Monday Mailbox

Another wonderful pair of books arrived for me. I'm so incredibly spoiled! This past week's mailbox arrival:

Lonely by Emily White came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
I don't know that I ever thought about loneliness as a mental health issue all on its own but am intrigued by this memoir of a woman who describes it thusly.

The Other Life by Ellen Meister came from Putnam thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
A book about the different lives you lead when you make different choices and the ability to move between the two lives? Well, I couldn't resist this premise.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader 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: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Billed as a tale of love between two older people, the very properly English Major Pettigrew and the widowed Pakistani-English Mrs. Ali, who owns the local village shop, this marvelous debut novel is indeed a charming love story but it is very multi-dimensional, a delightful story of two people who find they have as many similarities as differences, a complicated look at the invidiousnesss of racism, even that unintentionally practiced, the cost of progress, and the conflicts of family. It is a modern tale of manners told with wit and brilliance.

Opening with Major Pettigrew hearing about his brother's death, we are introduced to the quiet, reserved, eminently traditional Major. As he and Mrs. Ali come to know each other better, the Major understands how little consideration he's given to this nice woman who has made her home in the same village he has for so many years. He must face his own culpability in keeping Mrs. Ali an outsider for so long, especially as he witnesses the deliberate unkindnesses and bigotry displayed by so many around him. He finds in Mrs. Ali a kindred spirit of the sort that his wife Nancy had been for him and he gradually welcomes her into his life and thence into his heart. As their friendship and mutual admiration grows, many other multi-faceted characters parade through the narrative.

The Major's son Roger is a colossal prat, completely self-involved and almost as grasping as the Major's sister-in-law and niece. Roger's fiancee, a loud American turns out to have hidden depths. Abdul Wahid, Mrs. Ali's nephew is dour and studious, a seeming stereotype who learns to bend. The villagers are a mixed batch, with some welcoming the increasing involvement between the Major and Mrs. Ali and others being horrified.

The Major desperately wants to reunite the gun his father left his late brother with his own gun, making them the matched set they once were. He feels an entitlement for it to be so but his desire also reflects his insistence on history and tradition. As he strives to rescue the gun from his brother's widow, who is most concerned with the money possible if the gun is sold, he faces, on a smaller, domestic scale, several issues swirling throughout the novel: the potential loss of heritage and misunderstood intentions.

I loved the characters here and appreciated their dry sarcasm. Although not strictly a humorous book, I did chuckle quite often as I read along. And I appreciated the oblique but completely clear manner of addressing obstacles and beliefs, both positive (stewardship and preservation) and negative (racism and self-absorption). The story was completely satisfying and I am pleased to say that I enjoyed the book as much as the buzz would suggest. A wonderful read.


For more information about Helen Simonson and the book, be sure to visit her website, her Facebook page, and her GoodReads page.



Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours for arranging the blog tour and getting me to finally read my copy of this wonderful book.

Review: Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Forman Dew

Normally I don't like to read books in a series out of order but I didn't know that Being Polite to Hitler was the final book in a trilogy. Thankfully that turned out not to matter and I am even rather pleased to know that I can revisit these characters when I so choose, even if I do already know their ultimate outcomes (and I suspect that I have the first two books somewhere deep on the tbr mountains already so it will be easy enough for me to do). Putting aside the trilogy order issue though, how could I possibly pass up a book so enticingly titled especially coupled with the cover image of a woman daintily sipping tea? It was just too appealing.

Taking place in the years following World War II, from the early 50's to the early 70's, the novel follows the Scofield clan through their everyday lives in small town Washburn, Ohio. Matriarch Agnes Scofield starts the novel coming to the conclusion that she is tired of teaching. It was only ever something she did out of obligation and now she wishes to be able to leave off. Whether she will have the courage and ability to change her life in the face of the mundane remains to be seen. The novel also follows Agnes' family in their daily struggles, financial, marital, and personal as well.

Althought it might seem as if there's not much going on in this quietly domestic novel, there is nothing going on in the way that there was nothing happening in Virginia Woolf's novels. There is a sense of the ordinary extraordinariness of daily life in a small town during the post war years. And like Woolf's, many of Dew's characters face that elegantly quiet desperation in which only the comfortable upper middle class can indulge. The characters peopling the pages of the novel are langorous and yet tightly wound too, a neat, tricky bit of writing that Dew pulls off admirably.

The hopscotching narrative functions as a window to peek in on various different Scofields and the state of the world as America comes of age after the war. Dew weaves historically significant events throughout the story. Some are intact and lengthy (Kenndy's assassination) while others are merely alluded to or briefly discussed by the characters (the Rosenbergs), their prominence in the storyline mirroring the importance of each event commensurate with their impact on the middle America of the time. This is a book filled with moments, everday moments, extraordinary moments, and even authorial moments. At one point, with a wink to her readers, Dew gives herself a tongue in cheek tip of the hat in the midst of an exposition.

