Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries

Like many people, I'd guess, my first encounter with the work of Philip Pullman was His Dark Materials. Marketed as young adult novels, the trilogy—Northern Lights/The Golden Compass (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000)—featured themes not usually found in books aimed at middle schoolers, such as the murder of children, the death of God, and cosmos-healing sex between 13-year-olds.

But before Pullman became famous for His Dark Materials, he wrote another young adult series: the Sally Lockhart mysteries. It's pretty unusual for a male writer to feature a heroine; Pullman did it in both of these series.

In the first Sally Lockhart title, The Ruby in the Smoke (1985), the heroine is a 16-year-old in late Victorian London. As the book opens she is trying to learn more about the death of her father, Matthew Lockhart. Matthew was a shipping agent who drowned when his company's schooner was sunk in the South Seas with the loss of (almost) all hands, leaving Sally orphaned and virtually penniless. Sally's investigation brings her into contact with a gritty underworld of opium dens, brothels, East End slums, and street gangs.

It also brings her into contact with the legacies of British colonialism: the military occupation and exploitation of India, and the forced opium trade with China. (It soon becomes clear that the ruby of the title is derived from the former, while the smoke derives from the latter.) The later books in the series deal with the arms trade (The Shadow in the North (1986)), Jewish immigration and 19th-century social and labor movements (The Tiger in the Well (1990)), and great-power conflicts over resource-rich smaller countries (The Tin Princess (1994)). But while the books are firmly grounded in the grim realities of 19th-century capitalism and imperialism, they are also ripping yarns featuring criminal masterminds, powerful industrial magnates, international spies, and other fiendishly evil nemeses for Sally.

Aiding Sally over the course of the series are Frederick Garland, a photographer who is a few years older than Sally; Jim Taylor, an office boy and former street urchin, who becomes Frederick's assistant; and later, Daniel Goldberg, a Jewish refugee and labor organizer. As with Will in His Dark Materials, the men occasionally threaten to take over the narrative; fortunately, Sally is such a compelling character that the focus never shifts away from her for too long.

The voice of the narrator is also somewhat unusual. Sometimes the narrator adopts the limited point of view of the characters, especially when the situation is suspenseful or perilous. But at other times the narrator takes time out to explain the world of Victorian England from the standpoint of our contemporary mores—probably a necessary concession to the teenagers who are the books' intended audience, but a slightly disorienting shift in perspective nonetheless.

Apart from the narrator, there are a few other mild anachronisms as well. In The Shadow in the North, a factory is illuminated by electric light several years before the commercial manufacture of incandescent bulbs, and a character is described as having "a wide knowledge of matters on the fringe of psychology" at least a decade before the term "psychology" was in wide use. Pullman also discreetly signals his own tastes, as when he name-checks Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. Jim has a substantial collection of penny dreadfuls, referred to throughout the series, that he enthusiastically shares with other characters; after the first two novels in the Sally Lockhart series were published, Pullman wrote a book based on a character from penny dreadfuls, Spring-Heeled Jack (1989).

The level of violence in the series is amazingly high for books ostensibly aimed at young readers. Savage beatings and fights are described in gruesome detail, and over the course of the series characters are shot, stabbed, burned to death, killed by dogs, mutilated by bombs, drowned, crushed, felled by heart attacks, and plummet to their deaths. And it's not just the bad guys who get hurt: Frederick, Jim and Sally all sustain major injuries at various points, and (not to give too much away) one of them doesn't survive the series.

Another atypical aspect of the books is Pullman's frankness about sex. Prostitution, rape, and sexual torture are alluded to, although not described graphically. In the second volume in the series, The Shadow in the North, Sally and Frederick go to bed together—outside of wedlock!—while in the third volume in the series, The Tiger in the Well, it's suggested that Sally sleeps with a man she finds loathsome in order to divert suspicion and extract information.

If those aspects of the books seem aimed at modern sensibilities, other features are derived from sensationalist Victorian fiction itself. As Philip Pullman has written, "I wrote each one with a genuine cliché of melodrama right at the heart of it, on purpose: the priceless jewel with a curse on it—the madman with a weapon that could destroy the world—the situation of being trapped in a cellar with the water rising—the little illiterate servant girl from the slums of London who becomes a princess . . . And I set the stories up so that each of those stock situations, when they arose, would do so naturally and with the most convincing realism I could manage."

