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A Walk in the Park by Jill Mansell

November 8, 2012 by

A Walk in the Park by Jill Mansell is another engaging story about love and coming together as a family.  Lara Carson is forced to leave home at the age of 16 and returns to Bath 18 years later for her father’s funeral.  Things have changed drastically, but Evie is still the warm friend she remembers.  Lara believes she’s prepared to deal with the past, but when Flynn Erskine arrives unexpectedly her feelings nearly overcome her.  Not only does she owe the two most important people from her past an explanation, but she also has secrets she has to reveal — secrets that Flynn and Evie may not be ready for.

Mansell’s characters are always quirky, and there is no absence of that here, from Lara’s strong Aunt Nettie in Keswick to Don the jewelry shop owner in Bath.  While many of these characters are looking for love, denying that they are looking for love, or hoping to fall out of love with a cad, Mansell quietly addresses the fear that still haunts gays who have not come out of the closet, single-parenting obstacles, and how secrets can topple families.

Meanwhile, Lara is blindly making decisions that are best for her daughter, Gigi, but she refuses to look around her to see how her decisions affect herself and others.  She’s also busy trying to make love matches for her aunt and friends, at the same time she’s struggling to ignore her own passionate feelings for Flynn — her former teenage boyfriend.  Life and love is anything but a walk in the park for Lara and her friends, especially when the death of Lara’s mother raises questions about her mother’s faithfulness and about where she got the money to buy the family home.

Readers will note there are a variety of subplots, and while they are successfully concluded, there are some that felt a little rushed, which may be partially due to the multitude of characters Mansell creates.  Mansell novels are full of romance and flirty fun, but this one has some serious notes and a more mature set of story lines.  With a mother-in-law from hell and the outrageous behavior of rap star EnjaySeven, A Walk in the Park by Jill Mansell is a literary soap opera that leaps off the pages and makes readers thank their lucky stars their lives are less complicated.

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.

Filed Under: ARC, chicklit, fiction, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews, sourcebooks Tagged With: ,

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

November 6, 2012 by

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister is a novel about food and characters as original and complementary as the dinners they create during Lillian’s Monday night School of Essential Ingredients at her restaurant.  From the older couple Helen and Carl who are seasoned and aged by salted wounds and mellowing cream to the spunky and unsure experimental flavors of Chloe who strives to build her confidence in the kitchen and her relationships, Bauermeister has created a culinary masterpiece that will melt in readers’ mouths.

“The girl was a daughter of a friend and good enough with knives, but some days.  Lillian thought with a sigh, it was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.”  (page 7)

“Some smells were sharp, an olfactory clatter of heels across a hardwood floor.  Others felt like the warmth in the air at the far end of summer.  Lillian watched as the scent of melting cheese brought children languidly from their rooms, saw how garlic made them talkative, jokes expanding into stories of their days.”  (page 17)

“The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years.  She discovered that people seemed to react to spices much as they did to other people, relaxing instinctively into some, shivering into a kind of emotional rigor mortis when encountering others.”  (page 20)

Readers will smell the food, taste it, touch it, and become inspired to create their own culinary delights at home and share them with their families and friends.  Bauermeister threads the memories and problems of each character through the movements and creations in Lillian’s cooking class, alternating points of view and providing insight into each of their lives.  The true beauty of her prose is that cooking terms are even used when cooking is not the main focus of the story, and she excels at creating a mood of melancholy or a mood of frustration or even a mood of nostalgia as each character reviews their lives and their journeys in the kitchen.

Although the stories contained in the novel are short, Bauermeister does a magnificent job of creating characters that are three-dimensional.  Like the spices and other ingredients in Lillian’s recipes, each character is an essential ingredient to the whole of the novel.  In many ways, her novel is about enjoying each moment to its fullest, even those moments of guerrilla cooking in which someone is over your shoulder adding spices or tips to make a dish better, even if those moments of advice are unwanted at the time.  Taking criticism and advice with a touch of acceptance that we all need a little help is what the recipe to life requires to make it great.  The School of Essential Ingredients will leave readers wanting more, but willing to embark on their own journeys of food and so much more.

About the Author:

ERICA BAUERMEISTER is the author of The School of Essential Ingredients and Joy for Beginners. She lives in Seattle with her family.  Check out her Facebook page.

