Robin Sloan has created a novel that is about baking bread, physics, computer robotics all mixed up in a bowl that keeps the reader trying to figure out what the message of the story is.
Lois Clary is a software programmer, who lives in San Francisco and codes all day and collapses at night from her new job. She has no social life and very little human interaction. She does not know how to cook for herself and is subsisting on Slurry, a whole processed nutrition drink. Lois explains to the reader early on, "Let me just establish where I was at with the whole cooking situation. When I was a child my family had no distinguishable cuisine. ...We possessed no stock of recipes, no traditions, no ancestral affinities. There was a lot of migration and drama in our history; our line had been broken not once but many times, like one of those gruesome accident reports, the bone shattered in six places. When they put my family back together, they left out the food."
One day a menu randomly placed on her doorstep leads her to start ordering from Clement Street Soup and Sourdough. A spicy soup and sourdough bread that is delivered on a regular basis starts to make Lois feel better than she has in months. When the brothers who run the food service leave the country due to Visa issues, they leave Lois with the sourdough bread starter. She must keep it alive. This is a task that starts to become an obsession with Lois. She is now baking bread and coding around the clock. She is challenged to combine her two expert interests; coding a robotic arm to learn to bake.
This is where this reader kept looking for the message. I was assuming that the lesson I would learn in the end was that human interaction is the most important. That letting robots take over jobs that people do is wrong and will turn out badly in the end. That there is no replacement for the loving touch of human hands on our food. Throughout the book there are ups and downs of the ability of the robotic arm to be useful in the kitchen, but I am not sure Sloan leaves us with the don't do it message. Also there is the continued search for a nutritional supplement that you can eat that gives you all your nutrition without eating food. Is man sustainable without his human diet? That was also a theme throughout the book that explored and hopefully shown to be unsustainable.
An interesting plot line idea that bubbles in a crock like sourdough starter, but collapses when baked and taken out of the oven in the end.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Friday, December 22, 2017
The Necklace
What a wonderful story for a snow day! With hot cocoa and a warm blanket, you can sit back and caught up in the Quincy family's drama. Great Aunt Lou Lou has passed away and left the next generation to divide up the house, jewelry and household items. Of course there is a family scandal that has been swept under the carpet all these years that will be exposed when the dust clears. There will also be romance and a tug of war with a priceless necklace.
Claire McMillan has created a wonderful picture of the Quincy family, trying to hold onto the old world charm that surrounded their family, when there were weekend house parties and people had servants who brought around champagne while guests played lawn tennis and croquet.
It is 2009 and Nell Quincy Merrihew comes back to the ancestral home of the Quincy family after many years. Her mother left for good, years ago, married and with their child Nell had always lived in Oregon far from the family home. Summer visits, Nell remembers with her cousins, Pansy and Emerson, where when she tried to fit in. Now they are going to hear the reading of Lou Lou's will.
When the the will is read and Nell is named executor of the estate and given a necklace as her inheritance everyone wonders at the sanity of Lou Lou at the end of her life. But as the story unravels with a look back in history of Lou Lou and her brothers growing up, we see how history long covered up is being exposed and Lou Lou is finally trying to right some wrongs.
Ambrose, Ethan and Lou Lou were young adults in the early 1920s. May is the girl of Ambrose's dreams, but it seems Ethan also has his eye on her. Ambrose had a traveling spirit that could not be contained. He goes off and travels the world to come home to so many changes. Ambrose needs to travel even though it means leaving the woman he loves behind. He is not willing to commit tot marriage or give up his world trip. May isn't willing to take any chances, traveling unmarried with Ambrose or promise to wait for him.
This is a story of lost opportunities and chances taken and missed. The story of love declared too late. But also the story of finding out that sometimes feeling the outsider is not always what it seems. There are family secrets that continue to affect family relationships for generations.
Claire McMillan has created a wonderful picture of the Quincy family, trying to hold onto the old world charm that surrounded their family, when there were weekend house parties and people had servants who brought around champagne while guests played lawn tennis and croquet.
It is 2009 and Nell Quincy Merrihew comes back to the ancestral home of the Quincy family after many years. Her mother left for good, years ago, married and with their child Nell had always lived in Oregon far from the family home. Summer visits, Nell remembers with her cousins, Pansy and Emerson, where when she tried to fit in. Now they are going to hear the reading of Lou Lou's will.
When the the will is read and Nell is named executor of the estate and given a necklace as her inheritance everyone wonders at the sanity of Lou Lou at the end of her life. But as the story unravels with a look back in history of Lou Lou and her brothers growing up, we see how history long covered up is being exposed and Lou Lou is finally trying to right some wrongs.
Ambrose, Ethan and Lou Lou were young adults in the early 1920s. May is the girl of Ambrose's dreams, but it seems Ethan also has his eye on her. Ambrose had a traveling spirit that could not be contained. He goes off and travels the world to come home to so many changes. Ambrose needs to travel even though it means leaving the woman he loves behind. He is not willing to commit tot marriage or give up his world trip. May isn't willing to take any chances, traveling unmarried with Ambrose or promise to wait for him.
This is a story of lost opportunities and chances taken and missed. The story of love declared too late. But also the story of finding out that sometimes feeling the outsider is not always what it seems. There are family secrets that continue to affect family relationships for generations.
Sunday, December 17, 2017
The Prague Sonata
Bradford Morrow has written a beautiful symphony of words that crescendo in the final movement of this novel. An historical novel of life in Czechoslovakia as Hitler brings World War II to their doorstep and modern day Czechoslovakia and the Unites States as the protagonist, Meta Taverner tries to bring together the individual movements of an ancient sonata, that were separated by the war and presumed lost with the people who carried them.
As one of the subjects who is searching for the parts of the musical manuscript describes it, "A brother and a sister living in Josefov, neither of them particularly compos mentis, survivors from the Nazi occupation days, had made noises about an early sonata manuscript, divvied up into three parts as Caesar divided Gaul." This novel takes the reader across time periods and oceans as the suspense builds through both the historical stories of the survivors of the two great wars and the travels that Meta and her colleagues take to try and find the owners of the music and hear the stories from the protectors of the music.
The story starts during World War One when as a young girl Otylie's father is leaving her after they have buried her mother. Otylie is nine years old when her father leaves her with a musical manuscript that he says will bring her a fortune in the future. He leaves her with the words that, "all wars begin with music". She grows up wanting to put music behind her and working hard just to live from day to day during WWII.
Now in current day New York, Meta meets Irena, who at 80 years old is looking to pass on the burden of holding onto a music manuscript that needs to be reunited with its original owner. Meta a twenty something music student is looking for something that will ignite her passion. In the course of trying to find out who wrote the original score and find its rightful owner, she has found her own desire to explore Europe and find love.
Morrow has used so many wonderful musical phrases in this novel, one example being his way of describing love as a duet, "A duet that wanted to evolve into a fugue. One whose harmonic and rhythmic structures moved toward the resolution."
So wonderfully written that even though this is a narrative that I have read before about a lost object music or artwork from the Holocaust that people in current day are searching for, it was gripping and even so lovely at the end that I was brought to a few tears.
As one of the subjects who is searching for the parts of the musical manuscript describes it, "A brother and a sister living in Josefov, neither of them particularly compos mentis, survivors from the Nazi occupation days, had made noises about an early sonata manuscript, divvied up into three parts as Caesar divided Gaul." This novel takes the reader across time periods and oceans as the suspense builds through both the historical stories of the survivors of the two great wars and the travels that Meta and her colleagues take to try and find the owners of the music and hear the stories from the protectors of the music.
The story starts during World War One when as a young girl Otylie's father is leaving her after they have buried her mother. Otylie is nine years old when her father leaves her with a musical manuscript that he says will bring her a fortune in the future. He leaves her with the words that, "all wars begin with music". She grows up wanting to put music behind her and working hard just to live from day to day during WWII.
Now in current day New York, Meta meets Irena, who at 80 years old is looking to pass on the burden of holding onto a music manuscript that needs to be reunited with its original owner. Meta a twenty something music student is looking for something that will ignite her passion. In the course of trying to find out who wrote the original score and find its rightful owner, she has found her own desire to explore Europe and find love.
Morrow has used so many wonderful musical phrases in this novel, one example being his way of describing love as a duet, "A duet that wanted to evolve into a fugue. One whose harmonic and rhythmic structures moved toward the resolution."
So wonderfully written that even though this is a narrative that I have read before about a lost object music or artwork from the Holocaust that people in current day are searching for, it was gripping and even so lovely at the end that I was brought to a few tears.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
The Best of Adam Sharp
The Best of Adam Sharp written by Graeme Simsion is an intriguing novel. He leads the reader along down a winding path back through the life of Adam Sharp as he looks back on his younger days and wonders if he missed out on the love of his life and how his life would have been different if he had made a different choice back in his 20s.
Ever wonder what happened to your first love? What your life might have been like or where you would be now if you had married them? Sometimes lovers who left each other in high school and went onto other relationships and lives meet up again after their spouses have passed and they are both single again in later life. They pick up their friendship and sometimes their love affair again in old age. Would you still be attracted to that person who looked so good to you when you were 20 now that you are 70 or 80?
Adam at age 26 leaves England for a job opportunity in Melbourne, Australia. He is only there for a short contract job. After work in the evening he likes to go to the local bar and play the piano. One night the strong willed and alluring actress, Angelina Brown walks into the bar and sparks fly. She is married but astranged from her husband at the time and passion fills the air. They have a chance at something bigger, but Adam doesn't take it.
He goes back home and sets up housekeeping with Claire and decides he is happy with the life they have created. Until a post on his computer brings him back to an earlier forgotten time. Should Adam live dangerously and explore the option of rekindling this old romance? Is it worth risking the life you have for a chance at the unknown?
This is a novel that pulls the reader in. going along quite innocuously and then building suspense as Adam tries to sort out his life.
Ever wonder what happened to your first love? What your life might have been like or where you would be now if you had married them? Sometimes lovers who left each other in high school and went onto other relationships and lives meet up again after their spouses have passed and they are both single again in later life. They pick up their friendship and sometimes their love affair again in old age. Would you still be attracted to that person who looked so good to you when you were 20 now that you are 70 or 80?
Adam at age 26 leaves England for a job opportunity in Melbourne, Australia. He is only there for a short contract job. After work in the evening he likes to go to the local bar and play the piano. One night the strong willed and alluring actress, Angelina Brown walks into the bar and sparks fly. She is married but astranged from her husband at the time and passion fills the air. They have a chance at something bigger, but Adam doesn't take it.
He goes back home and sets up housekeeping with Claire and decides he is happy with the life they have created. Until a post on his computer brings him back to an earlier forgotten time. Should Adam live dangerously and explore the option of rekindling this old romance? Is it worth risking the life you have for a chance at the unknown?
This is a novel that pulls the reader in. going along quite innocuously and then building suspense as Adam tries to sort out his life.
Saturday, December 9, 2017
The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine
What an odd children's story. The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine. I was so intrigued by the title of this book to check it out of the library, even though I don't have a child to read it to.
The original story is the work of Mark Twain, discovered unfinished and so finished and illustrated by Philip and Erin Stead. It seems a bit dark and violent for young children. It is an allegory that gives the reader an important lesson about the importance of kindness, generosity, and empathy instead of power, intimidation and gold.
Johnny lives with his bully of a grandfather, who sends him off to market with their only skinny chicken. When he comes home with some blue beans given to him by a small old woman, then grandfather yells and throws the beans away. Johnny rescues one last beans and follows the directions from he woman to plant the beans and eat the flower. This leads him on an adventure to rescue a stolen prince and talk with the forest animals. The illustrations are beautiful watercolors, muted and simple.
The original story is the work of Mark Twain, discovered unfinished and so finished and illustrated by Philip and Erin Stead. It seems a bit dark and violent for young children. It is an allegory that gives the reader an important lesson about the importance of kindness, generosity, and empathy instead of power, intimidation and gold.
Johnny lives with his bully of a grandfather, who sends him off to market with their only skinny chicken. When he comes home with some blue beans given to him by a small old woman, then grandfather yells and throws the beans away. Johnny rescues one last beans and follows the directions from he woman to plant the beans and eat the flower. This leads him on an adventure to rescue a stolen prince and talk with the forest animals. The illustrations are beautiful watercolors, muted and simple.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
The Baker's Secret
If you think you have read all the Holocaust stories, there is always another side of the story you have not been told yet. Author, Stephen P. Kiernan has come up with just such a novel. This is the story told through the eyes of a young woman living in the small town of Vergers on the Normandy coast of France.
Emmanuelle, Emma is living in the darkest days of the war in a village that has been invaded by the German army. They have set up a base there and taken over the town. Emma who apprenticed at the side of Ezra Kuchen the baker, now is responsible for baking the daily bread for the invading army.
Her home has been taken to house the Captain of the army. Her father was imprisoned and then killed by the Nazis. The baker has also been taken away by the Nazis. Emma finds her won small way to maintain her dignity and fight back against the oppression, by helping to feed her neighbors.
Under the closely watched eyes of the armed soldiers, Emma builds a clandestine network of neighbors, trading goods with each other to keep people alive, and hopeful until they can be rescued.
This is a story of strength in the face of adversity. The people who have hope and the ones who lose hope. How different people justify their actions to survive. How you can hate a person but in death the hate is gone. Emma looks at the priest who she did not like and thought, "Here was the war's strangest lesson yet. All sorts of people - friends and family, yes, but also adversaries and annoyances - all kinds had died. AS they left behind everything, work, and home and habits and opinions and even hidden chickens, somehow Emma's heart broke for them all, including the ones she couldn't bear. Somehow their dying made them unhateable."
That is such an important lesson in the end and that even at the worst of times people still have the instinct to help others and hope that things will get better. When the Allied Forces arrive on
June 5th, 1944 the people of the town are both awed and ready to help them oust the invading German army.
What a wonderful story this is.
Emmanuelle, Emma is living in the darkest days of the war in a village that has been invaded by the German army. They have set up a base there and taken over the town. Emma who apprenticed at the side of Ezra Kuchen the baker, now is responsible for baking the daily bread for the invading army.
Her home has been taken to house the Captain of the army. Her father was imprisoned and then killed by the Nazis. The baker has also been taken away by the Nazis. Emma finds her won small way to maintain her dignity and fight back against the oppression, by helping to feed her neighbors.
Under the closely watched eyes of the armed soldiers, Emma builds a clandestine network of neighbors, trading goods with each other to keep people alive, and hopeful until they can be rescued.
This is a story of strength in the face of adversity. The people who have hope and the ones who lose hope. How different people justify their actions to survive. How you can hate a person but in death the hate is gone. Emma looks at the priest who she did not like and thought, "Here was the war's strangest lesson yet. All sorts of people - friends and family, yes, but also adversaries and annoyances - all kinds had died. AS they left behind everything, work, and home and habits and opinions and even hidden chickens, somehow Emma's heart broke for them all, including the ones she couldn't bear. Somehow their dying made them unhateable."
That is such an important lesson in the end and that even at the worst of times people still have the instinct to help others and hope that things will get better. When the Allied Forces arrive on
June 5th, 1944 the people of the town are both awed and ready to help them oust the invading German army.
What a wonderful story this is.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
The Story of Arthur Truluv
Author, Elizabeth Berg writes in her acknowledgements that her editor at Random House said, "I need an Arthur in my life." Berg agreed with her and so do I. As I was reading this fabulous novel there were two thoughts running through my mind; I would love to have an Arthur of my own and I hope that I can be an Arthur to someone else in my life.
