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Flesh by Khanh Ha

June 19, 2012 by

Flesh by Khanh Ha is dark and dreamlike.  Tai’s coming of age story is fraught with trauma and hardship, but he maintains his determination and remains grounded despite the beheading of his father at the hands of his granduncle in Northern Vietnam.  Ha has woven a dark love story within Tai’s trip through adolescence that takes him to Hanoi and other places as he searches for the man who turned in his bandit father to the authorities.  Part dark adventure, Tai is thrown into the world of Vietnam’s opium dens and indentured servitude as his mother barters him away to pay for a safe, final resting place for his father and younger brother.

“He could not tell which one was my father’s as he passed under the banyan tree.  Those were the same heads he saw in the rattan baskets, but now they had no eyes, only black sockets with grubs crawling in them.  He spotted a hole bored under each jaw, and a rod was pierced through it to the top of the skull and into a limb.  The heads looked out in different directions, and in the early morning light they bore a pinched look neither of hurt nor sorrow.”  (page 18)

Each chapter reads like a short story, a memory recalled by Tai about his journey and the impact is at once immediate and lasting.  Readers are piggybacking on Tai’s shoulders as he runs through the jungles of Tonkin and the streets of Hanoi as the dark, mysterious Frenchman chases him and he bumps into Xiaoli, a young Chinese girl working in an opium den.  Ha’s prose is poetic as it paints the scene in which you can smell the opium, see and hear the brown of Tai’s village and the busy streets of Hanoi, and feel the delirium of smallpox or his pulse quicken as he begins to fall in love.

“The bank was steep.  I was a salamander, half naked, creeping on the clay soil, seizing knotty vines that bulged across the incline.  The dark odor of sundered organics.  Lying flat on the ridge of the bank, I felt unusually warm, and then a suffocating heat hazed my eyes.”  (page 42)

Tai’s journey is through darkness and fear, and Ha raises questions of nurture vs. nature — whether we are only who we are because of who our parents were or the circumstances in which we were raised.  From the atmosphere to the myths and legends, Ha generates a novel that will capture readers from the beginning, but there are times when the dialogue is a bit trite and wooden.  However, as there is little dialogue per se and that dialogue is often between characters that know little of the other’s language, it can be forgiven.

Flesh by Khanh Ha is a stunning debut novel that showcases the writer’s ability to become a young male narrator whose view of the world has been tainted by his life circumstances and tragedy, but who has the wherewithal to overcome and become a better man.  Through a number of twists and turns, Tai must come to terms with the loss of his father, his obligations as the remaining male member of his family to care for his mother, and the secrets that his culture and family hide.

 

About the Author:

Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years he began writing short stories which won him several awards in the Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. Flesh is his first novel. He is at work on a new novel.

Visit the author at his website.

 

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This is my 46th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: , ,

Revenge (6:1 Series, Volume 2) by Janel Gradowski

June 11, 2012 by

Revenge (6:1 Series, Volume 2) by Janel Gradowski is even more well crafted than the first volume of short stories and flash fiction, beginning and ending with a wallop.  Once again there are six stories in this collection: “Persistent Foe,” “Kaboom,” “Check Out,” “Inconvenience,” “Anniversary,” and “Addendum.”  Some are longer than others, but each is well paced, with only one typical revenge story — “Kaboom.”

Agnes from “Persistent Foe” is the neighbor you wish you could be when you have loud, inconsiderate neighbors of your own.  While she does not complain too much outright and doesn’t call the cops, she exacts her revenge little by little each day envisioning a big payoff in the end.  And the ending of this one is inspired and unique. Gradowski does a great job of foreshadowing in this short story as well: “She plucked the invasive vine out the basket and dropped it into the tangle of weeds flourishing on the other side.  ‘Time to join your ancestors.'”  Readers will be sitting alongside Agnes as she watches the show unfold in her neighbors backyard one late evening.

“Kaboom” was the most predictable of the stories, but what made this one heart-pumping was the descriptions Gradowski uses as she tells the revenge yarn from the point of view of the perpetrator as she’s performing the act of revenge on her ex.  Meanwhile, Josie’s revenge is only possible because of Erik’s pride in “Check Out.”  Working as a grocery store check out clerk can be incredibly mundane and tiring, but there are moments in life when even that kind of job can be satisfying, especially when you exact revenge on a boy who ditches you across town.  “Inconvenience” brings to the surface many of the emotions that swirled about following the financial crisis and the persistent unemployment born by much of the U.S. population in recent years.  With bills to pay, should the “breadwinner” in the family swallow his pride and take any paying job to support the family, or should he hold out for a better position?  The short story tackles this question and more, but the revenge exacted in this story will leave readers agape.

