The Lies I Tell: A Novel
by Julie Clark
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. (4/18/2022)
Suspense novels require tension, anticipation and uncertainty. The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark supplies all of those. But if you look under the covers just a little, you find that like Lewis Carroll's Alice, you have to believe six impossible things, if not before breakfast, at least before you finish the book. The female protagonists are lying about who they are and what they are doing, consistently fooling people. The plot clicks along, with some intriguing cons. But when you unpack each falsehood, you start to wonder how so many men (and all the targets are men) could fall for so many ridiculous tricks. A good plot outline but with no there, there.
Two Storm Wood: A Novel
by Philip Gray
What Went On in Two Storm Wood? (12/19/2021)
Philip Gray's novel Two Storm Wood provides all the misdirection and moral ambiguity that you could want in a mystery.
Immediately after the World War I armistice, Amy Vanneck travels from England to France to get answers about the fate of her fiancé in the last months of the war. What does "missing in action" mean—is he really one of the unidentified bodies left on the battlefield or is he actually missing? Amy (and the reader) learns more than she may have expected about the conditions in France during and after the war. Many gruesome details are uncovered, including the activities of Chinese laborers brought to France to do jobs Allied soldiers can't or won't do. All this is background to the strange tale of what happened to her fiancé Edward Haslam in the site known as Two Storm Wood.
Spoiler alert: readers may need a strong stomach as details are revealed about a war than was even worse than you knew.
The Latinist: A Novel
by Mark Prins
Turning the Tables on an Ancient Myth (10/13/2021)
The Latinist by Mark Prins is an academic novel, featuring the power relationship between a male Oxford don and his promising female student and protégé. It is also is framed as a re-envisioning of the Apollo and Daphne myth—an ardent lover and a resistant maiden. The politics of the classical studies world is well presented, with some clever twists. This would be an entertaining and engaging book if it were not overburdened with the minutiae of Latin prosody. Clever parallels between the contemporary story and the classical narratives provide nice touches.
The author notes that much of the poetry in the text is fictional. Unfortunately, showcasing his Latin skills distracts and detracts from the main tale.
The Lost Notebook of Edouard Manet: A Novel
by Maureen Gibbon
Looking over the shoulder of an important artist (6/25/2021)
Art critics and museum docents work hard to interpret painter's masterpieces, but often they have little written material to guide their understanding. Maureen Gibbon has tried to get inside the head of modernist painter Edouard Manet by creating a fictional lost notebook covering the last few years of his life. Manet was already suffering from syphilis when the notebook begins in April 1880. The daily indignities of his health problems and the small pleasures of his sketching and interactions with his friends provide a look over the shoulder of a controversial artist who feels (and was) underappreciated. The most compelling sections deal with what may have inspired his famous painting, A Bar at the Moulin Rouge, and the sad-faced bar maid at its center. The format makes for a compelling book that sends the reader back for another look at the artist's work.
Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
by Russell Shorto
An Offering You Can't Refuse (2/23/2021)
This mash-up of memoir, history, and sociology is entertaining and enlightening. Russell Shorto demonstrates, through the history of his family and hometown, that the mythic big gestures and bloody violence of the mob portrayed in The Godfather books and movies are not the whole story. In small towns like the one in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that his Sicilian immigrant forebears settled, organized crime, mostly in many forms of gambling, was ubiquitous and sometimes nasty but nothing like the street wars of popular accounts.
Shorto's focus on his grandfather organizes the book and provides a good overview of the illegal, but not terribly secret, underground. Unfortunately the man for whom the author was named was a repulsive man whose mistreatment of his family, one hopes, was not typical. In describing the structure of the gambling operation in his home town, Shorto sketches parallels with the larger, corporate robber baron economy that kept its workers down while enriching those at the top. A deeper look at this symmetry would be a worthwhile extension of this book.
Migrations: A Novel
by Charlotte McConaghy
Prescient Tale of Extinction (4/15/2020)
Reading Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy during this period of life-changing events is chilling. The book is set in a time when climate change has led to extinctions of most forms of wildlife, which is shifting life for many people all over the world. Although Corvid-19 is not the same, the foreshadowing of uncontrolled and uncontrollable events is unmistakable
A migration is a voyage, which is what this book is—both a literal voyage following the last migration of the Arctic tern and Franny Lynch's own voyage seeking the clues to her life. Franny is both determined and desperate. You are drawn into her story and the lives of the oddly assorted crew of the fishing vessel which she inveigles into her quest. This is a sad but beautifully written book which slowly unfolds its mysteries and truths.
The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II
by Katherine Sharp Landdeck
What Did You Do in the War, Granny? (12/29/2019)
The Women with Silver Wings is a nice addition to the growing library of books about unsung women doing nontraditional jobs very successfully, especially during World War II. Women pilots were not allowed in the U.S. military until the 1970's, but more than one thousand women flew military planes during the second world war, mostly ferrying the planes from factories to places where there were needed. (They were considered civil servants rather than military.) This book tells the history of these piloting assignments and of some of the talented, brave, and determined women who undertook this mission. During the war they never received the military standing they deserved and it was not until more than thirty years later that Congress finally passed legislation giving these women some of what they were due. Although perhaps too much detail is provided on the post-war fight for military recognition, the first two-thirds of the book is a spirited description of lively young women doing a job they loved regardless of the obstacles in their path.
