Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I'm not much of a reader of the magical and fantastical (well, aside from Harry Potter). It just doesn't usually strike me as all that appealing when I am browsing through book descriptions. I tend to hew more toward the realistic (well, aside from romances) although I occasionally dip a toe into the fantasy world--usually when forced. When my book club chose Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, I wasn't overly thrilled. A book about two magicians in a high stakes duel and competing in a circus atmosphere didn't really seem like my kind of book. But it was the group's choice and it had been getting raves for the past year so I tried to go into it with an open mind. And while it was well written and imaginative, it has not changed my over all perception of fantastical fiction.

When a famous magician, Prospero the Great, meets his young daughter for the first time and sees that she has inherited his own real and true magical ability, he proposes a duel with his former teacher, pitting a protégé of each against the other in an attempt to show which method of magical teaching, experiential or textually based, is more effective. The duel will only commence after a period of learning and will be at the time and place of the former teacher's choosing, but it will not be friendly; it will be a duel to the death. The venue chosen is a magical night circus where Celia and Marco will showcase their fantastical skills. Marco knows from the outset that Celia is his competition but she has no idea that he is hers.

For years the two of them make considered moves, like a slow and enticing chess game between magicians, creating marvelous and awe-inspiring displays. They may be in control of the board, but they are certainly not the only people caught up in the circus world. Twins Poppy and Widget are born the night the circus commences and each of them has supernatural gifts as a result. Isabel, the fortune teller, loves Marco and keeps an eye on Celia for him. There are numerous non-magical people behind the scenes in the planning and continuation of the circus and many performers as well. There's a young farm boy named Bailey, who is inexplicably drawn to the circus. And each of them are players on a stage they do not control or understand.

I am still deciding if I enjoyed this book or not. There is no doubt that it was well-written and that Morgenstern is very imaginative and clever. But there's not a lot of plot here, just scene after scene of the boundlessness of Celia and Marco's ingenuity, skill, and imagination. The promise of magicians dueling doesn't feel fulfilled and never manages to provide any sort of tension to the novel at all.  The love story between them just sort of happens, making it feel unearned and inorganic.  The cast of characters is so numerous that they cannot all be well rounded purely from space constraints.  There is a gothic and menacing undertone to the entire book and it is a dreamy and lethargic, vaguely ominous and unsettling read. I knew I was going to be unhappy if Morgenstern chose the ending I suspected but one that I thought would be entirely wrong and then she did just that, wrapping things up hurriedly and too neatly for the previously decaying situation she'd created. But if I still feel ambivalent about the book, and I do, I did push myself out of my comfort zone with the read, and I can be pleased about that.

Sunday Salon: Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. And I'm a mother. So you could be excused for thinking that I was either served breakfast in bed or taken to a brunch by my adoring family, pampered and fussed over. I know that many mothers out there love that. I, however, am an odd duck and very little could appeal to me less. Instead, so far, I have stayed camped out in my jammies, holed up in bed, snacked on intentionally saved leftovers from a chick pea salad I made several days ago (which is better if it sits 24 hours or more), and read a book. Yes, the entire book. I have wallowed in the quiet, alone time. In all fairness to my family, they did all come in and wish me a Happy Mother's Day, give me cards, and gifts, and then headed off to their own interesting stuff. I did talk to my mom and my mother-in-law to wish them happy days too. But mostly I've been given the gift of uninterrupted time to read without having a single request of me even once. Bliss! I'm pretty sure in another century I'd have become a hermit (not a nun because their days might have been quiet but they were quite scheduled). Lest you think I am completely insensible to the day, the book I read is about a mother, the loss of her mother when she was young and her subsequent awful stepmother, her daughters, and the long held secrets of families.

If you are a mother, I hope you're having the exact sort of Mother's Day you most desire, whether it fits popular portrayal or not. And no matter who you are, I hope you're finding the reading time you want today.