“Anniversary” is not the happy occasion you expect, but it twists the idea of a celebration into a revenge scenario that celebrates the ability to break free.  Gary has some serious concerns about his wife and his boss, but being an accountant, he takes stock of the situation — its pros and cons — and comes up with the best solution for everyone.  Bartender Amelia doesn’t have a clue how her luck is about to change when Gary walks into her bar.  “Addendum” is one of the longer short stories in the collection, and Karen is a bit of an enigma given her risk averse mentality when it comes to guys and her reaction to her boyfriend Don’s cheating ways.  In an apartment that has eyes and ears in the form of Mrs. Conway, its hard to keep secrets.  “She was either a gossip super hero or had bugged everybody’s apartments with microphones and hidden cameras.”  Living under a microscope must have added undue pressure on Karen.  There is a great deal at work in this short story, and could be a precursor to something longer from Gradowski.

Revenge (6:1 Series, Volume 2) by Janel Gradowski is an even more well rounded collection of short stories and flash fiction pieces with characters that are dynamic and crafty.  The characters she creates in this collection will have readers snickering and smirking as they are reminded of the revenge plots they’ve created when wronged by lovers, neighbors, and friends.  Deliciously devilish, a joy to read.

About the Author:

Janel Gradowski grew up, and still lives, in the mitten of Michigan. She is a wife and mother whose writing companion is a crazy Golden Retriever named Cooper. In the past she has worked many jobs. Renting apartments, scorekeeping for a stock car racetrack and selling newspaper classified advertisements are some of the experiences that continue to provide inspiration for her stories. Now she writes short fiction and is also a beadwork designer and teacher.

Her work has appeared in many publications, both online and in print. The 6:1 Series features themed collections of her stories. Each volume will have six stories, a mix of flash and short fiction, that are based on the title’s theme.  Visit her blog, Janel’s Jumble.

***And yes, for those keeping track, this is the third item I’ve read on my Kindle.

Filed Under: fiction, purchased, Read in 2012, reviews, short stories Tagged With: , , , ,

Haunted (6:1 Series, Volume 1) by Janel Gradowski

June 7, 2012 by

Haunted (6:1 Series, Volume 1) by Janel Gradowski is part of her six stories with one theme series and was the first she published as an ebook after much success in publishing her flash fiction in literary journals.  This collection is a quick read and can be read in about a day.  There is a surprising breadth of characters and situations representing the theme from a woman haunted by her jilted lover to a ghost unaware of his present state.

There are six stories in the collection: “Sequestered,” “New Friends,” “Retirement,” “Grandma’s Treasures,” “Uncleansed,” and “Strangers.”  Each cast of characters is haunted in one way or another whether by the past, the supernatural, or their deeds.  Among some favorites in the collection are “Sequestered,” “Strangers,” “Grandma’s Treasures,” and “Uncleansed” that have very dynamic characters in normal situations that turn a bit abnormal.  However, “New Friends” reminded me of other stories involving ghost children causing mischief in houses and mothers who don’t believe their children at first and think that their kids are exhibiting signs of trauma.  Readers may want a new twist in this kind of story, but the characters of Wendy and her daughter Mia are playful and have a charming relationship that makes them endearing.

In “Sequestered,” Stacie is jilted by her fiance and escapes to the woods to forget.  Haunted by a unrequited love and a future that can never be, she gets more than she bargains for.  The ending will knock the socks off readers, and there are some great descriptions in this short story.

“Naked trees contorted like tortured skeletons in the frigid, autumn wind.”

“Wisps of fog rose from the lake’s glassy water, materializing like an army of ghosts.”

Even in “Retirement,” Gradowski has a way of painting the scene so that readers are captured by the moment and emotionally charged.  “Autumn thunderstorms are always more vicious than their summer counterparts, like they are enraged by the cold air.”  She generates the heartache of Cecily as a palpable being that reaches beyond the page, haunting not only the character created, but also the reader.

Readers can identify with the oddities of family members from the crazy grandmother to the strange behavior of parents after a tragic event and the rituals they rely upon to keep their sanity.  “Grandma’s Treasures” and “Uncleansed” explore these relationships and their odd rituals in a unique way and each story uncovers family secrets that the protagonists Lindsey and Eva, respectively, never expected.

Haunted (6:1 Series, Volume 1) by Janel Gradowski is an excellent debut from a talented flash fiction and short story writer.  Short story is a difficult form to generate connections between readers and characters, but Gradowski achieves this easily through her word choices and narrative flow.  Haunting prose, unique characters, and surprising twists will keep readers coming back for more.

About the Author:

Janel Gradowski grew up, and still lives, in the mitten of Michigan. She is a wife and mother whose writing companion is a crazy Golden Retriever named Cooper. In the past she has worked many jobs. Renting apartments, scorekeeping for a stock car racetrack and selling newspaper classified advertisements are some of the experiences that continue to provide inspiration for her stories. Now she writes short fiction and is also a beadwork designer and teacher.

