The Women

 The Women by Kristin Hannah is another fantastic novel.  The Nightingale was one of my all time favorites and The Women comes close.  I had been putting it off until my book discussion group put it on their list for this month.  That forced my hand and I am glad it did.  

This is a wonderful plot of a young woman coming of age in the sixties during the Vietnam War.  Living with her Republican family on Coronado Island in California.   It is at a time when going to war was still a patriotic act.  When her brother signs up and joins the Navy the family is very proud of him.

But when Jamie goes off to Vietnam as a nurse facing all the horrific horrors of young soldiers who are wounded her family is not as excited and supportive.

Coming back after her tour of duty she is not welcomed back with support and happiness.  She is suffering from PTSD even though that was not known at the time.  She is afraid to tell other people what she is suffering, thinking she is the only one.  

This novel beautifully handles the topics of war and the horrible way veterans were received back in the US.  The trauma they suffered.  Other topics raised are sacrifice, heroism, love and understanding.  There were so many incredible stories there were from that period in history .  The research and interviews the author did were very comprehensive and give the characters a realistic perspective.

Incredibly touching and poignant.

Marble Halll Murders

 Anthony Horowitz is probably one of the best mystery authors around.  Definitely on my favorites list and as soon as his newest novel comes out I am putting everything else aside to read it.

Horowitz has an incredible background having written for many of the television shows I have enjoyed. He wrote episodes of Midsommer Murders and Foyle's War.  He also wrote scripts for Agatha Christie's Poirot TV programs and also the Alex Rider middle school books.  Then there are the fabulous series he is writing now.  Two of them.  Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder.   

Each of these new series are so well written; they are funny, captivating and you never can guess where the plot is taking you.  One series is written about a mystery writer who has been writing a cleever very popular mystery series. The plots are a story within a story, the author tells the story and the editor is reading the story and living her real life.

In this latest book, Marble Hall Murders, the editor is working with a new mystery author.  This author is trying to continue the series of a dead author.  When the editor and the author clash over edits and rewrites they part ways.  But the editor cannot seem to separate from the author, her future is tied to this relationship.  Either shee finds a way to resolve things or she may not ever work in the business again.

Of course there are intriguing  questions about all the relationships between the characters, and there is a murder or two.  The writing is phenomenal and always very insightful.

Songs of the Broken Hearted

 

Author Ayelet Tsabari brings us her latest masterpiece of writing in Songs for the Brokenhearted.   Though the voice may sound similar to her nonfiction book, The Art of Leaving with essays about her family and their lives as Yemeni Jews in Israel, this time she has fictionalized the storyline.

It is critical that we read books by Israeli and Jewish authors both to give them a voice and for the powerful message we send that these books are important.  But it is also amazing to read books written by Israeli and Jewish authors because they always teach us something new, some new historic knowledge or a new perspective on news that we grew up with but may not have looked back at lately.

Songs for the Brokenhearted does all of that and more.  This is the story of many Yemeni Jews immigrating to Israel in the 1950s living in an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh HaAyin.  They are living under harsh conditions, not accepted by the Israelis as full citizens, looking for work and learning a new language.  Following the narrative of Yaqub, a shy young man who is trying to find his promised golden future we learn about how hard it was for these immigrants to get settled.  He meets the beautiful Saida in the camp but his love for her cannot be acted upon because she is already married.

Then we meet Zohara, a young thirty year old woman who is returning to Israel from New York,  for her mother’s funeral.  Zohara is at loose ends, confused, angry and not sure she is following the path she really wants.  She had left to study in the United States and felt she had escaped the life of poverty and embarrassment of having an illiterate Yemeni mother.  Growing up surrounded by Ashkenizi she always wished her skin was lighter and that her father was still alive.

Coming back now to Israel and trying to get along with her older sister, Lizzie, who Zohara thinks does not understand her, she finds she may have been wrong about quite a few things.  . She may have misunderstood her mother and the relationship her parents had.  She finds out her mother was a beautiful singer of Yemeni women’s songs.  This is an important part of the Yemeni culture that Tsabari weaves throughout the narrative.

