Review: Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield

Several years ago I read Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale, a book with books on the cover, a main character who is a biographer, and her subject who is a reclusive author. It was billed as gothic and mysterious, which are two adjectives from which I generally shy away. But the connection with books and the buzz it was generating was too hard to resist. And I liked it. I liked it enough to pick up Bellman and Black, the second offering from Setterfield, despite the fact that it is billed as a gothic ghost story. And although its subject matter is further afield from what usually read, it promised to be an interesting look into the height of the industrial revolution and the morbid Victorian celebration of death.

Rooks are incredibly intelligent birds. They have been documented making and using tools, they are thought to have long memories, and they are often found in myth as birds of prophecy and as symbols of death. There is something preternaturally intriguing about them for sure. When young William Bellman wants to show off his new catapult to his friends, he chooses to shoot a rock at a distant rook, killing it on impact. After admiring the true shot, he and his friends all go home and forget about the dead rook. But the parish, building, clamour, parliament, storytelling, or whatever collective noun you choose, of rooks do not forget their fallen comrade.

Life goes on for William though and he seems to live a good and charmed one at that. He learns his uncle's cloth dyeing textile business. He marries happily and has several children. He is wildly successful, well liked, and intelligent. But then tragedy overtakes him. First some of childhood friends die untimely deaths. Then his wife and all but one of his children succumb to an epidemic. As he lays in the graveyard consumed with grief and worry about his final living child who is clearly dying as well, a mysterious stranger who had appeared at all of the funerals William himself has had to attend over the past few years happens upon him and plants an idea, an opportunity arising out of the ashes of the dead, in William's head. William agrees to this deal and his daughter Dora slowly starts to recover. He stops caring about the dyeing industry and turns his attention to the business of death and mourning, building an enormous monument to the grave, a funerary emporium, death's department store. He creates Bellman and Black, purveyors of all things needed to mourn and to die.

Setterfield has written an unsettling story that is no traditional ghost story. Certainly Bellman is haunted by the death he caused so long ago and the losses he suffers in his own life but there is something more, something subtle, dark, and somber to this tale than just a simple ghost story. Almost half of the novel details the charmed life that William leads, going into detail about the processes in the cloth industry. He seems truly to be "to the good" until his own grief threatens to pull him into the grave that so many of his beloved already inhabit. And then he changes, becoming melancholy, obsessed with death, gloomy, and cold. He is driven to make his new business a success and he does that even as the narrative tension starts to tauten with an ominous unease. As those around him wonder about the shadowy Mr. Black, the reader must wonder too if he in fact exists or is just the tortured image of Bellman's increasingly unsettled mind.

Setterfield skillfully evokes the Victorian sensibility with her writing. Through the characters of William and the mysterious stranger, she offers half hidden and obscured intentions that make the story a degree more menacing than it might be otherwise. The interspersed passages about rooks and the mythology behind them are interesting, especially as they are symbols of memory, and these bits certainly add a creepy fascination to the reading. And yet there is little here to keep the reader turning pages beyond Bellman's torments as few of the other characters are well enough described to hold the reader's attention. Setterfield is a writer who knows how to use and manipulate language beautifully but this novel just doesn't have the fullness of an intriguing story behind it on which to hang those elegant and precise words.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: If Not For This by Pete Fromm

After I graduated from college, I went on a week long white water rafting trip. It was absolutely amazing and had I not already had a life plan in place, I might just have tried to become a river rat. The trip was exhilarating and gorgeous and I could see the appeal of the life of river runners, even if it was hard to be that grubby all the time. As we approached each set of rapids, the guide in the raft told us about the make-up of that particular rapid and how we planned to run it. But there was always a caveat to the plan. Rapids are not static. They change over the seasons. They change depending on the volume of water raging through them. And they can even change beyond recognition after just a single storm. In many ways, and in this in particular, rapids reflect our lives.  We never know when a rapid is going to spin us around or present differently than we expect or just be wild with water running high.  Pete Fromm has captured life as a series of rapids to run beautifully in his novel, If Not For This.

Maddy and Dalt meet at a party for boatmen on the Snake River. Their connection is instant and they embark on an enviable all-consuming love story, dubbing themselves "the lucky ones." But life rarely goes as planned and after they start up their own river running company, Maddy discovers that the bone deep weariness she's been experiencing is not mono as she'd perhaps thought, but instead MS and that she's pregnant as well. And so Maddy and Dalt have to change course and fight for some sense of normalcy as they plunge into the out of control rush of rapids they didn't hear coming.

As they grapple with the inexorable march of Maddy's illness, they must change how they thought they'd live their lives together. They are clearly soul mates and while their connection can sometimes be a bit much, it gives a solid foundation to the hard decisions they have to make. Do they choose to have children, knowing the ravages ahead? How do you deal with the frustration of losing independence by slow degrees, either the afflicted person or the person who loves them? How do you persevere in a life that is so different than the one on which you planned? The novel allows time to pass in the blank space between chapters so that each chapter shows a new stage in their lives rather than the slow, daily decline of the disease. While this takes away the drudgery of the everyday, it highlights Maddy and Dalt's tender and passionate embrace of life in the face of certain decline, showing their struggles at every stage, the black comedy they use to cope with this life sentence, and the full speed ahead courage and love that gets them through the lowest ebb. The descriptions of the physical world, the rivers and the wilderness are simply gorgeous and these early descriptions contrast heartbreakingly with the later grim reality of a body trapped and living with this thief of a disease. Fromm has written a stunning book not just about living with MS but also about love and nature and who we are deep down to our very souls.  It will touch your heart and tear you up in equal measure.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Look of Love by Sarah Jio. The book is being released by Plume on November 25, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Born during a Christmas blizzard, Jane Williams receives a rare gift: the ability to literally see true love. Jane has emerged from an ailing childhood a lonely, hopeless romantic when, on her twenty-ninth birthday, she receives a card from the midwife who delivered her. Jane must identify the six types of love before the full moon following her thirtieth birthday, or face grave consequences. When Jane falls for a science writer who doesn’t believe in love, she fears that her fate is sealed. Inspired by the classic song, The Look of Love will utterly enchant Sarah Jio’s rapidly growing fanbase.