This is my 79th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, giveaway win, New Authors Challenge, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: ,

The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister

November 5, 2012 by

The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister (January 2013) picks up where her earlier novel, The School of Essential Ingredients (Check out my review tomorrow), left off — revisiting with Lillian, Chloe, Isabelle, and Tom.  Bauermeister also brings in some new characters as well as she leads readers on a journey of human interaction and family.  In many ways, recipes still play a role here as they did in the first book, though the imagery and word choices here are less about ingredients and cooking than they are about nature and the people themselves.  Isabelle plays a more integral role here than she did in the last book as a mother to grown children concerned about their new role as caregivers and to her wayward roommate, Chloe.  She’s also a motherly figure to Lillian when she finds herself in uncharted waters.

“For all the glamour of restaurants, the underlying secret of the successful ones was their ability to magically repurpose ingredients, a culinary sleight of hand that kept them financially afloat and would have made any depression-era housewife proud.”  (page 3 ARC)

Bauermeister expands on her early work and how food and emotions are closely tied to one another, looking deeper into her recipe to the ingredients and how they blend together or are mixed.  When a recipe is created, are the essential ingredients lost in one another or do they merely bring out the best elements of one another to create something luminous?  Isabelle’s memory loss highlights the mixing element further in terms of how memories are mixed in our minds with scents and seemingly innocuous objects, but the recall of those memories in those moments when scents and objects are present is all at once disconcerting, phenomenal, and joyous.

Bauermeister has created another set of deep characters with nuanced personalities and places them in unusual situations that are all at once odd and plausible, and readers will be swept up in the relationships within these pages and how the characters mingle and mesh with one another in different ways.  Whether a chance meeting when returning a lost coat or a rushed moment in the accountant’s office, lives are touched and changed.  The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister examines the relationships we have, the ways in which we perceive them and ourselves, and how an outside perspective can improve our interactions with those we think we know the best and are closet to, creating even deeper connections than we thought possible.

About the Author:

ERICA BAUERMEISTER is the author of The School of Essential Ingredients and Joy for Beginners. She lives in Seattle with her family. Check out her Facebook page.

Also look for a giveaway and interview in January when the book is released.

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

Bowling Avenue by Ann Shayne

October 9, 2012 by

Bowling Avenue by Ann Shayne follows Delia Ballenger’s re-acquaintance with all things Nashville, including her absentee mother, statuesque brother-in-law, and two nieces she barely knows when she’s given her sister Ginna’s house, 603 Bowling Avenue.  Bowling Avenue has a culture all its own, with the in-your-business neighbors and the families of doctors from the Vanderbilt.  Delia has lived her life on her own terms, but has rarely returned home for family gatherings or holidays, spending her time alone in Chicago catering to the needs of the super rich on holiday in a variety of countries.  She’s lived an isolated life, and because of that her sister’s death is even more shocking as are the revelations that come with her passing.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, I really don’t.  So the prospect of staying at my dead sister’s house is not daunting in terms of worrying that I’m going to run into a spectral Ginna wandering the hall in her Lanz of Salzburg nightgown.  Actually, that would be really terrifying.  She wore those things all her life:  eyelet trimmed, flannel, hot as fiberglass insulation.”  (Page 10)

Death can change family dynamics in many ways, and Shayne examines how the death of a loved one can either tear a family further apart or bring them closer.  In the Ballenger family, communication is practically non-existent unless you are looking for sarcastic comebacks or blame.  Delia has a lot to learn not only about dealing with grief, but also about what it means to find a home and a family.  Shayne has a unique style and deftly wields the first person point of view through which readers learn the Ballenger family secrets.  The secrets unfold bit by bit as Delia attempts to get her sister’s house ready for sale, and as she deals with her mother’s interference and her brother-in-law’s hands-off approach to fatherhood and family.

Nashville has more than the music business, and Shayne has some of the quirkiest characters.  They are by turns fun and infuriating, but that’s what makes the story so engaging.  Bowling Avenue by Ann Shayne is a fun read with a tender heart.  Delia and her family will make you feel at home and wrap you up in their arms.  Readers will be cheering her on as she examines her past, her present, and her future.

***I want to thank Alma Katsu for recommending this book to me.***

About the Author:

Ann Shayne lives in Nashville with her husband and two sons. She is the co-author, with Kay Gardiner, of Mason-Dixon Knitting: The Curious Knitter’s Guide and Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines. Their blog, Mason-Dixon Knitting, has persevered since 2003 despite constant begging for them to shut up.

This is my 73rd book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The Caller by Karin Fossum, translated by K.E. Semmel

October 3, 2012 by

The Caller by Karin Fossum, translated by K.E. Semmel from the Norwegian, is the eighth book in her Inspector Konrad Sejer series of books.  It is not only a mystery with a adrenaline rush, but also a psychological examination of the criminal and victims minds.  Rather than a mystery that needs to be unraveled, Fossum creates an unsettling atmosphere that keeps readers on the edge.  What will happen next, how will the criminal again strike fear into those around him — neighbors, family, strangers.

