Review: Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser

We all know the Cinderella fairy tale, the Disney version if not the Grimm’s version. So, we all know that Cinderella's stepmother is a monster, her stepsisters are spoiled and hateful, and that she is only rescued from her life of servitude by her Prince Charming. But that story is wholly from Cinderella's perspective. What if her stepmother had a chance to tell her side of things, reaching all the way back to her own childhood and to the series of life decisions that brought her to marry Cinderella's father. What if she wasn't a monster? Rachel Hochhauser's enchanting novel, Lady Tremaine, takes this very premise and not only makes it come to life, it also takes the Prince Charming and "happily ever after" ending and turns it on its head in surprising and satisfying ways.

Lady Ethelreda Verity Isolde Tremaine Bramley is out hawking on royal lands to try and find game so that she, her two daughters, and her stepdaughter Elin will have a meager portion of meat in their stew. Surprised at this illegal endeavor by a stranger, she hies back to the once gracious home, now crumbling, where she and her daughters try to maintain appearances. Advantageous marriages are the only things that offer them any hope of rising out of the poverty into which they've sunk since Ethel's second husband died. Once at home, she discovers a royal messenger delivering an invitation to a ball designed to find the Prince a wife. The invitation is only for her stepdaughter Elin though, not Ethel's own daughters, a circumstance that she must remedy. The only way to get her daughters included will force her to come face to face with her past and ultimately to confront what her stepdaughter means to her.

These are not the familiar characters from the fairy tale. Ethel is not perfect, nor does she attempt to whitewash her mistakes, her occasional pettiness, or her pride. She does, however, offer explanations for her decisions, understanding that sometimes women don't have a good choice in front of them, they just have to choose survival, whatever that looks like. Elin, the Cinderella character, is sheltered and adored by her father and even after his death, she has no desire to see that stepmother Ethel's requests reflect their straitened circumstances and the reality of an all-female household without male protectors. She spends her days spouting platitudes she's read in a book from her late mother's collection and generally wafting about without contributing to the family. She is naive and innocent but also infuriating and willfully blind. And she has never allowed Ethel to forge much of a relationship with her, keeping her at arm's length. Ethel's daughters, Rosamund and Mathilde, understand the reality of their lives and pitch in as they can with the skills that gently bred young ladies possess. They are normal girls though, sometimes resentful of Elin's ability to rise above or ignore requests and angry that she is allowed to get away with such behavior. When Elin captures the attention of the handsome Prince at the ball, it seems as if the Bramley family's lives will change significantly for the better, even if not through the daughter that Ethel would have chosen, but just as the women's characters are different from the fairy tale, so too is the Prince's. So the story is far from over.

This is a completely engrossing tale centered less on "happily ever after" than on the demands that society makes of women, the social strictures that handcuff them, and the ways that they must make their own lives and rescue themselves. Hochhauser's writing shines in this reimagining. Ethelreda is recast from one-dimensional villain to a fully realized, flawed but fierce and human character. The twists and turns of the plot elevate this far above a simple morality tale. Ethel's primal mother-love for her daughters drives her actions at every turn. Her desire to protect them, to ensure their futures, to grant them the happiness that was so fleeting in her own life is absolutely uncompromising. This may have started out as a Cinderella retelling, but it ended up a tale of resilience, determination, and family with a surprising villain. Lady Tremaine is dark, twisty, and compelling in the best possible way.

Review: Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

While my now adult daughter was culling her bookshelves at my house, she put this one in the giveaway pile. Now, there was no way I could part with a Pride and Prejudice retelling without first reading it myself. I do love Pride and Prejudice like every other white girl English major in history and while this was cute enough, it didn't have the bite of the original to elevate it beyond simply rehashing the story.

Lizzie Bennet is a junior at the very exclusive Longbourn Academy, a boarding and finishing school for girls in Connecticut. She is a gifted pianist and it is this talent that won her a scholarship to Longbourn. The other students are awful, ultra-rich, entitled little snots, with the exception of her genuinely sweet and kind roommate Jane Netherfield and the other scholarship student, Charlotte Lucas. Lizzie endures brutal bullying (for instance, someone throws a milkshake on her simply because she is "poor" and she has her non-designer label winter coat stolen at a party, among other incidents) but she endures because this school is the place for her to be to further her musical education and eventually pursue a musical career. When the book opens, Lizzie is headed back to school for second semester, the semester where all of the girls are eagerly anticipating the spring prom, the biggest, most important social event on the Longbourn calendar. Jane is excited because Charles Bingley is back at Pemberley Academy, the boy's school, after a semester in London. With him is his standoffish friend Will Darcy. From there, if you know the original, you know the story.