Her work has appeared in many publications, both online and in print. The 6:1 Series features themed collections of her stories. Each volume will have six stories, a mix of flash and short fiction, that are based on the title’s theme.  Visit her blog, Janel’s Jumble.

***And yes, for those keeping track, this is the second item I’ve read on my Kindle.

This is my 44th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

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

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy

May 31, 2012 by

The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico by Sarah McCoy is a coming of age novel about a young girl, Maria — also known as Verdita — in Puerto Rico during the debate about whether or not the nation should become a member of the United States or remain independent.  Part of Maria Ortiz-Santiago’s family lives in the United States and part lives on the island in a little barrio, and readers get a taste of the differences between the two lives when Omar, her cousin, comes back to visit.  As the two grow older and grow apart, Verdita continues to ramp up her competitive spirit when he’s near to retain her hold on her father.  She’s always had a fear that a boy would usurp her father’s affections, especially after her mother becomes pregnant.

“For my eleventh birthday, Papi made piraguas.  He left balloons of water in the freezer until they were solid, then peeled the plastic off like bright banana skins.  On the veranda, he used his machete to shave the globes into ice chips.  Hard bits of cold spit out where the ball and blade met, landing on my arms and legs, cheeks and nose.  Papi said it was a Puerto Rican snowfall, and laughed long and deep.”  (page 1)

Verdita is a willful girl and very curious about everything around her, including the independence debate, the cock fights at the local bar, and the United States.  Readers will find that she’s obsessed with the United States and how different it is from her home in the barrio.  She wants to be blond, listen to Elvis, and learn English.  She wants to remain close with her father, but push her mother away.  All this mixed up emotion and desire in one girl is so vibrant on the page, female readers especially will remember what it was like to become a senorita and leave girlhood behind and all of the mixed and high emotions that brought with it.

“I ate until my stomach pushed into the table ledge.  I didn’t even really like the hamburger, but I liked that it came from America — that I was eating like an American.  It made me feel bigger than my finca on the mountain, bigger than the whole island.  I’d seen the States, even if I hadn’t seen President Kennedy.  My stomach was full of America.”  (page 59)

Even as she sees the goodness in her roots and her family, she still longs for the foreignness of the United States.  She becomes accustom to sharing her life with a sibling, but still longs to break break free.  She’s struggling between the desire to grow beyond her roots, deeply earthed in Puerto Rico, but barely realizing that she can grow taller and broader by taking the leap without having to sever her ties to home.

McCoy’s choice of first person point of view is spot on for a coming of age story, and while filtered through Verdita’s eyes rather than the other characters, readers will not feel as though they have missed anything.  She’s observant, opinionated, curious, and eager to explore.  The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico is not only about growing up, but about taking chances and spreading wings to find out who we are, who we want to be, and how we can make the best of everything we are given in terms of familial support and available opportunities.

This was a book I just had to pick up at the Gaithersburg Book Festival when Sarah McCoy was in town.  She’s a lovely writer and woman, and it was great to see her again and get another autograph.  I cannot wait to read her next novel.

About the Author:

SARAH McCOY is author of the novel, The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. The daughter of an Army officer, her family was stationed in Germany during her childhood. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband and dog, Gilbert, in El Paso, Texas. The Baker’s Daughter is her second novel. She is currently working on her next.

Filed Under: fiction, Publishers/Publicists, purchased, random house, Read in 2012, reviews, young adult fiction Tagged With: , ,

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri

May 21, 2012 by

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri is about mothers and daughters and sisters and their tension and love filled relationships.  Nora Cunningham returns to Burke’s Island to get away from her scandalous political life in Boston with Malcolm and clear her head in upper Maine. Irish-American immigrant ancestors infuse her memories, memories she barely remembers from her younger childhood of her mother, Maeve, and their life together on the island before her mother’s disappearance. Nora reconnects with her aunt Maire as she begins to find her self — the person she is without Malcolm and the person she’s been deep inside.

“Her mother laughs.  Her voice is as sparkling as light on water.  The folds of her skirt cling to her legs.  She’d dived in fully clothed.  She isn’t like the other mothers with their rules and careful ways.”  (Page 1 ARC)

Nora’s daughters, Annie and Ella — ages seven and twelve — are like Maire and her sister Maeve used to be — one always cautious and one who lives in the moment.  Barbieri’s weaves in Irish folklore about selkies, seals that shed their skin to become humans on land.  These seals play a protective role in the story as they are always just off shore, watching carefully.  Soon, a man, Owen Kavanagh, washes up on shore near Nora’s cottage in the middle of a rainstorm.  But he’s not the only mysterious male on the island; there’s also a young boy named Ronan who befriends Annie.

