Review: Rock, Paper, Scissors by Cathia Leonard Friou

Many years ago one of my neighbors was in the middle of a divorce. We often walked and talked about it as she was going through it. One of the decidedly lighter moments was when she told me that she had dipped her toe in online dating only to have her ex show up as her very first match. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I mean, they had once been married so surely they had a lot in common that had led them to the altar in the first place and the dating site's algorithm had picked up on that, but on the other hand, they were divorcing so all their commonalities didn't make them a good couple and no algorithm could know that. Cathia Leonard Friou details a similar situation in her short, thoughtful memoir about her divorce, Rock Paper Scissors: Scenes from a Charmed Divorce.

In this collection of brief vignettes about her marriage and subsequent divorce from her high school sweetheart Stuart, Friou examines the moments that made each of them who they were within their marriage and the unspectacular moments within that marriage that led them to divorce. The book is reflective and soul-searching, a non-linear look at the emotional journey she went through as she carefully and intentionally separated her life from her husband, the father of her children. Friou and her ex grew apart, unable to be for each other who the other spouse needed them to be. In the grand scheme of divorces, it was amiable and civilized but that doesn't take away from the grief and second guessing that still attended the process. She doesn't glorify divorce and acknowledges that hers has been pretty charmed as far as divorces go. Friou is honest in her sharing and the book feels like a solid way for her to move on, to close that chapter of her life with thankfulness, to release any remnants of pain leftover from the process, even though the divorce was settled long ago. The writing is simple and heartfelt and she recognizes and accepts that Stuart will forever be a part of her and her life even as she builds a new life for herself. A positive and affecting small memoir, this is an interesting read not only for those who are divorced or are contemplating it but also for those firmly in a relationship who will appreciate it for its insight into human interaction.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

I'm Fine and Neither Are You by Camille Pagan.

The book is being released by Lake Union on April 1, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: Honesty is the best policy…except maybe when it comes to marriage in this brilliant novel about the high price of perfection from bestselling author Camille Pagán.

Wife. Mother. Breadwinner. Penelope Ruiz-Kar is doing it all—and barely keeping it together. Meanwhile, her best friend, Jenny Sweet, appears to be sailing through life. As close as the two women are, Jenny’s passionate marriage, pristine house, and ultra-polite child stand in stark contrast to Penelope’s underemployed husband, Sanjay, their unruly brood, and the daily grind she calls a career.

Then a shocking tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling, Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to make—then commit to complete and total honesty.

What seems like a smart idea quickly spirals out of control, revealing new rifts and even deeper secrets. As Penelope stares down the possible implosion of her marriage, she must ask herself: When it comes to love, is honesty really the best policy?

Review: An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten

I kept seeing this little (and I mean physically little) book all over the place and the cover completely intrigued me. The skulls put me off some since I am the world's most cowardly reader but I couldn't resist the cross-stitch and the elderly woman of the title. The back of the book makes it sound like this is a collection of capers that would be charming and entertaining, if a little dark. And in a way, it was. Helene Tursten's An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good, translated into English from the Swedish, is not a mystery. It is not a light caper story. It is the tale of an 88 year old woman who knocks off people who need killing (or at least from her perspective they need killing). Neighbors, the fiance of her former love, a celebrity, and an antiques dealer who intends to cheat her all find themselves on the wrong side of this conscienceless octogenarian serial killer.

Written as 5 linked short stories, with 4 focused on Maud and the last centered on a detective who cannot find enough proof but knows that Maud killed the victim, the collection starts out with a lot of promise, full of engaging details and dark humor. Unfortunately it starts to feel a bit repetitive, especially the final story, which rehashes the previous story from the detective's perspective (a detective who is apparently the main character in a very popular series by Tursten). Maud's character is fascinating because the reader doesn't feel disgust for her even as she calculates how to murder the people who are annoying her beyond all endurance. She's not nasty, she's pragmatic and clever and uses her age and perceived feebleness to her advantage. The book is a very fast read and mostly entertaining, especially for those who are inclined to be tickled by people getting what they deserve (in some cases) or looking for a deadly version of the ultimate "Get Off My Lawn!"