Beautifully crafted, this is a quietly resonant novel. When Agnes' daughter-in-law Lavinia crossly accuses her husband Claytor of being willing to endure anything, willing to sit being polite to Hitler so as not to ruffle any feathers, the perfection of the title as a descriptor for the characters' lives is highlighted. And for those people who often find themselves bemoaning tepid endings, this book has one of the very best ending lines I have read, perfectly in keeping with the entire tone of everything that went on before. Lovers of literary fiction will find much to savor here and Woolf fans will rejoice in the understated homage to To the Lighthouse.

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

Review: The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

I generally don't read anything that has a body or blood in it because I am prone to nightmares, coward that I am. So it is probably completely incongruous that I would cheerfully agree to read a book in which one of the first female lawyers in Britain is helping to defend a man accused of murdering his wife. I am nothing if not inconsistent. Then again, I am up writing this review in the wee hours of the night when I am usually asleep because the image of a pink shoe on a lady's foot poking out of the underbrush has crawled into my brain and horrified me beyond sleep. Tame stuff for afficianados of the scary and gory but disturbing and lasting for babies like me.

Six years after her brother's death in WWI, Londoner Evelyn Gifford opens the door to find a small boy the spitting image of her brother standing with his mother on the stoop. There is no doubt that the child is her brother James' son, conceived just before his death. The household has been in a sort of grieving stasis since the telegram announcing James' death six years ago and the presence of small Edmund and his mum Meredith is about about to change everything. And while Evelyn's family life is undergoing this major upheaval, she is struggling in her professional life and opening up to an opportunity in her personal life as well.

One of the first female lawyers in England, Evelyn is still in training and facing the almost inevitable prejudice of being a trailblazer. Her boss has relegated her to mostly unimportant (and non-paying) clients. When he is out of town, by default she is given the case of a poor mother, a bit too fond of drink, who is accused of having kidnapped her own child. Leah Marchant willingly surrendered her children to a charity home while she tried to get back on her feet but in so doing, she didn't fully understand the consequences of her actions or the potentially terrible complications. In fact, neither did most of society fully understand the possible fates for children like Leah Marchant's. A seemingly insignificant case, it blossoms out of control as Evelyn undertakes to reunite the mother with her children.

Meanwhile, she is also called on to assist at a spectacular murder trial where a former soldier is accused of having shot his new wife in the heart while out picnicking and then cold bloodedly heading to a pub for a few drinks. The evidence against Stephen Wheeler is overwhelming if circumstantial and Evelyn may be the only person who believes his innocence. And proving that innocence could be beyond her capabilities.

As I've already mentioned, the murder storyline left me sleepless over the two nights it took to read the book. This is not because it was difficult to figure out who the killer was though. As a matter of fact, it seemed to me to be glaringly obvious from the first. But as the novel is much more than the mystery, this seems less a handicap than it might.

The obstacles faced by women in the time between the two world wars, as they not only entered the workplace but entered in educated professions which had always been the sole province of men, were enormous. And add to that the lack of rights of women in general during this time and it becomes clear the sorts of odds a character like Evelyn faced. She should have been a wonderfully admirable character but I just couldn't warm to her. She was somehow more insipid than I had expected given her drive to become a lawyer despite general public sentiment. Perhaps this was intended to show her complexity and make her multi-dimensional but it left me without a character with whom to identify. As for Meredith, the mother of James' son and the character who stands as a foil to Evelyn, I didn't care for her either. She was flighty and cruel, fickle, inconsistent, and grasping and I suspect she was not meant to seem that way. Evelyn's budding lust for Nicholas, a man who represents everything she abhors, was a distraction given everything else going on in the novel but his very presence was necessary to the meat of the plot, making for an interesting conundrum: how to include him without the busyness of yet another plot thread.

Given the fact that the novel was certainly out of my comfort zone, I probably zeroed in on things that wouldn't have struck other readers quite as strongly. And as evidenced by my lack of sleep, the detail of the story is quite vivid. The touches of historical information, the reaction and prejudice against the first female lawyers, the shipping of children from English charity homes to Canada where they could be ill-used, the toll the war had on the survivors, both soldier and civilian, all of these were fascinating and woven into the novel well. I just couldn't make a connection with the characters that didn't leave me irritated and so my overall enjoyment was lessened. I do think, however, that mystery readers will enjoy the threads of the story that kept me awake and historical fiction readers will find interesting nuggets scattered throughout this post-WWI set novel.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette

Reviews posted this week:

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

Georgia's Kitchen by Jenny Nelson
A Slender Thread by Katharine Davis
Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson
Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Sex, Drugs, and Gelfilte Fish edited by Shana Leibman
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Jackie Lyden
The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson
Daughter of the Bride by Francesca Segre
Chronicles of a Midlife Crisis by Robyn Harding
Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle
Half Empty by David Rakoff
She's Gone Country by Jane Porter
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Huck by Janet Elder
Out of the Shadows by Joanne Rendell
I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee
Never Trust a Rogue by Olivia Drake
After the Fall by Kylie Ladd
Heart With Joy by Steve Cushman
The Lacemakers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri
The Known World by Edward Jones
Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist
Web of Love by Mary Balogh
Pure Dead Frozen by Debi Gliori
The Best American Travel Writing 2009 edited by Simon Winchester
The Concubine's Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
The Forbidden Daughter by Shobhan Bantwal
The MacKenzies: Cole by Ana Leigh
Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows
Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
Running the Books by Avi Steinberg
The Time in Between by David Bergen
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell
The Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
Destiny Unleashed by Sherryl Woods
Grayson by Lynne Cox
While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
Falling in Love Again by Cathy Maxwell
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Semper Cool by Barry Fixler
City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell
The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak
The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Waking Up in Eden by Lucinda Fleeson
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
One Season of Sunshine by Julia London
A Round-Heeled Woman by Jane Juska
Shoes, Hair, Nails by Deborah Batterman
Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman
Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float by Sarah Schmelling
Eurydice Street by Sofka Zinovieff
Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O'Connor McNees
A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle
Great Lakes Nature by Mary Blocksma
The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Monday Mailbox

A new year and a new set of months of review books arriving. They look great of course, per usual. This past week's mailbox arrival:

Small Wars by Sadie Jones came from Harper Perennial thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
A seemingly peaceful posting to Cyprus turns that erupts into war, this story of the personal changes that brings about in Hal, a major in the British Army, and his wife Clara sounds like a captivating look at war, morality, and the ways in which they erode the people involved in them.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough by Ruth Pennebaker came from the author thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours.
Stories about three generations of women always catch my interest and this tale of family and the sandwich generation looks like it will be good for more than a few giggles.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Rose City Reader 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.

Sunday Salon: Resolutions and musings

I probably should have posted a resolution post yesterday. Obviously I didn't. I should probably post one today, a day late. But I won't. I have very few resolutions for the coming year and only one that is pertinent to the whole wide world: I resolve to post reviews of all the books I read in 2010 that I didn't get around to posting about in 2010. And really that's more a function of my own anal retentive personality than any feeling for the beginning of the year. But I will eventually get to all those wonderful books I have yet to share with you aside from listing in my sidebar, interspersed, of course, with this year's books. With the year so shiny and new, I have managed to schedule myself into quite a few books already and that's without my usual late rush to join reading challenges so the first few months of the year should be interesting ones indeed! In addition to all the reading I'll be doing, I will likely have some tennis matches (although as it's the Polar Bear league, there are equally good chances that they will be frozen out) and I have a half marathon next weekend that is very likely to turn into a very long walk. I'm probably not likely to do any other really long runs this year but I'm hoping to be in shape enough to do a few shorter ones.

Since I didn't post a list of the bookish goodies under the Christmas tree for me yet, I will beg your indulgence now. From my loving husband, I unwrapped Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard and Delhi by Sam Miller as well as the ever popular B&N gift card so we can pretend for one month at least that I haven't spent a seriously obscene amount at the store. From my sister-in-law came World and Town by Gish Jen. From my sister and brother-in-law came Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charleson, Casting Off by Nicole Dickson, East Hope by Katharine Davis, and Leopard Rock by Tarras Wilding. And because I am always significantly out-presented by my children, I saved my Secret Santa gifts for Christmas day as well. For the Booklovers Secret Santa, from Liz of Consumed by Books, I received a wonderfully generous package including Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield, a Cadbury bar, a package of three small notebooks (perfect to keep in my car for jotting notes) and a CD of Liz's favorite Christmas music which is great and totally appropriate since I listen to Christmas music for a month ahead of time and love to add new renditions into my listening line-up! And from Steve or Sean (I am notoriously bad at reading other people's writing), I received the utterly enticing ARC of Late For Tea at the Deer Palace by Tamara Chalabi, which comes out this month. Pretty special bookish haul if I do say so myself!

As for this past week's reading adventures, I didn't have many since I came down with the hideous and unpleasant cold my niece and nephews so thoughtfully brought to Christmas. I did, however, spend time with Louisa May Alcott as she fell in love one summer, finished learning about the natural world around the Great Lakes (and indeed around me here in the South too), and followed along as one of Britain's first female lawyers learned her craft both in a kidnapping case and a murder trial.

And for right now? Well, it's a toss up between going back to my latest read or singing (dreadfully off key, I might add) with my daughter to her new Singstar Abba game (the boys seem to have darted off to their hidey holes at the merest mention of the 70's pop sensations for some reason).