Lamp Black, Wolf Grey
by Paula Brackston
Magic, Mayhem, and Love (6/30/2015)
Set in Wales, Paula Black's " Lamp Black, Wolf Grey" mixes the 6th century with the 21st century in a romantic and suspenseful tale that includes two love stories intertwined along with real and fictional characters. And it works most of the time.
Laura Mathews, a successful artist has not succeeded in becoming a mother. She talks her husband Dan into buying an old house in the Welsh mountains hoping that the change will help them produce a child. She has not counted on meeting the handsome, charismatic Rys who is determined that they should become lovers.
The area is saturated in myth and legend with Merlin along with others becoming real people to sensitive artist Laura. A second plot tells of Merlin's doomed first love to Megan, a young woman very much like Laura. Now, there has to be a villain and the nasty Sir Geraint wrecks the love between Merlin and Megan.
I thoroughly enjoyed the tangled plot but, I must caution readers to remember this is fantasy and they must employ their suspension of disbelief for the novel to work.
Still Life Las Vegas
by James Sie
Searching for "Who I Am" (5/16/2015)
"Still Life Las Vegas," has to be one of the saddest coming of age stories I have ever read. Walter Valentine Stahl, a 17-year-old has lost his mother, his sister, and cares for his father, a weak, depressed man who cannot face lpife. The story is appropriately set in Las Vegas, a city filled with casinos that offer fake worlds to replace reality that is often too painful for those who flock to them.
Sie uses Greek mythological figures,once popular entertainers (Liberace) and shady characters along with young Walter's drawings to show us his desperate longing for stability and love, for discovering who he is
I'm not sure how I feel about the book. There is much to recommend it and just as much to demand it be reread. I want desperately to talk to another reader which suggests its potential as a book group choice.
He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him
by Mimi Baird with Eve Claxton
We Still Have Much to Learn (2/5/2015)
I sighed when this book arrived wondering why I had put it down as one of my choices. And then I began to read it. I finished it profoundly affected by the bittersweet life of Dr. Perry Baird.
The first 2/3rds of the book is Perry Baird's manuscript describing his life in various mental institutions written both when he was rational and when he was in a manic state. That Dr. Baird fully understood how manic depression(which we now know as bipolar) affects one, makes this section especially riveting as we enter the mind of this brilliant man both when it is rational and when it is manic. At times I felt as if his experience was happening in the 19th century.
The second part of the book details his daughter's childhood memories of her father and through her research an understanding of his disease and it's effects on him, his family and his colleagues. Mimi Baird's persistence in learning her father's story helps us readers understand how far we have come in diagnosing mental illness and how much we still must do to help those who gave it.
Brilliant and troubled, Perry Baird could not overcome a disease he had researched himself. As a friend of his early days said to his daughter Mimi, "He wanted the moon."
I strongly recommend book groups to select this book. There is much to discuss and ponder about mental disease and how we think of it and treat it today.
The Bloodletter's Daughter: A Novel of Old Bohemia
by Linda Lafferty
Cluttered (1/15/2015)
Lafferty's story suffers from inflating. Too much is not always a good thing. About 1/3 of the way through I began skimming. Too bad, because a more tightly constructed story could have made this a fascinating tale.
The Last Flight of Poxl West
by Daniel Torday
The Choices We Make (1/10/2015)
Early in Daniel Torday's novel "The Last Flight of Poxl West," Francine, Poxl's lover says "Isn't it silly... the choices we make." Poxl's life story is concocted of choices. He writes three novels that are rejected by publishers. Then he writes the book that will make him famous. He tells his nephew Eli, "I told the story the best I could... I wrote the book I needed to write." And it is indeed a gripping story filled with choices that will haunt both Poxl and Eli the rest of their lives.
As a young Jewish boy from Czechoslovakia, Poxl's life is filled with betrayals, with lovers, with working for the Civil Defense Department during the London Blitz and eventually flying for the RAF later in WWII. This part of the novel is filled with description so vivid that the reader can feel what it must have been like to be in London or on a bomber flying over Hamburg.
After the war, Poxl moves to New York where he becomes a college professor and a the faux uncle to a young Eli, the only son of a family that recognizes how much each needs the other. Poxl introduces Eli to great art, the theatre, literature and his war memories. Eli adores this man. But eventually both he and Poxl must come to terms with reality, with who they are what made them who they become.