How convincing that realism is depends on the reader, of course. For me, the books get steadily more fantastic as the series progresses. The Tin Princess, in particular, reads a bit like a novelized Tintin adventure: it's set a central European principality riddled with spies, skullduggery and nefarious plots, which our protagonists confront with forthrightness and pluck.

A gap of several years separates each subsequent volume in the series from the previous books. The Ruby in the Smoke takes place in 1872, when Sally is 16; The Shadow in the North takes place six years later, in 1878; The Tiger in the Well three years after that, in 1881; and The Tin Princess the following year. Pullman may have created a minor dilemma for himself by spacing the books so far apart chronologically; Sally is an adult by the start of the second book, and a mother by the start of the third, which is perhaps why she only has a cameo role in the last book. I'm thinking, though, that should Pullman ever want to return to these characters—and I hope that he does—there might be room for an adventure or two in the gaps between the books in the original series.

So if you give the books to a 12-year-old, be prepared to face some interesting questions. I recommend reading them yourself first—but that's a task that will be highly enjoyable whether or not you intend to pass them on to a young person later. As with His Dark Materials, the Sally Lockhart series is utterly addictive. Once you're hooked (which for me happened by the time I hit the second chapter of the first book), you'll want to devour them all.

The first two books in the Sally Lockhart series were adapted for television, with Billie Piper in the role of Sally. I haven't yet seen these films, but it strikes me that Piper may perhaps be miscast as the autodidact Sally (she was certainly miscast as Fanny Price in ITV's dreadful 2007 Mansfield Park, miswritten by Maggie Wadey and misdirected by Ian McDonald, and broadcast in the US as part of the PBS series The Complete Jane Austen). Still, I'll reserve judgment until I have a chance to see them.

Philip Pullman's informative website includes the author's own discussions of his books, along with brief extracts from each, and was the source of the cover images of the Sally Lockhart novels in this post.

Update 8 May 2013: Last night we watched the first of the two BBC Sally Lockhart adaptations, The Ruby in the Smoke (2006), and thought that it was pretty well done—but we would have been lost in places without having read the book first. Billie Piper acquits herself well as Sally, although the actress is clearly somewhat older than the character. Pullman's Sally is 16, while we're told at the beginning of screenwriter Adrian Hodges' television version that it is 1874, making Sally 18; Piper looks to be in her mid-20s. Jim, too, who is about 13 in Pullman's book, is here portrayed by Matthew Smith, a (very tall) actor who also clearly left his teens behind half a decade ago.

Hodges makes a few other changes as well, minor (Sally gets back the pistol her father gave her, rather than having to buy another one) and major (the final confrontation with Mrs. Holland takes place at Hangman's Wharf rather than on the more dramatic Tower Bridge). The filmmakers have also made the interesting choice to bring in a third British colonial reference after the military occupation of India and the opium trade with China by casting three of the characters as Afro-Caribbean. Among them are the sailor Matthew Bedwell and his twin brother the Rev. Nicholas Bedwell, both played by David Harewood. In addition to the reference to the slave trade in the British Caribbean, there is another historical basis for this choice: the Rev. George Cousens, a prominent Afro-Caribbean minister in the mid-19th century.

In other roles, JJ Feild, a wonderfully sympathetic Henry Tilney in ITV's 2007 Northanger Abbey, is a wonderfully sympathetic Frederick Garland here. And Julie Walters is a magnificently malevolent Mrs. Holland; her performance is reason enough to watch the film.

In adapting Pullman's book into a 90-minute runtime there was necessarily some compression, particularly at the denouement, but most of the scenes, incidents and characters in the novel make it into the film. Inevitably, perhaps, the movie feels like the introduction to a series, with (as in the book) a couple of major plot threads left dangling; it's unfortunate that to date only one more entry in the series has been produced. Still, on the basis of the strengths of this film we're looking forward to seeing its sequel, The Shadow in the North (2007)—I'll post about it here once we do.