And yes, this is a book about fear — the fear of death — the fear of death when it calls.  Death is always unexpected when it arrives, but what if you are lulled into an artificial sense of security by your own contented perceptions of your home and neighborhood?  What if something occurs that simply disrupts your preconceived notions of security?  Fossum asks these questions with each new prank and situation, and she ramps up the anxiety with each page turned.  From the very first pages, readers become aware that the Norwegian landscape will darken and tranquility will become tentative.

“Poor little thing, she thought, and tore its thighs off.  She liked the cracking sound the cartilage made when tearing from the bone.  Light and tender, the meat let go easily, and she succumbed to the temptation to stick a piece in her mouth.  It’s good, she thought, it has just enough seasoning, and it’s lean too.  She filled the pie dish and sprinkled on Cheddar cheese.  The she checked the time.  She didn’t worry about Margrete.  If the child sneezed she would know it immediately.  If she coughed or hiccuped, or began to cry, she would know.  Because there was a bond between them, a bond as thick as a mooring line.  Even the slightest tug would reach her like a vibration.”  (page 2)

However, it is the undercurrent under the surface plot that ripples beneath, providing just enough suspicion to keep readers wondering who the true criminal is.  Readers get a sense of Inspector Konrad Sejer as an honest man whose seen it all, but continues to work for the police as a way to ensure justice.  But readers also get to know how much his life has changed over the years and where his strength comes from — his family and young nephew Matteus.  His health may be failing, but the case is always important, pulling him away from his own misery into that of the victims and even the possible perpetrator.

When death calls, even in its mistiest form, The Caller by Karin Fossum, translated by K.E. Semmel tackles the what ifs and the inevitability that comes with that visit, including the reassessment of behavior and routine, love, and perseverance.  The atmosphere of the novel is by turns complacent and topsy-turvy, and Fossum’s characters must navigate the new world into which they are thrust.

About the Author:

Karin Fossum is the author of the internationally successful Inspector Konrad Sejer crime series. Her recent honors include a Gumshoe Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for mystery/thriller. She lives in a small town in southeastern Norway.

About the Translator:

K.E. Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Ontario Review, the Washington Post, Aufgabe, The Brooklyn Review, The Bitter Oleander, and elsewhere. He has worked as the Publications & Communications Manager of The Writer’s Center, an independent nonprofit literary organization based in Bethesda, MD that offers over 300 workshops in writing annually and hosts around 50 literary events a year.  He is known for his work translating Simon Fruelund’s fiction, and he has received a translation grant from the Danish Arts Council.

This is my 71st book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, purchased, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

The Realm of the Lost by Emma Eden Ramos

October 2, 2012 by

The Realm of the Lost by Emma Eden Ramos is a middle-grade fantasy novel about a 13-year-old girl, named Kat Gallagher, who is feisty and responsible.  She’s got younger siblings, Ellie and Colm, and a home life that is not what it once was, but she takes it on her own shoulders to care for her little brother whose sick a lot of the time.  Her and Ellie, on the other hand, act as sisters should, especially sisters who share a room.  They bicker over space, and one day on the way to school, all of the tension boils over on the streets of New York City.

An accident changes everything for Kat, and she finds herself in a place that is disconcerting to say the least.  Here, she meets Rosario and Mikey, her brother and sister in the realm, and she must contend with Miss A, her realm mother.  Between the Tallyman, the mysterious forests, and the creepy dark mists that come out at night with Apate, Kat must navigate a strange and frightening world.  What makes this world believable is Ramos’ ability to ground her characters in a place and time, despite their strange surroundings.

“Before she died, Grandma Rose gave me a sterling silver necklace bearing the Celtic triskele.  ‘This,’ she explained, pointing to each swirl that extended from the symbol’s triangular middle, ‘will bring you knowledge, power, and, someday, a safe passage.'” (from ebook, location 27)

Grandma Rose is like Kat, a feisty Irish woman who immigrated to the United States, and she is reminiscent of the grandmothers who tell tall tales from the past and generally dote on their grandchildren.  Unfortunately, we don’t see much of this relationship, but a glimpse is enough to get the gist that she’s an important part of Kat’s upbringing.  The relationship between Ellie and Kat is clear, though the relationship with their mother is a little less developed.  However, Ramos offers the right balance of plot and description to see where Kat is and when, allowing the suspense and tension to build to the twist.