The plot of this book is a simple one of love lost and love found. We first meet three characters who are suffering from loneliness and loss in their lives. Each has loved someone who is not apart of their life in the present. It has left them trying to find ways to cope with that loss.
Arthur has recently lost his wife, the love of his life to death. He goes to the cemetary everyday at lunch time and eats his sandwich while talking to Nola's grave. He imagines her there and listening to him. He also seems to have an ability to stand by any gravestone and imagine the person who is buried there and what their life was like before they died.
Next door, lives Lucille, who lives in the home she grew up in. Her high school boyfriend married another woman and she never found another relationship. She has lived alone all these years.
Maddy Harris, is about to graduate from high school. She has had a rough time at school, bullied by the other students. Her escape has been to spend time in the cemetary taking pictures. She does not have a good relationship with her father, who like her is lost after the death of her mother.
As these three characters' lives start to intersect they also find salvation in each other. Slowly their relationships build into friendship and trust. They find in each other what they have not been able to create in any of their other interactions. In the end they find compassion and are able to turn their friendship into the perfect kind of family. Ignoring age differences they all find happiness in their shared experience.
The plot of this book is a simple one of love lost and love found. We first meet three characters who are suffering from loneliness and loss in their lives. Each has loved someone who is not apart of their life in the present. It has left them trying to find ways to cope with that loss.
Arthur has recently lost his wife, the love of his life to death. He goes to the cemetary everyday at lunch time and eats his sandwich while talking to Nola's grave. He imagines her there and listening to him. He also seems to have an ability to stand by any gravestone and imagine the person who is buried there and what their life was like before they died.
Next door, lives Lucille, who lives in the home she grew up in. Her high school boyfriend married another woman and she never found another relationship. She has lived alone all these years.
Maddy Harris, is about to graduate from high school. She has had a rough time at school, bullied by the other students. Her escape has been to spend time in the cemetary taking pictures. She does not have a good relationship with her father, who like her is lost after the death of her mother.
As these three characters' lives start to intersect they also find salvation in each other. Slowly their relationships build into friendship and trust. They find in each other what they have not been able to create in any of their other interactions. In the end they find compassion and are able to turn their friendship into the perfect kind of family. Ignoring age differences they all find happiness in their shared experience.
Monday, November 27, 2017
Ginny Moon
Ginny Moon is the story told through the eyes of a young autistic girl. She was taken away from an abusive home when she was nine and after a few foster living situations that did not work out she has found her, "Forever Parents".
This is a great plot, we watch Ginny, learning to adapt to life in a home with loving parents, and go to school, fitting in with other special needs children and even participate in Special Olympics. the amazing part of this book is that author, Benjamin Ludwig, has I think, really gotten the voice correctly on this character. The reader really feels like they are listening to Ginny think and speak. There is a rhythm to Ginny's speech. There are the unique behavior patterns. But, not only does Ludwig understand the autistic brain, he has gotten the young girl's thoughts too. She is completely believable.
Learning to live together as a family is not easy for Ginny or her Forever Mom and Dad. There are numerous hurtles to overcome and then there are roadblocks thrown in the way.
Of course to add some tension to the plot, there is a secret that Ginny has not been able to convey to the people around her about the Baby Doll she left behind when she was taken away from her birth mom. It is an obsession that Ginny cannot let go of, and she is trying to escape to retrieve her Baby Doll at every opportunity. This adds some suspense and drama to the storyline.
This is not just an enjoyable storyline, it explores the what it is like to live inside the mind of an autistic child. This book shows how important love, caring and respect are in changing the life of a foster child, especially one with special needs. It also shows how much effort parent child relationships take. How building trust and love can change lives.
Ginny Moon is a book you will not want to put down until you reach the end.
This is a great plot, we watch Ginny, learning to adapt to life in a home with loving parents, and go to school, fitting in with other special needs children and even participate in Special Olympics. the amazing part of this book is that author, Benjamin Ludwig, has I think, really gotten the voice correctly on this character. The reader really feels like they are listening to Ginny think and speak. There is a rhythm to Ginny's speech. There are the unique behavior patterns. But, not only does Ludwig understand the autistic brain, he has gotten the young girl's thoughts too. She is completely believable.
Learning to live together as a family is not easy for Ginny or her Forever Mom and Dad. There are numerous hurtles to overcome and then there are roadblocks thrown in the way.
Of course to add some tension to the plot, there is a secret that Ginny has not been able to convey to the people around her about the Baby Doll she left behind when she was taken away from her birth mom. It is an obsession that Ginny cannot let go of, and she is trying to escape to retrieve her Baby Doll at every opportunity. This adds some suspense and drama to the storyline.
This is not just an enjoyable storyline, it explores the what it is like to live inside the mind of an autistic child. This book shows how important love, caring and respect are in changing the life of a foster child, especially one with special needs. It also shows how much effort parent child relationships take. How building trust and love can change lives.
Ginny Moon is a book you will not want to put down until you reach the end.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
You'll Never Know, Dear
OK I just finished Hallie Ephron's newest book, You'll Never Know, Dear.
I was a little nervous that it would give me nightmares, which is funny because the granddaughter in this story, Vanessa, is working on research grant about sleep and nightmares. Her mother and Grandmother are in an accident back home and Vanessa drops everything to go home to help them confront the past and the disappearance of her mother, Elizabeth's younger sister, Janey, so many years ago. Suspense builds as the women try to find Janey and also find out what happened the day she went missing. Good twists and turns keep the suspense building.
I do not want to give anything away so I will not write too much about this book, except that it is a good story for an afternoon when its raining or snowing outside.
I was a little nervous that it would give me nightmares, which is funny because the granddaughter in this story, Vanessa, is working on research grant about sleep and nightmares. Her mother and Grandmother are in an accident back home and Vanessa drops everything to go home to help them confront the past and the disappearance of her mother, Elizabeth's younger sister, Janey, so many years ago. Suspense builds as the women try to find Janey and also find out what happened the day she went missing. Good twists and turns keep the suspense building.
I do not want to give anything away so I will not write too much about this book, except that it is a good story for an afternoon when its raining or snowing outside.
Friday, November 17, 2017
Turkey Trot Murder
We are living in a very turbulent political climate right now and it was interesting to read a light, entertaining mystery novel that seems to cover all the topics that are in the news on a daily basis.
It surprised me that author, Leslie Meier would jump in with both feet and cover both the opioid crisis and the very negative and disturbing immigrant prejudice that we are experiencing in the United States today.
But then that is what made this mystery novel so interesting for me to keep reading. The mystery plot itself was very light and I found it seemed a bit far-fetched. The first inconsistency is that it is a few weeks before Thanksgiving and the first frost is mentioned and yet the pond already has a layer of ice on it.
But incredibly there is discussion of young people and the drug epidemic, when twenty something Alison is found having fallen through the ice. Also there are so many comments "ripped" as they say from the headlines in this story including immigrants from Mexico and drugs.
Lucy Stone, the local newspaper reporter and amateur detective, is covering a court case involving three young men accused of drug trafficking. As she leaves the courthouse, she comments on the verdict and that they were not local kids and they were causing a lot of trouble for the town.
"When she stepped outside she realized there was another dimension to the case. A group of demonstrators had gathered on the grassy area in front of the courthouse and were holding signs that read BUILD A WALL!! DEPORT THE DRUG DEALERS! and AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!"
These are all sentiments that have been shouted and tweeted by the top political figures of the US government. Just as in this novel, these statements build up resentment and lead to trouble and people getting hurt. There is also another point in the book where Meier quotes liberally from the news media, "Great. That is what we want. We want folks to realize that these immigrants, these Muslims and Mexicans and Somalis, are taking our country away from us. It's white people like you and me that built this country and now folks like us can't get jobs. All the jobs have gone overseas to places like Bangladesh and China. ....It's crazy the way we're letting these Mexicans flood the country with drugs, and they are sending us their criminals too." There is no question where these ideas are coming from, the Republican party in Washington DC.
So I think though Meier is not coming out and really taking a political position, she just includes these characters in this mystery novel, she has taken a risk writing this novel and must really want to speak out about what is happening in our country.
It surprised me that author, Leslie Meier would jump in with both feet and cover both the opioid crisis and the very negative and disturbing immigrant prejudice that we are experiencing in the United States today.
But then that is what made this mystery novel so interesting for me to keep reading. The mystery plot itself was very light and I found it seemed a bit far-fetched. The first inconsistency is that it is a few weeks before Thanksgiving and the first frost is mentioned and yet the pond already has a layer of ice on it.
But incredibly there is discussion of young people and the drug epidemic, when twenty something Alison is found having fallen through the ice. Also there are so many comments "ripped" as they say from the headlines in this story including immigrants from Mexico and drugs.
Lucy Stone, the local newspaper reporter and amateur detective, is covering a court case involving three young men accused of drug trafficking. As she leaves the courthouse, she comments on the verdict and that they were not local kids and they were causing a lot of trouble for the town.
"When she stepped outside she realized there was another dimension to the case. A group of demonstrators had gathered on the grassy area in front of the courthouse and were holding signs that read BUILD A WALL!! DEPORT THE DRUG DEALERS! and AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!"
These are all sentiments that have been shouted and tweeted by the top political figures of the US government. Just as in this novel, these statements build up resentment and lead to trouble and people getting hurt. There is also another point in the book where Meier quotes liberally from the news media, "Great. That is what we want. We want folks to realize that these immigrants, these Muslims and Mexicans and Somalis, are taking our country away from us. It's white people like you and me that built this country and now folks like us can't get jobs. All the jobs have gone overseas to places like Bangladesh and China. ....It's crazy the way we're letting these Mexicans flood the country with drugs, and they are sending us their criminals too." There is no question where these ideas are coming from, the Republican party in Washington DC.
So I think though Meier is not coming out and really taking a political position, she just includes these characters in this mystery novel, she has taken a risk writing this novel and must really want to speak out about what is happening in our country.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Modern Girls
Modern Girls by Jennifer S. Brown was actually not what I expected. I thought it would be a story about young working girls living in a more modern style than their mothers, working, going out to parties and drinking with friends after work at the local bar.
Dottie has prided herself on being modern, working, dressing in the most fashionable clothes. But, when she becomes in a family way without the benefit of marriage, she must figure out how modern she really is.
How Rose and Dottie come to terms with and deal with their pregnancies is admirable and touching, which makes Modern Girls a charming and engaging read.
Every generation wants to think of itself as more modern and experienced than the last. Every parent dreams that their children will be better off than they were. They work hard to give their children all the advantages that they could not afford or were not available to them. Yet, each child has to be their own person. Children are independent and take chances that lead them down the path they must take in life. Parents can only advise and maybe be there to pick up the pieces when things don't turn out perfectly. Every daughter thinks she is more knowledgeable than her mother, is sometimes embarrassed by her mother, and feels she is more stylish than her mother.
Modern Girls is set in 1935, New York City. Dottie still lives at home with her parents and brothers on the Lower Eastside of NY. She has grown beyond her neighborhood by getting a job at Dover Insurance and she has just been promoted from an office girl to the head bookkeeper because she has a talent for numbers. She has a long time boyfriend, Abe Rabinowitz, her devout and Dottie hopes, devoted boyfriend who she is hoping to marry. Until things go horribly wrong, and in an effort to make Abe jealous, Dottie spends a night with Willie Klein.
Dottie has prided herself on being modern, working, dressing in the most fashionable clothes. But, when she becomes in a family way without the benefit of marriage, she must figure out how modern she really is.
In a parallel plot line, her mother Rose, an immigrant who came to America and married twenty years ago, now the mother of five children, is just finding her light at the end of the parenting tunnel. Feeling that she can go out and socialize with her women friends and work for social justice causes with her friends, she is not ready to start all over when she finds out that she is pregnant again.
Rose is feeling old and tired to start over with a new baby, with feedings and dirty diapers. She is frustrated that she will not be able to help organize a letter writing campaign to encourage the United States government to relax the quotas for Jews coming into the country from Europe as reports are filtering in about the horrors of Hitler in Germany.
Two women at different stages in their lives facing major changes in their lifestyles. Each must make an important choice and decision that will change their lives forever.
Also explored through this novel is the difference between living on the Lower Eastside and Park Avenue. Rose and Dottie live with the Jewish immigrant population, where Yiddish is still the primary language spoken. Willie Klein who is the father of Dottie's baby, and his family have left the old world behind and are integrating into American society. "In the city, I didn't see Willie too often. His parents had distanced themselves from the lower East Side, taken to their Park Avenue address with full body and soul. ... mostly he stayed in his own world except to partake every now and then in the Yiddishe nightlife. His parents thought the cramped and crowded Lower East Side - the shaddachan making marriages, the peddlers on the street - an embarrassment, a throwback to life in the Old Country, even though neither had experienced it."
Also explored through this novel is the difference between living on the Lower Eastside and Park Avenue. Rose and Dottie live with the Jewish immigrant population, where Yiddish is still the primary language spoken. Willie Klein who is the father of Dottie's baby, and his family have left the old world behind and are integrating into American society. "In the city, I didn't see Willie too often. His parents had distanced themselves from the lower East Side, taken to their Park Avenue address with full body and soul. ... mostly he stayed in his own world except to partake every now and then in the Yiddishe nightlife. His parents thought the cramped and crowded Lower East Side - the shaddachan making marriages, the peddlers on the street - an embarrassment, a throwback to life in the Old Country, even though neither had experienced it."
How Rose and Dottie come to terms with and deal with their pregnancies is admirable and touching, which makes Modern Girls a charming and engaging read.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Glass Houses
Louise Penny has written another fabulous mystery novel about our friends in Three Pines. Chief Superintendent of the Surete du Quebec, Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie. His second in command and son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and head of homicide, Isabelle Lacoste. Of course there are all the citizens of the small hidden village; Ruth Zardo, Olivier and Gabri, Clara and Myrna. Then there are the guests and newcomers to the village, who help create the cast of characters that will be the victims and suspects in the murder case.
Each murder mystery that Penny writes is fantastic as a mystery novel in its self. But also it is a work of art in fiction literature. It does not just rest on the laurels of being a good whodunit, it takes the reader on a literary journey with beautiful descriptions of the forest and life in a small village. As the reader you go between two types of feelings. First, you like you are right there with the friends sitting at the table in the bistro sharing a bottle of wine or drinking your own hot chocolate to warm up in front of the fire on a snowy day. You are sharing a meal with Gamache and Beauvoir discussing the clues of the case.
"Olivier stood at the window of the bistro and watched the Surete officers walking down the road from the church. He wasn't alone. The rest of the village, and those from outlying farms, had gathered in the bistro, the focal point for the community, in good times and bad. ...They watched silently as Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste walked toward them through the cold November drizzle that turned, every now and then, into sleet. Then back again. Olivier and Gabri had been handing out coffee and tea, juices, and fresh, warm cookies from Sarah's bakery. No alcohol. No need to feed already heightened emotions. ...Both fireplaces, on either side of the bistro, were lit. And now the only sound, besides some labored breathing, was the cheery crackle of the logs. The place smelled of woodsmoke and rich coffee. And wet wool form those who'd arrived late, hurrying through the damp afternoon."
The second feeling could be jealousy, the feeling that you want to have that kind of place to go, to feel the warmth of a small pub or cafe, where you can go and replicate the cosiness that is described by Penny in this place and with the friends that you can always count on like these people seem to be able to trust and rely on each other.