“Indeed, a shiny head bobbed in the eddies that curled toward the shore, indigo depths between.  The creature met Nora’s gaze directly, its dark eyes wide and oddly human, before the children’s laughter drew its attention once more.”  (Page 18 ARC)

In many ways Ella and Annie act older than they are, but readers will see the toll that potential divorce can have on kids as their father makes a surprise visit to the island.  The island’s oasis atmosphere can be easily disturbed by outsiders, even if the inhabitants are eager to remain in between the past and the future like Nora.  However, how the characters react to those disturbances is a sign of strength and the support of their ancestors.  Barbieri blurs the lines between folklore and reality well here, and readers will be swept up in a cadence of storytelling that is reminiscent of Irish stories.

The Cottage at Glass Beach by Heather Barbieri is an oasis and a safe harbor in which Nora comes to reassess her life and decide how to move on after being deeply hurt by the one man she thought she could trust.  But she also must take into account the feelings and needs of her daughters, which is tough when harboring so much anguish.  A perfect summer read about mother-daughter bonds, bonds between sisters, and redemption.

Check out my review of The Lace Makers of Glenmara.

About the Author:

The author of two previous novels, The Lace Makers of Glenmara, and Snow in July, Heather Barbieri has won international prizes for her short fiction. She lives in Seattle with her family.  Please visit here on her Website and Facebook.

 

 

This is my 3rd book for the 2012 Ireland Reading Challenge.

 

 

 

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

Darkroom by Joshua Graham

May 15, 2012 by

Darkroom by Joshua Graham is mind-blowing, fast-paced, secretive, and conspiratorial.  Conspiracy theorists, anti-government advocates, and the generally suspicious of all things military and political must read Graham’s book.  Mixing in elements of reality with those of fiction, Graham aptly captures the disillusionment with the Bush Administration just before the election of President Barack Obama and the fervor behind a movement for change that got our current president elected.

However, in this case, the candidate for change is independent, former Vietnam War military star Richard Colson.  He exudes confidence and decisiveness, even in the face of his wife’s health misfortunes and the continuous emergence of his past that must be addressed.  Cover-ups, suspicious natural and accidental deaths among members of the Vietnam War’s Echo Company, disappearing college students, and other events pepper the narrative, but Graham has written a story that is ultimately about faith in ourselves, our beliefs, and the uncharted.

Peter Carrick, a photojournalist from the war and friend of Colson’s, is a distant father, despite his daughter Xandra’s attempts to win his approval through cello recitals and her career as a photojournalist.  The death of Grace, Xandra’s mother, brings the story full circle as Peter and his daughter fly to Binh Son, Vietnam to scatter her ashes as she’s requested, but what the trip brings forth is ugly, horrifying, and disconcerting.  Soon Xandra is caught up in a case she has no physical connection to, and is guided only by the mysterious visions she sees in the darkroom when she develops her photographs.

“To my surprise, when we pass the wall of trees, the ground is level and clear.  Charred black, the skeletal frames of several farmhouses shudder, as though one strong gust could blow them away like dandelion spores.  The rest are simply dirt pads where other homes once stood.”  (page 16 ARC)

Alternating from the Vietnam War where Peter Carrick meets his wife Grace and falls in love to the present where his daughter is caught in an investigation that turns into a hunt for her as she becomes a fugitive, Graham has created not only a dynamic protagonist in Xandra who must overcome her incessant need to please her father and gain his approval, but he’s created secondary characters like her father, Colson, Agent Kyle Matthews, and others who are just as complex.  Book clubs would have a ton of topics to discuss from faith to whether not telling someone something or a lie by omission is still lying.  Further, readers will likely discuss the variety of conspiracy theories that have persisted throughout politics, including the true perpetrators of the JFK and MLK assassinations.

Darkroom by Joshua Graham is more than compelling, it’s engrossing with its alternating points of view in different chapters enabling the story of the Vietnam War to be filtered through the eyes of characters in the present and the conspiracy to unravel at a far more breakneck pace toward the end.  Graham is not afraid of unhappy endings nor afraid of making the tough choices to kill off integral characters, but have faith because all is not as it seems.

About the Author:

Joshua Graham is the award winning author of the #1 Amazon and Barnes & Noble legal thriller Beyond Justice. His latest book, Darkroom, won a First Prize award in the Forward National Literature award and was an award-winner in the USA Book News “Bests Books 2011” awards. Connect with Josh at his Website, Facebook, and on Twitter.

Also, check out this month’s guest post about the power of photography.

This is my 40th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Check the other tour stops

Filed Under: ARC, challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews, Simon & Schuster Tagged With: , , ,

The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen

May 11, 2012 by

The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen is about an empty shell of a woman whose career is her life and nothing else matters, other than being smarter than her twin sister, Alex, who looks nothing like her and is a beautiful model.  Lindsey is in line for a vice president position at her advertising agency in New York City when she’s outmaneuvered by a competing colleague who is not afraid to use her sexuality to get what she wants.  Cheryl’s down-and-dirty tricks shatter Lindsey’s hopes, leaving her twisting in the wind and rudderless after the announcement that Cheryl is the new VP.

