Review: When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg

This slight novel is an intricate and revealing pas de deaux, a captivating performance. It is told in turns by Teo, an 85 year old former dancer and famous choreographer, and Vivi, a 42 year old artist/dabbler/waitress who is lost herself and yet inspires and ennervates Teo in ways he hasn't expected in years. As their relationship deepens, they tell not only of their presents and their differing philosophical stance on creation and art but also of their pasts and the terrible paralysing wounds they each suffered.

Passion, obsession, and the art that can so easily inspire the one to cross the line and become the other weave throughout the narrative as the reader learns of Vivi's failed love affair with German Gentile Martin and of Teo's devastating debut dance in Berlin in 1939. Both the characters, the one who survived World War II and the one who was born long after it was over, are irretrievably damaged by Hitler and anti-Semitism, haunted by their former lives in Berlin.

Vivi moved to a divided Berlin after her compulsory service for Israel so that she could follow boyfriend Martin, a man for whom she was prepared to sacrifice everything. But she is unable to reconcile the Martin who worked on a kibbutz in Israel with the Martin she joins in Germany, choosing to wander the city, drawn to the wall where she meets a dwarf who regales her with the terrible, hateful past of the city. So affected by the reality of this place so steeped in hatred and ghosts, she ultimately flees broken and devastated.

Teo had also lived in Berlin, an unwilling prisoner trapped by the war and by desire. His is not the usual WWII tale of concentration camps and horrors too terrible to recount. His terrors were also damaging and life altering though. As a young boy he had gone from Poland to Denmark to dance, heading to Berlin on the eve of WWII against his family and friends' advice to dance his debut with the Royal Danish Ballet. After the performance, on the eve of Germany's invasion of his Polish homeland, detained because of his Polish nationality and in danger because of his Jewish heritage, he is rescued by a Nazi officer with an appreciation for art and dance. And so begins his acquaintance with obsession and possession.

Teo and Vivi's stories intertwine seamlessly and their friendship with each other develops carefully as they debate and spark off of each other. Exquisite, lyrical, and intense, Fallenberg has captured the rhythms of dance in his language, the ability to inspire, to leap, and to inhabit the stars for brief flashes of time. His descriptions are visual and graceful. His musings on art and its creation through his characters' lives are fascinating as is the role of passion and singlemindedness. This is an impressive novel, tightly constructed and yet easily accessible. There are scenes of great horror but they are eased somewhat by the remove of the past and the healing of the present in the form of Teo and Vivi's growing relationship. An impressive accomplishment, the tale is riveting. The ending is a tad neatly coincidental but overall, this is a strong and gorgeous novel.

For more information about Evan Fallenberg and the book visit his webpage.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

With the weather so nice, it is hard to stay indoors with my computer so not much reviewing gets accomplished unless it rains. It didn't rain this week. Reading, well is continues rain or shine so I have something to report anyway! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this week are:

Island Girl by Lynda Simmons
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
When We Danced on Water by Evan Fallenberg

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette
Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom

Reviews posted this week:

Island Girl by Lynda Simmons

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

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Strange Relation by Rachel Hadas
Slow Love by Dominique Browning
West of Here by Jonathan Evison
Made For You and Me by Caitlin Shetterly
You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice
Twelve by Twelve by William Powers
Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
The Wedding Cake War by Lynna Banning
Dance Lessons by Aine Greaney
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Monday Mailbox

A couple of surprises landed in my mailbox this week. Book surprises are, of course, always welcome. :=) This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Something For Nothing by David Anthony came from Algonquin Books.
Publishers Weekly calls the main character a "lovable drug smuggler." I didn't know there was such a thing. Should be interesting to see how Anthony pulls this off!

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley came from Crown.
Although none of my kids have food allergies (unless a made-up allergy to vegetables counts), I have so many friends with food allergy kids that I am drawn to this memoir about a woman with severe food allergies and the tale of her growing up.