Review: The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice

It's really hard when reading a book about an earlier time period, not to impose our modern feelings on any aspect that we find distasteful or inhuman. But while we cannot change our own feelings, we must try to read the book without too much judgment. That is indeed very difficult to do when reading Claire Prentice's impeccably researched non-fiction tale, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island, about a tribe of Filipino people brought to the US and exhibited like zoo animals at Coney Island and across the country, a group of people who were treated appallingly badly, were lied to, were stolen from, were dismissed as ignorant savages, and to top it all off, were then failed egregiously in the American judicial system.

In 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, a tribe from the Philippines called the Igorrotes were a wildly popular part of the exhibitions. In light of this, a former army officer who had spent time in the Philippines doctoring to the tribe and who had been a part of the group that brought the Bontoc Igorrotes to this country for the World's Fair, decided that he wanted to bring another group to the US to exhibit them around the country in a commercial venture. The US government agreed to his initial plan, giving him the right and responsibility for the well-being of the people.

Truman Hunt was initially benevolent and caring and the tribe members felt as if he was their friend. He personally chose the 51 members of the tribe who would be allowed to accompany him to the US, promising them monthly pay and the proceeds from any souvenir sales they made in return for a year in the US.  People flocked to him to be considered. Once he had assembled the group, they made their way to the coast and embarked for a long and ultimately horrific experience in the US. When they arrived, Hunt made a token effort to display the group in an educational manner as he had promised the US government he would but quickly backed out of that agreement and headed to Coney Island to Luna Park where the Igorrotes became the biggest, most profitable exhibit of the season. Billed as head-hunting, dog-eating savages, the Igorrotes settled into the boring mundanity of a life purporting to be faithful to their life at home but in actual fact without any real purpose. Right from the start, their usual way of life was sensationalized and exaggerated in order to draw people in and increase ticket sales. The Igorrotes wore very little clothing in comparison to the Americans gawking at them. They sported tattoos inked after taking an enemy's head, and they celebrated major events with a dog feast. In America, they existed mainly to be looked at and to eat dog at every opportunity, something that tribe members would tell the interpreter was disrespectful of their actual culture but which would not be remedied.

Hunt quickly changed from a considerate guardian of the people to an avaricious huckster, seeding the newspapers with false stories about the tribe, creating things out of whole cloth, and treating the Igorrotes as ignorant side show exhibits rather than as human beings. If that wasn't enough, Hunt became even more greedy and brutal, forcibly stealing the money that the Igorrotes had hidden from him as their trust for him deteriorated and compelling them to live in appalling conditions. Personally Hunt was in trouble as well, being charged with bigamy, a charge he evaded, and then tracked by the government, which had finally woken up to Hunt's abuse and misuse of the Igorrotes, a potentially charged political situation.

The treatment these people endured at Hunt's hands is atrocious. That the media aided and abetted Hunt by printing his assertions and tall tales without bothering to check into even one of them is reprehensible and the height of yellow journalism. That the judicial system valued fraternal connections over the truth is completely and indefensibly shameful. Prentice's careful and extensive research brings this forgotten chapter of our history to vivid and disturbing life. She tells the story as if it was fictional, allowing herself to discuss what the people involved were thinking or feeling at each stage and while this is often supported by quotes from the individuals in question, sometimes she goes just over the line in trying to develop a person's character. She has easily shown Hunt as the con man he was and the devious ways he found to exploit the Igorrotes for his own profit. The Igorrotes, though, remain much more mysterious as individuals, perhaps because so few of them spoke English and so there's little reliable record of their feelings on their experiences beyond the court records in the end. Prentice does offer as much information as she could uncover to tell readers what happened to many of the major players in the story and that is much appreciated. The tale as a whole speaks to our fascination, a fascination that unfortunately continues to this day, with "otherness" and to the way that we are nowhere near as civilized, caring, and compassionate as might be hoped.

For more information about Claire Prentice and the book, take a look at her web page or at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I did a much better job on the reviews this week. Still a large mountain to climb, but... This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Ruby by Cynthia Bond
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
Z by Therese Anne Fowler

Reviews posted this week:

Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg
Flirting With French by William Alexander
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison
The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice
To Marry a Scottish Laird by Lynsay Sands

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

Fog Island Mountains by Michelle Bailat-Jones came from Tantor and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

About a man with terminal cancer who disappears in advance of a gathering typhoon and his wife, who has been unwilling to face the situation, and must now come home and look loss in the face, this sounds haunting and beautiful.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown

There's just something about pirates, you know? Not the pirates from today, but the ones from the 18th and 19th centuries. In reality they were probably just as bloodthirsty, ruthless, and terrible in their time as today's pirates are in ours but looking back at them there's something inescapably appealing and even romantic about them. Take the outlaw life, put it on a ship, and float it in an ocean (or the Great Lakes, I'm not picky) and I will have a hard time keeping my hands off the book. Add in a talented chef and a commanding, intimidating female pirate captain and you have a kooky premise that just begs to be read. This was indeed the case with Eli Brown's swashbuckling, highly entertaining, and surprisingly concerned with social justice adventure novel, Cinnamon and Gunpowder.

Owen Wedgwood is a talented chef for Lord Ramsey, one of the major shareholders in the successful Pendleton Trading Company. Wedgwood is kidnapped when a dinner party to which Ramsey had been invited and to which he took Wedgwood in the capacity of chef de cuisine, is interrupted by the appearance of Mad Hannah Mabbot, a feared and fearsome pirate captain. Mabbot dispatches Ramsey to the devil and after tasting the meal, decides to make off with the cook for her own benefit. Wedgwood is horrified by his fate as a prisoner on the pirate ship as it heads off into the deep blue sea; he thinks of his late wife and his late employer, and tries to come up with a plan to escape these murderous rogues. When he is summoned to Mad Hannah's presence, he finds out the terms of his survival. Just as Westley in The Princess Bride is told that the Dread Pirate Roberts will "most likely kill you in the morning," our pudgy, prudish, and rather bumbling chef is told that he must create a unique and exquisite meal, concocted almost entirely from the meager stores aboard ship, for the captain once a week or he will suffer her wrath and face a long swim home, either whole or in pieces depending on the depth of her disappointment. Aside from having no choice whatsoever, Owen has his professional pride at stake and he agrees to the devil's bargain.

