Review: The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig

The one room schoolhouse is an iconic image of the prairie, one which rural farmers' children traveled for miles to attend. Paul Milliron is the State Superintendent of Montana's schools charged with closing down some of the last one room schoolhouses in the state now that the advent of Sputnik has focused the whole nation on the state of math and science education and accelerated the school consolidation movement. Paul himself is the product of one of the schools he must now shut down. As he travels to his childhood home and toward his scheduled meeting with the intent only of softening the blow, he finds himself remembering a seminal year in his education.

The year that Paul is 12, his father sees an advertisement for a housekeeper who can't cook but doesn't bite. He hires Rose Llewellyn to come tend to the house and his boys, who have been missing a woman's care ever since their mother died. The advent of Rose and her dapper and very erudite brother Morrie in the Milliron home, and indeed this dry land farming community, turns out to be of momentous import. Morrie assumes the schoolteacher's position in the tiny schoolhouse that serves the surrounding farms, engaging and challenging the children far beyond anything ever expected of them before.

The characters in the story are complex and interesting and their actions, even when they are surprising, remain true to their cores. They are no-frills, reflective of the landscape in which they live. The slow unfolding of the story of that pivotal year is carefully measured and only occasionally interrupted by the older Paul's thoughts on his upcoming and unlooked for meeting to close the school that served him so well in his youth and offered him so much the year that Morrie and Rose moved to Marais Coulee. Doig's skill in painting place and atmosphere shines throughout the novel as does his rending of tensions and loyaties in this place still being settled. The unembellished writing makes the story accessible and unsentimental. But unembellished doesn't mean that there are not many riches here. The depiction of family, knowledge, and learning is plain and true and real. And while it took a little effort to get into the rhythm of the story at the beginning, I recommend perseverance. Doig has a given the reader a gift with this novel chronicling a time not so long past but certainly disappearing forever.

Review: Honolulu by Alan Brennert

Regret is a Korean girl so named to reflect her parents' disappointment that she was not born a boy. She is also not a child who is eager to submit to the life that has been mapped out for her choosing instead to sign on as a picture bride in Hawaii, a place where girls can attend school. Embarking on a ship with other picture brides, Regret, renamed Jin, quickly realizes that she has exchanged one drudgery-filled existence for another with an abusive, alcoholic gambler of a husband.

This tale of Asian immigrants and Hawaiian history is epic in scope. The story sweeps from pineapple plantations to the city of Honolulu in all its grandeur and debauchery in the early and middle years of the twentieth century. There are prostitutes, the detective who inspired the character Charlie Chan, the origins of the Hawaiian shirt, and so much more. And Jin's entirely possible story is woven throughout these historical events as she participates in the events and meets the people involved. The book is peopled with colorful characters but it still takes on difficult topics like discrimination and abuse. Jin is a strong and vibrant character who learns to direct her own life, celebrating the good and enduring the bad.

I enjoyed this one but wasn't wowed by it. In some ways it was a bit stereotypical. I appreciated the history woven into it but the weaving was perhaps not as skillfull and seamless as it could have been or perhaps there was just a little too much of it. The plot galloped along (a good thing when a book is a bit of a chunkster as this one is) and I liked the characters well enough. Those people enchanted by the setting in Hawaii or the exotic idea, and decidedly un-exotic reality, of picture brides will enjoy the storytelling here.

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

Review: Free to a Good Home by Eve Marie Mont

Noelle Ryan is a vet tech at an animal shelter. She loves finding homes for the dogs in her care, drawn to the innocent and needy. At home she has a rescue dog herself, Zeke, a friendly Great Dane upon whom she lavishes the love for which, thanks to the collapse of her marriage, she has no other outlet. Recently divorced, despite still loving her ex-husband, she and Jay continue to keep in touch as he builds his new life. Noelle still can't say no to Jay so when he asks her to give his mother, the eptiome of the evil mother-in-law, injections, she says yes, reluctantly but still she says yes. Noelle is the person everyone turns to when they need a favor, taking advantage of her giving heart, never stopping to consider that she might be reeling from the double whammy of discovering that she can't have children and that her ex-husband is gay. Even while she continues her caretaking of strays, surrendered animals and her cantakerous ex-mother-in-law, she meets Jasper, a relaxed musician who offers her the chance to be happy simply for the sake of being happy if only she can find the courage to take it.

