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Ripper by Stefan Petrucha

December 18, 2012 by

Ripper by Stefan Petrucha is not the gory thriller that many readers may expect, and rightly so, given that it is a young adult, historical fiction novel with a young main protagonist.  Carver Young is an orphan in New York City in the late 1800s, who is thrust into the care of an older Albert Hawking, a former Allan Pinkerton detective.  Carver is dragged into a fantastical world of secret agencies and cloak-and-dagger moments, all while the police are investigating some very real and grisly murders.  He’s joined by some rather eccentric characters, from his adoptive father, Hawking, and his home in the asylum, to Septimus Tudd, the current leader of the secret detective agency.

“Surrounded by unsettling sounds, Carver Young struggled to keep his hands still.  He had to focus.  Had to.  He could do this.  He wasn’t some infant, afraid of the dark.  If anything, he loved the dark.  But the cracks in the attic let the wind run wild.  Old papers fluttered like hesitant birds.  Musty clothes rustled as if touched by spirits.  And then the cleaver, wedged in the ceiling right above him, wobbled.”  (page 6)

Carver is a young man on the cusp of adulthood who has had little, if any, mild guidance in his life given his years at Ellis Orphanage.  When Hawking adopts him, he’s given the chance of a lifetime, to uncover the truth about his parents and to become a detective, with the help of some expert tutelage.  Petrucha’s prose and short chapters are built for mystery novels and suspense, but in some cases, the suspense build-up gets to be too much as it drags on a bit long with the “big reveal.”  Even younger readers could see the reveal coming a mile away in this one.  However, the real crux of the novel is not the reveal, so much as the journey Carver takes from childhood to adulthood and from inexperienced boy to amateur detective.

With help from his former orphanage friends and school crush Delia, Carver is able to overcome his fears and uncover the mysteries surrounding recent murders in New York City.  Petrucha does well to stick close to the true and well-known attributes of Teddy Roosevelt, who was once a police commissioner in the city, and the relatively well-known attributes of his eldest daughter, Alice.  There is intrigue, corruption, and a Hardy Boys-feel to this novel, with additional historical tidbits and extraordinary gadgets to provide a steam-punk atmosphere.

Ripper by Stefan Petrucha is a fast-paced, entertaining coming-of-age story with a detective story as a backdrop of sorts.  It’s about what it means to be a father, and how family can sometimes be a little less than ideal, and even disappointing.  However, it also about the inner perseverance one needs to overcome “the abyss” and still know what is right and true.

photo by Sarah Kinney

About the Author:

Born in the Bronx, Stefan Petrucha spent his formative years moving between the big city and the suburbs, both of which made him prefer escapism.

A fan of comic books, science fiction and horror since learning to read, in high school and college he added a love for all sorts of literary work, eventually learning that the very best fiction always brings you back to reality, so, really, there’s no way out.

An obsessive compulsion to create his own stories began at age ten and has since taken many forms, including novels, comics and video productions. At times, the need to pay the bills made him a tech writer, an educational writer, a public relations writer and an editor for trade journals, but fiction, in all its forms, has always been his passion. Every year he’s made a living at that, he counts a lucky one. Fortunately, there’ve been many.

This is my 86th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

 

What the Book Club Thought:

Most of the book club enjoyed Ripper for what it was, though two members would like to have seem more of the gross and grisly murders than were shown in the novel.  There is one moment in which Carver nearly vomits upon seeing a dead body, but there are not a lot of details revealed to the reader about the scene.  The big reveal didn’t seem to be much of a surprise to anyone in the book club, though one member expressed that he would have preferred if there had been two killers instead of one.

Some members were glad that the book didn’t delve too much into the gadgets of the underground detective agency, while one member likened the team of three kids (Carver, Delia, and Finn) to Harry Potter and his friends.  The shift from killing prostitutes in England to socialites in New York was something that the group thought had to do with the target audience of young adults.  However, our youngest member says that she’s read more gory books than this one.  One member also indicated that they noticed about 1/3 of the psychology of the Ripper was examined in this book, and could signal sequels to come.  Some suspect there could be two other books after this one, which is why the ending was so open-ended.

