So many authors are writing a book that includes some aspect of the Holocaust tragedy as a theme to drive their plot forward. Terri Gerritsen has added her novel to the group. I am not complaining, this is a genre that draws me in. I personally cannot get enough of these kinds of books. And lately, some of these novels have had new different information and come at this topic from new and different angles that have not been explored before. This book, Playing With Fire, uncovers what was happening in Italy during the war years. It brings to the present day public the real event of a December evening in 1943 when the Jews of Venice were pulled from their beds and rounded up into a school which was used as a detention center for four days without food and then herded onto trains that would take them to Poland. Even as they were being loaded onto the train half starved they wrote letters to their loved ones, saying that they were alright, still thinking this was a temporary situation. This novel will help us never forget what happened during those years of horror.
This story helps the reader understand how only twenty per cent of the Jewish population of Italy perished during the Holocaust. Compared to other countries that is a small number and author Terri Gerritsen wondered why. From her research she found that Jews in Italy were well assimilated and physically indistinguishable from their neighbors. They had blended into the larger population. Almost have of the Jewish marriages were to non-Jews and before the war they held high positions in government, academics, business, law and medicine. During the war there were many who helped save the Jews at the risk of their own lives. Gerritsen's characters show you the best and the worst of human behavior.
This is the love story of Lorenzo Todesco and Laura Balboni, two young musicians who, though from different religious backgrounds at the dangerous time in 1939, are going to play a duet in a local music competition. The young musicians are also falling in love. We are invited inside the family homes of the Balboni family who will try to convince the Todesco family to leave Italy and also help others escape out of the country. The reader is also a fly on the wall in the Todesco family home and hears how it is that so many families ended up staying in their homes until it was too late to escape the Nazi's impeding takeover.
Based on true events in Venice during the war years this story unfolds in parallel with a modern day story of a violinist who finds a musical composition that intrigues her in an antiques store.
Julie Ansdell, a young mother, wife and violinist gets caught up in a plot she cannot understand after buying a book of music in an antiques store in Rome. When she comes home to practice this extraordinary composition, her three year old daughter seems to become violent. Is it the music or is there something else making little Lily do these terrible things? As Julie fights to save her life and her keep her family together she searches for the origin of the music and uncovers the tragic love story of Lorenzo and Laura.
"Incendio", the musical composition that moves this novel forward is a haunting, mournful waltz. So as an added bonus Terri Gerritsen not only has written this wonderful love story but she also actually wrote the piece of music she imagined that flows throughout book. She contracted with Yi-Ja Susanne Hou, the internatioanl concert violinist to record the music she had heard as she was writing this book. "Hou definitely has the passion to bring "Incendio" to life", wrote Gerritsen on her blog, "and she even added her own frantic cadenza to the end of the recording..."
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Sunday, December 27, 2015
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
"Everyone joins a band in this life. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings......As life goes on you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, schools, an army.....But, in each band you join you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it."
Mitch Albom has written this wonderfully sweet love story into his new novel, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, in such a creative, fun, musical style. Since he made his writing debut with Tuesdays With Morrie, which was such a popular book, I think this is his next best publication. This is a sweet story of the love between a parent and a child and between a man and a woman. It is also about the strength of love between between a man and his musical talent and a musician and his adoring public.
This story is narrated by "Music". It is told in wonderful prose using all the terms used to create music as the elements that compose a persons life story. Frankie Presto begins life in Spain as a lost child, spending time in an orphanage and being rescued by a factory owner, Baffa Rubio. When his adoptive father wants him to have the very best in life he takes him to an old, broken guitarist. Now blind and drinking to forget his sorrows, Francisco Tarrega, who Frankie will only know as "El Maestro", the once famous guitarist teaches Frankie everything he knows.
The book is written starting at the end of Frankie's life, as people are gathering to pay their respects to the rock star, Frankie Presto, at his funeral. The story is told in flashbacks alternating with the main plot by Music, "I am Music. I am here for the soul of Frankie Presto. Not all of it. Just the rather large part he took from me when he came into the world. However well used, I am a loan, not a possession. You give me back upon departure."
Interwoven are interludes by all the famous musicians who crossed paths with Frankie during his career. Such greats as Burt Bacharach, Lyle Lovett, Wynton Marsalis and Tony Bennett. Each has a chance as they are coming into the funeral pallor to talk about their relationship and connection with Frankie.
And of course we cannot forget the love of his life, Aurora. They met as children and their on and off again relationship spans their entire lives. They are members of a band that can never really break up. Their band comes together and pulls apart and then regroups in different configurations all through the book. It is the musical composition that flows throughout the book. In the book love stories are described as a symphonies, with an Allegro beginning, quick and spirited, an Adagio section, a Minuet/Scherzo part and the Rondo, which is the repeating theme.
Once you pick up this novel to read you will not want to put it down till the music ends.
Mitch Albom has written this wonderfully sweet love story into his new novel, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, in such a creative, fun, musical style. Since he made his writing debut with Tuesdays With Morrie, which was such a popular book, I think this is his next best publication. This is a sweet story of the love between a parent and a child and between a man and a woman. It is also about the strength of love between between a man and his musical talent and a musician and his adoring public.
This story is narrated by "Music". It is told in wonderful prose using all the terms used to create music as the elements that compose a persons life story. Frankie Presto begins life in Spain as a lost child, spending time in an orphanage and being rescued by a factory owner, Baffa Rubio. When his adoptive father wants him to have the very best in life he takes him to an old, broken guitarist. Now blind and drinking to forget his sorrows, Francisco Tarrega, who Frankie will only know as "El Maestro", the once famous guitarist teaches Frankie everything he knows.
The book is written starting at the end of Frankie's life, as people are gathering to pay their respects to the rock star, Frankie Presto, at his funeral. The story is told in flashbacks alternating with the main plot by Music, "I am Music. I am here for the soul of Frankie Presto. Not all of it. Just the rather large part he took from me when he came into the world. However well used, I am a loan, not a possession. You give me back upon departure."
Interwoven are interludes by all the famous musicians who crossed paths with Frankie during his career. Such greats as Burt Bacharach, Lyle Lovett, Wynton Marsalis and Tony Bennett. Each has a chance as they are coming into the funeral pallor to talk about their relationship and connection with Frankie.
And of course we cannot forget the love of his life, Aurora. They met as children and their on and off again relationship spans their entire lives. They are members of a band that can never really break up. Their band comes together and pulls apart and then regroups in different configurations all through the book. It is the musical composition that flows throughout the book. In the book love stories are described as a symphonies, with an Allegro beginning, quick and spirited, an Adagio section, a Minuet/Scherzo part and the Rondo, which is the repeating theme.
Once you pick up this novel to read you will not want to put it down till the music ends.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Recipes for Love and Murder
The title of this book caught my eye on the library shelf. There is nothing I like better than a book with recipes and a good mystery, so when you put both together....it is like eating a delicious meal with good company. Nothing is better. I can safely say that about this book also. It is sweet like a good dessert with enough spice thrown in like a delicious serving of your favorite meal.
This mystery novel written by Sally Andrew that takes place in South Africa, which for me is not a place I have read much about. The descriptions of the heat and dry climate are palpable. Andrew paints a picture of life in the Klein Karoo, a semi desert region of South Africa with extreme heat and cold, with low rainfall and cloudless skies. Each day the main character and heroine of our story Tannie Marie, (auntie, the respectful Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) eats her meals on her stoep. The author, Andrews uses words beautifully to paint a picture in the reader's mind, "I made some coffee and went and sat on the stoep to watch the day arrive. It happens all of a sudden in the Karoo. one minute the light is soft and full of the night's shadows, and then the sun is blasting everything awake. The Rooiberg changes from red to orange to ochre yellow before you can finish your cup of coffee." Throughout the book there are descriptions that wow the tastebuds and fill you heart with love.
Tannie Marie is a middle aged-widow who likes to eat and cook. She has a job at the local newspaper, the Karoo Gazette, writing a advice column that gives relationship advice along with recipes to feed the soul. She describes herself, "My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English and the languages are mixed up inside me. I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear I go back to Afrikaans again." In my mind she is a warm, cuddly, courageous and clever character. She works alongside the editor of the paper, Hattie Christie and Jessica, the young investigative reporter. The dialog is tight, quick and witty.
When a letter comes to the paper from a woman who writes that her husband is abusive, Tannie Marie sends her some advice and a recipe for slow cooked lamb curry. When the woman turns up dead, Marie and Jessica start to make inquires and snoop around the crime scene. They seem to keep getting in the way of the police investigation and that leads to relationships with the Detective Lieutenant Henk Kannemeyer and police officer, Reghardt Snyman. There are many twist and turns as the ladies at the newspaper happen to turn up every time there is new evidence in the murder case. Intermixed in the murder plot are the lovelorn letters and recipe advice that Tannie Marie continues to dole out in large portions as she learns to let go of her painful past and open up just like she is counseling the writers who seek her assistance in their relationships.
This book is infused with mouthwatering descriptions of both the South African landscape and the foods of the people living in the Karoo. The story flows even more musically with its mix of English, Afrikaan and South African terminology. There is a glossary in the back of the book to help with the translations.
This book took me to a new world that I have never traveled in before. I am transported to the Karoo, joining Tannie Marie, Jessie and Hattie both at the newspaper office and after a long day at work sitting on the stoep drinking lemonade and sharing rusks.
Reading some of the reviews of Recipes for Love and Murder, it looks like this is the beginning of a new series. If so, I will be watching closely for the next one. Tannie Marie could join my list of favorite detectives.
This mystery novel written by Sally Andrew that takes place in South Africa, which for me is not a place I have read much about. The descriptions of the heat and dry climate are palpable. Andrew paints a picture of life in the Klein Karoo, a semi desert region of South Africa with extreme heat and cold, with low rainfall and cloudless skies. Each day the main character and heroine of our story Tannie Marie, (auntie, the respectful Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) eats her meals on her stoep. The author, Andrews uses words beautifully to paint a picture in the reader's mind, "I made some coffee and went and sat on the stoep to watch the day arrive. It happens all of a sudden in the Karoo. one minute the light is soft and full of the night's shadows, and then the sun is blasting everything awake. The Rooiberg changes from red to orange to ochre yellow before you can finish your cup of coffee." Throughout the book there are descriptions that wow the tastebuds and fill you heart with love.
Tannie Marie is a middle aged-widow who likes to eat and cook. She has a job at the local newspaper, the Karoo Gazette, writing a advice column that gives relationship advice along with recipes to feed the soul. She describes herself, "My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English and the languages are mixed up inside me. I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear I go back to Afrikaans again." In my mind she is a warm, cuddly, courageous and clever character. She works alongside the editor of the paper, Hattie Christie and Jessica, the young investigative reporter. The dialog is tight, quick and witty.
When a letter comes to the paper from a woman who writes that her husband is abusive, Tannie Marie sends her some advice and a recipe for slow cooked lamb curry. When the woman turns up dead, Marie and Jessica start to make inquires and snoop around the crime scene. They seem to keep getting in the way of the police investigation and that leads to relationships with the Detective Lieutenant Henk Kannemeyer and police officer, Reghardt Snyman. There are many twist and turns as the ladies at the newspaper happen to turn up every time there is new evidence in the murder case. Intermixed in the murder plot are the lovelorn letters and recipe advice that Tannie Marie continues to dole out in large portions as she learns to let go of her painful past and open up just like she is counseling the writers who seek her assistance in their relationships.
This book is infused with mouthwatering descriptions of both the South African landscape and the foods of the people living in the Karoo. The story flows even more musically with its mix of English, Afrikaan and South African terminology. There is a glossary in the back of the book to help with the translations.
This book took me to a new world that I have never traveled in before. I am transported to the Karoo, joining Tannie Marie, Jessie and Hattie both at the newspaper office and after a long day at work sitting on the stoep drinking lemonade and sharing rusks.
Reading some of the reviews of Recipes for Love and Murder, it looks like this is the beginning of a new series. If so, I will be watching closely for the next one. Tannie Marie could join my list of favorite detectives.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Twain's End
What an incredible story. I just finished reading, Twain's End, by Lynn Cullen. This is a wonderful historical novel about Samuel Clemens, better known to the world as Mark Twain. The plot of this book follows his relationship with his secretary of almost seven years, Isabel Lyon.
This is a story that you can get lost in. The character development here is so wonderful that you really feel like you are Isabel's friend and you are hearing about her life with Twain from her. Though the story alternates chapters between Isabel's voice, her mother's viewpoint and Clara Clemens voice, you really feel like you are right there at the family table. Based on the real people in Samuel Clemens life, you are learning about the man behind the character, Mark Twain. Twain is the author of such classic works as, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer. He was a master storyteller, but his personal life was filled with anger, regret and insecurity. He created the persona he wanted to present to the outside world in Mark Twain. Only those closest to him knew his real personality. His wife Livy, who was an invalid and died young, helped create the character he wanted to be. His secretary Isabel helped him continue to present that image to the public for the rest of his life.
Even at her own expense, she was always true to the man Clemens wanted to be.
The book brings the reader into the intriguing though complicated world of the Clemens family. He has a strained relationship with his wife, who cannot get out of bed. He and Livy have lost a daughter, Suzy, to meningitis which has taken a toll on all the family interactions. He and his daughter, Clara, will have a difficult relationship throughout their entire lives and his daughter, Jean, is an epileptic, which Clemens never knows how to be around, so she will be sent away to an institution for many years. Then there is the jealous maid, Katy, who tries at every turn to make Isabel's life miserable. Isabel will be Sam's personal secretary for six years, managing all the household accounts and taking care of all the bills and Jean's healthcare.
Though she waits for him to propose marriage, she loves him unconditionally, and stands by him even though he does not ask for her hand in marriage. Isabel tells Sam in a heated moment, "You know that I am committed to you. Though you won't take me to your bed anymore, though you throw young women in my face, though you reject me at every given chance, I'm committed to you and I always have been. I have never given you a reason to think otherwise."
Such raw passion. Yet, Twain, maybe because he does love her, pushes her away. He says many times throughout the book and I think really believes, " I kill the people I love with words."
An amazing story about Mark Twain and some of the people he interacted with during his life time.
One of the interesting families also interwoven in this story is Helen Keller and her patrons, Ann Sullivan Macy and husband, John Macy. This is also an eye opening realistic interlude when Helen and the Macys come to visit the Clemens home. Also we travel with Twain and his family to Italy and then with Isabel and Twain to Bermuda and also along with Isabel and Clara to Nova Scotia.
Intriguing and surprising, Cullen has written a wonderful love story that keeps the reader entangled all the way to the end. We become voyeurs looking through the window at the tragic but beautiful love story of Isabel Lyon and Samuel Clemens.
This is a story that you can get lost in. The character development here is so wonderful that you really feel like you are Isabel's friend and you are hearing about her life with Twain from her. Though the story alternates chapters between Isabel's voice, her mother's viewpoint and Clara Clemens voice, you really feel like you are right there at the family table. Based on the real people in Samuel Clemens life, you are learning about the man behind the character, Mark Twain. Twain is the author of such classic works as, Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer. He was a master storyteller, but his personal life was filled with anger, regret and insecurity. He created the persona he wanted to present to the outside world in Mark Twain. Only those closest to him knew his real personality. His wife Livy, who was an invalid and died young, helped create the character he wanted to be. His secretary Isabel helped him continue to present that image to the public for the rest of his life.
Even at her own expense, she was always true to the man Clemens wanted to be.