Noelle as a character is good and kind and loyal but she's also a bit of a lost soul. Luckily canine Zeke and the other shelter dogs help ground her a bit. Ex-husband Jay is selfish and thoughtless. He never stops to consider what his requests and suggestions do to Noelle emotionally, keeping her inadvertantly tied to him. As a boyfriend, Jasper is almost too perfect, giving Noelle the space she needs to find closure with Jay and to trust in her own feelings again. There was just such a charming feel throughout this book about second chances. So many of the characters had to accept the curves life threw at them and go on to create a different life, perhaps not the one once envisioned, but one that contained the potential for much happiness nonetheless and this same theme was reflected in the lives of the shelter dogs with whom Noelle worked. The dogs took what happened to them and in most cases, were rehabilitated to find love and caring in new homes.

The novel tackles a lot of weighty topics (terminal illness, homosexuality, infertility) but retains an air of pervading hope and a sense of happiness just around the corner throughout. This is a perfect book for dog lovers (although one set of Noelle's neighbors will make you mad) and for those who appreciate stories about new beginnings and genuinely nice characters coming into their own and fitting in their skin. I read this in a day so it's a quick and delightful book and would be perfect to tuck into a beach bag.

(For those of you who worry when a dog is on the cover of the book--after all the general rule of thumb is that the dog dies--I will ease your mind and say that Zeke is alive and licking at the end of the book. Not really a spoiler, I promise. Just a reassurance.

Make sure to visit Eve's website where you'll find her blog and all sorts of fun information. And don't forget that the book releases today so you too can have a copy of this charming story.

Thanks to Kaitlyn at Berkley for sending me a review copy of this book.

Review: How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Fowler

I stumbled across Connie May Fowler's works many years ago and have been enjoying her unusual writing ever since. With her trademarked meandering writing style, imitating and reflecting the heat shimmering over her fictional creation of Hope, Florida, Fowler has created the story of a woman beaten down by life, held hostage to her loveless marriage and her own inadequacies by self-esteem lower than a boa constrictor's belly who will finally rise up and learn to fly on her own.

Clarissa is a writer with two wildly successful books under her belt. She and her husband, Iggy, moved to Hope six months prior to the midsummer day (the summer solstice) during which all events of the story take place. As the day heats and grows, Clarissa watches as Iggy cavorts with his nude models (he's an artist or sorts) and is herself followed by a determined ghost who needs Clarissa to tell her terrible story and that of her husband and son as well. It is through the minor interventions of the ghost Olga and the imaginary voices in Clarissa's own head that she grows in strength as the day does, determining that her husband won't bully her anymore, that her opinion of things is valid, and that she has more worth than she's ever given herself for having.

The story seems to almost swirl through the pages, defying conventional narrative techniques. With ghosts unimagined and unacknowledged by Clarissa, a fly drunk on the appealing smell of the main character, a boy with a pet rattler, and a dwarf circus, this book is chock full of the unconventional and the unusual. And despite the craziness, Fowler manages to make this story of a woman's self-realization and strength completely normal and believable. Clarissa takes baby steps throughout her day and while her weaknesses make the reader groan, these small lapses into who she has been for all of her previous life make her newly fledged character all the more realistic. There are twists aplenty contained within and horrors too. The final culmination is a bit rushed but it nicely reinforces Clarissa as a woman with whom to be reckoned, a fighter. Once I picked this one up, I didn't put it down until I was finished, mesmerized as I was by the place, the characters, and the story itself and rooting for Clarissa to break free, to fly.

Thanks to Miriam at Hachette for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Review: Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had by Rick Bass

Have you ever read a book that is so gorgeous and resonant that it just tears your heart out? This is a book like that. Yes, you probably have to be a dog lover to fully appreciate the story but Bass' writing is sublime and loaded and rippling and majestic. He takes in Colter, his knob-headed hunting dog, as a favor to a friend, not knowing that this goofy looking pup will prove to be an absolute genius of a pointer and be the key to showing Bass the byways that many people never visit, teaching him about hunting and love and expectation and fulfillment.

Coupled with his transcendant prose about the natural world, this story of the best dog Bass has ever had is a delight. From Colter's entrance into Bass' life, his training as an incredibly promising hunting dog, all the hunts, successful and not, on which author and dog partner, to Colter's disappearance and the final resolution, this book glows with Bass' pride and love and respect for this most amazing animal in his life. It is an honoring of the bond they shared and a recounting of the lessons learned in each others' company. But most of all, it is a magnificently written book.

While Colter was a hunting dog and Bass did indeed hunt with him, the majesty and importance of the natural world shine through the whole narrative and it would be a shame for readers to dismiss the book from an anti-hunting stance. All animal lovers know that their pets have much to teach them but Bass has found a way to beautifully articulate those lessons in his paean to Colter. Much quoted in other reviews, the lines: "How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden," in the prologue give a sense of the reverence of the writing and the feeling captured in these pages. It is a grace fallen into, accidental or intentional, when the quiet reader opens the pages of this powerful, contemplative book.

Review: Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya

Winner of the 1973 Premio Quinto Sol national Chicano literary award, this coming of age story is told from the point of view of little Antonio Marez. He is the last of his parents' children and they are each determined that he will grow up to take after their side of the family. His father wants him to be a vaquero on the llano as he was and his mother, of farming stock, wants him to become a priest and scholar. And he himself has no idea which way his life will hew, observing everything as he does and asking difficult questions. In her old age, Ultima, a curandera or healer, moves in with his family and becomes a sort of touchstone for him in his philosophical wonderings, not least because little Antonio witnesses great evil that even the local priest seems unable to contain whereas Ultima, called a witch by so many, vanquishes it. As he grows, he reveres Ultima even as she throws some of the things he once thought were fact into question.

Anaya has captured the nature of men and their beliefs in this simple tale juxtaposing evil and good, right and wrong, Catholicism and paganism, child and man. While the novel is very pensive, Antonio as a character is far too old for his years, even if he is a child of the 1940's. His introspection and maturity are simply not that of a 7 or 8 year old child. A novel of ideas more than a novel of action, the plot bumps along slowly from one senseless, violent death to another and interspersed with long periods of tedium. This novel does give a voice to the Chicano population in northern New Mexico and showcases early magical realism and it has some sociological significance as a result. Overall the book was a slow, sometimes mesmerizing read but isn't one that I'd suggest to most readers, knowing they'd be bogged down with the pace.

Review: A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird

Isabella Bird was an inveterate traveller, naturalist, and writer. This might not be an unusual description for women today but Bird was all of these things in the mid-nineteenth century, a time when women's lives were far more constrained than they are today. She chronicled many of her travels in letters home to her sister before they were published in collections.

This particular collection of letters details Bird's long journeying through the Rocky Mountains, into the heart of the land, often unaccompanied, only choosing her routes based on her preference of the moment and always willing to deviate from the plan. She wrote beautiful descirptions of a time and place much changed today, appreciating the remote wildness she found on many of her tramps. In addition to her natural writings, she also turned her eye on the people who inhabited these lonely, majestic places as well and her character depictions are delightful. She has captured the character of the folks who chose to eke out a living homesteading in the shadows and valleys of these majestic mountains, capturing the fortitude, the sometime lawlessness, the hospitality, and the suspicions of her hosts and acquaintances.

Make no mistake that this is a modern day account. It is very much rooted in its time and it takes a little adjustment to Bird's language and writing to get into the book. But once in the story, the reader will happily accompany her on her meanderings, oftentimes in awe of her determination. The writing flowed clearly and smoothly along and I'll probably try searching out more of her straightforward and appealing travelogues. I may not have to suffer the discomforts she did in traveling but the romanticism of her journey, even when she encounters difficulties, is unbeaten.

Review: Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani

Adriana Trigiani is very well known for her women's fiction. Viola in Reel Life, a YA novel, is quite a departure from that but there are still similarities in the writing and especially in the characterizations. Most adult reader fans of Trigiani's will have no trouble at all reading this and making it a cross-over title.

The story opens with Viola feeling abandoned by her filmmaker parents at an all girls' boarding school in Indiana. Viola is completely unhappy with the situation because she defines herself as a New Yorker and an aspiring filmmaker. Being dropped off in a cornfield is not her idea of fun. She is determined to be unhappy and to make certain that everyone knows it, which does not get her off on the right foot with her roommates. Her best friend back home, Andrew, sympathizes as best as he's able through IM chats and e-mail.

Viola spends a lot of time documenting her experience at Prefect Academy and eventually realizes that she can choose to make the best of her situation or she can mope and be miserable for a year. Choosing to spread her wings, she becomes close friends with her roommates, meets a boy at the brother school, and creates a short film to enter into a big competition. Along the way, she learns that not only is life what you make of it but that there's a lot more to things than just their surface appearance. And it is this experience in delving deeper that causes her to grow as a character and a filmmaker.

This is a sweet story of a girl on the brink of growing up. There are moments when the dialogue is a bit stilted and slightly unnatural sounding, especially between the roommates but that is easily passed over. Like in Trigiani's other books, there is a fun and eccentric character, here it is Viola's wacky actress grandmother. She adds not only a bit of the "good crazies" into the plot but also offers Viola a dose of serious reality when she chooses to come out of character. The average reader will spin through this light and entertaining read. Tame enough for middle grade readers, this is a nice departure from the "mean girls" cult that YA literature has enshrined lately so those older girls who are tired of reading about back stabbing and nastiness will find this a welcome relief.

Thanks to Book Club Girl and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book so I could participate in the author interview on Blog Talk Radio.

Review: Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy

Sarah and Charles Lucas have created a long and generally happy life for themselves in the large Vermont house where they raised their children. And they have settled in for a contented retirement when Charles unexpectedly dies. Sarah finds herself drifting through her days until her granddaughter and friends move into the house. Then comes a woman and child who have lost everything in a fire. The cousin of an old friend moves into the guest house, needing quiet and solitude. The daughter and gradnson of an acquaintance escape an abusive situation by moving into Sarah's. And Sarah starts to come back to life with this newly created family inhabiting her home and her grounds.

Told in two seperate sections, starting with the Lucas' life before Charles' death, part one ends in the past, picking up part two with the memorial service and the emptiness now pervading Sarah's life. Maloy has written both the portrait of a good, solid marriage and of one partner's painful coming back to life after the death of her husband. The characters are flawed and real and utterly sympathetic. Their interactions, especially Sarah's with her children, echo the interactions of people the world round. While the Lucas house might be a place of healing for so many of the lost souls who congregate with Sarah, it is clear that this is just one stop on their path and that Sarah and her determination to find meaning in the life left to her is the main focus of the story. She is a strong and graceful character for whom the reader can't help but root, even as we see her frustrations and watch her admit her past mistakes. The narrative covers much loss but has a tender and lovely feel to it that draws readers in and keeps them engaged with the story each and every page. I very much enjoyed this book about lasting love, family, loss, and going on in spite of and because of what happens in life.

Review: Houston, We Have a Problema by Gwendolyn Zepeda

This fluffy bit of chick lit had a cute premise for a story: the main character has trouble making decisions in her life so she consults a fortune teller whenever she is at a crossroads. At least this is what the jacket copy promised. Unfortunately, since this is what interested me most about the book, this plot contrivance actually appeared fairly infrequently and without adding a single thing to the story. I think it actually detracted, as if the author suddenly realized she hadn't had Jessica visit the supposedly terribly important psychic so she dropped a scene in gratuitously. Other than this disappointment, the novel wasn't all bad. It was a pretty standard fluff book with a slight surprise ending but chick lit readers won't be surprised when I say that Jessica, our main character, learns a lot about herself and her prejudices, leading her to a happier, more fulfilled life both professionally and personally. A nice enough book to while away an afternoon with, it was ultimately merely the dreaded "okay."