Review: Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes by Betsy Woodman

Are there certain books that just appeal to you from the moment you read the jacket copy, charm you throughout the reading of them, and leave you with a happy glow when you've closed the covers on them?  They aren't pulse pounding or edge of your seat reading, they are gentle, comfortable, and lovely and make you hope that the author is writing more just like them.  Books like this are few and far between for me but they are always so appreciated when I do happen across one of them.  Betsy Woodman's Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes is one of those books (and is in fact the first in a planned series).  Just looking at the book gives me a contented feeling.

Janet Laird, a widowed Scottish woman, who has spent much of her life in India and feels most at home there rather than in her native Scotland, inherits her grandfather's home in the small northern Himalayan hill town of Hamara Nagar (translated as "Our Town") and determines that she will go and live there now that she is no longer needed as a music teacher to a nawab's children and despite her rather uptight son's admonitions that she come home to Scotland to live as she's in her late fifties and, in his opinion, too old to live alone.  But Jana Bibi, as she is called in India, has a bit more steel in her spine than her son suspects and she chooses her own course without regret, a course that takes her to the Jolly Grant House, new friends, and happiness.

When Jana, her maid Mary, and her garralous parrot Mr. Ganguly first arrive in Hamara Nagar they discover that the Jolly Grant House will require quite a bit of work to be made habitable, starting with evicting the monkeys who currently live throughout the home.  As Jana works on her house, she makes the acquaintance of her neighbors and other various townspeople who end up taking her into their hearts and lives.  She meets the local tailors, the owner of the local Treasure Emporium, a bagpipe playing Gurkha security guard, a young mute boy and his mother, the rigid and less than pleasant police chief, the editor of the local paper, some of the girls from the private school in town, and an American ex-pat who might or might not be CIA.  With this colorful cast of characters, Jana goes about righting her house and starting a life in this appealing town.  When she has settled in some, she discovers that the government has plans to flood their small town to create a dam.  In a bid to prevent this, Jana sets up shop as a fortune teller so that the town has a bit more appeal for tourists, a measure the government is sure to use when finalizing a location for the dam.  Helped by her chatty and entertaining parrot, Jana's shop is a hit and she becomes a vital part of the town's life.

Aside from the threat of being flooded, the novel focuses more on the everyday domestic dramas of life in a small town and the assorted people who live and love there.  The characters are eccentric, quirky, and delightful.  They are developed in such a way as to be respectful to their customs, wishes, and dreams and each of them is very definitely an individual.  Jana herself is sweet and as she slowly discloses her past, her quiet insistence on living her life as she chooses now becomes clearer and more understandable to the reader.  The setting is well-written and beautifully captures the spirit and feel of India.  The connection and welcome of the place is very realistic and just about everything about this lovely book made me want to visit India again.  If you are looking for a feel good novel with a touch of the exotic blended with a universal kindness and acceptance, this is the book for you.

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

Review: The Pleasures of Winter by Evie Hunter

I read fairly widely but have to admit that erotica is not on my usual list of genres into which I dip.  That's not to say that I haven't but my exposure to it has been fairly limited.  And BDSM (that's bondage & discipline, dominance & submission, sadism, and masochism for the uninitiated) really doesn't do it for me.  My first reading experience with erotica was through Anais Nin when I was a teenager.  I can't remember if I didn't understand it or if I truly just thought it was pretty tame but it didn't really lead me to more erotica.  Next, as a young woman in my early twenties, I searched out the Anne Rice Sleeping Beauty series when a local library pulled it off the shelves after a patron's complaint.  Having purchased all the books in the series, I do vividly remember reading them and finding them completely boring and a waste of money my husband and I didn't really have to squander.  But that's the sum total of my erotica reading since I haven't jumped on the Fifty Shades of Grey bandwagon.  Obviously, given the success of that trilogy, publishers are trying to find more books like these, even evoking those covers with the same black and white color scheme and similar feel.  Evie Hunter's erotic BDSM novel The Pleasures of Winter is very definitely a book meant for fans of the Fifty Shades trilogy and less for readers like me who are generally unmoved by tales with this premise.

 

Abbie Marshall is in Honduras, a hard hitting investigative reporter researching a story about a Honduran drug lord with ties to the US State Department.  Trailed by scary bad guys and desperate to escape them, she finagles her way onto a private plane with Hollywood hearthrob Jack Winter by agreeing to interview the spectacularly gorgeous, breath-takingly masculine actor.  Immediately attracted, they spark off of each other, verbally sparring and generally finding each other irritating.  But then the plane's pilot suffers a heart attack and dies mid-air so their antagonism has to take a back seat to survival in the remote Honduran jungle into which they've crash landed.  Jack, having learned survival techniques from one of his movies, takes charge of their small party (himself, Abbie, his best friend Kevin, and his agent Zeke).  Abbie, used to being in charge, doesn't take well to his demands and chooses to ignore them, jeopardizing their health and lives.  Jack, used to being obeyed, decides to punish Abbie.  To both of their surprise, she enjoys her punishment.  But they find their way out of the jungle and back to the US before their out of control attraction can go any further, each determined to put the other out of their thoughts.  Jack, because Abbie is a reporter, and Abbie because Jack is a big star. 