Update 17 May 2013: The adaptation of The Shadow in the North is more straightforward than that of Ruby in the Smoke, and the outlines of the story should be clear even for those who haven't read the book. As before, the Victorian setting is nicely evoked, and Billie Piper, JJ Feild, and Matt Smith make most welcome returns from the first episode.

The flaw of this second (and likely final, alas) episode in the series is its villain. In Ruby, Elliot Cowan wasn't my image of Hendrik van Eeden, but it didn't much matter—Julie Walters was the perfect embodiment of the relentlessly malignant Mrs. Holland. In Shadow, Jared Harris is also not my image of the amoral industrial magnate Axel Bellman. But here it's a bigger problem: Bellman is the central villain, and Harris simply wasn't sufficiently sinister.

I also found the blind casting, admirable though it is in theory, to be distracting in practice. Nellie Budd is played by Doña Croll, an actress born in Jamaica; casting the spiritualist medium as an Afro-Caribbean woman seemed to flirt with cliché. And the dreadlocks on Bellman's henchman Mr. Brown (Vyelle Croom) seemed, er, dreadfully anachronistic.

Still, this adaptation is pretty effective. It's a shame that the series never reached the third and fourth books, both of which have key scenes that would lend themselves readily to cinematic treatment.

Update 1 May 2013: The comments below contain spoilers—if you plan to read the books, you may want to wait until you have before taking a look at the comments.

Aap Ki Kasam

For two-thirds of its length, Aap Ki Kasam (Your promise, 1974) is a delight. Poor boy Kamal (Rajesh Khanna) and rich girl Sunita (Mumtaz) meet at college; after the inevitable  initial misunderstandings, they tease, flirt and begin to fall in love. On a trip back to Kamal's village, Sunita's car runs out of gas (by design?) in the middle of a thunderstorm. Sunita has providentially brought along a thermos of tea; when she sips out of Kamal's cup, and then he turns the cup so that he sips from the same place, it shows how sexy suggestion can be:

R. D. Burman's and Anand Bakhshi's music, and the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar, continue the playful, romantic mood in "Suno Kaho":

Kamal and Sunita marry, and Kamal's friend Mohan (Sanjeev Kumar) gives Kamal a job in his electronics shop and a home next door to him in a little cottage. The newlyweds spend most of their time billing and cooing, and this gives us the perfect opportunity to enjoy the Rajesh-Mumtaz jodi in all its glory.

There's a moment in the film that perfectly illustrates their famous chemistry, when Mumtaz reaches out and gives a little tug to a tuft of Rajesh's chest hair. It's charming, touching, funny, surprising, and utterly believable besotted newlywed behavior. And judging from Rajesh's reaction, I'll swear it's an unscripted, spontaneous moment of unfeigned affection between the actors:

When Kamal pretends to have a headache to avoid early-morning tennis with Mohan and stay in bed with Sunita, Mohan sends a doctor over to see him. The doctor tells Kamal (perhaps as a practical joke by Mohan) that he should abstain from so much lovemaking. Since the temptation is too great at home, Kamal and Sunita go to the park—which turns out to be filled with cuddling couples. Sunita teases Rajesh mercilessly in "Paas nahin aana" (Don't come near). "Don't forget," she tells him, "today you are under oath and love is banned!":

Kamal and Sunita go to a temple to pray for a child. Kamal tells Sunita (to her surprise, and ours) that he would prefer a daughter; sons, he tells her, are neglectful, but daughters always love their parents. (Foreshadowing!) They drink a celebratory cup of bhang, and are feeling no pain in "Jai Jai Shiv Shankhar" (Hail, Lord Shiva). Mumtaz under the influence is especially hilarious:

I would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of the movie watching Kamal and Sunita's love games, but of course neither they nor we can be left in such bliss. Discord soon arises in the form of Mohan's unhappy marriage and his (too close?) friendship with Sunita. Kamal frequently finds Mohan in his house, sharing coffee and laughter with Sunita, and begins to wonder whether Mohan has ulterior motives.