The novel moves between Poxl's memoir and Eli's comments on their relationship. It is sweet and bittersweet and rich--a story that pulls you in. It is much more than a war narrative and a bildungsroman. In the end, you will lean back and think what it means to not only live your life but what it means to understand how live it.
The Same Sky
by Amanda Eyre Ward
A Satisfying Read (11/1/2014)
Too often an author struggles to make a two-strand plot come together successfully. In "The Same Sky,"
Amanda Eyre Ward avoids that problem in two ways. First, she balances each major character's story by alternating chapters devoted to each so readers can watch them develop equally. Second, it becomes obvious early that their lives will somehow intersect. Thus readers become involved equally in both stories. I liked this way of moving the story even though I knew where Ward was going.
We can believe the details of Carla's life in Honduras because we have read about the US border problems and are familiar with undocumented immigrant issues. Ward uses Carla's story to flesh out those issues. Alice's thread is also one that many readers who struggle with the fertility/infertility issues can identify with her. Both of these characters became real to me.
I would have no trouble recommending this novel to my book club members knowing that the issues it develops would stimulate a lively and worthwhile discussion.
Accidents of Marriage
by Randy Susan Meyers
Marriage is never simple (6/17/2014)
Randy Susan Meyers "Accidents of Marriage" is an intense and often painful look at what happens in a relationship in which the couple has lost the ability to communicate. Ben and Maddy have been married for over 15 years and have 3 children between the ages of 14 and 6. At one time a close and sexual relationship, they hardly know each other any more. Ben is a rising young lawyer who loves the limelight and Maddy a wife and mother who sees their life spiraling out of control. In a riveting opening we watch horrified and helpless as Ben's need to be in charge boils over into a dangerous car battle between himself and another car with tragic consequences for their entire family.
The story is told in alternate chapters through Ben, Maddy and Emma, their 14 year old daughter. Slowly we begin to see the dynamics of their relationships with each other, their grandparents and siblings, colleagues and friends. The novel demands that we understand our responsibility to each other as well as to ourselves without letting our egos rule.
Meyers handles those dynamics well and manages to create believable, rounded characters trying to come to terms with who they are within a husband and wife relationship as well as in their family and their concept of who and what they are as individuals. All of which makes "Accidents of Marriage" a wonderful choice for a book group discussion.
The Perfume Collector
by Kathleen Tessaro
Delightful, well wrought and mysterious love story (3/24/2014)
Kathleen Tessaro's "the Perfume Collector" is told through the lives of two women who struggle to find their niche, their place in life.
Eva d'Orsey, an orphaned 14 year old immigrant is put into service at the Warwick Hotel by her uncle who has decided that she is old enough to fend for herself. The Warwick caters to celebrities, the well-to-do and the hangers-on. Her story begins in 1928 and is juxtaposed with that of Grace Munroe a naive young woman from a sheltered background who has married an up and coming young lawyer and become part of sophisticated social life of 1955 London.
The book opens with Eva making a will that names Grace as the beneficiary of her considerable wealth. What follows is the story of Eva's attempts to rise above her humble beginnings through cunning and compromise. Her ability to use and understand numbers makes her a valuable asset to gambler Walter Lambert and also leads her into the acquaintance of Madame Zed, a woman who creates exquisite perfumes and Valmont her prodigy.
We follow Eva as she manipulates her way through a life filled with compromises from 1928 until 1954 when she leaves an expensive apartment and her stocks to Grace.
Grace is an unhappy young wife, bored with being a socialite who finds out that her husband has been cheating on her. Confounded by the letter from Eva's solicitor asking to come to Paris and claim her inheritance, Grace decides to do just that and escape her unhappy life.
From this point on we follow the lives of Eva and Grace in alternating chapters. While it isn't particularly difficult to figure out their relationship, that isn't what makes this novel worth reading. It is the tangles and complications which had caused their decisions, the fascinating people that enter their lives, how creating exquisite perfumes ties them together and romance that keep one reading.
Tessaro's story may not be new but is delightfully told. I loved the desperate Eve as she manipulates her way through seemingly impossible problems and the unhappy Grace who wants more than an empty life filled with pleasing her husband and fitting into the shallow life of a socialite.
House of Bathory
by Linda Lafferty
A Confusing Gothic Novel (1/7/2014)
Moving from 2010 to 1610 and back in 123 short chapters with the two intertwining stories and two-dimensional flat characters, "House of Bathory" became a nightmare read for me.