Promises to Keep by Jane Green came from Plume.
I have thoroughly enjoyed all the Jane Green novels I have read so I'm really looking forward to this one too.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mari Reads 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: Island Girl by Lynda Simmons

Haven't we all walked into a room and wondered what in the heck we needed to find in there? Set car keys down and couldn't remember where on earth they might be? Spaced out about an appointment or meeting? Searched our minds for a common word that is just on the tip of our tongue and yet irretrievable in the moment? For most of us, busy as we are, these are isolated events and nothing to worry about. For some people though, these are the first manifestations of something so much worse.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, Ruby Donaldson knows she has a limited amount of time to organize and tie up the loose endings of her life before she is lost in the fog of the especially aggressive, early onset version of the disease. Ruby is a stubborn, fiesty, and independent woman who hates having to reach out for help but her new circumstances demand it. She has long had a combative relationship with her oldest daughter, Liz. But now she needs to make things right with Liz so that when the time comes (and Ruby has no intention of letting Alzheimer's, aka Big Al, steal her away, plotting to take herself out long before that time comes), her younger daughter, the beautiful but intellectually delayed Grace, will be able to hold onto the family's home on an island a short ferry ride from Toronto, the only place Grace feels safe.

Ruby is prickly and cantankerous and she has spent a lifetime pushing people away. The Donaldson women have been famed for their strength and their eccentricities for as long as they've owned the island home and Ruby lives up to the reputation in spades. But after a year with insidious Alzheimer's and recognizing its more frequent incursions into her daily life, she reaches out to her old boyfriend, Mark, to ask for his help in finding her oldest daughter, from whom she is estranged. This first step towards connection and reconnection will change everything. Liz was once a brilliant lawyer but is now a wreck of an alcoholic, one who clings desperately to her anger and bitterness towards her mother refusing to let Ruby's diagnosis change her feelings in any way. She is consumed with rage and unhappiness but she still makes time to see her little sister every week behind their mother's back. Grace is lovely and childlike and there is a tragedy in her past that makes her unwilling to break out, even in small ways, from Ruby's stifling overprotectiveness. She is incapable of leaving the island, content to work in Ruby's beauty shop from the ground floor of the home that has been in their family for generations.

Told in the alternating voices of the three Donaldson women, Ruby, Liz, and Grace, this is not just a sad story of a strong woman fighting with every ounce of her being against this terrible disease, it is also the story of healing a divided family and looking to the future. The characters are fully developed, flawed, and believable. The obstacles that they have to overcome are mostly those they have created themselves and so the reader can sympathize with the difficulty they each face in trying to change themselves and come together before it's too late. There are many different plot threads weaving through the book and while this can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, it is also the true and messy reality of life. Each of the plot lines is also important not only to fully flesh out the characters, but to help the reader understand all of the challenges they face and to show how this family came to the place they find themselves now.

The main story, though, remains Ruby's. Simmons has done a lovely job capturing the small coping mechanisms that Ruby has developed and uses them well to illustrate Ruby's deterioration even as she puts up a valiant fight in her unwinnable war. Despite the obvious family dysfunction, Simmons has also managed to skillfully weave love and caring through the hurt and anger and secrets pulsing between her headstrong characters leaving room for hope. A lighter, more humorous novel than I would have expected, I quite enjoyed my time with the Donaldsons, rooting for them to heal within, to find the strength to change what they needed to change while remaining true at the core, and to be able to come together in the end.

For more information about Lynda Simmons and the book visit her webpage, her Facebook page, and read her blog. You can also read an excerpt of the book to get a taste of it for yourself.

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

For me, I can't wait to read: The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan. The book is being released by Dutton Adult on June 9, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Marissa Rogers never wanted to be an alpha; beta suited her just fine. Taking charge without taking credit had always paid off: vaulting her to senior editor at a glossy magazine; keeping the peace with her critical, weight-obsessed mother; and enjoying the benefits of being best friends with gorgeous, charismatic, absolutely alpha Julia Ferrar.

And then Julia gets hit by a cab. She survives with minor obvious injuries, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality, possibly forever. Suddenly, Marissa is thrown into the role of alpha friend. As Julia struggles to regain her memory- dredging up issues Marissa would rather forget, including the fact that Julia asked her to abandon the love of her life ten years ago- Marissa's own equilibrium is shaken.

