Wednesday, March 13, 2024

The Main Character




Check out this author Jaclyn Gordis, she has a very vivid immagination.  Her novel The Chateau was an interesting twisting plot with a mysterious thread running through it. Now Gordis has captured the imagination again with this new novel, The Main Character.  


Have you ever wondered if there are things about those closest to you that you do not know? How would you react if their secrets came out and affected your life? This mysterious novel shows how characters react to the secrets as they come to light.  


One of the interesting themes in this novel is sibling rivalry, a topic close to my heart. Always in competition with a younger smarter sister, always wondering who Mom loved best.  This is a novel that examines how the relationship between siblings can fester and grow into love and or resentment.  How a parent responds to each child can have an affect on both children and their relationship.  Reader, you may want to watch your back after reading this story, you never know what your sibling might be planning.


Following in the footsteps of Agatha Christie, we meet our characters on the famous train ride along Italy’s Mediterranean coast, the renovated Orient Express. Rory is the main character in Ginevra Ex’s new novel.  Ginevra Ex is a prolific author who studies people and writes mystery novels based on their lives.  She learned early on in her career to write what you know sells the most books, but she cannot bring herself to really delve into her own life for a book. 


Rory is the newest character that Ex is writing about.  She has interviewed her for hours about her life and also the people closest to Rory, her brother, Caroline, her best friend, and her ex fiance, Nate.  When they all turn up on the train Rory begins to wonder if real life will start to imitate fiction and that Ginevra is manipulating her life into a mystery novel.  She is concerned that this may lead to someone’s death.


Riding the train and stopping at various tourist locations builds suspense.  Learning about each character’s lives through alternating chapters, we become privy to the secrets each person is hiding and how that information will affect the group.  Even the author Ginevra Ex has an agenda and secrets she is haboring.


On a more serious note this book also discusses the topic of the refusnicks, Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union who escaped and came to America.  The author bases the character of Rory’s father, Ansel, on her father and his parents' experience.  The author’s father was born in Ukraine and his identification card stated he was Jewish. He took the perilous parth to freedom in 1976.  The author describes life in the Soviet Union and refusnicks situation beautifully.  She also paints the picture of the scenery of Italy’s Mediteranian coast with a rich palette. 


Sunday, March 3, 2024

The Lioness of Boston

 The Lioness of Boston is a fascinating historical novel about the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Bella or Mrs Jack.  

Emily Franklin has captured Boston and its snowy winters and hot summers beautifully.  If she has done so well with describing the city I have assume that her retelling of Bella Gardner's life is also percise and accurate also.  

This is a sort of slow moving novel, but then I guess that is how the real life of any famous person really is. There is so much to learn and it is an intriguing story but nothing earth shattering happens that moves a plot along quickly or with any suspense.  It is interesting to see that she was a woman who did not fit into the rules upper class society expected of her.  She was always looking to stretch the box that women were supposed to live in.  She had trouble making friends, though she did make good friends with those who also found themselves struggling with the behaviors expected of them in their social circles.  So she became good friends with artists and writers and even scientists who were on the fringes.

Her husband tolerated her antics and amazingly they stayed married throughout their lives.  He even assisted her and encouraged many of her purchases and ideas.  The most fun for me was reading about Boston at the turn of the last century and the  artists and artwork.  I took extra time while reading to look up many of the artists and their paintings.  

I also went to Emerson College when it was housed on Beacon Street.  We went to classes in 130 Beacon Street.  The cafeteria and the administrative offices were all at 150 Beacon Street. then I read that Isabella requested that her house number 152 never be used again after she moved out.  After Gardner moved to the Fenway where her house is now a museum, Eben Sumner Draper was the next owner and then Alvan Tufts Fuller also lived in the house.  Both men were later governors of Massachusetts.  It became known as the Governors Mansion.

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

 I cannot believe I have already reviewed this novel by Elise Friedland, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel.  

This novel a fun look back at the history of the Catskill Mountains, a piece of especially Jewish nostalgia. This novel can be read for the simple entertainment and/or for a deeper dive into the family dynamics and drama. 

The Golden Hotel has been a family run business for generations.  Two families have come together every summer to open the hotel to the guests who return on a regular basis expecting a certain standard of service that is renown in the Catskills.  This book is based on the historical hotels that attracted so many families who summered in the Catskills from New York City.  The families would drive up and mothers and children would stay while fathers would commute back and forth to the city between work and leisure.  

But times have changed and the hotels are not as popular as they once were. The clientele is not returning and those who are seeing the decline of the facilities. The owners cannot keep the hotel running.  There are of course also secrets that have been kept over the years and relationships are on edge.  it is time to sell and move on.  But not everyone is in agreement about how to move forward.

The issues of the generational divide and the hard decisions to live in the past or to embrace the future.  How to memorialize the past and not lose the memories of fun times had.  This plot also examines family secrets and how much you know about people even when you live with them.