“He kept hold of my hands as he rubbed his thumbs along my palms.  Doug made Bill Clinton look like a nun wearing a chastity belt at a Victorian tea party.”  (page 67)

While this may sound like the crux of the novel, it isn’t.  Lindsey is tough to like from the first pages with her obsessive nature and her workaholic personality.  It’s almost like she’s forgotten how to be a human being and interact with people beyond work projects and business dealings.  Although she knows the ins and outs of her job and refuses to play dirty, she also lacks the social skills to really connect with her co-workers and fails to have friends outside of work.  Her only friend is her colleague Matt, who she jokes with about Cheryl and other work-related things.  Once forced to start over, she heads back to Washington, D.C., and rethinks more than her advertising job.

“I put on my new black bra and matching panties, then slipped into my Rock & Republic jeans and black turtleneck.  The turtleneck looked simple and classic from the front, which made the flash of bare skin in the back all the more unexpected.  And my jeans hadn’t gotten any looser since yesterday.  I squatted and squeezed and shimmied my way into them, working up a light sweat.  On the bright side, if I wore them often enough, I wouldn’t ever have to go to the gym.  (On the not-so-bright side, I might be developing multiple personalities.  But hey, at least one of my personalities would be skinny!)” (page 174)

Pekkanen has created a dynamic that any reader with siblings can relate to, a deep-seated jealousy of what the other sibling seems to have.  Whether it’s Lindsey’s jealousy of her sister Alex’s beauty or the nuanced envy of her sister Alex for what Lindsey has, Pekkanen has created a set of characters with stories interwoven in a way that keeps readers in a state of anticipation.  What’s even more ironic is the job Lindsey lands once back home living with her parents and how much in common she has with the desperate people she meets.

In many ways, the title of the book is ironic because her sister is no more different from Lindsey than the clients she meets.  Each searches for the human connection that’s missing from their lives, whether that means connecting with their soul mate or connecting with their sister.  Lindsey’s clients help teach her to seek out what’s been missing from her life.

The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen is fun and serious, with a deeper message about finding confidence in yourself and your skills so that you can grab everything that life has to offer, even if it isn’t exactly what you planned. To answer Lindsey’s question about how you know which life is the right one for you: You Feel It. And Sarah Pekkanen has definitely chosen the “write” life.

About the Author:

Sarah Pekkanen is the internationally-bestselling author of the novels The Opposite of Me and Skipping a Beat and the upcoming These Girls, as well as the linked short stories available for ereaders titled “All Is Bright” and “Love, Accidentally.” For more information please visit her Website, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

 

 

 

This is my 38th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, Simon & Schuster, The Literary Road Trip Tagged With: ,

Perla by Carolina De Robertis

May 10, 2012 by

Perla by Carolina De Robertis (giveaway following the review) is captivating and intoxicating in its setting, mystery, and the psychological unraveling of the main protagonist, Perla.  She’s growing into a young woman, but her cloistered existence threatens to explode until she begins to release herself in books and in her relationship with Gabriel.

The past haunts everything around her, though she does not know it at first.  She is proud of her family and her father’s naval career and her mother’s quirky penchant for picking up new hobbies and discarding them.  But her pride is suddenly shaken when she learns of the Disappeared, Argentinians who were silently taken from their workplaces and homes in the 1970s and 1980s by the government for allegedly being subversives.  In school she writes a short story that wins a prize and is published in the newspaper, but her story has other unintended consequences.  It opens up hidden fissures in her family, and forces her to rebel and question the father she’s loved with blind devotion.

“He was uninvited moisture.  He had leaked into this house.  I had every reason to find his presence an affront, to be enraged at his invasion, or at least to eject him in calm tones.  Certainly he made me feel combustible, unsafe in my own skin.  But though I didn’t know why, though the feeling shocked me, I did not want him to leave.”  (page 28)

The fluidity with which De Robertis tells the tale is much like the Dali painting, “The Persistence of Memory,” hung in Perla’s childhood home, weaving in and out of reality and shaping a psyche that is struggling with secrets that are too devastating to hold inside.  Perla is a novel about identity and how it is created or comes into being and whether it is alive within us before we are even born.  In accordance with this look at identity, the novel examines the harsh treatment society places on new generations for the transgressions of the past.  Struggling with the truth of her father’s job and how it may have contributed to the disappearance of many Argentinians is enough for Perla to deal with as a young adult, but she also must confront the sneer and the unspoken disgust in the eyes of her classmates and friends when her father’s occupation is revealed.

Retreating into herself and her books, Perla finds a way to cope and becomes strong in a way that even she is unaware of, and when she meets Gabriel, her strength is tested once again.  Can she love her father and still love this man who writes articles condemning the actions of former military and government leaders who now have immunity?  Can she reconcile the two worlds of her life into one and live with herself?  And how can she explain her love for her father amidst the knowledge of what his actions before she was born did to the country and to other families?