The book brings the reader into the intriguing though complicated world of the Clemens family. He has a strained relationship with his wife, who cannot get out of bed. He and Livy have lost a daughter, Suzy, to meningitis which has taken a toll on all the family interactions. He and his daughter, Clara, will have a difficult relationship throughout their entire lives and his daughter, Jean, is an epileptic, which Clemens never knows how to be around, so she will be sent away to an institution for many years. Then there is the jealous maid, Katy, who tries at every turn to make Isabel's life miserable. Isabel will be Sam's personal secretary for six years, managing all the household accounts and taking care of all the bills and Jean's healthcare.
Though she waits for him to propose marriage, she loves him unconditionally, and stands by him even though he does not ask for her hand in marriage. Isabel tells Sam in a heated moment, "You know that I am committed to you. Though you won't take me to your bed anymore, though you throw young women in my face, though you reject me at every given chance, I'm committed to you and I always have been. I have never given you a reason to think otherwise."
Such raw passion. Yet, Twain, maybe because he does love her, pushes her away. He says many times throughout the book and I think really believes, " I kill the people I love with words."
An amazing story about Mark Twain and some of the people he interacted with during his life time.
One of the interesting families also interwoven in this story is Helen Keller and her patrons, Ann Sullivan Macy and husband, John Macy. This is also an eye opening realistic interlude when Helen and the Macys come to visit the Clemens home. Also we travel with Twain and his family to Italy and then with Isabel and Twain to Bermuda and also along with Isabel and Clara to Nova Scotia.
Intriguing and surprising, Cullen has written a wonderful love story that keeps the reader entangled all the way to the end. We become voyeurs looking through the window at the tragic but beautiful love story of Isabel Lyon and Samuel Clemens.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Plus One
Plus One by Christopher Noxon is what I might refer to as the modern art version of literature. TO me this is almost a non story. Yes there is a plot about a young couple, Alex and Figgy Sherman-Zicklin who find themselves in Hollywood, living the life on the fast track. But the plot is thin and the story is funny in that sad way that shows how unhappy the people are who live this fast paced lifestyle.
Alex Sherman-Zicklin has married his best friend, Figgy and they have hyphenated their last names and now have two children. Figgy's career takes off as a writer for a television show when her show wins an Emmy. Alex becomes the plus one on the Emmy invitation and in all aspects of their lives.
He decides house husband does not do him justice so he takes on the title "domestic first responder" and stays home to take care of the children, cook the meals and manage the household.
This story looks at the issues, in a funny sarcastic way, of being the stay at home dad, the kept husband, whose wife is the major bread winner and the unknown, unseen, plus one at parties and functions. As Figgy moves ahead we watch Alex work to figure out his role and his place in their relationship and to build his own self-esteem. Of course there is the so called friend leading him down the wrong path, Huck, who introduces Alex to all the wild side of being a plus one and makes Alex question who he really is and wants. Huck, who in the end shows Alex how to save himself and his marriage.
A cute quirky book that portrays what it is like to live above your means and always be trying to keep up with beautiful people. This is a story of being yourself and staying true to the morals and ideals that made you the family and couple you always were.
Alex Sherman-Zicklin has married his best friend, Figgy and they have hyphenated their last names and now have two children. Figgy's career takes off as a writer for a television show when her show wins an Emmy. Alex becomes the plus one on the Emmy invitation and in all aspects of their lives.
He decides house husband does not do him justice so he takes on the title "domestic first responder" and stays home to take care of the children, cook the meals and manage the household.
This story looks at the issues, in a funny sarcastic way, of being the stay at home dad, the kept husband, whose wife is the major bread winner and the unknown, unseen, plus one at parties and functions. As Figgy moves ahead we watch Alex work to figure out his role and his place in their relationship and to build his own self-esteem. Of course there is the so called friend leading him down the wrong path, Huck, who introduces Alex to all the wild side of being a plus one and makes Alex question who he really is and wants. Huck, who in the end shows Alex how to save himself and his marriage.
A cute quirky book that portrays what it is like to live above your means and always be trying to keep up with beautiful people. This is a story of being yourself and staying true to the morals and ideals that made you the family and couple you always were.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Nature of the Beast
Louise Penny is one of my favorite mystery authors. She writes a novel that contains a mystery within it. Her prose are beautiful and her character development over the course of the series has been in depth and personal. Reading each of the books that are published is getting back in touch with a group of friends and catching up on what has been happening in your lives since you last met.
She has created such a wonderful cast of characters living both in the village and the police officers who always come to Three Pines to solve the crimes there. I love everyone from retired Chief Superintendent, Armand Gamache to his assistant and now son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, to the new Chief Inspector, Isabelle Lacoste. Then there are the townspeople, Olivier and Gabri, who run the Bed and Breakfast and the Bistro, Ruth Zardo, with her pet duck, the resident poet, Clara, the artist, Myrna, who owns the bookstore and others who come and go through the series when needed to push forward the plot.
Also her descriptions of the village of Three Pines is so wonderful that while I am reading the book I can almost feel like I am there. Then when I finish I feel bad that the town I live in is not that small and tight knit. Sitting in my cold living room on a winter day reading about Reine-Marie and Armand Gamache I wish there was a bistro to walk across the common to and sit by the warm fire my friends and share news and drinks and lunch.
In this story a family living off more isolated in the forest of Three Pines comes to the forefront of the story when their son is killed in the woods. Penny for the first time in the book, brings in a real life historical case about Gerald Bull, a real man and scientist who was a arms designer. Bull with the help of some other scientists who worked on creating "Baby Babylon" a massive gun, built on the border of the Unites States and Canada in Quebec's Eastern Township. It was built to be the biggest missile launcher in the world. It was pointed at the United States.
Penny takes the facts of the case and builds it into the fabric of her characters in Three Pines, She dredges up the history of the case and ties it into the history of the town and the citizens who would have lived in the town at that time. As Gamache and his colleagues look into the murder many secrets are uncovered, feelings are explored and friendships are tested.
Once again Louise Penny has used her way with words to really dig deep and explore the human condition. " It feels like my bones are dissolving," said Evelyn. And Clara nodded. She knew the feeling. "Tell me," said Clara. She didn't ask, "Of what?" Clara knew what she was afraid of . And she knew the only reason Evelyn had allowed her past the threshold wasn't because of the casseroles she carried in her arms, but because of something else Clara carried. The hole in her own heart."
The words so descriptive you can picture not only the conversation but the feelings involved. Penny is a master story teller.
She has created such a wonderful cast of characters living both in the village and the police officers who always come to Three Pines to solve the crimes there. I love everyone from retired Chief Superintendent, Armand Gamache to his assistant and now son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, to the new Chief Inspector, Isabelle Lacoste. Then there are the townspeople, Olivier and Gabri, who run the Bed and Breakfast and the Bistro, Ruth Zardo, with her pet duck, the resident poet, Clara, the artist, Myrna, who owns the bookstore and others who come and go through the series when needed to push forward the plot.
Also her descriptions of the village of Three Pines is so wonderful that while I am reading the book I can almost feel like I am there. Then when I finish I feel bad that the town I live in is not that small and tight knit. Sitting in my cold living room on a winter day reading about Reine-Marie and Armand Gamache I wish there was a bistro to walk across the common to and sit by the warm fire my friends and share news and drinks and lunch.
In this story a family living off more isolated in the forest of Three Pines comes to the forefront of the story when their son is killed in the woods. Penny for the first time in the book, brings in a real life historical case about Gerald Bull, a real man and scientist who was a arms designer. Bull with the help of some other scientists who worked on creating "Baby Babylon" a massive gun, built on the border of the Unites States and Canada in Quebec's Eastern Township. It was built to be the biggest missile launcher in the world. It was pointed at the United States.
Penny takes the facts of the case and builds it into the fabric of her characters in Three Pines, She dredges up the history of the case and ties it into the history of the town and the citizens who would have lived in the town at that time. As Gamache and his colleagues look into the murder many secrets are uncovered, feelings are explored and friendships are tested.
Once again Louise Penny has used her way with words to really dig deep and explore the human condition. " It feels like my bones are dissolving," said Evelyn. And Clara nodded. She knew the feeling. "Tell me," said Clara. She didn't ask, "Of what?" Clara knew what she was afraid of . And she knew the only reason Evelyn had allowed her past the threshold wasn't because of the casseroles she carried in her arms, but because of something else Clara carried. The hole in her own heart."
The words so descriptive you can picture not only the conversation but the feelings involved. Penny is a master story teller.
Monday, November 30, 2015
The Theory of Death
Faye Kellerman has written another in a long line of mystery novels about Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker, the wonderful Jewish couple who solve crimes. The series started with Peter coming to solve a murder case at a mikvah where Rina was working. He solves the case, protects Rina and of course falls in love. Over the course of time and books, Rina and Peter have married, blended their families and had children of their own all while living in Los Angeles, Ca. They now have retired and are starting again in New York state with grown children and grandchildren.
They have moved from Los Angeles to upstate New York for their retirement and to be near all their children and grandchildren who are the New York City area. But of course Peter cannot sit around and he takes on a part time role in the local police department. In the last novel he also takes on a young partner who comes from a wealthy family. The young partner was shot in solving a crime and his father has given him an ultimatum to go to law school if he wants to inherit.
In this novel Tyler McAdams, the young assistant, is visiting the Deckers in Greenbury, NY to study for his finals at Harvard. He is a sarcastic young man with a distaste for money and doesn't live the fancy lifestyle he could be. He is hard working and loves working to solves mysteries with Peter.
Rina also gets involved because she loves to take in strays, as in young adults, and mentor them.
She is always feeding the detectives with good kosher meals. Along with the delicious food she also offers advice. Peter relies on her for support and appreciates her input.
This time the case they are working on looks like a suicide of a college student but when a college professor who this student was working with also turns up dead the questions turn from suicide to murder. There are a few red herrings as you are led to question the behavior of a few of the students and professors who are still on campus. There is a lot to learn both about the characters in the story and Kellerman adds in complicated information about what the students are studying, and writing their thesis on. We enter the world of vectors and math theories and secret cyphers that are very complicated. McAdams gets to shine as he explains these enigmatic formulas to Decker and helps him solve the crime.
They have moved from Los Angeles to upstate New York for their retirement and to be near all their children and grandchildren who are the New York City area. But of course Peter cannot sit around and he takes on a part time role in the local police department. In the last novel he also takes on a young partner who comes from a wealthy family. The young partner was shot in solving a crime and his father has given him an ultimatum to go to law school if he wants to inherit.
In this novel Tyler McAdams, the young assistant, is visiting the Deckers in Greenbury, NY to study for his finals at Harvard. He is a sarcastic young man with a distaste for money and doesn't live the fancy lifestyle he could be. He is hard working and loves working to solves mysteries with Peter.
Rina also gets involved because she loves to take in strays, as in young adults, and mentor them.
She is always feeding the detectives with good kosher meals. Along with the delicious food she also offers advice. Peter relies on her for support and appreciates her input.
This time the case they are working on looks like a suicide of a college student but when a college professor who this student was working with also turns up dead the questions turn from suicide to murder. There are a few red herrings as you are led to question the behavior of a few of the students and professors who are still on campus. There is a lot to learn both about the characters in the story and Kellerman adds in complicated information about what the students are studying, and writing their thesis on. We enter the world of vectors and math theories and secret cyphers that are very complicated. McAdams gets to shine as he explains these enigmatic formulas to Decker and helps him solve the crime.
The Hours Count
Jillian Cantor, has written another fabulous novel based on a real event in history but telling the story from a completely different viewpoint. Her last novel, Margot, is the story of Anne Frank, and what could have happened had they lived, taken from the sister's point of view. In this new book, The Hours Count, Cantor has written a plot that tells the story of the Cold War from the American perspective, and the paranoid fears Americans had toward Russian American citizens. This story is told by Millie Stein, a fictionalized neighbor that could have lived in the apartment building with the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
World War Two has ended and Americans have come home, but their celebration is short lived. Now there is the threat of Russia developing the atomic bomb and attacking America. Senator Joe McCarthy creates an atmosphere of paranoia that has citizens unable to trust their neighbors. He starts the House Un-American Activities Committee, holding hearings that accuse 200 US government employees of being members of the American Communist Party. There are trials where friends accuse friends and relatives turn in their relatives as communists.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only two Americans to be executed for espionage related to sharing information with the Russians, during the Cold War. To this day there is a question as to whether Ethel was really involved and to what extent Julius was involved. This novel uses the facts of the case and the descriptions known about Julius and Ethel and expands on those facts to create a story of what might have happened. Based on the premise that Ethel left her two young sons with a neighbor when she went to testify in court about her involvement with her husband, who had been arrested days before, Cantor develops her neighbor into Millie Stein and creates a back story that builds a tentative but friendly relationship between the two women.
The lonely housewife Millie is home with a son, who today would be diagnosed autistic, is trying to figure out how to take care of him and make friends with the other mothers in her apartment building. She is married to a Russian immigrant, older and uncommunicative. Millie realizes that she is stuck in an unhappy marriage while her new friends, Ethel and Julius seem to be so in love.
So many issues of the day are presented in this wonderful novel. Along with the Cold War and who you could trust are the ideas of marriage and divorce, birth control and abortion.
Though the lines can seem blurred between what really happened historically between 1947 and 1953 there are many actual references that are woven into the story. The Rosenbergs really did live on the 11th floor of a building in Knickerbocker Village, on the Lower East Side of New York. Also accurate are the references to the smallpox outbreak, the killer fog, the Dodgers vs Yankees World Series of 1949. Other references to Ethel making a voice recording for her son and participating in psychoanalysis along with the tensions between Julius and her brother David in their business are also factual.
This is a wonderful story of the Rosenbergs and whether you know the history or not you will enjoy this novel. Jillian Cantor gives the reader a very sympathetic side to the story of the Rosenberg family.
World War Two has ended and Americans have come home, but their celebration is short lived. Now there is the threat of Russia developing the atomic bomb and attacking America. Senator Joe McCarthy creates an atmosphere of paranoia that has citizens unable to trust their neighbors. He starts the House Un-American Activities Committee, holding hearings that accuse 200 US government employees of being members of the American Communist Party. There are trials where friends accuse friends and relatives turn in their relatives as communists.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only two Americans to be executed for espionage related to sharing information with the Russians, during the Cold War. To this day there is a question as to whether Ethel was really involved and to what extent Julius was involved. This novel uses the facts of the case and the descriptions known about Julius and Ethel and expands on those facts to create a story of what might have happened. Based on the premise that Ethel left her two young sons with a neighbor when she went to testify in court about her involvement with her husband, who had been arrested days before, Cantor develops her neighbor into Millie Stein and creates a back story that builds a tentative but friendly relationship between the two women.
The lonely housewife Millie is home with a son, who today would be diagnosed autistic, is trying to figure out how to take care of him and make friends with the other mothers in her apartment building. She is married to a Russian immigrant, older and uncommunicative. Millie realizes that she is stuck in an unhappy marriage while her new friends, Ethel and Julius seem to be so in love.
So many issues of the day are presented in this wonderful novel. Along with the Cold War and who you could trust are the ideas of marriage and divorce, birth control and abortion.
Though the lines can seem blurred between what really happened historically between 1947 and 1953 there are many actual references that are woven into the story. The Rosenbergs really did live on the 11th floor of a building in Knickerbocker Village, on the Lower East Side of New York. Also accurate are the references to the smallpox outbreak, the killer fog, the Dodgers vs Yankees World Series of 1949. Other references to Ethel making a voice recording for her son and participating in psychoanalysis along with the tensions between Julius and her brother David in their business are also factual.