Wedge, as he comes to be called, tells of his incarceration on the ship, his attempts to coax something edible from the hard tack and weevil-ridden flour stores, his culinary creativity, and his dawning realization that there is more to the flame haired captain and her zeal in hunting down and destroying the Pendleton ships than he ever imagined in the splotched and hidden journal in which he confides most nights. As time passes, his first impressions of the crew and her captain are softened and humanized and he finds his own feelings about the raids on the Pendleton ships doing a volte face once he understands the reasons better. There is a fair bit of rollicking fun to be had in the adventures of the Flying Rose and her crew. There's also murder and plotting, high seas treachery, a saboteur, eccentric crew members, chasing after an elusive pirate called the Brass Fox, a jail break, trying to elude the notice of Laroche and his diabolically clever inventions, and over the top entertaining romps through the oceans of the world. In short, this is a perfect pirate tale.

But it is the something more than a pirate tale here that really elevates the novel. Brown touches on the history of the British tea trade and the effects that the forced introduction of opium has on the Chinese. There are the politics of social justice and the importance of family loyalty included as well. The characters are wonderfully fleshed out and quirky. With a passionate, determined, and charismatic female captain and a perpetually disapproving, tight-laced, often incompetent male chef, Brown has inverted the expected roles for men and women with the former in the role of nurturer and the latter in the role of adventurer. The slow revelation of Mabbot's motivations, her true character, and her deep-seated integrity don't mitigate her unforgiving vigilante justice or compensate for the gritty and terrible bloodbaths but they do add a dimension not often seen with respect to pirates or ascribed to women, especially those in 1819. Brown describes the meals that Wedge creates for the lady pirate as both exotic and in lushly sexual terms. And even though there is a slow developing romance involved, the larger part of the novel is over the top and humorous even as it touches on politics and morality. These are pirates (and a chef) like you've never seen before and the novel is a fun and fabulous read.

Sunday Salon: Books you still recommend years later

So I was reading my friend C.'s blog the other day when I came across her post about the books she listed in that meme asking people about the most influential books in your life. She noted that almost all of hers were books she read before she turned 21. She wondered if most people's "Most Influential" books were from those years because everyone is still trying to figure out who he or she is or will become. In looking at most people's lists (mine included), it does seem to hold that the books that have most influenced us are those we read in young adulthood or even childhood. But surely we don't stop growing and developing as human beings then so why shouldn't there be books from later years that also deserve mention. So she decided to try and create a list of books that she'd read after she turned 22. I thought that would be a worthy thing to attempt too so here are the top fifteen books I've read in adulthood (plus the bonus of a few that just made me smile), those I still mention when someone asks me for a great read (in no particular order):

1. Silk by Alessandro Baricco
2. Safe From the Sea by Peter Geye
3. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
4. The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett
5. The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist
6. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
7. Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
8. Montana, 1948 by Larry Watson
9. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
10. Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols
11. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
12. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
13. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
14. Silk and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie
15. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

And those that made me smile just to read them:

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

It makes me feel better to know that I do still come across books that leave an indelible print on my reading self. They may come fewer and farther between the older I get, but they are still out there. What books would you put on a list of your own like this?

I didn't do much reading this week. I worked on getting some of the long-standing, out-standing reviews I had to complete instead. But I did indeed manage a few books. I watched as man tried to defend his reputation to his community and to his son. I felt shame over the history of exhibiting human beings that we have swept under the rug of history. And I zipped along as a young woman found love with a kilted Scotsman (Outlander withdrawal anyone?). I still have bookmarks making their way through stories invoking the Upper Peninsula of Michigan because that is where my heart lies, a fictionalized version of Zelda Fitzgerald's life, and the tale of an abused young woman whose childhood friend shows her kindness not understood by their shared town. Where did your reading adventures take you this past week?

Review: Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard

I am as enchanted as anyone by beautiful, lyrical writing. Being able to evoke a place or create a unique character or capture the fluid nuances of dialogue is incredibly important in the best writing. But sometimes in the quest for this transcendent writing, authors do too much, taking their language from the sublime to the overdone. And sometimes the search for the perfect word or descriptive phrase is too evident and forced in the writing to make for easy and seamless reading. This was the case for me with Melissa Pritchard's novel, Palmerino.

Sylvia Casey is a writer. Her previous books were not enough of a success for her publisher to stay with her if she doesn't produce a blockbuster of sorts this time around. As if struggling professionally isn't enough, her husband of many years has recently left her for a man. She's come to Palmerino, an enclave in Italy just outside Florence, to recover personally and professionally as she researches the life of Violet Paget, a Victorian novelist best known for her supernatural stories under the pen name of Vernon Lee. Paget was a polymath, feminist, and lesbian who fully inhabited the created persona of Vernon Lee and Sylvia Casey wants to write a fictional biography of the not very well known author, hence her retreat to Palmerino, where Paget/Lee lived out much of her life.

The story has a triple stranded narration, telling the story of Sylvia and Violet/Vernon as well as the ghost of Vernon, who slowly creeps into Sylvia's consciousness before possessing her incrementally, in an intentional echo of Vernon's own writing. When the narration focuses on Sylvia, it centers on her writing, the lush, atmospheric place that Palmerino is, and her discoveries about the little known writer on whom she is growing increasingly fixed. The portion centered on Violet/Vernon tells a fairly straightforward biography of the writer, using her own diaries, letters, and the impressions of those around her, painting her as impressively intelligent, socially abrasive, scared of intimacy, and needy. When the spirit of Vernon narrates the tale, there is a sense of gathering menace and a disturbingly self-congratulatory feel in the pleased accounting of what she can make Sylvia write and do.

The narration gives the sensation of having a dreamy veil over it. Everything, whether necessary, tangential, or completely immaterial to the plot, is described in detail, giving the whole of it a florid and meandering feel. The pacing is slow and made for a very soporific read for me. The ending is a bit strange and otherworldly, another echo of the real Vernon Lee's work, but inevitable for all that. While I found the story a struggle to read, there are many glowing tributes to the book and the writing. Certainly the question of inspiration, research, and authorship, loneliness and connection, and the close link between this world and the spirit world are all present in the text but ultimately they don't seem to drive anything or to be examined fully in the course of the novel. In the end, the biggest irony for me is that Sylvia's manuscript, called Palmerino, is deemed unreadable.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

First lines are important. They can be the reason someone buys a book, or puts it back on the shelf. Great first lines live on in our collective cultural consciousness. We all know "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." or "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" or "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." These all snag the reader into the text immediately and set their scenes beautifully. Celeste Ng's lovely and painful novel, Everything I Never Told You, has its own intriguing and horrifying first line: "Lydia is dead." And there's no way from that first moment that the reader can think of anything but finding out everything that leads up to that opening moment.