Review: The Baghdad Clock by Shahad al Rawi

The Middle East has been consistently in the news for decades now. Refugees continue to flee the war torn countries of the region. We've learned how to pronounce the names of the countries but what do we really know of the people who live in there? Shahad al Rawi's novel, The Baghdad Clock, takes readers into one Baghdad neighborhood from 1991 at the beginning of the first Gulf War through two young girls' growing up and becoming woman all the way to the present day.

The unnamed narrator meets her friend Nadia one evening when they are in the neighborhood air raid shelter with their mothers. The two of them become inseparable and continue to go to school, play, and explore even in the shadow of the war raining down on their country. They grow, they fall in love with boys, and they watch as long time neighbors slowly emigrate to find safety and security away from the Iraq of bombs and economic sanctions. The novel is a look at everyday life in Baghdad, a chronicle of a neighborhood slowly losing its sense of community, and an account of two friends coming of age and trying to preserve the memories of the people and events of their youth.

There is no real unifying plot other than the changing of the neighborhood and the narrator's musings on it and the people she knows. Aspects of magical realism are threaded through the narrative with the narrator being able to share Nadia's dreams, with the neighborhood portrayed as a ship, and in the person of an old soothsayer who appears in the neighborhood in various guises throughout the novel to predict the future and to warn the inhabitants. The tales of the individual neighbors makes them fully rounded, real characters and it clearly diminishes the neighborhood as each of them eventually climbs into the cars that whisk them away to another life. This particular neighborhood in Baghdad is very obviously meant to mirror the disintegration of Iraqi society as a whole as the wars go on and different sorts of people, never described and never joining the fabric of the existing place, move into the abandoned homes. The daily tragedy of war is very evident, especially in the short history of the neighborhood the girls write, even if they aren't chronicling deaths but rather defections and disappearances. The story was slow, perhaps because it was fairly directionless, and the use of the Book of the Future, set in the present (or near enough) and then moving into future predictions at the end was at odds with the tone of the previous 3/4 of the novel. The writing was sometimes a bit confusing, whether as a result of this being a translation or simply transferred from the original it's hard to say. It does offer a perspective on daily life in Iraq that those of us in the West rarely see and as such will be of interest to those curious about this part of the world.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf
At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Cathia Leonard Friou
When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl's Book by Naja Marie Aidt

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel

Reviews posted this week:

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

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

An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd
The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
Granny’s Got a Gun by Harper Lin
White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf
At Briarwood School for Girls by Michael Knight
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Cathia Leonard Friou

Monday Mailbox

An interesting and eclectic trio landed on my doorstep and my tbr piles. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Unbreakables by Lisa Barr came from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Harper.

About a woman who flees to France after discovering that her husband is a serial cheater and who learns to indulge her own desires, this looks fascinating and at least a little bit steamy too. Yay!

Most Anything You Please by Trudy Morgan-Cole came from me for myself.

Sagas make me happy so I am looking forward to reading this one about three generations of women in Newfoundland who run a small grocery and confectionary store.

Drive-Thru Dreams by Adam Chandler came from Flatiron Books.

Non-fiction that looks at fast food as quintessentially American, this looks like a fun ride.

If you want 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: Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

I have long been fascinated with Russia. I took two years of Russian in high school and took whatever Russian history classes I could find both in high school and college. I've read many of the major Russian writers for classes and as well as on my own. So while I wasn't thrilled when Kristin Hannah's Winter Garden was chosen for book club, I at least figured that the subject matter would interest me, even if the writing didn't engage me. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Since I already knew of the horrors of the Siege of Leningrad, there was nothing new to keep me from focusing on the rest and it turns out that wasn't a good thing.