De Robertis takes readers on a psychological journey through Perla’s mind as she processes the revelations of her family life and the nation she was born into.  Legacy plays an important role and it is clear that Perla must uncover what that legacy should be as she grows into a woman and leads her own life.  The prose is so enchanting and intoxicating, hours of reading fly by as streets in Buenos Aires become crowded with footfall percussion beats and musical laughter countered with the closed off rooms of Perla’s childhood home and the dark, swirling violet waves of her aunt’s painting.  Water also is a significant image throughout the book as it gives life and sustains it in the womb and in the soil, but it also connects everyone and everything in the story, running underground and supplying the sustenance to the tale.

“Flowers lurked at every turn.  You could not rest your gaze without encountering a geranium, two geraniums, hundreds of geraniums, and you could not walk without the feeling that geraniums were following you close at heel, bright mobs of them, crowding the air at your back.  You could not help feeling vastly outnumbered.” (page 90)

In a few sections when Perla’s mother has taken up gardening as a hobby and begins overpopulating the house with geraniums, it is clear that these flowers are like the bodies of the disappeared blossoming despite the cover up and lurking around every corner, haunting those that took part.  These bodies even when the blossoms fade from lack of care, continue to haunt the house and its inhabitants, prodding Perla’s family to look about them, to question, to uncover the truth beneath the well-manicured soil.

Perla by Carolina De Robertis melds the supernatural with reality in a way that it becomes a testament to all of the disappeared and the children of the disappeared who were restored and not.  It is an examination of an ugly part of Argentinian history in which women, children, and men were taken from their families and homes without warning, tortured, and released from planes above the Atlantic Ocean — erased from existence.  De Robertis does not dwell on the horrors of those times, but on the consequences of those actions and the reverberations felt for generations following the political upheaval that caused them.  She does so with aplomb and breath-taking imagery that transports readers to a South American nation ripe with beauty and dark secrets to explore what it means to have an identity and to be an individual in spite of what your family may have done in the past.  One last note, get the tissues ready!  Another for the 2012 best of list.

Author Carolina De Robertis

About the Author:

Carolina De Robertis is the author of Perla and The Invisible Mountain, which was an international bestseller translated into fifteen languages, the recipient of Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize, and a Best Book of 2009 according to the San Francisco Chronicle, O, The Oprah Magazine, and BookList. Her writings and literary translations have appeared in Zoetrope: Allstory, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is the translator of Alejandro Zambra’s Bonsai, which was just made into a film, and Roberto Ampuero’s internationally bestselling The Neruda Case, which will be published for the first time in English in July 2012. De Robertis has been awarded a 2012 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

De Robertis grew up in a Uruguayan family that immigrated to England, Switzerland, and California. Prior to completing her first book, she worked in women’s rights organizations for ten years, on issues ranging from rape to immigration. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is currently elbow-deep in writing her third novel, which explores migration, sexual frontiers, and the tango’s Old Guard in early twentieth century South America.  Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and through her Website.

tlc tour host

This is my 37th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

 

 

 

To enter for 1 copy of Perla by Carolina De Robertis (US/Canada), leave a comment about what you’d like to learn about the disappeared of Argentina.

Deadline is May 17, 2012, at 11:59PM EST

Filed Under: challenges, fiction, giveaway, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

Astride a Pink Horse by Robert Greer

May 8, 2012 by

Astride a Pink Horse by Robert Greer is a thrilling ride steeped in the mystery of the west and its ties to the Cold War and nuclear missiles.  Elgin “Cozy” Coseia and Freddie Dames are college buddies who were drafted to major league baseball teams before an accident stopped Cozy’s career very short and they went into business as journalists in Denver.  A murder of a former Air Force Master Sergeant Thurmond Giles, a former nuclear-missile maintenance technician, has these boys running the bases faster than they ever did in college baseball, as they play tag with local law enforcement in Wyoming and team up with Major Bernadette Cameron of the Air Force.  The back-and-forth investigation has the journalists and Cameron working closer than her superiors want her to be, but a murder and possible national security breach are at the top of all of their agendas.

Greer intricately weaves in the story of the murder with anti-nuclear protesters from the 50s and 70s, a WWII Japanese-American internment camp survivor, and a hospital equipment transporter into the story in a way that keeps readers guessing as to how they are all connected to one another and possibly the murder.  Giles is far from well liked by anyone given his large ego and his womanizing, and navigating civilian and military investigations into not only the security breach at Tango-11 a decommissioned missile silo, but also the murder of Giles.