Overall, this was a good read for most of the group, though some indicated about 75 pages or so could have been edited out to make it shorter than 400+ pages.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, challenges, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2012, reviews, young adult fiction Tagged With: , ,

Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara

December 5, 2012 by

Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara is set in 1930s Massachusetts as the rest of the world is on the cusp of war with the Nazis and Boston is hoping to alleviate its water shortage by creating a new reservoir along the Cascade River.  Painter Desdemona Hart Spaulding lives in the sleepy little town of Cascade, which has been a target of lawmakers looking for water over the last decade.  Her life is nothing like she expected as her family falls on hard times, and she makes a life-altering decision to marry Asa to save her father and her home.  What she fails to realize is that some decisions are made for you by circumstance and fate in a cascade of changes that you can either fight or ride.

From the moment readers meet Dez, they know that she is conflicted about her new role as wife.  She makes her husband’s breakfast and tries to care for her father, but her mind wanders to her studio, her paints, and her canvases, making her lose track of time as she dives into the colors and scenes she creates.  Asa is hard to grasp as he seems to want to be oblivious to his wife’s struggles, but is forced to see reality when his wife makes decisions that place them both in the spotlight as the town looks for ways to save itself from drowning.

“Their once-fashionable resort town with its pleasant waters was looking more and more like the ghost valley that was invading dreams and even the pages of her sketchpad.”  (page 3)

O’Hara’s novel is not just about the cascade of decisions and twists in one’s life, but also the unexpected changes that face a country in a depression on the verge of a possible world war — at a time when sentiment against Jews is turning negative as many people lose their jobs and are thrust into poverty.  Things spiral out of control for the Spauldings and the town, but Dez is determined to follow her innate desire to pursue her art in spite of her duty to her husband and her father’s legacy as she hopes to turn public sentiment in favor of saving Cascade from the water department.  The parallels between the river and how it can shape a town and how events can shape people are deftly made in O’Hara’s lyrical prose.  She intertwines Shakespeare’s plays and famous quotations easily, tying Dez to her father’s legacy throughout the novel even when she has all but abandoned it in favor of an affair of art.

While Dez can seem immature in her clinging to Jacob, a traveling salesman, it is clear from her relationship with Asa that she’s never been in love with anything other than Shakespeare as seen through her father’s theater in Cascade and her own painting.  She is an artist that needs to feel substantial loss and pain before she can fully come into her art.  O’Hara has created a novel about the tensions between duty and desire and following one’s dream.  She has captured the struggle of artists, who unfortunately are too often misunderstood by non-artists, to achieve the time necessary to create without the guilt of failing to meet the obligations of family life and other relationships.

Through gorgeous descriptions and painting techniques, O’Hara plunges readers into the light-filled studios and landscapes of Dez, as well as into her nightmares, her guilt, and her nostalgia for things past.  Through quick brushstrokes and scraped canvases, the novel transports readers into muddied waters and into the bold color of an artist’s life.  Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara is a debut that shimmers like the rushing river over the rocks of the waterfall with its quiet power shaping Dez and what was once Cascade, Massachusetts.

***On a completely different note, I was totally in LOVE with this cover.   It was so utterly distracting with its water shapes in the profile image and how the boulders blended in as the woman’s hair.  I was enamored.***

About the Author:

Maryanne O’Hara was the longtime associate fiction editor of Ploughshares, Boston’s award-winning literary journal. Her short fiction has been published in magazines like The North American Review, Five Points, Redbook, and many anthologies. She has received grants from the St. Botolph Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and her story collection was a finalist for 2010′s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She lives on a river near Boston.

Find out more about Maryanne at her Website, her blog, and connect with her on Facebook.

This is my 83rd book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

 

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

The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye

November 1, 2012 by

The Lighthouse Road by Peter Geye feels like the frozen tundra and the heat of the tropics all at once as his eccentric characters hack their lives out of the wilderness outside Duluth, Minn., between the 1890s and 1920s in Gunflint.  Odd is a young fisherman with his own small boat, whose mother died soon after he was born.  Raised by the local apothecary owner, Hosea Grimm alongside his daughter Rebekah, Odd strives to make his mark in the rough-around-the-edges town.

Geye’s narration shifts between Thea and Odd’s stories, with Thea’s set during the late 1890s when the town is just beginning and Odd’s story set during the 1920s during prohibition.  Earning money and carving out a life from the wilderness is tough work, and Odd begins making whiskey runs for the local bars and Grimm.  As the narrative shifts from Odd’s life to Thea’s life, the secrets of Gunflint are revealed slowly.  These secrets have lasting consequences for Odd as he falls in love.