So in this book, the murder plot revolves around the idea that a strange figure appears in the center of town who looks like the Grim Reaper, and is called a "cobrador", acting as a conscience for someone who has done something bad and gotten away with it. This figure follows the person around until the pay their debt, either money or with guilt and embarrassment. Things go wrong and after watching the cobrador stand on the village green for two days, someone is found dead.
The book starts in the middle with Gamache on the witness stand in court testifying about who the murderer is. The interesting concept in this book is how it travels back and forth in time, between the trial in the present tense, with Gamache telling the story as he testifies, and a kind of flashback, where we are back in Three Pines as the case is being investigated. In this back and forth style the entire case is revealed slowly, explaining how the murder occurred and how they discovered who committed the crime and what the motive was.
Again just a wonderful literary mystery novel to sink down into the couch and imagine you are in Myrna's book shop, in Three Pines, on a rainy, or snowy afternoon with some comfort food and hot chocolate reading about the case with Armand and Reine-Marie.
Each murder mystery that Penny writes is fantastic as a mystery novel in its self. But also it is a work of art in fiction literature. It does not just rest on the laurels of being a good whodunit, it takes the reader on a literary journey with beautiful descriptions of the forest and life in a small village. As the reader you go between two types of feelings. First, you like you are right there with the friends sitting at the table in the bistro sharing a bottle of wine or drinking your own hot chocolate to warm up in front of the fire on a snowy day. You are sharing a meal with Gamache and Beauvoir discussing the clues of the case.
"Olivier stood at the window of the bistro and watched the Surete officers walking down the road from the church. He wasn't alone. The rest of the village, and those from outlying farms, had gathered in the bistro, the focal point for the community, in good times and bad. ...They watched silently as Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste walked toward them through the cold November drizzle that turned, every now and then, into sleet. Then back again. Olivier and Gabri had been handing out coffee and tea, juices, and fresh, warm cookies from Sarah's bakery. No alcohol. No need to feed already heightened emotions. ...Both fireplaces, on either side of the bistro, were lit. And now the only sound, besides some labored breathing, was the cheery crackle of the logs. The place smelled of woodsmoke and rich coffee. And wet wool form those who'd arrived late, hurrying through the damp afternoon."
The second feeling could be jealousy, the feeling that you want to have that kind of place to go, to feel the warmth of a small pub or cafe, where you can go and replicate the cosiness that is described by Penny in this place and with the friends that you can always count on like these people seem to be able to trust and rely on each other.
So in this book, the murder plot revolves around the idea that a strange figure appears in the center of town who looks like the Grim Reaper, and is called a "cobrador", acting as a conscience for someone who has done something bad and gotten away with it. This figure follows the person around until the pay their debt, either money or with guilt and embarrassment. Things go wrong and after watching the cobrador stand on the village green for two days, someone is found dead.
The book starts in the middle with Gamache on the witness stand in court testifying about who the murderer is. The interesting concept in this book is how it travels back and forth in time, between the trial in the present tense, with Gamache telling the story as he testifies, and a kind of flashback, where we are back in Three Pines as the case is being investigated. In this back and forth style the entire case is revealed slowly, explaining how the murder occurred and how they discovered who committed the crime and what the motive was.
Again just a wonderful literary mystery novel to sink down into the couch and imagine you are in Myrna's book shop, in Three Pines, on a rainy, or snowy afternoon with some comfort food and hot chocolate reading about the case with Armand and Reine-Marie.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Born a Crime
Trevor Noah has written an incredible book. I listened to him read the story of his childhood on the audiobook and it just made his story even more amazing. He talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa explaining the incredible segregation between not only black and white, but also the prejudice against "colored" people, who are born of mixed heritage.
I love watching Trevor Noah on late night television. His show is clever and he is such a cute young man. I also love listening to him at night and on the audible book, his voice has such a soft lilting cadence and wonderful accent to it.
What a life story he has lived in such a short time. He has become so successful, but that is not what the book is about at all. the book takes us back to his childhood, growing up with a black mother and a white father, who is not really involved in his upbringing. He describes all the members of his family, from his mother, to his aunts and uncles and cousins in such a colorful manner. They are all interesting characters. His mother is very religious, believing that her faith will carry her through any disaster or trouble in her life. He has two half brothers , when his mother marries another black man. This man is abusive to his mother and he spends his youth defending and protecting her.
He runs with a rough group of boys for a while as a teenager. he gets into trouble along the way, but always seems to land on his feet. Some of the time it seems like he is just lucky. Other times it could be his easy going personality helps him win people over.
He has lived through things our children here in America will never have to experience. He has amazingly come out of it all to be very successful. He has experienced hatred, and bigotry, physical abuse and even a stint in jail. But the man you see on television seems like such a sweet likeable person, it is hard to imagine the life he describes in this book.
I love watching Trevor Noah on late night television. His show is clever and he is such a cute young man. I also love listening to him at night and on the audible book, his voice has such a soft lilting cadence and wonderful accent to it.
What a life story he has lived in such a short time. He has become so successful, but that is not what the book is about at all. the book takes us back to his childhood, growing up with a black mother and a white father, who is not really involved in his upbringing. He describes all the members of his family, from his mother, to his aunts and uncles and cousins in such a colorful manner. They are all interesting characters. His mother is very religious, believing that her faith will carry her through any disaster or trouble in her life. He has two half brothers , when his mother marries another black man. This man is abusive to his mother and he spends his youth defending and protecting her.
He runs with a rough group of boys for a while as a teenager. he gets into trouble along the way, but always seems to land on his feet. Some of the time it seems like he is just lucky. Other times it could be his easy going personality helps him win people over.
He has lived through things our children here in America will never have to experience. He has amazingly come out of it all to be very successful. He has experienced hatred, and bigotry, physical abuse and even a stint in jail. But the man you see on television seems like such a sweet likeable person, it is hard to imagine the life he describes in this book.
A Tightly Ravelled Mind
OK this is probably the craziest book I have ever read. When I looked back at reviews after finishing the book I saw that many people put it down without finishing it. I did think about a few times, but I kept thinking that there would be a good twist at the end, so on I plunged.
I will say that it is not the worst book, it did keep me reading to the end. It did have some clever plot points and funny, in a awkward way, scenarios. I will be recommending this book to a friend of mine who is a psychologist.
But I will say that it is not a good mystery in the sense of a whonunit. It does not really build suspense and there is not really any good character development, so that you are really basically just shocked with the ending, but the author has not done a good job developing any of the characters so that you feel sorry for anyone or that justice has been dealt.
This is the story or Nora Goodman, who is a Freudian therapist, separated from her husband, also a therapist, taking care of her two young children. She has half a dozen clients and they are starting to die. She becomes convinced they are being murdered. She hires private detective, Mike Ruiz to find the killer.
As Nora is working with her patients, trying to help them understand their neuroses, she is also still trying to work out her own psychological issues from her childhood. Her first patient to die is Howard, which catches her by surprise. Nora thinks, "The media presented Howard's demise as accidental - a little chemistry experiment in his home workshop gone wrong. But Freud didn't believe in accident sand neither did I. Deep down no one believe s in accidents. We all want meaning. We prefer the illusion of control over what matters in our lives, no matter how irrational the explanation."
This is a story of a neurotic woman who has never resolved her harmful relationship with her father and mother, and is not really able to help her patients. The people you, as a reader, are most concerned for in the end are her children. Parents who never resolve their own problems can just pass the problems onto the next generation.
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Young Jane Young
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like today if you had decided to go to a different college, chose a different career, marrying a different person? Have you ever thought about what makes us go in one direction or another. How we choose when we reach in a fork in the road? Young Jane Young, is the newest novel to come out of the imagination of Gabrielle Zevin. These are the very subjects explored in this novel. More to the point, Zevin shows us how far reaching those actions are. Because when we make pick an option, it has repercussions on many people around us.
Written from the the perspective of three different characters in this story we learn the story of young love with a married man from three different viewpoints. Each character has a very distinctive voice. First from Rachel Grossman, Jewish mother, has retired to Florida. She is a widow now, always looking for a new relationship. She and her best friend go out to meet men, or on dates with the men they have met. There is always something wrong with the men they are involved with. With a few Yiddish words and phrases to pepper her New York Jewish dialog, Rachel tells the story of her daughter's disgrace.
As you read each interpretation of the events Zevin does a great job of making each voice unique and fitting to the character. The story told from the perspective of Jane Young, now in her forties, living in a small town in Maine with her daughter. She has remade herself into a event planner. She creates the perfect wedding for new couples starting out in life. Jane explains this way, "...To be clear, even if it's not what I thought I'd do, I like planning weddings. I like the ceremony. And people invite you into their lives on what they believe to be the most important day. It's a privilege." That is her standard spiel for how she ended up in Maine as a wedding planner. Her young daughter, Ruby goes to school and assists her mother in the afternoons. They have become powerful and yet beloved fixtures in the town.
Ruby writes the story from her point of view. Her section of the book is written like a child writing letters to her pen pal. Well written emails carry on the one sided conversation with a pen pal across the ocean. She writes about school and working with her mom. She writes about finding out her mother's secret and feeling she just cannot condone her behavior and sit by quietly. She needs to speak out.
We hear the details of the embarrassing stigma of Jane's past. She tells the story of Aviva Grossman, political intern. The mistakes she made and how it has affected her entire life since. this is the most cleverly written section of the book. Written in the style of a choose your path stories. At the end of each short chapter there is a choice, would you choose to stay or go? Would you break up or stay involved? Would you turn right or left? With each choice you turn to a different page. Each choice offers a different ending to your story. It shows the uncertainty of life. How each avenue we choose leads to the next crossroads. How our decisions affect our life and the those whose lives we touch.
Gabrielle Zevin has connected all the women in this novel around the congressman in a complex way. Se has presented each woman's story in a personal viewpoint so that you can relate and feel supportive of each of them. Life and love are complicated and the lines of right and wrong are blurred.
Written from the the perspective of three different characters in this story we learn the story of young love with a married man from three different viewpoints. Each character has a very distinctive voice. First from Rachel Grossman, Jewish mother, has retired to Florida. She is a widow now, always looking for a new relationship. She and her best friend go out to meet men, or on dates with the men they have met. There is always something wrong with the men they are involved with. With a few Yiddish words and phrases to pepper her New York Jewish dialog, Rachel tells the story of her daughter's disgrace.
As you read each interpretation of the events Zevin does a great job of making each voice unique and fitting to the character. The story told from the perspective of Jane Young, now in her forties, living in a small town in Maine with her daughter. She has remade herself into a event planner. She creates the perfect wedding for new couples starting out in life. Jane explains this way, "...To be clear, even if it's not what I thought I'd do, I like planning weddings. I like the ceremony. And people invite you into their lives on what they believe to be the most important day. It's a privilege." That is her standard spiel for how she ended up in Maine as a wedding planner. Her young daughter, Ruby goes to school and assists her mother in the afternoons. They have become powerful and yet beloved fixtures in the town.
Ruby writes the story from her point of view. Her section of the book is written like a child writing letters to her pen pal. Well written emails carry on the one sided conversation with a pen pal across the ocean. She writes about school and working with her mom. She writes about finding out her mother's secret and feeling she just cannot condone her behavior and sit by quietly. She needs to speak out.
We hear the details of the embarrassing stigma of Jane's past. She tells the story of Aviva Grossman, political intern. The mistakes she made and how it has affected her entire life since. this is the most cleverly written section of the book. Written in the style of a choose your path stories. At the end of each short chapter there is a choice, would you choose to stay or go? Would you break up or stay involved? Would you turn right or left? With each choice you turn to a different page. Each choice offers a different ending to your story. It shows the uncertainty of life. How each avenue we choose leads to the next crossroads. How our decisions affect our life and the those whose lives we touch.
Gabrielle Zevin has connected all the women in this novel around the congressman in a complex way. Se has presented each woman's story in a personal viewpoint so that you can relate and feel supportive of each of them. Life and love are complicated and the lines of right and wrong are blurred.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
Truth and Consequences
This is the story of the Bernie Madoff crisis and scandal. I know we all know this story and it is out of the news now but I ran across the book this week and sat down to see what it was. I was pulled in and by the way Sandell writes the story. It reads almost like you are friends with the family and you are talking to them about what happened. This is the personal side of what happened to children and grandchildren who did not question their rise to the top. Who believed in their father and his business abilities and were not prepared for their fall to the bottom.
Laurie Sandell the author of this non fiction book relates to the family she is writing about and believes their view of events. She also found herself in a similar situation when she discovered her father also had been practicing a financial fraud. So she brings across a feeling of believability to this book that makes you want to see it from that point of view.
It is interesting because the reader can feel you are a voyeur without fear of getting caught. Like the paparazzi that followed the family to bring the public pictures of them we can read this story in safety and not feel guilty for peeking.
But in the end, I will say that, I do feel sorry for Madoff's sons and their families. Each son has an ex-wife and children from those marriages that were still very much a part of their everyday lives. They also had a current relationship with a woman. All the women cared very much and were not in these relationships for the money. The grandchildren were affected just by sharing the last name.
Each son suffered in their own personal way and reacted to the situation differently. Andrew seemed to have been able to try and get his life back on track and create a better atmosphere for his children and fiance Catherine. Though he has passed away from cancer since this book was written.
Unfortunately, Mark reacted much more harshly to the discovery of his father's deceit, and could not recover emotionally. It is no spoiler to say that he took his own life in 2010. But you feel his pain when you read this book.
Laurie Sandell the author of this non fiction book relates to the family she is writing about and believes their view of events. She also found herself in a similar situation when she discovered her father also had been practicing a financial fraud. So she brings across a feeling of believability to this book that makes you want to see it from that point of view.
It is interesting because the reader can feel you are a voyeur without fear of getting caught. Like the paparazzi that followed the family to bring the public pictures of them we can read this story in safety and not feel guilty for peeking.
But in the end, I will say that, I do feel sorry for Madoff's sons and their families. Each son has an ex-wife and children from those marriages that were still very much a part of their everyday lives. They also had a current relationship with a woman. All the women cared very much and were not in these relationships for the money. The grandchildren were affected just by sharing the last name.
Each son suffered in their own personal way and reacted to the situation differently. Andrew seemed to have been able to try and get his life back on track and create a better atmosphere for his children and fiance Catherine. Though he has passed away from cancer since this book was written.
Unfortunately, Mark reacted much more harshly to the discovery of his father's deceit, and could not recover emotionally. It is no spoiler to say that he took his own life in 2010. But you feel his pain when you read this book.
Monday, August 28, 2017
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Lisa See, the author best known, I think, for her book, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, has written another wonderful novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane that brings the world of China and its very diverse regions and populations to an American audience. This novel focuses on the remote mountains where families make their living tea farming.
When the story begins the village of the Akha hill tribe have kept to themselves, isolated by the mountains that surround them. They with their tribal customs unaware of the changing world around them. They grow and pick tea leaves which they travel to sell at market. But they live with their own rules and traditions among their village.
Li-yan, the only daughter in her family starts to question the way of life she is growing up in. She goes to school and her teacher encourages her to continue her education further than anyone in her family has before. She falls in love and defies her parents in an effort to marry the boy she thinks is right for her, even though her parents are against the marriage. Li-yan also defies Akha customs when she has a child out of wedlock and gives her away.
She goes off and learns all the aspects of tea planting, harvesting and making tea. As she learns and becomes successful she is able to bring her village into a more modern era. They become acquainted with ways of life in the larger cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou.