Eulberg has stayed incredibly faithful to Austen and in this case a few deviations might have added a bit to the story. The character development relies entirely on the reader knowing the original novel, the dialogue can feel stilted and unrealistic for teenagers in the 2000s, and occasionally it has to try quite hard to bend a modern day story starring teenagers to the plot of the original (hence the idea that a few deviations might have been to its benefit). It's kind of cute and fluffy but, in the end, rather flat, lacking all of the nuance that makes Austen sing.

Review: A Good Animal by Sara Maurer

Sault Ste. Marie, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, is probably best known for the Locks, which allow freighters to move from Lake Huron to Lake Superior and vice versa. And while much of its economy does revolve around shipping and the lakes (and the tourism the latter brings in), it is also surrounded by vast tracts of farmland, so a good portion of its population works the land rather than plying the waves. I have spent every summer of my entire life not too far from the Soo so finding a book set in a place I know so well was a nice surprise and I happily chose it for my summer book club. While we are all more attuned to life on the water than farm life, we all appreciated this debut novel and the way that it captured the heart and soul of the people of the area.

Everett is seventeen and heading into his senior year of high school. He wants to follow his father into sheep farming. It is just who he is, without question. Despite the toughness of the life, he is eager to earn enough money to start his own herd and make his own decisions about the sheep. His pay from summer haying and his winnings from the county fair should enable him to finally do so. His dreams are sent a bit sideways though, first when his sister discovers that her pet show sheep is destined to be slaughtered for meat unless Everett buys it for her, and second when a new girl, Mary, moves into town with her Coast Guard father. Mary has no intention of putting any roots down in Sault Ste. Marie and Everett can't imagine himself living anywhere else. Being teenagers, their being at odds about what life looks like after graduation will become a problem for future them as they live completely in the present.

Maurer has created a book that captures the UP and the people living in it beautifully. Yoopers really are their own unique people and this novel displays them sympathetically and honestly. It's a well wrought coming of age novel, a heartbreaking tale of first love. Hard life lessons, mistakes, and a very tough ending that comes slightly too quickly, although not unexpectedly, are realistic. There is no doubt that Everett, who narrates the novel, is firmly of the soil where he was born. He is sweet and empathetic but quiet and reserved, unused to sharing his feelings out loud. That he can't imagine Mary wanting something different from what he wants and that they don't discuss most of the decisions they do make, marks him very definitely as a teenage boy, still learning about life while trying to make very adult decisions. He sees his own parents' loving marriage and imagines he will have something similar with Mary, without truly understanding everything his parents had to overcome and do to make the contented life they have. Mary, who is only seen through Everett's eyes and so is more inscrutable, is biding her time until she can leave her apathetic father and this small Midwest town although she cannot help but be drawn to Everett, who loves with his whole heart, even as everything about his farming life bothers her. The farm life itself, with all of its brutal realities (there are some gruesome scenes of death), is carefully drawn in its totality. The writing is descriptive and vivid. There is a sadness and a hearkening back to the past that weaves through now adult Everett's recounting of 1995-96, the telling of a year that shaped him forever. If an abundance of farming details don't bother you as a reader, this deliberate and heartbreaking tale of growing up and becoming an adult, with all the joys and diappointments attendant on that growth, is worth the read.

Review: Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

This book has been on the best seller list (or lists) for about a thousand years now. I had no intention of reading it, even when people I knew started gushing about it. It just didn't really appeal to me. And then my book club chose it so I was obligated to read it. I really wish they hadn't because my instinct about how I'd feel about it was spot on. I hated it. I'm so baffled by what others see in it and am sorry I spent precious reading hours on this "emperor has no clothes" book.

An elderly man named Theo arrives in a smallish southern city called Golden. He offers no reason for coming to this place, doesn't give his last name or any information on who he is, but he settles into the town quietly, staking out a favorite park bench and frequenting the local coffeehouse. When he sees a series of pencil portraits of local people for sale on the walls of the coffeehouse, he decides that he will buy them and gift them to the people who are the subjects of each one. As he gives the portraits to the people, he learns about them and their lives, he eventually connects with the artist, and he ingratiates himself in the daily life of the town folks, like the bookseller and the man from whom he rents his apartment (and who is the only person with whom Theo shares his identity and his reason for being in Golden).

