Review: The Welcome Home Diner by Peggy Lampman

When we lived in suburban Detroit, I organized an annual service day for my alma mater. One year we joined an organization that planted trees in the inner city. As we dug holes and planted new trees to replace those dead from disease, several people came out of their homes and questioned us about what we were doing. Most were suspicious of our motives and some wanted us to stop, at least until we mentioned that the minister of a local church had volunteered to water all the trees in hopes of helping them root and survive. It was a reaction I'd never expected to encounter. After all, we were just trying to help make their neighborhood more beautiful and replace what they had lost long ago. Trees couldn't possibly be political, could they? We moved away from Detroit in 2008 as the housing bubble was bursting in a spectacular way all across the US and so I don't know whether our trees survived or even whether the inhabitants of the neighborhood itself are still there or if they were among those so hard hit that their homes were torn down and they were displaced. What wasn't lost on me though was the idea that what one person sees as a gift of good can be seen otherwise by the people on the receiving end. This is just one of the issues addressed in Peggy Lampman's newest novel, The Welcome Home Diner but one that resonated with me for sure.

Addie and Sam Jaworski are cousins who have bought both a home and a diner in a depressed area of Detroit. They've realized their dream of refurbishing the diner and opening a restaurant focused on the cuisine that means the most to them, the foods they learned to make in childhood with their Polish Babcia and the comforting soul food of their diverse, local staff. They have a kitchen garden behind the diner to supply many of their vegetables and they use local artisans and purveyors for the rest of their supplies. Despite their outreach to the neighborhood and even as they become more successful professionally, they are avoided by the neighbors and patronized mainly by suburban hipsters, a point which continually nags at them, and which runs counter to their vision. Initially things seem to be mostly going well personally and improving professionally for the two women but there start to be cracks in their lives. Addie's boyfriend can't commit to marriage and family, two things she wants more than anything, and Sam's boyfriend has plans that could change everything for the two cousins. A troll has started posting negative and untrue comments about the diner and they are faced with threats by a shady linen company. And the cousins, who not only work together but have bought a fixer upper home together, have a relationship damaging fight. Only the community they have created around them can buoy them up and get them through all of these difficulties and more.

The narrative flips from Addie to Sam so that each woman has a voice for the reader and so that her internal thoughts and pressures can help explain all of the decisions, good and bad that she makes. Occasionally it is difficult to determine who the focus is on, especially when the character in question is ruminating over a problem both women share. Sam and Addie, although growing up under very different circumstances, both need to discover their own self-worth over the course of the novel. They are so focused on the stresses of running the diner and of their respective love lives that they either don't know or they lose sight of their own identity and truth. Their fumbling makes them feel terribly real and familiar. The secondary characters are generally a delightful bunch (although there are one or two who are more irritating and problematic than delightful). Like the city itself resurfacing from the economic disasters of the past, the secondary characters, and in many ways, Sam and Addie too, are looking for a second chance, a personal revitalization if you will. The stresses of owning a small restaurant and the difficulty of having it truly be a welcome home in the midst of a neighborhood that views them with suspicion is very well depicted here. Addie and Sam do want to be good community partners but it's not as easy and immediately appreciated as they had assumed. The novel is full of weighty plot lines, many of which are quite secondary. Lampman takes on a veritable cornucopia of issues in this novel: gentrification, sex trafficking, family, both created and chosen, race, the farm to table movement, rehabilitating convicts, second chances, and forgiveness. There is a clear love of food here with delectable passages about cooking and ingredients that will make any reader's mouth water and there are recipes at the end for any cooks looking to make their own Polish soul food fusions. There's a lot to think about in the pages of the novel and readers of women's fiction as well as foodies and those interested in the rebirth of Detroit will certainly enjoy the book.

For more information about Peggy Lampman and the book, check out her website and blog or like her on Facebook or Twitter. Check out the book's Goodreads 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 author for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: The It Girls by Karen Harper

Although we may think that our time has a strange and unprecedented obsession with the people we’ve made famous, we are actually just following in the footsteps of previous decades and centuries. Every age has had its celebrities and its obsessions. Karen Harper’s newest novel, The It Girls, explores two famous women, real life sisters, who were the epitome of that indefinable “it.”

Lucy and Nellie Sutherland wanted nothing so much as to be as famous as their own celebrity crush, Lillie Langtry. Lucy wanted to design clothing and Nellie wanted to be a celebrated author. In this process of achieving their goals, each of these determined women weathered unhappy marriages, hardship, poverty, and obsessive critical attention that wasn’t always positive. Lucy was the designer behind the romantic, floaty, and highly coveted designs under the label Lucile and Nellie became Elinor Glyn, the author behind quite scandalous, very popular romantic fiction. Both sisters were clearly creative, driven to succeed, and quite good at marketing themselves and their brands. In their early years they assisted each other but as they each became more successful, there was a widening streak of jealousy over the other’s success that changed and harmed their relationship periodically.