Meredith is a tightly wound, rule following, control freak who works hard to be the mother her own mother never was but who rejects her husband's overtures time after time. Nina is an award winning war zone photographer who is known for keeping an emotional distance from her subjects, allowing her to capture the truth of their lives impartially, but her inability to open herself up is causing her problems with her sexy occasional boyfriend. Both Meredith and Nina learned their emotional frigidity at the knee of their mother, a Russian woman who never mothered them, showing them only disapproval and detachment. Luckily they had a loving and giving father who held the family together, even as he enabled their mother's emotional distance. When he suffers a massive heart attack and then slowly fades away, he makes the girls promise that they will stand by their mother and listen as she tells them the end to the incomplete fairy tale she used to tell them in childhood, the one that will explain so much they've never understood, that will explain the trauma that shaped all of their lives and especially their mother's. As Anya tells the tale, it slowly becomes clear to the girls that she is telling them the story of her own life before them, a story devastated by the Siege of Leningrad.

The narrative can be split pretty cleanly into two halves here: before the telling of the tale and during/after. The latter is certainly more interesting in terms of plot since Meredith and Nina are not characters with whom the reader will find it easy to empathize. They have clearly been badly damaged by their mother's remoteness but they seem, in many ways in their own lives, to be emulating her rather than the father they both claim to have adored. They come across as incredibly selfish. The second part does pick up although the conceit of the fairy tale isn't altogether successful as it ceases to be a fairy tale quite soon into the telling, in addition to the fact that it doesn't actually have all of the elements of traditional fairy tales. There's no magic, no triumph of good over evil, and no moral message or universal truth to it although it does, eventually have a happy ending. Anya, Meredith and Nina's mother, is a character who is hard to know, even as she tells the girls about her life in the Soviet Union.  These daughters are ridiculously slow at figuring out the fairy tale is Anya's true life and it begs the question why they were never interested in their mother's origins. That Anya only sees things in black and white and cannot see color, even though there's no physical reason to explain that, is meant to show that the color leached out of her world long before Meredith and Nina were born and to give her a pass on her treatment of her daughters. She shut down emotionally to survive the terrible things that she endured but she never did choose to truly live again, to the detriment of her family. The ending to the story was too coincidental, completely unbelievable and far too easy given the decades of hurt that preceded it.

The writing here was repetitive and pedestrian and the internal musings of the characters were overly long and uninteresting in their repetition. Each time a character comes back onto the page, they are described physically, as if the reader isn't able to keep the (frankly unnecessary) picture of that particular character in mind without help. I am very definitely in the minority in my opinion of this one (in fact, many people adore it) so if you like dysfunctional family stories where secrets eventually come out after a long and drawn out lead up, where a terrible historical event that isn't apparently taught in schools (except mine) is a major plot point, where a lack of family connection is suddenly resolved, and there is boundless hope that it's never to late to forgive and to heal, you might like this one a whole lot more than I did.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

Henry, Himself by Stewart O'Nan.

The book is being released by Viking on April 9, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: A member of the greatest generation looks back on the loves and losses of his past and comes to treasure the present anew in this poignant and thoughtful new novel from a modern master

Stewart O'Nan is renowned for illuminating the unexpected grace of everyday life and the resilience of ordinary people with humor, intelligence, and compassion. In this prequel to the beloved Emily, Alone, he offers an unsentimental, moving life story of a twentieth-century everyman.

Soldier, son, lover, husband, breadwinner, churchgoer, Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honor. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he's always believed in logic, sacrifice, and hard work. Now, seventy-five and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It's 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple anymore. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife Emily and dog Rufus stand by him. Once so confident, as Henry's strength and memory desert him, he weighs his dreams against his regrets and is left with questions he can't answer: Is he a good man? Has he done right by the people he loves? And with time running out, what, realistically, can he hope for?

