Review: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

I first came across Jennifer Cody Epstein's fiction with her wonderful novel The Painter From Shanghai about a little known (at least in this country) Chinese artist. This newest novel is not centered on an historical figure so much as on the often forgotten or overlooked American bombing raids on Tokyo during World War II. When most people think of the Asian theater of the war, they concentrate on Hiroshima and Nagaskai or the bloody battle for Okinawa. They don't typically consider the fact that the US fire-bombed Tokyo, not once but twice, reducing a large swath of the city to rubber and killing 100,000 civilians in mere hours. But Epstein has brought this fact home through her cast of characters and in particular in the character of young Yoshi Kobayashi and her various degrees of connection to people on both sides of the war.

Starting in 1935 before jumping to 1942 and then onwards through the war and into the aftermath, the reader is introduced to and given background information on several of the interconnected characters in the story. First there is the college-aged Cam Richards as he sits atop a stalled ferris wheel with Lacey, who will become his wife. He is a quiet, sweet, thoughtful, and good looking young man who fought hard to overcome a terrible childhood stutter and the disappointment of his father and whose love of airplanes and the concept of flight will soon lead him to become a pilot. A world away in Japan, architect Anton Reynolds, his wife Beryl, and their sensitive and artistic son Billy are hosting a Japanese couple, master builder Kenji Kobayashi, his glamorous, London-educated wife Hana and their young daughter Yoshi, who will become the center through whom all the other characters connect. Anton is living and working in Japan designing major public buildings in Tokyo. Seduced by the Japanese aesthetic as much as by the lost and depressed Hana, he becomes an expert in Japanese building while Kenji Kobayashi builds Anton's visions and then takes his knowledge to Manchuria after the Japanese invasion there, leaving Yoshi and Hana behind.

In 1942, after participating in the foolhardy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, Cam Richards, whose newly pregnant wife anxiously awaits him at home, has to bail out of his plane. His discovery, unconscious in a field in Manchuria, by Kenji Kobayashi starts weaving the connections between all of the characters until the war has wrapped them all in a terrible web of conflict, hatred, and destruction. Through the ensuing two decades, the characters all play their parts in the war, from Anton who builds Japanese tenaments in the Utah desert to help the US perfect its firebombing raids to Kenji who builds Japanese villages in occupied Manchuria using captured Chinese workers, from Yoshi who survives the horror of firebombing but loses everyone she cares about to Billy who is sent to Japan in the immediate aftermath of the war as a translator and who hides a crippling secret of his own.

Epstein has created an unflinching look at the devastation wrought by war both physically and emotionally through the lives of her characters. She captures the lost innocence, the brutality and inhumanity of war, the way that person turns against person, friend against friend, country against country. But she's also tapped into the human component and the strain on conscience when planning or carrying out the atrocities of war. There are varying perspectives on rightness and whether everything is in fact fair in war plus the impact it all takes on the various characters.  She doesn't shy away from the horrors but in the end, allows several of her characters to achieve resolution and grace. Thoroughly researched and exquisitely rendered, this is a gripping look at the cost both in people and in place that we extract over and over again when we go to war. World War II buffs and other historical fiction lovers will enjoy this gripping and conflicted look at our not too distant past.

For more information about Jennifer Cody Epstein and the book check out her website, find her on Facebook, 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 this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Nowhere Is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden
The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern

Reviews posted this week:

Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag

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

Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
The One-Way Bridge by Cathie Pelletier
Float by JoeAnn Hart
Nowhere Is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden
The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

Monday Mailbox

Another week where the mailbox held daily delights for me; the best kind of week, really. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Love Wars by L. Alison Heller came from New American Library and Book Sparks for a blog tour.

A divorce lawyer for the rich and powerful encounters the wife of a client and realizes that she cannot destroy this woman.  She'll have to somehow keep her involvement on behalf of this woman very, very quiet. Definitely sounds like a different but wonderful novel.

A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home by Sue Halpern came from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Riverhead Books.

How could you not want to read a memoir about a therapy dog? These animals are the sweetest and I'm looking forward to reading about their experiences in the nursing home.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein came from W.W. Norton and Co. and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Focused around the American efforts to defeat the Japanese and one young Japanese girl who is tied directly or indirectly to the people involved with the bigger events of the war, this feeds into my love for novels about the Far East.

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver came from Harper.

A sibling tale about a woman who wants to help her brother lose weight so that he doesn't kill himself with food and in the process risks her settled marriage and family, I'm curious to see Shriver's take on out of control obesity.

Our Love Could Light the World by Anne Leigh Parrish came from She Writes Press and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

Linked stories always intrigue me and this set about the chaotic family you don't want living near you should be entertaining and even a little sad.

Black Venus by James MacManus came from Thomas Dunne Books and Meryl Moss Media Relations for a blog tour.

I read Baudelaire's poetry years ago in French class and remember enjoying it so this novel about the Haitian cabaret singer who was his muse and his obsession is definitely appealing.