The Lee family lives in a small community in Ohio in the 1970s. Father James is a professor at the local college. He's Chinese-American and has always hoped that his children will fit into their community better than he ever did. Mother Marilyn is a blue-eyed blonde who met James when he was at Harvard and she was at Radcliffe. She dreamed of becoming a doctor but had to shelve her dreams when she got pregnant. They have three children. Nath, is a high school senior getting ready to go off to college; Lydia, at sixteen, is the family favorite; and Hannah, is a serious, quiet child they often forget they have. On the morning that the novel opens, the family doesn't yet know that Lydia's body will be pulled from the lake by their home in a few short days; they just know she's not at the breakfast table on time. Even after they know that the special blue-eyed child who was the light of her parents' lives has died, there is the question of how she could possibly have died. As each person in the family comes to terms with Lydia's death and with their own idea of how, the family cracks and then breaks.

Each character in the novel narrates his or her own sections, allowing the reader to understand each character's feelings toward Lydia and the way that she impacted each of their lives. Although they are a family, in many ways they are related individuals more than any kind of unit. Each of them stands alone within the family structure, seeing things from their own perspective only. And each of them reacts to their grief differently. Lydia's death highlights all of this but it is not the genesis for it. The family has been non-communicative for a long time, allowing the pressure of expectations, the local racism, and the high cost of personal dreams imposed on someone else to cloak the unqualified love and support that a family should provide.

The novel is not really a mystery, although there is the question of just how Lydia died and what might be being hidden about the night she disappeared. Instead it is a psychological domestic drama with the pain of the present woven skillfully with the history of the family from its very beginnings. The writing is smooth and understated and the pacing is slow but never ponderous. There is a long, slow build to the truth of Lydia's death. In the end, I wanted to cry for Lydia and, in fact, for each member of her family for the pressures and the expectations and the failures they each faced both before and after her death, as spouses, as parents, as siblings. And if the novel is disturbingly sad in tone over all, there is a haunting and perfect beauty to the end.

A quiet novel, this is an amazingly fast read because you cannot fail to want to keep turning pages and find out what happened to Lydia. Ng does a lovely job rendering the suspicious racism of the time and the way in which grief destroys people individually. She manages to make the reader feel sorry for parents who were so obliviously self-absorbed with their own problems that they could only live vicariously through their daughter and who are gutted by the truth of her loss, which is no small task and her depiction of Nath and Hannah as surviving siblings is heartbreaking.  This is a novel you will think about, with characters you will pity, long after you close the cover.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: Flirting With French by William Alexander

It's been twenty-five years since I last took a French class. I freely admit I have retained little of the vocabulary and even less of the grammar from my seven years of learning. If I tried to speak French now, it would be a garbled and hideous thing, I know. I cannot read the French novels (no translation needed once upon a time, thank you very much) that grace my bookshelves. I cannot even read the long term paper I wrote for my AP French class so long ago. Given that it was a ten page paper on the meaning of life based on the existential writers we'd read that year, I'm not certain I'd be able to read or understand it if it was in English, but that's neither here nor there. The amazing fact here is not that I once wrote something like that (although, yes, it is pretty amazing), it is that I once wrote it in an entirely different language, despite all the errors highlighted in red pen. And even though it has been many years since I was even remotely competent (note I am not saying fluent) in French, I do find myself wishing I was once again. There's no reason for me to re-learn French. It's just something I think would be cool. So it's not a huge surprise that I was immediately drawn to William Alexander's experiential narrative non-fiction book, Flirting with French, about his own desire and attempt to (re)learn French as an adult.

Alexander is fifty-eight years old and a dedicated Francophile when he decides that he is going to take the next twelve months and become fluent in French, even if it kills him (and it tried to). He took French briefly and without much enthusiasm when he was much younger but he is ready to really devote himself to learning the language. He attends a conference about language acquisition and although the science of it is against him reaching the level of fluency he desires, he is not deterred at all. He proceeds to try all sorts of ways to learn French, interactive computer programs, Rosetta Stone, French language Meet-ups, corresponding with French speakers via email, even two weeks of serious French immersion classes in France. And in the midst of his quest to beat the odds and learn the language, he is faced with serious and recurring heart issues as well.

As he attempts to re-learn, retain, and learn afresh, Alexander also addresses the mechanics of language learning as an adult and the belief that language learning in children is fluid but not in adults, the governmentally sanctioned Academie Francais and its quest to preserve the purity of the French language, the history of the language itself, his attempts to think as a Frenchman and his attempts at French culture (like his day long croissant making--delicious but ridiculously time-consuming). He discusses the vast difference between French and English, the gender of words and the lack of rationale behind said gender assignments, the nerve wracking question of whether you "tutoyer" someone (use the familiar "you" as opposed to the formal "you"), and the incomprehensibility of conversational French as versus formal French.

The book is a nice combination of factual information about the French language and language acquisition and personal anecdotes on Alexander's part about his not altogether successful struggles to learn French. The tone of the book is self-deprecating and mostly light-hearted (although some of the medical crises are not as light). Alexander is funny and both he and his quest come off as tres charmante. The end result of Alexander's year to learn French might surprise some readers, or it might not, but it is a a fitting ending for sure. I still think it would be fun to try and pick up the language again myself but I somehow suspect that if I followed that interest, it would, as Alexander suggests with his subtitle, charm me, seduce me, and nearly break my heart too.

Thanks to the publisher and LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg

In the 1920s, Singapore was under British colonial rule and was surprisingly cosmopolitan. It experienced a financial boom between the two world wars, just as the Western world did. It had vibrant communities made up of various different nationalities: Indians, Straits Chinese, and British.  Some of the unrest in neighboring China found its way into the equatorial island country. It is at this time and in this period of relative calm that Liz Rosenberg's short novel, The Moonlight Palace, is set.

Agnes Hussein is 17. She is one of the last descendants of the last sultan of Singapore and she lives with her elderly extended family in the crumbling Kampong Glam Palace. Her parents and older brother died in the flu epidemic many years ago and she is left with her grandmother, Nei-Nei Down; British Grandfather; her Uncle Chachi, who is actually her great uncle and the heir to the palace; an aged servant; and a trio of odd young male boarders. It is only the rent that these students pay combined with British Grandfather's pension from the army that keeps the Hussein family in the slowly disintegrating palace at all. As the youngest, most able-bodied member of the family, Aggie feels as if she must take on responsibility for the old people, coming up with the idea of a retail job to help keep them afloat. Even as Aggie is trying to find a way to help bring in some money to patch the palace, one of the boarders is concocting his own dangerous plot that will change the lives of all the residents of Kampong Glam Palace but especially of the naïve and sweet Aggie who will experience love and betrayal for the first time as a result.