Like Emily, Alone, Henry, Himself is a wry, warmhearted portrait of an American original who believes he's reached a dead end only to discover life is full of surprises.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
Granny’s Got a Gun by Harper Lin

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
The Optimistic Decade by Heather Abel
White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

Reviews posted this week:

Tiny Americans by Devin Murphy
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood

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

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd
The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager
Granny’s Got a Gun by Harper Lin

Review: The Quintland Sisters by Shelley Wood

When I was little, I met a lifelong friend. My mom drove the two of us back and forth to Safety Town every day the summer before kindergarten. Her mom didn't drive us because she had infant triplets at home, two identical girls and a boy. The triplets' birth had caused rather a lot of excitement and it reached the point that they had to unlist their phone number so perfect strangers wouldn't call and wake the babies during their nap. I also remember that when the triplets were old enough, they would scoot their cribs across the nursery floor and climb in together, thus foiling the idea of having them sleep separately. Obviously, given the fact that I was only five and I still remember this, it was quite memorable. I can't even begin to imagine the circus that ensued when the Dionne quintuplets were born decades before the triplets I knew. But I don't have to envision it because Shelley Wood has done the research and fictionalized this miraculous and disturbing story in her new novel, The Quintland Sisters.

Emma Trimpany, a bilingual seventeen year old girl with a port wine stain on half of her face, is volunteered by her mother to attend to a birth with the local midwife with the hope of finding Emma a profession. It is 1934 and much of the world is in the grip of the Great Depression so Emma's parents want her to have a secure future, even if she isn't at all certain she wants to be a midwife. The birth she is called out to attend will change the trajectory of her entire life though. It's the unexpected birth of the five, tiny, and identical Dionne quints. The Dionnes, he a poor farmer and she a housewife, were already parents to five other children when the severely premature babies arrived. Keeping the five babies alive is touch and go for quite some time but their remarkable birth immediately captures the imagination of Canada, the US, and the world.

Told through Emma's journal entries, letters to her from those she meets in the course of her years as nurse to the Dionne girls, and newspaper articles celebrating the special little girls, the story, based on the real life Dionne quintuplets, is an infuriating and amazing one of celebrity, greed, exploitation, the bounds of medical ethics, and government overstep. The daily life of the infants, then babies, then toddlers and that of the fictional Emma are woven together easily. Emma remarks that her birthmark makes her invisible, which perfectly places her to see and hear things about the Dionne parents, Dr. Dafoe, the girls' doctor, and the staff at the government built Dafoe Hospital and Nursery that show the reader the tragedy of the strange upbringing of the quintuplets. Emma is quite young and impossibly naive when she witnesses the birth and begins to devote her life to the babies. She shows no concern that the Dionne parents are not allowed access to their own children except on the doctor's carefully charted schedule or that the children were quickly made wards of the Ontario government, seeing these outsiders as appropriate surrogate parents for the children, especially after witnessing the horrible behavior of Maman and Papa Dionne. As the quintuplets grow, Emma's duties change and circumstances force her to start to consider a life not lived in the service of her five precious girls.

Although the book spends a fair bit of time with the quintuplets, it is really Emma's story that is being told, from her first naive reluctance to a doting maternal feeling, to full maturity and control over her own future. As the story and Emma's understanding evolve, it is clear that there is a very seedy underside to the quints' situation. The outside world is not permitted to see any of the stress and strife roiling; they only see the carefully orchestrated marketing that allows them to believe that the girls live an idyllic life in their nursery home. Just as Emma becomes more attuned to the undercurrents, she also comes to see that there are no good guys in the equation either. Exploiting the children for money, even if it is just to keep them financially secure for life (and it's not just that), is no less odious when it is the father, the doctor, or the government doing it. The readers' sympathies swing from character to character, although the girls remain pitiable throughout. The treatment of the girls, being displayed as curiosities to the eager public, and the medical regimentation and testing, although not terribly detailed, were completely repugnant and the reader swings from interest in the story to distaste and back again. Wood has clearly done a lot of research and tried to address the abhorrent bits of the story with delicacy, using Emma's journalistic sensibilities to draw off some of the horribleness. But she has not flinched from portraying the sadness and uncertainty in these little girls' lives, the good impulses and bad, problematic or well meaning, and the impossible position the girls' celebrity and the world's fascination and well wishes cause. Historical fiction fans will enjoy the story, even it is Emma's story first, throughout, and last, rather than Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Marie, and Emilie's.