Tsabari also brings in a little known harsh historic fact that nurses in the camps were taking Yemeni children away from their families and giving them up for adoption.  They were telling the parents their children had gotten sick, were taken to a hospital and then the nurses told the parents the child had died.  

Also setting Zohara’s story in 1995 the historic events of the Oslo Accords and the association of Yizak Rabin plays a large role in this novel. Zohara’s nephew, Yoni gets caught up with a group of Israeli reactionary young men who attend rallies and protests.  Tsabari sets out viewpoints from the different sides of the political argument around peace in the Mideast during this time period.

The book is beautifully written about a very emotional time in everyone’s life when a loved one’s life ends and you not only re-evaluate yourself and your relationship to that person, but also find out secrets about their lives.  The book follows multiple romantic plot lines and also the relationship between sisters, and friends.  It is interesting to read about historical facts that have led to where Israel and its neighbors are now. A time when a hope for peace in the Mideast was really thought to be an imminent possibility.

The Serpent Bearer

 A romantic World War II spy novel, with buried family secrets, dangerous German criminals and a love story.  In The Serpent Bearer, author Jane Rosenthal, creates a novel that spans time from the war years to present day.   We learn the story of Solomon, Solly, Meisner, who travels from Spain to Mexico and ends up in a small Jewish community in North Carolina where he raises his daughter, Isabelle.  

Now, in his dotage, Solly reminisces about the past revealing his family secrets and the exciting life he led as a spy during World War II.  At the same time Izzy is becoming aware that there was more to her father’s history than she knew. The version of her parents' love story she had grown up hearing may not have been the whole story.

Sitting in his assisted living apartment, all the memories come flooding back to Solly.  First, his narrow escape when the building he was in was bombed during the Spanish Civil War.  Then, as a young Jewish lawyer, in South Carolina, he was recruited to go to Mexico during World War II to spy on suspected Nazi activity there.  Sent by the COI, the newly created government department to gather foreign intelligence, Solly agrees to go hoping to find his lost love interest and answers to what happened in Spain. 

This should be a simple mission Solly thinks, “He’d been so cavalier, so full of bravado, thinking what the hell, Solly - go to Mexico, have a look around, listen in on some radio communications, report back, win Estelle’s hand in marriage and come home, victorious, free. A hero. What a fool.”  page 225

The mission brings him back in contact with people he worked alongside in Spain, who he had thought were his friends. What had happened to them? Why had they not tried to find him? Now he sees that the people he thought he knew may not be who he thought they were.  He begins to wonder if the woman he loved really is who she says she is. As he encounters Nazi operatives and Jewish refugees, Solly is finding out who is a true comrade and who is a subversive.  

Wonderfully detailed descriptions of the landscape, buildings and locations, bring the reader right into the action. The Serpent Bearer is a story of intrigue, danger and bravery. Bringing the reader some interesting history of Nazi activity in Mexico within a plot abundant in gripping action scenes, near death experiences and unselfish love. 

The Little Goat

 Passover is one of the most celebrated of the Jewish holidays. It is a holiday observed in homes around the world. There are many different Haggadot, offering a variety of ways to put together a seder.   Families build on generational customs or create their own traditions to commemorate the spring holiday, when the Israelites left Egypt and started their journey to the promised land.  

In Dara Horn’s new graphic novel, One Little Goat, she brings her memories of family seders to teen readers. They will definitely be able to relate to the teenage angst of being caught at the dinner table for many hours with elderly relatives and younger cousins and siblings. 

Using themes and references to the Passover seder, Horn creates a witty, funny story about what can happen if you never find the Afikoman, the dessert without which a seder cannot end.

Bringing to life the goat from Chad Gadya, the song sung at the end of the seder about a father buying a goat for two zuzim, our protagonist is able to be the hero and find the missing matzah after six months of being stuck at the Seder.

The goat takes the “wise child” on a journey meeting characters from the many seders throughout history. They travel back in time and see his parents as children at their family seders, in the USSR, 1981, as refuseniks. Then back in time past the Holocaust and seder in the Warsaw Ghetto.  Back to the 1300s and creation of the Bird’s Head Haggadah.

