State of Terror

 State of Terror, is written by one of my favorite authors, Louise Penny.  This time she has collaborated with Hillary Clinton to write a mystery novel that is both political and a statement on the social and political situation that gripped our country and the world in 2021.

Louise Penny is known for writing mystery novels that are more like novels with a threat to someone's life  or a threat to the way of life in society.  She has a distinct and unique style of writing that brings the reader  in and makes you feel like you are there as a character int he plot.  When she writes about Three Pines, a small cold, snowy village hidden behind trees in the  wilderness of Canada you  can  almost smell the pine trees.  You can almost taste the hot cocoa as her main characters gather around the fire at the Inn.

This book started off feeling like a departure from Penny's signature style,  but quickly became a  political intrigue that followed that same writing theme. Her main character seems to  be a take off on Hillary Clinton.  Except that Clinton has a lifetime of experience that prepared her to Secretary of State and this character has been appointed to her position after running a media empire for years.  The tension between the President and Ellen Adams is deep seated.  The  President, it seems, wants Ellen to fail, but she  is a determined and feisty character who pushes forward and is determined to win the day.

When three bombs go off in various European countries Ellen and her assistant and best friend, Betsy Jameson, are off to meet with different world leaders trying to discover who knew what when.  It seems clear  to Ellen  that an  old political enemy is behind the attacks; Bashir Shah, an evil Pakistani arms dealer “intent on creating a hell on earth.”  Ellen Adams even thinks Shah might have killed her husband in revenge for articles her media company published about him.  Her travels send her to Russia, the grand Ayatollah of Iran and even to Florida to visit a previous president at his compound.

The book plays with characters that resemble members of the US government's previous administration including the Secretary of Defense who is trying to undermine Adams.   The Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff and the Secretary of Defense both look really guilty of being behind the crimes and even have a fist fight in the Oval office. 

This book  is quite full of characters.  Sometimes it is hard to keep track of  them all and there are many twisty plot turns. But that is in true form for Penny.  The book is very different than her Armand Gamache series, though her emotional writing style does come through, her prose and style of offering so many  different directions and not following them directly to a conclusion.  Her ability to write about friendship and present philosophical views are all there.  

Then  there is Penny's co author Hillary Clinton.  She brings the political viewpoint to the book. This is her chance to vent about the way things turned out during the presidential election she lost to Trump.  Though his name is not used there are references to him and his followers.  The president, Eric Dunn, in this book is called "Eric the dumb".  To her credit though she also pays tribute to a long time friend Betsy Ebeling, who died recently, in the character of Betsy Jameson.

In t he end it is a fun book to read and could possibly  lead to another political mystery that Ellen Adam and her entourage need to solve.

Comfort Me with Apples

 Comfort Me With Apples is being described as a terrifying new thriller written by bestselling author,  Catherynne M. Valente.  There is a feeling of suspense and dread as you read this thin novel.  The plot is definitely building toward the uncovering of a mystery.

Sophia wakes every morning and her first thought is , I was made for him. She is convinced her husband is perfect. She can feel it in her bones. He is perfect. Their home together in Arcadia Gardens is perfect. Everything is perfect.

It's just that he's away so much. So often. He works so hard. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. He is the perfect husband and everything is perfect.

But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things begin to appear in the house.  She starts to have dark thoughts. The look on her husband's face when he comes back from a long business trip. The questions he will not answer. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. And whenever she asks the neighbors, they can't quite meet her gaze....  She is very popular with the neighbors, Mrs Orpington and Mrs. Palfrey and the others.  

They  all live in Arcadia Gardens and there are quite a number of rules for living in this perfect setting. Each chapter starts off with some rules, like no walking on the grass and no children are allowed to live here. The novella is short and you need to pay close attention to the details to discover the secret to the story.  I read through once and then had to go back and see the multitude of clues that I missed the first time.

I  do not want to ruin the plot for you so I highly recommend you pick up this short book, but I will not give you anymore details.