For more information about Shelley Wood and the book, check our her author website, like her on Facebook or follow her on Instagram or Twitter, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and Harper Collins for making me pull this off my shelf sooner rather than later.

Review and Book Club Questions: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

Although I read fairly eclectically, I don't often read much in the science fiction or fantasy genres. When I do though, I tend to enjoy the books a lot. You'd think this would translate in me picking up more of them, but no. It means that people know I am reluctant with regards to the genre and only recommend I read the very best, the most thoughtful, the ones that will engage me the most even as they push my regular reading boundaries. Mary Robinette Kowal's novel The Calculating Stars, the first in the Lady Astronaut series, is one of these. Alternate history set in the 50s? Not my usual choice but it came so highly recommended that I knew I should give it a chance. Let's just say that 2 of my 3 year-round book clubs have read it now and this is very likely to be one of the three books for my summer book club as well.  I have the second novel on my shelves to read and was pleased to see that books 3 and 4 have been acquired (novelette 4.5 already exists and was, in fact, written first and won a Hugo to boot).

It's 1952 and physicist, mathematician Elma York and her engineer husband Nathaniel are on vacation in the Poconos when something catastrophic happens.  Initially they think a nuclear bomb has detonated.  Unable to return home to Washington DC, Elma, a former WWII pilot, flies them west to Wright-Patt Air Force base in Dayton, OH where they discover that an enormous meteorite has wiped out the entire East Coast, including the vast majority of the government as well as Elma's family. As if that's not terrible enough, the meteorite has put Earth on a collision course with an ecological disaster so vast that the need to get off this planet and find a viable way to colonize another planet before humanity's time runs out has become of utmost importance. There's no longer a race against other countries to get into space but a cooperative race for space and survival. Elma, who is incredibly brilliant and already worked for NASA before the meteorite, wants to be in the running to be an astronaut. But it's the 1950s and a woman's place is not in space, at least not according to the men around Elma, aside from her husband. As technologies are fast tracked and developed, Elma is right there in the fray. But she faces constant sexism and condescension, being metaphorically patted on the head and discounted until she is proven capable again and again.

Kowal has created a fascinating alternate history that doesn't dismiss the social issues of the 1950s but in fact highlights them in this subtly different world. Elma is a trailblazing character, one who is both impressive and strong but also fully human with weaknesses and doubts. Her push to be included, to realize her dream of being an astronaut, not only raises the question of discrimination because of gender but also finds her allied with women of color who have been doubly marginalized. Because of Elma's profession and ultimate goal to be a Lady Astronaut, there is definitely a good amount of math and science in the story but it isn't necessary to have a full understanding of either in order to enjoy the novel. The social issues and hurdles that Elma faces are really the main thrust here and they are big, complex issues indeed: sexism, racism, mental health, environmentalism. Kowal does a fantastic job raising these issues in the context of the 50s and 60s, using the attitudes of that time to showcase where we today have improved and where we haven't really come all that far. The narrative tension is not really about the outcome of Elma's quest as much as it is about the smaller, more personal pieces of her life (after all, the novelette was published first and its title gives away what has to occur in the preceding books) and it is this focus on the social and personal that makes this such a successful crossover novel. It's a well-researched and thought provoking novel and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Here are the questions I created for one of my book clubs since I found very little online that suited my purposes. They are in no particular order, just the order they occurred to me as I leafed back through the novel. This novel is eminently discussable and although it might be out of the comfort zone of many book clubs, it raises many worthy questions and can certainly sustain a book club discussion well past that first glass of wine. Feel free to borrow these for your book club as well.