This is a wonderful story of the Rosenbergs and whether you know the history or not you will enjoy this novel. Jillian Cantor gives the reader a very sympathetic side to the story of the Rosenberg family.
Friday, November 20, 2015
The Next Best Thing
Jennifer Weiner, the master of the chick lit novel has written another fun plot line.
This time her heroine is a young woman who comes to Hollywood, a naive, pure, ingenue.
Ruth Saunders was in a fatal car accident as a child. Her parents are killed and she is physically deformed. She is brought up by her grandmother who works hard to develop in Ruth a strong sense of positive self esteem despite scars on her face.
So this becomes the story of beauty and whether it is skin deep or who you are as a person. This light, fluffy plot takes on the larger issue of how people treat each other. How people react to a person when they can see a physical flaw. Whether it is scars on your face, color of your skin or sitting in a wheelchair, it can alter your first impression of the person you are talking to.
But also in the novel the author shows how fickle Hollywood can be. You can age out of popularity in this business, also how much you weigh and your body type are important to whether you will work or not in this industry.
Told around the story of Ruth and her vivacious grandmother, who pull up roots and move across the country so Ruth can try her hand at writing scripts for television. Her grandmother works as an extra and meets Maurice the new man of her dreams. "As it turned out, senior citizen like my grandmother, the ones who were both ambulatory and with-it enough to get themselves to the set, read a script, and take direction, were in great demand as extras."
So between funny episodes that tell the behind the scenes story of trying to make it big time in a competitive, back stabbing world, there are some tender moments as Ruth and her grandmother negotiate their lives together and in the world at large.
This time her heroine is a young woman who comes to Hollywood, a naive, pure, ingenue.
Ruth Saunders was in a fatal car accident as a child. Her parents are killed and she is physically deformed. She is brought up by her grandmother who works hard to develop in Ruth a strong sense of positive self esteem despite scars on her face.
So this becomes the story of beauty and whether it is skin deep or who you are as a person. This light, fluffy plot takes on the larger issue of how people treat each other. How people react to a person when they can see a physical flaw. Whether it is scars on your face, color of your skin or sitting in a wheelchair, it can alter your first impression of the person you are talking to.
But also in the novel the author shows how fickle Hollywood can be. You can age out of popularity in this business, also how much you weigh and your body type are important to whether you will work or not in this industry.
Told around the story of Ruth and her vivacious grandmother, who pull up roots and move across the country so Ruth can try her hand at writing scripts for television. Her grandmother works as an extra and meets Maurice the new man of her dreams. "As it turned out, senior citizen like my grandmother, the ones who were both ambulatory and with-it enough to get themselves to the set, read a script, and take direction, were in great demand as extras."
So between funny episodes that tell the behind the scenes story of trying to make it big time in a competitive, back stabbing world, there are some tender moments as Ruth and her grandmother negotiate their lives together and in the world at large.
Monday, November 16, 2015
The Lost WIfe
Alyson Richman seems to be turning out novels at an amazing speed. The Lost Wife is a wonderful story, full of historical accuracy of what life was like for Jewish families in Europe leading up to the takeover of Czechoslovakia and then in the concentration camp, Theresien.
Richman talks in an interview about overhearing a woman explaining at the hairdresser that she knew about a man and woman who found each other many years after the war, who though they were married they each thought the other spouse was dead. Richman who had been working on the idea for a book about an artist living in Theresien camp decided to use this idea as her jumping off point.
What a beautiful story she has written. The two elderly people meet for the first time in sixty years.
They have both lived long full lives thinking the other had died during the Holocaust. But through it all they never forgot the other. Richman tells the story of what happened and how they reach their current circumstances with alternating chapters telling the story from each perspective. The reader sees what happened throughout the war years and how the couple came together and how they ended up apart.
Her historical accuracy and descriptions of being in a concentration camp give the reader a way to really relate to the experiences of many people who lived through that time. Richman intersperses real people and events that happened in Theresien to give the reader a real understanding of life in that horrific environment.
A wonderful love story and a story that shows that a feeling of strength and determination can have such a strong effect on one's life. That people who overcame terrible odds, won against the war machine of WWII by having families and bringing new generations of children and grandchildren into the world to carry on their family names. That brave people risked everything to let the world know what was happening in the camps.
Richman talks in an interview about overhearing a woman explaining at the hairdresser that she knew about a man and woman who found each other many years after the war, who though they were married they each thought the other spouse was dead. Richman who had been working on the idea for a book about an artist living in Theresien camp decided to use this idea as her jumping off point.
What a beautiful story she has written. The two elderly people meet for the first time in sixty years.
They have both lived long full lives thinking the other had died during the Holocaust. But through it all they never forgot the other. Richman tells the story of what happened and how they reach their current circumstances with alternating chapters telling the story from each perspective. The reader sees what happened throughout the war years and how the couple came together and how they ended up apart.
Her historical accuracy and descriptions of being in a concentration camp give the reader a way to really relate to the experiences of many people who lived through that time. Richman intersperses real people and events that happened in Theresien to give the reader a real understanding of life in that horrific environment.
A wonderful love story and a story that shows that a feeling of strength and determination can have such a strong effect on one's life. That people who overcame terrible odds, won against the war machine of WWII by having families and bringing new generations of children and grandchildren into the world to carry on their family names. That brave people risked everything to let the world know what was happening in the camps.
Willful Behavior
Donna Leon has just published her 24th book in the mystery series following the police work of Commissario Guido Brunetti. I just discovered this author and character and read completely out of order book number 11, Willful Behavior.
This is a wonderfully written mystery story. The characters are well developed and you can get a great idea of who they are even jumping in the middle of the series. Leon writes such descriptive dialog and character representation that you feel like you know them even though you are meeting them for the first time. Leon does say that the time is irrelevant in her books. She does not really age her characters in real time. Brunetti loves to come home and eat lunch with his family. His wife Paola, a college professor, works in her home office and cooks gourmet meals for her family. Their son and daughter are typical children who in this book are just there in the background to help create the loving family life that is the back drop for Brunetti at the end of the day.
This was an intriguing mystery about a young college student who is killed and as the plot unfolds, it is suspected that she has connections to lost or stolen Holocaust artwork. We learn about the war years in Venice and how the government turned a blind eye to what was happening in Italy during the war. In this book Leon writes about the different attitudes Italians had during the war and afterwards. There is reference to resistance fighters, secrets of collaboration and the exploitation of the Italian Jews.
Leon writes with attention to detail, both in the meals Paola cooks for Brunetti and in the historical events she references throughout the novel. She expertly offers twists and turns that leave you surprised at the end of the book, about what really happened to victims in this case.
This is a wonderfully written mystery story. The characters are well developed and you can get a great idea of who they are even jumping in the middle of the series. Leon writes such descriptive dialog and character representation that you feel like you know them even though you are meeting them for the first time. Leon does say that the time is irrelevant in her books. She does not really age her characters in real time. Brunetti loves to come home and eat lunch with his family. His wife Paola, a college professor, works in her home office and cooks gourmet meals for her family. Their son and daughter are typical children who in this book are just there in the background to help create the loving family life that is the back drop for Brunetti at the end of the day.
This was an intriguing mystery about a young college student who is killed and as the plot unfolds, it is suspected that she has connections to lost or stolen Holocaust artwork. We learn about the war years in Venice and how the government turned a blind eye to what was happening in Italy during the war. In this book Leon writes about the different attitudes Italians had during the war and afterwards. There is reference to resistance fighters, secrets of collaboration and the exploitation of the Italian Jews.
Leon writes with attention to detail, both in the meals Paola cooks for Brunetti and in the historical events she references throughout the novel. She expertly offers twists and turns that leave you surprised at the end of the book, about what really happened to victims in this case.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
The Collector
The Collector is a artistic mystery written by Anne-Laure Thieblemont and translated by Sophie Weiner. Not only does the plot revolve around some ancient artwork being sold at auction and then disappearing, but the author writes in a very descriptive artistic style.
This is the story of Marion Spicer who works for an organization called Search Art with her best friend Chris. Marion spends her days looking through auction catalogs trying to spot works of stolen or lost art for this company and its clients. It is very apropos then when Marion finds out the father she thought had died when she was a child, was very much alive and had created a whole new persona for himself as Edmond Magni, a wealthy and well known collector of pre-Colombian art. Now he has really died and she las been named as his sole
Marion is left to inherit Magni's extensive collection of unique and famous sculptures if she can find three missing pieces within a time limit. This sets her off to face danger and intrigue where some unscrupulous dealers will do anything to protect their secrets.
The Collector is a fast paced story following the mystery of the artwork and the dealers who will do whatever it takes to protect the value of their collections. Though the characters are not well developed it is a fun novel with many twists and a surprising outcome. This book has all the elements of a good mystery, a few deaths and a cast of dangerous characters. You will be routing for Marion Spicer all the way to the end.
The author Anne-Laure Thieblemont was an investigative reporter in art trafficking and has met many famous art collectors. The Collector was her first mystery novel. When Anne-Laure was not writing she was out searching for gems and designing jewelry that she had made in Istanbul. She made her home in Marseilles. Unfortunately she passed away suddenly in 2015. This is sad on many levels including that there is a second book in this series, yet to be translated into English and then the series will end.
This is the story of Marion Spicer who works for an organization called Search Art with her best friend Chris. Marion spends her days looking through auction catalogs trying to spot works of stolen or lost art for this company and its clients. It is very apropos then when Marion finds out the father she thought had died when she was a child, was very much alive and had created a whole new persona for himself as Edmond Magni, a wealthy and well known collector of pre-Colombian art. Now he has really died and she las been named as his sole
Marion is left to inherit Magni's extensive collection of unique and famous sculptures if she can find three missing pieces within a time limit. This sets her off to face danger and intrigue where some unscrupulous dealers will do anything to protect their secrets.
The Collector is a fast paced story following the mystery of the artwork and the dealers who will do whatever it takes to protect the value of their collections. Though the characters are not well developed it is a fun novel with many twists and a surprising outcome. This book has all the elements of a good mystery, a few deaths and a cast of dangerous characters. You will be routing for Marion Spicer all the way to the end.
The author Anne-Laure Thieblemont was an investigative reporter in art trafficking and has met many famous art collectors. The Collector was her first mystery novel. When Anne-Laure was not writing she was out searching for gems and designing jewelry that she had made in Istanbul. She made her home in Marseilles. Unfortunately she passed away suddenly in 2015. This is sad on many levels including that there is a second book in this series, yet to be translated into English and then the series will end.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
The Rosie Project
Wow is all I can say to the wonderful world you fall into when you start reading this book.
The author, Graeme Simsion, really makes makes you feel like you are walking in Don Tillman's shoes as you follow his process to find a wife. Tillman is a professor at a small college who, it seems clear, is not only a science geek, but has some of the exact qualities of being somewhere on the autism spectrum that he is studying and is oblivious to that fact. As a running joke through out the novel characters keep telling each other, "Humans often fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others."
There is a wonderful cadence to the story as Don goes through the process of setting up his questionnaire based on his likes, dislikes and routines that he thinks will help him find the perfect woman to be his wife. He sets up the Wife Project with the help of a friend. His friend sends a young beautiful psychology student his way and he meets Rosie Jarman who is looking for her "real" father. Rosie's mother, before her death, told her that she had sex with a man in her graduating class from medical school and Rosie was the product of that escapade. Rosie has decided she wants to find this man and Don helps her with genetic testing, creating the Father Project.
Along the way on the their search Don and Rosie have many adventures. Don is having the best time of his life and is willing to postpone the Wife Project while helping Rosie. Through a series of well paced, funny hi -jinks and clever dialog, Simsion creates a moving, creative love story.
Though the ending starts to become clear early on the solid writing style and witting repartee keeps the reader engaged all the way to the end. Romantic but not sappy this is a fun book to read.
The author, Graeme Simsion, really makes makes you feel like you are walking in Don Tillman's shoes as you follow his process to find a wife. Tillman is a professor at a small college who, it seems clear, is not only a science geek, but has some of the exact qualities of being somewhere on the autism spectrum that he is studying and is oblivious to that fact. As a running joke through out the novel characters keep telling each other, "Humans often fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others."
There is a wonderful cadence to the story as Don goes through the process of setting up his questionnaire based on his likes, dislikes and routines that he thinks will help him find the perfect woman to be his wife. He sets up the Wife Project with the help of a friend. His friend sends a young beautiful psychology student his way and he meets Rosie Jarman who is looking for her "real" father. Rosie's mother, before her death, told her that she had sex with a man in her graduating class from medical school and Rosie was the product of that escapade. Rosie has decided she wants to find this man and Don helps her with genetic testing, creating the Father Project.
Along the way on the their search Don and Rosie have many adventures. Don is having the best time of his life and is willing to postpone the Wife Project while helping Rosie. Through a series of well paced, funny hi -jinks and clever dialog, Simsion creates a moving, creative love story.
Though the ending starts to become clear early on the solid writing style and witting repartee keeps the reader engaged all the way to the end. Romantic but not sappy this is a fun book to read.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
The Mystics of Mile End
Sigal Samuel has created a beautiful love story in her first novel, The Mystics of Mile End.
Written as a coming of age story, we hear the story from four viewpoints. First we hear the story from the point of view of a child, Lev. The Hebrew translation of Lev is heart. This is a story of the heart and how it can fall in love and how that love can be shattered. After hearing the story told by Lev we hear the story through the eyes of David, the childrens' father. Then we hear the story retold from Lev's sister, Samara's interpretation. This is always a terrific way to read a book, so that you are comparing the same life experience from the minds of many different characters. In each narration new perspectives of the same facts help to flesh out the reality of the situation. Then just when we think we have all the facts we hear the story from a fourth influential voice. Chaim Glassman, their neighbor, Hebrew teacher and Bar/ Bat Mitzvah tutor. From his vantage point both literally as he watches the comings and goings of the people in the neighborhood through his window, and also figuratively because he has the ear of his students. Glassman has an influence on the young minds he helps to mold.
This is a story of Kabbalah and the mystical traditions of Judiasm intertwined with the disappointments in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the feelings of loss in a family after a death. Looking for answers to the meaning of life and the reasons for loss, Kabbalah gives the characters in this book something larger than life to strive for. Each of the main characters in this story is searching for meaning in the hardness of everyday life. Each of the characters in this novel are struggling with their religious beliefs.
Mr. Glassman gives Lev and Samara the explanation of Kabbalah as the ultimate source of knowledge of the Jewish religion. Eating from the Tree of Life , Mr. Glassman explains will give
you the secret of how to live forever. Lev asks, "The Tree of Live is one of those secrets? What does it do". Mr. Glassman explains, "The most important one. Centuries ago, it became a very popular kabbalistic idea. You should better ask, what does it not do! The Tree of Life does everything! It is what God used to create the universe out of nothing. It has ten parts—ten vessels—and when God poured His light down into them, the whole world appeared. And so our holy sages taught that a person who wants to go back up to God has only to climb this same Tree."
The story takes place in Mile End, described as the half hipster, half Jewish religious neighborhood of Montreal Canada. This is where Lev and Samara are growing up with their father, the college professor, David and all the flawed neighbors. This is a sometimes humorous but always touching novel about the nature of life and the reason to exist. It is about family relationships, how fragile and easily misunderstood they can become. It is about silence and sound, looked at through a mathematical and scientific lens, and the need for human relationships.
