Review: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

Bobo has written another AWFUL BOOK. Huzzah! Huzzah! Now before you think I am condemning this long awaited follow-up prequel/sequel to her memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, you should know that this is in fact how her family refers to her fantastic first book. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is a worthy successor to her first critically acclaimed memoir. Knowing I had this book coming up on my list for review, I hurried to read Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight about Fuller's African childhood because I am completely and totally compulsive about reading things in order (and I had owned the first book, unread, for well over a decade). Less obsessed readers do not need to do so though as this tale, centered around Fuller's dramatic and entertaining mother Nicola Fuller, easily stands on its own.

Nicola Fuller grew up in Kenya while Britain was still ascendant on the African continent and her attitudes were shaped by life under a ruling minority. She is a fascinating, expansive, extravagant, over the top personality who shines as the emotional center of this book. With insight from her mother and extensive, casual interviews over cocktails under African sunsets, Fuller tells of her mother's childhood, young adulthood, charmed early life with Fuller's father, and the increasingly dangerous times and tragedies they survived. While this sequel does cover some of the same ground as her first memoir, it adds a whole new dimension to both Tim and Nicola Fuller, painting them more sympathetically than they were previously portrayed. And given the love that shines out from the pages of this book, this portrayal is probably the more accurate.

Woven throughout the tales of her mother's life, are events of great historical significance. These forays into modern African history never come off as dry but instead as shaping the everyday life and tragedies of everyone around them, not excluding the Fullers themselves. Fuller does not whitewash the colonial sympathizing sentiment with which she grew up. She details the atrocities of a war that touched many people she knew and that constrained her own childhood. The acknowledgement that the African continent and the countries on it are complicated is a constant subtext. Nicola Fuller is also complicated, full of contradictions, and enduring just like the land she so loves.

This memoir/biography is really a love story on many levels: the Fullers' love for Africa, Bobo's love for her mother, and Nicola's and Tim's steady love for each other. It is enchanting and funny, heartbreaking and nostalgic, a tale acknowledging and mourning the past but content to move into the future complete with cocktails served under the tree of forgetfulness (an actual tree on the banana and fish farm where Nicola and Tim live now). A lushly gorgeous rendering of a specific time and place, this was a charming, intimate, and delightful read.

For more information about Alexandra Fuller and the book visit her webpage.

Thanks to Trish 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: Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos. The book is being released by William Morrow on October 4, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: What if saying hello to an old friend meant saying good-bye to life as you know it?

It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them.

Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat—the bewitching, charismatic center of their group—e-mails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse. But instead of a happy reconciliation, what awaits is a collision of past and present that sends Pen and Will, with Pen’s five-year-old daughter and Cat’s hostile husband in tow, on a journey across the world.

With her trademark wit, vivid prose, and gift for creating authentic, captivating characters, Marisa de los Santos returns with an emotionally resonant novel about our deepest human connections. As Pen and Will struggle to uncover the truth about Cat, they find more than they bargained for: startling truths about who they were before and who they are now. They must confront the reasons their friendship fell apart and discover how—and if—it can ever fall back together.

Thoughts that occurred to me while running this am...

and one that occurred afterwards because I am a little slow on the uptake.

In the order that the thoughts occurred to me, which is to say, no particular order at all, let me share with you some of the contents of my head during this morning's run.

1. I can't believe I gave up extra sleep time for this! (Either I'm coming down with something or hell has frozen over because I looked at my bed this morning after coming back from kid #3's bus stop and actually chose to go for a run instead of crawling back under the covers.)

2. Huh. I'm not sure these lyrics are the best thing to be hearing mid-run. (The iPod was on shuffle so I'm not sure of the song but the lyrics were something along the lines of "I want to be running when the sand runs out." Yeah, not feeling so metaphorical at that particular moment.)

