Review: Water Wings by Kristen den Hartog

There is something about seeing the word water in the title that draws me to a book. It's an appeal I have tried to explain but haven't quite nailed down. Add to the title words, a cover picture of water of any sort and a plot that has a river running through it and I'm a complete and total gonner. This book promised all of the above even if it ultimately went far afield from its promises.

Returning home for their mother's wedding to shoe store owner Reg, both Hannah and Vivian and their cousin Wren look back on their shared past, starting to understand as adults those things that they couldn't understand as children. Their beautiful mother Darlene is, in so many ways, the same dependent woman she had been in their childhood, both before and after their charismatic father Mick died in a freak boating accident. The narration does much to illuminate Hannah, Vivian, and Wren's characters, even if it isn't enough. Hannah has always been the dreamy sister, the one with synesthesia, the one highly attuned to the tremors and fault lines running through her parents' marriage. Vivian is the practical one, the casually unkind one who picks at her sister, the one who makes sure that everything runs as it should no matter what the circumstances. And Wren is the outsider, not only because she is not a sister, just a cousin, but also because she was born with webbed hands and is therefore used to the small cruelties of life shown so clearly in the community in which they live.

This book is rife with the secrets each character holds close to her heart, secrets overheard, witnessed, and suspected. It is a masterful portrait of a dysfunctional family after it has lost its charismatic center (Mick) and must rely on superficial beauty (Darlene). It is painful and haunting and the reader will wish for more for the emotionally injured young girls. The narrative moves slowly through the past, exposing memories and unearthing long forgotten truths. The present day portions are not quite as compelling as the past portions, perhaps because the girls, even once they learn what has drawn their mother to Reg, still don't fully understand Darlene's motivation or who she has become. There's also something quintessentially Canadian about the narrative here, something that goes beyond setting and manifests itself in a feeling.

I have to admit that I didn't love this meditative novel but I do recognize that it was complexly constructed and well-written. The disconnectedness pulled at me and slowed me down. I never quite felt we understood the characters, despite having sections narrated from their own experience. In looking at the reviews at amazon I am clearly alone in this slight disappointment though. Are you someone who has read it and disagree with me? I'd love to hear why.

Review: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

I am quite probably the last person on the planet to have read this book. And despite all the rave reviews (are there any detractors at all?), I was planning to hold out even longer (forever?) until I decided to use this graphic novel as my book to challenge my preconceptions about a genre for the Take Another Chance Challenge. Because you see, I am not a fan of the graphic novel. Somehow, the whole comic panel thing detracts from the story for me. But I thought this universally praised graphic novel might be the one that made me understand what all the hoopla is about over these books. Sadly, that was not to be.

Telling of Satrapi's childhood in Iran, this is a simple but direct tale about the overthrow of the Shah and the beginning of the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi grew up learning that no one was safe, not family, not friends, no one. They could and did just disappear. And yet both her family and she as a young girl stayed politicized, quietly (and sometimes, in the manner of children, not so quietly) questioning the official line. The graphics are blocky and starkly black and white, reflecting the simplicity of a child's memories and also the growing horror of life under the regime.

While this sounds promising, I was unable to get myself past the prejudice I was trying to challenge. I simply don't love graphic novels. Having to stop and examine the art broke the flow of the narrative for me. I would have prefered more detail in words than the simplistic comic panels offered. While I do recognize that condensing a powerful tale into a book as minimal as this takes skill, I'm much happier with my wordier, less illustrated texts. I do have the second book sitting here and because I am this way, I am certain I will be reading it as well but unless something finally clicks for me, that will likely be my last graphic novel.

Review: Petals From the Sky by Mingmei Yip

Meng Ning is finally going to see if her vocation is to become a Buddhist nun like her mentor, the lovely nun who saved her life so many years ago. Finally all but finished with her doctorate, Meng Ning signs up for a retreat to test her desire to enter the Empty Gate, forsaking love and marriage. But a fire breaks out in the convent and she is fortuitously rescued by a handsome American doctor, igniting in her a seed of doubt about her own path. More than a traditional love story, this is the tale of a woman discovering herself and her own desires.

As Meng Ning and Michael come to know each other better, their characters change fairly significantly and in ways that make them seem to be completely removed from who they were at the beginning of the book. Although Meng Ning's decision whether to marry Michael or to turn her back on family and the material world is a serious one, her constant waffling makes for tough reading. And the plot is completely anachronistic when she travels to New York and meets Michael's "friends." Certainly, Yip has done a reasonable job portraying a woman who has been hovering without making a decision for more than 10 years but there was just something a little off-putting here. The descriptions of the Buddhist life, its necessary intersections with the outside, material world, and the culture clash that is inevitable in a cross-cultural relationship are all interesting but they just can't quite carry the novel.

Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a copy of the book to review.

Review: A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova

Elena Gorokhova grew up in a Leningrad strangled by Communism. Her mother was a doctor and her dashing father died of tuberculosis when she was young. Her family owned a summer home farm but they were not high up cadre members and so they faced shortages and discrimination like so many others. Gorokhova herself was fascinated by the English language and attended a special school in order to become fluent, working first as a student tour guide and then in other prestigious jobs, ultimately marrying a foreigner and being allowed to emigrate to Texas with her husband.

Gorokhova's childhood was certainly materially different than a childhood here in the States at the same time and her spirit of endurance and perseverance shine through the book. At the same time, she is writing a paean to her mother and the strength of character that she obviously inherited from Galina. The narrative is sometimes episodic in nature as she skims over large swaths of time, occasionally only touching the surface of her feelings at the time or her impression of the feelings of the adults around her. As she is clearly writing this from the vantage point of many years on, it would certainly be acceptable for her to speculate on the adults' experience of Communism more than she does. Her schooling and experience with censorship, toeing the official doctrinal line is illuminating and makes the reader wonder how many others went along with obvious untruths and injustices out of expediency. Although there is an air of want and lack and bleakness, it is also obvious that Gorokhova was raised with much love, whatever the hardships of being raised under Communism. Her rebellion and desire to escape made her unique. Her English speaking ability threw her in the path of an opportunity to make good her escape. And so we have this interesting and very different memoir.

The episodic feel I mentioned above sometimes caused a choppiness to the book and the history of Gorokhova's family felt almost like a rote recitation devoid of emotion. But an interest in Soviet life will overcome the flatness and the pacing issues for the Russophile reader. As an affirmation that Communism, at least as embodied by the former Soviet Union, was hypocritical and ultimately unworkable, this stands out. As a coming of age in a place incredibly foreign to those of us in the west, this will resonate both with familiarity and strangeness. Over all, it was a decent read and I'd be curious to read more from people who grew up under the restrictive regime that so characterized Soviet Communism.

My thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book.

Review: Billie's Kiss by Elizabeth Knox

I first stumbled upon Elizabeth Knox through her first novel The Vintner's Luck. I'm not sure what about it captured my imagination--okay, I'll admit to being shallow and tell you that sharing her last name was the first impetus for picking her book up at the bookstore--but something about that cover copy and the picture (plus her name) grabbed me and I ended up taking the book home with me. I absolutely wallowed in it. It was exquisite and I knew I would obsessively buy her books as I saw them come out. So when I found this one, I immediately snapped it up and promptly stowed it on a shelf to be forgotten in the mists of time. Seriously, I've owned it unread since 2002. But it seemed like the right time to blow the dust from the top edge and actually read it. I was hoping for another transcendent reading experience. Sadly I was disappointed. That is not to say that it isn't a good book, after all, how many times in one life can an author be transcendent, right? But I wanted to be blown away here and there was something holding me back from that sort of over the top reaction.

Billie is a young woman traveling with her very pregnant sister and brother-in-law to his new place of employment as a cataloguer for Lord Hallowhulme on a remote Scottish island. The trip has been long and rather arduous given pregnant Edith's desperate sea-sickness. Just minutes from landing, Billie and her brother-in-law kiss and Billie jumps from the ship. A heartbeat later, the ship explodes and many of the people on board are drowned, including Billie's sister Edith. Murdo Hesketh, a distant kinsman of Lord Hallowhulme's, undertakes an investigation into the explosion, initially convinced that Billie has had a hand in sabotage. While the mystery of the exploding boat weaves desultorily through the novel, the book as a whole is more a character study of Billie and Murdo, examining their past lives, ferreting out the secrets that have formed them into the remote, solitary beings they are in the pages of the novel.

With a narrative akin to swimming through layers of viscous liquid, this is a slow moving and awkwardly paced novel. Knox has pegged the desolation and spare beauty of the setting very well. The spareness is echoed in the characters' interactions with each other and the personal connections between them, main characters and supporting characters, needed more to make them real. A few of the drowned characters, those closest to Billie and Murdo, are given backstories but for the most part, even with backstory, they remain almost as enigmatic as the main characters do. After a languid investigation, the truth about the explosion comes out. Unfortunately it comes out quickly and cursorily, which leaves it at odds with the pace of the rest of the book. It also rather comes out of left field, disconcertingly enough. Despite these problems, Knox is clearly an impressive writer, having a lovely way with words. She submerges her reader deeply into the narrative and has recreated beautifully the turn of the twentieth century, drawing characters who exist comfortably within their time period. This may not have struck me the way that The Vintner's Luck did, but I will still look for Knox's other works (maybe even on my own shelves again?).