Sight Reading by Daphne Kalotay came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A love triangle set amongst the world of classical music and musicians, this is a world with which I'm not familiar but which I have enjoyed immersing myself in in the reading of several other novels so I fully expect to find this one enjoyable and fascinating as well.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit MariReads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag

What do you do when you have exhausted all hope? When the worst thing you can imagine happening has in fact happened? When you have no idea where your life is going now? Are there people in your life to whom you turn? Is there a place you can retreat and recharge? In Menna van Praag's charming new novel, The House at the End of Hope Street, there is a magical house that serves as a place where women who don't know where they are headed next can take time to find their path.

Nineteen year old genius and synesthete, Alba Ashby, has had the very worst thing she can think of happen to her and she  when she finds herself standing at the door to a his completely lost when she finds herself at the door of a house she's never noticed before at the end of Hope Street. When she knocks, she finds that the house and Peggy Abbott, the house's caretaker, have been waiting for her. She will be allowed a total of 99 nights to stay in the house and to figure out her path. And she won't have to figure it out alone. The house will help. On the walls are portraits of famous women who have all come to the house at one time or another to find their way, from authors to big names in the women's movement to actresses and more. Best yet, these portraits are not simply on the walls, they actually consult with the current inhabitants and help steer them in the direction of their destiny. The talking portraits are not the only delightful magical part of the house though. It sends notes to the women living there when it needs them to know something. It gives each occupant the deepest desire of her heart, a wardrobe of phenomenal clothing or a room piled to the ceiling with books for example. And there are ghosts around, from Mog the cat to Stella, who sits in the kitchen sink waiting to talk to Alba and who holds an important key to Alba's past and to her future.

Alba is reeling from her major disappointment, her newfound knowledge of herself (which is only slowly shared with the reader), the seeming loss of her heretofore acute receptivity and synesthesia, and her uncertainty about her direction in life now that she has lost the thing that has most defined her for the majority of her life. In addition to all of this, her mother, who has long battled bipolar disorder, finally succeeds in committing suicide and so Alba must go home, where she learns shocking news about her parents, her siblings, and herself.  And armed with this new confounding knowledge, she will return to the house to spend more of her 99 days in its comforting embrace.

Alba isn't the only resident of the house; there's also Carmen, a singer who has lost her voice and is haunted by whatever she's buried in the garden and Greer, an actress who is keeping an old and emotionally wrenching secret. Not to forget Peggy, who has taken care of the house and the women in it for almost her entire lifetime, following in the footsteps of other psychic women in her family (the house doesn't particularly like men) and who has finally recognized her own true love. Each of the women is facing an unfamiliar and unexpected turn in the path she expected her life to take. The house is not the only thing that will help them determine their direction though, their connection to each other will also help.

This is a whimsical, lovely, and enchanting novel about female empowerment. The house at the end of hope street is a refuge for those who find themselves at its door; it is both physically at the end of the street and symbolically at the end of hope for the confused and hurting women who find themselves on its front stoop. While mostly light magical realism, van Praag also touches briefly on deeper issues such as spousal abuse, adoption, sexuality, fidelity, and family, both created and genetic. She's created an appealing setting and done a wonderful job making it seem possible and sometimes even slyly entertaining. (The characters on the china naughtily acting out the Kama Sutra and partner swapping as frequently as soap opera characters is one of my favorite bits.) The characters here are all trapped, paralysed by things in their pasts that make it impossible for them to move on. They are emotionally damaged but completely sympathetic and van Praag has managed to keep each character and the problems of her past mysterious as long as possible, lending an air of mystery to the novel. The tale as a whole is bewitching, quirky, and wondrous. There are darker moments for sure but in general, it is a book that makes the reader smile and give it a gentle, heartfelt hug as she turns the last page.

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

Review: The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When my mom stood at the back of the church ready to marry my dad, my grandfather turned to her and told her it wasn't too late to get out of it and that he knew where the back door was. My dad, in turn, told me the same thing as we stood in the same spot my mom and grandfather had stood twenty-six years earlier. Now, neither of us cried off and it's become a part of family lore for daddy to say to daughter but what if we had? And what if we not only had called off the wedding at the very last moment but had been a high profile person trying to evade the press as she escaped her "not going to be a wedding?" This is the opening premise of Susan Elizabeth Phillips' newest novel, The Great Escape, the companion novel to Call Me Irresistible.

Lucy Jorik is the beloved, adopted, oldest daughter of the former President of the United States. She has spent her life being a good, steady, and responsible daughter, one worthy of the amazing life she got to lead after being adopted. She never rebelled or caused her family embarrassment. Instead she presented the expected picture, buttoned up, wearing pearls, and giving up her social work job to work as a lobbyist on behalf of more disadvantaged children than case work would effect. And now she's all set to marry the perfect man. Only he's not perfect for her and she realizes that she can't marry him no matter what embarrassment it brings to Ted and his family or to hers. So she runs away, acting out of character by jumping on the back of a perfect stranger's motorcycle and zooming off.