This is a novel about mother daughter relationships, family dynamics and rural Chinese customs and traditions that have lasted for generations. See has written an incredibly informative story that you can just hear the people speaking in your head as you read. The dialect and speech patterns are wonderful.
Bringing the story full circle with Li-yan's daughter being brought up in America and learning how to deal with not only being an adopted child, but adding in the stigma of being Chinese in an American family. See has delved into many interesting dilemmas that face modern teenagers.
So many subjects so artfully tackled in this novel. It starts off slowly but builds to a wonderful story.
When the story begins the village of the Akha hill tribe have kept to themselves, isolated by the mountains that surround them. They with their tribal customs unaware of the changing world around them. They grow and pick tea leaves which they travel to sell at market. But they live with their own rules and traditions among their village.
Li-yan, the only daughter in her family starts to question the way of life she is growing up in. She goes to school and her teacher encourages her to continue her education further than anyone in her family has before. She falls in love and defies her parents in an effort to marry the boy she thinks is right for her, even though her parents are against the marriage. Li-yan also defies Akha customs when she has a child out of wedlock and gives her away.
She goes off and learns all the aspects of tea planting, harvesting and making tea. As she learns and becomes successful she is able to bring her village into a more modern era. They become acquainted with ways of life in the larger cities of Shanghai and Guangzhou.
This is a novel about mother daughter relationships, family dynamics and rural Chinese customs and traditions that have lasted for generations. See has written an incredibly informative story that you can just hear the people speaking in your head as you read. The dialect and speech patterns are wonderful.
Bringing the story full circle with Li-yan's daughter being brought up in America and learning how to deal with not only being an adopted child, but adding in the stigma of being Chinese in an American family. See has delved into many interesting dilemmas that face modern teenagers.
So many subjects so artfully tackled in this novel. It starts off slowly but builds to a wonderful story.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Closed Casket
Finally got around to reading the second of the Sophie Hannah versions of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Sophie Hannah is the only mystery author who has been given permission to write as Poirot by the Christie family. So as I am reading I am trying to see if I have the same feeling as when I am actually reading a mystery written by the master of mystery.
The books are fun to read. They have very well concealed answers to the crime presented. They are set in the right time period and with a similar cast of characters. And, of course there is the satisfying ending with Poirot gathering all the members of the house who could be suspects, in a room, to reveal the killer and how and why he committed the crime. There is the pleasing feeling at the end that yes you as the reader was right there with Poirot and Police Inspector, following closely all the clues that were presented and almost quite sure of who the murderer was, with just a few new facts thrown in at the end to make the reason he or she committed the crime reasonable.
In this novel we are at a country house for the weekend. The elderly widow who has inherited the family fortune, and also in this case is a mystery author. Tonight at dinner she announces to the guests who have been invited that she is changing her will. Of course around the table are her children, her solisitors, other close friends and Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool.
The cast is set, the plot in motion and off we go to see if we can solve the crime that, of course, will be committed after this thunderous announcement.
Hannah has written a clever and entertaining mystery, I am going to go back and study Agatha Christie in much more depth to see if I think personally that she has lived up to the accolades she is gathering that say she is filling Agatha's shoes. Hannah said in an interview I read, that she is not trying to replicate Christie's style exactly. So she brought in a new narrator. She is looking to present a gift to Christie fans, " That’s what I want people to feel about this too: it’s a proper Poirot novel.”
I will be reading about Agatha Christie and rereading some of her early mysteries over the next few weeks. I will review what I find out.
The books are fun to read. They have very well concealed answers to the crime presented. They are set in the right time period and with a similar cast of characters. And, of course there is the satisfying ending with Poirot gathering all the members of the house who could be suspects, in a room, to reveal the killer and how and why he committed the crime. There is the pleasing feeling at the end that yes you as the reader was right there with Poirot and Police Inspector, following closely all the clues that were presented and almost quite sure of who the murderer was, with just a few new facts thrown in at the end to make the reason he or she committed the crime reasonable.
In this novel we are at a country house for the weekend. The elderly widow who has inherited the family fortune, and also in this case is a mystery author. Tonight at dinner she announces to the guests who have been invited that she is changing her will. Of course around the table are her children, her solisitors, other close friends and Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool.
The cast is set, the plot in motion and off we go to see if we can solve the crime that, of course, will be committed after this thunderous announcement.
Hannah has written a clever and entertaining mystery, I am going to go back and study Agatha Christie in much more depth to see if I think personally that she has lived up to the accolades she is gathering that say she is filling Agatha's shoes. Hannah said in an interview I read, that she is not trying to replicate Christie's style exactly. So she brought in a new narrator. She is looking to present a gift to Christie fans, " That’s what I want people to feel about this too: it’s a proper Poirot novel.”
I will be reading about Agatha Christie and rereading some of her early mysteries over the next few weeks. I will review what I find out.
Monday, August 14, 2017
Magpie Murders
OK this book has gone to the top of my favorite books of the summer! What a fun idea for writing a mystery. The mystery within the mystery novel. I will definitely go out and find some of Anthony Horowitz other stories to read. Of course I have loved every episode of Midsomer Murders on PBS for years, which he created, so I should not be surprised that he wrote such a creative novel.
As I mentioned there are multiple stories happening at the same time within this book. When we start reading with book editor, Susan Ryeland, the newest manuscript from the publisher's most popular author, Alan Conway, we are reading a fun and intriguing mystery story being spun. Then when Ryland reaches the end of her wine and the end of the chapters she has been sent, she realizes that something is amiss. She becomes a detective as she tries to figure out where things have gone wrong.
I will not give away any of the plot of this book, it is so much fun to read for yourself. I will say though that the writing style of this author is so incredible, that I took notes for future use when I will teach others about mystery novels. Horowitz has written some wonderful explanations of how a mystery novel works, how the detective thinks, and why readers are so fond of the genre of the mystery novel. Horowitz writes, "In a whodunit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence.
....There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet, there are almost non in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area."
Horowitz asks the reader, "Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us - the crime or the solution?" I think he has really captured something special in this book.
As I mentioned there are multiple stories happening at the same time within this book. When we start reading with book editor, Susan Ryeland, the newest manuscript from the publisher's most popular author, Alan Conway, we are reading a fun and intriguing mystery story being spun. Then when Ryland reaches the end of her wine and the end of the chapters she has been sent, she realizes that something is amiss. She becomes a detective as she tries to figure out where things have gone wrong.
I will not give away any of the plot of this book, it is so much fun to read for yourself. I will say though that the writing style of this author is so incredible, that I took notes for future use when I will teach others about mystery novels. Horowitz has written some wonderful explanations of how a mystery novel works, how the detective thinks, and why readers are so fond of the genre of the mystery novel. Horowitz writes, "In a whodunit, when a detective hears that Sir Somebody Smith has been stabbed thirty-six times on a train or decapitated, they accept it as a quite natural occurrence.
....There are hundreds and hundreds of murders in books and television. It would be hard for narrative fiction to survive without them. And yet, there are almost non in real life, unless you happen to live in the wrong area."
Horowitz asks the reader, "Why is it that we have such a need for murder mystery and what is it that attracts us - the crime or the solution?" I think he has really captured something special in this book.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
a piece of the world
Orphan Train was a fabulous book by Christina Baker Kline. There was so much to learn about a time period in American history that was little understood. Now she has outdone herself with her newest novel, based on the real life of Christina Olson, the muse for 30 years of famous painter, Andrew Wyeth.
This is just on the level of a novel an incredible story. Beautifully expressed through Christina's eyes, her life and debilitating disease are laid bare in cool facts without too much emotion. Christina for the most part accepted her lot in life and made the most of it. There are times when she brings the reader to the edge of tears for a woman who never found true love, but just at that point Christina either, does something to push people and the reader away, or shows her strength of character and the reader is not given the opportunity to feel sorry for her.
I can never look at the painting of "Christina's World" the same way again. Now one must look up close and examine the grass, the colors, the house and the woman who is reaching out toward what she was wanted the most, "a normal life". Both Christina and Andrew Wyeth had hard childhoods and both had a limp. Both had hard relationships with their fathers. Andrew says to Christina at one point, "It's brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I wrestle with that everyday." They each had strong ideas of what they wanted out of life and worked hard to live the life they wanted on their own terms.
This is just on the level of a novel an incredible story. Beautifully expressed through Christina's eyes, her life and debilitating disease are laid bare in cool facts without too much emotion. Christina for the most part accepted her lot in life and made the most of it. There are times when she brings the reader to the edge of tears for a woman who never found true love, but just at that point Christina either, does something to push people and the reader away, or shows her strength of character and the reader is not given the opportunity to feel sorry for her.
I can never look at the painting of "Christina's World" the same way again. Now one must look up close and examine the grass, the colors, the house and the woman who is reaching out toward what she was wanted the most, "a normal life". Both Christina and Andrew Wyeth had hard childhoods and both had a limp. Both had hard relationships with their fathers. Andrew says to Christina at one point, "It's brave to resist the pull of the familiar. To be selfish about your own needs. I wrestle with that everyday." They each had strong ideas of what they wanted out of life and worked hard to live the life they wanted on their own terms.
The Lost Letter
I am always wondering if I will find some old letter or diary that will give me a connection to my past or a world I am connected to that I never knew existed. How exciting it seems it might be when cleaning out your parents home, to find some old memories that will give you incite into who your parents were before they were those old grown-ups who told you what to do.
Or when we were renovating our house, I hoped I would find some old papers hidden in the attic or a wall that would lead to someone's personal lost story. Jillian Cantor has found a way to write a wonderful sweet and historic story of the Holocaust and one family's journey out of Austria woven from a stamp collection.
Going back and forth between 1938 and 1989, Cantor intersperses two stories. The love story of Kristoff, a young apprentice to the famous stamp Jewish stamp engraver, and his daughter Elena.
When the war reaches their small town and starts to affect their lives, Kristoff and Elena must make some very dangerous and important decisions. While in 1989, Katie Nelson is cleaning out her father's house, after putting him a nursing home. He is suffering from a failing memory. Katie brings his stamp collection to Benjamin, a stamp appraiser, to find out if her father really had ever found the "gem" he was searching for. Thus starts the journey that takes Benjamin and Katie across the world to find out the story behind an Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter in her dad's collection.
This is a new and beautiful way to learn about another piece of the history of the Second World War. It also bring us to the contemporary historic bringing down of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of East and West Germany.
Or when we were renovating our house, I hoped I would find some old papers hidden in the attic or a wall that would lead to someone's personal lost story. Jillian Cantor has found a way to write a wonderful sweet and historic story of the Holocaust and one family's journey out of Austria woven from a stamp collection.
Going back and forth between 1938 and 1989, Cantor intersperses two stories. The love story of Kristoff, a young apprentice to the famous stamp Jewish stamp engraver, and his daughter Elena.
When the war reaches their small town and starts to affect their lives, Kristoff and Elena must make some very dangerous and important decisions. While in 1989, Katie Nelson is cleaning out her father's house, after putting him a nursing home. He is suffering from a failing memory. Katie brings his stamp collection to Benjamin, a stamp appraiser, to find out if her father really had ever found the "gem" he was searching for. Thus starts the journey that takes Benjamin and Katie across the world to find out the story behind an Austrian stamp placed on an old love letter in her dad's collection.
This is a new and beautiful way to learn about another piece of the history of the Second World War. It also bring us to the contemporary historic bringing down of the Berlin Wall and the reuniting of East and West Germany.
Monday, August 7, 2017
Poetry Will Save Your Life
Jill Bialosky has found a creative way to write about her personal experiences and make them interesting to a wider audience. If you are a poetry enthusiast, you will enjoy reading her memoir, Poetry Will Save Your Life.
I must admit that poetry has never really spoken to me, so there a few poems that I have learned over the years, mainly for school assignments that I recognized in this book. There are a few that brought back fond memories of my mother, because she did like poems and Robert Louis Stevenson, who is ddquoted int his book was one of her favorites. "My Shadow" and "The Swing" were poems my mother loved to recite to me when I was a child.
Bialosky writes each chapter in this book about different stages and experiences in her life. In each instance she uses a poet and their poetry to relate to her frame of mind and emotions in those circumstances. It is interesting that there is a poet and poems to fit all different situations in life. When you are happy or sad, about marriage and loss of a pregnancy and even suicide. Though looking at the book as a whole, there are more poems about the unhappy experiences in life than the happy ones, or do we just look for something to fulfill us when we are down?
Growing up Jewish Bialosky even can relate to the psalms and poems of Jewish poets for inspiration and soloace. She quotes Psalm 23, "The Lord Is My Shepard..." which we are all so familiar with and the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, who as a child immigrated from Germany under Hitler's regime, to Palestine with his Orthodox family. His poetry including, My child blossoms sadly", "carries the anguished reverberations of history and politics", says Jill Bialosky.
Though we do not share the same favorite poets, Bialosky says in an interview that her favorites are Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens, this was an interesting quick book to read. If you are moved by the poems she has chosen you may even enjoy it in a more personal way than I did.
I must admit that poetry has never really spoken to me, so there a few poems that I have learned over the years, mainly for school assignments that I recognized in this book. There are a few that brought back fond memories of my mother, because she did like poems and Robert Louis Stevenson, who is ddquoted int his book was one of her favorites. "My Shadow" and "The Swing" were poems my mother loved to recite to me when I was a child.
Bialosky writes each chapter in this book about different stages and experiences in her life. In each instance she uses a poet and their poetry to relate to her frame of mind and emotions in those circumstances. It is interesting that there is a poet and poems to fit all different situations in life. When you are happy or sad, about marriage and loss of a pregnancy and even suicide. Though looking at the book as a whole, there are more poems about the unhappy experiences in life than the happy ones, or do we just look for something to fulfill us when we are down?
Growing up Jewish Bialosky even can relate to the psalms and poems of Jewish poets for inspiration and soloace. She quotes Psalm 23, "The Lord Is My Shepard..." which we are all so familiar with and the Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, who as a child immigrated from Germany under Hitler's regime, to Palestine with his Orthodox family. His poetry including, My child blossoms sadly", "carries the anguished reverberations of history and politics", says Jill Bialosky.
Though we do not share the same favorite poets, Bialosky says in an interview that her favorites are Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath, and Wallace Stevens, this was an interesting quick book to read. If you are moved by the poems she has chosen you may even enjoy it in a more personal way than I did.
Thursday, July 27, 2017
The Other Einstein
Marie Benedict has written a fascinating story about the Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva “Mitza” Marić. So much of history has not been recorded and so Benedict has taken liberties with the few simple facts she does have at her disposal and embellished them to create a wonderful love story, that slowly shows the true personalities of these two genius characters.
Using her imagination she develops the relationship that could have brought Mileva and Albert together and also been the reason it could not succeed. There is factual evidence of the type of society they were living in. So the idea that a woman of such intelligence could not be successful on her own, or that she could not have it all, a family, a marriage and a career is frustrating to a reader in present day. I definitely sided with Mileva and wanted her to have everything she dreamed about.
I was angry with Einstein for taking credit for her work and for not learning how to make their marriage work. So though Albert Einstein is a legend in our time, this story leaves some doubt in my mind that he could have been as successful as he was without his wife's assistance. I have lost some of the awe I had of him. This novel paints Einstein as a smart, successful but not always pleasant human being.