The lives and accomplishments of Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon, and Elinor Glyn were fascinating but they might have been better served by having separate books about them. Although they were sisters, their relationship to each other did not seem to be the focus of the book, instead it centered on their rise to fame and the obstacles they overcame to live celebrated lives. The beginning of the book with the two as teenagers in Jersey is rather awkward as they have a conversation with each other recounting their early years. Since they both already know their own history, it is a strange choice to give the reader their backstory this way. And after the women’s younger years, their lives diverge quite a bit, the bulk of their contact being at a distance. They do come together to support each other in hardship but mostly their stories are very separate. The narrative jumps back and forth between the sisters, sometimes at concurrent points but sometimes in different years or months. These switches back and forth aren’t as seamless as might be hoped, perhaps because the parallels in the sisters’ lives aren’t terribly clear. Despite the coming together at the end, which had a completely different feel than the preceding story, this felt more like two books living uneasily together under one cover. Even so it might spark readers to find more on Elinor and Lucile, two women who lived interesting public lives in spite of the challenges in their personal lives.

For more information about Karen Harper and the book, check out her website or like her on Facebook. Check out the book's Goodreads 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 Harper Collins for sending me 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:

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The It Girls by Karen Harper
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Hard and Heavy Thing by Matthew J. Hefti
Paint Your Wife by Lloyd Jones
The Company They Kept edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Thousand-Miler by Melanie Radzicki McManus
Dear Fang, With Love by Rufi Thorpe
Close Enough to Touch by Colleen Oakley
America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Hope Has Two Daughters by Monia Mazigh
After the Bloom by Leslie Shimotakahara
Metis Beach by Claudine Bourbonnais
Smoke by Dan Vyleta
Coco Chanel by Lisa Chaney
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Reviews posted this week:

Start Without Me by Joshua Max Feldman
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso

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

To Love the Coming End by Leanne Dunic
The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
City Mouse by Stacey Lender
Cutting Back by Leslie Buck
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
A Narrow Bridge by J.J. Gersher
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
How to Survive a Summer by Nick White
Bramton Wick by Elizabeth Fair
The Finishing School by Joanna Goodman
Meet Me in the In-Between by Bella Pollen
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier
Lights On, Rats Out by Cree LeFavour
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Him, Me, Muhammad Ali by Randa Jarrar
What Are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffee
Girl in Snow by Danya Kukafka
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Talker by Mary Sojourner
When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
'Round Midnight by Laura McBride
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
Last Things by Marissa Moss
All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai
Civilianized by Michael Anthony
The Redemption of Galen Pike by Carys Davies
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
In the Woods of Memory by Shun Medoruma
Before the Wind by Jim Lynch
Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent
Inhabited by Charlie Quimby
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
One Good Mama Bone by Bren McClain
The Excellent Lombards by Jane Hamilton
You and I and Someone Else by Anna Schachner
Meantime by Katharine Noel
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
So Much Blue by Perceval Everett
The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber
Mothers and Other Strangers by Gina Sorell
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell
How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry
Between Them by Richard Ford
Kinship of Clover by Ellen Meeropol
The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman
The Clay Girl by Heather Tucker
Morningstar by Ann Hood
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran
Song of Two Worlds by Alan Lightman
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Old Herbaceous by Reginald Arkell
The Original Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
A Season of Ruin by Anna Bradley
Incontinent on the Continent by Jane Christmas
We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
The Little French Bistro by Nina George
Sourdough by Robin Sloane
A Paris All Your Own edited by Eleanor Brown
The Rook by Daniel O'Malley
Living the Dream by Lauren Berry
Lawyer for the Dog by Lee Robinson
Lily and the Octopus by Stephen Rowley
Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae
Beginner's Guide to a Head-On Collision by Sebastian Matthews
Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The It Girls by Karen Harper
Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrival:

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty came from W. W. Norton.

It might sound macabre (although I don't think so), but this book about the way people around the world care for their dead sounds simply fascinating to me!

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.

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.

L'Appart by David Lebovitz.

The book is being released by Crown on November 1, 2017.

Amazon says this about the book: Bestselling author and world-renowned chef David Lebovitz continues to mine the rich subject of his evolving ex-Pat life in Paris, using his perplexing experiences in apartment renovation as a launching point for stories about French culture, food, and what it means to revamp one's life. Includes dozens of new recipes.

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country—under baffling conditions—while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.