The Singapore setting is well done and carefully drawn. The time of the book is less well depicted with little devoted to ensuring that the reader always feels immersed in the 1920s instead of the present. The history of the time was so rich, especially in Asia, and yet the novel really just offers a glancing nod towards the way in which the world around them was changing and the growing tensions in the British held colony. The characters themselves are generally appealing and entertaining but a little thin and the pacing is slow without much narrative tension. Some of this lack of tension is because the story is told from Aggie's point of view and her understanding of her family's tenuous position is not only incomplete but it is almost non-existent. She knows that their financial straits mirror the ruin of the palace but has no concept of what that really means for the future, leaving her open and susceptible to outside forces. The ending of the novel introduces a new character entirely and then wraps up abruptly after a cursory couple of pages. A quick read, this coming of age novel is not quite as fully rounded as might be hoped but it is, despite that, a nice and easy read.

For more information about the book, take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Christmas at Tiffany's by Karen Swan. The book is being released by William Morrow Paperbacks on October 28, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: In the wake of a heartbreaking betrayal, a young woman leaves the Scottish countryside to find her destiny in three of the most exciting cities in the world—New York, Paris, and London—in this funny and triumphant tale of fulfillment, friendship, and love.

Ten years ago, a young and naïve Cassie married her first serious boyfriend, believing he would be with her forever. Now, her marriage is in tatters and Cassie has no career or home of her own. Though she feels betrayed and confused, Cassie isn’t giving up. She’s going to take control of her life. But first she has to find out where she belongs . . . and who she wants to be.

Over the course of one year, Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with her best friends living in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris, and London. Exchanging comfort food and mousy hair for a low-carb diet and a gorgeous new look, Cassie tries each city on for size as she searches for the life she’s meant to have . . . and the man she’s meant to love.

Review: Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky

All of us have many teachers over our lifetime. Some of them teach us in school, some coach us in sports, and some just teach us about life. Among those many teachers are those couple who leave a lasting impression, who push us to be better than we ever imagined we could be. We all have at least that one teacher in our lives. The lucky among us have several. For me, over the years, I can point to a couple of swim coaches, a geometry teacher, and a Russian teacher who all took the time to not only teach me about what their field was but to develop me as a person and to teach me about what I could and should expect from myself. Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky have written a tribute to the teacher, and in Melanie's case, father, who had that same sort of dramatic impact on their lives in their non-fiction book, Strings Attached.

Opening with Melanie dreaming of losing her sister and Joanne answering the phone to hear a voice she hadn't thought of in years, this is the story of Mr. Kupchysky, or Mr. K, the school orchestra director in East Brunswick, New Jersey, his life, the terrible sorrows and hardships he had to overcome, and the impact he had on countless children's lives. Told in alternating chapters by Joanne and Melanie, they each describe Mr. K and his methods as a music teacher. Melanie, being his daughter, saw the impact his hard life had on him, not only his escape from WWII Ukraine but his wife's debilitating illness, their tough marriage, and then the disappearance of their youngest daughter, Stephanie. As they describe Mr. K. though, each of them also tells of her own life and growth as a musician and as a person.

Each of them details the incredibly high standards to which Mr. K. held his musicians and the heights to which those expectations led them. Both Lipman and Kupchynsky excelled at their instruments, earning honors and accolades, learning invaluable lessons from their hard but proud taskmaster. Mr. K.'s methods as a teacher are not ones that are often seen or embraced, especially in today's educational environment. He did not praise where no praise was earned. He intimidated. He didn't couch his honesty in easy to swallow platitudes or soften the blow of his disappointment. He didn't subscribe to the school of only positive reinforcement. In fact, he was the sort of teacher who ruled through discipline and determined repetition. His lofty expectations for anyone lucky and talented enough to study under him shaped them all. And it clearly worked.

While this aspect of the story was mildly interesting for a reader with no musical knowledge and no interest in teaching, the story really drew me much more into it when Stephanie went missing and the focus was on the impact of her disappearance and the way that Mr. K.'s former students rallied around as he faced yet one more tragedy in a life rife with them. It is Stephanie's disappearance that is even the catalyst for Lipman's reconnection with the Kupchynskys and the driving force behind looking back at what defined and drove Mr. K., and what made him the inspiration for so many young musicians. I have to admit I didn't love this as much as I had hoped to, perhaps because the pacing of the narration in the 60s and 70s was much slower than that of the 90s, or perhaps because music and teaching are not particular interests of mine. But as a book, it did get me to reflect on the people who have been so very important, and not always adequately acknowledged as such, in my own life, a worthy outcome to reading it, I think.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I didn't get any closer to getting caught up on reviews this week either. As a matter of fact, per usual, I got further away from being caught up. ::sigh:: This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Ruby by Cynthia Bond
The Way North edited by Ron Riekki
The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison

Reviews posted this week:

Us by David Nicholls
The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Flirting with French by William Alexander
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft
Falling For Max by Shannon Stacey
The Moonlight Palace by Liz Rosenberg
Christmas Brides by Suzanne Enoch, Alexandra Hawkins, Elizabeth Essex, and Valerie Bowman
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Certainty by Victor Bevine came from Lake Union Publishing and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

World War II books typically focus on the war overseas but not on the affect of such a huge mobilization at home. This novel about thousands of recruits training in Newport, changing the tenor of the town, and ultimately accusing a beloved minister of sexual impropriety should be completely different.

The Banks of Certain Rivers by Jon Harrison came from me because sometimes you just want to treat yourself.

An author on Facebook is running a discussion about this book and I was intrigued by the premise: a teacher with an incredibly complicated personal life, breaks up a fight but whose actions, on video look entirely different. Now I have to catch up with the group so I can comment too.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun

Although we are far from Israel and Palestine here in the US, the ongoing problems between the two are never far from the nightly news. But what we see on tv very often feels removed. How can we possibly understand the root of the conflict from these nightly dispatches? How much of the hatred and violence finds its way into everyday life of people in Israel and Gaza? Only by peering into the lives of those who live with the violence and suspicion and low (and sometimes very high) level fear, can we hope to reach some sort of authentic understanding, even if it is still the understanding of an outsider. So it was with great interest that I picked up Raba'i al-Madhoun's novel, The Lady From Tel Aviv, thinking that it would give me a window into not only the heart and mind of a Palestinian returning to his family and homeland after an exile of almost 40 years but also into the heart and mind of a regular Israeli, the titular lady from Tel Aviv, as well.