Obviously the author did a great deal of research into the life of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who is remembered as the Blood Countess and gave us a fairly well-developed description of Slovakia during her lifetime but too much of that knowledge gets lost in the jumble of mixing two time periods, two stories and two sets of characters. The contemporary story is much the bigger loser. The characters are one-dimensional and the story stretches credulity.
The author had much to build on in order to create a rich, multilayered story, but unfortunately it never came together.
The Daughters of Mars
by Thomas Keneally
The War to End All Wars (5/22/2013)
Too often novels about war are only incidentally about women or have secondary women characters. But in The Daughters of Mars Thomas Keneally puts them front and center allowing readers to see and experience what it was like to be a nurse in World War I, long before women were thought to be capable of doing more than cleaning up wards and wounded patients and following orders from anyone who wore pants.
Australians Sally and Naomi Durance are no nonsense young women who sign up to become military nurses in early 1915. During the next five years, they learn that there is much more to nursing than their training has prepared them for. From their first experience in the Dardanelles on the peninsula in Gallipoli where the Australians are brutally beaten in a battle the soldiers and their commanders had expected to win with ease, we follow them to France and England as they serve in hospitals and on the front. Sally, Naomi, and the other nurses fight battles to help severely wounded soldiers with serious head wounds, blindness, amputations, and PTSD using medical knowledge that was not much advanced from the American Civil War days. And they must also battle an ingrained male belief that women are indeed the weaker and less important of the sexes.
On a larger scale, Keneally shows the effects of this devastating war not only on the soldiers and the nurses, but also the civilians who struggle to understand the unimaginable. Lives are destroyed, love is found and lost. Keanelly spares us nothing.
I have but two complaints. First, a map of the Dardenelles and Gallipoli would have been especially useful. Next, I wish that Kenneally had simply ended the book without choices.
Read this book to experience life in a world that we know so little about and has as much to say about the human experience today as it does about life 100 years ago. Don't miss that experience.
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
by Therese Anne Fowler
The Other Side of Paradise (3/7/2013)
Like most readers, "The Great Gatsby" was my Fitzgerald source. I also knew Scott became an alcoholic and Zelda ended up in a home for people with mental problems and that is pretty much it.
Therese Fowler filled in the gaps in this well-written biographical novel. At first I felt as if I was reading about Daisy Buchanan, Gatsby's long lost love and thought I would have to force myself to continue. But Fowler rounded out these characters so I could see how little they knew about life, how truly lost they were.
This is the tragic story of lost souls who have no coping skills. Having read about the lost generation, I was able to see how ill-prepared Zelda and Scott were to live a fulfilling life.
Scott's alcoholism was fueled by a massive inferiority complex and Zelda's fragile mental state--Fowler suggests she was bipolar--along with other health problems and a dysfunctional marriage eventually contributed to a complete breakdown.
Zelda's story became a compelling read for me. When I finished, I couldn't let go of the tragic waste of a once vibrant person, actually persons.
This book should be read along with Paula Mclain's "The Paris Wife" which covers the same period of time of Hemingway's life. It is also worth rereading Scott's novels as well as Zelda's "Save Me the Waltz."
The One and Only Ivan
by Katherine Applegate
A wonderful Book for Middle-grade Children (2/15/2013)
Ivan is a silverback gorilla who has lived most of his life in a cage. He narrates the story. Through Ivan, an elephant named Stella, a stray dog named Bob and a young girl named Julie and a baby elephant named Ruby we learn what it must be like for animals to be captured and caged and even trained to do "do tricks" to live. Ivan narrates the story and we learn how he went from life in the wild with his "family" to being a pet and finally being used as a draw in a mall designed to bring in people.
Through these characters, Applegate helps readers understand and empathize with animals who are misused by them.
Applegate doesn't preach instead letting her characters tell their stories.
Whether a child reads this book or an adult reads it to children, this is a book worth getting.
Live by Night
by Dennis Lehane
Live By Night by Dennis Lehane (8/10/2012)
Dennis Lehane’s This Given Day, set at the end of WWI during the turbulence of political and social unrest, introduced young Danny Coughlin and his family. Live by Night follows that novel but is not so much a sequel as an exploration of Danny’s younger brother Joe.
Early in Live by Night, Joe Coughlin’s father tells him,”…violence breeds violence…what you put out into the world will always come back for you…but it never comes back in a way you can predict.” And Joe’s story proves his father right.