Panda is seemingly a bad boy who initially inexplicably allows Lucy to travel around with him for two weeks after she flees. She is trying on a new persona, one a little more selfish than she has ever allowed herself to be, and he is fighting to keep her at arm's length both because he is attracted to her and because he is in fact not a bad boy but instead a bodyguard hired by her family to ensure her safety during the wedding and now beyond. The last night before he admits to her who he is and takes her to the airport to send her home to her family, they both give in to their mutual attraction and have sex, which makes Lucy's feeling of betrayal at his real identity that much bigger. And when she contemplates flying home to her parents, she just can't make herself yet. So she rents a car and heads north to an island in Lake Michigan where Panda has a home, a fact she discovered surreptitiously. She dons a Goth disguise and moves into his cottage where she meets and befriends several islanders. But of course, Panda shows up at the cottage and their antagonism sparks again.

The burgeoning relationship between Lucy and Panda, complete with the heavy freight of both of their pasts, is not the only plot line though. There's a thread about the young African American boy living next door with his white guardian, Bree, who seems completely frozen emotionally for reasons that are revealed eventually. There's a tension and antagonism between Bree and another islander, Mike, who knew her many summers ago as they each struggle to figure out their futures. And there's a television star who has gained an appalling amount of weight thanks to a relationship she ended. She must lose it before she loses her job as the hard-nosed, shaming fitness expert on a show called Fat Island but she has to stay incognito while she follows her deprivation diet and over the top exercise regimen. None of these characters' stories are as secondary as they perhaps should be, coming across as just too much going on and too scattered as a result.

Lucy and Panda as characters are rather bland and their attraction to each other is pretty flat, the reader only knowing about it because we're told it exists. The fact that Lucy is trying to find herself means that the romance is diluted as well. And as for the finding herself thing, well, she's awfully immature for a thirty-one year old woman; her character would be much more believable ten years younger. Further adding to the number of things going on in the novel are the myriad of social issues that Philips introduces. There are issues of poverty, race, sexuality, fidelity, and women's positioning after divorce to name a few. As is the case with the multiple competing plot lines, there is just too much going on to give the needed depth to all of the issues. And the pre-epilogue ending was not only out of the blue, it wasn't very satisfactory either. Normally I like epilogues to romances because I do want to see the happily ever after in action but in this case it has a completely different tone than the rest of the story and seemed as if it belonged to another tale altogether. This was overall an okay escapist romance but ultimately it missed the mark for me in several ways.

For more information about Susan Elizabeth Phillips and the book check out her website, find her on Facebook, 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff

Mitchell Zuckoff writes fascinating true adventure stories. I first discovered him though his book Lost in Shangri-La about a WWII plane that crashed into a remote and nearly inaccessible valley in Dutch New Guinea, what the survivors endured, and the daring rescue to pull them out. He brings the same story-telling skills and ability to take the reader into the moment in his newest work of non-fiction about another rescue mission, Frozen in Time.

Greenland, that misnamed island of glaciers, snow, and ice, perpetually white and forbidding, might have been far from the fighting in WWII but it was deemed a strategic outpost to the Allied war effort. By planting bases on it, there was a place to re-fuel planes on their way from the US to Europe and it gave the powers that be some meteorological insight into the weather that was soon to swirl its way into Europe and onto the soldiers on the ground. But the massive island's variable weather, unpredictable blizzards, and harsh climate made it incredibly treacherous to fly over and throughout the course of the war, quite a number of planes crashed onto its glacial interior. One plane, a C-53, carrying five US military personnel made a forced landing on Greenland and the crew miraculously survived the crash. But their radio contact with base didn't last long enough for their location to be fixed and so the rescue missions that were mounted to discover them not only had to contend with the frustrations of terrible weather grounding planes for days at a time but also with finding one relatively small plane in a vast, blank land. But looking for a needle in a haystack was just the first of the problems about to beset the rescue mission.

A B-17 bomber, diverted from delivery in Europe, was pressed into service looking for the downed C-53 and its crew. But it too flew into disorienting conditions pilots called "flying in milk" and crashed onto the island in the midst of a crevasse-riddled glacier. Amazingly, the nine men on board the B-17 also survived. But now there were two separate crews of 14 men stranded on the ice in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet and fighting for their survival. Zuckoff captures the immediacy of the danger that the men on the ice faced, from their lack of provisions and cold weather survival gear to the danger of frostbite and exposure. He captures the frustration of command at the inability to find a way to safely remove these would be rescuers now in peril themselves. And he follows the planning and determination of a pilot and his navigator on a Coast Guard cutter patrolling the seas off of Greenland as they prepare to risk their own lives to save the men in the B-17 by flying their small Grumman Duck, an amphibious biplane, to the crash site to pluck the men two by two off the ice.