Review: The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso

"Good fences make good neighbors," while often true, isn't particularly the case in Yewande Omotoso's novel, The Woman Next Door. Not even a fence can make the two neighbors, one black and one white, like each other, get along with each other politely, or even just tolerate each other when they pass in the street or encounter each other at neighborhood meetings. In fact, Marion and Hortensia, two women with what should be quite a lot in common, loathe each other and delight in making the other uncomfortable or angry in their well-off suburban Cape Town neighborhood. Both are highly educated and were quite well respected in their chosen fields (textile design for Hortensia and architecture for Marion). Each had a less than ideal marriage and shortly after the opening of the novel with the death of Hortensia's husband, both are widows. In their eighties now, having been neighbors and enemies for years, each of them holds tightly onto her rancor towards the other one. These two irascible women delight in sniping at each other without really knowing each other more than superficially. But when an accident happens and a legal threat to their homes surfaces, Hortensia and Marion are forced into a grudging cooperation.

Compared by many to Grumpy Old Men, this is actually something entirely different. Yes, the two main characters are cantankerous and competitive but they also have the weight of South African history underpinning their sometimes hilarious and sometimes bitter and mean hostilities. Their personal stories wrap around the greater political history of apartheid, slavery, and race in general. Omotoso keeps a light hand on the history, politics, and issues though so as not to make the characters simply foils for past injustice. Hortensia and Marion feel real in their own right with their flaws, occasional nastiness, veiled insecurities, disappointments, and personal problems. It is the women and their relationships, warts and all, that drives the narrative here. There is some humor but in general the novel is more serious than not, taking on race, women's rights, marriage, motherhood (or not), jealousy, aging, and more. I found this to be a worthwhile and enjoyable read if not entirely what I expected.

Of note: this book is one of the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads for 2017-2018.

Review: Start Without Me by Joshua Max Feldman

Family can be a mixed blessing, especially around the holidays. The things that we love and hate come into high definition during days like Thanksgiving, with its lofty expectations of family harmony and togetherness. And in fact, the expectations can be impossible to meet, especially when people come to the feast with the burden of past baggage or secrets weighing them down. Joshua Max Feldman's new novel, Start Without Me, tells the tale of two strangers, their two different Thanksgivings, and how they come together in their despair as they struggle with where they are in life.

Adam, a former musician who is struggling to maintain his hold on sobriety, is home for Thanksgiving for the first time in years but he is spooked by the thought of his whole family around him and when he accidentally breaks the coffee pot before anyone else wakes up, he flees the house and heads for the airport to go home, away from all the disappointment he exudes like a cloud. Marissa is a flight attendant, lingering in the airline's day room rather than get on the road to spend her short layover at her wealthy in-laws' home. Her in-laws have never really liked her, the poor daughter of an alcoholic mother.  The fact that her marriage is faltering and she's pregnant from an uncharacteristic one night stand with her old high school boyfriend, ratchets up her dread of the coming ordeal. Procrastinating just a bit longer, she stops for coffee in the airport hotel's restaurant, which is where she meets Adam. They are two tired, worn out strays who recognize the despair and loneliness in each other and connect despite the incredible unlikeliness of that connection. As they meet up over and over again during the course of the day, each trying to work through their emotional pain, to confront the demons haunting them, and to keep the weight of their pasts and past mistakes from drowning them, they are slowly moving towards an understanding and acceptance of their separate futures.

Neither Adam nor Marissa are particularly likable characters. They are sad and flawed and their respective weaknesses are on display throughout the entire novel. They desperately need to find the small kindnesses each offers the other because they cannot, or won't, find kindness from others around them. There is no grace for the ordinary traumas of their lives. A pervading feeling of disappointment threads through the novel and Adam and Marissa are clearly worn down and defeated themselves. The story is quite slow moving, mostly character driven, and split into two clear halves. The first half is slightly less serious than the second, at least in part because Adam and Marissa's painful histories, the unhapppiness and choices that formed them gradually comes out and because the reader sees each of them interact with family, confirming for the reader what each has said about their chances for a decent holiday, all in the second half. Adam's sister is (understandably) angry and frustrated and unforgiving with him while Marissa's in-laws are (not understandably) as hateful and dismissive of her as she thinks. While the novel feels authentic and realistic, it is also painful and depressing and the slightest glimmer of hope in the end isn't enough to make the reader feel as if these two characters can overcome everything stacked against them. This is not a happy families holiday story. It is not a romantic tale of serendipitous meeting. It is the tough and doleful tale of two damaged human beings who cross paths briefly amid the somber wreckage of the holiday, perhaps each other's lifeline or perhaps just a chance meeting.

For more information about Joshua Max Feldman and the book, check out his website, like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter. Check out the book's Goodreads 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 Harper Collins for sending me a copy of this book to review.