Review: Benny and Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

Benny and Desiree find themselves occupying the same cemetery bench during their weekly visits to commune with their dead. They do not like each other to start, eyeing the graves of each others' family with distaste. Desiree ("Shrimp") has chosen an unadorned, stark stone for her young husband and leaves no plants or flowers on his grave. Benny's mother has chosen an elaborate carved stone for his father and is now beneath the overwrought stone herself. Benny diligently plants and tends their graves, overloading it with tokens. But the librarian and the dairy farmer have more differences than just the headstones that transfix them and it is only as they shyly get to know each other and start a relationship that these more substantial differences come to light.

If this makes this book sound like a romance, it should, but not one of the sweaty clinch variety. This is an understated and delicate look at the burgeoning love between two people so diametrically opposite each other. And yet at the start their shared passion seems able to overcome so much. It is only with familiarity that the stress fractures grow. Mazetti has drawn an entirely plausible and charming story of a relationship here. Her characters are completely appealing and I felt an immediate pull into their lives. The over-arching sadness that wrapped each of them individually, seemingly cocooning them from the small joys in life, lifts slowly but perceptibly as they allow love and solicitude into their lives in the person of each other.

And while I thought that the about face of the ending was a bit abrupt, I turned the last page wanting desperately to be able to go on to the sequel that is available in Mazetti's native Sweden. Others have used the descriptors charming and delightful and lovely when describing this slight book and I concur wholeheartedly. There is a very light touch here, even when acknowledging the difficulties that love can present and sometimes cannot overcome. Putting the book down was never an option and I finished it in one sitting. Now I feel like I should go back to it and savor the sweetness, the clumsiness of Benny, the cautiousness of Shrimp, and the whole arc of the enchanting story. In case you hadn't yet guessed, I loved this book and feel I'm on a misson to share it with everyone.

Many thanks to Caitlin from FSB Associates for the review copy of this wonderful book.

Review: Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

Shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize, this is just the latest amazing novel by Shamsie. Years ago I read Salt and Saffron by her and was utterly captivated. So when the opportunity came along to review this newest book, I couldn't pass it up.

The three-part story of Hiroko, a Japanese woman who survives the Nagasaki blast, this is a sprawling novel spanning four countries, two continents, and modern wars. Opening in Nagasaki before the dropping of the atomic bomb, Hiroko lives with her father and visits her love and fiance Konrad, a German ex-pat who has come to Nagasaki after being told by his half-sister and brother-in-law that he, because of his German heritage, was unwelcome in British controlled India. But when the bomb falls on Nagasaki, Konrad and Hiroko's father both die and she is marked forever by the embroidered design from her kimono, carrying the burnt shadows of the title on the skin of her back for the rest of her life.

After the war, Hiroko travels to Delhi, India to find Konrad's sister and the Indian boy he spoke of so fondly, the one whom he placed in his brother-in-law's law office, Sajjad Ashraf. While living with Elizabeth (Ilse) and James Burton, Konrad's sister and brother-in-law, Hiroko and Sajjad fall in love, despite their disparate backgrounds. They elope against the backdrop of the withdrawal of the British from India and then find themselves barred from returning to Sajjad's beloved Delhi by dint of their having been out of the country during the Partition and Sajjad's Muslim faith. They make a life for themselves in Pakistan, raising a son, as their lives continue to criss-cross with the lives of Elizabeth Burton and her son Harry. This time, it's not the bomb that shadows their lives but the mujahideen and their fight.

And finally, after tragedy strikes Hiroko once more in Pakistan, she travels to the US where the Burton and Ashraf families again become irretrievably intertwined. And again Hiroko is shadowed by war, this time by the powerful unrest in the Middle East and her own fears when her adopted country of Pakistan becomes a nuclear nation.

As always, Shamsie's writing is astonishing and her characterizations are complex and full. She never mutes the horror of the tragedies that befall Hiroko but she doesn't sensationalize them either, using them to underscore the cost of war in human terms. She tackles morality, racism, and human nature and yet she weaves these themes together into her story so effortlessly that they do not stand out screaming their importance but instead subtley push the reader to consider his or her beliefs and prejudices, especially in this modern age. The novel is haunting and powerful and well-done. She's captured terror, both inflicted and received while she's also rendered the humanity and dignity of those who live their everyday lives with the shadows of terror on their skin, in their minds, and in the actions around them. A brilliant novel, this is one that all readers should add to their lists.