Mileva begins the novel coming to Zurich to study. She has forgone personal pleasures, including friends and parties to get ahead with her studies. When she meet Einstein, she tries to avoid falling for his charms. She knows that success comes at a price. When she begins getting involved emotionally, she fears that she will lose herself in the relationship. Einstein reassures her, "No, Miss Maric. Surely bohemians such as ourselves - separate and apart from others with our vision and all our cultural and personal differences - can have both." When she tries to put some distance between them, Einstein tells her he will wait for her as long as it takes. "Never before have I been so certain of someone or something as I am of you . I will wait, Miss Maric. Until you are ready."
though this starts as a wonderful love story and I was routing for the success of their love story, it ends quickly when I think Einstein is threatened by Mileva's intellect. She possibly could have been more successful than Einstein if times were different and women could show their ability. If she had been a stronger person, maybe with a different husband she could have been the name we remember today, along with Marie Curie.
Though women today have found more of a voice in business, and they can show their inteligence and make a name for themselves...there is still a debate over whether a woman can have it all, career, marriage and family and be happy.
Using her imagination she develops the relationship that could have brought Mileva and Albert together and also been the reason it could not succeed. There is factual evidence of the type of society they were living in. So the idea that a woman of such intelligence could not be successful on her own, or that she could not have it all, a family, a marriage and a career is frustrating to a reader in present day. I definitely sided with Mileva and wanted her to have everything she dreamed about.
I was angry with Einstein for taking credit for her work and for not learning how to make their marriage work. So though Albert Einstein is a legend in our time, this story leaves some doubt in my mind that he could have been as successful as he was without his wife's assistance. I have lost some of the awe I had of him. This novel paints Einstein as a smart, successful but not always pleasant human being.
Mileva begins the novel coming to Zurich to study. She has forgone personal pleasures, including friends and parties to get ahead with her studies. When she meet Einstein, she tries to avoid falling for his charms. She knows that success comes at a price. When she begins getting involved emotionally, she fears that she will lose herself in the relationship. Einstein reassures her, "No, Miss Maric. Surely bohemians such as ourselves - separate and apart from others with our vision and all our cultural and personal differences - can have both." When she tries to put some distance between them, Einstein tells her he will wait for her as long as it takes. "Never before have I been so certain of someone or something as I am of you . I will wait, Miss Maric. Until you are ready."
though this starts as a wonderful love story and I was routing for the success of their love story, it ends quickly when I think Einstein is threatened by Mileva's intellect. She possibly could have been more successful than Einstein if times were different and women could show their ability. If she had been a stronger person, maybe with a different husband she could have been the name we remember today, along with Marie Curie.
Though women today have found more of a voice in business, and they can show their inteligence and make a name for themselves...there is still a debate over whether a woman can have it all, career, marriage and family and be happy.
Dinner with Edward
Dinner with Edward is a true story of the relationship that develops between Edward, a nonagenarian, who has recently lost his wife and the author, Isabel, who is going through the end of her unhappy marriage. A short sweet story about the nourishment of both body and the soul.
Isabel Vincent, a newspaper journalist, writes beautifully about her dinner dates with Edward. Each menu is presented at the head of the chapter. The two of them talk about life and food. Edward gives explanations of the recipes, that Isabel sometimes tries to recreate at home. Edward takes great care even with the cocktails shared.
Every week after being introduced by Isabel's friend, Edward's daughter, the two share a meal cooked by Edward. Edward is a charismatic, refined gentleman. He was married for over 60 years to Paula. They were madly in love and when she first died, Edward wanted to die also. Isabel was a foreign war correspondent, where she met her husband, a Serbian war photographer. They have a daughter and have tried to settle down in the city, then moved to Roosevelt Island for a more peaceful lifestyle. Though they have tried everything, Isabel's marriage is still falling apart. Her weekly dinners with Edward start to save the Isabel who has been getting lost inside her melancholy. Then the dinners start to save Edward also.
What a beautiful story of intergenerational commitment and friendship. How we can always learn something new. How important having a friend who bolsters up your ego and self worth can be. And, probably the most important how being needed and having a purpose to get up in the morning are to keep us wanting to live for another day.
Isabel Vincent, a newspaper journalist, writes beautifully about her dinner dates with Edward. Each menu is presented at the head of the chapter. The two of them talk about life and food. Edward gives explanations of the recipes, that Isabel sometimes tries to recreate at home. Edward takes great care even with the cocktails shared.
Every week after being introduced by Isabel's friend, Edward's daughter, the two share a meal cooked by Edward. Edward is a charismatic, refined gentleman. He was married for over 60 years to Paula. They were madly in love and when she first died, Edward wanted to die also. Isabel was a foreign war correspondent, where she met her husband, a Serbian war photographer. They have a daughter and have tried to settle down in the city, then moved to Roosevelt Island for a more peaceful lifestyle. Though they have tried everything, Isabel's marriage is still falling apart. Her weekly dinners with Edward start to save the Isabel who has been getting lost inside her melancholy. Then the dinners start to save Edward also.
What a beautiful story of intergenerational commitment and friendship. How we can always learn something new. How important having a friend who bolsters up your ego and self worth can be. And, probably the most important how being needed and having a purpose to get up in the morning are to keep us wanting to live for another day.
This Is Just A Test
Madalyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang have come together to write, This Is Just A Test, combining religious and cultural customs to show that we are all more alike than different.
A middle school novel that brought tears to my eyes as I read about David Da-Wai Horowitz learning some very grown up concepts about compromise, getting along and standing up for what is right. There are quite a few lessons that the reader can learn right along with David, his friends and even his adult family members.
David Da-Wai Horowitz is the product of a Chinese mother and a Jewish American father. He lives together with his sister and parents. His Grandmother Wai Po and her small dog, Bao Bao, having recently been evicted from her apartment come to live in their house.
Granny M feeling left out of the family finds a way to move into the neighborhood also.
Granny Wai Po is feeling on the outside as the family prepares for the Bar Mitzvah with David learning Hebrew, not Chinese and the food plans for Jewish foods, not Chinese foods.
There is also a school wide, Trivia Contest taking place that involves him and his best friend, Hector and their new friend and teammate, Scott. David also learns through this experience to negotiate when one friend wants to exclude another from the group.
Interspersed in this story of conflict and resolution is the story of the Cold War during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan is president and there are talks between the Unites States and the Soviet Union. Reagan is calling the Soviets the Evil Empire. David's English class will be reading George Orwell's book, 1984, in 1984. The movie, The Day After, has just been released and the kids at school are all talking about it. David gets to watch it and now is concerned about the future. Will there be a war? Will someone just push the button? These were the major concerns of Americans during the 80s.
David's father tries to explain that in every generation there is some concern, "...the future was scary. The thing was: That future was right now and now was scary too. My dad told me we had no idea what living in a scary world was really like. 'Try hiding under your desk and pretending that it will save you if there's a bomb. That's what your mother and I did. Or what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Did you learn about that yet?" Reading to day with the current political climate in the United States it is another reminder that every president has been dealing with some unrest on the world stage. That this country has been through turmoil before and we have come through. Hopefully this will all work out for the best, and our children and grandchildren will read about 2017 in their history books and write literature that talks about the fear and outrage we are living with now.
This book is cleverly written to cover so many topics, world history, family dynamics, and the personal growing pains of learning about making and keeping friends and girls. There is a common thread that works in all these categories. There is also a sweetness about David and how all these dilemmas work out that made me cry at the end. I think parents and pre-teens will love this book.
A middle school novel that brought tears to my eyes as I read about David Da-Wai Horowitz learning some very grown up concepts about compromise, getting along and standing up for what is right. There are quite a few lessons that the reader can learn right along with David, his friends and even his adult family members.
David Da-Wai Horowitz is the product of a Chinese mother and a Jewish American father. He lives together with his sister and parents. His Grandmother Wai Po and her small dog, Bao Bao, having recently been evicted from her apartment come to live in their house.
Granny M feeling left out of the family finds a way to move into the neighborhood also.
Granny Wai Po is feeling on the outside as the family prepares for the Bar Mitzvah with David learning Hebrew, not Chinese and the food plans for Jewish foods, not Chinese foods.
There is also a school wide, Trivia Contest taking place that involves him and his best friend, Hector and their new friend and teammate, Scott. David also learns through this experience to negotiate when one friend wants to exclude another from the group.
Interspersed in this story of conflict and resolution is the story of the Cold War during the 1980s. Ronald Reagan is president and there are talks between the Unites States and the Soviet Union. Reagan is calling the Soviets the Evil Empire. David's English class will be reading George Orwell's book, 1984, in 1984. The movie, The Day After, has just been released and the kids at school are all talking about it. David gets to watch it and now is concerned about the future. Will there be a war? Will someone just push the button? These were the major concerns of Americans during the 80s.
David's father tries to explain that in every generation there is some concern, "...the future was scary. The thing was: That future was right now and now was scary too. My dad told me we had no idea what living in a scary world was really like. 'Try hiding under your desk and pretending that it will save you if there's a bomb. That's what your mother and I did. Or what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Did you learn about that yet?" Reading to day with the current political climate in the United States it is another reminder that every president has been dealing with some unrest on the world stage. That this country has been through turmoil before and we have come through. Hopefully this will all work out for the best, and our children and grandchildren will read about 2017 in their history books and write literature that talks about the fear and outrage we are living with now.
This book is cleverly written to cover so many topics, world history, family dynamics, and the personal growing pains of learning about making and keeping friends and girls. There is a common thread that works in all these categories. There is also a sweetness about David and how all these dilemmas work out that made me cry at the end. I think parents and pre-teens will love this book.
Monday, July 17, 2017
The Shadow Land
The Shadow Land is the newest novel written by Elizabeth Kostova. She is also the author of The Historian, which I loved and The Swan Thieves which I will have to make a point to go back and read.
Kostova talks about having married a Bulgarian and traveling between the United States and Bulgaria. She became interested in the history of the country. As a reader I am glad so glad she did. This novel is fascinating and as I read I learned about a history I had never known before. Though the work camps in Bulgaria were not the same as the concentration and extermination camps of Germany and Poland during WWII, the descriptions of what went on at these rehabilitation prison camps is horrific.
Capturing the readers imagination and presenting the terrible history of the country mixed into a romantic story of intrigue, Kostova, has the reader on the edge of your chair trying to stay at least in step with the characters of this novel.
Alexandra Boyd, a young American, running from her own memories and personal pain, comes to Bulgaria to teach. As she helps an elderly couple and their son trying to get into a taxi cab, she accidentally ends up with one of their bags in her possession. She and her cab driver, Bobby, try to return the bag returning to the hotel where they all intersected. Then they go to the local police station to try and get help in locating the couple and their son. This is the beginning of a mystery of who these three travelers are, the contents of their bag which turns out to be the human ashes of Stoyan Lazarov, a violinist. Alexandra and Bobby travel around Bulgaria meeting people whose lives have been touched by this talented musician. Alexandra gets a view of the country she would never have had as a tourist or teacher. Bobby gives her an education in the horrors of a century in the history of the country that is fascinating for the reader.
The shadows of what was really happening hidden from most of the citizens of the country. The shadows of the men who were taken off to the prison camps. The idea of people who have died creating shades and shadows of the people they were. Standing in the shadow of a person, really seeing them or not. The men coming home from the camps, being like a skeleton, a shadow of their former selves. This is a book of suspense, strength and love. Kostova writes beautifully about how love can be found in the aftermath of loss.
Kostova talks about having married a Bulgarian and traveling between the United States and Bulgaria. She became interested in the history of the country. As a reader I am glad so glad she did. This novel is fascinating and as I read I learned about a history I had never known before. Though the work camps in Bulgaria were not the same as the concentration and extermination camps of Germany and Poland during WWII, the descriptions of what went on at these rehabilitation prison camps is horrific.
Capturing the readers imagination and presenting the terrible history of the country mixed into a romantic story of intrigue, Kostova, has the reader on the edge of your chair trying to stay at least in step with the characters of this novel.
Alexandra Boyd, a young American, running from her own memories and personal pain, comes to Bulgaria to teach. As she helps an elderly couple and their son trying to get into a taxi cab, she accidentally ends up with one of their bags in her possession. She and her cab driver, Bobby, try to return the bag returning to the hotel where they all intersected. Then they go to the local police station to try and get help in locating the couple and their son. This is the beginning of a mystery of who these three travelers are, the contents of their bag which turns out to be the human ashes of Stoyan Lazarov, a violinist. Alexandra and Bobby travel around Bulgaria meeting people whose lives have been touched by this talented musician. Alexandra gets a view of the country she would never have had as a tourist or teacher. Bobby gives her an education in the horrors of a century in the history of the country that is fascinating for the reader.
The shadows of what was really happening hidden from most of the citizens of the country. The shadows of the men who were taken off to the prison camps. The idea of people who have died creating shades and shadows of the people they were. Standing in the shadow of a person, really seeing them or not. The men coming home from the camps, being like a skeleton, a shadow of their former selves. This is a book of suspense, strength and love. Kostova writes beautifully about how love can be found in the aftermath of loss.
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Our Short History
Lauren Grodstein captures the poignant, yet sad thoughts of a woman at the end of her life. Having friends and relatives who have faced the same, I think what must be horrific, reality that your dying of cancer, I cannot imagine what that is like. What thoughts go through your mind as you are living with a time bomb in your own body. Grodstein attempts to put down in writing the thoughts and needs of a cancer patient who is dying way too young.
Karen Neulander is a 40 something mother and career woman. She has worked since her teens and now has a well established business set up with her partner Chuck running election campaigns. She has candidate, Ace Reynolds, whose re-election campaign looks like a shoo in. During her thirties she met the love of her life, Dave Kersey, a one term Democratic congressman from New Jersey. When she gets pregnant Dave says he is not interested in having children. Karen leaves and gives birth and brings up her son, Jacob, without ever telling Dave. Now seven years later she is dying from ovarian cancer and her son who she wants to leave in the custody of her sister, wants to meet his father.
This book is Karen's thoughts and feelings about her life, career and messages she wants to leave her son. She writes about the present thinking that her son will read this when he is an adult. When he has no siblings or parents to reminisce with about childhood memories, and he wonders what his mother was like. She also is examining her feelings about leaving her son at such a young age. Interestingly through it all she is determined to keep working. She ignores pain and possible signs that she should go to her doctor, to keep working and spending time with her son. She also wants to give Jacob everything she can before she cannot. So when he asks to meet his Dad, she goes against her personal wishes and introduces them to each other.
This is a story about love, sacrifice, parenthood and ultimately life itself.
Karen Neulander is a 40 something mother and career woman. She has worked since her teens and now has a well established business set up with her partner Chuck running election campaigns. She has candidate, Ace Reynolds, whose re-election campaign looks like a shoo in. During her thirties she met the love of her life, Dave Kersey, a one term Democratic congressman from New Jersey. When she gets pregnant Dave says he is not interested in having children. Karen leaves and gives birth and brings up her son, Jacob, without ever telling Dave. Now seven years later she is dying from ovarian cancer and her son who she wants to leave in the custody of her sister, wants to meet his father.
This book is Karen's thoughts and feelings about her life, career and messages she wants to leave her son. She writes about the present thinking that her son will read this when he is an adult. When he has no siblings or parents to reminisce with about childhood memories, and he wonders what his mother was like. She also is examining her feelings about leaving her son at such a young age. Interestingly through it all she is determined to keep working. She ignores pain and possible signs that she should go to her doctor, to keep working and spending time with her son. She also wants to give Jacob everything she can before she cannot. So when he asks to meet his Dad, she goes against her personal wishes and introduces them to each other.
This is a story about love, sacrifice, parenthood and ultimately life itself.