Alternating with the historical chapters of the increasingly frantic determination to rescue the weakened and suffering men from the B-17, Zuckoff weaves in current day chapters about the quest to locate the Grumman Duck, also tragically lost on the unforgiving glaciers of Greenland with her crew of two fearless men and one of the B-17 survivors. He captures the larger than life, forever optimistic personalities who spearheaded the years of research into the fate and location of the little amphibious biplane and her passengers, lobbied government agencies for their support, and by hook or crook and on a showstring managed to assemble the people and the money to make the trek to Greenland to try and physically locate the final resting place of the Duck.

Zuckoff has written a completely gripping, compelling tale. He's captured the terror and helplessness of the downed men and those valiantly searching for them. He's drawn visceral pictures of the aching cold and desperation they felt as the days mounted without their discovery and that they continued to feel even after their discovery as more time passed while the powers that be tried to figure out a way to pluck them from the ice without endangering more lives. The reader truly feels the ways in which they were at the complete mercy of nature and their own psyches. Pulled from journals, declassified documents, interviews with survivors' families, maps, and interviews, Zuckoff stays true to the story as reproduced publically, honoring the survivors' and participants' versions of events, never speculating on what cannot be known. The story of the men and the several attempts to rescue them is compelling. The modern day narrative about the expedition to find the Duck and her three missing men is interesting and provides closure to the sixty year old tale but isn't quite as enthralling as the historic events. This is a tale of heroes and determination, an overwhelming perseverence in the face of danger, and the unthinkable but constant threat of failure. World War II buffs will certainly appreciate it but other armchair travelers will also find themselves captivated by the hellish Greenland winter, the dire circumstances of the men, and the terrible or wonderful consequences that befell every man who dared to go out to try and save his fellows even in the face of overwhelming risk.

Have I intrigued you enough? Watch the book trailer here.

For more information about Mitchell Zuckoff and the book check out his website, find him on Facebook, or follow him 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to 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.

The Lost Husband by Katherine Center. The book is being released by Ballantine Books on May 7, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: Dear Libby, It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for—Dear Lord!—two whole years, and I’m writing to see if you'd like to be rescued.

The letter comes out of the blue, and just in time for Libby Moran, who—after the sudden death of her husband, Danny—went to stay with her hypercritical mother. Now her crazy Aunt Jean has offered Libby an escape: a job and a place to live on her farm in the Texas Hill Country. Before she can talk herself out of it, Libby is packing the minivan, grabbing the kids, and hitting the road.

Life on Aunt Jean’s goat farm is both more wonderful and more mysterious than Libby could have imagined. Beyond the animals and the strenuous work, there is quiet—deep, country quiet. But there is also a shaggy, gruff (though purportedly handsome, under all that hair) farm manager with a tragic home life, a formerly famous feed-store clerk who claims she can contact Danny “on the other side,” and the eccentric aunt Libby never really knew but who turns out to be exactly what she’s been looking for. And despite everything she’s lost, Libby soon realizes how much more she’s found. She hasn’t just traded one kind of crazy for another: She may actually have found the place to bring her little family—and herself—back to life.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The One-Way Bridge by Cathie Pelletier
Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
Float by JoeAnn Hart
The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George

Reviews posted this week:

The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn
All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg

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

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag
Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
The One-Way Bridge by Cathie Pelletier
Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff
Float by JoeAnn Hart
The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Monday Mailbox

It's been like Christmas in April this past week here. And the kiddo who celebrates his birthday this month is a little disgruntled that I've gotten all the gifts so far! ::grin:: This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Frozen in Time by Mitchell Zuckoff came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

How could you not be attracted to a book about a dangerous rescue mission to pluck downed men off a Greenland glacier during WWII and the corresponding modern day hunt to find the rescue plane's wreckage? I've already finished reading this one.

Float by JoeAnn Hart came from Ashland Creek Press.

Friends know that I am a complete sucker for any book with water on the cover or dealing with a lake, ocean, river, etc. So a funny novel about the ways in which we are destroying our oceans could hook me in so many different ways.

Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole came from Ballantine Books.

Epistolary novels make my heart sing. And letters from the time of both world wars, love, and secrets just make this one that much more enticing.

The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg came from Grand Central Publishing.

A woman obsessed with food, her husband who leaves her, and their grown children who want to fix everything that's gone wrong, this is definitely appealing.

Schroder by Amity Gaige came from Twelve.

A story about the seven days in which a father kidnaps his daughter, this one should be completely intense.

The Time of My Life by Cecelia Ahern came from William Morrow.

I like Ahern's novels and this one about a woman who is harassed by Life in the form of a sloppy man sounds very entertaining.

The Repeat Year by Andrea Lochen came from Berkley.

I've wanted a do-over on occasion but I'm not so sure I'd want an entire year to do over as is the case in this fun looking novel.

Replacement Child by Judy L. Mandel came from Seal Press.

A memoir written by a woman who was conceived as a replacement child after one older sister was killed and another badly burned when a plane crashed into their home, this could be tough to read but definitely interesting nonetheless.