My reading travels this week took me all sorts of different places. I went out to a beach house on Long Island with a play group fraught with tensions. I visited a young girl who traveled around with her father and his bees after her mother abandoned her. I watched as another young girl's mother, fed up with and dissatisfied with her life, disappeared, first emotionally and then in truth. I sympathized as a young woman tried to make sense of her own desires as she untangled her love life. And then finally, I rooted for an older woman wanting to live her life her way as she grappled with and brought repressed memories to light. Can't wait to see where the next one takes me. Where did your reading travels take you this past week?

Review: Casebook by Mona Simpson

We learn to be adults through our observations, learning from our parents and the other adults in our lives. Most children want to be grown-up long before they are and so they scrutinize their parents' lives. They listen in on phone conversations. They eavesdrop. They sit at the top of the stairs or by a vent where voices carry to try and overhear what to children is information about the unknown landscape of adulthood. In Mona Simpson's newest novel, Casebook, her main character Miles Adler-Hart and his best friend Hector spy on adults, like all children do, but they hear and uncover things they shouldn't with unintentional results.

Miles is not yet a teenager when he starts eavesdropping on his mother. He starts because he wants to watch Survivor and hopes to hear his mother discussing the forbidden show with one of her friends. But he and his walkie talkie, with the transmit button taped down for extended listening, get trapped in his parents' room where he overhears the information that his parents are separating. Slow to learn that no good ever comes of listening in to others' conversations, Miles continues to listen to things he was never intended to hear on an extra phone extension specially rigged for surveillance. And eventually, after his parents' divorce and even after he comes to like his mother's long term boyfriend, he can't break the habit, an inability that has the power to ultimately destroy the things that make his mother the happiest.

The novel opens with a note about the book being a prequel to a popular comic, noting that it was written by one of the authors and annotated by the other. This opening seems rather out of place and only ties into the story itself at the tag end of the novel. The structure does set the reader up for the few, scattered footnotes to be found in the text but the notes are so few and far between that they are unnecessary, or on the flip side, there should have been more to make them more effective.

The characters are well drawn and appealing, especially Miles. He starts as a typical, slightly nerdy pre-teen, chubby, and unsure of himself. He is generally a loving older brother to his younger twin sisters, nicknamed the Boops, and is pretty accepting of what he admits is his parents' "good" divorce. He struggles with his mother's geeky new boyfriend Eli at first but eventually comes to welcome him as a part of their lives, until his suspicions get the better of him. Miles is a caring son, concerned with his mother, whom he calls the Mims, her happiness, and the hope that her romantic fantasy of happy families comes true.

As the novel progresses and the year pass, Miles' interests and actions change and broaden beyond the domestic drama. He harbors a long unrequited love for a girl in his class and kindly holds back from hurting another who is interested in him. He develops an interest in sex (but please not when concerned with his mother!) just like any other normal teenaged boy. He internalizes a need for security and financial stability learned from his mother and some of the funniest moments in the book occur when he and Hector flex their entrepreneurial muscles, reselling soup at school and rehoming vicious pets.

Although this was not the boy version of Harriet the Spy that I might have expected when I first picked it up, it is a satisfying read. Although very different books, Harriet learned a lot about people through her spying and Miles does too. How do we learn about love and relationship? By watching (and listening to) our elders, of course. And this is just what Miles learns: the ins and outs, successes and failures of love and relationship, the importance of truth and the destructive power of lies, and the ways in which happiness grows more complicated and sometimes more fragile in adulthood. Simpson has written an engaging coming of age tale that easily reminds readers of their own innocent childhoods before they understood heartbreak, sadness, and loss and how they felt when they discovered that this trio is forever a part of life.

For more information about Mona Simpson and the book, check out her website, her Facebook page, or take a look at the Good Reads page. 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.

Review: Delicious! by Ruth Reichl

Do you ever taste a recipe and wonder what's in it? Do you read cooking magazines? Do you drool over pictures and recipes in cookbooks? Do you watch food shows and vow to try their recipes or visit the featured restaurants? Is restaurant critic your dream job? If you answered yes to any of these questions and especially if you answered yes to all of them, Ruth Reichl's new novel, Delicious!, is a book you'll devour.