The premise sounds heartwarming enough but the execution moves beyond heartwarming and straight to saccharine treacle. Every person this genial old man gives a portrait to instantly offers him their innermost thoughts and feelings, telling him personal and private information about their lives without reservation. The only person who doesn't happily accept the gift is a woman whose abusive boyfriend intercepts the letter and the portrait. The instant acceptance and lack of skepticism about this man, and the immediate opening up of the recipients strains credulity more than a little. The characters Theo meets are all simple, uncomplicated, and flat, caricatures rather than complex human beings. His secret is telegraphed long before the end of the book, making the revelation anticlimactic. The tales of the portrait people went on far too long, making this reader incredibly tired of the boring inhabitants of Golden. The writing was overly descriptive, to the point of being florid, and repetitious. OK, we've got it, there are ninety-two portraits. You don't have to keep repeating this fact. (But there actually aren't only ninety-two as Asher, the artist, replaces the portraits with others as they sell to Theo.) There is a lot of heavy-handed Christian theology in here as well, despite no mention of this in the blurb, which seems dishonest in the marketing of the book (and the author had a large hand in the choice of marketing so this can be laid at his feet rather than the publisher's). The Theo character is alternately presented as a Jesus figure and as a saintly disciple, neither of which felt comfortable even in an obvious parable such as is presented here. There is only the slightest hint of a plot with the bulk of the book being long philosophical, Christian-coded conversations between Theo and the people to whom he's giving the portraits. In the end, the only thing I liked about this book was that other people (including my entire book club) liked it and felt that it offered them hope for the future (I don't see it, but this is what they told me). As for the book itself, it was poorly written, one dimensional, and far, far, far too long. I cannot recommend it.

Review: Good People by Patmeena Sabit

This is one of those books that's hard to talk about. Yes, the subject matter is tough. Yes, it asks the reader to do some thoughtful work. But mostly it's hard because so much of what you could say would give too much away. It is a great book to discuss with others who have read it, to compare impressions on, to examine deeply in community; and it is absolutely worth doing this with. Sabit has written a masterful novel that I want to talk to everyone about.

The Sharaf family immigrated to Northern Virginia from Afghanistan. Father Rahmat worked incredibly hard and became very successful financially. Father, mother, and four children (two older and two younger) tried to abide by the expectations of their Afghan Muslim community while striving for the American Dream. Oldest daughter Zorah, in particular, appeared to be the embodiment of what they could achieve in this country, until something went wrong.

The novel is told in a sort of Greek chorus of narrators, short interviews with people who knew (or didn't) members of the Sharaf family. Community members, family friends, school friends, a lawyer, law enforcement, the media, neighbors who didn't really interact with the Sharafs, and more form the core of the story and shape the reader's perceptions of who the family was and what they would be capable of. Notably, the voices the reader doesn't hear from are the Sharafs themselves. Everything in the book is speculation or opinion, based sometimes more and sometimes less on facts. Certain of the interviewees are supportive of the family and then later in the telling, their telling changes tenor. Everyone speaking about the family comes to the situation with their own perspective, their own axes to grind, their own jealousies, their own misunderstandings, their own moral stances, and their own prejudices. And still, with all the tellings but without the Sharafs, the complete truth of what happened remains undiscoverable.

Sabit has written a completely engrossing novel, one that forces us as readers to look at our own previously unexamined prejudices, to consider how we make decisions, what are our preconceived assumptions and whether they are open to change, and how much indisputable information do we require, especially in this climate of viral social media and rampant misinformation, before we pass judgment. This is a novel about the power of public perception, both within the community (are the Sharafs "good Muslims") and in the greater American society. Were the Sharafs too American? Were they not American enough? And who gets to decide? The slow doling out of information and the rising tension of what happened and how the larger public responds to it is presented incredibly skillfully as readers confront the role that racism and identity play in the coverage they are reading, especially as this is the only information from which they as readers can determine the truth. The chapters are short and the pages turn quickly as the reader races to try and discover first the terrible thing that has happened and then the truth of that occurrence. Too much reading about the book will spoil the effect of the sparingly doled out information so I implore you not to research this book very much. Just read it blind. Gulp it down. And then try to reconcile your opinion of the truth with *all* of the facts presented. I'm here if you want to talk about it once you turn the last page.