Topsy by Michael Daly was a contest win from WNBA-Charlotte.

As macabre as a book about an elephant who was electrocuted at Coney Island sounds (and this is non-fiction, incidentally), this tale of circuses and elephants and electricity should prove fascinating.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit MariReads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg

Three very different women. Three very different lives. Brooke is the happily married mother of twins. Her husband is about to turn forty and she's decided to give him a gift he won't expect: tasteful nude photos of herself. Samantha is a young, adventurous, athletic woman on her honeymoon in Hawaii. Her husband is a politician and quite a bit older than she is. He's also cheating on her with a woman from his campaign as Samantha finds out when she logs onto his computer on the second morning of their marriage. Painful as that was, it freed her from a life and marriage that would have suffocated her. Katherine is a forty year old single career woman. She's wildly successful and filthy rich but she also tortures herself everyday by going to work for the man who broke her heart almost twenty years before. So she decides to take her first vacation ever and it changes her life and her goals. When the novel opens, Brooke, Samantha, and Katherine are each living their separate lives, in some cases working through disappointment and betrayal, but living fully.  At the close of the first portion of the book, each of these three women is just at the cusp of feeling on top of the world, as if everything in their lives is almost perfect, that this very day is the happiest of each woman's life.

And the reader knows there just isn't any way to sustain that. As the second part of the book starts, these three women, none of whom have ever met each other, are about to have their happy lives shattered by the same scary diagnosis, one that will connect them in ways they never wanted. Because all three feel alone and in need of people who understand, they all reach out to an online community to find connection, commiseration, advice, and hope. And because of their shared hometown, even though Samantha and Katherine no longer live there, Samantha, more at peace with her diagnosis and further down the treatment path, reaches out to the other two women to offer them whatever she can emotionally. And caring, supportive relationships develop between Samantha and Katherine as well as Samantha and Brooke even as they make vastly different choices about their treatment and about their futures.

Focused on the strength of women's relationships and the importance of love and support, especially when faced with a life-altering diagnosis, the novel is pleasant but unspectacular. It took an inordinate amount of time to connect the women and while each of their back stories was important, especially their understanding of what they each wanted out of life, they took up too much of the novel since the meat of the story is meant to be the women's health battle and their coming together (even though Brooke and Katherine never do). As for the characters themselves, I have to admit I spent the entire book wanting to smack Brooke for all the flat cliches she represents. As for her husband never knowing of her diagnosis, well, apparently her husband doesn't ever look at their mail because here just a simple urgent care visit generates about ten insurance and facility related notices and bills as well as obvious activity online in our insurance and bank accounts.  Just not altogether realistic.  Samantha is chipper and upbeat all the way along and while that makes her a very sympathetic and likable character, her lack of any despair or grief causes her to come across as very one dimensional. Katherine seems to me to be the most fully human of the three women, running a gamut of emotions while still staying true to her character as portrayed. Over all, the writing is fairly pedestrian and there's a distinct lack of narrative tension. The reason behind writing the book and the cause it supports (cancer research) is phenomenal but unfortunately the actual book itself comes up a bit short in the end.

For more information about Mike Greenberg and the book check out the book's website, or follow Greenberg on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book. And finally, in conjunction with this novel, Greenberg and his wife have created a foundation called Heidi's Angels in memory of a dear friend who died of breast cancer. They are donating 100% of the author's proceeds from the sale of the book to the V Foundation for continued cancer research.

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

Review: The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn

It is not easy being a stay at home mom. It's especially not easy being a stay at home mom to two closely-spaced children. Been there, done that, and even added a third, fool that I am. Sometimes you ache for an escape or un-child related adult interactions or just some uninterrupted sleep. Amy Shearn's novel, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, captures the experience of being the mom to a toddler and an infant, the bone deep weariness, the endless frustration, and the moments of unsurpassed sweetness that help make the colicky screaming, the dirty diapers, and the disastrously messy house worth it, at least most of the time.

Jenny Lipkin is a stay at home mom to two year old Betty and infant Rose. Much of the luster has worn off of husband Harry, once her knight in shining armor, now harried and working for his family's failing candy business. The four of them are living in a tiny, cramped Park Slope apartment and, at least in Jenny's case, facing an endless stream of days filled with exhaustion and stultifying sameness. One night when Harry calls from work to say he's stopping to pick up some cigarettes and then never comes home, Jenny is too tired to even worry. In fact, Harry has a gambling addiction and has disappeared before, although never for as long, and he usually comes home either flush with some extra money or with his tail between his legs. But this time, Jenny's in-laws are worried about him and not just because he's taken money from the business. Jenny's biggest worry, since her brother-in-law and mother-in-law continue to deposit Harry's base pay into the bank for her, is how to live on the meager base without his sales bonuses, and more importantly, how to function as a single mother.