The four realms and what they signify are interesting, and could bring additional inspiration for a series of novellas, if Ramos is so inclined — the possibilities are endless.  But what is truly engaging is the parallels between The Realm of the Lost and Kat’s real life, only in the lost realm, Kat is forced to take on the role of younger sibling.  The Realm of the Lost by Emma Eden Ramos is an adventure that teachers Kat that there are more important things than just whether you have your own room.

***I wanted this to be longer!***

About the Author:

Emma Eden Ramos is a writer and student from New York City. Her short stories have appeared in Stories for Children Magazine, The Storyteller Tymes, BlazeVOX Journal, and others. Emma’s novelette, Where the Children Play, is included in Resilience: Stories, Poems, Essays, Words for LGBT Teens, edited by Eric Nguyen. Three Women: A Poetic Triptych and Selected Poems (Heavy Hands Ink, 2011), Ramos’ first poetry chapbook, was shortlisted for the 2011 Independent Literary Award in Poetry. Emma studies psychology at Marymount Manhattan College.  Please visit her Website.

This is my 5th book for the 2012 Ireland Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, Ireland Challenge, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, young adult fiction Tagged With: , ,

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

September 26, 2012 by

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a novel that tries hard to be a Gothic tale full of ghosts and melodrama, but light on the actual romance.  Margaret Lea receives a random letter from famed contemporary author Vida Winter, a woman who spends a lot of her time telling stories even to those journalists seeking her real-life story.  Lea is a bookworm extraordinaire, who helps her father in his antique bookshop, while her mother is hold up in her room every day barely engaging them.  Margaret is intrigued by Winter after reading a volume of short stories from her vast collection of books, titled “Thirteenth Tales of Change and Desperation.”  Upon meeting the woman and asking for three true things she can double-check for their accuracy, Margaret is sucked into her real-life tale by their own common bond.

What follows is the unraveling of Vida Winter’s real life story in a fragmented narration, which vacillates between Margaret’s journalistic digging and Vida’s fairy tale-like story.  Setterfield weaves a story of mystery that Margaret is determined to uncover even as she is haunted by her own family past.  There is a cast of secondary characters that are as colorful as Winter, but there are moments of too much detail that bog down the narration in Winter’s story and in Lea’s investigations and wanderings around Winter’s childhood home of Angelfield.

“Vida Winter’s appearance was not calculated for concealment.  she was an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess.  Her stiff figure rose regally out of a profusion of fat purple and red cushions.  Draped around her shoulders, the folds of the turquoise-and-green cloth that cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame.  Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils.  Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick.  In her lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles; only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous note.”  (Page 43-4)

Despite this, Setterfield peppers her story with mist and ghosts, leaving the reader wondering if they are real.  The creation of Margaret and her back story, which is similar to Vida’s, is a bit contrived to propel the story forward and to engage Margaret in the investigation of Winter’s family.  Overall, the story within the story is the most engaging with incest, twins, and family secrets, and the story on which Winter builds her new life as an author.

“‘You think that a strange thing to say, but it’s true.  All my life and all my experience, the events that have befallen me, the people I have known, all my memories, dreams, fantasies, everything I have ever read, all of that has been chucked onto the compost heap, where over time it has rotted down to a dark, rich organic mulch.  The process of cellular breakdown makes it unrecognizable.  Other people call it the imagination.  I think of it as a compost heap.'”  (Page 46)

The conclusion of the story is very anti-climatic with a wrap up of all the secondary and tertiary characters, which felt unnecessary, and there are elements of the story that remain unresolved.  The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is an intriguing novel that could have done better under a different structure to capture the reader’s attention fully, rather than allowing the story of Margaret to pull them out of the biography of Winter, who is the true protagonist of the novel.  While Margaret is a necessary evil in that she is picked by Winter to tell her story, and she must investigate the truth of it given the legend that surrounds Winter as an unreliable narrator, there are too many moments in which Margaret’s wanderings and indecision disengage the reader.

About the Author:

Diane Setterfield is a British author whose 2006 debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale, became a New York Times #1 bestseller. It is written in the Gothic tradition, with echoes of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

This is my 70th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

 

 

What the Book Club Thought (Beware of Spoilers):

Most of the members enjoyed the novel, including the male member who selected the book as his pick for the month.  Two of our members, including me, just felt the book was an OK read.  While most of us did not mind that Setterfield did not provide a concrete time or setting for the novel, one of our female members wanted to feel more grounded.  Several members mentioned an overuse of Jane Eyre and allusions to the classic novel, which was clearly a favorite of the character and the author.  Most of us enjoyed the story within the story that was about Winter’s childhood and family and thought it was the most engaging.  While most of us did not hate Margaret, most of us believed it was contrived to make her a match for Winter’s story.  One male member absolutely did not like Margaret at all.