Lehane picks up the story of the Coughlins in 1925. Joe’s older brothers have left Boston, his mother is dead and his father, the Deputy Police Superintendent is on the way to becoming commissioner. Joseph senior has risen to his station by compromising his values, yet he has no illusions of who he is nor what his youngest son is becoming. He and young Joe are, like many fathers and sons, at loggerheads: young Joe rebelling and his father coming down on him hard. But finally, this is young Joe Coughlin’s story--the story of a conflicted young man who believes in morals, in helping those who struggle to maintain a decent living. He flinches at being called a gangster, preferring the term outlaw, which allows him to believe that he is a respectable citizen who must make violent choices. He is definitely not Michael Corleone, yet during his short life—the story spans just nine years—Joe will struggle with the two images and realities of his life.
The title sums up his story; Joe chooses to live by night when he can’t clearly see the world—his world—as it is. He could be the main character in a 1940’s John Garfield film or perhaps an early Cagney or Bogart film where the hero takes a wrong turn and cannot go back.
I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderfully written book and loved its flawed hero.
The Woman at the Light: A Novel
by Joanna Brady
The Woman at the Light (6/24/2012)
Joanna Brady’s The Woman of the Light will take many readers into a period of time and a setting with which they are not familiar: the Florida Keys from 1829 through 1884. Her descriptions of the area, of the way of life, especially for women and slaves, give us a look at life far removed from today and even from the South during the Civil War. She does this well. Unfortunately, her story lacks the depth needed to create believable and well-rounded characters. Emily Lowry is simply unbelievable. Even after all that happens to her, she remains the same as the woman we meet early in the story. Too often the cavalry comes at just the right time. What a shame, because Brady has the makings for a fascinating glimpse into history and a memorable character.
Take Me Home
by Brian Leung
Take Me Home by Brian Leung (4/21/2012)
Take Me Home is a historical novel about the clash between Chinese workers brought in by the Union Pacific to work in coal mines in Wyoming and the white workers who become convinced they are taking jobs from them and eventually rise up to run out the heathen Chinamen The author does a good job of letting us know how ignorance can create fear. Prejudice against the Chinese workers is fueled by the belief that they are subhuman with yellow skin, have tails, and dress strangely. The white workers are, for the most part uneducated and poor, so easily taken advantage of. So why give this book only a 3 when all of the above suggests it should be stronger? The 3 represents, for me, a poorly structured book that jumps between the late 19th and early 20th centuries and does a poor job of character development so that it is difficult to care about the characters. I just couldn't get involved in what should have been a riveting story. It does, however, show readers the prejudice that existed toward people who are so different from the majority race even when many of them are also immigrants who cannot speak English. So, a book that should have been riveting never quite gets there.
The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel
by Jamie M. Saul
The First Warm Evening of the Year by Jaime M. Saul (4/20/2012)
How easy it can be for our lives to fall into a pattern, to accept the known over the unknown, and fall into a never-ending routine. We can be so accustomed to the everyday that we forget a time when life was exciting, when we welcomed the new and looked forward to the unexpected. That is where the characters in Jaime Saul’s novel find themselves. All are in their 40’s and have put behind them the exciting days of their youth and early adulthood. Laura and Geoffrey shared a unique friendship in college. Laura married a fellow musician and became part of a well-known jazz group that had gigs worldwide while Geoffrey remained a bachelor who became successful in the arts, had sophisticated friends and a girl friend who demanded nothing of him. Marian, Laura’s best friend, married her brilliant high school sweetheart and together they developed an innovative and successful landscaping business. But then Laura dies of cancer at age 42 and names Geoffrey executor of her will. Arriving in her home town of Shady Grove, NY, he meets Marian and suddenly realized that “No one had ever quite looked at me like that. That’s when I fell in love with her.” But this is not a harlequin romance. Rather, it is a beautifully written story of how love can, if we are willing to let it, change our lives. As the title suggests, for Geoffrey and Marian their meeting is indeed “the first warm evening of the year” that suggests many more to come.