Written as a coming of age story, we hear the story from four viewpoints. First we hear the story from the point of view of a child, Lev. The Hebrew translation of Lev is heart. This is a story of the heart and how it can fall in love and how that love can be shattered. After hearing the story told by Lev we hear the story through the eyes of David, the childrens' father. Then we hear the story retold from Lev's sister, Samara's interpretation. This is always a terrific way to read a book, so that you are comparing the same life experience from the minds of many different characters. In each narration new perspectives of the same facts help to flesh out the reality of the situation. Then just when we think we have all the facts we hear the story from a fourth influential voice. Chaim Glassman, their neighbor, Hebrew teacher and Bar/ Bat Mitzvah tutor. From his vantage point both literally as he watches the comings and goings of the people in the neighborhood through his window, and also figuratively because he has the ear of his students. Glassman has an influence on the young minds he helps to mold.
This is a story of Kabbalah and the mystical traditions of Judiasm intertwined with the disappointments in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the feelings of loss in a family after a death. Looking for answers to the meaning of life and the reasons for loss, Kabbalah gives the characters in this book something larger than life to strive for. Each of the main characters in this story is searching for meaning in the hardness of everyday life. Each of the characters in this novel are struggling with their religious beliefs.
Mr. Glassman gives Lev and Samara the explanation of Kabbalah as the ultimate source of knowledge of the Jewish religion. Eating from the Tree of Life , Mr. Glassman explains will give
you the secret of how to live forever. Lev asks, "The Tree of Live is one of those secrets? What does it do". Mr. Glassman explains, "The most important one. Centuries ago, it became a very popular kabbalistic idea. You should better ask, what does it not do! The Tree of Life does everything! It is what God used to create the universe out of nothing. It has ten parts—ten vessels—and when God poured His light down into them, the whole world appeared. And so our holy sages taught that a person who wants to go back up to God has only to climb this same Tree."
The story takes place in Mile End, described as the half hipster, half Jewish religious neighborhood of Montreal Canada. This is where Lev and Samara are growing up with their father, the college professor, David and all the flawed neighbors. This is a sometimes humorous but always touching novel about the nature of life and the reason to exist. It is about family relationships, how fragile and easily misunderstood they can become. It is about silence and sound, looked at through a mathematical and scientific lens, and the need for human relationships.
Friday, October 16, 2015
The Seven Good Years: A Memoir
In his newest book of short stories and essays, The Seven Good Years: A Memoir, a title that references the Bible story of Joseph, who interprets Pharaoh's dream that there would be seven good years of plenty and then seven bad years of famine, Etgar Keret has written some of his best material. He is a prolific short story author with five other books to his name. He writes about life in Israel, in a satirical, honest, truthful way. His stories can seem to be complex, contradictory and sometimes ambiguous but always at the end of each story, Keret has delivered a message, though sometimes coded, his point of view.
In this book, Keret, writes about experiences that happen during the first seven years of his son, Lev's life and the last seven years of his Dad's life. The last time he will be both a son and a father at the same time. He talks about life as a father and how the birth of a child changes a person. He writes about his relationship with his wife. He also writes about everyday life in Israel. He writes about his relationship with both his brother and his sister, who has become a strictly religious Orthodox Jew, the mother of 11 children.
In the essay titled, "Bombs Away" he gives you an idea what it is like to live in a country under fire.
He talks about a friend coming to visit who tells him that the Iranian leader wants the total destruction of Israel even at the expense of Iran itself. His friend says why continue with life if we are going to be destroyed. Etgar Keret explains to his wife what is the use of wasting time and money to fix up the house if we are all going to be decimated? So they start to let everything go. They do not do house repairs, his wife stops using the dishwasher and only washes dishes on an immediate need basis. They stop mopping the floor and removing the garbage. Then Keret has a dream that a peace treaty is signed with the Iranians. "That hit her really hard. Maybe S. was wrong", she whispered in terror. "Maybe the Iranians won't attack. And we'll be stuck with this filthy, rundown apartment, with debts and your students, whose papers you promised to give back in January and haven't even started to mark...." Finally, he writes, his wife fell back to sleep but he could not. "So I got up and swept the living room. First thing tomorrow morning, I will call a plumber."
This is the clever and interesting way he starts a story off in one direction and then twists around to make a point he wants to bring home about the way his family experiences life as Israelis and as second generation Holocaust survivors. He talks about his parents, his father who has recently passed away from cancer and his mother who remembers her life in World War II Poland.
He shares memories of his time spent with his father at the end of his life. He talks about visiting Poland on book tours and purchasing a house in Warsaw, Poland to honor his mother.
He talks about bringing up a child in Israel and how everyday activities of life there are punctuated by the attacks of rockets and bombs. How he and his wife try to keep life as normal as possible and also try to make staying safe a game, trying not to scare their son while explaining difficult everyday questions of a young child.
He writes about the feeling of writing his first story, which gives the reader insight into what he felt like being a young soldier int he Israeli army, "I wrote my first story twenty-six years ago, in one of the most heavily guarded army bases in Israel I was nineteen then, a terrible, depressed soldier who
was counting the days to the end of his compulsory service. I wrote the story during an especially long shift in an isolated, windowless computer room deep in the bowels of the earth. I stood in the middle of that neon-lit freezing room and stared at the page of print. I couldn't explain to myself why I wrote it or exactly what purpose it was supposed to serve. The fact that I typed all those made up sentences was exciting, but also frightening. I felt as if I had to find someone to read the story right away, and even if he didn't like it or understand it, he could calm me down and tell me that writing it was perfectly all right, and not just another step on my road to insanity."
As the reader, you can really feel like you are there in Keret's shoes. He writes with such passion and feeling communicating to readers outside Israel what it truly feels like to live under the pressures and uncertainty of everyday life there. Etgar Keret brings the conflict in Middle East right into your living room, where you are sitting comfortably on the couch reading, he makes you feel just a little bit uncomfortable.
In this book, Keret, writes about experiences that happen during the first seven years of his son, Lev's life and the last seven years of his Dad's life. The last time he will be both a son and a father at the same time. He talks about life as a father and how the birth of a child changes a person. He writes about his relationship with his wife. He also writes about everyday life in Israel. He writes about his relationship with both his brother and his sister, who has become a strictly religious Orthodox Jew, the mother of 11 children.
In the essay titled, "Bombs Away" he gives you an idea what it is like to live in a country under fire.
He talks about a friend coming to visit who tells him that the Iranian leader wants the total destruction of Israel even at the expense of Iran itself. His friend says why continue with life if we are going to be destroyed. Etgar Keret explains to his wife what is the use of wasting time and money to fix up the house if we are all going to be decimated? So they start to let everything go. They do not do house repairs, his wife stops using the dishwasher and only washes dishes on an immediate need basis. They stop mopping the floor and removing the garbage. Then Keret has a dream that a peace treaty is signed with the Iranians. "That hit her really hard. Maybe S. was wrong", she whispered in terror. "Maybe the Iranians won't attack. And we'll be stuck with this filthy, rundown apartment, with debts and your students, whose papers you promised to give back in January and haven't even started to mark...." Finally, he writes, his wife fell back to sleep but he could not. "So I got up and swept the living room. First thing tomorrow morning, I will call a plumber."
This is the clever and interesting way he starts a story off in one direction and then twists around to make a point he wants to bring home about the way his family experiences life as Israelis and as second generation Holocaust survivors. He talks about his parents, his father who has recently passed away from cancer and his mother who remembers her life in World War II Poland.
He shares memories of his time spent with his father at the end of his life. He talks about visiting Poland on book tours and purchasing a house in Warsaw, Poland to honor his mother.
He talks about bringing up a child in Israel and how everyday activities of life there are punctuated by the attacks of rockets and bombs. How he and his wife try to keep life as normal as possible and also try to make staying safe a game, trying not to scare their son while explaining difficult everyday questions of a young child.
He writes about the feeling of writing his first story, which gives the reader insight into what he felt like being a young soldier int he Israeli army, "I wrote my first story twenty-six years ago, in one of the most heavily guarded army bases in Israel I was nineteen then, a terrible, depressed soldier who
was counting the days to the end of his compulsory service. I wrote the story during an especially long shift in an isolated, windowless computer room deep in the bowels of the earth. I stood in the middle of that neon-lit freezing room and stared at the page of print. I couldn't explain to myself why I wrote it or exactly what purpose it was supposed to serve. The fact that I typed all those made up sentences was exciting, but also frightening. I felt as if I had to find someone to read the story right away, and even if he didn't like it or understand it, he could calm me down and tell me that writing it was perfectly all right, and not just another step on my road to insanity."
As the reader, you can really feel like you are there in Keret's shoes. He writes with such passion and feeling communicating to readers outside Israel what it truly feels like to live under the pressures and uncertainty of everyday life there. Etgar Keret brings the conflict in Middle East right into your living room, where you are sitting comfortably on the couch reading, he makes you feel just a little bit uncomfortable.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Fat Girl Walking
Ok, so the full title is Fat Girl Walking Sex, Food, Love and Being Comfortable in Your Skin...Every Inch Of It. This book with the mouthful of a title was written by Brittany Gibbons which she then also clarifies as Brittany Herself.
This was not a book I had heard about or read reviews about...it just jumped off the shelf at me while scanning the shelves for other books. The title caught my eye and how could I resist.
Ok so this is a fun book to read if you need a break in the literature you're reading.
It is not only light but frivolous. There are some funny vignettes, but unless you know Brittany
personally, I am not sure how important to know about her life as a heavy young person and what
it is like being over weight through high school and college. I was looking to see if I could relate to her or if she was offering some great advice to those of us who are also in the same weight class.
She is clever and witty...she has made a success of her life with a husband and three children, a TED talk and now a book. In the end weight isn't the deciding factor for happiness or success. But I still would like to lose those last 10 pounds ....I think I would be happier.
This was not a book I had heard about or read reviews about...it just jumped off the shelf at me while scanning the shelves for other books. The title caught my eye and how could I resist.
Ok so this is a fun book to read if you need a break in the literature you're reading.
It is not only light but frivolous. There are some funny vignettes, but unless you know Brittany
personally, I am not sure how important to know about her life as a heavy young person and what
it is like being over weight through high school and college. I was looking to see if I could relate to her or if she was offering some great advice to those of us who are also in the same weight class.
She is clever and witty...she has made a success of her life with a husband and three children, a TED talk and now a book. In the end weight isn't the deciding factor for happiness or success. But I still would like to lose those last 10 pounds ....I think I would be happier.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
House of Thieves
Charles Belfoure does not disappoint in this second novel. Quickly on the heels of his amazingly written and well received novel The Paris Architect, Belfoure has wowed me again. There is certainly a similar theme running through this story about an architect who seems to have no option but to compromise his ethical beliefs and use his knowledge of architecture for evil.
In this novel you are drawn into the world of New York in 1886. There is a clear division between the wealthy society life around Central Park and the underworld of life in the Tenderloin and Bowery districts of the City. The Cross family are distant, relatively poor relations to the famed Knickerbocker society. These families comprise the descendants of the original Dutch founders of the New Amsterdam. John Cross, a successful architect and his wife Helen, a society wife live with their three children, George, a Harvard graduate, Julia, a debutante and Charlie the youngest brother.
In an effort to help his son George out of a gambling debt, John Cross gets involved with the underworld gang, Kent's Gents, led by James T. Kent. Kent is a well-bred, Princeton educated man from a wealthy mercantile family in Baltimore. He trained as a doctor, but found that he got a adrenaline rush from committing crimes. He runs an extensive crime organization. Cross is just the type of partner he has been looking for. With Cross' knowledge of architecture his gang can increase their portfolio.
With wonderful descriptive prose Belfoure creates both the elite social society and their whirlwind high living party world and the colorful back streets underworld. He brings out the moral dilemmas that face both the people with everything and the people with nothing. He develops the characters so well you are not sure who is justified and who you think is guilty. As an architect himself, Belfoure has the insight and imagination to bring to the written page a character that designs buildings and then how to use that knowledge to outwit the security systems of that time period.
This is the beginning of the Pinkerton guard force and the security systems we use today.
In this novel you are drawn into the world of New York in 1886. There is a clear division between the wealthy society life around Central Park and the underworld of life in the Tenderloin and Bowery districts of the City. The Cross family are distant, relatively poor relations to the famed Knickerbocker society. These families comprise the descendants of the original Dutch founders of the New Amsterdam. John Cross, a successful architect and his wife Helen, a society wife live with their three children, George, a Harvard graduate, Julia, a debutante and Charlie the youngest brother.
In an effort to help his son George out of a gambling debt, John Cross gets involved with the underworld gang, Kent's Gents, led by James T. Kent. Kent is a well-bred, Princeton educated man from a wealthy mercantile family in Baltimore. He trained as a doctor, but found that he got a adrenaline rush from committing crimes. He runs an extensive crime organization. Cross is just the type of partner he has been looking for. With Cross' knowledge of architecture his gang can increase their portfolio.
With wonderful descriptive prose Belfoure creates both the elite social society and their whirlwind high living party world and the colorful back streets underworld. He brings out the moral dilemmas that face both the people with everything and the people with nothing. He develops the characters so well you are not sure who is justified and who you think is guilty. As an architect himself, Belfoure has the insight and imagination to bring to the written page a character that designs buildings and then how to use that knowledge to outwit the security systems of that time period.
This is the beginning of the Pinkerton guard force and the security systems we use today.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Candy Corn Murder
Leslie Meier has written another fun mystery story, this one is her 24th mystery celebrating yet another holiday. This time it is October and the residents of Tinker's Cove are about to celebrate Halloween. This year they are doing it up in a big way with a Halloween Festival that last for the week with different events every day.
There are the usual activities like the largest pumpkin competition and the how many candy corn in the jar contest. The scuba diving club wants to have a pumpkin carving contest underwater and then there is the cataplut a pumpkin the farthest contest. Just as the festival is in full swing a body is found. This time not only is Joan covering the murder for the newspaper, she has an added incentive to uncovering the murderer and why a man has been murdered in Tinker Cove. Her husband is the prime suspect in this case. She needs to clear not only the family's good name, but get her husband out of jail.
This is on the surface a cosy mystery story, but running through the book is the undercurrent of an important ethical problem that we are dealing with in society. The backdrop is a story of domestic violence and abuse. So while the town is celebrating Halloween, they are also gearing up and getting ready for a "Take Back the Night" march to lend their voices and send the message that violence against women must end now.
A fun mystery novel with a serious message.
There are the usual activities like the largest pumpkin competition and the how many candy corn in the jar contest. The scuba diving club wants to have a pumpkin carving contest underwater and then there is the cataplut a pumpkin the farthest contest. Just as the festival is in full swing a body is found. This time not only is Joan covering the murder for the newspaper, she has an added incentive to uncovering the murderer and why a man has been murdered in Tinker Cove. Her husband is the prime suspect in this case. She needs to clear not only the family's good name, but get her husband out of jail.
This is on the surface a cosy mystery story, but running through the book is the undercurrent of an important ethical problem that we are dealing with in society. The backdrop is a story of domestic violence and abuse. So while the town is celebrating Halloween, they are also gearing up and getting ready for a "Take Back the Night" march to lend their voices and send the message that violence against women must end now.