At a housewarming party, Sunita sings an exquisite love song...to Mohan! But "Mohan" ("enchanting") is one of the names of Lord Krishna, and Sunita, as Radha, is singing about the God of Love as a sign of her devotion to her husband. But Kamal thinks she's confessing her "Chori Chupke" (Secret, silent) love for his sitar-playing neighbor and boss:

Things spiral downwards pretty quickly from this point. Kamal's suspicions are confirmed, or so he thinks, when he returns unexpectedly from work one day to see a man scrambing over the wall between his house and Mohan's. The back door is open, and Mohan's cigarettes are in his ashtray. Not only that, but Sunita greets him at the door with her hair disheveled and her sari disarranged, and Kamal notices the sheets on their bed are mussed. But instead of having an honest conversation with her, he shuns her without explanation, which she—entirely innocent, of course—finds bewildering and hurtful. And when she finally confronts him about his cold, accusatory behavior, Kamal goes too far...

And this is where writers Ram Kelkar and Ramesh Pant, and director J. Om Prakash, themselves go too far. We're forced to watch Kamal make mistake after self-destructive mistake, and subject himself to misery on self-inflicted misery. Even more fatally, Sunita virtually disappears from the screen.

The first part of the movie features many wonderful moments between Rajesh and Mumtaz, and the songs are classics. But the change of tone in the final hour is jarring: it feels like someone replaced the final reels of Vivah (2006) with the final reels of Devdas (2002). As a result, Aap Ki Kasam ultimately fails to deliver on its initial promise.

You can watch Aap Ki Kasam on YouTube, for free.

Farewell to Caffe Venezia Opera Night

The murals at Caffe Venezia: a cat (in the doorway of the bakery) watches over our favorite table
Photo from Berkeleyside

On Tuesday we had dinner in a lovely candlelit square in Venice, surrounded by music. Or at least that's the way it felt as we attended the final Opera Night at Caffe Venezia. Venezia has been our favorite Berkeley restaurant for more than two decades; it was the place we'd go for birthdays and anniversaries and pre-show dinners. The restaurant was designed and decorated so that it seemed as though you were sitting at an outdoor cafe in Venice, an illusion fostered by Silvio Ronzone's cleverly detailed trompe-l'oeil murals (click on the picture above for a larger version).

The whimsical verisimilitude extended to a splashing central fountain, pigeons perched on a balcony, and a laundry line that stretched high above the tables. The laundry changed seasonally (on Valentine's day, the line was hung with bright red lingerie):

Note the pigeons (on the balcony at top left) and the laundry
on the line; photo by Gourmet G.

And of course, what would Venice be without opera? Every New Year's Eve Venezia presented an Opera Night, where singers from the Berkeley/West Edge Opera and other local companies would perform while your meal was served. It felt so festive to be sipping a glass of prosecco while being serenaded with the greatest hits of 19th century opera.

But to our dismay Caffe Venezia announced earlier this year that it would be closing at the end of May, and offering a final Opera Night on Tuesday, April 9. (Opera Night had begun as Tuesday Night Opera until it gradually became an only-on-New-Year's-Eve event.) We made sure to get reservations, but were uncertain what to expect with the looming closure.

The mood of the evening was bittersweet indeed, but this was one of the best Opera Nights we'd ever attended. Perhaps recognizing that this was their last chance to show their appreciation for the restaurant and the event, the audience responded to the performers enthusiastically. And the singers seemed to be inspired by their reception. The mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott, in particular, playfully engaged the audience by singing "Una voce poco fa" from Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816) and the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen (1875) while strolling among the tables and directly addressing (and sometimes caressing) the diners.

Among the many highlights of this truly delightful evening were two duets sung by Baggott and her soprano partner Jillian Khuner. The first was the Flower Duet ("Sous le dôme épais") from Leo Delibe's Lakmé (1883), one of the few operas with a South Asian setting. I wasn't able to find a version with the singers we heard at Caffe Venezia, so Elīna Garanča and Anna Netrebko will have to do:

The second duet was the Barcarolle ("Belle nuit d'amour") from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann, 1881); the act from which this duet is taken is set (appropriately enough) in Venice. The video below again features Garanča and Netrebko:

Savoring a deliciously earthy Refosco from Friuli as the accompaniment to my favorite Venezia dish, malfatti con funghi ("badly cut" pasta with a richly flavorful mushroom sauce), in the company of my sweetheart, while listening to Khuner and Baggott's gorgeous voices intertwine—it's hard to imagine a more enjoyable way to spend an evening. Perhaps we should regret the disappearance of the 18th-century tradition of having supper and drinking champagne while attending the opera.