Unfortunately, the novel is misnamed and there's relatively little time spent with Dana Ahova, the Israeli actress that main character Walid Dahman meets on his plane ride from London to Tel Aviv. Instead the bulk of the novel focuses on Walid's experiences both as a young man when he could no longer come home from school in Egypt, exiled because of the Occupation, to all that he experiences as he arrives home and spends time with the family he hasn't seen for decades. The reality of being a Palestinian coming into Israel and trying to get into Gaza is dehumanizing, even with Walid's British passport, and the situation in which his family finds itself living is cramped and oftentimes scary. Walid's visit back certainly highlights some of the horrifying treatment of regular Palestinian citizens in Gaza but in terms of a plot, the novel meandered without much focus besides presenting everyday life, much of which is fairly miserable.

As is to be expected, the tale is fairly one-sided, which doesn't make it an untruthful depiction, rather it just feels unbalanced although it is far less politicized than it could be. There is a lack of an intriguing cohesive story here despite the hope that it would chronicle the meeting of two people who find the ability to see each other as individuals beyond their nationality. And while they do see each other as human beings, the whole of it didn't have enough impact or meat to make it engrossing reading. In fact, I found the novel to be rather underwhelming over all, which makes me wonder if I missed something in the translation that made it worthy of shortlisting for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2010.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry

We all take risks every day. When we do it consciously, we weigh up the chances that something will go horribly wrong and having determined the odds are with us that nothing bad will happen, we do whatever it is we've been considering. But what about that slim percentage of times that the unthinkable does in fact happen? How do we live with ourselves, knowing that we chose the risk that led to terrible loss or tragedy or regret? And what happens if we can't accept it? These questions and more swirl through the tense plot of Karen Perry's (the pen name for authors Paul Perry and Karen Gillece) novel, The Innocent Sleep.

Harry and Robin are artists who have settled in Tangiers because of the quality of light. They have settled into their chosen community there and have a three year old son Dillon. He's not the easiest of toddlers,incredibly difficult to settle into sleep and so when, on the eve of Robin's birthday, Harry realizes that he hasn't picked up her present, just a five minute walk away, he leaves the sleeping child in their flat and goes to collect it.  It was at that moment that the world cracked open. An earthquake ravages Tangiers and the building where they had lived is leveled. Dillon's body is never found.

Living in Dublin five years on, Harry and Robin are trying to carve a new life out of the rubble of the old. Robin is newly pregnant and working as an architect while Harry is giving up his stand alone studio and moving his work back into the garage thanks to the economic stresses of the time. But on his final day at the studio, he has to make his way through a rally where he spots a young boy he is convinced is Dillon.  Harry had searched and searched for his son after the earthquake, always certain that no body meant that the boy had survived and now that he's seen him on the street, he cannot rest until he tracks this child down. He is completely obsessed. While Robin doesn't believe him, the cursory reappearance of a child who could be Dillon unravels their carefully constructed new life. Secrets and lies emerge, guilt rears its head again, and innocence has to be redefined. The tale of their life in Tangiers changes from one of artistic fulfillment and familial happiness ending in enormous grief to one of furtiveness, illicitness, and infidelity. And the unwritten story of their future metamorphoses right before the reader's eyes as both Harry an Robin's secrets are revealed.

The story is told in an alternating first person narrative so that both Harry and Robin can tell the story directly and neither of them are entirely truthful with the reader until they have to be. The pacing of the novel is uneven, very slow in the beginning but building tension quickly towards the end and the plot itself felt drawn out. The surprising ending comes after a hysterical, frantic crescendo. And while it would seem as if parents who have lost a child and are devastated by their loss should be sympathetic characters, they weren't really.  In fact, there are really no good guys here.  Not even relatable guys.  The story does raise issues of the bounds of creativity, all-consuming grief and obsession, mental illness, the limits of forgiveness, and horrifying regret over wrong choices but it couches it all in choices that are hard, if not impossible, to overlook.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Heart Has Its Reasons by Maria Duenas. The book is being released by Atria Books on November 1, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Declared “a writer to watch” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), New York Times bestselling author María Dueñas pours heart and soul into this story of a woman who discovers the power of second chances.

A talented college professor in Madrid, Blanca Perea seems to have it all. But her world is suddenly shattered when her husband of twenty years leaves her for another woman. Questioning the life she once had and whether she truly knows herself, Blanca resolves to change her surroundings. She accepts what looks like a boring research grant in California involving an exiled Spanish writer who died decades ago. Anxious to leave her own troubled life behind, she is gradually drawn into his haunted world, with its poignant loves and unfulfilled ambitions.

But in delving into the past, Blanca finds herself simultaneously awakened to the present by Daniel Carter, a charismatic professor with crucial knowledge about the dead writer that he has never before revealed. Amid this web of passion, conflict, and hidden feelings, including her own, Blanca advances like an avid detective, refusing to quit, and ultimately discovers startling answers that resonate deeply in her own life.

Evocative, lyrical, and humorous, The Heart Has Its Reasons is a journey of the soul from the pangs of the past to the vibrant present. It is a story about the thrill of creating one’s life anew.

Review: Us by David Nicholls

They say that opposites attract, right? My husband and I are certainly opposites in many ways but our opposing ideas are generally superficial. He likes comic book movies and thrillers; I like rom-coms. He loves meeting strangers; I'd rather go to the dentist for a root canal. He likes tv; I love books. And on and on. In all the ways that really matter though, our view of the world, our desires for the future, our theories on how to raise our kids, we are very similar. Twenty-five years on, I suppose we could have grown alike rather than started that way but I suspect that the fundamentals were always there. And that is why it was so very curious and intriguing to read about Douglas and Connie, characters in David Nicholls' newest novel, Us, who started out fundamentally different and who have never really bridged that gap in all the years of their marriage.