A fun mystery novel with a serious message.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Schlepping Through The Alps
Sam Apple, who I picture as a kind of nebbish, nerdy type from New York City, heads off to Austria to find out how people living there in the 2000's feel about anti-Semitism and Jewish people.
Apple meets Hans Breuer, an Austrian shepherd, who is performing Yiddish folk songs and showing a slide presentation of sheep herding in the Alps, in a classroom at NYU. He is intrigued and decides to leave his personal troubles behind in New York and apprentice with Hans herding sheep and understand how this young man has become the modern day "Wandering Jew".
This book follows Sam Apple has he tries to uncover the anti-Semitism he is positive is still prevalent in Austria today as he interviews the citizens of Vienna and other people Sam introduces him to as they travel the countryside with 625 sheep. Apple also interviews Hans and the people in his life to find out how a young half Jewish shepherd came to sing Yiddish folk songs as he wanders the hills.
This is both a look back at the history of Austria during World War Two and how far this generation is disconnected from their history.
Apple is searching for answers as he interviews Austrians sitting at a cafe about their feelings about Jews, the war and the concentration camps. Over and over he is told that one, the average person was unaware of what was happening in the camps, and two, that being born after the war, they have done nothing wrong and are not responsible for what happened during the war. Apple begins to wonder to himself, "Although I remained firm in my belief that Austria had a long way to go before the country would be ready to move on, I hadn't stopped to think exactly what it would take to satisfy me. Certainly Austria can't mull over it's war crimes forever. Vienna now had a beautiful memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazis; a new settlement had just been reached with the Jewish community on reparations for slave laborers; and the Austrian public schools now teach about the Holocaust and take students on trips to concentration camps. What, exactly, would the Austrians have to do before the country would be off the hook in my mind?"
Interestingly, Apple also wonders why Jews who had either escaped Austria during the war or had lived through the horrific camps during the war, came back to Austria to live after the war. Apple wonders if they have regretted those decisions over the years or if they feel they are welcome in the country today. He interviews a petite elderly woman, who was in England during the war and came back and worked at a Communist newspaper after the war, "I thought they were waiting for us to come home and build a new Austria. But I was wrong. Nobody wanted us. Nobody helped us find a job or a flat. It wasn't about being Jewish or Communist. They just thought we were on the wrong side." They thought the Jews had been on the side of the enemy. The woman explains there was a new "we" feeling and the refugees disturbed this feeling.
Sam Apple grows as a person as he travels with Hans, his wife, his mistress and Han's sons, living the way of life of a shepherd. He matures and learns about himself during this experience also. He reminisces about growing up with his grandmother, Bashy. He explores his relationships with women and why they don't workout or last. Like a boy on his Bar Mitzvah journey, Apple returns to New York, a man.
Apple meets Hans Breuer, an Austrian shepherd, who is performing Yiddish folk songs and showing a slide presentation of sheep herding in the Alps, in a classroom at NYU. He is intrigued and decides to leave his personal troubles behind in New York and apprentice with Hans herding sheep and understand how this young man has become the modern day "Wandering Jew".
This book follows Sam Apple has he tries to uncover the anti-Semitism he is positive is still prevalent in Austria today as he interviews the citizens of Vienna and other people Sam introduces him to as they travel the countryside with 625 sheep. Apple also interviews Hans and the people in his life to find out how a young half Jewish shepherd came to sing Yiddish folk songs as he wanders the hills.
This is both a look back at the history of Austria during World War Two and how far this generation is disconnected from their history.
Apple is searching for answers as he interviews Austrians sitting at a cafe about their feelings about Jews, the war and the concentration camps. Over and over he is told that one, the average person was unaware of what was happening in the camps, and two, that being born after the war, they have done nothing wrong and are not responsible for what happened during the war. Apple begins to wonder to himself, "Although I remained firm in my belief that Austria had a long way to go before the country would be ready to move on, I hadn't stopped to think exactly what it would take to satisfy me. Certainly Austria can't mull over it's war crimes forever. Vienna now had a beautiful memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazis; a new settlement had just been reached with the Jewish community on reparations for slave laborers; and the Austrian public schools now teach about the Holocaust and take students on trips to concentration camps. What, exactly, would the Austrians have to do before the country would be off the hook in my mind?"
Interestingly, Apple also wonders why Jews who had either escaped Austria during the war or had lived through the horrific camps during the war, came back to Austria to live after the war. Apple wonders if they have regretted those decisions over the years or if they feel they are welcome in the country today. He interviews a petite elderly woman, who was in England during the war and came back and worked at a Communist newspaper after the war, "I thought they were waiting for us to come home and build a new Austria. But I was wrong. Nobody wanted us. Nobody helped us find a job or a flat. It wasn't about being Jewish or Communist. They just thought we were on the wrong side." They thought the Jews had been on the side of the enemy. The woman explains there was a new "we" feeling and the refugees disturbed this feeling.
Sam Apple grows as a person as he travels with Hans, his wife, his mistress and Han's sons, living the way of life of a shepherd. He matures and learns about himself during this experience also. He reminisces about growing up with his grandmother, Bashy. He explores his relationships with women and why they don't workout or last. Like a boy on his Bar Mitzvah journey, Apple returns to New York, a man.
Friday, September 4, 2015
The Lost Concerto
The Lost Concerto, written by Helanie Mario is a fast moving suspense novel. You have to pay close attention to follow the political and espionage aspects of the story. The plot moves along at a slow musical andante pace as the storyline unfolds, the danger builds and the romance develops. Your pulse will quicken as the good guys fight the bad guys in a darkened church cloister. The character development is well done and the reader definitely finds himself entrenched in the plot hoping that certain characters to win and overcome the dark forces of evil.
A beautiful woman is killed as her son escapes and the question is left in the air, where is the important diary naming names and the lost manuscript of a never before heard Concerto by Beethoven? This is the beginning of an international spy thriller that keeps the reader trying to figure out as the intrigue is being uncovered. Reading along to keep track of who the good players are and who is lying to whom. Traveling between the United States and France to follow the killer and the search for the information that can reveal all. There are beautiful descriptions of the France both the countryside and the the city of Paris. There are also wonderful descriptions of music.
We meet Maggie O'Shea, a concert pianist who owns a music store, mother of Brian, who is also a consummate musician about to have his first child with his young wife. Sofia, Maggie's best friend has been murdered, believed by the hand of her husband, Victor Orsini and their young son has disappeared. Maggie's husband, Johnny has also died in a boating accident and she is having trouble getting on with her life. The players now start to get more complicated as CIA agent
Simon Sugarman enters the picture along with retired Afghanistan army veteran, Colonel Michael Jefferson Beckett is assigned to keep Maggie safe. There are a few more characters that run throughout the story and the plot picks up the pace as a deadline for finding and stopping a potential bombing comes closer. It is a story of love and loss and vengeance and courage.
This story touches on the idea that Hitler and the Nazis were confiscating the artwork of Jewish artists and collectors. But this is not really a book about that time period or the search and recovery of those artifacts. This is a modern day suspense novel filled with political intrigue that brings in the CIA and even the Yale University club, Skull and Bones. This is a novel pulled from the pages of leading newspapers. It is also based on the experiences of United States servicemen, for their remarkable patriotism, bravery, strength and sacrifice, who the author says, in her acknowledgments, the characters, "....Colonel Beckett and Zachary Law could not have 'come to life' without their stories and inspiration."
A beautiful woman is killed as her son escapes and the question is left in the air, where is the important diary naming names and the lost manuscript of a never before heard Concerto by Beethoven? This is the beginning of an international spy thriller that keeps the reader trying to figure out as the intrigue is being uncovered. Reading along to keep track of who the good players are and who is lying to whom. Traveling between the United States and France to follow the killer and the search for the information that can reveal all. There are beautiful descriptions of the France both the countryside and the the city of Paris. There are also wonderful descriptions of music.
We meet Maggie O'Shea, a concert pianist who owns a music store, mother of Brian, who is also a consummate musician about to have his first child with his young wife. Sofia, Maggie's best friend has been murdered, believed by the hand of her husband, Victor Orsini and their young son has disappeared. Maggie's husband, Johnny has also died in a boating accident and she is having trouble getting on with her life. The players now start to get more complicated as CIA agent
Simon Sugarman enters the picture along with retired Afghanistan army veteran, Colonel Michael Jefferson Beckett is assigned to keep Maggie safe. There are a few more characters that run throughout the story and the plot picks up the pace as a deadline for finding and stopping a potential bombing comes closer. It is a story of love and loss and vengeance and courage.
This story touches on the idea that Hitler and the Nazis were confiscating the artwork of Jewish artists and collectors. But this is not really a book about that time period or the search and recovery of those artifacts. This is a modern day suspense novel filled with political intrigue that brings in the CIA and even the Yale University club, Skull and Bones. This is a novel pulled from the pages of leading newspapers. It is also based on the experiences of United States servicemen, for their remarkable patriotism, bravery, strength and sacrifice, who the author says, in her acknowledgments, the characters, "....Colonel Beckett and Zachary Law could not have 'come to life' without their stories and inspiration."
My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past
Jennifer Teege writes passionately about her discovery has an adult that she has roots in the Nazi party. Having grown up as an adopted foster child she has always been aware of her racial difference to her adoptive family. Taken in by a loving family at the age of three and having been adopted at the age of six by the same family she has vague memories of her mother and maternal Grandmother.
When one day as a married adult woman with two children of her own, she opens a book in the central library in Hamburg, Germany to look at a man with familiar features and realize that is her Grandfather. The book she picks up has the curious title, I Have to Love My Father, Don't I? The subtitle of this book reads, The Life Story of Monika Goeth, Daughter of the Concentration Camp Commandant from "Schindler's List". As Jennifer Teege looks at the book in her hands she realizes that she is looking at a book written by her mother about her grandfather, Amon Goeth.
An extremely cruel and influential figure in the Nazi party, Teege is shocked to learn about her connection to this man. Her grandfather is exposed to the world in the movie, "Schindler's List".
Teege realizes the connection between Amon Goethe and Oscar Schindler, "....drinking buddy and adversary: Two men born in the same year, one a murderer of Jews, the other their savior."
Teege had spent four years living in Israel in her young adult years. She has a degree from Tel Aviv University in Middle Eastern and African studies. She is fluent in the Hebrew language. She has some very close friends who are Israelis, whose families escaped Eastern Europe and settled in Israeli living through and surviving the Holocaust.
Jennifer has to rethink her whole life experience. Teege finds her life divided between the two time periods she has lived in, "A before, when she lived without knowledge of her family's past, and an after, living with that knowledge." She spends quite a lot of time explaining in this book about how she comes to grips with the thought that she has the same blood following through her that Amon Goethe did. She looks into the history of the time, what Goethe did in the concentration camp and what his family, her grandmother and mother knew while he was carrying out these atrocities.
This book is the way Jennifer Teege worked through her discovery and how she has been able to make it part of her narrative. She has found a way to accept her ancestry and make the future better based on the past.
When one day as a married adult woman with two children of her own, she opens a book in the central library in Hamburg, Germany to look at a man with familiar features and realize that is her Grandfather. The book she picks up has the curious title, I Have to Love My Father, Don't I? The subtitle of this book reads, The Life Story of Monika Goeth, Daughter of the Concentration Camp Commandant from "Schindler's List". As Jennifer Teege looks at the book in her hands she realizes that she is looking at a book written by her mother about her grandfather, Amon Goeth.
An extremely cruel and influential figure in the Nazi party, Teege is shocked to learn about her connection to this man. Her grandfather is exposed to the world in the movie, "Schindler's List".
Teege realizes the connection between Amon Goethe and Oscar Schindler, "....drinking buddy and adversary: Two men born in the same year, one a murderer of Jews, the other their savior."
Teege had spent four years living in Israel in her young adult years. She has a degree from Tel Aviv University in Middle Eastern and African studies. She is fluent in the Hebrew language. She has some very close friends who are Israelis, whose families escaped Eastern Europe and settled in Israeli living through and surviving the Holocaust.
Jennifer has to rethink her whole life experience. Teege finds her life divided between the two time periods she has lived in, "A before, when she lived without knowledge of her family's past, and an after, living with that knowledge." She spends quite a lot of time explaining in this book about how she comes to grips with the thought that she has the same blood following through her that Amon Goethe did. She looks into the history of the time, what Goethe did in the concentration camp and what his family, her grandmother and mother knew while he was carrying out these atrocities.
This book is the way Jennifer Teege worked through her discovery and how she has been able to make it part of her narrative. She has found a way to accept her ancestry and make the future better based on the past.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal is a entertaining story complete with recipes. This is the story of Eva Thornvald as it unfolds mainly through stories of the people around her. Each chapter seems at first to be about someone completely different, sometimes at first seeming totally unrelated to the chapter before. Then it becomes clear how the chapter and the people in the story will fit into the life of Eva. Each of the chapters presents a dish or ingredient that will play an important role in Eva's life.
Eva is the child of a tragic beginning, the daughter of a chef and his wife who discovers she has more of a passion for wine than motherhood. From this union Eva is blessed with a once-in-a-generation palate. She has the ability to eat extremely hot peppers and to be able to taste the individual ingredients in a dish. As an adult Eva and a friend create a dining experience different than any other in the country. This sought after dinner reservation with Eva as the mystery chef creates the culmination of Stradal's expose of America's midwestern culinary experience. We are invited to experience the Lutheran church bake-off, the county fair, the chili-pepper eating contest and the opening of deer hunting season as they all relate to Eva's life.
We are also introduced to the beginning of the foodie culture of farm to table. Cooking with all natural fresh ingredients, using only locally sourced ingredients. This is a statement on the growing trend away from the comfort foods of our childhoods and toward the vegan, gluten free, soy free, GMO free, locally sourced recipes that are popular today. One of the character's, Pat Prager enters her peanut butter bars in the Petite Noisette recipe contest. When she sizes up the competition she quickly realizes she will lose. "Gone was the hope of five thousand dollars; gone was the job in the Cities and the dance lessons with Rodrigo. Pat had overreached; she had fallen prey to temptation, and her greed and selfishness had led to desires that had brought her to this sinful place. ..She suddenly felt sorry for these people and their awful food. She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what?"
This book is a fun story delivering a fun poke at the way society has gone through many changes in the way we eat from farm fresh ingredients to the quick packaged and modified foods we ate during the 1900s and now back to farm fresh non processed foods. It is also the story of Eva, who finds success and happiness in the food she prepares and shares with others.
Eva is the child of a tragic beginning, the daughter of a chef and his wife who discovers she has more of a passion for wine than motherhood. From this union Eva is blessed with a once-in-a-generation palate. She has the ability to eat extremely hot peppers and to be able to taste the individual ingredients in a dish. As an adult Eva and a friend create a dining experience different than any other in the country. This sought after dinner reservation with Eva as the mystery chef creates the culmination of Stradal's expose of America's midwestern culinary experience. We are invited to experience the Lutheran church bake-off, the county fair, the chili-pepper eating contest and the opening of deer hunting season as they all relate to Eva's life.
We are also introduced to the beginning of the foodie culture of farm to table. Cooking with all natural fresh ingredients, using only locally sourced ingredients. This is a statement on the growing trend away from the comfort foods of our childhoods and toward the vegan, gluten free, soy free, GMO free, locally sourced recipes that are popular today. One of the character's, Pat Prager enters her peanut butter bars in the Petite Noisette recipe contest. When she sizes up the competition she quickly realizes she will lose. "Gone was the hope of five thousand dollars; gone was the job in the Cities and the dance lessons with Rodrigo. Pat had overreached; she had fallen prey to temptation, and her greed and selfishness had led to desires that had brought her to this sinful place. ..She suddenly felt sorry for these people and their awful food. She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what?"