5 stars
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
by Katherine Boo
behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo (1/12/2012)
No matter where we live, whether in a middle class neighborhood, a gated community with multi-million dollar homes, or a slum, it is human nature to aspire to have a better life. Katherine Boo focuses on the poorest of the poor who live in a garbage strewn, makeshift settlement called Annawadi, which has grown up next to the airport and the expensive hotels that surround it in Mumbai, India. She takes us into the lives of several families and their attempts to better themselves. It is not difficult to identify with Manju, a young woman working on a college degree while also teaching children in a makeshift school and doing the drudge work of cooking and cleaning for her family. Manju dreams of making a good marriage while her brother Abdul earns most of the family’s income by sorting through garbage and selling what can be salvaged. Abdul lives for the moment knowing that he can be successful only by being invisible to those around him. Their mother, Zehunisia, cares about her 10 children, depends on Abdul and pushes Manju to work hard. Their father cannot work because garbage work had ruined his lungs. The dangers threatening them daily include disease, rats, and the knowledge that no one outside of their immediate family cares about them. Neighbors’ jealousy, corrupt officials, doctors, and even those who run facilities funded by outside sources to help the poor but use those funds for themselves threaten them. Until an unexpected tragedy puts them all at the mercy of a life with no life supports, the family continue to believe they will eventually succeed,.
This is a great read for book clubs. We hear much of India as a country that has millions of citizens bettering themselves but we seldom hear about those who are left behind to live in unimaginable circumstances. “behind the beautiful forevers” will open eyes and hearts and, hopefully, cause readers to become part of those who help “make incremental and meaningful improvement” for people living in such circumstances. To do so, however, we must first become aware of their real plight. And Boo's book is a perfect place to begin.
When She Woke: A Novel
by Hillary Jordan
When She Woke (11/13/2011)
Having taught Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" to numerous high school juniors, I bought the book as soon as I saw it advertised. And, yes, I can see the resemblance to Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" as well. But ultimately a book must be judged on its own merits. While Jordan's novel has a political point of view, an astute reader can look beyond that and see a terrific story with a likable if fallible protagonist who must come to terms with her own life as well as the society she finds herself in. And this is what happens. As she questions her life and the restrictions that govern it, she eventually makes choices that form her character.
This would be a wonderful book club read, especially if the members have differing political and religious beliefs but are strong enough not to believe that their own views are the only valid ones. It is also a book that forces readers to look around at the restrictions put on our lives and those of others through public attitudes, the press, government, and the instant opinions that take over in our instant news world.
Read it. Like it. Hate it. But be sure to talk about it.
The Return of Captain John Emmett: A Mystery
by Elizabeth Speller
The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller (9/5/2011)
While a mystery, Speller's novel also deals with the horrors of trench warfare and the relationships of officers--usually from the upper classes--and enlisted men. When Mary Emmett, sister of John Emmett, contacts Lawrence Bartram and asks him to look into her brother's suicide, Bartram reluctantly agrees. Bartram's search takes him on a journey that reveals as much about his own war experiences as the life of young British men of all classes who signed up to fight what they thought would be short and glorious tour of duty. Speller lets us see how the devastating mental effects the war had on many soldiers (who were often seen as cowards) as well as how the deaths of nearly a full generation of young men affects their own lives as well as those of their families. While Speller spends a bit too much time on a sometimes convoluted plot, the book is a fascinating read. Those who have read the books of Charles Todd that deal with WWI or who remembers the Stanley Kubrick 1950's film "Paths of Glory"should enjoy this novel.
The Forever Queen: Sometimes, a desperate kingdom is in need of one great woman
by Helen Hollick
The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick (8/27/2011)
Most historical novels about British royalty are set later than the early Anglo-Saxon period. This one takes place during the eleventh century and features "Emma," daughter of Richard I of Normandy,whose brother Richard II marries her to King Aethelred II (also known as Aethelred the Unready) who is 20 years older than the 13-year-old Emma in 1017. Emma produces two sons and a daughter for him but lives a wretched life. She is tough, however, and learns how to survive the life fate has given her. When her husband finally dies, she has no choice but to marry Cnut, the Viking invader who eventually rules Norway, Denmark and England. And this is only a third of her remarkable life.
While this fascinating story centers on Emma, it also tells us much about the early history of an often weak and unsettled England during a time when the lives of royalty and the upper classes were often filled with violence and danger while the peasants suffered for the foibles of their leaders. Hollick's characters are fully developed; her descriptions beautifully rendered and the violence of the times--burnings, beheadings, eyes gouged out--described in detail. Yet, the characters also loved and cared for their families and the people they ruled. Helen Hollick helps us understand this violent time while telling a rousing good story of a woman who became the mother of two kings and the great-aunt of William the Conquerer.
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