Review: The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax

Opening at a writer's convention, Kendall is hoping to win a coveted Zelda award. Instead, her publishing company drops her and even her three long standing writer friends can't keep her from fleeing to her home where another bombshell drops on her. Her husband has been gone all weekend and Kendall must face the fact that he has been cheating on her and wants a divorce. In short, her life is falling apart around her ears. Fleeing for a second time, she high tails it to the cabin in the North Carolina mountains that she has always loved. It is here that Mallory, Faye, and Tanya ultimately find her, hiding from the world, completely emotionally paralyzed, and unable to write. Her three friends decide to help her write the final book of her contract so she can get on with her life. But when they do this, they expose the long buried secrets they've kept from the world and from each other. Even worse, this book that was supposed to be ignored, a chore to be gotten through before Kendall can move on to other things, becomes a bestseller and opens all four of the writers and friends to the scrutiny not only of the world but to each other and to their loved ones.

An interesting premise, this does share a bit of the seamy side of publishing and exposes a fickle and subjective profession. It also gives a few insights into some of the ways in which writers write and how they feel about their chosen profession. Mostly though it is intended to be a book about friendship and secrets. The characters are quite different from each other and their secrets are mostly fitting given their personal lives. But the bond of friendship between the women needed a bit more development to be completely believable. It can be hard to balance an ensemble cast in a novel, making certain that each character receives enough time on the page and enough development to feel authentic but Wax does manage that balance here, telling each main character's story by turns, allowing the reader to understand each home life and a bit of why the secrets are so important, even potentially devastating. The secondary characters, the children and men in the womens' lives, were quite flat and undeveloped but necessary to the plot. But this was a minor weakness. While the women could be frustrating and some of the secrets were a bit much, this was mostly a likeable piece of chick lit.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading This Week?

This meme is hosted by J. Kaye at J. Kaye's Book Blog. With a sick child trapping me in the house this past week, I read like a woman possessed. Unfortunately, I did not also write reviews like a woman possessed. Maybe this week I'll make a dent in that ever burgeoning list.

Books I completed this week are:

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizake
The Accidental Bestseller by Wendy Wax
The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton
Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Freeze Frame: A Photographic History of the Winter Olympics by Sue Macy
Nearer My Dog to Thee by Graham Mackintosh
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Reviews posted this week:

Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
In Summer Light by Zibby Oneal
The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
The Blue Star by Tony Earley
The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizake

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

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton
Cheaper By the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Freeze Frame: A Photographic History of the Winter Olympics by Sue Macy
Nearer My Dog to Thee by Graham Mackintosh
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin
Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland
My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel

Giveaways on the blog

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker **This closes today so get your entries in asap!

Monday Mailbox

I've had a sick kid since last weekend and so with that strange sense of time passing slowly, I didn't realize that the week during which I could receive books for the Monday Mailbox post was almost over. Luckily, at the very last minute, three books arrived so I could still write up this post. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Sweet By and By by Todd Johnson came from the publisher for a book tour through TLC Book Tours.
A group of five Southern women connected through a nursing home, this cross-generational tale of friendship and aging sounds lovely.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow came from my favorites at Algonquin Books.
After a terrible tragedy, a biracial little girl who has been raised to think of herself as white goes to live with her African-American grandmother and is now expected to think of herself as black. I expect this is one that will make me think, even long after the final page is turned.

The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar came from the publisher for a book tour through TLC Book Tours.
A midwestern couple who has lost their young son moves to a village in India. I have read Umrigar's work before and was very impressed so I am looking forward to this tale of different cultures and the hearts of people.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Marcia at The Printed Page and enjoy seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Sunday Salon: The Post HoLITday party

The holidays are over and yet I didn't manage to participate in two things that I wanted to do during those days. So I went ahead and just moved the time-frame to suit myself. Book End Babes suggested a hoLITday party for my book club. I just couldn't pull it off. Not that I didn't want to. But the holidays always threaten to swamp me without hosting a party.