This book is a fun story delivering a fun poke at the way society has gone through many changes in the way we eat from farm fresh ingredients to the quick packaged and modified foods we ate during the 1900s and now back to farm fresh non processed foods. It is also the story of Eva, who finds success and happiness in the food she prepares and shares with others.
At The Water's Edge
I think I pinched a nerve in my back and spent the day on the couch trying not to move in order to avoid any pain. Susan Gruen's book At The Water's Edge help make the day pass quite quickly. I started the book int he morning and finished it as the sun went down. With a few breaks for food and such I could not put this novel down.
This book by Susan Gruen, author the Water For Elephants, has done what many authors find hard to do. She has written a second book that, I think, is even better than her first. Water For Elephants was a national best seller and told terrific story. She has outdone herself in this new novel. At The Water's Edge grabs the reader right from the Prologue and does not let you go until the very last page.
It is a story of love and betrayal beautifully portrayed by the main character, Maddie Hyde. It is 1944 in Philadelphia and while a war rages in Europe the wealthy families of Pennsylvania are living a blissfully ignorant lifestyle parties and worrying only about their social standing. When young Maddie's new husband, Ellis and his friend, Hank find themselves embarrassed by their behavior at a New Year's party they decide to reestablish their good names by traveling to the Scottish Highlands to hunt the Loch Ness monster.
Gruen uses factual newspaper stories from the time period to create the story of these three oblivious young socialites stumbling into the realities of World War II in the Europe. Gruen admits to playing loosely with dates but she does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of small town life during the blackout and food shortages the war brought to every town. The war continually runs through the background of this story. Slowly Maddie becomes aware of how real the war is as she sees wounded soldiers being shipped home and reads articles in the newspaper as the concentration camps are liberated. These incidents along with blackout curtains, food rationing and trips to the air raid shelter help to change Maddie into the likable character she becomes as the story progresses.
By the end of the book you are rooting for her, hoping the book will give her the ending she deserves to live happily ever after. This book is a terrific character study of the different people confronted by hardship, war and money. We are shown the motivation of the privileged society and how that can destroy you. The book is about the Maddie's awakening to the realities of the people she has surrounded herself with. There are monsters everywhere, some hidden like the Loch Ness monster, some out in the open like real life monster, Adolf Hitler and some that you find out about as you experience life.
This book by Susan Gruen, author the Water For Elephants, has done what many authors find hard to do. She has written a second book that, I think, is even better than her first. Water For Elephants was a national best seller and told terrific story. She has outdone herself in this new novel. At The Water's Edge grabs the reader right from the Prologue and does not let you go until the very last page.
It is a story of love and betrayal beautifully portrayed by the main character, Maddie Hyde. It is 1944 in Philadelphia and while a war rages in Europe the wealthy families of Pennsylvania are living a blissfully ignorant lifestyle parties and worrying only about their social standing. When young Maddie's new husband, Ellis and his friend, Hank find themselves embarrassed by their behavior at a New Year's party they decide to reestablish their good names by traveling to the Scottish Highlands to hunt the Loch Ness monster.
Gruen uses factual newspaper stories from the time period to create the story of these three oblivious young socialites stumbling into the realities of World War II in the Europe. Gruen admits to playing loosely with dates but she does a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere of small town life during the blackout and food shortages the war brought to every town. The war continually runs through the background of this story. Slowly Maddie becomes aware of how real the war is as she sees wounded soldiers being shipped home and reads articles in the newspaper as the concentration camps are liberated. These incidents along with blackout curtains, food rationing and trips to the air raid shelter help to change Maddie into the likable character she becomes as the story progresses.
By the end of the book you are rooting for her, hoping the book will give her the ending she deserves to live happily ever after. This book is a terrific character study of the different people confronted by hardship, war and money. We are shown the motivation of the privileged society and how that can destroy you. The book is about the Maddie's awakening to the realities of the people she has surrounded herself with. There are monsters everywhere, some hidden like the Loch Ness monster, some out in the open like real life monster, Adolf Hitler and some that you find out about as you experience life.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Two Bronze Pennies
Author Chris Nickson writes about Leeds, England at the turn of the century in a very realistic light. He writes historical mysteries with an attention to detail that makes the story come alive in the reader's mind. This reviewer has also been watching The Murdoch Mystery series on television recently, so the as Nickson describes the atmosphere of the area and places the characters in the historical time period, I can picture a similar scene from my television viewing.
Two Bronze Pennies takes place in Leeds focusing on the Jewish quarter of the city, the Leylands.
As Nickson describes the area the people are living in, the pubs, the housing and the police precinct the reader gets a feel for the poverty level and the way of life there. Our main character, Police Inspector Tom Harper is newly married to a pub owner, who also has opened bakery businesses in the area. She is a successful business woman, which it seems is unusual for the time, and a widow.
Harper is also not a wealthy man, he is a copper who works hard and long hours using whats available at that time in history to detect and solve murders. Criminology is much more simple and harder to solve then.
The case be investigated in this novel, the second int he series, is about a young Jewish man that has been murdered. The book exposes the undercurrent of anti- semitism that was event at that time in England. Also brought into this story is the disappearance of Louis Le Prince, a gentleman who was working on a motion picture camera invention. Le Prince disappeared and it was rumored that Thomas Edison living in New York had something to do with his disappearance. Edison was also at this time developing his moving motion picture camera. History has Le Prince getting the first patent for the camera, but Edison trying to dispute it. This book touches on that rivalry.
A fun mystery with wonderful attention to detail of the time and place in history. It would have been a bit better if it had tied the Le Prince mystery into the main murder mystery that Harper is investigating as a plot twist at the end. This reader was actually waiting for that to happen.
Two Bronze Pennies takes place in Leeds focusing on the Jewish quarter of the city, the Leylands.
As Nickson describes the area the people are living in, the pubs, the housing and the police precinct the reader gets a feel for the poverty level and the way of life there. Our main character, Police Inspector Tom Harper is newly married to a pub owner, who also has opened bakery businesses in the area. She is a successful business woman, which it seems is unusual for the time, and a widow.
Harper is also not a wealthy man, he is a copper who works hard and long hours using whats available at that time in history to detect and solve murders. Criminology is much more simple and harder to solve then.
The case be investigated in this novel, the second int he series, is about a young Jewish man that has been murdered. The book exposes the undercurrent of anti- semitism that was event at that time in England. Also brought into this story is the disappearance of Louis Le Prince, a gentleman who was working on a motion picture camera invention. Le Prince disappeared and it was rumored that Thomas Edison living in New York had something to do with his disappearance. Edison was also at this time developing his moving motion picture camera. History has Le Prince getting the first patent for the camera, but Edison trying to dispute it. This book touches on that rivalry.
A fun mystery with wonderful attention to detail of the time and place in history. It would have been a bit better if it had tied the Le Prince mystery into the main murder mystery that Harper is investigating as a plot twist at the end. This reader was actually waiting for that to happen.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
A Marriage of Opposites
A Marriage of Opposites is the newest book by the author of many incredible novels, Alice Hoffman.
Two of my favorite books, The Museum of Extraordinary Things and The Dovekeepers are her other most recent novels. All of these stories are based on real life historical situations that she has elaborated on to bring their stories to life. Hoffman has the wonderful ability to weave together threads of history into a vibrant, colorful fabric that catches the reader's eye.
This is the story of life on the island of St Thomas for the small Jewish community that had escaped the European Inquisition. It is the story of the Pizzaro family and the changing world of the early 19th century. Alice Hoffman has taken a story forgotten to history and brought it to life. Now we will now never forget the lives and love affair of Rachel and Frederic and the artwork of their son Camille Pissarro. She has introduced many of us to the painter Camille Pissarro and chronicled his family's history, imagining the intimate details of their everyday lives.
The story starts in 1807 on the island of St Thomas in the Jewish enclave of the port city, Charlotte Amalie. There the families of the congregation live, work and pray together. Secrets are kept and families help each other. In the greater community families help or shun each other. Rachel Pomie grows up with her best friend, Jestine, the daughter of the family cook, Adelle. Her father teaches her to read and write in not only English but also Hebrew, Danish and Dutch and to speak French. She is also educated in the finances of their family business. When she turns seventeen she is married to a widow to strengthen the two family businesses. Rachel is a strong willed woman who speaks her mind and takes control of her life. She finds true love and has 10 children, her youngest son becoming the famous artist, Camille Pissarro, who will later be known as one of the fathers of Impressionism.
Camille grows up to become a strong personality who speaks his mind and defies respectability. He is so much like his mother that most times they are at odds. They quarrel over his passion for art, "I see you did a great deal of work,' Rachel said, as she examined the contents of the trunk. 'If art can be said to be that.' She threw a look at her son and he shrugged, annoyed. 'It's a calling,' he said. 'Whether or not you wish to think of it as work is entirely up to you." Rachel asks him what he thinks about his art and he replies, "I think of it as salvation."
He thinks far ahead of his time to when people will be equal and difference of race, religion or social standing will not matter. He is an outcast among his peers. Rachel had aways wanted to go to Paris. Camille also looks for escape from the island of St. Thomas in Paris. The story will take the reader on a journey from St. Thomas to France through the generations of this fascinating family.
There are many relationships in this story and each one is a union of opposites. Each marriage is a connection of opposite personalities. So many of the relationships in this book are not recognized by the society they live in. So each of the main characters in this book develops the ability to stand up for what they believe in and defy the standards and conventions of the times.
This is a story of the hardships of the time and a love story between those of different classes, ages and religions and how society accepted or rejected the connections. A story of relationships and their conflicts that repeat themselves from generation to generation. Another wonderful novel by a masterful storyteller.
Two of my favorite books, The Museum of Extraordinary Things and The Dovekeepers are her other most recent novels. All of these stories are based on real life historical situations that she has elaborated on to bring their stories to life. Hoffman has the wonderful ability to weave together threads of history into a vibrant, colorful fabric that catches the reader's eye.
This is the story of life on the island of St Thomas for the small Jewish community that had escaped the European Inquisition. It is the story of the Pizzaro family and the changing world of the early 19th century. Alice Hoffman has taken a story forgotten to history and brought it to life. Now we will now never forget the lives and love affair of Rachel and Frederic and the artwork of their son Camille Pissarro. She has introduced many of us to the painter Camille Pissarro and chronicled his family's history, imagining the intimate details of their everyday lives.
The story starts in 1807 on the island of St Thomas in the Jewish enclave of the port city, Charlotte Amalie. There the families of the congregation live, work and pray together. Secrets are kept and families help each other. In the greater community families help or shun each other. Rachel Pomie grows up with her best friend, Jestine, the daughter of the family cook, Adelle. Her father teaches her to read and write in not only English but also Hebrew, Danish and Dutch and to speak French. She is also educated in the finances of their family business. When she turns seventeen she is married to a widow to strengthen the two family businesses. Rachel is a strong willed woman who speaks her mind and takes control of her life. She finds true love and has 10 children, her youngest son becoming the famous artist, Camille Pissarro, who will later be known as one of the fathers of Impressionism.
Camille grows up to become a strong personality who speaks his mind and defies respectability. He is so much like his mother that most times they are at odds. They quarrel over his passion for art, "I see you did a great deal of work,' Rachel said, as she examined the contents of the trunk. 'If art can be said to be that.' She threw a look at her son and he shrugged, annoyed. 'It's a calling,' he said. 'Whether or not you wish to think of it as work is entirely up to you." Rachel asks him what he thinks about his art and he replies, "I think of it as salvation."
He thinks far ahead of his time to when people will be equal and difference of race, religion or social standing will not matter. He is an outcast among his peers. Rachel had aways wanted to go to Paris. Camille also looks for escape from the island of St. Thomas in Paris. The story will take the reader on a journey from St. Thomas to France through the generations of this fascinating family.
There are many relationships in this story and each one is a union of opposites. Each marriage is a connection of opposite personalities. So many of the relationships in this book are not recognized by the society they live in. So each of the main characters in this book develops the ability to stand up for what they believe in and defy the standards and conventions of the times.
This is a story of the hardships of the time and a love story between those of different classes, ages and religions and how society accepted or rejected the connections. A story of relationships and their conflicts that repeat themselves from generation to generation. Another wonderful novel by a masterful storyteller.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy
Rachel Joyce has done a remarkable job of intertwining two completely separate books into feeling almost like you are reading one story. After reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and enjoying it for the beautiful writing style and descriptive passages where you felt like you were walking along side Fry as he walked to see his old work associate Queenie, this story just further develops the story. Where the story of Harold Fry ended without complete answers, The Love Song of Queenie Hennessy adds in the details and fleshes out the tale.
Again, Joyce writes with beautiful attention to detail. Queenie writes to Fry about creating a garden behind her seaside cottage. You can see the garden as Queenie sees it in her mind, ",,,the rock pools, the winding paths, the shell beds, the figures, the wind chimes, the flowering gorse topiaries that smelt of coconut when the sun was on them."
Queenie is spending her last days in the hospice, as she is dying from cancer. When Sister Mary Inconnu, one of the nurses caring for her, comes in one morning with a peach, Queenie tries to remind her that she cannot eat. The Sister has been helping Queenie write her memories down so that if she is not there when Harold Fry finally arrives her story will be there for him to read. She offers her the peach to distract her from the long wait for Fry. You can almost taste a peach as Queenie is encouraged to eat it. The description of the peach paints an almost sensual picture in the reader's mind, "I stroked the velvety red blush if its skin. I felt the give of its flesh as I pressed it with my fingertips. I traced the well-defined crease. The dimple at its center where once the fruit was attached to a stem, a tree, and grew there. This may sound strange, but I forgot briefly that you could eat a peach as well as touch it."
Then of course there is the interplay between Queenie waiting for Harold Fry as walks to visit her and Fry walking to see her. This could have easily have been written in alternating chapters in one book, but that might have taken away from the wonderful drama of each story. This book is cleverly written to remind you of the story of Harold Fry as the letters and notes he sends arrive at the hospice. There Queenie and the other people living out their last days wait with anticipation for each letter. The Sisters read the letters and post them on a bulletin board. The reader is reminded of locations and events that Fry encountered on his route. In this novel, as a letter from is delivered from each location, Queenie recounts more details of the story of their relationship.
Life tries to stand still while the patients in the hospice wait for Harold Fry to arrive. In the first book Harold Fry attracted a following and made an impact on peoples' lives as he was walking. Again in this book, Fry walking to see Queenie has an impact on the people in the hospice with her. This is a story of how the actions of each individual affect others around them in both positive and negative ways. That love is an emotion that can change lives and every act of kindness has repercussions.
A tender, feel good love story.
Again, Joyce writes with beautiful attention to detail. Queenie writes to Fry about creating a garden behind her seaside cottage. You can see the garden as Queenie sees it in her mind, ",,,the rock pools, the winding paths, the shell beds, the figures, the wind chimes, the flowering gorse topiaries that smelt of coconut when the sun was on them."