“They all looked the same at a glance, so she learned to identify them by their grotesqueries:  the missing fingers or hands, the peg legs, the hunch backs, the harelips, the sunken chests, the pruritus and scabies.  It seemed as if each of the men possessed some defect or wound.”  (page 47)

Although the novel is about the residents of Gunflint, it also is an immigration and pioneering story.  The members of Gunflint are the first to hack their lives out of the woods, and Thea is the immigrant from Norway among them, who speaks little to no English when she arrives.  Geye once again relies on his abilities to paint a thorough picture of the town and its people, setting the stage for his story — even providing Odd a deformity of his own that mirrors the most prevalent problem in the town, which allows the secrets and lies to grow and fester.

Odd is a man who builds things with his hands, hoping that by building a larger boat he can improve his lot in life and to find a new life with his love.  Despite his realization that the town turns a blind eye to the tawdry goings on in town and its festering secrets, he is blind to the myth of the “grass is always greener on the other side.”  Geye’s novel is about the glimmer of hope in our lives and how it must be nurtured to bloom, but it also is about holding on too tight to that hope, so tight that it becomes extinguished.  Geye has hit another one out of the park with The Lighthouse Road.  **Excellent book for book club discussions**

About the Author:

Peter Geye received his MFA from the University of New Orleans and his PhD from Western Michigan University, where he was editor of Third Coast. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and continues to live there with his wife and three children. He is the author of the award winning novels, Safe from the Sea and The Lighthouse Road.

Please check out the reading guide.

Other reviews:
Safe From the Sea

Filed Under: historical fiction, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2012, review copy, reviews, unbridled books Tagged With: ,

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

October 24, 2012 by

The Help by Kathryn Stockett, which was my book club’s October selection, has been celebrated and made into a movie already.  Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter share the narration for the 1960s segregated Jackson, Mississippi, as the lines blur between the races and to social classes.  While Skeeter’s social class is not as pure as it seems, the Black maids are struggling to make ends meet and hold their tongues even as others are engaged in sit-ins at the local Woolworth’s and marches.  Stockett carefully illustrates the social and color lines in the South, while also paying careful attention to the harsh realities of Black maids in white households.  This is not just a story about Black maids, but also about where stigma comes from, how it is perpetuated, and how it can be overcome.

“And I know there are plenty of other ‘colored’ things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon’s meetings — the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate.  But truth is, I don’t care that much about voting.  I don’t care about eating at a counter with white people.  What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.”  (page 256)

Stockett has created a novel that gets readers thinking about their own environment and what they tolerate on a daily basis, even though they do not agree with certain things that happen or continue to be spoken in anger or prejudice toward others.  Like she notes in her “Too Little, Too Late” essay at the back of the paperback, no one in her white family who had a Black maid even thought about asking the maid what it was like to be Black in the deep south.  How many things that go on daily do we disagree with and dislike, but allow to happen without so much as a criticism or objection?

On one hand, readers are introduced to the Black maids and the prejudice they put up with from their white employers, and on the other hand, Stockett introduces Skeeter, a young woman returned from college to find that she is vastly different from her childhood friends, Hilly and Elizabeth.  While the parallel is lightly drawn and clearly not the same kind of prejudice on both sides, it does raise the question about what it means to create groups within a larger society to the exclusion of others.  Both avenues lead to great isolation and emotional pain, but the consequences of speaking out against that oppression are potentially more violent and devastating for the maids than for Skeeter.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett provides a balanced look at the love and disdain in the relationship between white women and families and Black maids, but it also tends to play it safer than one would expect given the volatile time period being discussed.  Yes, there are occasions of devastating tragedy, spousal abuse, and hints of other violent behavior, but truly the focus is less on the consequences of speaking out and more on the ties that bind each group to one another.  Stockett has chosen to show the complex relationships between these women given the societal constructs that constrain their actions and behaviors, even if they would wish it not so.

About the Author:

Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she moved to New York City where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her family. The Help is her first novel.

 

This is my 77th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

 

 

What the Eclectic Bookworms Thought (Beware of Spoilers):

Overall, we all enjoyed The Help and determined that it accurately portrayed the South, particularly the conflicted emotions of the Black maids and the children they raised.  It also demonstrated the poor logic that many white families used to determine what Blacks were good enough to do for them, but not good enough to share with.  For instance, Blacks cannot use the same bathrooms as whites because they are diseased, but at the same time, those maids can cook their families’ food and raise their children.