Where the Grass is Green and Girls are Pretty

 Where the Grass is Green and  Girls are Pretty is the newest book written by author, Lauren Weisberger. Weisberger is best known for her novel, The Devil Wears Prada, and she has a number of other entertaining novels.

In this newest story we meet two sisters living perfect lives. Peyton Marcus has it all.   A career as a popular TV anchor for the most viewed morning show, an apartment in New York City. Her husband, Issac, who loves her and a teenage daughter, Max who is on her way to college in the  fall.  Peyton is the obsessed  woman who works out at the gym and has beauty treatments to keep her looking young  and  worries about making sure she is always presenting the perfect image to the world. 

Her sister, Skye also has it all, living the life of a stay at home mom in the town of Paradise.  She has the perfect, loving husband, Gabe, and a beautiful young child, Aurora. She is trying to find herself as her daughter gets older and Skye is feeling like she needs to make an impact on the world and use the expensive college degree she worked hard to get.

Jealousy is such an ugly thing.  Each sister has jealous memories of their shared childhood.  Though they are close and tell each other everything now there are secrets each is afraid to share.  Their mother, whose outrageous behavior pulls them together, is misunderstood.  As the story develops the secrets each sister holds onto builds.  Sometimes one's actions have far rippling affects.  That is the case in this plot.  As we find out the extent of the mistakes Peyton and Skye make and how it extends out to affect their husbands and children, and finally each other.   It strains their relationship.

The story is told in a delightful entertaining way, but the messages of jealousy and envy are well  developed.  There is much to discuss about the world of college admissions to the relationship of siblings  and the need to the best.  Wanting the most for your child..even  if its not what your child may want.  Your child as a reflection of yourself.

Weisberger captures the current dichotomy between teens and their parents in this quote about how parents are not caught up on the social changes today.  "Did they totally  understand the social changes that were taking place in her generation? Of course not. They still expressed incredulousness when Max told them that this boy came out as gay or that girl came out as transgender, and it wasn't a thing. That these were un-newsworthy announcements. They struggled with the idea that people had pronoun preferences. They could grasp the concept that a whole lot of her friends, and maybe even  Max, thought of sexuality as fluid, and something that happened on a continuum , not a fixed point on a straight line.  Hell, they probably freak out if she wanted to marry someone who wasn't Jewish one day, despite being the lest religious people she'd ever met.  And the y were  the liberals ones! The New Yorkers!"

This example really captures the age gap  between not only teens but millennials  and their parents today. I remember when I was young how old fashioned my grandparents and parents seemed. Now I feel like one of those out of touch elders, trying hard to keep up with the times.

This was book was very enjoyable to read and it brings up many issues I think so many people struggle with and might not want to admit.  The only character I was unsure about was Peyton's husband who stands by her through thick and thin.  He is so easy going and accepting of her personality and her foibles and shortcomings and never really seems to get angry enough with her.  It did not seem realistic.

Recipe for Disaster

Recipe For Disaster is the story of Hannah, daughter of a Jewish mother and a dad who was raised Catholic. 

The author, Aimee Lucido grew up under similar circumstances to her protagonist, Hannah. 

In this story Hannah struggles with feelings about whether she is really Jewish or not and wanting a

Bat Mitzvah.  Also thrown in the story are cooking sessions with her Jewish grandmother

baking rugelach.  

I liked the clever way the author writes recipes that are about the ingredients for friendship and relationships. Also the author is very perceptive about the family dynamics between her parents, grandmother and siblings and friends.  This is a good story for middle schoolers to read for themselves 

and also for parents to read and discuss with their kids.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

 If you enjoy historical novels this is a really interesting book, looking at the beginnings of dictionaries.

Pip Williams has written a wonderful novel called The Dictionary of Lost Words.  This is the story of a young girl who grow up in the world of the first dictionary.  Her father is a collector of words and definitions for the dictionary and Esme grows up to follow in his footsteps.  We follow Esme as she goes off to school, gets involved with the women's suffrage movement, finds lust, love and passion for people in her life and in the words she is gathering.