Book Club Questions by Kristen:

Kowall says: “Science fiction and fantasy takes the real world and tips it over to the side so you can see all the gaps in between.” What are the ways you see this being true in this story?

Women in history have frequently been erased but books like Hidden Figures, The Radium Girls, Fly Girls, and other narrative non-fiction like them are starting to bring the amazing sidelined women back into full view. How does fiction like this also add to the narrative?

It’s the coming environmental crisis that drives the push to get into space in the book but when the crisis isn’t nearly as imminent as the public initially thinks, funding for space exploration and settlement could be in danger. How is this mirrored in our world today?

Elma is not only a woman but a Jewish woman and is familiar with both sexism and religious persecution as a result. Does this make it surprising how naïve she is, at least initially, about the treatment of African-Americans, from the government not evacuating survivors in largely African-American areas to the rejection of the best pilots for the astronaut program? How does she try to change her own responses to systemic prejudice?

Elma wants more than anything to have the chance to go into space and makes some pretty big sacrifices towards achieving her dream. What does she sacrifice? Are the sacrifices worth it? Have you ever made sacrifices of this magnitude in order to achieve a long-held dream?

Elma is a character of two extremes. She has crippling anxiety and panic attacks but she’s also fearless enough to excel as a pilot and push against boundaries to be an astronaut. How can these two polar opposites exist so easily in one character? Do these differences make her a more human character?

Nathaniel and Elma don’t have children, although the there is a suggestion that they may want them at some future date. Several other of the potential “lady astronauts” do have children. In fact, one cannot continue in the training program because she’s pregnant. What are the ethics involved in bringing children into a world that is set to self-destruct? Would you choose to have children in the circumstances? Why or why not?

At the end of the book, Elma discovers that her grandmother and great aunt had in fact survived the impact. Should she have searched harder for those she loved or was her lack of curiosity understandable given the widespread devastation? How does the idea of family play a part in the novel?

What does her faith mean to her, especially in the aftermath of the meteorite?

Discuss Elma’s contentious relationship with Parker. Is she right to compromise with him despite his horrible misogyny?

When Elma finally agrees to take Miltown, she keeps it a secret because she knows it could jeopardize her position in the space program. How have attitudes towards medications of this type and the conditions they treat changed over the years? Or have they stayed the same?

Elma and Nathaniel have a strong and equal marriage partnership that isn’t often seen in portrayals of the 1950s and Elma is clearly no June Cleaver. How does Nathaniel’s support of and belief in his wife help enable her to pursue her dreams? Does it feel realistic to you?

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

Cheer Up Mr. Widdicombe by Evan James.

The book is being released by Atria on March 26, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: From a bright new voice in contemporary fiction comes a hilarious and sophisticated comedy of manners about a delightfully eccentric family and the absurd happenings that befall them during one frenzied summer at their home in the Pacific Northwest.

The inimitable—some might say incorrigible—Frank Widdicombe is suffering from a deep depression. Or so his wife, Carol, believes. But Carol is convinced that their new island home—Willowbrook Manor on the Puget Sound—is just the thing to cheer her husband up. And so begins a whirlwind summer as their house becomes the epicenter of multiple social dramas involving the family, their friends, and a host of new acquaintances.

The Widdicombes’ son, Christopher, is mourning a heartbreak after a year abroad in Italy. Their personal assistant, Michelle, begins a romance with preppy screenwriter Bradford, who also happens to be Frank’s tennis partner. Meanwhile, a local named Marvelous Matthews is hired to create a garden at the manor—and is elated to find Gracie Sloane, bewitching self-help author, in residence as well. When this alternately bumbling and clever cast of characters comes together, Willowbrook transforms into a circus of uncovered secrets, preposterous misunderstandings, and irrepressible passions.

Written in a singularly witty and satirical style, Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe is perfect for fans of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Andrew Sean Greer's Less, and Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins.