Also touched upon in the discussion was the great feelings of Margaret for her deceased twin, a twin that she never met and never saw given that she died almost immediately after birth.  Some of us didn’t believe in this feeling and deep connection, but would have believed it more if she had grow up with her twin and she died after a bond had formed.

At one point during the discussion, one member wondered aloud if Winter would have chosen someone as inexperienced as Margaret to write her biography or if she would have chosen someone with more experience.  In most of our estimations, we believed that Winter was as eccentric enough to want some unknown writer write her biography rather than someone more experienced.  In a way, some of us agreed that she would prefer an unknown writer because she could more easily manipulate the story with someone less experienced.

The cutting of Isabelle randomly when her and Charlie begin to interact seems incongruous with a young girl who is doted on by her father.  While we could see that the kids were neglected in many ways and that the dishevelment of the house played a role in how they all interacted, it was a bit of a stretch that a well-loved young lady would automatically cut herself and enjoy inflicting pain without a catalyst/reason.  One member, in particular, wanted to know more about why she engaged in those behaviors and why the incestuous relationship began or was inevitable.  However, given that the point of view of the story is from a younger member in the household as it was told to her, this was not possible, which again calls into question the structure the author chose to use.

Overall a good book with some good elements and some not-so-good elements.

How I Rank Our Book Club Picks for the First Round:

  1. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  2. City of Thieves by David Benioff
  3. A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear
  4. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
  5. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
  6. Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
  7. Ashes by Ilsa Bick
  8. Star Wars & Philosophy by Kevin S. Decker and Jason Eberl
Filed Under: challenges, fiction, giveaway win, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews, Simon & Schuster Tagged With: , ,

The Names of Things by John Colman Wood

September 20, 2012 by

The Names of Things by John Colman Wood is the journey of an anthropologist through the grieving processes he documented among the Northeast African Dasse nomadic camps following the passing of his wife sometime later.  Beautifully written in alternating time frames from the anthropologist’s past field work that helped him create two books on the nomadic lives of these people and their grieving rituals and the present when he returns to the African Chalbi Desert to cope with his wife’s passing.  Wood also includes excerpts on the tribe’s grieving rituals throughout the book, which help to anchor the story in Africa, and help the reader learn how the tribe has named the unnameable — a task the anthropologist must learn.

The prose of this novel is hypnotic and carries the reader into the desert with these people as the anthropologist gains their favor and begins to feel at one with the community.  Wood not only raises questions of an academic nature about the role of an anthropologist, but also whether his presence has polluted the natural dynamic of the community by introducing foreign ideas and culture into their community.  But the presence of the anthropologist among this community also raises questions of how well he can integrate into the community and understand their rituals, feelings, and perspectives, especially since he always remains mostly an outsider to their customs and their grief.

In many ways, the protagonist observes and hangs on the outside not only of the lives of the African tribe, but also of his own life.  His artist wife, who accompanies him to the desert, is left to her own devices as he gallivants through the desert with the tribe and conducts his research.  While she paints and sketches and carves out a routine for herself in which she sits with the sick in the city hospital and does menial tasks, her husband is not with her and he seems to not even think of her much until he returns to her side.  What’s even more curious about these characters is that they seem well paired in that they both need to be alone to complete their work, though their philosophies about the privacy of notes/sketches are very different.

“What I think is interesting, she went on, is that for the list to be interesting you have to bring something else to it.  You have to want what’s on it, and that isn’t a matter of accuracy.  It’s not about the place but about you.”  (page 221-2)

John Colman Wood knows the best way to write about the research anthropologists conduct, while at the same time maintaining the reader’s engagement in the story of his protagonist and his wife.  Even though the research separates them, and the anthropologist seems indifferent to his wife’s suffering, it is clear that he understands her artistic nature and her need to be alone to observe.  However, these characters (who do remain nameless throughout the book) are separate but together on their journeys of observation, with only one of them truly connecting with something outside themselves.  Although The Names of Things is about how to define and deal with the grief that inevitably comes when we love, belong, and need one another, it also is about how we interact with those around us and how much a part of the community we become or not.  A well-written and paced debut novel that will surprise readers with its journey into the customs that bind us together and how they are shaped by the people that create them.

About the Author (Photo credit: Carol Young Wood):

John Colman Wood teaches at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His field research with Gabra nomads of northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. His fiction has appeared in Anthropology and Humanism, and he has twice won the Ethnographic Fiction Prize of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

This is my 67th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar

August 23, 2012 by

The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar focuses on four women — Laleh, Kavita, Armaiti, and Nishta — who were in college during the 1970s in India and were part of a socialist movement with their male friends Iqbal and Adish.  The students were caught in the midst of a nation’s struggle to improve its government and build a new identity as corruption had plagued the elections process and religious violence against Muslims and Hindus occurred relatively frequently.  In the late 1970s, The Emergency was declared in India, which gave the government extraordinary powers to restrict civil liberties, and led to a number of arrests and violence, among other things.

Laleh, Nishta, Armaiti, and Kavita were idealists looking to create a new world, and with their combined enthusiasm and wide-eyed innocence about a world that they could create for their futures and that of India, they dove headlong into the movement they thought best poised to help them achieve their goals.  However, the realities of social movements intervened, demonstrating the brutality on both sides and those realities forced them to choose the path that would lead them into adulthood.  Looking back on their college years, some of the group is filled with regret at what was not achieved and the friends lost, while others are glad to have had their delusions shattered and the truth revealed.  Umrigar’s characterizations demonstrate the ways in which poignant events in history can leave a lasting impression on idealists, forcing their perceptions to skew so much that they adopt the most radical of views or forcing them to realize that bodily and emotional harm are not endurable.  Although there is one member of the group who followed her ideals and made the tough choices, there are consequences of those hard decisions as well — the loss of friendships, family, and independence.

“Could time really alter things so much? If so, the devil that every religion taught people to fear and loathe was simply the passage of time.”  (page 113 ARC)

Following thirty years of silence, the women are called upon once again to come together, but this time for a friend in America who needs them.  One of them is dying and wishes to seem them all together again, but she cannot travel and they must come to her in America.  Reuniting is never easy, especially when each of them holds guilt about not keeping in touch, secrets from the past, and prejudices born of their not-so-shared history.  The world that each of them found may not be the world that they dreamed they would create together, but it is a world in which they all live now and must learn to either accept or make moves to change for themselves and one another.

“Color.  She was obsessed with color.  There was the read of the Shiraz that Richard had opened the night before.  The burnt orange of the handcrafted cherry table in the hallway.  The glitter of a computer chip, the history of human intelligence shrunk into a capsule.  The muted gold of this leather couch she was napping on.  It made you greedy, intoxicated, made you want to open your mouth and bite into the richness of the world.  It made you want to never leave it, never miss out on a day of this party, this wild carnival ride.”  (page 234 ARC)

Thrity Umrigar not only shares a bit of India’s history with her readers, but she shares some of the religious tensions that pervade Indian society and how it can color the perceptions of people who were once considered friends.  The World We Found is stunning, emotional, and heated in the issues it tackles from religious fanaticism to moral ambiguity and the tenuous bonds between friends and family.  The ties between Laleh, Kavita, Armaiti, and Nishta are unbreakable no matter what tore them apart after college, but the ties between Iqbal and Adish are no less strong, though they seem more complicated by the roles expected of men in their respective religions and Indian society.  Book clubs would have a great deal to discuss after reading this novel and are likely to come away from the discussion with a new perspective on religion and friendship.

About the Author:

Thrity Umrigar is the author of three other novels—The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time—and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. A journalist for 17 years, she is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and a 2006 finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. An associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, Umrigar lives in Cleveland.  Please visit her Website.

Also check out my review of The Weight of Heaven.  Enter to win a copy at GoodReads before Sept. 10.

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, Harper Collins, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

The Voice I Just Heard by Susan Dormady Eisenberg

August 21, 2012 by

Look at this book’s cover, as the woman walks out on the stage and sees the waterfalls before her, this is a perfect metaphor for the stage fright that grips Nora Costello when she sings, especially when her dismissive parents are in the audience. Imagine what singing is like for an artist, it is the air they breathe and the thrum of their soul, but imagine how it would be to recapture your flagging confidence in the presence of parents who disapprove of the theater as a career, particularly after one of your staunchest supporters, your brother Liam, dies in the Vietnam War dashing your father’s hopes of another brilliant doctor in the family.  The Voice I Just Heard by Susan Dormady Eisenberg is an operatic debut of epic proportions, with a story that takes readers behind the scenes of theater and opera through an emotional journey of losing a brother at one of the most controversial times in U.S. history — the Vietnam War.

“As Liam and I stood elbow to elbow at the fence, he said, ‘I should’ve memorized the whole poem, but I only recall the first four lines and the last four.’  His expression turned solemn.  ‘Here’s how it ends.  “Oh may my falls be bright as thine, may heaven’s forgiving rainbow shine, upon the mist that circles me, as soft as now it hangs o’er thee.”‘

‘That’s sweet,’ I said.  ‘But what does it mean?’

‘I asked Sister Perpetua.  She said we have the power of the falls in each of us.  When we screw up, heaven sends us a rainbow to tell us we’re forgiven.’  He shrugged.  ‘It’s weird.  I’ve come here three times and never seen a rainbow, so I wonder if Moore made it up.'”  (page 152)

Eisenberg, who has written profiles of singers, actors, and more, deftly weaves in the story of Liam and Nora’s childhood and the pressures they faced to be perfect for their upper crust parents — even if that meant tamping down their desires for a new direction and passion — with the present day family dynamics of losing a son to war.  Nora is set adrift without the anchoring relationship of her brother, who in a way was her buffer between her passions and dreams and her parents’ disapproval.  Her father is stoic in his response to his child’s death, and her mother withdraws from everything.  Eisenberg’s prose brings to life the grief of these characters as the mother goes to mass daily, the father buries himself in work, and Nora seeks solace in the theater where she runs public relations for the summer showing of Annie Get Your Gun in Cohoes, N.Y., alongside her gay boss Graham Chase.  A former mill town, Cohoes is a hot bed of hidden beauty in more ways than one, and it’s the perfect setting for two battered singers to meet — Nora Costello and Barton Wheeler, where they can come to terms with the right path for their artistry and their souls.

Eisenberg’s characters are deeply emotional, high strung, and respond before thinking, which gets them into a number of situations that can be misinterpreted and blown out of proportion, and in this way, her dramatic story resembles the missteps in Pride & Prejudice.  Nora must learn to see the courage within herself, repair her relationships with her parents and childhood friend Liz, and determine what path is best for her without the influence of others.  Bart, on the other hand, is balancing his true career with the need to support his two daughters from a previous marriage, while still holding onto the family business.  When they come together sparks fly.

The Voice I Just Heard by Susan Dormady Eisenberg is about finding the confidence in oneself to reach out passionately for the life you want to lead and to never let go of it, not matter what the detractors say.  Sage advice for any artist — whether singer or poet.  Nora is spunky, head strong, and passionate, while Bart is more restrained (probably due to his age and life experiences), but he’s equally adrift as he’s lost confidence in his abilities and the right path for himself.  From the stage in Cohoes to Washington, D.C., Nora and Bart grow into themselves and their voices — voices that are their own and remind them of where they belong.  When overture sounds and the cast steps on the stage, the voices in this novel will sweep the reader away into a operatic crescendo like no other.

There is some strong sexual language in this book, so beware.

About the Author:

Susan Dormady Eisenberg is a writer based in Maryland. She has published articles in Opera News and Classical Singer (such as a November 2011 cover profile of baritone Robert Orth), as well as The Hartford Courant and The Albany Times Union. On February 3, 2012, she released her first novel, The Voice I Just Heard, as an indie ebook.

As a freelancer Susan has written promotional publications for clients throughout Greater D.C. Prior to launching her business, she did publicity for Goodspeed Opera House and Syracuse Stage, and marketing for the Joffrey Ballet/New York.

Please also check out my interview with her for the D.C. Literature Examiner.

This is my 61st book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

 

 

Filed Under: challenges, Events, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, The Literary Road Trip Tagged With: , ,

The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy by Regina Jeffers

August 14, 2012 by

The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy by Regina Jeffers is a Pride & Prejudice mystery with heart and a devotion to Jane Austen’s characters as she envisioned them.  The beauty of this  novel is that it not only holds true to the original and what happened between the Bennets, the Darcys, and the Bingleys, but it also demonstrates that those characters can change and become more than Austen intended.

Georgiana has vanished among the moors in Scotland while she waits for her husband Major General Edward Fitzwilliam to return from fighting France at Waterloo, and her brother Mr. Darcy and his wife Elizabeth are preparing for the wedding of her younger sister Kitty.  The Darcys may be enjoying being new parents and building their small community of friends and family, but the Wickhams and Mrs. Bennet’s mischief are never too far away.

“For a brief second, Darcy’s brain told him that his vision had betrayed him.  It could not be George Wickham aiming one of the military’s best personal weapons at him, but he rejected that erroneous assumption immediately.  It was Wickham, and Darcy was the target.”  (Page 142)

Jeffers is true to the original characters, while intermingling the elements of gothic literature found in the prose of the Brontes.  She creates situations with new characters that generate serious suspense that will have readers on the edge of their seat about the safety of Georgiana.  Darcy is a loving husband, but he and his wife still have that back-and-forth banter that readers of Austen love.  But their relationship has matured, with an absence of misunderstandings and temper flare-ups that got them into hot water with one another in the first place.  Jeffers is at her best here with prose that keeps to the customs and diction of the past and mixes it seamlessly with modern sensibility.

“‘Elizabeth?’ Darcy asked eagerly as he stood mesmerized by his son’s antics.  ‘Have you seen what Bennet has accomplished?’

His wife joined him in his sitting room.  ‘What would that be?’ Her voice betrayed her amusement.

Darcy turned his head to glare at her.  ‘I suppose Bennet’s turning from his knees to his back is not a recent achievement?’

Although she attempted a sympathetic countenance, Elizabeth’s smile widened.  ‘If it is of any consequence, your son has only mastered the rotation in the last week.’

Darcy threw up his hands in frustration.  ‘That settles it! I refuse to be away from my family ever again.  Bennet grows too quickly as it is.  . . . ‘” (Page 394)

The novel pulls readers in easily, particularly with the mystery that leaves Georgiana’s captors and location a mystery until the latter quarter of the novel.  The technique of intermittently showing readers Georgiana’s thoughts and concerns about her location as her kin learn of the erroneous reports that reached her in Scotland and her subsequent disappearance are well done.  Jeffers also creates a set of villains that rival even Mr. Wickham, and the secrets revealed about the MacBethan family in Scotland will cause some readers to have nightmares or at least feel very uncomfortable.  The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy shows that beloved characters can evolve, have adventures, and learn to forgive.

About the Author:

A teacher for nearly 40 years in the public school systems of three different states, Regina Jeffers is a Time Warner Star Teacher Award winner, a Martha Holden Jennings Scholar, a Columbus Educator Award winner, and a guest panelist for the Smithsonian. She served on various national educational committees and is often sought as a media literarcy consultant. Like many “snow birds,” Jeffers moved to the South several years ago. She is late to the publishing business, having written her first book on a dare from her students, who, literally said, “If you know all this, why do you not do it yourself?” On a whim, she self published her first book, and from there, everything happened at once. Now, writing for Ulysses Press in California, Jeffers is the author of several Jane Austen adaptations including Darcy’s Passions, Darcy’s Temptation, Vampire Darcy’s Desire, The Phantom of Pemberley, and Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion. She considers herself a Janeite – a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and spends lots of her free time involved in such. Jeffers has now branched out into the Historical Romance genre. Her first book in the Realm series, The Scandal of Lady Eleanor, will be released in early 2011.

Filed Under: fiction, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , ,

The Marriage Price by Alma Katsu

August 9, 2012 by

The Marriage Price by Alma Katsu is another short story from The Taker series and it reunites readers with Jonathan’s hometown just before he marries child-like Evangeline.  Told from Evangeline’s point of view, readers will get a taste of her less than innocent side as she talks of the finery and the house that will be hers once she is married to Jonathan.  There’s is clearly not a love match in more ways than one as Jonathan’s family chose her for him, and she clearly has ulterior motives of her own.

She’s a naive girl who is chosen by his family to become his wife as Jonathan’s father declines in health. While Lanore from The Taker and The Reckoning does not appear in the short story, her presence is clearly felt by Evangeline, who — while naive about the sexual relationships between men and women — is not blind to the emotional connection between Jonathan and Lanore.

Evangeline’s character becomes more nuanced through this short story. Although she is portrayed as innocent in The Taker and even child-like, she is more of a strategist in The Marriage Price. She’s looking forward to the big house and the finery she can obtain through her marriage, and while Jonathan is preternaturally gorgeous, his behavior toward her is forward and aggressive by her standards. Their relationship is more student-teacher, though Evangeline’s eyes are more on the prize than on the “love” they can share together.

“Now, it was all she could think about, those shameful things Jonathan had coerced her into doing. That was why she was certain a woman would come forward on her wedding day: it would be a punishment for what she did with Jonathan before they were legally wed.” (Kindle short story)

Katsu creates a dynamic subordinate character that can stand on her own and gets a taste of what her married life will become.  Evangeline may have thought she would gain a great deal through her marriage, but she may have fooled herself into believing that what happened between them in the marriage bed would stay there.  The short story raises questions about arranged marriages, marrying for money and position, and the dark secrets that spouses can hide about not only their pasts, but also their passions.

About the Author:

Alma Katsu is a 30-year DC veteran who lives in two worlds: on one hand, she’s a novelist and author of The Taker (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books). On the other hand, she was a senior intelligence analyst for CIA and NSA, and former expert in multilateral affairs.  Check out this Interview With Alma.

This completes my first series for the Finishing the Series Reading Challenge 2012.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, Finishing the Series Reading Challenge, purchased, Read in 2012, reviews, short stories Tagged With: , , ,