They visited Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel, Nachman of Bratslav, and even Dona Gracia Nasi in Constantinople in 1556, during the Inquisition.  

Then the Goat takes the child who now is becoming wiser further back in time to meet Rav and Shmuel in the third century, known as great Amoriam, great Jewish scholars.  The Rabbis, Eliezer, Joshua, Elazar ben Azaria, Akiva and Tarfon make an appearance before the Goat takes the child to the night his ancestors left Egypt. 

This is a very clever way to tell the Passover story and explain its importance to older children.

It is a very timely story showing how throughout history Jews have been strong and resilient continuing their traditions even in the face of adversity.  Bringing home the message how special and magical maintaining our Jewish connections can be.

The Greatest Lie of All

 Author, Jill Cantor newest novel is titled  The Greatest Lie of All.  This is a twisting maze of tangled lives.  Amanda Grant is a young actress ready for a new challenge.  Leaving a relationship when her partner cheats on her, she is asked to star in a biopic  about the famous Gloria Diamond, a famous romance writer who had told her own tragic romance story in a memoir.  Now they are going to bring the story to the screen. Gloria is having second thoughts as the filming begins.  Amanda is trying to understand the person whose life she is going to represent.  She is having trouble getting to know Gloria.  

There are so many different surprises as we get to know Amanda, Gloria and even her son, the handsome lawyer, Will.  In alternating chapters we learn about Gloria’s life and Amanda’s past, how in the end lives overlap.

Marble Hall Murders

 Anthony Horowitz does it again with the third installment of the Susan Ryeland mystery novels.  

This time the novel is titled Marble Hall and it so cleverly picks up right where the second book ended.  Susan Ryeland reminds the reader that Atticus Pund, the great detective was murdered and Ryeland’s life also almost ended as the last novel came to a close.  She had moved to Greece with her boyfriend and was going to start a new life.

But now she is back in New York and having just moved into a new apartment by herself she is looking for editing work again with a new publisher. She has realized that she needs to live in New York and work in publishing, the quiet island life is not for her.

The first job to come along is a new young talent who is writing a conclusion novel with the protagonist being Atticus Pund.  He has an idea to continue the series even though the original author is dead.

But all is not as it may seem and Susan gets mixed up with the writer and his family and strange things start to happen.  Life and fiction start to overlap and the secret to an old murder and a new murder may be revealed in the script that is being written.

Twisty and tangled plots run through the novel with a story within the story and characters that blur the lines of fiction and “fiction”.  I may have solved part of the mystery as I lay awake last night after reading to just before the reveal chapter, but then there was of course another twist that I was not expecting… 

Horowitz is a master of the craft and again brings an entertaining, incredibly well written mystery that there are quotes to underline and ideas to think about long after the book is closed.

 Anthony Horowitz is probably one of the best mystery authors around.  Definitely on my favorites list and as soon as his newest novel comes out I am putting everything else aside to read it.

Horowitz has an incredible background having written for many of the television shows I have enjoyed. He wrote episodes of Midsommer Murders and Foyle's War.  He also wrote scripts for Agatha Christie's Poirot TV programs and also the Alex Rider middle school books.  Then there are the fabulous series he is writing now.  Two of them.  Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder.   

Each of these new series are so well written; they are funny, captivating and you never can guess where the plot is taking you.  One series is written about a mystery writer who has been writing a cleever very popular mystery series. The plots are a story within a story, the author tells the story and the editor is reading the story and living her real life.

In this latest book, Marble Hall Murders, the editor is working with a new mystery author.  This author is trying to continue the series of a dead author.  When the editor and the author clash over edits and rewrites they part ways.  But the editor cannot seem to separate from the author, her future is tied to this relationship.  Either shee finds a way to resolve things or she may not ever work in the business again.

Of course there are intriguing  questions about all the relationships between the characters, and there is a murder or two.  The writing is phenomenal and always very insightful.