Douglas and Connie Petersen have been married for twenty-five years and have a seventeen year old son, Albie. They have planned a month long Grand Tour of Europe and its spectacular art, their last family vacation before Albie leaves for college. But even before they leave, Connie wakes Douglas in the middle of the night and tells him that she thinks their marriage has run its course and she might leave him when they come back from Europe. The news is a terrible blow to Douglas, whose world has been made brighter for so long by the arty and worldly Connie's presence in it. Since the vacation is still going ahead, Douglas intends to try and repair the damage with his wife, damage he has been ignorant of for the most part, to rescue his marriage and to try and connect with the spoiled, sullen Albie as well.

But what vacation goes as planned? There are tender moments but there's also bickering and misunderstanding and wrong-footedness too. There's a spectacular lack of communication and unrealized expectations. Douglas narrates the novel looking back at the trip and even further back at his long history with Connie. He is as straight and milquetoast as you might expect a biochemist to be but has a wonderfully witty turn of phrase, even when he doesn't realize he's being funny. He is unflinchingly honest about his own acknowledgement of his mediocrity and the fact that he should never have ended up with a vibrant and unique Connie. He details and defends his conventionality as he realizes that it is this constrained, uber-planned manner that has him so often at odds with his free-spirited wife and son. And yet he cannot let go of the very safe conventions that are such a part of his fabric. As the three Petersens travel around Europe, he tries very hard, commenting on the famous art in ways that just make Connie and Albie shake their heads. But it has always been a bit of mother and son against dad in their family and this trip just highlights that all the more. None of it is entirely unexpected though. It's only when the whole thing goes tits up that Douglas starts to really think deeply about the future and his relationships with both Connie and Albie.

Nicholls skillfully weaves both the trip and the previous twenty-five years together in Douglas' first person narration. And using Douglas to narrate makes the reader much more sympathetic to someone who might otherwise be the less appealing character. Douglas' confused honesty, his attempts to do or say the right thing and yet still missing the point entirely, his introspection about his fundamental differences with Connie and why staying with her is so important to him, and his sincere desire to be the hero of the family all combine to make him a pitiable and yet engaging character. As he narrates, the reader also gets a good sense of Connie and Albie's characters too, especially when Douglas looks back with regret for choices he made along the way. Nicholls is a fantastic writer and the fate of this mismatched family is one that really gets under the reader's skin. There are moments of predictability for anyone who has themselves been in a long relationship but they heighten the realism of the tale and then are often turned on their heads in the end anyway. The story is a poignant look at marriage and parenting, a beautiful rendering of growing up and out-growing the life you've created.

For more information about David Nicholls and the book, check out his website, his Facebook page, or take a look at the book's page on GoodReads. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book. And finally, watch this video: to hear David Nicholls himself talk about the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Us by David Nicholls
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Ruby by Cynthia Bond
'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma

Reviews posted this week:

First Impressions by Charlie Lovett

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Flirting with French by William Alexander
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine
Us by David Nicholls
The Wednesday Daughters by Meg Waite Clayton
Highland Scandal by Julia London
Since You've Been Gone by Anouska Knight
Starting Over by Sue Moorcroft

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

I Take You by Eliza Kennedy came from Crown and Library Thing Early Reviewers.

When a description invokes both Bridget Jones' Diary and Where'd You Go, Bernadette, how can you possibly pass it up? I am looking forward to this novel about a woman who is getting married to the perfect man but shouldn't be, or maybe she should.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: First Impressions by Charlie Lovett

It's no secret that I love Jane Austen and that I am like a fly to honey with any and all Austen related books. The only thing that really gives me pause is when the word "mystery" is appended to one of these books (well, that and zombies but since there's no way I'm reading about zombies under any circumstances, it's hardly worth mentioning). I am not really a mystery reader so I have to think long and hard about reading something so clearly outside my happy zone. I am so glad that I pushed past my reservations and picked up Charlie Lovett's new novel, First Impressions, a love letter to book collectors and a fascinating "what if?" literary mystery about Jane Austen and the authorship of Pride and Prejudice.

Told in a double stranded narrative set now and when Jane Austen was a young woman, the novel is a delight. Sophie Collingwood has finished school and doesn't quite know what is next for her when she meet brash American Eric. She is put off by him but somehow intrigued as well. As he is about the leave England, she doesn't have to think too hard about him even though he tracks her to her family home and alienates her father. She intends to discuss the paradox of this man and what shape her future should take with her much beloved bachelor Uncle Bertram, with whom she has always had more in common than with anyone else in her family. But then Bertram dies in what, to Sophie, is a suspicious fall. She is devastated and then surprised when she discovers that Bertram left his flat and his extensive and personally valuable library to her, his fellow bibliophile.

And so Sophie's future takes an unexpected turn as she determines to move into Uncle Bertram's flat. She is blindsided though when she discovers that his gorgeous library, the one that has been her own inspiration for so long, has been liquidated in order to pay off debts and she vows to track down at least the most important of the books from his library, the ones he chose each year from the locked and inaccessible library at her own family home as a Christmas gift. She also turns to one of his friends, an antiquarian bookseller who hires her on the spot to work in his shop, giving her the chance to be surrounded by books and to relish the hunt for special requests, including an odd request (or two) for a seemingly nonexistent second edition of a dry collection of morality tales by a nineteenth century cleric.

In chapters alternating with Sophie's story is the tale of Jane Austen and her growing friendship with octogenarian Richard Mansfield, who has taken up residence not far from her family. He is a wonderful sounding board and keen critic for her writing, helping her to develop and improve her drafts encouraging her and becoming incredibly important to her over time.

The two plot lines seem unrelated in the beginning aside from Sophie's love of Austen but they start to dovetail nicely as Sophie meets and gets involved with the very attractive Winston, the first person to ask her about the small book of morality tales. When she is given the same commission by a shadowy figure named Smedley, she has no idea where her search will lead, although the second plot line about Austen and the Reverend Mansfield and their close, confiding connection offers clues.