With the help of a dozen girls, she reluctantly agrees to coach in an after-school running program. There, Marissa uncovers her inner confidence and finds the courage to reexamine her past and take control of her future.

The Art of Forgetting is a story about the power of friendship, the memories and myths that hold us back, and the delicate balance between forgiving and forgetting.

Tueday's midmorning running musings

I'm stoopid. No really. Dumber than a box of rocks. Who in their right mind goes for a run knowing that the temps are well into the eighties? Who was up and awake when the temps were in the low seventies and opted to go back to bed and run later? Yup. Apparently my IQ today is lower than a rock. I couldn't run the whole planned run (only 3 1/4 miles) because the heat just sucked the life right out of me. And my clothes and hair look like I've been running through the sprinklers. Don't I wish! Actually, I contemplated jumping into the neighborhood pool but then realized that since it's not officially open until this weekend they've probably got some nasty chemical stew going on in it right now. So I'd die from heat stroke accelerated by poisoning if I hopped in.

While I was running and losing 100 lbs. of water weight a minute, I finally understood why world class runners wear the equivalent of a sports bra and tight underwear to run. And as my own shorts bunched up between my fat, sweaty thighs, I wished I had those to run in too. (Well, I also wished for smaller thighs but I can buy the first and neither love nor money seems to be providing the second). Sadly, without the thinner thighs (amongst other body parts), the running underwear outfit is not an option. Just the thought of my wobbly, undulating stretch marks on display for the entire neighborhood to see is giving me an optical illusion headache. On the plus side, my bunched up and uncomfortable shorts caught a lot of sweat and kept it from running down into my socks. Yes, appealing, isn't it? Running can take you right back to childhood and wetting your pants. Such a charming trip down memory lane.

I did have a few moment on the run that shouldn't have been and ultimately didn't last very long though. Some neighbors lost trees in the last nasty set of storms and they've had someone come out, take them completely down, and grind the stumps. So a brief close of the eyes and the smell of freshly sawn wood transported me immediately to the the cottage up north where summer running is dreamy and cool. Totally lovely. Then the heat radiating up off the road, the sweat running down my spine, the sunscreen leaking into my burning eyes, and the bunched up, wet shorts brought me right back down here to the sunny south. Maybe tomorrow I'll be smart enough to stay out of bed until *after* I've run!

Monday Mailbox

I've been awol and not posting much at all so my weekly mailboxes haven't been acknowledged. By no stretch of the imagination does this mean I'm not thrilled beyond measure to receive these books. I definitely am! And so here are the past few weeks' worth. This past several week's mailbox arrivals:

The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes came from Pamela Dorman Books.
A woman in 1960 who is trying to reconstruct her own life after a tragic accident finds a letter asking her to leave her husband. 40 years later, another woman finds this same letter in newspaper archives and decides to research the mystery behind it in hopes of resurrecting her career and understanding her own love life. Double stranded narratives done well always appeal to me.

Faith by Jennifer Haigh came from Harper thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.
How the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church affects one very devout family, this sounds like it will be mesmerizing reading.

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park came from Simon & Schuster.
A young Korean woman who marries out of duty instead of love and must then bear the anguish of knowing she's chosen wrongly, I am looking forward to this one.

The Rules of the Tunnel by Ned Zeman came from Gotham thanks to Lisa at TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.
A memoir of clinical depression and the journey back from its depths, this one is incredibly appealing to me.

Next to Love by Ellen Feldman came from Spiegel and Grau thanks to Lisa at TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.
War has a huge impact on the men and women who live through it and this chronicle of three friends who live through WWII and into the world shaped by this terrible war looks amazing.

The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair came from the author.
Family secrets, India, childhood memories. Could this one hit more of my reading passions?

Killer Stuff and Tons of Money by Maureen Stanton came from Penguin Press thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.
I'm not an antiquer or flea market afficianado but I am intrigued by people who are so I'm looking forward to this narrative non-fiction tale.

Tassy Morgan's Bluff by Jim Stinson came from Plume.
A quaint and quirky small town? I love reading about places like this and the people who live there.

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