Caffe Venezia’s warm ambiance, excellent staff (Amy was our attentive and efficient server on Tuesday), well-prepared food and affordable elegance will be sorely missed. Many thanks to everyone at Venezia who made every meal we had there over the years a special occasion. We can only hope that another restaurant in Berkeley or San Francisco will take over the tradition of Opera Night.

You can read about Venezia in longtime staffer Allison Etchison's article in Berkeleyside, from which the first photo of Venezia was taken.

Update 27 December 2019: This post has been updated with the correct identity of one of the singers, who was previously misidentified.

Prem Kahani

With a cast that includes Rajesh Khanna, Shashi Kapoor, and Vinod Khanna, the gender balance and narrative focus of Prem Kahani (Love Story, 1975) is definitely shifted towards the manly side. The "love story" of writer-director Raj Khosla's film is one of masculine friendship, loyalty and self-sacrifice.

But by far the most interesting character in Prem Kahani is Kamini (the adorable Mumtaz). Kamini is in love with her next-door neighbor Rajesh (Rajesh), an apolitical poet who plans to become a teacher. The famous Rajesh-Mumtaz chemistry is in full effect in "Prem Kahani Mein":

Prem Kahani's superb soundtrack is by Laxmikant-Pyrarelal, with lyrics by Anand Bakhshi; the playback singers are Kishor Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Mohd. Rafi and Mukesh.

Kamini's wealthy father, Judge Shrikant Sinha (K. N. Singh), is a supporter of British rule—the film is set during the days of the Quit India movement of the early 1940s, although the clothes and hairstyles scream mid-1970s—and he arranges Kamini's marriage with police inspector Dheeraj (Shashi). Defiantly, Kamini declares her intention to marry Rajesh. Her father tells her that if she goes against his wishes, she must carry her proposal to Rajesh herself—and she does:

But Rajesh's politically committed brother Brijesh (Trilok Kapoor) has been killed leading an anti-British demonstration. Rajesh, radicalized, has decided to join the freedom struggle. He sacrifices his love for Kamini because he doesn't want to see her widowed like his sister-in-law, and pretends that his feelings were never serious:

Kamini, deeply hurt and angry, agrees to obey her father's wishes and marry Dheeraj.

Rajesh now embarks on a campaign of assassination and becomes a wanted man. He's wounded during a police dragnet, and is smuggled to the house of a close friend in the truck of the Pathan tribesman Sher Khan (Vinod Khanna):

(Sher Khan doesn't realize how quickly his willingness to sacrifice himself will be tested.)

The close friend Rajesh has chosen to hide with is none other than...Dheeraj! And sending the irony meter pinging off the scale, Rajesh's unexpected arrival at Dheeraj's house interrupts Dheeraj and Kamini's wedding night. But Dheeraj has the right priorities:

Despite Dheeraj's and Rajesh's supposed closeness, apparently neither one has ever mentioned Kamini to the other. Of course, this puts Rajesh and Kamini in a painful and awkward situation, and they both pretend that they've never been anything more to each other than neighbors. But there's still plenty of emotion simmering beneath the surface, as in "Phool aahista phenko" (Gently pluck the rose):

When Dheeraj finds out that Rajesh was once in love, he puts him on "trial" with Kamini as the judge. She delivers her verdict on Rajesh's behavior towards the unnamed girl:

Of course, Kamini herself isn't being fully honest with Dheeraj—or, perhaps, with herself, as Rajesh's presence brings old feelings flooding to the surface (or should I say pouring down like the monsoon):

(Notice how, at the end of the song, Rajesh closes the windows—symbolically closing off the resurgence of their feelings for one another. It's just one of Raj Khosla's many telling directorial touches in the film.)

Meanwhile, Sher Khan has been arrested and is being tortured to reveal Rajesh's whereabouts, and Dheeraj can't intervene without throwing suspicion on himself and endangering Rajesh. (If you're thinking, as I'm sure you are, that this scenario is eerily similar to the moment in Puccini's opera Turandot when the servant girl Liù is tortured so that she'll reveal the true name of Prince Calàf, the parallels don't end there.)