As the two plot lines start to make sense together, the literary mystery confounding Sophie picks up in pace and tension. Readers familiar with the fact that the first draft of Pride and Prejudice was called First Impressions can hardly miss the unreliable nature of first impressions both in Sophie's tale and in Austen's and will appreciate the whisper of allusion. In pursuing the fictional question of authorship, Lovett has also drawn the reader's attention to the curious and fascinating idea of the printer behind the physical books and the printer's oeuvre above and beyond the worth of the works themselves.  Lovett's description of Uncle Bertram's library and the impetus behind each book's inclusion in that library is completely intoxicating. There are some slightly outlandish coincidences necessary to drive the plot and the scenes in Austen's time aren't quite as compelling as those in Sophie's. But over all, this is a charming novel sure to appeal not only to lovers of Austen but to everyone who loves books and the adventures that they offer us.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Who Is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko. The book is being released by New Vessel Press on October 14, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha – the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons – died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days. This gloriously written tale, in which Levadski feels “his heart pounding at the portals of his brain,” mixes piquant wit with lofty musings about life, friendship, aging and death.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's been a crazy week for me. I started the week sicker than a dog and unmotivated to do anything other than lay in bed and read. Then when I started to feel better again, I finally painted the powder room bathroom. The paint has only been sitting in there for months now. Once I got a second coat of paint up, I needed to wash out the roller and paintbrush so I finally tackled the disaster that is the laundry room since I needed the stationary tub to be empty enough to clean up the paint mess I'd made. I still have more house projects, several that people will see (like the bathroom paint job) and several they won't (like the laundry room clean sweep) but I also need to buckle down and write some reviews as well. And to that end, I'm asking blog readers to let me know which of the books I have in that appallingly extensive list of unreviewed reads they'd most like to see finished up. So take a look and let me know. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
First Impressions by Charlie Lovett
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Flirting with French by William Alexander
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Ruby by Cynthia Bond

Reviews posted this week:

Dinner With the Smileys by Sarah Smiley
Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
First Impressions by Charlie Lovett
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Flirting with French by William Alexander
Reluctantly Royal by Nichole Chase
The Geometry of Love by Jessica Levine

Sunday Salon: U-Pick

Fall is here. Well, the morning temps would have us believe that anyway even if the later in the day temps belie it. One of my favorite things to do when my kids were small was to go to the u-pick apple orchard and pick more apples than any one family needed. Of course, then I'd have to find things to make out of the bounty we hauled home. My kids are older now and we don't live in the land of u-pick apples anymore so that's one thing that has fallen off our annual fall list. But isn't it funny how those apples always tasted better than any from the store? It's almost like the little bit of effort it took added to the pleasure in them. I think I've always felt that way though, that I wanted a little control over things, and not just food. I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books too where it felt like I was driving the story, even if all I was doing was turning to one of several predetermined plot twists. I'd read those books over and over, making different choices at the bottom of each page, pleased with myself when I got the outcome I wanted. So obviously I'm normally a bit of a control freak. I have, however, gotten so far behind in my reviewing that I think it's time to take it all out of my hands and let you all choose for me. Consider this the u-pick version of book reviewing. Better yet, you get to choose and I do the work. So tell me, what do you want to see me review next from my appallingly extensive list of unreviewed reads?

The Innocent Sleep by Karen Perry
Strings Attached by Joanne Lipman and Melanie Kupchynsky
Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard
If Not For This by Pete Fromm
The Lady From Tel Aviv by Raba'i al-Madhoun
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
Ishmael's Oranges by Claire Hajaj
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
Euphoria by Lily King
The Blessings by Elise Juska
The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Painted Horses by Malcolm Brooks
All Fall Down by Jennifer Weiner
Juliet's Nurse by Lois Leveen
We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride
Bellman and Black by Diane Setterfield
The Orphans of Race Point by Patry Francis
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Mr. Tall by Tony Earley
Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown
Gemini by Carol Cassella
The Bride Insists by Jane Ashford
A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
First Impressions by Charlie Lovett
A Fork in the Road edited by James Oseland
Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman
Flirting with French by William Alexander


And since you can see for yourself where I've been spending my reading hours this past week (from Crawford to Alexander), I won't bother telling you where my reading travels have taken me this past week. But please so tell me where you've been.

Review: Mimi Malloy, At Last by Julia MacDonnell

Sometimes people don't want to acknowledge or face the less than perfect things that pop up in life. And while it is important to stay positive and to focus on the good, only the full range of our experiences tells the story of our lives. Those things that are swept into dusty corners and neglected or unacknowledged might not be pleasant but they form us indelibly just as much as the wonderful things do. In Julia MacDonnell's quirky novel, Mimi Malloy, At Last, about an aging woman determined, nay, insistent, on letting sleeping dogs lie, this is very true.

Mimi Malloy is irascible. She is going to speak her mind and age in her own way, preferably with a cigarette, a drink in her hand, and some Sinatra on the stereo. That her memory has some rather alarming holes in it gives her pause not at all. She is an entertaining character, in both senses of the word, and her policy of moving forward into the future without looking back at the past is working for her. Well, it is working for her until her family wants to start prying into the whole story, even the repressed memories Mimi long ago buried as far out of her consciousness as possible. But Mimi will be a tough nut to crack. She's a pistol, suddenly retired, the divorced mother of six and one of a clutch of bickering, chattering, loving sisters. Mimi's brain also shows evidence of atrophy and she personally sees no point in digging into the holes. Mimi refuses to consider assisted living like her eldest daughter suggests, plugging along in her apartment, getting to know Duffy, the super, and fielding phone calls and visits from her surviving sisters and many daughters.

But Mimi's new and carefully constructed life hits a bump in the road when one of her sisters starts delving into the past and the family genealogy on behalf of her grandson. She finds a necklace that once belonged to her mother and all of a sudden, this find, in addition to the questions about the past, start bringing memories to the surface. The ghosts of her late sisters start to visit her and make her face the terrible unhappiness in her past. She's not alone as she relives the pain of one sister being sent away never to be seen or heard from again and life with her nasty, abusive stepmother. Her relationship with Duffy the super turns into a sweet romance and a haven for both of them in the face of deep hurts and family secrets.

Although the mystery of what happened to unruly sister Fagan turns out to be unsurprising, it is the uncovering of her fate with Mimi and the rest of the close and inquiring but pushy family that is the real journey of the novel. Mimi's struggle for continued independence in the face of her concerned daughters and her medical situation is a touching one, even if Mimi is often crotchety ands short towards those to whom she is closest. The book is rife with humor but also with sadness and loss. MacDonnell also introduces a storyline that juxtaposes false memories with repressed memories but that never calls into question the veracity of Mimi's sudden piecemeal recollections. Mimi may be getting older, but she can reinvent her life just as well as anyone else can and she's not going to relinquish control if she can help it. As a character Mimi comes off as older than she actually is and there are some pieces of the plot that feel unnecessary but over all, this is a warm story about family, aging, and the past, all centered around the female equivalent of a grumpy old man.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book for review.