Review: Hey Ladies! by Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss

I love epistolary novels and I will have been mother of the bride and mother of the groom both in just over 2 years so this tale of a bride, her seven bridesmaids, and the year leading up to the wedding should have been exactly the kind of fluff and puff that I would devour right now. Instead, I hated it and forced myself to finish it. I am obviously not the age demographic (although neither are my daughter and soon to be daughter-in-law, Gen Zs that they are) but more importantly, I hope I'm not as snotty, self-centered, thoughtless, and, frankly, stupid as the characters in this book. And I certainly hope that there truly aren't women out there who are like these women, the worst one-dimensional caricatures of Millenials and bridezillas that I've come across.

Spanning a year of emails amongst a group of female friends, this novel in pieces is meant to show a humorous year of friendship, relationships, work, and general life. The emails start off with a New Years' Day message from Ali to her tribe offering up her resolutions for the year, squealing (you can practically hear it on the page) about her new boyfriend, and asking one of the group "if I go into [my new boyfriend's] bathroom and take photos of what's in his medicine cabinet, can you text your doctor friends really quick and tell me what his presciptions mean/what medical issues our potential children might have?" Clearly, I should not have persevered past this very first page. It is obviously exaggerated for comic effect, which might have been okay had it been done sparingly, but it wasn't. This made the novel unbelievable and annoying rather than funny. The women come off as dumb as stumps. Does one of them, who, incidentally, has a pretty impressive work title, actually believe that there's no wi-fi in Europe and therefore she won't be hearing from her boyfriend for the duration of his work trip? ::shudder:: In addition to coming across as airheads, these women are immature and awful. They are passive aggressive and competitive with each other. It boggles the mind why any one of them wants to be around any other one of them for any reason, never mind calling them the closest of friends, traveling together, spending obscene amounts of money on each other, and being in each others' weddings.

I would be horrified if my daughter or future daughter-in-law (or any of their friends, if I'm being honest) had any similarities with this entitled and ugly crew of women. It's hard to believe, but I did read every page of this, initially hoping it would smooth out and improve, and then in order to make sure my reaction was not outsized compared to the entirety of the story. It was not. This was not the read I hoped for. It was not cute. It was not funny. It makes complete sense that it has its origins on Twitter (and now I'm 100% skeptical of the quality of The Toast as well). Having finished this, I'm not entirely sure what to do with the physical book because I hate to to drop someone else's IQ with it or, at the very least, to doom them to such a terminally unfunny, ghastly read by putting it back out into the universe.

Review: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

We all need to eat. Some people experience food as necessary. Others revel in it as more, whether for the taste or the experience of eating a certain thing, or for the memories different foods inspire. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is obviously one of the latter people, as evidenced by her gorgeous collection of essays, each centered on a different food. Some of the foods she discusses are ones I've never eaten. Others are as common to my table as to hers. And each essay made me reflect on the food she was discussing, plumbing my own memories of that specific food or thinking of a food that conjures a similar response in me.

Nezhukumatathil is a beautiful writer and her turns of phrase are as delicious as the foods she's discussing. Most of the foods are just that, a singular food, not a dish or a recipe, although she does discuss where she has eaten each thing, sometimes in context of a larger dish. She weaves the histories of the foods, the people who first discovered or ate them, and the way they were dispersed around the world with very personal reflections on growing up as the American daughter of immigrant parents (a Filipina mother and an Indian father), as a young poet and teacher finding her place in the academic and literary worlds, and as a wife and mother with young, and then teenaged, children. Some of these foods are her heritage, passed down through the generations, and others are newer culinary experiences for her. There are some political moments here, usually tied to identity and to the personal, but they flow easily and organically as the essays unfold. The essays as a whole touch on the full range of emotion but center more on joy and nourishments (or as Nezhukumatathil calls them, jamborees) making this an immensely pleasurable read. Gorgeous full-page color illustrations by Fumi Nakamura show each food or drink discussed, which is helpful and interesting for readers who might be unfamiliar with certain of the foods she mentions. This is a charming, short collection any reader will enjoy consuming "bite by bite."