Sunday, July 9, 2017
In The Great Green Room
It is always interesting to read about someone famous. We take a voyeuristic enjoyment in reading about people's personal lives. Reading the biography of Margaret Wise Brown is fascinating. There is so much more to this seemingly quiet woman's life than I could ever have imagined.
Margaret Wise Brown much too young. She missed out on so many wonderful life experiences. But also she missed out on knowing how famous her children's book, Goodnight Moon would eventually become. Reading about her life and career that was my one feeling of regret on her behalf. IF she could only know how much of an impact her books have had on children for so many, many years.
Margaret was a woman who liked to live life to the fullest. She was full of passion with an incredible yearning for adventure. She loved nature, both picking flowers and going on rabbit hunts with the Buckram Beagles.
She was a beautiful woman. Though she was insecure in her ability to have a successful relationship, she had a few love affairs, with both men and women. She had a long time affair with Bill Gaston, who never divorced his wife, and with the ex-wife of John Barrymore, who went by the stage name, Michael Strange.
Margaret studied young children and found out what made them enjoy stories, what kept their interest and what did not. She wrote stories about the world from the perspective of a child. She worked with the newly opened, Bank Street School, to shape their curriculum and start their children's book publishing business. She wrote for Walt Disney studios and she was at the forefront of Golden Books publishing, with a ongoing contract with them for four manuscripts a year. She was a prolific writer and a savvy business woman. She wrote poetry, songs and many unpublished manuscripts. Her dream of becoming an author of adult novels was never realized, but she has gone down in history has someone who helped form the children's literature we still read today, taking the genre beyond the traditional Grimm's style fairy tales.
Author, Amy Gary has brought Margaret Wise Brown to life in this wonderful biography.
Margaret Wise Brown much too young. She missed out on so many wonderful life experiences. But also she missed out on knowing how famous her children's book, Goodnight Moon would eventually become. Reading about her life and career that was my one feeling of regret on her behalf. IF she could only know how much of an impact her books have had on children for so many, many years.
Margaret was a woman who liked to live life to the fullest. She was full of passion with an incredible yearning for adventure. She loved nature, both picking flowers and going on rabbit hunts with the Buckram Beagles.
She was a beautiful woman. Though she was insecure in her ability to have a successful relationship, she had a few love affairs, with both men and women. She had a long time affair with Bill Gaston, who never divorced his wife, and with the ex-wife of John Barrymore, who went by the stage name, Michael Strange.
Margaret studied young children and found out what made them enjoy stories, what kept their interest and what did not. She wrote stories about the world from the perspective of a child. She worked with the newly opened, Bank Street School, to shape their curriculum and start their children's book publishing business. She wrote for Walt Disney studios and she was at the forefront of Golden Books publishing, with a ongoing contract with them for four manuscripts a year. She was a prolific writer and a savvy business woman. She wrote poetry, songs and many unpublished manuscripts. Her dream of becoming an author of adult novels was never realized, but she has gone down in history has someone who helped form the children's literature we still read today, taking the genre beyond the traditional Grimm's style fairy tales.
Author, Amy Gary has brought Margaret Wise Brown to life in this wonderful biography.
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Three Day Weekends Are Murder
Whenever you need a break a fun light mystery novel is the way to relax. No exception, Three Day Weekends Are Murder, written by Rayna Morgan is a fun, light murder mystery that keeps the reader trying to guess who the murderer is and gives a satisfying result in the end.
This novel is part of the Sister Sleuths series. What a different idea to have two sisters working along side the handsome police detective solving crimes. Three Day Weekends ...is not their first murder. The sisters have solved crimes before. Their father was a police detective. Sister, Maddy is dating the handsome detective, Tom in a sleepy beach community. Her sister Lea is married to Tom's best friend.
In this novel, Lea finds out a antique diamond and ruby necklace has gone missing from the local mansion museum, where it is supposed to be on display. Then a woman is found murdered in Maddy's ex-husband's hotel room during a company retreat. Could these two crimes be connected or are we looking for two different crooks. The ladies start asking questions and snooping around.
This novel is part of the Sister Sleuths series. What a different idea to have two sisters working along side the handsome police detective solving crimes. Three Day Weekends ...is not their first murder. The sisters have solved crimes before. Their father was a police detective. Sister, Maddy is dating the handsome detective, Tom in a sleepy beach community. Her sister Lea is married to Tom's best friend.
In this novel, Lea finds out a antique diamond and ruby necklace has gone missing from the local mansion museum, where it is supposed to be on display. Then a woman is found murdered in Maddy's ex-husband's hotel room during a company retreat. Could these two crimes be connected or are we looking for two different crooks. The ladies start asking questions and snooping around.
Sunday, July 2, 2017
Crimes Against A Book Club
What a fun summer beach read! So many of us have been or still are members of a book club. We meet monthly to discuss the book of choice. It is not only about the books, it is about socializing and feeling that camaraderie of being apart of the group. Social standing means so much to people. It is about self esteem and wanting to be popular. We all have the face we show the world, like a outfit we have picked out to present the image we want people to see, and the body underneath, that we are protecting from being bruised, that we feel vulnerable about.
Kathy Cooperman has written a light fun novel about the women who live in the wealthy community of La Jolla, California. She has illustrated a look inside the neighborhoods and lifestyles of the families who live in here, similarly to the way Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus wrote about the life of the rich and famous of New York City, in the their book, The Nanny Diaries.
Annie Baker, her husband and three children have just relocated to Carmel Valley, not quite the picturesque, millionaire community of La Jolla. She is invited to the neighborhood book club meeting hoping to find some new friends. There she is reminded of her college days, not fitting in socially with the beautiful girls, being much more of a nerd. Thinking about her best friend Sarah Sloane, who was the college sweetheart, tall, beautiful red hair and winning personality, she hatches a plan. Annie and Sarah are both suffering from personal problems. Annie has three children, but her youngest son has just been diagnosed with autism. Sarah is desperate to have a child and is going for infertility treatments. These are both costly procedures. Looking for some quick money they put together Annie's science expertise and Sarah's good looks and charisma and decide to take advantage of the insecurities of the wealthy vain ladies of the book club.
Though this is written as a funny story about families, their money and social standing the community, it can be read on a deeper level with an important moral to the story about human nature. How gullible we are when it comes to a scheme to make us feels more popular, beautiful, younger and more successful. How much we see ourselves through the reflection of others. Each of the women in the book club seem to Annie so shallow and self absorbed. Sarah begins to get to know them on a more personal level as she sells them their special anti-aging product. She sees that each of these women has a personal story that goes deeper than the face they show to the world.
Kathy Cooperman has written a light fun novel about the women who live in the wealthy community of La Jolla, California. She has illustrated a look inside the neighborhoods and lifestyles of the families who live in here, similarly to the way Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus wrote about the life of the rich and famous of New York City, in the their book, The Nanny Diaries.
Annie Baker, her husband and three children have just relocated to Carmel Valley, not quite the picturesque, millionaire community of La Jolla. She is invited to the neighborhood book club meeting hoping to find some new friends. There she is reminded of her college days, not fitting in socially with the beautiful girls, being much more of a nerd. Thinking about her best friend Sarah Sloane, who was the college sweetheart, tall, beautiful red hair and winning personality, she hatches a plan. Annie and Sarah are both suffering from personal problems. Annie has three children, but her youngest son has just been diagnosed with autism. Sarah is desperate to have a child and is going for infertility treatments. These are both costly procedures. Looking for some quick money they put together Annie's science expertise and Sarah's good looks and charisma and decide to take advantage of the insecurities of the wealthy vain ladies of the book club.
Though this is written as a funny story about families, their money and social standing the community, it can be read on a deeper level with an important moral to the story about human nature. How gullible we are when it comes to a scheme to make us feels more popular, beautiful, younger and more successful. How much we see ourselves through the reflection of others. Each of the women in the book club seem to Annie so shallow and self absorbed. Sarah begins to get to know them on a more personal level as she sells them their special anti-aging product. She sees that each of these women has a personal story that goes deeper than the face they show to the world.
Friday, June 30, 2017
The Awkward Age
The Awkward Age by Francesca Segal is about the problematic years of adolescence. Hormones are raging and the teenager is confused, moody and self centered. We have all gone through it and many of us have parented some teens through it also. This book brings back memories of both those times, you as the teen and you as the parent. Interestingly, Segal writes the story from different character viewpoints along the way. As the reader you get to see into the thoughts of parents and the children living through the angst of growing up.
This novel brings us the newly joined families of Julie Alden and her daughter Gwen. Since the passing of Gwen's father, Daniel, Julie as the single parent has tried to make Gwen's life happy indulging her every whim. They have been a team for years, alone against the world. They are also close with Daniel's parents, who have thought that Julie should move on and find a new relationship. Recently Philip Alden the father-in-law has introduced Julie to James a fellow doctor, who now moves in with Julie and Gwen bringing along his children from a previous marriage. James' daughter is off at university but Nathan, an angry teenage son joins the household.
How do you blend two families into a one happy household all living under the same roof? Segal does a fabulous job of getting inside every one's head. She is able to explain the psychology of what each person would be feeling as they try to change pre-established patterns they each created to fit into the world. Teenagers trying your patience, as parents try to work on a new loving relationship.
Parents loving their children and wanting to defend them against angry thoughts from the other parent.
Gwen has the family over a barrel, she wants her mother's undivided attention back and to be the center of attention. She goes to extreme lengths to be the focal point of the family.
The night Nathan graduates from high school everyone is waiting for him to come home to celebrate, but he lets the family down and goes out with friends. Both James and Julie are on edge as they try to not fight, "An edge to her voice made James stop. 'Of course she needs a break. There's no competition. We're never going to play that game, baby, let's not start. There's only one team here.' He dragged the chair over and sat and faced her, looking serious. 'it's been awful and they both need a break. Thankfully it's not Gwen's style to go out drinking like a frat boy, and my son - every now and again he gets the urge to behave like the dumb teenage boy that he is."
This story analyzes relationships on so many levels. The give and take between the new couple, Julie and James, the interaction between James and his first wife, the interaction between Julie and in-laws. What it is like to be parenting someone else's child. Even the unusual relationship between Philip and Iris Alden. They are divorced but seem to care about each other and spend time together.
This novel brings us the newly joined families of Julie Alden and her daughter Gwen. Since the passing of Gwen's father, Daniel, Julie as the single parent has tried to make Gwen's life happy indulging her every whim. They have been a team for years, alone against the world. They are also close with Daniel's parents, who have thought that Julie should move on and find a new relationship. Recently Philip Alden the father-in-law has introduced Julie to James a fellow doctor, who now moves in with Julie and Gwen bringing along his children from a previous marriage. James' daughter is off at university but Nathan, an angry teenage son joins the household.
How do you blend two families into a one happy household all living under the same roof? Segal does a fabulous job of getting inside every one's head. She is able to explain the psychology of what each person would be feeling as they try to change pre-established patterns they each created to fit into the world. Teenagers trying your patience, as parents try to work on a new loving relationship.
Parents loving their children and wanting to defend them against angry thoughts from the other parent.
Gwen has the family over a barrel, she wants her mother's undivided attention back and to be the center of attention. She goes to extreme lengths to be the focal point of the family.
The night Nathan graduates from high school everyone is waiting for him to come home to celebrate, but he lets the family down and goes out with friends. Both James and Julie are on edge as they try to not fight, "An edge to her voice made James stop. 'Of course she needs a break. There's no competition. We're never going to play that game, baby, let's not start. There's only one team here.' He dragged the chair over and sat and faced her, looking serious. 'it's been awful and they both need a break. Thankfully it's not Gwen's style to go out drinking like a frat boy, and my son - every now and again he gets the urge to behave like the dumb teenage boy that he is."
This story analyzes relationships on so many levels. The give and take between the new couple, Julie and James, the interaction between James and his first wife, the interaction between Julie and in-laws. What it is like to be parenting someone else's child. Even the unusual relationship between Philip and Iris Alden. They are divorced but seem to care about each other and spend time together.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Mort Ziff Is Not Dead
Cary Fagan grew up in the 1960s, during the height of the Borscht Belt comedians and Jewish comics who were famous for their stand up acts in restaurants making jokes about themselves and their family relationships. Looking back at a memorable vacation to Miami Beach with his siblings and parents in 1964, Fagan creates a wonderful novel about growing up, working together with your siblings and a legendary comedian.
Mort Ziff Is Not Dead is the story told in the first person by the son of a Canadian Jewish family, Norman Fishbein. His older siblings, Marcus and Larry always give him a hard time until he wins a contest and with the money decides to take his family a free trip to Miami Beach. His mother loves that new singing sensation, The Beatles.
"Mom really liked the Beatles; in fact, she had cut a picture of them out of the newspaper a year ago and it was still on the fridge....The words underneath said that The Beatles had come to Miami Beach for their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and that had liked the place so much they decided to stay a week. ....They looked like they were in Paradise. And then I knew. I really did. I knew the perfect thing to do with the money."
As the author describes the airplane trip to Florida, adult readers will be reminded of how different air travel was and children will learn how their parents traveled when they were children. Reminiscent of comedians like, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles and Milton Berle. Mort Ziff is an old performer who has seen more popular times. In the face of the new more exciting young performers his job is in jeopardy until Norman and his new found friend Amy work together with their siblings to re energize Ziff's act and his career. They learn how to work together, helping each other instead of fighting as they save the career of the outdated comic.
In a time of segregation the 1960s had separate hotels for Jews and Christians. It was a time that separation allowed famous performers like, Louis Armstrong and Harry Belafonte to perform in a Miami Beach hotel but not to stay in a room at any of those resorts. These topics are mentioned in passing in this novel to give the reader a true perspective of the time period. But mainly this story focuses on the relationship between the brothers and how they all mature as they work together and get along on this important family vacation.
A fun novel written on levels that will appeal to both young readers and adults. Children will relate to the kids in the story and their adventures, adults will have fun going down memory lane to a time of innocence.
Mort Ziff Is Not Dead is the story told in the first person by the son of a Canadian Jewish family, Norman Fishbein. His older siblings, Marcus and Larry always give him a hard time until he wins a contest and with the money decides to take his family a free trip to Miami Beach. His mother loves that new singing sensation, The Beatles.
"Mom really liked the Beatles; in fact, she had cut a picture of them out of the newspaper a year ago and it was still on the fridge....The words underneath said that The Beatles had come to Miami Beach for their second appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and that had liked the place so much they decided to stay a week. ....They looked like they were in Paradise. And then I knew. I really did. I knew the perfect thing to do with the money."
As the author describes the airplane trip to Florida, adult readers will be reminded of how different air travel was and children will learn how their parents traveled when they were children. Reminiscent of comedians like, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles and Milton Berle. Mort Ziff is an old performer who has seen more popular times. In the face of the new more exciting young performers his job is in jeopardy until Norman and his new found friend Amy work together with their siblings to re energize Ziff's act and his career. They learn how to work together, helping each other instead of fighting as they save the career of the outdated comic.
In a time of segregation the 1960s had separate hotels for Jews and Christians. It was a time that separation allowed famous performers like, Louis Armstrong and Harry Belafonte to perform in a Miami Beach hotel but not to stay in a room at any of those resorts. These topics are mentioned in passing in this novel to give the reader a true perspective of the time period. But mainly this story focuses on the relationship between the brothers and how they all mature as they work together and get along on this important family vacation.