Review: Tiny Americans by Devin Murphy

It seems to be a trend to use third person limited narration that rotates amongst two or more characters. It is less common, and perhaps a harder feat, to have those multiple points of view, all from first person narrative perspective. This means that each character's voice must be separate and distinct or the reader risks frustration and uncertainty about the "I" who is directing the story at that moment. In Tiny Americans, Devin Murphy's newest novel, he develops his characters beautifully, making the rotating first person narrative structure seem effortless in this poignant and well-written tale of a dysfunctional family and the roads they travel away from each other and then back again.

Opening in 1978 with Terrance Thurber's attempts to teach his children, Jamie, Lewis, and Connor, about the natural world while trying to get himself sober, the Thurber family's world will soon be altered and re-ordered forever by Terrance's eventual abandonment of home and family. Told in chapters alternating mainly between the 3 siblings, the novel examines how this seminal event made each of them who they are as adults, probes where each was broken by their family's dysfunction, and traces those broken echoes through their lives. It is an introspective study of family, searching, and forgiveness. Sadness leaks through the chapters, which span 40 years.

The narrative, primarily character driven, is chronological but spotted with intentional gaps.  The chunks of missing time don't seem important though as the characters are fully rounded by the moments the narrative does spend with each of them, connecting them to each other even when they themselves are not in contact. From the siblings' early explorations into the natural world to the contrasting ways they each cocoon themselves after their father's leaving, Murphy has written this very carefully, very precisely, and very beautifully. The novel is intricately plotted in its move from one sibling to the next sibling either a year or several years further on. It is a slow and deliberate, intimate, ultimately touching story of a family that has lost its way trying to find equilibrium and connection again, to repair themselves, and to find forgiveness.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

American Duchess by Karen Harper
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

Reviews posted this week:

American Duchess by Karen Harper

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

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd
The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Tiny Americans by Devin Murphy
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar by Olga Wojtas
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy came from William Morrow.

I've already reviewed this one here.

Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries by Mel Anastasiou came from me for myself.

An octogenarian amateur sleuth solving mysteries in an old folks home? How delightful sounding!

If you want 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: American Duchess by Karen Harper

It is hard for us, in this day and age, to reconcile ourselves to the idea of a forced marriage. Most of us choose to marry for love and even those people who I know who have had arranged marriages have had a more modern version where they were allowed to decline if the prospect was too horrible to contemplate. But it's really not that long ago that marriage was a business transaction and not a love match, especially in the upper classes, as Karen Harper shows in her latest historical fiction novel about Consuelo Vanderbilt, American Duchess.

In 1895, at only 18 and in love with another man, Consuelo is forced by her overbearing, social climbing mother into marriage with the ninth Duke of Marlborough, her money for his title and palace estate. One of the Gilded Age's "Dollar Brides," Consuelo was perhaps the most famous among the American heiresses who left America for England and the chance to marry into a cash strapped aristocracy. Trapped in a loveless marriage with a cold fish husband, Consuelo turned towards doing good for those less fortunate than she was, earning the sobriquet of Angel of Woodstock for her ministering in the village near Blenheim Palace. Her life continued to be glittering on the surface even as she stretched her philanthropic muscles and poured herself into her two beloved sons. Being the Duchess of Marlborough, especially with her financial means, brings her into contact with many of the famous, the glamorous, and the royal of her time although she regarded her life as like to being in a gilded cage. And it is only later in life that she finds the freedom and love that she searched for for so long.