 

Of course they find they can't forget each other.  And Abbie is inspired by her time in the jungle to start exploring her submissive side.  The fact that she would like to expose Jack as a participant in the BDSM world, a fact that would apparently derail his career forever, only has a little to do with her desire.  It is through her research into her own sexual preferences that she and Jack reconnect, first through anonymous e-mail and eventually in person again.  The sex between the two of them is graphic and steamy but really not all that unusual or kinky despite the room in Jack's house devoted to his predilection.  Although they connect sexually as a Dom and a sub, they still have major trust issues and don't really talk to each other, leading to misunderstandings and unhappiness. 

 

As a character, Abbie is supposed to be fearless, driven, and capable and yet she comes off as meek and idiotic, especially in the jungle.  Jack is a take charge character haunted by his past and deeply private but his self-avowed darkness doesn't really ever manifest itself.  And his decision to physically punish Abbie while in the jungle (the catalyst for her discovery about her own sexual preferences) was fairly appalling as it was unilateral and by no means consensual.  Jack did acknowledge this once but its wrongness was then completely ignored by both characters, suggesting that because he recognized submissive tendencies in Abbie, it was okay to spank her without her consent (hard enough to leave marks).  Yuck!  Both Jack and Abbie were fairly flat characters with whom it was rather hard to sympathize.  And in the end, their concerns about each other are too easily dismissed and those once important plot threads are dropped in favor of the stereotypical happy ending demanded by romances.  Their capitulation to each other and the way in which they both conveniently forget the problems that drove them apart is too simple, unresolved, and completely unbelievable.  The fact that BDSM leaves me cold didn't help me like the book any better.  On the plus side, it was a quick and basic read.  Perhaps those who enjoyed Fifty Shades will find this one more satisfying than I did.

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

Review: Losing My Sister by Judy Goldman

The sibling relationship is a very special one.  It can be contentious or loving and is frequently both.  Your siblings know you in ways that no one else in your life does.  They share your history and know many of your secrets even if you've never told them.  Sisters definitely share a powerful bond.  A sister, in many ways, is a reflection of who we are, our nearest family, our closest ally and our bitterest enemy.  Only someone so important in our lives could drive us to such extremes of feeling.  Only a sister.  But when you lose your sister, you lose a large part of who you are.  You are never you in relation to your sister ever again and you have to carry your memories and your shared past alone no matter that past was whether it was idyllic, horrific, or just your garden variety sister relationship.  In Losing My Sister, Judy Goldman explores every facet of her relationship with her older sister, Barbara, from childhood to adulthood including her feelings at watching Barbara fight breast cancer for years and her stunned feelings of loss when Barbara loses the battle.

A lovely and loving relationship memoir, Goldman weaves her happy childhood memories growing up with Barbara in with the struggles they faced in their adult relationship.  As children, the sisters were very close and each happily played the role the family expected of her.  Judy was always the sweet, subservient sister who appreciated her older sister's protectiveness.  Barbara was the more assertive sister who sheltered her younger sister.  And as children, there was never any reason to push the boundaries of these roles.  But as adults, Judy no longer wanted to give Barbara charge of her life, choosing her own way as a wife and mother.  This abrupt rewriting of their understood relationship with its implied judgment and competition led to tension, hurt feelings, arguments, and estrangements over the years.  But Goldman is scrupulously honest when looking at the reasons she and her sister fall out, examining her own culpability and the possible ways in which she contributed to the ongoing rifts.

If she chronicles the ways that a sister relationship can break down, she also chronicles the depth of love that always rescues it.  No matter what memories Goldman shares with the reader, it is clear that her love for Barbara shines through.  And her shock and grief at the news that Barbara's cancer is terminal is profound.  In this memoir looking back at her relationship with her beloved older sister, Goldman writes with a reflective honesty and a touching poignancy.  Because she is a poet, Goldman includes some poetry that speaks to the complex and multi-faceted relationship she had with her sister.  The non-chronological narration might give some readers pause, especially when the sisters are not speaking to each other and there's a time jump backwards or forwards.  And while the devastation of losing a sister is clearly overwhelming, there's a bit of a tendency for Goldman to take on more of the blame for their feuds than is probably merited but that's a common enough tendency after the death of a loved one, to canonize them to some degree.  Over all though, this is a well-written and introspective look at the connection of family, the universality of relationship, and the ways in which we break away (or don't) from the long-ingrained expectation of who we are, especially in relation to our siblings.

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.