Billie Breslin has quit school and moved to New York to take a job at Delicious!, a venerable and iconic food magazine. Billie has an extraordinary palate and hopes that her job as an assistant at the magazine will turn into a proving ground for her writing. And although her recipe for gingerbread is what secured her the job, she most emphatically doesn't cook herself. There's clearly a reason for this but Billie holds it close to her chest. She settles into the magazine happily, building deep friendships, learning the trade, and having the opportunity to write articles about the amazing people and fantastic things happening in the world of food.

While she works at the magazine, she also works weekends at a wonderful old fashioned Italian deli called Fontanari's where she is folded into the family. After a year at Delicious!, she, like everyone at the magazine, is taken by surprise when the owner decides to close the magazine, one of his father's original publications. Only Billie is kept on in the deserted, historic mansion to field calls and letters about the Delicious! recipe guarantee. One query about an old recipe sends her into the long locked library in the building. While there, she stumbles on a hidden room and files containing fascinating WWII era letter from a young girl named Lulu Swan to famed chef and writer James Beard who once worked at Delicious!. Hunting down the entire set of letters before the now deserted mansion is sold becomes a driving force for Billie, fellow Delicious! writer friend Sammy, and finally the architectural historian called in to look at the house, Mitch, who is also longtime customer at Fontanari's and eventually Billie's boyfriend.

Set up very much like a romantic comedy movie centered around food, the novel is charming. It is one part love letter to local food purveyors in NYC, one part mystery, one part tragedy, and one part love story. Told both through letters that Billie writes to her much adored, perfect older sister Genie, and through first person narration, the story clips along at a good pace. Billie's eventual revelations about Cake Sisters and her past isn't all that surprising but it isn't really the heart of the novel anyway. The letters from Lulu to James Beard and the mystery of them is truly the main course here. Lulu's letters are delightful and they give a uncomplicated and interesting look into life in Akron during the war in a family where the father has gone off to fight. She captures the sadness and uncertainty of the time beautifully while her requests for wartime recipes and food advice under rationing are truly fascinating. The novel unnecessarily veers away from Billie's search for the rest of the letters and into romance novel territory a bit with Billie and Mitch's relationship. While their relationship helps Billie to grow and mature as a character, the details of their intimate encounters don't really move the plot along. But Reichl does get back on plot, tying up many of the loose ends in a light and satisfactory way. The novel will make you salivate over all of the fantastic food descriptions and luckily Billie's gingerbread recipe is included at the end so you can make your own luscious cake while you think about the tasty novel on which you've just closed the cover.

For more information about Ruth Reichl and the book, check out her website or follow her on Twitter. 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.

Lost for Words by Edward St. Aubyn. The book is being released by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux on May 20, 2014.

Amazon says this about the book: Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels were some of the most celebrated works of fiction of the past decade. Ecstatic praise came from a wide range of admirers, from literary superstars such as Zadie Smith, Francine Prose, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Michael Chabon to pop-culture icons such as Anthony Bourdain and January Jones. Now St. Aubyn returns with a hilariously smart send-up of a certain major British literary award.

The judges on the panel of the Elysian Prize for Literature must get through hundreds of submissions to find the best book of the year. Meanwhile, a host of writers are desperate for Elysian attention: the brilliant writer and serial heartbreaker Katherine Burns; the lovelorn debut novelist Sam Black; and Bunjee, convinced that his magnum opus, The Mulberry Elephant, will take the literary world by storm. Things go terribly wrong when Katherine’s publisher accidentally submits a cookery book in place of her novel; one of the judges finds himself in the middle of a scandal; and Bunjee, aghast to learn his book isn’t on the short list, seeks revenge.

Lost for Words is a witty, fabulously entertaining satire that cuts to the quick of some of the deepest questions about the place of art in our celebrity-obsessed culture, and asks how we can ever hope to recognize real talent when everyone has an agenda.