3. Holy cow buddy! Please don't ever drag your trash to the curb shirtless again. Unless you are in phenomenal shape and a hottie to boot, save even the partial nudity for the privacy of your own house. (And shortly following that, directed to the same guy came another thought.) Just because the jeans are your skinny jeans, does not make them, in fact, *actual* skinny jeans. I have jeans that fit 20 years and 30 pounds ago too but I keep them as a goal, not a current fashion statement. And as far as that goes, skinny jeans on men is not a pretty fashion anyway so best to just avoid the whole look. (Yes, it took me a while to run past this guy's house. I think it was the running equivalent of slowing down in the car to rubberneck. Unfortunately it probably reinforced the guy's image of himself as able to pull off the too small jeans hiding under the tubby gut--and yes I am well aware of the pot calling the kettle black circumstances of that observation but at least my tubby gut was covered and trying to exercise.)

4. What does that guy have in his hand? A golf club? Shit! Maybe I shouldn't run past him. (It's a little disconcerting to be faced with passing a walking man carrying a golf club when you are clearly a chubby, slow, out of shape woman. On the plus side, he was a painfully slow walker if I was sailing past him like I had wings on feet because Apollo I'm not.)

5. Seriously, if you wanted to ban feathers in girls' hair, shouldn't that have been included in the dress code before the school year began and I spent money getting one put in R.'s hair? Not knowing that it would be the fashion is no excuse for you, as principal of a middle school, to declare after the fact that feathers are not okay. It's been a fashion making its way around the country for months now as you would know if you paid any attention whatsoever. (Fly fishermen the country over have been lamenting the rising cost of feathers for their flies as a result of the trend and even I, in my self-imposed news vaccuum--gearing up to avoid all election BS, dontcha know, know that and I'm not paid to deal with 6th-7th-8th graders all day every day. Seriously, how out of touch is the school administration?)

6. Only a few more small hills and then I'm home. Wonder if crawling up them still counts as running? (Self-explanatory, no?)

And the shower thought...

7. Mother effer! (Sweat washing into the paper cut like snicks all across my legs where I had a run in with ornamental grass planted too close to the sidewalk on my walk last night hurts like a son of a beeyotch. And furthermore, lotion after a shower is an even worse idea. Just sayin'. And you're welcome for keeping it close to PG rated since you know there was absolutely zero censoring in my actual thoughts. Hey, it's my own private shower after all. We also won't discuss the fantasy I had about creeping out late at night and taking a weed whacker to the whole damn mound of grass. A girl can dream though.)

Review: False Colours by Georgette Heyer

I have been reading romances since I was 10 or 12 years old. I fell in love with Jane Austen the first time I opened the pages of Pride and Prejudice. And yet, it wasn’t until recently that I opened, read, and enjoyed my first Georgette Heyer novel, despite the fact that Heyer is widely considered a worthy successor to Austen. But after my first Heyer, I was glad to know I hadn’t yet read much of her works because it meant that I still had that much enjoyment ahead of me. False Colours is the third work I’ve read and although it didn’t entertain me as much as my previous two novels did, it still had the authenticity, attention to detail, and that indefinable something that characterizes Heyer’s works.

Borrowing a successful plot contrivance from great writers before her, False Colours has a masquerade or false identity plot. Kit and Evelyn are twins and as close to physically identical as can be. So when Evelyn is missing on the very eve of a party to introduce him to the family of the woman he hopes to marry, Kit reluctantly gives in to his flighty and charmingly capricious mother’s insistence that he impersonate his elder brother, the Earl of Denville. After all, the masquerade is only to last one evening and only for the purpose of convincing Cressy’s intimidating and opinionated grandmother to give her blessing to their marriage. But Evelyn doesn’t return the following day and despite Kit’s best efforts to remain out of Cressy and her grandmother’s way so that they don’t discover the hoax pulled over on them, his mother agrees to host them at a small house party on Evelyn’s country estate. Kit and Cressy are thrown together with great regularity and start building a happy rapport. Yet Kit cannot tell her his real identity and so things bumble along in an almost Shakespearean comedy sort of way towards the denouement.