“‘As the pitiful-looking beast approached me, faltering with each step, I realized that it was carrying a rider who was charred almost black from head to toe.  I watched for a few moments as animal and rider, unaware of my presence, veered to my left and walked toward the river to disappear into the yellow haze.  Thoughts of my wife and children, coworkers and countrymen, worked their way through my head, but it was the image of the charbroiled rider astride a pink horse that stayed with me the rest of the day.'” (page 159 ARC)

Greer’s characters are eccentric and downright odd at times, especially WWII Japanese-American internment camp survivor Kimiko Takata who’s battling dementia and her nephew Rikia, who is paranoid that his math colleagues are eager to steal his work and ultimately the glory that he knows it will come with.  Egos are big with some of Greer’s characters, but what sets some of them apart is their purpose, like Freddy Dames’ search for the biggest story that will make his Web-based news service shine.  Cozy and Cameron are strong-willed and used to working alone, but in this case, they come to realize that standing alone all of the time can be too comfortable and lonely at the same time.

Astride a Pink Horse by Robert Greer is well crafted mystery that will leave readers guessing for most, if not all, of the book.  His characters are unique, eccentric, and witty, which helps keep the pace fast and the suspense thick.

The novel is a standalone, but Greer also has a mystery series with CJ Floyd.

About the Author:

Robert Greer is a native of Columbus, Ohio, who spent his formative years in the steel mill town of Gary, Indiana. He graduated from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and subsequently earned degrees in dentistry, medicine and pathology from Howard University and Boston University. He is a professor of pathology, medicine, surgery, and dentistry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center where he specializes in head and neck pathology and cancer research. He also holds a masters degree in Creative Writing from Boston University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Miami University, his alma mater. Greer has lived in Denver for thirty years.  Visit his Website.

This is my 36th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

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

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

May 1, 2012 by

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman is written very frankly and is told from the point of view of corporate cube dweller Tom Violet, whose father just happens to be the famous writer Curtis Violet who has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Tom is having marriage problems, hates his corporate job as a copywriter, and continues to have daddy issues; he’s on the precipice.  At work, he cuts into his enemy Greg every chance he gets and flirts with his underling, copywriter Katie.  He’s filling his days with useless interactions and writing that has no meaning for him.  He’s aimlessly adrift, but still wants his father’s approval, but how far is he willing to go to get it.  Will he become his father and chase after younger and younger skirts?  Will he become pretentious and full of himself, while looking down at other writers?  Norman’s character is adrift, but blissfully unaware of it until he loses his job and his thin connections to the “real” world.

“Then I realize that despite what both of them must suspect about me and my abilities as a man, Anna and Allie are looking at me.  They’re waiting for me to do something.  Waiting for me to protect them.  Even Hank is looking at me now, perfectly still, the rigid statue of an ugly little dog.”  (Page 9)

Like the characters his father writes about in his novels, Tom acts on impulse and very rarely worries about the consequences, and in fact, on occasion, thinks that the consequences will be positive.  The banter between Tom and Greg is highly entertaining and almost surreal because in a normal work environment wouldn’t Tom have been fired after how many complaints were filed against him by Greg?

“She tried to read it, but she had to put it down, stunned that she’d married a man who is so bad at writing books.  On almost every page, there’s something egregious to change.  There are typos, cliches, errors in logic, rambling sentences, and narration where there should be dialogue.”  (Page 163)

When Tom uncovers the truth about his family and his father, he’s faced with a hard choice.  He has to either move on and forgive or continue to flounder in self-pity, regret, and indecision to the point at which decisions will be made for him.  Norman has a clear grasp of what it means to be a writer, full of self-doubt and self-confidence at the same time, and his characters are dynamic and incredibly flawed.  Although there are moments when readers will not like Tom or his father, there are other moments where their hearts will soften for him.

How do you domesticate a writer, who is trained to run wild, at least in his imagination?  Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman is about finding peace with oneself and their family even if events are beyond their control and immutable.  It’s an adventure for readers and writers alike, and a true page turner.

***This is a book I picked up thanks to so many great reviews, including those from Booking Mama, Rhapsody in Books, Book Chatter, and Literate Housewife.

Author Matthew Norman

About the Author:

Matthew Norman is an advertising copywriter. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Baltimore. His first novel, Domestic Violets, was recently nominated in the Best Humor Category at the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Read more on his blog or follow him on Twitter.

 

This was a stop on The Literary Road Trip because the author lives in Baltimore and the novel takes place in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

 

 

This is my 34th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, reviews Tagged With: ,

Mr. Darcy Forever by Victoria Connelly

March 29, 2012 by

Mr. Darcy Forever by Victoria Connelly is the third book in the author’s Austen Addicts series (to be published in April by Sourcebooks), though each book can be read as a stand alone.  Sarah and Mia Castle could not be more different, and while they compare themselves to Austen’s famous sisterly pair Marianne and Elinor from Sense & Sensibility, they are far more complicated.  Mia is a wanna-be actress/singer who is struggling to find her niche in her career and who readily sticks her foot in her mouth, while Sarah is suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and can barely eat in restaurants without first examining their cleanliness.  These sisters are like best friends and both love Jane Austen and the yearly festival in Bath, but what happens if a man comes between them?