Review: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose

I have tried to describe this book to several people now and it always comes across as sounding very strange indeed. I'm not sure they believe me when I say that it all fits beautifully within the context of the story and that it is a fascinating tale based, at least in part, on real people. I mean, who is going to believe that a novel about a lesbian, cross-dressing, French, race car driving woman who despite being a patriot became a spy and then a torturer for the Nazis in Occupied France? Crazy focus for a novel, right? And yet, it not only works, but Prose's newest novel, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, comes together as a marvelous tale about love, desire, art, betrayal, and the seeds of evil.

Paris in the years leading up to WWII had a giddy, frenetic feel to it and that sense of grabbing life around the neck was nowhere more evident than at The Chameleon Club, where men dressed as women and women dressed as men. People came to the club to listen to the owner, Yvonne, croon about her long dead sailor and to let their hair down, free to be themselves as they could nowhere else. And the club is the place that the narrative circles back to again and again, a place that all the characters have been too and that some know intimately.

Narrated by multiple characters in multiple ways (letters, essays from the time, published and unpublished memoirs written later, and a biography written in the present), the novel swirls around the person of Lou Villars. Although Lou is not always the central character in the narrations, her presence and her ultimate war crimes, which are made clear in the very beginning of the novel, are the threads that connect all the players together. Lionel Main is an American writer who is searching for fame as he writes (and embellishes or even makes up out of whole cloth) about a decadent Paris for readers at home. Gabor Tsenyi is the Hungarian photographer who snaps an iconic picture of Lou in a tuxedo with her lover Arlette in a fancy party dress while sitting at the Chameleon's bar. Suzanne Dunois Tsenyi is Gabor's ever tolerant girlfriend and ultimately his wife. Baroness Lily de Rossignol is a frigid but wealthy woman who bankrolls Gabor's photography and employs Lou as a race car driver for her gay husband and his brother's brand of French cars. And finally Nathalie Dunois is a teacher in the present who is writing a biography of Lou Villars called The Devil Drives, humanizing and even identifying with this woman who has been so demonized for her role in Nazi Occupied France that her life is rarely, if ever, spoken of.

Telling the story of Lou's life from childhood through her impressive athletic displays as a young woman and on into the disappointments and betrayals of her adulthood, this novel seeks to understand the genesis of evil. Does Lou become an informer and torturer because of her upbringing? Does she become open to evil because of the way that life and the people in it maltreat and take advantage of her? Or is it something else, the seed of which has always been in her? How could a French patriot who venerated Joan of Arc willingly collaborate with the Nazis? Lou never narrates her own story and so despite all the evidence, we cannot fully know. The other characters, who do narrate, explain not only what they knew of Lou but also their own lives in that increasingly ominous time before the war and the decisions that led them to their roles during the war. All of the narrators are contemporaneous with Lou except for Nathalie Dunois, her biographer, who becomes less and less reliable as the book progresses.

Each of the different modes of narration and the different narrators widen the tale with their overlapping observations, making this an incredibly nuanced read. The beginning of the novel, as the reader is meeting each of the characters in the story, and there are many beyond just the narrators, can be a bit overwhelming but once they are all in place, the story starts to race along to the inevitable conclusion, and one that the reader knows from the outset. The journey to that end is definitely worth the ride as the stories tell and retell, expanding on each other as Lou's decisions, desires, and even sometimes her naivety push her ever closer to the wrongheaded justifications she will use to excuse her participation in evil. Prose is a masterful writer and she manages to keep all her balls in the air with this complicated and unusual novel.

For more information about Francine Prose and the book, check out her author page. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on 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?

A good reading week, if not a good reviewing week this past one. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose
Delicious by Ruth Reichl
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Casebook by Mona Simpson

Reviews posted this week:

Recklessly Royal by Nichole Chase

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

Where Somebody Waits by Margaret Kaufman
Dinner With the Smileys by Sarah Smiley
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose
Delicious by Ruth Reichl
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra