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Gracianna by Trini Amador

August 2, 2013 by

Source: Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours
Hardcover, 277 pages
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Gracianna by Trini Amador is based on true events of the author’s great-grandmother’s life.  Gracianna is headstrong and determined to achieve her dream of going to America no matter who she leaves behind.  High in the Pyrenees Mountains among her Basque people along northeastern Spain and southwestern France, women tend to be strong, persevering against all odds, while traditionally, men run in fear or have wanderlust.  Amador chooses a third-person, seemingly omniscient narrative in which readers will see and hear the actions and reactions of Gracianna, Constance, and Juan.  Unfortunately, this method lends itself to more telling than showing, leaving the reader at a distance from the characters.

“Once she decided to engage with anyone on a given subject, they would become transfixed by her confidence, and the grasp and depth of her knowledge.  Her sureness came from her strong core.” (page 7)

While the 1940s through WWII is a tumultuous period full of tension and anguish, readers are likely to be pulled in and out of the story as the points of view shift even within chapters between main and minor characters.  From the French Resistance to the concentration camps in Auschwitz, Amador describes the conditions with aplomb, though there are moments where prisoners are asked by newcomers where they have landed in a way that makes it seem like they’ve arrived at a hotel or paradise resort — thus shifting the tone and diminishing the frightening atmosphere readers may expect.

Through the novel, Amador relies on sometimes obvious, and at other times unnecessary headline-like title breaks in the middle of chapters that often foreshadow the action to come.  Readers could find these distracting.  Gracianna is a character that readers want to love and cheer on throughout the novel, but the unusual structure makes that difficult.

In many ways, the author’s style is too focused on Gracianna’s cultural compass and how it guides her actions and decisions, and does little to shed light on her emotional losses and connections with others.  The relationship she has with her sister is tough to get a handle on given the time lapse between when she last sees her in Basque and when Constance shows up in Paris, and her relationship with her husband seems one-sided, as though she is pressured into marriage by the war.  Gracianna by Trini Amador pays homage to the author’s heritage and great-grandmother, weaving a story of fact and fiction that leaves readers looking for more dynamic characters they can connect with.

About the Author:

Trini Amador vividly remembers the day he found a loaded German Luger tucked away in a nightstand while wandering through his great-grandmother’s home in Southern California. He was only four years old at the time, but the memory remained and he knew he had to explore the story behind the gun. This experience sparked a journey towards Gracianna, Amador’s debut novel, inspired by true events and weaving reality with imagination. It’s a tale drawing from real-life family experiences.  Visit him on Facebook and Twitter.

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This is my 50th book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2013, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The News from Spain by Joan Wickersham

July 30, 2013 by

Source: Public Library, though Beth Kephart’s review had me seek it out.
Hardcover, 208 pages
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The News from Spain: 7 Variations on a Love Story by Joan Wickersham explores what it means to love in its many forms, and how that emotion can be caught up with and distorted by other emotions and desires.  From the woman whose husband is a serial cheater even as she lays partially paralyzed and dependent upon him to the woman who is drawn again and again to a co-worker who is just out of reach, Wickersham demonstrates the power love has over our bodies and the helplessness we feel as we try to fight off that power.  Each story is titled “The News from Spain,” harkening to the segues used in conversation to divert attention or change the subject from something more personal and deeply wounding, as if calling attention away will make relationships and connections easier to bear or ignore.

“What they had together was pleasant.

But still that word continued to bother her, whenever she thought of it.  The fact that it appeared to be lauding, but the thing that it praised was a limitation.”  (Page 40)

There are characters here who are emotionally detached for a number of reasons, but even they find themselves in the midst of relationships, waffling through the navigation of their emotions.  Each character is seemingly stuck in a pattern of love, and these patterns continue infinitely through time as some of them long separated from these emotional or physical affairs continue to mull them over and remember them either fondly or quizzically.  Wickersham explores what it means to love and be loved, but also what it means to hurt the ones we love, to struggle in the quest for giving and receiving forgiveness, and also what it means to move beyond the hurt and pain to find peace and fondness without the bitterness and regret.

In one story, the narrator talks of unrequited love and the emotions running throughout her body becoming an unruly mob when she tries to rein them in after confessing to the man.  And this frenetic movement within her is reminiscent of those first flushes of love — requited or not — and the passions they inflame, but as she professes to continue to love her husband, readers may begin to wonder if it is love she feels at all for this other man or a want for those feelings of passion to reignite her life.  The News from Spain: 7 Variations on a Love Story by Joan Wickersham is at times an emotional roller coaster and at others a dark comedy on the passions of love, but her characters struggles are brought to life in a way that will leave a lasting impression on readers.

About the Author:

Joan Wickersham was born in New York City and grew up there and in Connecticut. Her new book of fiction, The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story, will be published by Knopf in October 2012. Her memoir The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order (Harcourt 2008) was a National Book Award Finalist. She is also the author of a novel, The Paper Anniversary.

Please visit her Website and her Facebook page.

This is my 49th book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2013, reviews, short stories

Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano

July 18, 2013 by

Source: TLC Book Tours and Harper
Hardcover, 288 pages
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Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano is an imaginative coming-of-age story for eleven-year-old Luz Castillo that uses the cards from a Mexican game that resembles American bingo.  Each card can be covered in the game once the riddle is called and the players know what card it is based on the riddle, and each card is placed in a tablas in any order or in a standard order.  Like the game, Luz unwinds her memories just before a tragic event lands her in a center and her father arrested.  As she turns the cards over, a memory is triggered, and she writes it down in her journal at the behest of her auntie Tencha.  Like any child traumatized by a startling event, Luz’s memories do not follow any kind of straightforward timeline, but they do reveal a great deal about her family’s immigration, ties to Mexico, and adjustment in America.

“And because quiero can mean either want or love, I asked if it meant “I want you” or “I love you.”  Come here, because I love you,or, come here, because I want you? If you were saying to someone, come to me, then the person you loved wasn’t there, and if you had to tell someone to come to you then maybe he didn’t love you.  And to want someone to come to you is like an order.  If you have to order someone to come to you, how much love is in that anyway?”  (page 13 ARC)

Like the journal entries, Luz’s family life is complex and multilayered with her older sister, Estrella, having been born in Mexico and knowing to smoothly speak Spanish, while Luz is a natural born American who is self-conscious about speaking Spanish aloud even though she knows what those around her say.  While there are moments in this novel when Luz has more adult thoughts, the experiences she has at home with her parents always fighting and her cousins taking advantage of her youth when she visits in Mexico, it is clear that she is mature beyond her years and has given a great deal of thought to her life experiences.

Peppering the story with Spanish words, the meaning of which can be mostly gleaned from the context of the story, Zambrano has crafted a puzzle that will spur readers to keep reading and take the journey with Luz as she uncovers the memories she’s tried to forget about her family.  While Luz has grown up in a typically male-oriented household, it is clear that America has had an influence on the family as her mother takes a job outside the home and never cowers behind her skirts when her husband is out of control with drink.  Despite the hardships, Luz has faced, she still remains optimistic and open to the possibilities of a better life, as she speaks to God in her journal entries about her past and her own confusion and feelings.

Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano is well-crafted, stunning, and highly recommended.  It brings to light the horrors of familial dysfunction, abuse, and general family discord through the eyes of a mature child, who strives to cope with it all in the best way possible.  Not only does it highlight the transition of a family from life in Mexico to one in America — with its opportunities and disappointments — but it also examines the dichotomy of family relationships that produce both love and hate.  Zambrano is an author to watch for.

About the Author:

Mario Alberto Zambrano was a Riggio Honors Fellow at the New School and recently completed his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as an Iowa Arts Fellow. He is a recipient of the John C. Schupes Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction. Lotería is his first novel.

Find out more about Mario at his Website and connect with him on Facebook.

This is my 46th book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2013, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton

July 10, 2013 by

Source: Unbridled Books, unsolicited
Hardcover, 288 pages
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What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton is a look at the reverberating impact of war on not only the countries directly affected, but also those countries who send people to help refugees and the injured.  Todd Barbery coordinates aid for refugees and hospitals with the help of his Afghan contact, Amin.  Todd is far from his wife Clarissa of about three years and his only daughter Ruby, who is just beginning her own life, but while Clarissa fears for his safety and has wrestled a promise from him that this will be his last rotation in Afghanistan, Todd wishes not to be so closely guarded and insists on moments of freedom.

“Already wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, she tied the laces to her tennis shoes, tugged a sweatshirt over her head, and slipped downstairs.  Her stomach felt hollow.  Hunger had largely left her during these last days — she’d always been an indifferent eater, but now she found herself forgetting about food altogether until she’d notice her hands were shaking.”  (Page 135 ARC)

Each section is from a different perspective that alternates between Todd, the subject who is kidnapped and the major driver of the plot; Clarissa; Amin; Mandy; and Stela and Danil — a mother and her son, a young graffiti artist who lost his brother to Afghanistan and friendly fire.  While many of these characters’ experiences and lives intersect, Mandy and the letters written by Najibullah — a former ruler of the nation who is held by the UN and not allowed to leave for exile with his wife and daughters — are outside those interactions and direct connections to demonstrate a more compassionate and empathetic side of the story to juxtapose the heartbreak and devastation of war.

“The man turned toward Todd.  He was about twenty-five years old.  He wore a blue-gray turban and a brown vest over his salwar kameez, and his eyebrows were unusually thick, like angry storm clouds hovering over his eyes.”  (page 31 ARC)

There is great compassion and hidden understanding in these fictional lives, and much of that seems to stem from the torture and death of a historical figure, Najibullah, at least as a driving force for Amin.  However, the letters from the former president to his daughters in exile tend to pull the reader out of the rest of the story until the connection is made to Amin, and the novel may have been better served had those letters been truncated and included in Amin’s portion of the story as flashbacks or memories.  The tension with the kidnapping is well done as is the tension between Clarissa and her step-daughter as negotiations continue and the FBI is looking for the go-ahead for a military distraction even though they claim they do not know her husband’s exact location.

Danger is around every corner, or that’s how it should be perceived in this novel, and when it isn’t unfortunate things happen but at other times unexpectedly good things happen as well.  Hamilton’s prose is easy to read and is packed with emotion and perspectives that are rarely examined in war-based fiction.  The novel seeks to be well-rounded in perspective, which is tough given the complexities of the factions in Afghanistan.  What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton is engaging and hammers home the impact of war not just on the immediate participants and their families, but also those on the periphery and who are actively compassionate in their work and have a need to assist in any way they can.

About the Author:

Masha Hamilton is currently working in Afghanistan as Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy at the US Embassy. She is the author of four acclaimed novels, most recently 31 Hours, which the Washington Post called one of the best novels of 2009 and independent bookstores named an Indie choice. She also founded two world literacy projects, the Camel Book Drive and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. She is the winner of the 2010 Women’s National Book Association award.  Check out the inspiration behind the book, What Changes Everything.  She is also behind the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

This is my 43rd book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2013, reviews, unbridled books Tagged With: ,

A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson

July 9, 2013 by

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 440 pages
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A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson is a mystery set in Lisbon, Portugal, in the 1990s, but also a novel that has routes in World War II when Germans were looking for an escape route when the war looked to be ending, and not in their favor.  The novel opens with the death of a young teen, Catarina Oliveira, who has a promiscuous past and a less-than-ideal family life.  Inspector Zé Coelho is on the case, which drags him into conspiratorial intrigues and the dark, convoluted past of his home nation.  Shifting back to 1941, Wilson unveils Klaus Felsen, a German businessman who is “recruited” by the German SS for a particular purpose that takes him into Spain, Portugal, and later Africa, as some Nazis, including his recruiter Lehrer, begin to see the campaign against Russia as folly.  Wilson’s novel is about political regimes and how even their single-minded focus can be derailed by the most personal of matters.

Felsen is an opportunist who attempts to make the most of his new position in the SS, doing the best he can to game the Wolfram markets and garner more of the mineral and other materials away from Britain and the allies from neutral countries, like Portugal.  His meeting with a British agent Edward Burton turns ugly, marring his character and leading him down an ever darkening path that sets him adrift.  Coelho, meanwhile, is slowly investigating the murder of young girl, finding that the ghosts in Salazar‘s closet are not so hidden.  The links between the Oliveira girl and the Nazis’ past in Portugal are convoluted and sinister even as publicly the nation remained neutral.

“‘So you’ve seen some of Lisbon,’ he said.  ‘Now when you see Salazar’s capital after dark perhaps you understand my point about the harlot.  Lisbon’s a whore, a peasant Arab whore, who wears a tiara at night.'”  (page 92)

Wilson successfully paints an atmosphere of paranoia among the Germans as the war winds down, and demonstrates through a series of minor characters the tensions between fascism and communism in Portugal following the war.  These political tensions weigh heavily throughout the mystery novel creating a multilayered, interlocking puzzle to be unraveled by Coelho.  Ripe with sex scenes and the underbelly of prostitution in Lisbon, the darker elements of Felsen and later Miguel Rodrigues’s desires come into the light, along with incest, adultery, perversity, and murder.

Unfortunately, these multiple story lines seem forced together toward the end with newer, less important plot lines that could have remained unresolved by Wilson.  Ultimately, the most well drawn character in the book is Felsen, though for the latter third he disappears until the very end when there seems to be no other way to tie up the mystery.  Coelho is a carbon cut out of any police detective and doesn’t seem particularly Portuguese with any respect, which could be due to the time he spent in England with his wife and child.  His time in England, however, may have made him less old-world Portuguese in some sense, but at his core, readers may expect him to still have those old world values, which could leave readers feeling that Wilson’s detective is not authentic enough.  A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson works as a mystery novel but not as well as one would expect given the high number of coincidences, but the historical parts of this book are deeply engaging and unique.  Overall, a satisfying read that will keep readers turning the pages.

About the Author:

Robert Wilson is the author of nine previous novels, including A Small Death in Lisbon and The Company of Strangers. A graduate of Oxford University, he has worked in shipping, advertising, and trading in Africa, and has lived in Greece and West Africa.

This is my 42nd book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Penguin, Read in 2013, reviews Tagged With: ,

Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart, Illustrated by William Sulit

July 2, 2013 by

Source: Author Beth Kephart
Paperback, 188 pages
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Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart, illustrated by her husband William Sulit, is a companion to her centennial novel, Dangerous Neighbors (my review), that provides a more in-depth look at the mysterious William.  William Quinn is adrift when his father is sent to prison and his brother is murdered in 1871 Bush Hill, Pennsylvania.  His ma, Essie, is drowning in her melancholy, barely able to rise to drink a spot of tea in the afternoons, while William is wandering about considering the ways he can fix things.  While attempting to find the right elixir to cure his mother using the classified ads in the Ledger, William also is crafting a plan to right the other wrongs that have befallen his family to return it to stability.

“He reaches in, lifts Ma into his arms.  He presses a kiss to her forehead then straightens to find the balance of her, catching the sight of them both in the mirror across the room — William sandy-haired and river-eyed, Ma rubbed away and sinking, the two of them together like a lowercase T.  Ma’s hair is yellow and loose, a curl fallen to the center of her forehead.  Her skin is pale, her hands just slightly blue.  She doesn’t weigh her right size.  She doesn’t resist.  When the sheet pulls away, her nightdress bunches at her knees.  It’s Ma’s feet that frighten William most of all — the color of bone and much too skinny to put any walking on.”  (page 13 ARC)

Through a mix of true history, careful attention to detail (as always, with Beth), and dynamic characterization, this young man becomes a beacon of honesty and integrity.  His goodness is tested, but he’s on the straight and narrow, despite the stacked circumstances and the pressure to cave in and become someone less than he is.  Kephart brings home the pressure of change and darkness with the thrumming of the machines, the locomotive commotion, and the constant mechanization of the city pounding in the background.  While the industrialization signifies a change and progress that can be beneficial and create opportunity, there also is the darker underbelly of those changes that must be dealt with — the corruption and the abuse of those willing to take advantage of their position and of others.  There is a keen juxtaposition of this in the characters of Officer Kernon and the Ledger’s editor Mr. Childs — one who abuses his position to get what he wants and the other who offers his aid in the form of mentoring and money to young men in need of guidance.

William is intuitive, he’s caring, and he has a gift for returning lost animals to their rightful homes, and this becomes a way for him to see hope in his future and to his mother, a hope that even Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent cannot offer.  Bush Hill comes to life in the hands of Kephart, who clearly loves her subject even the dark alleys and the unsavory places like Cherry Hill Penitentiary.  While William is less mysterious in this novel, there seems to be more to his story or at least there is more for him to see of the world, but readers will get the sense that he’s on the path he’s meant to follow and that he and his Ma will be OK.  Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent by Beth Kephart, illustrated by William Sulit, is splendid and will leave readers wanting even more.

About the Author:

Beth Kephart is the author of 14 books, including the National Book Award finalist A Slant of Sun; the Book Sense pick Ghosts in the Garden; the autobiography of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, Flow; the acclaimed business fable Zenobia; and the critically acclaimed novels for young adults, Undercover and House of Dance. A third YA novel, Nothing but Ghosts, is due out in June 2009. And a fourth young adult novel, The Heart Is Not a Size, will be released in March 2010. “The Longest Distance,” a short story, appears in the May 2009 HarperTeen anthology, No Such Thing as the Real World.

Kephart is a winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Leeway grant, a Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Kephart’s essays are frequently anthologized, she has judged numerous competitions, and she has taught workshops at many institutions, to all ages. Kephart teaches the advanced nonfiction workshop at the University of Pennsylvania. You can visit her blog and my interview with her.

My other Beth Kephart reviews:

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, historical fiction, Read in 2013, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

June 28, 2013 by

Source: Author Beth Hoffman
Hardcover, 354 pages
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Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman is a coming of age story for Teddi Overman who has a gift for restoring old furniture that speaks to her.  Her small, close-knit family from Kentucky is as diverse in background and interests as any family could be, with her brother Josh so attuned to nature — he’s almost as wild as the animals he observes and cares for — to her uptight mother Franny, who has secrets hidden deep inside.  Teddi is an independent and stubborn girl whose life is altered when she meets an older man, Mr. Palmer, who’s passing through town.  He buys a refurbished chest from her side-of-the-road shop and encourages her to follow her dream and look him up in South Carolina.  When she graduates from high school, something irrevocably changes for her family as each member either seeks freedom or learns to find that freedom is already there.

“Some people run toward life, arms flung wide in anticipation.  Others crack open the door and take a one-eyed peek to see what’s out there.  Then there are those who give up on life long before their heart stops beating — all used up, worn out, and caved in, yet they wake each morning and shuffle their tired legs through another day.”  (page 1)

The double meaning in the title comes into play when her brother makes his flight from the family farm.  The close relationship between Josh and Teddi is tender and endearing, but it also makes his lack of communication with his sister heart-breaking.  In many ways, looking for me is not about Teddi finding herself — because she already knows who she is and what she wants out of life — but about her finding the piece of herself that went missing when her brother left.  Early on in the story, even Teddi recognizes that leaving home means leaving something of yourself behind, and she even suggests that it’s a piece that cannot be reclaimed, but waits for your return and for you to remember.  Recovering that piece of herself is a journey only she can accomplish, but even so, she can and does lean on the support system of friends she finds in Charleston.

Olivia and Teddi tell each other like it is, and like most real-life friends, keep secrets from one another when they know the unsolicited advice they’d receive is not something they would want to hear.  Teddi rebuilds and refinishes furniture, but in many ways she uses those same skills to restore her own family, which fell into disrepair through a series of missteps and miscommunications.  Through a greater understanding of her mother and father’s motivations and backgrounds, Teddi is able to come to terms with her past and embrace her future fully.  Grammy Belle, Josh, Sam, Albert, Inez, and Olivia will leave lasting impressions on Hoffman’s readers, causing them to be missed something fierce when the last page is turned.

Second novels can suffer from harsh criticism, especially when they follow a wildly successful debut novel, like Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt (my review), but Looking for Me breaks through preconceived expectations to weave a story that will enchant readers with not only its southern charm and hospitality, but also the mysteries of family connections and miscommunications.  Hoffman’s second novel is captivating from the first pages and will give readers hope that the future is brighter than we expect it to be.  Another winner from an author I love.

About the Author:

Twelve days after Beth Hoffman’s first novel was published in January 2010, she became a New York Times bestselling author with foreign rights selling to prestigious publishers in Italy, Germany, France, Poland, Norway, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

Before beginning her writing career, Beth was president and co-owner of an interior design studio. An artist as well as an award-winning designer, her paintings are displayed in private and corporate collections in the United States, Canada, and the UK.

Beth lives, along with her husband and two very smart cats, in a restored Queen Anne home in a quaint historic district in Northern Kentucky. Her interests include the rescue of abandoned and abused animals, nature conservancy, birding, historic preservation, and antiquing.  Visit her on Twitter and Facebook.

Filed Under: fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2013, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister

June 5, 2013 by

Source: borrowed from Anna
Paperback, 269 pages
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Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister is the perfect summer read, and while summer may be a few weeks away yet, this book hit the spot.  A group of friends came together unexpectedly from different walks of life and varied backgrounds and families, with some divorced, others perpetually single, and even a few happily married and content with family life.  These women — Daria, Marion, Sara, Hadley, Caroline, Ava — came together at first to help out Sara, a mother with twins and not enough hands, through a baby holding circle.  Once the twins grew old enough and Sara adapted to her new role as a mother of three, the women turned to another challenge, helping Kate through chemo and her battle with cancer.  As her daughter challenges Kate to take on the rapids of the Grand Canyon, she challenges all of these supportive women to face their own fears and challenges, and luckily each of them agrees.  From baking bread to getting a tattoo, these challenges are as varied as the women who must accomplish them.

“Two months later, Henry came into town just in time for Thanksgiving, bringing with him the smells of travel, cigarette smoke from a crowded train in Poland, yeast from a bakery in Alsace-Lorraine.  The toys he brought the children were not made of plastic; the music he hummed was nothing she recognized.  He was her twin, and looking at him she had never felt more as if he was her second half, the one she had sent out into the world while she stayed home.  She felt as if she could not stand close enough to him, listen to his stories long enough, as if doing so would make her a complete person again.” (page 107 ARC)

Like Bauermeister’s previous and current books that focus on people and food, so does Joy for Beginners, and in many ways all of her books center on the theme of learning to enjoy life and make the most of it.  Rediscovering what it means to be alive is at the heart of this novel, and it was a wonderful ride to see these women conquer their fears and face the challenges before them.  Like her previous books, readers will taste and smell the foods the women eat and find; they’ll smell the perfumes and scents around them; and they’ll experience the joy, surprise, and invigoration each of these women find.

Each of these women’s stories reads like a separate short story, but what makes this novel work are the connections these women share with one another and between themselves.  Kate and Sara may have brought these women together to nurture them and be their rocks of support, but its the connections that they continue to build together that propels these stories onward and deepens the ties that bind them together.  Readers are likely to want to see more from these women as their stories seem to be just beginning.  Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister is uplifting, fun, and reflective, but it also demonstrates the perseverance of the human soul despite the challenges of life that can seem overwhelming.

About the Author:

ERICA BAUERMEISTER is the author of The School of Essential Ingredients (my review) and The Lost Art of Mixing (my review).  She lives in Seattle with her family.  Check out her Facebook page.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2013 Tagged With: ,

Thinking of You by Jill Mansell

May 24, 2013 by

Source: Sourcebooks Landmark
Paperback ARC: 432 pages
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Thinking of You by Jill Mansell is another romp in the English countryside.  Ginny Holland has a problem when she’s in emotional turmoil — her mind wanders and the tasks at hand just disappear from her consciousness.  Even when she’s worried about her daughter’s first year at college in Bristol and away from home, Ginny is still not immune to the charms of a hot-looking man in an antique shop.  But while she’s browsing and happily daydreaming about the man in the shop, he catches her red-handed with a shoplifted item.  Mansell has an uncanny way of bringing together the most divergent plots, weaving in secondary characters that are just as fun and hopeless as the main character.  While her books generally have happy endings and wrap-up relationships pretty neatly, they still provide a few hours of escape that can lift any mood.

“‘Watching how it’s done?’ Evidently amused, Evie paused on her way to table six with two plates of mussels.  ‘Can’t you just feel all those flirty female hormones in the air?’ With a wink, she added, ‘Good old Finn, he hasn’t lost his touch.’

‘I can see that.’  As Finn crossed the room in order to answer the ringing phone, every female eye followed him.

‘You’d better watch out.  You could be next.’

Ginny grinned because the idea was so ludicrous.  ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.  He’d be too worried I might nick his wallet.'”  (page 119 ARC)

Beyond the fun, faulted characters, Mansell has a gift for humorous and witty dialogue that will leave readers in stitches.  Ginny is a mother looking to hang onto her daughter Jem for as long as she can, but reality gets in the way when she advertises for a flatmate and ends up with a young woman who is unable to get over her ex-fiance and is utterly depressed.  Mansell’s books aren’t just about the mistakes we make, but also the silver linings of those mistakes.  Without advertising for the flatmate, Ginny never would have been forced by the incessant ex-fiance talk to go out and get a job and a social life.

Even though the main romantic relationship is not only predictable, but also a little less developed than some of the others, Mansell excels at creating other relationships that are dynamic and complicated.  From Ginny’s relationship with the vivacious and slutty Carla to Ginny’s relationship with her grown daughter Jem, each of these relationships provide the characters with a foil and with a sounding board when they get into hot water.

Thinking of You by Jill Mansell is a soap opera on paper with characters in college and middle-age, each striving to find out where they want to go when they hit that inevitable fork in the road.  While some choose the right path, others stumble onto the wrong one for awhile before falling through the bush onto the other side.  But there are still some that blissfully walk the same path they always have.

About the Author:

Jill Mansell lives with her partner and children in Bristol, and writes full time. Actually that’s not true; she watches TV, eats fruit gums, admires the rugby players training in the sports field behind her house, and spends hours on the internet marvelling at how many other writers have blogs. Only when she’s completely run out of displacement activities does she write.

Other Mansell books reviewed:

Filed Under: ARC, chicklit, fiction, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2013, reviews, sourcebooks Tagged With: ,

Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende

May 15, 2013 by

Book Source: HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours
Hardcover: 400 pgs
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Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende is written in a notebook form without chapter breakdowns and is not a linear narrative.  Maya Vidal is a very troubled youth when tragedy strikes her very unconventional family of her pilot father who is rarely home, her grandparents Nidia and Popo, her absent mother Marta Otter, and the family friend Mike O’Kelly.  The novel is a departure from Allende’s typical historical fiction novels, but do not expect history to be absent from this coming-of-age novel — the takeover of Chile by Pinochet is present in the background, hanging over the Vidal family like a hazy cloud.  From her nose ring and tattoos to her goth clothes, Maya and her vampire friends set out on a path of self-destruction as a way to rebel against their family lives that they claim are very distasteful and harmful.  However, unlike Debbie and Sarah, Maya’s life is far from abusive and emotionally vacant, though it has changed significantly.

“I love some of the island’s customs, like truco, but there are others that bug me.  If a chucao, a tiny loudmouthed bird, chirps to the left of me, it’s bad luck, so I should take off a piece of clothing and put it back on inside out before going any farther; if I’m walking at night, I’m supposed to carry a clean knife and salt, because if I cross paths with a black dog with one ear lopped off, that’s a brujo, and in order to get away I have to trace a cross in the air with the knife and scatter salt.”  (Page 47 ARC)

Allende is a novelist that handles details with aplomb, weaving them in the disjointed narrative at just the right time, leading readers on an emotional journey that evokes not only frustration at Maya’s behavior, but also one of sympathy and sadness for the losses she feels.  She needs to hit rock bottom in order to climb up and rebuild her life, even though she falls off a high cliff into the abyss of drug dealers, mafia criminals, and the sex trade.  Allende does not sugarcoat anything that Maya experiences in her rehab stints or her escapes and drop off the map inside Las Vegas.  Unwittingly or willfully blind, Maya stumbles into a crime ring that is bigger than she ever thought it could be and it puts her life and the lives of her loved ones in danger as she never could have imagined. However, the end game with the conspiracy feels a bit contrived.

Maya’s past is never far behind, even as her life spirals out of control, chirping behind her ear at every turn.  Running is the only way she knows how to deal with her emotions, and its the way her family has dealt with the harsh struggles of their lives since the time of Pinochet. The ties that bind this family are stronger than ever, even as dynamics change between them and secrets of the past are uncovered. Love is the strongest tie, but fear also can be a great motivator as the walls close in. Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende is a modern marvel that will make a lasting impression on readers as a headstrong girl becomes unmoored and is forced to not only confront her own demons but the ghosts of the past.

About the Author:

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of many bestselling novels, including, most recently, Island Beneath the Sea, Ines of My Soul, Zorro, Portrait in Sepia, and Daughter of Fortune. She has also written a collection of stories; three memoirs, The Sum of Our Days, My Invented Country, and Paula; and a trilogy of young adult novels. Her books have been translated into more than 27 languages and have become bestsellers across four continents. In 2004 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Allende lives in California.  Find out more about Allende, her books, and her foundation at www.isabelallende.com, and connect with her on Facebook.

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Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, translated by Barbara Harshav

May 2, 2013 by

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, translated by Barbara Harshav, is about the paths we take in our lives, the regrets we carry, and the desire to connect with something or someone outside of ourselves.  Raimund Gregorius is a Swiss classical languages teacher in Bern, who has cloistered himself among his texts and his classes to the detriment of his marriage and his social life.  He’s governed by a routine existence that is abruptly changed one morning on the way to the lycée.  His love of language and learning takes him on an unexpected journey into the language and heart of Lisbon as seen through the eyes of Amadeu de Prado, a young doctor caught up in a test of his principals like none other at the time of the Salazar dictatorship.

“Gregorius took off the glasses, and covered his face with his hands.  The feverish change between dazzling brightness and threatening shadow pressing with unusual sharpness through the new glasses was a torment for the unprotected eyes.  Just now, at the hotel, after he had woken up from a light and uneasy afternoon nap, he had tried the old glasses again.  But now the dense heaviness felt disturbing, as if he had to push his face through the world with a tedious burden.”  (page 111)

Through a mix of text from Prado that Gregorius translates and the teacher’s interactions with Prado’s family and friends, a tale of hunger, deprivation, and principals emerges that will keep readers on their toes.  The parallels Mercier draws between Prado and Gregorius are uncanny, and yet, the men are so different from one another in how they choose their paths.  At the same time, both men are swept up in a hunger for more life and more connection, especially given how both their fathers had suffered and how little they knew them.  In many ways, it seems as though part of that hunger is fed by the “absence” of the father — though not their physical absence — and the expectations that absence placed on these men as they grew older.

“Who could in all seriousness want to be immortal?  Who would like to live for all eternity?  How boring and stale it must be to know that what happens today, this month, this year, doesn’t matter:  endless more days, months, years will come.  Endless, literally.  If that was how it was, would anything count?”  (page 170-1)

Gregorius begins his journey in Lisbon with Prado’s book in his hands, seeking the truth of the man who wrote such inspiring words — words that spurred his desire to drop his old life and journey into a new world.  There moments when he loses himself, bumping around Lisbon and falling into the life of Prado so much so that he forgets texts that he lived and breathed in for years.  But even in returning to Bern, Gregorius is out of place; it is no longer comfortable or it does not feel like home.  Both Prado and Gregorius reach a certain precipice in their lives, and how they handle it is so similar; it is like a mirror image of the past facing the present.

Mercier explores the compartmentalization of our own lives and how we can not really know others as intimately as we can know ourselves, but even that is questioned as we can also fall into deceiving ourselves about our own abilities, emotions, and more.  Memories are fleeting and often distorted, but to uncover an unvarnished truth about the past, all sides of the story must be sough out to find the truth in the middle.  Beyond that there are questions of whether one should be sacrificed for the many or the good cause and what exactly the fear of death is about.  Night Train to Lisbon is a methodical and deep account of two men with their own convictions and perceptions about life and what it is that are challenged by the world around them.  Deeply moving, profound, philosophical and engaging.

About the Author:

Peter Bieri, better known by his pseudonym, Pascal Mercier, is a Swiss writer and philosopher.  He studied philosophy, English studies and Indian studies in both London and Heidelberg.  Mercier cycling team is a former French professional cycling team that promoted and raced on Mercier racing bikes. Together with the Peugeot cycling team, the Mercier team had a long presence in the cycling sport and in the Tour de France from 1935 until 1983.

About the Translator:

Barbara Harshav translates from French, German, and Yiddish, in addition to Hebrew. Her translations from Hebrew include works by prominent authors such as Michal Govrin, Yehudah Amihai, Meir Shalev, and Nobel Laureate S.Y. Agnon. She teaches in the Comparative Literature department at Yale University.

This is part of my own personal challenge to read more books set in or about Portugal.

This is my 27th book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

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Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan

March 28, 2013 by

Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan is stunning, absorbing the reader into the lives of her characters — animal and human — and forcing them to contemplate wider questions of what it means to love, change, and grow.  The collection melds nature and human nature flawlessly as Ryan explores the parallels between the natural world and the human world.  For an example of this, please check out my short story spotlight of the story “Greyhound.”

There are moments when characters connect with animals in ways that are astonishing, like a goose that follows a human who never feeds it in “Migration,” and the love between a woman and an an octopus in “A Sea Change.”  But each of these stories is more than a moment in time, and in some cases, they examine a lifetime in just a dozen or so pages.  Ryan has a gift for creating characters and relationships that are realistic, without leaving the reader wondering what’s next by the end of the story.  Encapsulating the right moments and memories, she demonstrates her short story creating skills in a way that ensures readers remember her characters vividly.

“She had read that many Canada geese were no longer bothering to migrate, particularly those in populated areas.  The margins between people and wildlife were beginning to blur, and there was something unnerving about the intersection:  pigeons living on dropped French fries; raptors nesting on sooty skyscrapers; geese, sated and lazy staggering through city parks.  How many generations would pass before their wings grew stunted and useless?  Fly, she thought, staring at the flock.  Fly before it’s too late.”  (page 69 ARC)

There are so many well written and emotional stories in this collection, and it’s clear that Ryan is a observer of not only nature and how it operates, but also how humans have shown similar attributes and skills.  But these characters are more than just studies in how they interact and resemble other animals in the wild, they live and breath the calm experiences of the world around them, sometimes without even realizing its influence.  There are subtle messages about slowing down, enjoying the moment and loved ones while they are here, but there are also calls to action.  Act on that love or that need for change, do more than just survive, which is interesting given that one of the stories is called “Survival Skills.”

Survival Skills: Stories by Jean Ryan, which will be published in April 2013 by Ashland Creek Press on paper from Sustainable Forestry Initiative Certified sources, is a highly enjoyable collection that will get readers thinking about their own lives, the nature around them, and even their own pets, but most of all, readers will be entranced by these stories.

***If you haven’t read novels or short stories from Ashland Creek Press, you are missing out on some really great finds.  Might I suggest you start with Ryan’s collection?***

About the Author:

Jean Ryan, a native Vermonter, lives in Napa, California.  A horticultural enthusiast and chef of many years, Jean’s writing has always been her favorite pursuit. Her stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals, including Other Voices, Pleiades, The Summerset Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Blue Lake Review, Damselfly, and Earthspeak. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, she has also published a novel, Lost Sister.  Visit her Website.

This is my 17th book for the 2013 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2013, review copy, reviews, short stories Tagged With: , ,