While the depiction of the times and social mores is as perfect as ever, the language, even for a reader familiar with much Regency-set fiction, is rife with unfamiliar slang and coloquiallisms. This might not be as large a problem as it is except that the bulk of the book is dialogue between Kit and Lady Denville, robbing the reader of many context clues. Lady Denville, Kit’s mother, as a character, is absurd and cheerily profligate, even in the face of ruin. She is depicted as a doting mother and yet she is unconcerned that her debts, the ones she is doing her utmost to ignore or forget, are going to force her eldest son into a loveless marriage of convenience so that he can end the trust in which his fortune is held. And she is unbothered by the tenuous, rather dicey situation in which she’s placed Kit, the potential heartbreak which it will cause both Kit and Cressy. It’s an inconsistency of character that Heyer doesn’t generally make. The plot is rather more drawn out than it needs to be and it is lacking in the tension that would keep the reader eagerly turning the pages given that both Kit and Lady Denville are spectacularly unconcerned by Evelyn’s prolonged and continued absence. There are moments of humor here but the weakness of the story otherwise overshadows them. This is not a bad book, it just isn’t everything Heyer is capable of and readers unfamiliar with her oeuvre might want to start elsewhere, perhaps with the enchanting caper that is The Grand Sophy (my own personal favorite so far).

Review: You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

Normally short stories are not high on my list of appealing things to read. A few authors have managed to break through my apathy for the form though and after reading this collection of linked short stories, I'm going to add Siobhan Fallon to the list. When we see news coverage of our troops, it generally focuses on the far away places in which they are fighting, the emotional toll it takes on the men and women in uniform, or on the tragedy of their loss. Rarely do we see even a human interest story on the lives of the people they've left behind, the husbands, wives, and children who wait patiently for them on military bases around the country. Fallon's stories offer glimpses into the lives of the families who live a military life even when the men (and women) are gone.

I picked this up one night and absolutely zipped through it. Beautiful and affecting, these tales of life on base after the soldiers are deployed and how they integrate back into their lives and those of their families after such extended absences are timely and well-written. The uniqueness of the army base setting and the challenges faced by our military and their families make this an unusual but important read. Tackling subjects as diverse as infidelity, loss of trust, loneliness, the ever present threat of death or disability, and the petty everyday minutia that takes on a greater significance in light of the dangers facing the husbands in these stories, the collection is unvarnished and honest.

Fallon's prose in unadorned and straightforward and the stories are sometimes stark and unforgiving. The lives of the wives are threaded through with tension and anticipation, sometimes pleasant and other times terrifying. Some of the stories are a little ragged and unfinished but that reflects reality of life on base. There are no real endings, not even when a wife hears the worst, that her husband has died, just the relentless march of life moving onward. A moving look at the enormous range of sacrifices made by our military and their loved ones, this collection is well worth savoring.

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

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Hmph! School supply shopping, the start of school itself, and the resumption of all kid activities has obviously taken a whack at my reading and reviewing as evidenced below. Here's hoping this coming week I'll be able to find a better balance again. This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed these past several weeks are:

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson

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
Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Reviews posted this week:

How to Love an American Man by Kristine Gasbarre
The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald
From Zero to Mastectomy by Jackie Fox

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

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
The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom
Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan
The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellyn Bache
When the Killing's Done by T.C. Boyle
The First Husband by Laura Dave
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
The Mystery of the Third Lucretia by Susan Runholt
Next by James Hynes
Spanish Holiday by Kate Cann
The Little Woman Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas
Baby Don't Go by Susan Andersen
The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt
Unsaid by Neil Abramson
The Soldier's Wife by Margaret Leroy
Harvest by Catherine Landis
The Sweetness of Tears by Nafisa Haji
The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber
Don't Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
The Evil B. B. Chow and Other Stories by Steve Almond
Withering Tights by Louise Rennison
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson

Monday Mailbox

I thought for sure I wasn't going to have any more surprises in the mailbox but I was wrong! (Don't tell my kids I was wrong though; I have them convinced that I'm always right. Of course, it helps that they have yet to figure out the proper use of the words right and correct so I'm not really lying.) This past week's mailbox arrival:

Fabulous Finds by J. Lee Drexler and James R. Cohen came from Meryl Zegarek Public relations, Inc..
Stories from a long-time antiques appraiser, this is likely to contain some pretty entertaining tales.

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