As the police manhunt for Rajesh closes in, and as it becomes harder for Rajesh and Kamini to conceal their (former?) love from Dheeraj, Kamini is forced to make a final, fateful choice—a choice which, if the men had been listening, she made long ago...

You don't mess with Kamini!

Kamini is an incredibly compelling character: smart, courageous and complicated. And Mumtaz is wonderful in the role. In a film packed with male stars, she more than holds her own, and makes Kamini the focus of our sympathies

For an additional take on Prem Kahani (including the gorgeous lyrics of "Phool aahista phenko"), please see MemsaabStory. From this wonderful review, Memsaab on "Phool aahista phenko": "This is Hindi cinema at its finest, honestly. So much communicated so beautifully in one simple song! How to explain it when someone says 'Oh, Bollywood—those are musicals, right?' Sigh."

Suggested reading: Revealing likes, illusory control, and sadistic parents

Do you feel smarter?

You: In college I thought that what people liked—especially their favorite music, movies, and books—told you everything you needed to know about them. It was one of the surprising discoveries of adulthood that the complexities of personality can't be defined quite so easily or simply.

Or can they? Researchers at the University of Cambridge have found that Facebook "likes" can be used to guess with a high degree of accuracy your gender, sexual orientation, political leanings, religious affiliation, whether you're a smoker, and even whether your parents split up before you were 21. As Geoffrey Mohan writes, perhaps it's not unexpected that someone who likes "Proud to be a mom" is most likely female and a parent. But more surprising is that David Stillwell and his Cambridge colleagues found that likes also correlate with traits such as intelligence, openness to new experiences, and conscientiousness—at least, as far as these traits can be accurately measured by personality tests. ("Liking" curly fries correlates with high IQ, while liking Hello Kitty indicates that you are open to new experiences but not highly conscientious.)

One or two of these correlations could be dismissed as statistical happenstance; taken together, they can create a highly detailed picture of who you are. And it doesn't matter whether, in any individual case, the correlations are accurate, as long as employers, insurance companies and marketers think that they are. What you like can say a great deal more about you than you may realize. (Geoffrey Mohan, "On Facebook, you are what you 'like,' study finds" Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2013)

Somini Sengupta

Illusions of control: Of course, we're all concerned about Internet privacy. Aren't we? But when you create an account on a site, you often must enter personal information such as an e-mail address and even your date of birth. We often do this without thinking—and as Somini Sengupta reports, with such key pieces of personal information sites can find out a huge amount of additional data about us.

Behavioral economist Alessandro Acquisiti has explored what motivates us to act against our own interests and surrender important personal information. And he's made some disturbing findings:

• We are inconsistent: If shoppers are offered a $10 coupon and told that it will be increased to $12 if they share information about their purchases, only about 50% agree to share. But if they are offered a $12 coupon and told that it will be decreased to $10 if they keep their data private, 90% agree to share. 
• We are irrational: Participants in a study of lying, stealing and drug use were far more willing to share data that could personally identify them if they were given a greater degree of choice about what information to share. 
• And we're distractable: Students surveyed about cheating were far more likely to admit to it if an unrelated offer popped up while they were answering the survey. 

It seems that we find the illusion of control and choice far too reassuring. (Somini Sengupta, "Letting down our guard with web privacy," New York Times, March 30, 2013)

Adam Phillips

Parents as sadists: Psychologist Adam Phillips writes about parent-child dynamics, and concludes that parents can't avoid acting in ways that are perceived by the child as sadistic. And sometimes, even with the best-intentioned parents, it isn't just perception: "The parent who punishes the child for his tantrum—punishment being itself a kind of tantrum, a despair about the rules rather than their enforcement—says to the child: my tantrum is more powerful than yours, but tantrums are all we have got...The punitive parent is giving the child what we have learned to call a double message: he is being told by someone who is enraged by their frustration that he should not be enraged by his frustration." (Adam Phillips, "The magical act of a desperate person," London Review of Books, 7 March 2013)