The book is narrated in the first person by Consuelo herself and opens with the day of her wedding, the wedding of the century, before moving backwards two years to show just how she ended up on the verge of this unwanted marriage and then forwards into her life as Duchess of Marlborough and beyond. Early on in the story, Consuelo is immature, alternately defiant and compliant, while her mother is firmly dictatorial and her father is a complete milksop. Husband Sunny is unemotional and a hidebound traditionalist but not really as present in the novel as one might expect, and certainly not portrayed as horrible a person as our narrator asserts that he is. In fact, none of the characters is completely fleshed out and they feel a little one dimensional as a result. Even Consuelo as the narrator has no flaws nor does she share the little human details that would have made her character realistic and fully realized, making this read more as a superficial biography, removed from the subject, than as a personal account, which a first person narrative historical fiction should surely have mimicked. Consuelo's story has all the makings of a fascinating one, an activist, an heiress, and American Duchess whose life spanned both world wars and who found her own happiness later in life but this skims lightly across the surface of this complicated woman. The writing is simple and easy to read and although it is not a full portrait of Consuelo (oddly ending on a romance novel note of happily ever after and in the midst of WWII despite the fact that Consuelo lives another 20 odd years), it is a light and fast read perfect for those with a fascination with the English aristocracy, those who like to see how the other half lives, and historical fiction fans looking for an easy beach read.

For more information about Karen Harper and the book, check our her author website, follow her on Facebook, look at the book's Goodreads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme was 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. I'm choosing to continue the tradition even though she has stopped.

My Very '90s Romance by Jenny Colgan.

The book is being released by William Morrow Paperbacks on March 12, 2019.

The book's jacket copy says: From New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan comes a hilarious romantic comedy about a down-on-her-luck florist whose future begins to bloom when she takes on the challenge of helping to transform her nerdy roommate.

Holly is a frustrated florist whose life doesn’t seem to be coming up roses. Fleeing a roommate situation from hell, she moves in with a motley crew of friends—Josh, a sexually confused merchant banker; Kate, a high-flying legal eagle with talons to match; and Addison, a gorgeous computer geek who spends his days communicating with his online girlfriend and anyone who worships at the altar of Jean-Luc Picard. From the moment Holly catches a rare glimpse of Addison, she’s smitten. The only problem is how to get him to swivel his chair from the computer screen to her adoring gaze.

After a series of false starts—involving a new friend and mathematician, Finn—Holly coaxes Addison away from his computer screen and out into the open. While “out in the open” spells disaster for Addison, curiously, her own future begins to bloom. Holly and her friends make desperate attempts to connect with Addison, drag him away from his fiercely possessive girlfriend, Claudia, and get him to communicate with the real world.

With Jenny Colgan’s trademark wit and a cast of unforgettable characters, My Very '90s Romance will capture your heart.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
The Bottom of the Sky by Rodrigo Fresan
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
American Duchess by Karen Harper

Reviews posted this week:

The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
100 Dives of a Lifetime by Carrie Miller and Brian Skerry

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

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Rules of Surrender by Christina Dodd
The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handle
Tiny Americans by Devin Murphy
Oh, Tama! by Mieko Kanai
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Exposure by Jean-Philippe Blondel
Here I Am! by Pauline Holdstock
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center came from St. Martin's Press.

A female firefighter has to move from Texas to Boston to help out her sick and estranged mother and finds the change of culture rough, fighting to be accepted at her new firehouse and resisting falling for one of her coworkers. Sounds really good, right?!

Normal People by Sally Rooney came from me for myself.

Boy meets girl, communication problems, Costa Novel winner, Man Booker longlisted, and on and on. How could I not want to read this? Answer: impossible. Of course I want to.

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Agatha Christie came from me for myself.

The queen of crime fiction wrote about crimes of the heart? Well, I am all in on this love triangle novel.

Barracombe's by Susan Scarlett came from me for myself.

This is one of Noel Streatfeild's (best known in this country for her kid's books like Ballet Shoes, etc.) adult novels and I can't wait to read this pre-WWII romance about a nasty cousin who comes to stay and disrupt the lives of her happy extended family.

The Road to the Harbour by Susan Pleydell came from me for myself.

A Greyladies book set in a fishing village, this story of a young woman who goes back to where she was last happy looking to heal and forget the recent past after the scandal of her brother's treasonous actions only to have the past catch up with her looks fantastic.

If you want 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.