Queenie is spending her last days in the hospice, as she is dying from cancer. When Sister Mary Inconnu, one of the nurses caring for her, comes in one morning with a peach, Queenie tries to remind her that she cannot eat. The Sister has been helping Queenie write her memories down so that if she is not there when Harold Fry finally arrives her story will be there for him to read. She offers her the peach to distract her from the long wait for Fry. You can almost taste a peach as Queenie is encouraged to eat it. The description of the peach paints an almost sensual picture in the reader's mind, "I stroked the velvety red blush if its skin. I felt the give of its flesh as I pressed it with my fingertips. I traced the well-defined crease. The dimple at its center where once the fruit was attached to a stem, a tree, and grew there. This may sound strange, but I forgot briefly that you could eat a peach as well as touch it."
Then of course there is the interplay between Queenie waiting for Harold Fry as walks to visit her and Fry walking to see her. This could have easily have been written in alternating chapters in one book, but that might have taken away from the wonderful drama of each story. This book is cleverly written to remind you of the story of Harold Fry as the letters and notes he sends arrive at the hospice. There Queenie and the other people living out their last days wait with anticipation for each letter. The Sisters read the letters and post them on a bulletin board. The reader is reminded of locations and events that Fry encountered on his route. In this novel, as a letter from is delivered from each location, Queenie recounts more details of the story of their relationship.
Life tries to stand still while the patients in the hospice wait for Harold Fry to arrive. In the first book Harold Fry attracted a following and made an impact on peoples' lives as he was walking. Again in this book, Fry walking to see Queenie has an impact on the people in the hospice with her. This is a story of how the actions of each individual affect others around them in both positive and negative ways. That love is an emotion that can change lives and every act of kindness has repercussions.
A tender, feel good love story.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The Curse of the House of Foskett
This is the second in the Gower Street Detective series by M.R. Kasasian. In this mystery series we follow the life of Sidney Grice, a personal detective and his ward, March Middleton. It is set in 1882 Victorian England on the streets of London.
In this story March Middleton is recording the case of the Curse of the House of Foskett. She is also assisting her guardian, Grice in solving the deaths that are occurring through this book. The case appears on the surface to be a simple fact that the members of the group, the Final Death Society each are dying off in turn. According to Grice, what would you expect if you have signed up for a group whose purpose is to leave the fortune of all the members to the last person standing after all the others are dead.
But in every mystery things are not always what they seem. Author, Kasasian, has created a wonderfully colorful character in Grice, a bristly, irritable personal detective who is investigating the murders. His style of speech is sharp and witty. He is nasty and argumentative with everyone, even his ward, who I really think he likes. This rapier wit is delightful to read and really lends substance to Grice's character.
Grice on the hunt for clues puts the housekeeper in her place, "...'Hold still woman.' He picked a piece of fluff out of her wig and popped it into an envelope. 'I am most particular about whom I follow, why, when, and where, and I shall not have witnesses dictating the sequence in which I collate evidence. At best your suggestion is impertinent. At worst it might be construed as suspicious."
March Middleton who seems to be a young woman in her early twenties is a great match for her guardian. She is feisty and quick tongued also. She can match Grice's cutting repartee, comment for comment. Over dinner they banter back and forth, "He swallowed. 'You know March, your excursion seems to have done you some good. You have constructed an entire sentence of rational thought.' 'You are the only man I know who can turn a compliment into an insult.'"
The writing style is in this book is quite syncopated, with a quick fascinating style. Wonderfully engaging and fun to read. This reader will go back and read book one and look forward to another mystery featuring Sidney Grice and March Middleton.
In this story March Middleton is recording the case of the Curse of the House of Foskett. She is also assisting her guardian, Grice in solving the deaths that are occurring through this book. The case appears on the surface to be a simple fact that the members of the group, the Final Death Society each are dying off in turn. According to Grice, what would you expect if you have signed up for a group whose purpose is to leave the fortune of all the members to the last person standing after all the others are dead.
But in every mystery things are not always what they seem. Author, Kasasian, has created a wonderfully colorful character in Grice, a bristly, irritable personal detective who is investigating the murders. His style of speech is sharp and witty. He is nasty and argumentative with everyone, even his ward, who I really think he likes. This rapier wit is delightful to read and really lends substance to Grice's character.
Grice on the hunt for clues puts the housekeeper in her place, "...'Hold still woman.' He picked a piece of fluff out of her wig and popped it into an envelope. 'I am most particular about whom I follow, why, when, and where, and I shall not have witnesses dictating the sequence in which I collate evidence. At best your suggestion is impertinent. At worst it might be construed as suspicious."
March Middleton who seems to be a young woman in her early twenties is a great match for her guardian. She is feisty and quick tongued also. She can match Grice's cutting repartee, comment for comment. Over dinner they banter back and forth, "He swallowed. 'You know March, your excursion seems to have done you some good. You have constructed an entire sentence of rational thought.' 'You are the only man I know who can turn a compliment into an insult.'"
The writing style is in this book is quite syncopated, with a quick fascinating style. Wonderfully engaging and fun to read. This reader will go back and read book one and look forward to another mystery featuring Sidney Grice and March Middleton.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Gangsterland
How funny is Tod Goldberg's new novel, Gansterland? A laugh a page funny.
A book about a gangster who is relocated from Chicago to Las Vegas and given a new identity as a Rabbi!!
This is a really fun summer read. Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man with the Chicago Mafia Family. He is the best at getting in and out of a crime scene without a trace. Then in a job gone wrong he kills three FBI agents and leaves behind evidence to link him to the crime. His cousin Ronnie sells him to a Las Vegas gang to make him disappear. He undergoes some reconstructive surgery and resurfaces as Rabbi David Cohen.
As Rabbi Cohen studies to Talmud and Torah so he can minister to the congregants at Temple Beth Israel, former FBI agent Jeffrey Hopper is on the trail of Sal Cupertine. This is a fun book that shows the dark side of the Mafia in a funny light. Describes murder, then describes the Jewish thoughts on death, all in a light manner. Tod Goldberg says in an interview, "I knew I wanted it to be a mordantly funny book, but I also knew I wanted to deal with serious issues, and to strike that balance was hard, because if you do either one poorly, the other one feels gratuitous."
I think Goldberg has hit the mark, he has used a topic that is real, the Mafia in Las Vegas, Chicago and other major cities and he has made it funny. Rabbi David Cohen is finding his way in his new life, "It didn't matter to David what Ruben was paid. He just wanted to know how Bennie was keeping him quiet and what David would need to do if he wanted to keep him quiet..." He continues to work both as a hit man and a Rabbi, "It dawned on David then that he wouldn't just be presiding over the funerals of the war dead, that he might not know one body to the next who was a natural death verses a murder."
This is definitely a fun book to read and really got me thinking about the Jewish players in the history of the mob. I will be doing some more reading about this topic. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and many others, Tod Goldberg has whet my curiosity about this topic.
A book about a gangster who is relocated from Chicago to Las Vegas and given a new identity as a Rabbi!!
This is a really fun summer read. Sal Cupertine is a legendary hit man with the Chicago Mafia Family. He is the best at getting in and out of a crime scene without a trace. Then in a job gone wrong he kills three FBI agents and leaves behind evidence to link him to the crime. His cousin Ronnie sells him to a Las Vegas gang to make him disappear. He undergoes some reconstructive surgery and resurfaces as Rabbi David Cohen.
As Rabbi Cohen studies to Talmud and Torah so he can minister to the congregants at Temple Beth Israel, former FBI agent Jeffrey Hopper is on the trail of Sal Cupertine. This is a fun book that shows the dark side of the Mafia in a funny light. Describes murder, then describes the Jewish thoughts on death, all in a light manner. Tod Goldberg says in an interview, "I knew I wanted it to be a mordantly funny book, but I also knew I wanted to deal with serious issues, and to strike that balance was hard, because if you do either one poorly, the other one feels gratuitous."
I think Goldberg has hit the mark, he has used a topic that is real, the Mafia in Las Vegas, Chicago and other major cities and he has made it funny. Rabbi David Cohen is finding his way in his new life, "It didn't matter to David what Ruben was paid. He just wanted to know how Bennie was keeping him quiet and what David would need to do if he wanted to keep him quiet..." He continues to work both as a hit man and a Rabbi, "It dawned on David then that he wouldn't just be presiding over the funerals of the war dead, that he might not know one body to the next who was a natural death verses a murder."
This is definitely a fun book to read and really got me thinking about the Jewish players in the history of the mob. I will be doing some more reading about this topic. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and many others, Tod Goldberg has whet my curiosity about this topic.
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
The Book of Speculation
Author Erika Swyler has used her extensive imagination to create the history of the Simon Watson's family. Simon Watson is a young librarian living in a small beach town on the Long Island Sound. He is living alone in the house he and his sister grew up in. His parents have died and his sister moved out. The story begins with the house crumbling around him as he is let go from his job as a research librarian due to budget cuts. He is unable to find the funds to fix up the house and he is contemplating leaving town himself.
Involved in a romantic relationship with Alice, the girl next door, he feels unable to borrow the money to repair the house from her father, but Frank McAvoy seems intent on keeping the house in one piece.
Then one day a mysterious book arrives. It is the diary and log of a traveling circus that seems to have faced an unfortunate end. Simon's mother was a mermaid in a traveling circus before the children were born and his sister, Enola has gone off with a modern day traveling carnival.
In the book Simon finds mention of names he remembers his mother mentioning. This sets him doing what he does best, researching the characters in the book and finding out family secrets that have been hidden for generations.
When his sister announces she is coming for a visit and shows up with her electric performer boyfriend all the cards are now on the table and the pieces of the family history start to fall into place. Past and present start of come together and it is up to Simon to find out the common thread between the book and the Watson family.
In a story of parallels between Simon's modern day family tribulations and the historic traveling circus the reader gets the flavor of what it was like to travel with those 18th century circuses. Throughout the book there are also crude pictures and descriptions of the Tarot card readings, interesting to those who are intrigued by the psychic, spiritual world.
Written in similar fashion to Marisha Pessl's Night Film, and The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman, Erika Swyler has written a wonderful novel about the power of books, magic and families.
Involved in a romantic relationship with Alice, the girl next door, he feels unable to borrow the money to repair the house from her father, but Frank McAvoy seems intent on keeping the house in one piece.
Then one day a mysterious book arrives. It is the diary and log of a traveling circus that seems to have faced an unfortunate end. Simon's mother was a mermaid in a traveling circus before the children were born and his sister, Enola has gone off with a modern day traveling carnival.
In the book Simon finds mention of names he remembers his mother mentioning. This sets him doing what he does best, researching the characters in the book and finding out family secrets that have been hidden for generations.
When his sister announces she is coming for a visit and shows up with her electric performer boyfriend all the cards are now on the table and the pieces of the family history start to fall into place. Past and present start of come together and it is up to Simon to find out the common thread between the book and the Watson family.
In a story of parallels between Simon's modern day family tribulations and the historic traveling circus the reader gets the flavor of what it was like to travel with those 18th century circuses. Throughout the book there are also crude pictures and descriptions of the Tarot card readings, interesting to those who are intrigued by the psychic, spiritual world.
Written in similar fashion to Marisha Pessl's Night Film, and The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman, Erika Swyler has written a wonderful novel about the power of books, magic and families.
Friday, July 10, 2015
The Day of Atonement
Author David Liss once again has made history come alive. The Day of Atonement is a quick moving, suspenseful story of life in Lisbon during the Inquisition. His ability to write about historical facts interwoven with a personal story makes the time period feel realistic and immediate.
This is the story of what it was like to be a New Christian living and doing business during the 1700s in Lisbon, Portugal. When Sebastiao Raposa finds himself an orphan of the Inquisition at the age of 13, he escapes to London. There he is taken in by a benefactor, the notorious bounty hunter, Benjamin Weaver. He apprentices under Weaver for ten years and then returns to Lisbon disguised as a English businessman. He is anxious to have his revenge on the men who imprisoned his family.
Sebastian has become a practicing Jew in London even though his family had been "New Christians" Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity generations before but are still the subject of focus by the Inquisition. Foxx wrestles with atonement and sin. He goes to Lisbon with the intention of making the priests atone for their sins, but as he begins to exact his violence he is concerned that it will make him as evil as the Inquisition priests. "Yesterday I had killed in self-defense. Could I truly kill a man in cold blood? I had always believed that when the moment came, I would be equal to the task. Now here it was, and it was no longer simply a matter of rebalancing the scales of justice. A child's life, a parent's love, hung in the balance, and yet I found that murdering a man, even the most hated of men, was a harder thing than killing in the heat of conflict."
Of course all is not what it seems, as Sebastian Foxx, as he is now known, finds out. He is ruthless and unafraid, feeling he has nothing to lose. But as time goes by and he becomes embroiled in many different business plots, his feelings change and his hardness softens. This could be either an impediment to his success in exacting revenge or it could be his opening up to feelings of vulnerability again. He indeed has a conscience that guides him through life.
This is a book of suspense, subterfuge and romance. The reader is pulled in from the beginning and is left sitting on the edge of his chair till the final page. Characters who seem loyal may turn on you to save their own skin and fill their personal coffers. Foxx learns he cannot trust anyone until the final ship has sailed.
This is the story of what it was like to be a New Christian living and doing business during the 1700s in Lisbon, Portugal. When Sebastiao Raposa finds himself an orphan of the Inquisition at the age of 13, he escapes to London. There he is taken in by a benefactor, the notorious bounty hunter, Benjamin Weaver. He apprentices under Weaver for ten years and then returns to Lisbon disguised as a English businessman. He is anxious to have his revenge on the men who imprisoned his family.
Sebastian has become a practicing Jew in London even though his family had been "New Christians" Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity generations before but are still the subject of focus by the Inquisition. Foxx wrestles with atonement and sin. He goes to Lisbon with the intention of making the priests atone for their sins, but as he begins to exact his violence he is concerned that it will make him as evil as the Inquisition priests. "Yesterday I had killed in self-defense. Could I truly kill a man in cold blood? I had always believed that when the moment came, I would be equal to the task. Now here it was, and it was no longer simply a matter of rebalancing the scales of justice. A child's life, a parent's love, hung in the balance, and yet I found that murdering a man, even the most hated of men, was a harder thing than killing in the heat of conflict."
Of course all is not what it seems, as Sebastian Foxx, as he is now known, finds out. He is ruthless and unafraid, feeling he has nothing to lose. But as time goes by and he becomes embroiled in many different business plots, his feelings change and his hardness softens. This could be either an impediment to his success in exacting revenge or it could be his opening up to feelings of vulnerability again. He indeed has a conscience that guides him through life.
This is a book of suspense, subterfuge and romance. The reader is pulled in from the beginning and is left sitting on the edge of his chair till the final page. Characters who seem loyal may turn on you to save their own skin and fill their personal coffers. Foxx learns he cannot trust anyone until the final ship has sailed.
Monday, July 6, 2015
All the Light We Cannot See
All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr is an incredible book. It has won a few awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is well deserved. The author has created a story that describes life in France under the occupation of the German Nazis in such a realistic way. His characters are so believable and the reader can see why people acted and reacted to the war in the many ways they did. Each character shows a different style of personality and how people could either stand up to the tyrannical leaders that were demanding allegiance to the war effort or were caught up in the war machine and did not know how to break free.
This is the story of two children and their families and how in their parallel worlds their lives are affected by the war. First there is Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a young girl blinded by cataracts at the age of six. Her father works for the Museum of Natural History of Paris. When his daughter becomes blind he spends his time carving replicas of all the buildings in their neighborhood. Marie-Laure learns how to travel through her neighborhood by touching those models and memorizing their layout. This is the first literal definition of "light we cannot see".