Unable to cope, Jenny climbs up on the Brooklyn Bridge intending to jump but changes her mind at the last second. Falling in anyway, Jenny plunges into the river where she is not only visited but also inhabited by a rusalka, a mermaid from Salvic folklore. Rusalkas are not the benign and benevolent mermaids of Disney movies but the souls of suicides, wronged wives, and the like. The rusalka who posseses Jenny won't share much of her past with her new host but she does get Jenny out of the water, back on land, and back to her babies. She also becomes the interior voice urging Jenny on and convincing her to really live, to find happiness even if it takes a long search. But the rusalka wants this because she wants to experience life again herself and so she pushes Jenny into both good and bad choices, even one disastrous choice, whatever suits the rusalka's own desires.

As Jenny goes about her days in the park with her mom friend Laura, at the coffee shop, at the library story hour, flirting outrageously with the one stay at home dad in their circle of acquaintances, at the kiddie gym, and with her mother-in-law, she carries on an internal dialogue between her real self and her rusalka as she learns to be a little freer, a little happier, and a little less caught up in appearances. Of course, her husband is still missing and she's still generally depressed and angry but she's learning to cope and to take care of herself, much in the way she cares for the needs of her girls.

Jenny as a character is very isolated. She is suffering from post-partum depression but her isolation, the distance she keeps from everyone, including her best friend, means the reader spends a lot of time with her and in her head. Sometimes this is a humorous thing, like when she and the rusalka are negotiating but equally often Jenny can be so whiny, listless, and woe-is-me that it's hard to keep inhabiting her thoughts. Yes, parenting is surprisingly, appallingly difficult but she has a mother-in-law to babysit for her whenever she asks and at least some income, paltry as it may be, as long as her husband's pay continues to come in from the business. She has the luxury of checking out and that makes it a little hard to read about her slogging through her life, complaining at every turn, for as long as the book requires. And certainly real life post-partum depression does go on and on for even longer than the duration of the time depicted in the book but reading about it without change for so many pages got tiresome. The pacing of the narrative was very slow and drawn out, much as the years of parenting young children feel when you are in the midst of them. The novel is very much driven by Jenny's character and her dawning self-realization. Whether Harry comes back in the end, where he's been for the bulk of the novel, is almost entirely immaterial. And even the rusalka, central as she should be based on the title, flits in and out of the pages, simply a plot element that might or might not be entirely in Jenny's head and certainly isn't fully explored. What Shearn gets right about parenting though generally outweighs the problems of the book. An interesting take on motherhood, marriage, and the claustrophobia of depression, this would be a good choice for a book club to discuss.

For more information about Amy Shearn and the book check out her website, Facebook page, 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 this book to 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.

The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr. The book is being released by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers on May 7, 2013.

Amazon says this about the book: Lucy Beck-Moreau once had a promising future as a concert pianist. The right people knew her name, her performances were booked months in advance, and her future seemed certain.

That was all before she turned fourteen.

Now, at sixteen, it's over. A death, and a betrayal, led her to walk away. That leaves her talented ten-year-old brother, Gus, to shoulder the full weight of the Beck-Moreau family expectations. Then Gus gets a new piano teacher who is young, kind, and interested in helping Lucy rekindle her love of piano -- on her own terms. But when you're used to performing for sold-out audiences and world-famous critics, can you ever learn to play just for yourself?

National Book Award finalist Sara Zarr takes readers inside the exclusive world of privileged San Francisco families, top junior music competitions, and intense mentorships. The Lucy Variations is a story of one girl's struggle to reclaim her love of music and herself. It's about finding joy again, even when things don't go according to plan. Because life isn't a performance, and everyone deserves the chance to make a few mistakes along the way.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

The early in the week headache thanks to my newly stitched together head made reading and writing a bit dicey but things improved at the end of the week. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Better Than Fiction edited by Don George
The One-Way Bridge by Cathie Pelletier

Reviews posted this week:

The J.M. Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society by Barbara Zitwer
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Life After Life by Jill McCorkle
Paris in Love by Eloisa James

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

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag
Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
The Mermaid of Brooklyn by Amy Shearn
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
All You Could Ask For by Mike Greenberg

Monday Mailbox

Sometimes it's hard to restrain myself from pumping my fist when I pick up the mail and find a book in the box (or by the front door or inside on the counter if my children have brought it in for me already). This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Snapper by Brian Kimberling came from Pantheon.

I don't know much about birds myself although I have been trying to learn some here and there because I do like the feathered friends in my backyard but a book about a bird researcher in love with an enigmatic woman sounds wonderful and completely captivating.

The S-Word by Chelsea Pitcher came from Gallery Books.

Oh dear. Sometimes I prefer to keep my head firmly entrenched in the sand when it comes to the horrors and hatefulness that can devastate teenagers and sometimes I feel like I need to confront it and be aware since I have two of my own. This book about a girl branded as a slut and driven to suicide is sure to be horrifying and scary.

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski came from Harper.

About a baby born mute but with acutely supernatural hearing who must bring healing to his mother and grandmother, I finished reading the copy I bought just as the copy from the publisher arrived (literally within minutes!) so expect a review in the not too distant future.