As a side note to those on budgets: this has been released as a paperback original, a trend I'd love to see more of by publishers.

Review: A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

Having read Shalev's beautiful novel, The Blue Mountain, I was eager to see if A Pigeon and a Boy was as gorgeously rendered as that one was. I have to say that I still find the other more enticing but this has an appealing dream-like cast to it. Two different stories that converge in the narrative, the story opens with a rich American, former member of the Palmach telling of the death of a boy and his symbolic release of a final homing pigeon as he dies in battle to the other tour members and Yair, their Israeli tour guide. From this point onward, the narrative splits into the stories of Yair's life and that of Baby, the young homing pigeon handler who died so many years ago in the fighting. But as the stories diverge, so they must, in the end, converge again. Both stories center on love and its loss: man-woman, mother-son, and friend-friend. Shalev draws Israel before Independence with minute strokes, describing the place and everything in it with a detailed richness that sometimes threatens to overwhelm the reader. His characters are lost and found again in love drawing understanding sympathies from the reader. The tragedies and betrayals, both physical and emotional, that play out in the novel are piercing and yet there is still ultimately a redemptive feel to the novel as a whole: the past melts seamlessly into the present and the present can be made right. I found it initially hard to sink into the book fully but once I made that effort, I was rewarded by a stunning book; one that will stay with me for a long time.

Review: Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols

The first in a trilogy, this lovely book chronicles Nichols' search for and purchase of a country freehold not too far from London where he can garden. Taking place not too long after the end of the Second World War, not only is this a delightful and enchanting book about plants and gardening, but it is awonderful snapshot of a time long since past. Nichols' garden is his main focus but he also introduces the reader to his eccentric neighbors, his elderly gardener, and various other people about the place. He discusses the folly and joys that came with purchasing his estate. And he generally injects enough light humor in all areas that this was a wonderful, completely appealing read. There are certainly instances that firmly place this in its time period but it has aged well and was a wonderfully diverting book to cozy in with for an afternoon. I have to actually physically restrain myself from jumping immediately into the second book in the trilogy, wanting to draw out the pleasure a bit by savoring the anticipation of an equally lovely amount of time spent with it. And don't skip over this book thinking that you aren't a gardener and don't want to read about gardening. Anyone who lights a hedge on fire on purpose and scorches the heck out of his new albeit slightly dilapidated home should be able to entertain any and all non-fiction readers with ease.

Review: Kristin Lavransdatter: II The Mistress of Husaby by Sigrid Undset

I read the first book in this trilogy years ago and struggled through it. At the time, I was told that the translation I happened to have was probably the hardest to plug through so I put off, and put off, and put off reading any further. But I wanted to because I had heard such wonderful things about this medieval set saga written by Nobel prize winner Undset. I don't really know what finally inspired me to pick up the second book this many years onward (good thing I have a decent memory for most books or I'd have been rather lost I suspect) but I am glad I did and am now looking forward to the third and final installment in Kristin Lavransdatter's life.

This portion of the saga starts with Kristin and Erlend arriving at Husaby, his ancestral estate, as they start their marriage. But Kristin and Erlend's life is not destined to be easy, even once they have the sanction of marriage, and Undset draws a full and captivating portrait of life in 1400's Norway. Domestic and political, male and female spheres, religion and secularity are all played out on a grand and a small scale, providing the reader with and intimate glimpse of a time long since passed from memory. Kristin is a strong and fascinating character but she has her faults. Erlend is weaker and more wayward as a character, a bigger picture thinker than his wife, who focuses on the small details. But their inability to temper each other's weaknesses in a true partnership leads them into great difficulty.

Once I settled into the language of this translation (and that took a bit), I was interested to see how Kristin and Erlend developed. In general I sympathized more with Kristin because she did so very much, always cognizant of the consequences of her actions. But there were times that I found myself getting annoyed with her, as if she was indeed a real person making poor choices and ill-advisedly holding onto grudges instead of a character in a book. The setting of the book was rich and well-detailed. And the historical imformation in the story line itself and in footnotes was fascinating since Norway's history is not even touched upon in classes in this country. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to live in the Middle Ages but I enjoy visiting there on occasion through the pages of a book. And I plan to visit Kristin in the last third of her story sooner rather than later.