“But it wasn’t his face Sarah was trying to get a good look at, but the cover of his book.  She was always fascinated by what other people were reading and couldn’t help wanting to know what the handsome stranger was reading.”  (Page 58 ARC)

While both sisters are seeking their very own Mr. Darcy, they end up with a Willoughby and broken hearts.  Sarah and Mia spend three years without speaking, a sisterly relationship that seems irrevocably broken, but Jane Austen comes to the rescue when both cannot resist the Regency period and all of the celebration Bath has to offer.  Can Austen repair this damaged relationship and help them find true love and a happy ending?

Connelly peppers her prose with wit and fun, but she also tackles tough issues when Sarah and Mia fall for the same man.  Her characters react in real ways to the hurts they endure and they react with anger and passion when the situations warrant it.  Readers will be swept away by Mia and Sarah’s story as Connelly alternates between the present when they are not speaking and three years prior when the incident that tears them apart happens.  From the side characters Connelly creates to the reappearances of characters from the previous two novels in the series, she weaves an intricate story that Austen lovers will be unable to put down.

Mr. Darcy Forever by Victoria Connelly is about love and forgiveness between sisters who are swept up in Austen’s fairy tale-like world of happy endings, only to find that the happiness they thought they would have was fleeting.  A more serious, modern Austen that explores the bonds between sisters and the power of the love they share to overcome anything.

About the Author:

Victoria Connelly grew up in Norfolk before attending Worcester College where she studied English Literature. After graduating, she worked her way through a number of jobs before becoming a teacher in North Yorkshire.

In 2000, she got married in a medieval castle in the Yorkshire Dales and moved to London. Five weeks after their wedding, her husband, a television news cameraman, was sent to Israel. Convinced something terrible would happen to him, she came up with the idea for a novel about a young widow who starts seeing angels on her desk at work, but was scared to write it in case she tempted fate. It was only years later that her husband admitted to having a bullet graze his shirt sleeve whilst filming in Israel!

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

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng

March 27, 2012 by

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng is a highly atmospheric novel that oozes mysterious beauty and is set in Malaysia following the retirement of Judge Teoh Yun Ling, a survivor of a brutal Japanese internment camp during WWII when Japan attacked her homeland in China.  Following her survival she comes to Malaysia where she meets the former Japanese Emperor’s gardener Nakamura Aritomo.

Eng uses shifts in time between the present when Malaysia is its own country to when it was under attack from communist guerrillas.  While the nation is struggling to become independent from British rule Ling meets Aritomo and requests his help to make a Japanese garden to honor her sister.

“There has been a storm in the night, and clouds are still marooned on the peaks.  I step down the veranda onto a narrow strip of ceramic tiles, cold and wet beneath my bare soles.”  (Page 11)

Like the narrow path of tiles, Ling has navigated a small space between sanity and insanity when it comes to dealing with what happened to her in the internment camps.  Although she was a judge for more than 12 years seeking justice, she also sought to provide herself with a bit of solace when she sat on the tribunal for Japanese war criminals seeking out kernels of information about the secret camp in the jungle where she and her sister were held prisoner.

Eng is deft in his selection of images and moments like these as he strives to provide a deeper understanding of Ling’s character and the rawness she still feels even though she survived the camp and was released at age 17.  This rawness is prevalent in her reactions to Aritomo when she first meets him and begins gardening at Yugiri, and even in the book’s present, she is still carrying that wariness of the Japanese when she meets with historian Tatsuji.

A deep intimacy is created in Eng’s prose between Aritomo, Ling, and the reader, and through this connection, readers will garner a deeper sense of connection and how it can ultimately lead to a greater understanding of the self and of forgiveness.  Readers will be transported into the Malaysian countryside in the mountains with Ling, Aritomo, and the others, but the journey through the untamed jungle is what will capture their attentions as the mysteries behind Ling’s survival from the internment camp and Aritomo’s departure from the Japanese empire as the Emperor’s gardener are unraveled like so many vines.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng has to be one of the best and most well written novels about WWII in the Pacific Theater and how the war impacted not only Malaysians and the British, but also those loyal to the Emperor Hirohito and the politics of a nation caught between two colonizing nations.  Additionally, it easily demonstrates the different ideologies floating about at the time and the aftermath of a major war on the colonies caught in between.  Eng interweaves the past with the present and the not-so-distant past to illuminate the scars that must be overcome by these characters, but only once they begin to see past their own ethnicity and prejudices.  It is a story of love, forgetting, remembering, and healing.

One of the best books I’ve read this year!

About the Author:

Tan Twan Eng is a Malaysian author born in Penang. His first novel The Gift of Rain was published in 2007 and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize that year; it is set in Penang in the years before and during the Japanese occupation of Malaya in World War II and has received critical acclaim around the world.

 

 

This is my 20th book for the 2012 New Authors Challenge.

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