It is fascinating the way they gathered the words and definitions for the First Oxford English Dictionary.

People from the public would send in words and definitions on slips of paper.  These were edited and verified by men who were working on the dictionary.  IT took forty years for the first sections A - B to be printed.  The original dictionary was printed in sections every two letters or so, years apart.  When the author found evidence of a member of the public had written to the men compiling the dictionary that a word had been left out, Williams said she knew she had the plot of her novel.

The word left out was bondmaid, the definition, a young woman bound to serve until her death.

Williams creates her story around the premise that Esme as a young girl found this word on the floor under the table where the words were sorted and hid it.  She goes on to collect words that are considered unfit for the dictionary but that she thinks are important.  Williams examines the idea that men and women look at words differently.  Certain words have different meanings and there were mainly men who worked on the dictionary.  Esme looks at words like sisters and mother and sees that there can be multiple meanings to these words.

It was very interesting thinking about the definitions and learning how the dictionaries were compiled and how it was decided which words to include or exclude.  Also following the historical events of the time, the war and women's fight for the right to vote, how women were treated and the class differences in terms of language and lifestyle were all well presented.,

Crying in H Mart

 I have always loved shopping in H Mart and eating from the little kiosks that sell Korean and Japanese food there.  People watching and trying different ethnic foods is always delicious and fun.

I will never visit an H Mart again without think of Michelle Zauner's book, Crying in H Mart.

This is a wonderful trip through the market picking out the produce and ingredients she needed to fill her memories of her mother through food.  When Zauner loses her mother at a young age to cancer, she tries to reconnect with the Korean side of her family through the shared foods she grew up eating.  

She takes her new husband to Korea and they visit her mother's family the way she did as a child.  Michelle tells the story of her childhood and the feeling of wanting to fit in in America and now when her mother is gone, the feeling of wanting to make sure people know she is also Korean.  She gave her parents a hard time as a teenager and feels bad for the time lost having good relations with her mother.  SO when her mother is sick and dying she tries hard to be the perfect daughter and make up for the unhappy years.

This story was so wonderful because in some ways I could relate to her sadness, I also lost my mother way too soon,  and because the food descriptions were so fascinating.  I am not sure I would eat many of the dishes that she describes but it was very interesting reading about this other culture.

I guess in a way there are similarities between different cultures, because there were points in the book where I thought something similar happens in the Jewish culture also.  

Once Upon A River

 Diane Setterfield has written many wonderful books.  My other favorite is The Thirteenth Tale, but here I am going to  review, Once Upon A River.  This is one of those books that has been sitting forever on my to read pile.   So I was thrilled when one of my book groups decided to make it a discussion book.  Though once I started it I was thinking so many  books to read, this is so confusing, should I keep reading?

But like every good book discussion  book this one did not let me down.  I pushed through and it became quite interesting and mesmerizing the further I got.  Also the discussion was fabulous and that always makes a reader walk away feeling fulfilled by the book.

This is an unusual story of an inn where the locals come to drink and tell stories. In the town there are three families who have lost young girls.  The Vaughn family, who lost a child  to an abduction, the Andersons, who eldest troublesome son, had a daughter who is missing, and Lily, who works for the church pastor, who  lost a baby sister many years ago.

One evening a man arrives in a terrible storm carrying a  small child in his arms who appears to be dead.  The local young woman who is the only doctor in the area treats  the man, and then realizes that the child is now alive.   As the story unfolds we get to know all  the many characters in this story which clearly centers around the river Thames that flows through the town.  

An historical fiction based on a real town on the river, this is becomes a fascinating tale of the families and how they are interconnected and how people can want something so much they  are willing to defy their true knowledge to make it so. There are multiple plot line working along side each other in this meandering novel.   Setterfield writes, . “A story ought to go clearly in one direction, then, after a distinct moment of crisis, change to go in another."   But that is not how she has written this book.  This story flows like a river and when it hits a rock or a bend, it redirects around to a new direction.