If you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit MariReads as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: Paris in Love by Eloisa James

Having lost her mother to cancer and then beaten breast cancer herself, romance author and Shakespeare professor Eloisa James (the pen name of Mary Bly) wanted a chance to live out a dream. So she and her Italian husband, Alessandro, a fellow professor, and their two children set about winnowing down their possessions, put their suburban home on the market, took sabbaticals from their respective universities, and moved to Paris for a year. During the course of that French year, James updated her Facebook status and Tweeted about their experience living as ex-pats and it is these snippets, slightly expanded, plus a few longer vignettes that have been collected into this light memoir of their year abroad.

James offers brief snapshots of ordinary life in Paris. She's captured the way they all meet life in this foreign culture. There's the kids' adjustment to their Italian school, the challenge and struggle of learning all their subjects in another language (despite the fact that they know Italian thanks to their father), and the negotiation of the social ins and outs of a new school. She offers minute descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells around their charming neighborhood. She rhapsodizes about the shopping and the food so readily available to them and their endless parade of welcome guests. She tells of trips to Italy to see her mother-in-law, Marina, and Milo, the dog masquerading as a  furry speed bump who once belonged to the family but now lives in Italy permanently, growing ever fatter off of delicious table scraps, and she tells of Marina's visit to them in Paris. She captures the daily existence, complete with humorous moments, thoughtful pauses, frustrations, and joys of raising a family while having the flexibility of writing and researching from anywhere in the world. That these moments are in Paris rather than in the US makes them seem slightly exotic but aside from setting, in many ways they are really universal.

Arranged chronologically, the brief paragraphs of the memoir provide a nice amuse bouche of a book. But the very nature of the frothy and delectable brief bits means there is a skimming, superficial feel to the memoir. It comes across as fleeting and insubstantial,  lacking a narrative cohesiveness and feeling sketched, unfinished in some way. I imagine that it was beyond delightful to be on the receiving end of the status updates and tweets but I just don't know that the format works in favor of a completed memoir. James is a beautiful writer though and what she has captured and describes in the short paragraphs is very much the essence of each moment. Perhaps this is better as a book to dip into and out of over a long span of time rather than reading it in one sitting. It is a tiny confection and must be approached as such.

Review: Life After Life by Jill McCorkle

My grandmother lives in an assisted living and nursing facility. Each of the residents has his or her name on the door to their apartment but each time we go and visit, some of the names have changed. It is a sad fact of life, especially in a nursing home setting, that death is a constant. This place is the final home for almost all of its inhabitants. But here in the wrinkle ranch, the old folk's home, the elder shelter, heaven's waiting room, as much as death is a constant presence, life also goes on, a life after life. Jill McCorkle's much anticipated new novel, Life After Life, is set in just such a place, examining life, death, and the human spirit.

Told in vignette-style stories, the novel focuses on the lives and deaths of the residents, their deceased loved ones, and the staff of Pine Haven Retirement Facility in small town North Carolina. And contrary to popular belief about nursing homes, life at the Pine Haven is not just a monotonous wait for death. There are the same rivalries and friendships inside its walls that add spice to life outside the home. There are contentious residents, sweetly accepting residents, conniving residents, wise residents, angry residents, and contented residents. Their sojourn in the nursing home doesn't change who they are fundamentally.   In many cases, in fact, it distills this essential being, clarifying and sharpening it.

Sadie, a former third grade teacher who taught most of the residents of the town at one time or another, has started a thriving business creating photographs that place her fellow residents all over the world and in the midst of adventures they never took. She knows much of what goes on in the nursing home and offers well-considered, sage advice to those who ask. Rachel, an outsider to the area, harbors a secret she clutches to her heart and which brought her from Boston to this small piece of North Carolina. Stanley is a crotchety old man who seemingly slips in and out of dementia, one moment lucid and courtly and the next shouting and offensive. Joanna is a volunteer at the home who spends her time there sitting with the dying, chronicling people's last words, final moments, and the essence of who they were. She records her observations in her notebook, preserving the memory of each person, keeping them from being forgotten, bearing witness to their life and their death. CJ is a young, tattooed and pierced single mom who has lived a tough life. Best friends with Joanne, she works as Pine Haven's beautician as she tries to build a better life for her little boy. Abby is a lonely child who is all but neglected at home in the wake of her parents' growing unhappiness and anger and is bullied or ignored at school. Her mother is nasty and narcissistic while her father is blind to her emotional neglect so she escapes to Sadie's room and the caring she finds there whenever she can.