Then Lisa of Online Publicist came up with the idea of The Dewey Tree project for book bloggers to donate books to a worthy charity. I didn't officially participate because you had to take a picture of your donation and well, my camera may have finally dried out, but it certainly doesn't function (I did get a new one for Christmas but my sweet D. and my parents didn't realize that it didn't come with a lens so I'm still camera-less for the moment).

But having already donated two boxes of books before Christmas, I decided to combine the two ideas and host my very own post-hoLITday party now. I made sure all food was diet and/or healthy so people wouldn't break their New Year's Resolutions because of me (amazing, really, how no one took any of the cottage cheese even though I supplied plenty of fruits to put on top of it). And then I collected up the closet load of books I had been squirreling away to pass along. Everyone invited brought their own books to swap and in the end I think I have more books on my dining room table than I started out with, which is no mean feat given how full it was to start. All of these remaining books will be duly boxed up and delivered to Julia's Coffee and Tea which is the Charlotte Habitat for Humanity's coffee shop and used bookstore. They can even use the books that sank on the boat this summer because they will pulp them and use them for insulation. How cool is that?!

I may have been too late to call it an official Book End Babe event or to have it be a part of The Dewey Tree project, but better late than never (and really, donating books to a good cause is always a good idea). It was great fun. I only acquired five more books myself (a minor miracle) and watched many of my friends take stacks and stacks home to read. The remaining books will also go off to find or become part of new homes. And I think that I'll wait until I have built up another stash of books to pass along and then host this again. Next time I'll probably have tastier food though (provided I'm back to fitting in my pants by then).

This past week I've had a sick kid so I logged a lot of reading time. I've been to aristocratic Japan in the years just prior to WWII with four sisters whose way of life, so traditional and rooted in the past, is becoming obsolete. I watched as four disparate writer friends rallied together to help one of their own, inadvertantly exposing deep, potentially damaging secrets. I enjoyed two Americans sponging off their wealthy friends' bounty together, causing their own marriage to shift fundamentally. I hopped through a classic, glad I wasn't one of twelve children. I learned a lot about the history, mostly fairly recent, of the Winter Olympic Games and thoroughly enjoyed the pictures accompanying the history. I traveled to Baja California with a man and his dog, investigated the ecology of the area, and met park rangers, hikers, and other campers during a 4 month sojourn in one of Mexico's remote and unspoiled National Parks. I delighted in a Tanzanian cake maker in Rwanda who not only bakes beuatiful cakes but cares deeply for her neighbors in this wounded and still recovering African nation. And finally, I sat and absorbed the genius that led Pierre-Auguste Renoir to paint a masterpiece, enjoying the imagined story behind the pictures. I hope your travels through books took you to many enjoyable places this past week and that your adventures continue this coming week as well.

Review: The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizake

The story of four sisters from Osaka, two married and two unmarried, in the years immediately leading up to WWII, this is the portrait of a time coming to a close and an aristocracy already in its twilight. The narrative here is slow and elegiac. Nothing much happens in the infinitesimal crumbling of the Makioka sisters' way of life but the novel is beautifully rendered nevertheless. The two unmarried younger sisters live not with their oldest sister, as would usually be the case, but with their second sister, Sachiko and her husband and daughter. The youngest sister, Taeko (or Koi-san), cannot marry until the thrid sister, Yukiko marries and so Sachiko and oldest sister Tsuruko want very much to find a match for the self-effacing but somehow stubborn Yukiko. Through the several years of the narrative, matches are found and discarded for various reasons. But with each new match, the prospective groom is somehow a less and less appealing prospect, mirroring the decline of the once great Makioka family name.

While the family dithers about a match for Yukiko and she herself stays quiet about the prospect, younger sister Taeko is being seen about town with the man she ran away with several years prior, defying decorum and jeopardizing Yukiko's chances for marriage. Frustrated by the protracted wait for Yukiko to marry so she herself can marry, Koi-san quietly goes about running her own life, in spite of her older sisters' admonitions and cautions. Meanwhile scenes of placid, unseeing domesticity intrude on almost every page as Sachiko sits thinking or crying or resting in her home with only the occasional company of her young daughter to enliven the room.