A fun novel written on levels that will appeal to both young readers and adults. Children will relate to the kids in the story and their adventures, adults will have fun going down memory lane to a time of innocence.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Bone Box
Bone Box is amazingly Faye Kellerman's 24th mystery novel. The Rina Lazarus and Peter Decker series of books that started in New York when a woman was attacked at a mikvah in the novel, Ritual Bath has traveled to California and now has returned to New York, now upstate.
Rina and Peter are happily married, with children and grandchildren, both from their previous marriages and together. Rina still keeps Judaism a relevant and important constant in their ever chaotic lives. Though they have traveled far from a Jewish neighborhood, and added "adopted"
step-children into their lives who are not Jewish, Rina continues to follow the rules of Shabbat and kashrut.
In this novel, the mystery plot has Rina discovering a long buried body on a nature trail in the small college community they live in. This unearths disagreements and long buried relationships at the local colleges as Decker and his young sidekick, Tyler McAdams start re-interviewing students and professors that have been around for more than five years. Kellerman makes this storyline very current with discussions of homosexuality, transgender and the LBGTQ community. Beyond trying to follow the who done it, the reader gets a chance to think about feelings and ideas surrounding the transgender issue.
Also in this novel Kellerman brings back all of Decker's friends and colleagues from the past. It . is nice to see old friends. With a possible missing person in California connected to the case, Peter's old partner, Marge Dunn, is brought onto the case. As the case heats up at home in Greenbury, NY, Decker calls on both Chris Donatti and Scott Oliver to help keep Rina safe and out of trouble.
Incredibly, Kellerman has been able to sustain the characters, making them feel like old friends. She has keep the plots interesting, fresh and diversified to make this reader coming back for each new mystery novel she delivers. Also waiting patiently for the next one after not be able to put the current one down until the very last page.
Rina and Peter are happily married, with children and grandchildren, both from their previous marriages and together. Rina still keeps Judaism a relevant and important constant in their ever chaotic lives. Though they have traveled far from a Jewish neighborhood, and added "adopted"
step-children into their lives who are not Jewish, Rina continues to follow the rules of Shabbat and kashrut.
In this novel, the mystery plot has Rina discovering a long buried body on a nature trail in the small college community they live in. This unearths disagreements and long buried relationships at the local colleges as Decker and his young sidekick, Tyler McAdams start re-interviewing students and professors that have been around for more than five years. Kellerman makes this storyline very current with discussions of homosexuality, transgender and the LBGTQ community. Beyond trying to follow the who done it, the reader gets a chance to think about feelings and ideas surrounding the transgender issue.
Also in this novel Kellerman brings back all of Decker's friends and colleagues from the past. It . is nice to see old friends. With a possible missing person in California connected to the case, Peter's old partner, Marge Dunn, is brought onto the case. As the case heats up at home in Greenbury, NY, Decker calls on both Chris Donatti and Scott Oliver to help keep Rina safe and out of trouble.
Incredibly, Kellerman has been able to sustain the characters, making them feel like old friends. She has keep the plots interesting, fresh and diversified to make this reader coming back for each new mystery novel she delivers. Also waiting patiently for the next one after not be able to put the current one down until the very last page.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Witch Summer Night's Dream
This is the third mystery novel in the Bewitched By Chocolate series, written by H. Y. Hanna.
Hanna is getting better and better at developing the characters in this sleepy, cozy mystery series.
Even though the reader does have to suspend belief to agree to the reality of magic, Hanna does not make the story too unbelievable.
The young woman Caitlyn has come to this small English village to find out about her birth parents and is now living with her Grandmother. She is involved also with her aunt and cousin. Her adopted cousin Pomona, who was the daughter of her adoptive mother's sister also plays an important role in her life. Caitlyn seems a little bit immature though when she talks about her romantic interest in James Fitzroy, who is the Lord of the Manor in this small village. Not only is he described as handsome but his family owns the businesses throughout the town. So I understand if Caitlyn is a bit tongue tied in front of him at first but now their interactions are at a more in depth level and she should be more relaxed with him. They both seem so naive about romantic interactions.
In this installment of the series, Caitlyn finds a young teen dead in the garden behind the Chocolate Shop. It is almost Midsummer's Eve and Widow Mags has been making a chocolate sauce that seems to be like a love potion. People cannot resist her chocolate covered strawberries. There are three separate love stories going in this plot. Caitlyn is trying to win over James, her cousin Evie has a crush on Chris Bottom, and even Ferdinand the bull on the neighboring farm is having trouble with the cows in the pasture. Bringing in some tourists who are searching for the love potion, one who works for a rival chocolate company and a professor who is fascinated with Shakespeare's play, Midsummer Night's Dream. There are many references to the famous Shakespeare play in the book.
A fun cozy mystery series that engages the reader in both the plot and the characters. It is fun to come back again and again to see how characters that you watch grow are coming along in their fairy tale lives.
Hanna is getting better and better at developing the characters in this sleepy, cozy mystery series.
Even though the reader does have to suspend belief to agree to the reality of magic, Hanna does not make the story too unbelievable.
The young woman Caitlyn has come to this small English village to find out about her birth parents and is now living with her Grandmother. She is involved also with her aunt and cousin. Her adopted cousin Pomona, who was the daughter of her adoptive mother's sister also plays an important role in her life. Caitlyn seems a little bit immature though when she talks about her romantic interest in James Fitzroy, who is the Lord of the Manor in this small village. Not only is he described as handsome but his family owns the businesses throughout the town. So I understand if Caitlyn is a bit tongue tied in front of him at first but now their interactions are at a more in depth level and she should be more relaxed with him. They both seem so naive about romantic interactions.
In this installment of the series, Caitlyn finds a young teen dead in the garden behind the Chocolate Shop. It is almost Midsummer's Eve and Widow Mags has been making a chocolate sauce that seems to be like a love potion. People cannot resist her chocolate covered strawberries. There are three separate love stories going in this plot. Caitlyn is trying to win over James, her cousin Evie has a crush on Chris Bottom, and even Ferdinand the bull on the neighboring farm is having trouble with the cows in the pasture. Bringing in some tourists who are searching for the love potion, one who works for a rival chocolate company and a professor who is fascinated with Shakespeare's play, Midsummer Night's Dream. There are many references to the famous Shakespeare play in the book.
A fun cozy mystery series that engages the reader in both the plot and the characters. It is fun to come back again and again to see how characters that you watch grow are coming along in their fairy tale lives.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Miles Off Course
Miles Off Course is the third installment in the Rowland Sinclair mystery series. What a fun series of mystery novels written by Sulari Gentill. Though referring to these novels as mysteries is misleading. Each of these books is based on some historical facts and characters, then a story of Rowland Sinclair, a wealthy country gentleman who is uncomfortable with his family's wealth and position has found a group of flamboyant friends who are living in the family home with him. Milton, a frustrated poet, Clyde, starving artist and Edna the sculptor, with whom Rowland is in love, go on adventures to solve murders and expose the underbelly of crime in Australia. Rowland and his friends are on the political left and Wilfred Sinclair, Rowland's brother is on the right. There is always a dust up between the two brothers that creates some intrigue.
This time one of the Sinclair's favorite employees has disappeared and Rowley volunteers at the urging of his brother to look into the situation. taking along his companions they set off into the mountains outside Sydney and get into all kinds of trouble. While it looks like they are just stumbling along, in the end all the discounted pieces fall in place and they always get their man. That is what makes these mystery plots unique. There is never a formula plot of the mystery to these novels. Rowley and his friends just seem to be living their everyday extraordinary lives when things go wrong and suddenly there is a mystery to solve. But it is not always a body, at least not int he beginning.
This time though there is a missing person and they think it could be a corpse they are looking for, when they find their employee, it leads to another mystery and even when they come across a dead body and it looks like that wraps up the case, it is not the end. In the end it all is neatly packaged in a financial dilemma.
I still really enjoy the descriptions of Australian countryside and the colorful characters The writing style and the wonderful way the author sets the scene for the 1930s time period brings the story to life for me. I am getting attached to the characters with each new narrative.
This time one of the Sinclair's favorite employees has disappeared and Rowley volunteers at the urging of his brother to look into the situation. taking along his companions they set off into the mountains outside Sydney and get into all kinds of trouble. While it looks like they are just stumbling along, in the end all the discounted pieces fall in place and they always get their man. That is what makes these mystery plots unique. There is never a formula plot of the mystery to these novels. Rowley and his friends just seem to be living their everyday extraordinary lives when things go wrong and suddenly there is a mystery to solve. But it is not always a body, at least not int he beginning.
This time though there is a missing person and they think it could be a corpse they are looking for, when they find their employee, it leads to another mystery and even when they come across a dead body and it looks like that wraps up the case, it is not the end. In the end it all is neatly packaged in a financial dilemma.
I still really enjoy the descriptions of Australian countryside and the colorful characters The writing style and the wonderful way the author sets the scene for the 1930s time period brings the story to life for me. I am getting attached to the characters with each new narrative.
Monday, June 5, 2017
The Course of Love
Alain De Botton writes what seems to be both a novel and a self help book here, in The Course of Love. We are drawn in by the story of Rabih and Kirstein as they negotiate their meeting, courtship and eventual marriage and family. But as we read about their relationship, in all its intimate details, there is also a running commentary interspersed throughout the storyline. This could almost be the voice of a therapist interjecting a narrative of how each person is contributing to the interactions. How their personal interpretations of each action feed both the good and bad parts of the relationship.
As you read this book you cannot help but put yourself into each situation. You will see yourself siding with or recognizing similarities with one of the two, Rabih or Kerstein. Then you will read the italic commentary and see how if one of the two or both had said what was really going through their minds at the time the conversation could take a different direction or tone. You will wonder if that is possible in your personal relationships. Does this theory work in real life. Can each partner open up and trust their partner with such honesty? Can you even really know yourself to understand what experiences from your past have led you to this moment and reaction in this situation?
Rabih and Kerstein enter into this established practice we call marriage. You meet someone that is attractive to you and you don't want to loose them or be alone anymore so you propose marriage. Botton tells us that marriage is, "a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate."
While reading the book the reader can relate to the thoughts and feelings this couple expounds while dating and then entering marriage. They have disagreements over the temperature in the bedroom at night. Whether the window should be open or closed. Then they go to IKEA to pick out drinking glasses and cannot agree on the style. At each of these turns the narrator/therapist examines the words not said, the feelings not explored and explains how the discussions would be different if each partner trusted the other enough to be able to share their real feelings and thoughts. The conversations would have a different outcome, the relationship would change.
So in reading The Course of Love, you are reading a novel about two people living life, with all the ups and downs that every marriage with children goes through. You can also read the commentary about love and marriage as if you are in a "course on love", trying to take home the positive lessons to improve your own personal relationship.
As you read this book you cannot help but put yourself into each situation. You will see yourself siding with or recognizing similarities with one of the two, Rabih or Kerstein. Then you will read the italic commentary and see how if one of the two or both had said what was really going through their minds at the time the conversation could take a different direction or tone. You will wonder if that is possible in your personal relationships. Does this theory work in real life. Can each partner open up and trust their partner with such honesty? Can you even really know yourself to understand what experiences from your past have led you to this moment and reaction in this situation?
Rabih and Kerstein enter into this established practice we call marriage. You meet someone that is attractive to you and you don't want to loose them or be alone anymore so you propose marriage. Botton tells us that marriage is, "a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate."
While reading the book the reader can relate to the thoughts and feelings this couple expounds while dating and then entering marriage. They have disagreements over the temperature in the bedroom at night. Whether the window should be open or closed. Then they go to IKEA to pick out drinking glasses and cannot agree on the style. At each of these turns the narrator/therapist examines the words not said, the feelings not explored and explains how the discussions would be different if each partner trusted the other enough to be able to share their real feelings and thoughts. The conversations would have a different outcome, the relationship would change.
So in reading The Course of Love, you are reading a novel about two people living life, with all the ups and downs that every marriage with children goes through. You can also read the commentary about love and marriage as if you are in a "course on love", trying to take home the positive lessons to improve your own personal relationship.
Friday, June 2, 2017
All Grown Up
"Growing up is hard to do." When do you recognize that you are a grown up? Is it when you move out and get your own apartment, when you get your first job and start supporting yourself? In this novel,
All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg wrestles with this very problem. Andrea Bern is the protagonist in this novel about growing up. She is a 39 year old, single woman living alone in an apartment in New York City. She dropped out of art school years ago and took a job to pay the rent. She has a series of roommates, lovers and friends who at different times in her life, marry, have children and move on.
She is the child of a feminist mother who works as an activist and a father who died of a drug overdose. Her brother gets married and has a child and moves to New Hampshire. Her mother follows her brother to Vermont to help out with the baby and Andrea feels deserted.
Attenberg writes this book in what seem like connected short stories. It is hard at times to see how they are interconnected. This is a book for the Gen X generation. Maybe a chance for young women to see that the idea of equality between the sexes, sleeping around without commitment does not really work out in the end. Andrea never really seem to find happiness. She is an an example of all the worst behaviors of the youth. Drinking, drugs and free love. Taking a mediocre job to pay the bills and never trying to make a career with her art. She is also very self centered, not being there for her brother and sister-in-law when they need her, and bemoaning the fact that her mother has moved out of the city to New Hampshire.
In the end this reader thinks the message not to be self centered. Being single is different than being unattached. You need other people in your life, you cannot live a happy life all on your own. you also need to extend yourself to others, it cannot be all about you. Andrea is an example of all that can go wrong with a self centered attitude and that is not being grown up.
All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg wrestles with this very problem. Andrea Bern is the protagonist in this novel about growing up. She is a 39 year old, single woman living alone in an apartment in New York City. She dropped out of art school years ago and took a job to pay the rent. She has a series of roommates, lovers and friends who at different times in her life, marry, have children and move on.
She is the child of a feminist mother who works as an activist and a father who died of a drug overdose. Her brother gets married and has a child and moves to New Hampshire. Her mother follows her brother to Vermont to help out with the baby and Andrea feels deserted.
Attenberg writes this book in what seem like connected short stories. It is hard at times to see how they are interconnected. This is a book for the Gen X generation. Maybe a chance for young women to see that the idea of equality between the sexes, sleeping around without commitment does not really work out in the end. Andrea never really seem to find happiness. She is an an example of all the worst behaviors of the youth. Drinking, drugs and free love. Taking a mediocre job to pay the bills and never trying to make a career with her art. She is also very self centered, not being there for her brother and sister-in-law when they need her, and bemoaning the fact that her mother has moved out of the city to New Hampshire.
In the end this reader thinks the message not to be self centered. Being single is different than being unattached. You need other people in your life, you cannot live a happy life all on your own. you also need to extend yourself to others, it cannot be all about you. Andrea is an example of all that can go wrong with a self centered attitude and that is not being grown up.
The Weight of Ink
The Weight of Ink, written by Rachel Kadish is a story within a story. Though the book itself is weighty the plot moves along at a quick pace so the reader never feels dragged down by the volume.
The story is test of love and the ability to understand yourself knowing when and how to accept love otherwise you are left with loneliness. There are many messages in this novel, of understanding yourself, being able to give yourself to someone and not feel you have forsaken your individuality and of being able to accept love.