The short chapters, told from the perspective of the large ensemble cast, the pages from Joanna's notebook, and the final thoughts of the dying, all build an exquisite character driven novel about secrets and self and the facades we all present to the rest of the world. It's a thought-provoking work about death and letting go but also about life and the living of it right up until the very end. The narrative slowly reveals the stories of each of the characters, what life events created them, and why each of them, resident or not, made his or her way to the nursing home. As ever, McCorkle's writing is magnificent and her characters are just quirky enough to be completely human. There is a poignancy here, as might be expected in a novel so closely tied to the end of life, but it also offers the quiet solace of the eternal, especially through the final, unspoken but conscious thoughts of the dying. Life After Life is understated, reflective, and emotionally pitch perfect until the oddly incongruous and inexplicable ending.  It just doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the novel.  Over all though, this was a lovely and incredibly enjoyable read despite the unfortunate ending.  It is, generally, a novel to be savored.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of this novel to review.

Review: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

I know they say you can't judge a book by its cover but we all do. If we didn't, the entire art department at publishers would be out of work. So when I saw the gorgeous cover of this book with an Italian village oceanside and perched in the cliffs, I knew the book was calling to me. When I saw that it was written by Jess Walter, whose The Financial Lives of the Poets I read several years ago, I knew I needed to read it. And when I saw that it combined a story of 1960s Italy and modern day Hollywood, I knew I had to own it. So I bought it and it sat on my shelf unread. But then a blog tour happened and it was the perfect excuse to read this book about two different times and places converging into one complete if tangled storyline.

Opening in 1962 as a beautiful, rising young actress, a member of the cast of the still under production Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton movie Cleopatra, boats into the tiny, forgotten town of Porto Vergogna, sent there because she's been told she's dying of stomach cancer. Dee Moray is to wait there in this blip on the map for the man who will take her onward to Switzerland where a doctor will treat her condition. Pasquale Tursi, a young Italian man newly returned home after the death of his father, stands deep in the port's waters when the boat carrying the beautiful actress arrives. He's trying to shift rocks in order to be able to build a tennis court cantilevered out over the ocean for the enjoyment of the American tourists his father, who owned the only hotel in town, and now he believed would soon discover and flock to the little hamlet. And lo and behold, just as in his beliefs, an American actress to stay in his tiny hotel. During the short tenure of her stay in Porto Vergogna, Dee and Pasquale, despite having trouble communicating (she has no Italian and his English is rudimentary) make an unexpectedly deep connection with each other. Pasquale is kind and loyal and he does his best to help Dee see the beauty around them in life. And Dee responds to the bone-deep honor and goodness of this young man as she learns the truth of her situation.

And then the novel flips to modern day Hollywood where once legendary producer Michael Deane, botoxed and cosmetically enhanced into a caricature and a cliche, lives and works on the fringes of a studio no longer making epic movies, instead making the worst sort of reality tv: on-screen train wrecks. His assistant Claire Silver is facing a career crisis as she looks forward with trepidation to another of Deane's Wild Pitch Fridays, a day where anyone and everyone who ever came into contact with the great Michael Deane, the crazy, the misguided, and the terminally untalented, is given the opportunity to come in and have a face to face pitch meeting over which Claire will have to preside. And this Friday is no exception. But at the tail end of the day, something different happens. Shane Wheeler, a screenwriter who lives in his parents' basement after a failed marriage, arrives late to give his pitch: a different, gritty, and deeply depressing take on the Donner Party focused not on the cannibalism but on the devastation and grief of the members of that ill-fated party. He arrives at the studio at the same time as an old Italian man searching for Dee Moray, whose only clue to her whereabouts is an ancient Michael Deane business card. And because of Shane's time brief time abroad in Italy, he becomes the de facto translator for Pasquale Tursi as he meets Michael Deane and they all set out on a quest fifty years in the making to find out whatever happened to Dee Moray.

The novel is not told in any sort of linear fashion, with the plot jumping backwards and forwards in time willy nilly and from character to character. This literary whiplash is hard to adjust to in the beginning but as the novel moves on, it becomes easier and easier to make the leaps with it. Not only is it told non-linearly, the novel also uses more than just straight traditional narration to tell the stories of the myriad of characters in its pages. Among the narrative devices are an unpublished screenplay, an autobiographical play performance, an unfinished World War II novel which starts at the end and never does have a beginning, and the expunged, sleazy, and legally indefensible version of a memoir subsequently sanitized and published for wider consumption. All of these different narrative devices mirror the themes of the novel as a whole and enrich the stories of the characters to whom they belong. But the sheer number of characters, the amount of stories and backstories, the epic scope of this cinematic, quintessential Hollywood story, and the careening roller coaster ride of the multiple plotlines handicap the novel a bit. Walter does pull everything together and make it all pertinent in the end but getting to that point is sometimes too much. He has written an interesting look at integrity, goodness, and living an honorable life versus self-serving greed, despair, and failure. Some of his people and places are in fact the beautiful ruins of the title while others are instead ugly ravaged remains of a lifetime of poor choices. Walter is definitely a talented writer so although this novel proved to be missing just that slightest bit of heart that would have had me raving over it instead of concentrating on the complexity of the plot and the fantastic gymnastics of the writing itself, it is worth a read.

For more information about Jess Walter and the book check out his website or follow him 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 Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.