In the country, lives Werner Pfennig, a young boy who has been orphaned by the mines that are the mainstay of income for the town. He and his sister live in the orphanage and he dreams of escaping the life ahead of him in the mines. The outbreak of war becomes his light out of the tunnel, but he cannot see where it will lead him. He has a gift of understanding how radios work and while in the orphanage, he and his sister, Jutta, listen to someone broadcasting on the radio late at night in French. Broadcasting on radio waves, another light that cannot be seen. The person on the radio talks about the brain's power to create light in the darkness. about science: “What do we call visible light?” the Frenchman asks. “We call it color. But . . . really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
Doerr creates Werner as such a believable character. He gives the reader wonderful insight into how a young man could be swayed to follow the army officers directions, building an angry man ready to fight against even an unarmed civilian. The Nazi military commander tells the boys, “You will all surge in the same direction at the same pace toward the same cause. . . . You will eat country and breathe nation.”
In this way Doerr makes the reader realize how Germans could turn in their Jewish friends and neighbors and how the soldiers in the German army could torture and send so many Jews and others to the concentration camps.
Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris for the small town of Saint Malo on the Brittany coast. Her father carves her another set of buildings for this small village and gifts her with braille copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Her father is arrested and Marie -Laure shows her true strength of character through her ability to survive in the home of her great uncle and to join the resistance, again learning her way around the town by memorizing the replica her father built her.
Doerr has built a story here that covers so many of the different situations that were faced throughout the war by people on many different sides of the conflict. His descriptions are realistic and you become so attached to the characters that you can feel what they are struggling with as they grow and change through out the novel.
This is the story of two children and their families and how in their parallel worlds their lives are affected by the war. First there is Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a young girl blinded by cataracts at the age of six. Her father works for the Museum of Natural History of Paris. When his daughter becomes blind he spends his time carving replicas of all the buildings in their neighborhood. Marie-Laure learns how to travel through her neighborhood by touching those models and memorizing their layout. This is the first literal definition of "light we cannot see".
In the country, lives Werner Pfennig, a young boy who has been orphaned by the mines that are the mainstay of income for the town. He and his sister live in the orphanage and he dreams of escaping the life ahead of him in the mines. The outbreak of war becomes his light out of the tunnel, but he cannot see where it will lead him. He has a gift of understanding how radios work and while in the orphanage, he and his sister, Jutta, listen to someone broadcasting on the radio late at night in French. Broadcasting on radio waves, another light that cannot be seen. The person on the radio talks about the brain's power to create light in the darkness. about science: “What do we call visible light?” the Frenchman asks. “We call it color. But . . . really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
Doerr creates Werner as such a believable character. He gives the reader wonderful insight into how a young man could be swayed to follow the army officers directions, building an angry man ready to fight against even an unarmed civilian. The Nazi military commander tells the boys, “You will all surge in the same direction at the same pace toward the same cause. . . . You will eat country and breathe nation.”
In this way Doerr makes the reader realize how Germans could turn in their Jewish friends and neighbors and how the soldiers in the German army could torture and send so many Jews and others to the concentration camps.
Marie-Laure and her father leave Paris for the small town of Saint Malo on the Brittany coast. Her father carves her another set of buildings for this small village and gifts her with braille copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Her father is arrested and Marie -Laure shows her true strength of character through her ability to survive in the home of her great uncle and to join the resistance, again learning her way around the town by memorizing the replica her father built her.
Doerr has built a story here that covers so many of the different situations that were faced throughout the war by people on many different sides of the conflict. His descriptions are realistic and you become so attached to the characters that you can feel what they are struggling with as they grow and change through out the novel.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
The Book of Aron
The Book of Aron, author Jim Shepard points out, on the book's cover, is a novel. Though at the end when you read through the acknowledgements he does write that he used factual material about Janusz Korczak's Ghetto Diary; The Selected Works of Janusz Korczak among other sources about living in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust.
The Book of Aron is the story of life in Poland as Germany starts its march on Poland and its containment of Jewish citizens into smaller and small ghetto areas that become known as the Warsaw Ghetto. We start with Aron, also known by family and friends as Sh'maya, narrating the story of his life. He lives with his family, two older brothers and one younger brother, and his parents in the Polish countryside. His father gets a job at a fabric factory in Warsaw and the family moves to Zamenhofa Street in the city. There at the age of eight he makes his first real friend Lutek. By the time he is ten the war has started. Aron and Lutek find that they have a knack for sneaking around unnoticed. They can bring home some stolen food for their families. They can sneak out through a hole in the wall, out of the Ghetto, and bring back items to trade for food and other necessities. He and Lutek meet Boris, Adina and Zofia and become a small gang of bandits, smuggling and trading contraband to help their families survive.
This story describes from Aron's point of view how as life slowly changes, the children and adults living in the Ghetto slowly adapt to the new routines. You feel like you are there suffering with the sickness, lice and starvation the people are experiencing. You can understand how Aron feels and reacts to the circumstances of the hand he has been dealt. As the walls of the Ghetto squeeze in tighter and more and more of the area is quarantined for typhus, Aron is approached by the Jewish Yellow police, who want him to work as an informer. Aron has to wrestle with his conscience and work to stay alive and one step ahead of the blackmailers, Jewish, Polish and German Police.
Aron ends up in the orphanage, with Dr. Janusz Korczak, his childhood changed forever by the war, "We were eating less at meals and everyone was frantic about it. If we finished our portions too soon we had a longer wait until the next meal and our torture grew. All anyone could think about was the table's next loaf of bread. In the isolation ward when the soup kettle went round a forest of little hands rose from the beds. We had soupy oat flour cooked in water and horse blood curdled in pieces and fried in a pan. It looked like scraps of black sponge and tasted like sand. On Sabbath a broth of buckwheat and lard."
Shepard has written this novel in such a convincing voice that the reader will much more clearly understand the dilemmas and choices people had to make to survive these horrific times.
The Book of Aron is the story of life in Poland as Germany starts its march on Poland and its containment of Jewish citizens into smaller and small ghetto areas that become known as the Warsaw Ghetto. We start with Aron, also known by family and friends as Sh'maya, narrating the story of his life. He lives with his family, two older brothers and one younger brother, and his parents in the Polish countryside. His father gets a job at a fabric factory in Warsaw and the family moves to Zamenhofa Street in the city. There at the age of eight he makes his first real friend Lutek. By the time he is ten the war has started. Aron and Lutek find that they have a knack for sneaking around unnoticed. They can bring home some stolen food for their families. They can sneak out through a hole in the wall, out of the Ghetto, and bring back items to trade for food and other necessities. He and Lutek meet Boris, Adina and Zofia and become a small gang of bandits, smuggling and trading contraband to help their families survive.
This story describes from Aron's point of view how as life slowly changes, the children and adults living in the Ghetto slowly adapt to the new routines. You feel like you are there suffering with the sickness, lice and starvation the people are experiencing. You can understand how Aron feels and reacts to the circumstances of the hand he has been dealt. As the walls of the Ghetto squeeze in tighter and more and more of the area is quarantined for typhus, Aron is approached by the Jewish Yellow police, who want him to work as an informer. Aron has to wrestle with his conscience and work to stay alive and one step ahead of the blackmailers, Jewish, Polish and German Police.
Aron ends up in the orphanage, with Dr. Janusz Korczak, his childhood changed forever by the war, "We were eating less at meals and everyone was frantic about it. If we finished our portions too soon we had a longer wait until the next meal and our torture grew. All anyone could think about was the table's next loaf of bread. In the isolation ward when the soup kettle went round a forest of little hands rose from the beds. We had soupy oat flour cooked in water and horse blood curdled in pieces and fried in a pan. It looked like scraps of black sponge and tasted like sand. On Sabbath a broth of buckwheat and lard."
Shepard has written this novel in such a convincing voice that the reader will much more clearly understand the dilemmas and choices people had to make to survive these horrific times.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
The Travels of Daniel Ascher
Deborah Levy- Bertherat has written this short but fascinating story. It has been translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. What a wonderful story of a great uncle who travels around the world and writes adventure stories for children. Great-uncle Daniel is the life of the kids table at family holiday meals. All the children in the family are reading his books and following the heroic journeys of Peter Ashley-Mill, in the Black Insignia series. All the children except Helene. She never liked the books as a child. She also was very critical of her uncle, who wrote under the pen name H.R. Sanders. Now she is living in the upstairs apartment owned by Great- uncle Daniel Roche or is it Daniel Ascher?
Helene meets a fellow student, Guillaume who is quite enthusiastic about the Black Insignia series of books and thrilled to meet the author. Guillaume can quote from the books. He encourages Helene to read the books and they discuss them in detail. As Helene gets to know her uncle better she starts to see similarities between him and his character. She also begins to question the memories of her childhood when Uncle Daniel would come to visit and the stories she heard at home about his childhood.
When a postcard he sends her from one of his trips turns out to be false, she starts to search for her uncle and uncover his past. This book takes a very subtle approach to the Holocaust and the Jews escape or capture from Germany. Without too much detail of the atrocities of war this beautiful story makes clear what happened to Jewish families and how some people were able to escape while others were not. The book also shows how their war experience can affect them for the rest of their life.
Helene meets a fellow student, Guillaume who is quite enthusiastic about the Black Insignia series of books and thrilled to meet the author. Guillaume can quote from the books. He encourages Helene to read the books and they discuss them in detail. As Helene gets to know her uncle better she starts to see similarities between him and his character. She also begins to question the memories of her childhood when Uncle Daniel would come to visit and the stories she heard at home about his childhood.
When a postcard he sends her from one of his trips turns out to be false, she starts to search for her uncle and uncover his past. This book takes a very subtle approach to the Holocaust and the Jews escape or capture from Germany. Without too much detail of the atrocities of war this beautiful story makes clear what happened to Jewish families and how some people were able to escape while others were not. The book also shows how their war experience can affect them for the rest of their life.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Safekeeping
OK I get it, life is not all peaches and cream. There is not always a happy ending in real life. But, when you are reading a book, can't there be just a little bit of an suspension of disbelief??? Many times when you delve into a great novel, you are looking for that escape from all the real world problems and hoping that for these characters, in this one instance, this time there may be some chance for a different outcome.
Author, Jessamyn Hope has written just that type of novel. Set in Israel during the peace talks of 1994, between Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin, Hope has written a wonderful multi layered story of life on a kibbutz. taking the reader back to the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel and the beginning of kibbutzim, she has created characters than span the generations.
Together for one summer are six diverse people thrown together to work through their various problems and escape their pasts. On Kibbutz Sadot Hadar their lives intersect and each plays off the others as they attempt to the trajectory they were on. Adam, a young drug addict, trying to rectify his past crimes and honor his Holocaust refugee grandfather comes to the kibbutz to find a woman his grandfather loved fifty years before. He is trying to track down the mystery woman and return a brooch to her for his grandfather, but she seems to elude him. Also volunteering on the kibbutz are a few other lost souls trying to turn their lives around. Ulya, an ambitious, Soviet emigre who wants to see New York City; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir the Israeli teenager who wants to escape to America and become a musician; and Ziva, the old Zionist Socialist firebrand who help found the kibbutz.
As we get to know each of the characters we learn about their background and how they ended up on the kibbutz and where they wish they were going. Then we see how the interactions between people and the experiences that happen to them in every day life and dramatically change the course of their
plans. In this novel you need to be careful you get attached to because just like in real life, things don't always end up perfect and happy for everyone. Just when you are routing for a character, they can take a downward spiral and change course and even if you are hoping they will straighten themselves out, just like a real friend, sometimes it seems they cannot save themselves.
The book is fascinating and keeps you glued to the page all the way through. The characters are beautifully developed and as a reader you do begin to like and root for some and some you are not so attached to and hope maybe they will not succeed in their endeavours. Jessamyn Hope also does a wonderful job with her description of the kibbutz and the lifestyle there. She brings to life the idea of all for one and one for all spirit that was there at the beginning. She also brings it full circle and shows how that atmosphere is not as important today as it was for the pioneers.
As the kibbutz goes through a vote to change from everyone working for the common good to a place where each is paid according to their position, Ziva, the original organizer of the kibbutz feels betrayed, "Greed egotism, corruption, have always won out in the end, always except...Here. The kibbutz. The kibbutz is the only long lasting, completely voluntary, socialist utopia in the world. If you want to own a private home or SUV or climb a corporate ladder - fine, by all means, go ahead. Move to Tel-Aviv. Or New York. London, Tokyo, Bombay. Anywhere in the world. But, please, leave this one small corner of the map alone."
Hope also describes the Jews escape from Germany and the refugees coming to Israel in historical detail. She recreates the feelings they had as they developed the farms and planted the orchards and created community. She recounts the feelings also as the United Nations voted to make Israel a state.
Jessamyn Hope has written a wonderful first novel that stays with you long after you have finished the last page.
Author, Jessamyn Hope has written just that type of novel. Set in Israel during the peace talks of 1994, between Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin, Hope has written a wonderful multi layered story of life on a kibbutz. taking the reader back to the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel and the beginning of kibbutzim, she has created characters than span the generations.
Together for one summer are six diverse people thrown together to work through their various problems and escape their pasts. On Kibbutz Sadot Hadar their lives intersect and each plays off the others as they attempt to the trajectory they were on. Adam, a young drug addict, trying to rectify his past crimes and honor his Holocaust refugee grandfather comes to the kibbutz to find a woman his grandfather loved fifty years before. He is trying to track down the mystery woman and return a brooch to her for his grandfather, but she seems to elude him. Also volunteering on the kibbutz are a few other lost souls trying to turn their lives around. Ulya, an ambitious, Soviet emigre who wants to see New York City; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir the Israeli teenager who wants to escape to America and become a musician; and Ziva, the old Zionist Socialist firebrand who help found the kibbutz.
As we get to know each of the characters we learn about their background and how they ended up on the kibbutz and where they wish they were going. Then we see how the interactions between people and the experiences that happen to them in every day life and dramatically change the course of their
plans. In this novel you need to be careful you get attached to because just like in real life, things don't always end up perfect and happy for everyone. Just when you are routing for a character, they can take a downward spiral and change course and even if you are hoping they will straighten themselves out, just like a real friend, sometimes it seems they cannot save themselves.
The book is fascinating and keeps you glued to the page all the way through. The characters are beautifully developed and as a reader you do begin to like and root for some and some you are not so attached to and hope maybe they will not succeed in their endeavours. Jessamyn Hope also does a wonderful job with her description of the kibbutz and the lifestyle there. She brings to life the idea of all for one and one for all spirit that was there at the beginning. She also brings it full circle and shows how that atmosphere is not as important today as it was for the pioneers.
As the kibbutz goes through a vote to change from everyone working for the common good to a place where each is paid according to their position, Ziva, the original organizer of the kibbutz feels betrayed, "Greed egotism, corruption, have always won out in the end, always except...Here. The kibbutz. The kibbutz is the only long lasting, completely voluntary, socialist utopia in the world. If you want to own a private home or SUV or climb a corporate ladder - fine, by all means, go ahead. Move to Tel-Aviv. Or New York. London, Tokyo, Bombay. Anywhere in the world. But, please, leave this one small corner of the map alone."
Hope also describes the Jews escape from Germany and the refugees coming to Israel in historical detail. She recreates the feelings they had as they developed the farms and planted the orchards and created community. She recounts the feelings also as the United Nations voted to make Israel a state.
Jessamyn Hope has written a wonderful first novel that stays with you long after you have finished the last page.
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