The story is written across centuries. Helen Watts is a senior professor at the local college in London when she receives a phone call from an former student. He and his wife are renovating an old house and come across some ancient documents that seem to be written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The University Library purchases the papers and as the librarians work to preserve the precious parchment and ink, Helen and her assistant Aaron Levy, an American graduate student begin to translate the letters and other papers. They are working to uncover information about the author and time period of the work. Their discoveries are incredible and they can hardly believe what they have found. They are translating the writings of a 17th century woman, who is recording the Jewish diaspora from the horrific Spanish Inquisition to the Jews in the city of Amsterdam, who escape to the safety of London. We follow the thoughts and correspondence of Ester Velasquez, as she writes about her life in the 17th century, being a woman and a scholar. She has been orphaned and rescued by elderly Rabbi Moseh HaCohen Mendes. He was blinded during the Inquisition and has also escaped to London, where Ester is his scribe, a position unheard of in this time period, who to engage with the brilliant men of her time writes under an assumed pen name. She tries to communicate with the scholars and the shunned including Baruch de Spinoza.
The novel takes the reader back and forth between Helen and Aaron translating the letters and working to figure out who is writing them and what their positions were. They also are working through their own awkward relationship with each other and their individual interpersonal relationships. Both Helen and Aaron are unlucky at love. Helen let the love of her life get away many years ago. Aaron is at risk of loosing at love because he is unsure of his feelings. Across the century, Ester and her friend Mary are also struggling with feelings of love and marriage. Ester has sworn never to fall in love, Mary is anxious to find true love. Mary asks Ester whether she thinks love is real, "I mean", Mary continued slowly, ignoring Ester;s laughter, "do you think love can be made to happen with whichever man our minds choose - so it's a thing a lady may direct as she pleases?" Ester replies, "Outside control, and so folly to seek." Mary disagrees and says that though it is our of her control, love is not folly but good. Ester says, "It's a danger to a woman even to feel love."
Kadish delivers a weighty novel full of intrigue, historical references and a love story with parallels because relationships have so much in common even centuries apart. Following all the characters and conversations can be complicated, but the reward is sweet.
The story is test of love and the ability to understand yourself knowing when and how to accept love otherwise you are left with loneliness. There are many messages in this novel, of understanding yourself, being able to give yourself to someone and not feel you have forsaken your individuality and of being able to accept love.
The story is written across centuries. Helen Watts is a senior professor at the local college in London when she receives a phone call from an former student. He and his wife are renovating an old house and come across some ancient documents that seem to be written in Hebrew and Aramaic. The University Library purchases the papers and as the librarians work to preserve the precious parchment and ink, Helen and her assistant Aaron Levy, an American graduate student begin to translate the letters and other papers. They are working to uncover information about the author and time period of the work. Their discoveries are incredible and they can hardly believe what they have found. They are translating the writings of a 17th century woman, who is recording the Jewish diaspora from the horrific Spanish Inquisition to the Jews in the city of Amsterdam, who escape to the safety of London. We follow the thoughts and correspondence of Ester Velasquez, as she writes about her life in the 17th century, being a woman and a scholar. She has been orphaned and rescued by elderly Rabbi Moseh HaCohen Mendes. He was blinded during the Inquisition and has also escaped to London, where Ester is his scribe, a position unheard of in this time period, who to engage with the brilliant men of her time writes under an assumed pen name. She tries to communicate with the scholars and the shunned including Baruch de Spinoza.
The novel takes the reader back and forth between Helen and Aaron translating the letters and working to figure out who is writing them and what their positions were. They also are working through their own awkward relationship with each other and their individual interpersonal relationships. Both Helen and Aaron are unlucky at love. Helen let the love of her life get away many years ago. Aaron is at risk of loosing at love because he is unsure of his feelings. Across the century, Ester and her friend Mary are also struggling with feelings of love and marriage. Ester has sworn never to fall in love, Mary is anxious to find true love. Mary asks Ester whether she thinks love is real, "I mean", Mary continued slowly, ignoring Ester;s laughter, "do you think love can be made to happen with whichever man our minds choose - so it's a thing a lady may direct as she pleases?" Ester replies, "Outside control, and so folly to seek." Mary disagrees and says that though it is our of her control, love is not folly but good. Ester says, "It's a danger to a woman even to feel love."
Kadish delivers a weighty novel full of intrigue, historical references and a love story with parallels because relationships have so much in common even centuries apart. Following all the characters and conversations can be complicated, but the reward is sweet.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
The German Girl
The German Girl written by Armando Lucas Correa is the story of the privileged life of young Hannah Rosenthal, growing up in Berlin. She is twelve years old in 1939. She has lived a charmed life, going to school and meeting with her friend Leo Martin. As the restrictions imposed on the Jewish citizens of Berlin her world is closing in on her. Her parents are secretive and her mother stops leaving the house. She sneaks out to hear their parents plans from her friend Leo.
Finally plans are made to leave Germany on the last ship sailing, the SS St Louis, a transatlantic journey to Cuba. Everything has been sold to obtain passage on this ship for Hannah, Leo and many other families. As history has recorded while the ship is our at sea, rumors start to circulate that Cuba will not be receiving the passengers, or the costs will increase to be able to land there. Though life on the ship has all the trappings of a luxury crossing, the refugees future is uncertain.
Juxtaposed with this story is the life of Anna Rosen, living in New York City, who on her twelfth birthday receives a package of photographs of people she has never met. Finally, after years of not having any connection to extended family, Anna is about to meet up with her father's past. Anna and her mother fly to Havana, Cuba to meet Aunt Hannah and find out about the mysterious past of her father's family.
Tying together Hannah's story of leaving Berlin during World War Two, with her life growing up in Cuba at the time of its revolution, until Anna Rosen comes to hear the story of her family's history in New York City, after the September 11th tragedy. All these events pulled together by the generations of one family, based on a true story.
Well written from the perspective of two young voices, really giving the reader the feelings of how young pre teen girls would interpret the deprivation they were experiencing and how it would affect their personal lives.
Finally plans are made to leave Germany on the last ship sailing, the SS St Louis, a transatlantic journey to Cuba. Everything has been sold to obtain passage on this ship for Hannah, Leo and many other families. As history has recorded while the ship is our at sea, rumors start to circulate that Cuba will not be receiving the passengers, or the costs will increase to be able to land there. Though life on the ship has all the trappings of a luxury crossing, the refugees future is uncertain.
Juxtaposed with this story is the life of Anna Rosen, living in New York City, who on her twelfth birthday receives a package of photographs of people she has never met. Finally, after years of not having any connection to extended family, Anna is about to meet up with her father's past. Anna and her mother fly to Havana, Cuba to meet Aunt Hannah and find out about the mysterious past of her father's family.
Tying together Hannah's story of leaving Berlin during World War Two, with her life growing up in Cuba at the time of its revolution, until Anna Rosen comes to hear the story of her family's history in New York City, after the September 11th tragedy. All these events pulled together by the generations of one family, based on a true story.
Well written from the perspective of two young voices, really giving the reader the feelings of how young pre teen girls would interpret the deprivation they were experiencing and how it would affect their personal lives.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Fever
Mary Beth Keane has published her first novel, Fever to critical acclaim. She won awards for it and it is recommended as an important book to read and she was named as one of the 5 under 35 special authors to watch for 2013.
All of this leads to the recommendation of this book by this blogger also. It is a fascinating story that tells the story of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. It is written as a novel, but it reads in a dry no nonsense style that to me read almost like a non fiction account of the facts and experiences of Mary. There is no added dialog to stir up emotions. This is a strict bare bones account of Mary and her relationship with Alfred, who she is in a relationship with for over 20 years. They never marry but live together for most of those years. Mary came to America from Ireland when she was 17 years old. She starts off living with her aunt and uncle and her first job is in a laundry.
After her aunt passes away, she moves in with Alfred and starts looking for jobs in kitchens. She enjoys cooking and is able to find various positions working in wealthy New Yorker's homes cooking for the family and for their dinner parties. Her reputation builds and she is always a well sort after cook.
But the unusual part is that in every household eventually someone gets sick with the fever. Mary is a great help to the family during the time the illness is int he home. She is there to help nurse people back to health. She always seems to know what to do. Most of the people recover, but the children are the ones who are most susceptible and some die. Eventually Mr Soper, the city sanitation supervisor starts to see the pattern emerging. He comes to take Mary into quarantine. Medicine is not very advanced yet at that time, they are working on a vaccine and cures. They realize that Mary is a carrier, even though she has never shown signs of the disease herself. They are not sure how to handle her situation. She is sent away to an island off New York where they are treating TB patients and they build her a cottage there. Though she lives out the end of her life there, there are some mishaps along the way as she gets a chance to go back to her old life, promising never to cook for anyone again, but not being able to keep that promise for long.
Keane sets the scene well describing New York City of the early 1900s. Also putting Typhoid Mary's life in perspective with the other tragedies of the time period, including the Triangle Factory fire and the use of the drug morphine for pain treatment and the discovery of its addictive qualities.
Mary's a strong character, who is ignorant of the science and confused by her stubborn attitude and caught up in her own heartbreaking life. In the end I do think she recognizes her moral responsibility to society e3ven though it is almost too late.
All of this leads to the recommendation of this book by this blogger also. It is a fascinating story that tells the story of Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary. It is written as a novel, but it reads in a dry no nonsense style that to me read almost like a non fiction account of the facts and experiences of Mary. There is no added dialog to stir up emotions. This is a strict bare bones account of Mary and her relationship with Alfred, who she is in a relationship with for over 20 years. They never marry but live together for most of those years. Mary came to America from Ireland when she was 17 years old. She starts off living with her aunt and uncle and her first job is in a laundry.
After her aunt passes away, she moves in with Alfred and starts looking for jobs in kitchens. She enjoys cooking and is able to find various positions working in wealthy New Yorker's homes cooking for the family and for their dinner parties. Her reputation builds and she is always a well sort after cook.
But the unusual part is that in every household eventually someone gets sick with the fever. Mary is a great help to the family during the time the illness is int he home. She is there to help nurse people back to health. She always seems to know what to do. Most of the people recover, but the children are the ones who are most susceptible and some die. Eventually Mr Soper, the city sanitation supervisor starts to see the pattern emerging. He comes to take Mary into quarantine. Medicine is not very advanced yet at that time, they are working on a vaccine and cures. They realize that Mary is a carrier, even though she has never shown signs of the disease herself. They are not sure how to handle her situation. She is sent away to an island off New York where they are treating TB patients and they build her a cottage there. Though she lives out the end of her life there, there are some mishaps along the way as she gets a chance to go back to her old life, promising never to cook for anyone again, but not being able to keep that promise for long.
Keane sets the scene well describing New York City of the early 1900s. Also putting Typhoid Mary's life in perspective with the other tragedies of the time period, including the Triangle Factory fire and the use of the drug morphine for pain treatment and the discovery of its addictive qualities.
Mary's a strong character, who is ignorant of the science and confused by her stubborn attitude and caught up in her own heartbreaking life. In the end I do think she recognizes her moral responsibility to society e3ven though it is almost too late.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
The Chilbury Ladies' Choir
This is one of those books that has gotten an incredible amount of publicity. I started reading it thinking that I was not going to like it and "what was all the fuss about anyway". But now I am one of the many admirers. What a fabulous plot. Author Jennifer Ryan has captured the personalities of her characters so well. She has created a wonderful closeness of the small village that I can just imagine the people walking around from house to house visiting each other. I can imagine the women gathering for choir practice.
World War II has begun to involve Britain. The men of this small village have been drafted to serve. The women ban together to support those who are losing husbands and sons. As the war progresses and begins to encompass their world more and more they continue to lend strength to each other.
In this novel we follow the diary entries and personal correspondence of four women. Kitty Winthrop, a young girl writing in her diary, Venetia is her older sister writing to a friend who has gone off to London to work for the war effort. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal and Edwina Paltry writes letters to her sister, Clara. So in this way we get varying perspectives of the same events, which keeps the plot moving forward with different viewpoints of the gossip and happenings that are the everyday life of a small village.
There is an accepted way of life in a small British village. Kitty Winthrop writes in her diary about the idea of life in the countryside of England, "...I suddenly began to doubt if she really knew the countryside, how attached everyone is to tradition around here. There is something called conventional wisdom, which means we have to carry on doing things the same way, even when it doesn't make sense. that's what countryside's about."
Then along comes Miss Primrose Trent, known throughout the novel as Prim. She comes to live in Chilbury and is the music teacher at the Litchfield University. She starts the Chilbury Ladies' Choir and forces the women to come out of their comfort zone. They create the Ladies' Choir to help themselves and others keep their spirits up. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal, "Funny how a bit of singing brings us together. There we were in our own little worlds, with our own problems, and then suddenly they seemed to dissolve, and we realized that it's us here now, living through this, supporting each other. That's what counts."
Among the choir members there is the widow who lost her husband in the first war and now has to send her only son off to the army. There is the young girl, Kitty with a unrequited crush on a soldier. Her older sister, Venetia who feels trapped in the small village and is dreaming of a more exotic life. She gets romantically involved with a dashing stranger who comes to town. Silvie, a small child, who is a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia living with the Winthrop family, hiding a family secret. Edwina, a conniving midwife, running from her seedy past. Along the way other characters come to town to stir up the mix of villagers. The colonel who is billeted to live in the home of Mrs. Tilling. The mysterious handsome stranger who has come to the village to paint. The wounded solider who comes home to get on with his life.
All these characters help build the drama that creates so much of the intrigue, heartbreak and life and death matters this small village to deal with. Twists and turns keep the reader's curiosity piqued until the very end of the novel.
World War II has begun to involve Britain. The men of this small village have been drafted to serve. The women ban together to support those who are losing husbands and sons. As the war progresses and begins to encompass their world more and more they continue to lend strength to each other.
In this novel we follow the diary entries and personal correspondence of four women. Kitty Winthrop, a young girl writing in her diary, Venetia is her older sister writing to a friend who has gone off to London to work for the war effort. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal and Edwina Paltry writes letters to her sister, Clara. So in this way we get varying perspectives of the same events, which keeps the plot moving forward with different viewpoints of the gossip and happenings that are the everyday life of a small village.
There is an accepted way of life in a small British village. Kitty Winthrop writes in her diary about the idea of life in the countryside of England, "...I suddenly began to doubt if she really knew the countryside, how attached everyone is to tradition around here. There is something called conventional wisdom, which means we have to carry on doing things the same way, even when it doesn't make sense. that's what countryside's about."
Then along comes Miss Primrose Trent, known throughout the novel as Prim. She comes to live in Chilbury and is the music teacher at the Litchfield University. She starts the Chilbury Ladies' Choir and forces the women to come out of their comfort zone. They create the Ladies' Choir to help themselves and others keep their spirits up. Mrs Tilling writes in her journal, "Funny how a bit of singing brings us together. There we were in our own little worlds, with our own problems, and then suddenly they seemed to dissolve, and we realized that it's us here now, living through this, supporting each other. That's what counts."
Among the choir members there is the widow who lost her husband in the first war and now has to send her only son off to the army. There is the young girl, Kitty with a unrequited crush on a soldier. Her older sister, Venetia who feels trapped in the small village and is dreaming of a more exotic life. She gets romantically involved with a dashing stranger who comes to town. Silvie, a small child, who is a Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia living with the Winthrop family, hiding a family secret. Edwina, a conniving midwife, running from her seedy past. Along the way other characters come to town to stir up the mix of villagers. The colonel who is billeted to live in the home of Mrs. Tilling. The mysterious handsome stranger who has come to the village to paint. The wounded solider who comes home to get on with his life.
All these characters help build the drama that creates so much of the intrigue, heartbreak and life and death matters this small village to deal with. Twists and turns keep the reader's curiosity piqued until the very end of the novel.
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