I interviewed the author about this book and we had a wonderful exchange about her reasons for writing this book and how she met a member of the Grossinger family, from the Grossinger Hotel, one of the most famous of the Catskill establishments.

The Stolen Lady

 The Stolen Lady written by Laura Morelli explores another little known topic of World War II.

Morelli builds a beautiful novel around the artwork hidden during the war to save it from Nazi hands.

I have read and reviewed a few different books here about the Mona Lisa painting.  Like her famous smile the story of the Mona Lisa and who she was has been a unresolved mystery for years.  This book introduces us to who the famous unknown lady might have been and how her painting ended up in the Louvre in Paris, then how it was saved from the Nazis, as they took Paris and tried to steal the art.

In alternating chapters the story of Lisa Gherardini, and her maid servant, Bellini Sardi who accompanies Lisa as she marries a prosperous silk merchant.  We see the closed world of women at this time in society. As we learn about the government of Medici that Lisa's husband follows the Florentines are preparing to  rise up against the Medici and a young monk convinces Bellini to join their efforts.  

Then in the later story, at the dawn of WWII, Anne Guichard, is a young archivist employed at the Louvre.  Anne joins the effort helping move artwork including the Mona Lisa to the Castle of Chambord, where the Louvre’s most precious artworks are being transferred to ensure their safety.   

This book was fast paced with intrigue and suspense, but also so interesting in the historical events it covers and so much new information to me.

Mastering the Art of French Murder

Warm, right out of the oven, Mastering the Art of French Murder, is the the amazingly perfect entertaining mystery for anyone viewer of the Great British Baking Show.  Written by Colleen Cambridge, it brings the reader right into the tent, under the lights and behind the cameras.

As I read this delightfully delicious mystery, I could hear the voices of the real TV show in my head.  I could picture the tent and the chefs all trying to bake or prepare the recipes for the contest, and the heat of the competition was palatable .

Such a clever idea to use the British Baking Show as a backdrop for a murder mystery, I cannot believe I did not think of it myself..  As we read this novel, we are introduced to each of the cooking contestants, learning a little of their background and how and why they wanted to enter the contest.  

Each chapter releases a little more of their stories and then some background connections to each other or to the mansion that houses this baking show set.  The only thing missing from this fun, delectable are some recipes that you could sink your teeth into after finishing the book and solving the mystery.

Saturday, February 24, 2024

The Bookstore Sisters

 Ann Hoffman does not disappoint int his new novella, The Bookstore Sisters.

Though this is a short story, it packs a big punch.  Two sisters grow up together with their father, running a small bookstore in Brinkey's Island,  Maine.  Their father is so nice that he almost has turned his bookstore into a lending library, allowing people to read the books and return them.  When he dies one sister, Isabel, decides that she is ready to leave the small town and head off on her own.  She goes and builds a life in New York and tries to forget the past. 

Sophie, the other sister stays and keeps the promise they made to their father to keep the store open. She marries a local young man and is pregnant when he dies.  She brings up her daughter on her own.  But when Sophie breaks a leg and cannot take care ofher daughter or the book store, her daughter takes matters into her own hands.

Writing to her aunt she summons her home to help out.  The two sisters must face each other and their past to work together to save the bookstore and take care of family.  They need to work through their feelings of anger and distrust to reach a close sister relationship again.

A sweet story of the love that is hidden bewtween two sisters that can be covered up but never really lost.


Pineapple Street

If you know NYC and Brooklyn you will feel right at home reading this novel. If you know the area of the fruit streets even better.  Author, Jenny Jackson has beautifully described the world of the ultra wealthy and how they see the world.  Also how others perceive them from the other side of the tracks.

This is the story of the Stockton family, which even the name sounds stuffy and sounds like old money and the family originally came over on the Mayflower.  The parents, Chip and Tilda have moved out of the family home on Pineapple Street and moved into a smaller home on Orange Street.  The three children who are now adults grew up in the family home and now the son, Cord brings his new wife, Sasha to live there.  Cord's sisters have also left the house and his sister Darcy is married to Malcolm, and their are parents to Poppy and Hatcher.  The youngest Stockton is Georgiana, still single and working in a not for profit to help solve world hunger.  Cord is working with his father in the family real estate business and Darcy is a stay at home mom, with Malcom working in finance.

Darcy describes herself as an orange, a tough outer shell to protect the sweet though vulnerable fruit on the inside.  Her sister was always the Cranberry, a little sour, and Cord was the Pineapple, fun, thrilled to be the center of attention and always made a gathering more festive. 

As the family closes rank to protect itself from the outside world, each family member needs to learn how to welcome in the new spouses and not shut them out.  There are so many secrets that each member of the family is keeping to maintain face that it gets to be too overwhelming.

Also it is current day and these one percenters are struggling with having so much at the expense of others having so little.  How to balance your wealth, live a happy life and share with others is a theme throughout.  So many series topics in what seems on the surface to be a lighthearted entertainment.