The three younger sisters are very well fleshed out and individual in this most domestic of novels although the reader's sympathy with each of the characters changes as the novel progresses. Japan during the "China Incident" is exquisitely rendered although very little of the gathering political storm clouds penetrate the novel's pages since the four sisters are mostly ignorant of the coming calamity, and indeed of anything much beyond their own sphere. The writing is luxurious and fulsome despite the fact that so much of it chronicles the ennui of the aristocratic housewife. This is most assuredly not the novel for people who want to have action in their novels. Almost nothing whatsoever happens here and yet somehow Tanizake has managed to make it an important and weighty nothing. Written during the Second World War, this shows perhaps most clearly, the traditions and the propriety that Japan stood to lose so clearly, really had already lost by the time of the writing. Full of faded beauty, stagnant hopes, and honor-bound duty, ancient and new, this is a tour de force.

Review: The Lonely Hearts Club by Elizabeth Eulberg

Penny is completely disillusioned when she finds her boyfriend, whom she has been in love with almost her entire life, cheating on her. She's sick and tired of the way that none of the boys in her life have ever lived up to what she wants and expects. Convincing herself that all guys are jerks, she forms the Lonely Hearts Club (yes, from the Beatles song--after all, her name is Penny Lane) with herself as the founding and sole member. But when an old friend, who ditched Penny long ago for a boy, is dumped and wants to make amends for putting Ryan first, above their friendship, Penny finds herself sharing the concept. And slowly this club of one becomes the club to be in with members across all four years of high school vowing not to date for the duration of their high school careers, go to dances and social events as a group, attend Saturday night meetings, and always support their friends. But it's not that easy, with guys who are bitter about being ditched for a group of girls, a principal who is against the club, despite it not being either official or meeting on school property, and girls who are catty or just joining for the status. Hardest of all is the fact that Penny might have found a guy who's not a jerk, one who she might really like to go out with.

This is a very cute story. Eulberg has captured high school and teens pretty well. And her tale of female empowerment and sisterhood is one that so many girls these days need to hear. Penny is, of course, the best fleshed out of the characters while the rest of her friends, even her inner circle are much more superficially drawn and act mostly as foils so that Penny isn't talking to herself. Penny's parents are eccentrically simple and offbeat, being big enough Beatles fans to not only name their daughters after Beatles hits, but to become vegetarian simply because Paul is. Perhaps as would be expected, they don't figure much in the story either but the bits where they do appear, they are supportive and understanding. The burgeoning love story is sweetly handled and Penny's renewed friendship with Diane is maybe a bit too easily achieved but over all this is a nice anecdote to all the mean girl books out there. Being popular doesn't have to mean being a snot and having boys draped all over a girl. It can also mean being content with friends and happy in your own skin, as Penny is. A good lesson to share.

Thanks to Chelsey at Big Honcho Media for a review copy of this book. Also, check back here on Monday for a giveaway and more author information.

Saturday Shout-Out

On my travels through the blogging world, I find many books that pique my interest. I always add them to my wish list immediately but I tend to forget who deserves the blame credit for inspiring me to add them to my list (and to whom my husband would like to send the bill when I get around to actually buying them). So each Saturday I'm going to try and keep better track, link to my fellow book ferreter-outers (I know, not a word but useful nonetheless), and hopefully add to some of your wish lists too.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell was mentioned at Me and My Big Mouth.

Family Planning by Karan Mahajan was mentioned at Me and My Big Mouth.

The Brontes Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson was mentioned at A Life in Books.

See You in a Hundred Years by Logan Ward was mentioned at Caroline Bookbinder.

Reading the OED by Ammon Shea was mentioned at Caroline Bookbinder.

What goodies have you added to your wish lists recently? Make your own list and leave a comment here so we can all see who has been a terrible influence inspiring you lately.