Everything Was Goodbye by Gurjinder Basran. The book is being released by Pintail on Dec. 31, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book:  THE YOUNGEST OF SIX daughters raised by a widowed mother, Meena is a young woman struggling to find her place in the world. Originally from India, her family still holds on to many old-world customs and traditions that seem stifling to a young North American woman. She knows that the freedom experienced by others is beyond her reach. But unlike her older sisters, Meena refuses to accept a life dictated by tradition. Against her mother’s wishes, she falls for a young man named Liam who asks her to run away with him. Meena must then make a painful choice—one that will lead to stunning and irrevocable consequences.

Heartbreaking and beautiful, Everything Was Good-bye is an unforgettable story about family, love, and loss, and the struggle to live in two different cultural worlds.

Review: Married Love by Tessa Hadley

Short stories are very hard to get right, at least for this reader.  They don't tend to be my favorite type of writing to read.  While their length makes them ideal for reading in small bursts, especially nice for those of us who spend so much time in carpools or sitting at sports practices in which we are not participants, they can also feel too small or too spare to be complete and very often feel incomplete and unsatisfying.  Tessa Hadley, in her new collection, Married Love and Other Stories, has avoided these common pitfalls of short stories and created a complete and intricately crafted collection of tales about ordinary people muddling through their lives and relationships and the domestic dramas and non-events that give shape to their existence.

Hadley's writing is controlled and tightly composed as she creates her characters and their particular circumstances.  Every nuance of speech and even their smallest of actions is considered and carefully constructed to give the reader the measure of not only the character but their entire life in relation to each other, outside events, and the one small space in time captured within the short story.  The stories all focus on relationship and the ways in which people together are not what they seem, going along living their lives of quiet desperation or hiding momentous events of little importance even while tiny flashes of unvarnished truth wink from their everyday, generally unremarkable lives.  What Hadley has done so well is that an instant or several minor instances in her characters' lives are richly complex and representative of the whole of their lives.  They are the people around us.  They are universal.  They are us.

The title story tells of a young woman determined to marry her brilliant music professor who is forty-five years her elder and the slow dawning realization about the lack of brilliance in the mundanity of everyday married life as the years pile up.  The other stories are just as firmly set in the unremarkable everyday as the first one and yet they all resonate with profound emotional insight.  A woman helping a friend clean an industrial building reflects on her family and her relationship with them, especially her army son, as she scrubs walls clean and unplugs a filthy sink.  A girlfriend and boyfriend meet each others' families, realizing that they are outsiders, disappointing and different.  A young man searches out his wealthier cousin to make her acquaintance but is less drawn to her than to her sly companion who knows him for who he is.  A girl lurks around the edges of her parents' party in the company of the strange, pitiable young man who is her mother's hanger-on.  A brother delayed coming home from abroad worries about his unreachable sister after he sees her Facebook status change.  A young woman living at home in the aftermath of her brother's suicide tries to slink through her life unnoticed until she starts to move beyond being defined by his death.  These are just some of the stories but they are representative of the whole.

There is nothing particularly remarkable happening in any of the stories in the collection but Hadley has managed to catch them so perfectly and illuminate them so fully that they feel entirely complete and self-contained.  They are densely emotional despite their commonplace events and they highlight the interior life, the secret feeling we so carefully conceal from the world.  Hadley has deftly peeled back the surface and shown the intense swirl beneath the skin.  There is not much happiness to be found in the stories but rather than its opposite depression, there's more an undertone of resignation running through many of them.  And while there's a lot of truth to the resignation, that's a little depressing in and of itself.  Short story fans will definitely not want to miss this offering but those who don't often read short stories should also appreciate the masterly writing here as long as they aren't looking for happy, feel-good stories.

For more information about Tessa Hadley and the book visit this British Council Literature page. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Rough week for me.  The never-ending migraine really derailed most of my days and inertia took care of the rest.  Sometimes being a slug is just what I need though.  This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Married Love by Tessa Hadley
I Married You For Love by Lily Tuck

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

My Bookstore edited by Ronald Rich

Reviews posted this week:

Nothing :-(

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

Losing My Sister by Judy Goldman
Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes by Betsy Woodman
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Forgotten by Catherine McKenzie
Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick
The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch
Moranthology by Caitlin Moran
The Blue Notebook by James Levine
Turning Pages by Tristi Pinkston
Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Sad Desk Salad by Jessica Grose
You Tell Your Dog First by Alison Pace
Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace
Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh
Buddy by Brian McGrory
His Mistress by Christmas by Victoria Alexander
The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye
Happily Ever Madder by Stephanie McAfee
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Married Love by Tessa Hadley
I Married You For Love by Lily Tuck

Monday Mailbox

After a week of no books arriving, I got a luscious pair of books.  You can all commence feeling jealous now.  ::grin::  This past week's mailbox arrival:

The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Bejamin came from Delacorte Press and Pump Up Your Book for a blog tour.

A novelization of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's life with husband Charles, this sounds positively fascinating.

The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs by Dana Bate came from Hyperion and BookSparks PR for a blog tour.

Could you just eat the cover of this one? About a woman who opens an illegal supper club in her landlord's town house, I do love books centered around food or eating.

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