Actress
by Anne Enright
Actress stays too long on the stage (11/25/2019)
Actress starts out strong and I thought I would love it, but as it dragged on, not so much. The writing in the beginning is compelling. The many anecdotes, set in the present and the past, are interesting on their own but I am not sure they make up a finished book. The reader never learns the answers to some of the big questions. Maybe that is the author's point. For the reader it is frustrating and unsatisfying. Not a favorite.
The Seine: The River that Made Paris
by Elaine Sciolino
When a River is More than Water (9/20/2019)
From the source of the Seine (la Seine, always feminine) in Burgundy to its ultimate destination in the English Channel, Elaine Sciolino takes us on a glorious journey. We visit people living on house boats, barge operators, nearby vineyards, chateaus, and most of all, the fascinating spots along the river as it flows through Paris. Maps and wonderful photographs enhance the text. Each chapter has its own special charm. Imagine a whole chapter on bouquinistes or booksellers.
Reading and immersing myself in this history, travelogue, love story, was particularly timely for me as I am going to Paris soon. I plan to use her descriptions of the strolls along the river as my own secret guidebook. A true gourmet meal for those who love history and travel.
The Shadow King: A Novel
by Maaza Mengiste
Mythic Tale of a Forgotten War (6/25/2019)
The Shadow King is a beautifully written story of the war fought by the Ethiopians against the invading Italians in 1935. Mostly known by Westerners for the unsuccessful plea for help by Ethiopia's leader Haile Selasse to the League of Nations, this war was a lopsided and heart-breaking struggle in pastoral corner of Africa.
Kidane is a local leader who gathers a ragtag army to fight against the ferenji or foreigners seeking to conquer their land. Hirut is a young, courageous servant in Kidane's household in the rural countryside. Slowly, inexorably, Hirut and Kidane's wife Aster take larger roles in the guerrilla warfare. Their inevitable failure unrolls slowly in poetic language that has the reader wishing for a different ending.
The heroism of strong and proud men and women is wonder to read.
Travelers: A Novel
by Helon Habila
So Many Reasons to Leave Your Home Country (5/12/2019)
In a beautifully written series of six interwoven stories about African refugees in Europe, Travelers by Helon Habila is an effort to put a human face on the mass movement of people seeking peace and safety. As the stories fold into each other, the characters suffer ever greater traumas. There are no happy endings here. The travelers may not always make good decisions, but in their struggle to take control of their own destinies they have limited options.
Although the setting is Europe and Africa, the stories could easily be told of our own hemisphere. Bad things happen to good people everywhere. This book succeeds because it provides some insight in our confusing, distressing world.
D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
by Sarah Rose
The Courageous Women Who Became “D Day Girls” (3/28/2019)
D Day Girls is a readable introduction to the women who served in the UK Special Operations Executive (SOE) in France during World War II. For anyone who has read earlier histories of the brave activities of the SOE, this book does not add a lot of new material. A new generation of readers will learn about the dangers these women faced and their contribution to the fight against the Nazi occupation of France. The betrayals and the cooperation from the French population are part of the story.
One quibble is that for much of the book the expected time frame for D Day is 1943. That earlier D Day never materializes and with little transition we are suddenly reading about the events leading to the real 1944 D Day. But that aside this book should encourage readers to look at the full memoirs and other, more detailed books and films about the women of the SOE, those who survived and those who didn’t.
The Last Year of the War
by Susan Meissner
Last Year of the War (11/11/2018)
The Last Year of the War is at its best when it tells the story of Elise Sontag's experience as the child of a German immigrant falsely accused of being a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. Unlike the mass incarceration of Japanese families in the U.S., individual German citizens were arrested, and held with minimal due process, and offered internment with their families. Elise's parents and brother are sent to a camp in Texas and then "repatriated" to Germany for the last months of the war. The story is a compelling and interesting piece of historical fiction, with a believable account of how an American-born teenager might have reacted.
The book is less successful when it verges into soap opera after the war with the drama of Elise's marriages and interactions with her in-laws. The picture of Elise in old age feels contrived and does not add to an otherwise good book.
Sold on a Monday
by Kristina McMorris
Sold on a Monday (8/9/2018)
Sold on a Monday has a good premise—down-on-her luck mother puts her children up for sale. Who was she? Why did she need to do it? Who would buy someone else's children? Ah, the makings of a good tale of the anguish and poverty of the Depression.
But wait, what about these aspiring journalists and their woes—a son trying to impress his father, an unwed mother with a supportive family? The story takes a while to get going. And suddenly we are in the midst of a detective story—who was the mysterious man who bought the children, where did the mother go, what do mobsters have to do with this? So many threads, not all fully developed. There are certainly interesting, attention-getting twists here. A stronger writer might have used all this material to better effect.
Eternal Life
by Dara Horn
Eternal Life by Dara Horn (11/26/2017)
As Dara Horn imagines in her new book, Eternal Life, living forever is starting over again and again, losing your family in one life and popping up in another place with a new life. Like all her books, this one is grounded in Judaism. The first son, the one his mother, Rachel, saves by taking a vow never to die, is the real historical Yochanan, the primary author of the Mishnah, the basic document for Jewish communal religious practice after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. You could read Rachel's everlasting life as an analog of Yochanan's work. Similarly the contemporary Rachel's son's interest in blockchain or indestructible internet data relates to everlastingness.
The book abounds with morsels worthy of marking with post-it notes for later contemplation. The opening chapter provides hints of what is to come but is an annoyingly confusing start to a smart and intriguing book. Twinned plots set 2000 years apart force the reader to consider their commonalities. Lots to consider here for readers and book groups with a bent for philosophical discussion.
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