The group seemed split about which character they liked best, with some of us in favor of Minny, while others liked Skeeter and Aibileen best.  One of our female members said that Aibileen’s voice was the most balanced, and that’s why she liked her best, while our youngest member said that she enjoyed Skeeter best because she was an aspiring writer.  Personally, Minny’s kick ass attitude and yet vulnerability when it came to her husband and children made her both frightening and endearing — as well as a little bit vulnerable.

The club also discussed whether we would go as far as Minny to get revenge on Hilly, with only a few of saying that we would and a couple of us indicating we would have gone further.  At one point the discussion of slavery came up and whether the maids would have considered themselves still slaves or something more than that, but we all seemed to be on the fence about that question.  A discussion of other cultures’ use of slavery and how slaves could earn their way out was also mentioned, though none of us had any concrete sources on hand to discuss that too much in depth.

Other topics touched upon during the discussion include the friendship dynamics in Hilly’s group and how most of the women were subservient to Hilly and her approval, while others like Skeeter seemed to see that cow-towing to Hilly was wrong as well as how Minny and her family seemed to get by more easily than Aibileen who was on her own without any children.  We all enjoyed the book, though some of us would have preferred less about Stuart and Skeeter’s relationship and that other sections were trimmed down.  I personally enjoyed the additional insight into Skeeter and Stuart’s relationship after having watched the movie and found that part lacking in the film.

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

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated by Ann Goldstein

October 16, 2012 by

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, is the story of a young unnamed woman’s grandmother just at the end of WWII in Italy after the 1943 American bombing of Cagliari.  Despite the namelessness of the main characters, there are named secondary characters in the slim novel that provide it depth and the main characters some roots.  The granddaughter is telling the story of her grandmother after her death, reminiscing about the growth and change in family.

The life of this family has seem good times and bad times, with some members experiencing greater hardships than others.  The grandmother in particular has a number of suitors that fail to come back after several weeks due to rumors about her sanity.  Her own family keeps her at arms length and often hidden from public view unless necessary.  She’s the black sheep of the family, though from what we learn about her she has normal urges of a young woman and a desire for freedom.  More than that, she’s got a creative mind and a penchant for writing.

“One day my great-grandmother waited for her in the courtyard with the whip, made of ox sinew, and began to hit her until even her head was bleeding and she had a high fever.”  (Page 14)

After a number of miscarriages and failed pregnancies, the grandmother has little recourse but to take action and find away to rid herself of at least one health problem.  On a trip to take care of her kidney stones in the healing waters, the grandmother meets a young man, known only as the Veteran.  In many ways, they are the same, but they also have different tragedies to overcome.  He was a concentration camp survivor after being captured during the war, while she is an escapee from her family.  Like the many times destroyed home on Via Manno, families are built and rebuilt as the darkness is torn out of the house and light once again filters in through its large windows with new hope.

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, is about family and how it can be ripped apart and held together by secrets.  But it also is about dreams and love, and the sacrifices we must make to live into the future.  In many ways, its about the perseverance of our ancestors and how they can shape us in the future, even without our knowledge.

About the Author:

Milena Agus was a finalist for the Strega and Campiello prizes, and was awarded the prestigious Zerilli-Marimò prize for Mal di petra (From the Land of the Moon). It is her first novel. Agus lives in Cagliari, Sardinia.

About the Translator:

Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. For Europa Editions, she has translated three novels by Elena Ferrante—The Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost Daughter—Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, The Chill by Romano Bilenchi, The Father and the Stranger by Giancarlo de Cataldo, and The Worst Intentions by Alessandro Piperno. Her translation of Linda Ferri’s Cecilia is forthcoming in May 2010. She received a PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award and was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. She is currently editing the complete works of Primo Levi, for which she received a Guggenheim Translation fellowship. She lives in New York.

This is my 74th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge in 2012.

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

Skeleton Women by Mingmei Yip

September 25, 2012 by

Skeleton Women by Mingmei Yip is set in 1930s Shanghai when gang leaders are at odds over the foreign and domestic business, but in the shadows are skeleton women who can make men fall in love with them and be willing to risk everything for them, even their lives and fortunes.  Heavenly Songbird Camilla is tied to the Flying Dragons boss Mr. Lung, but her agenda is more secretive as she seeks to fulfill her duties to a rival gang, the Red Demons and Mr. Wang.  An orphan turned spy, she sings on stage and warms the bed of Mr. Lung at night when she meets his son, Jinying, who has fallen head over heels in love with her since first hearing her sing at the Bright Moon Nightclub.

“People admired or hated me as the ultimate femme fatale.  But I myself had no idea who I was.  I was nobody, literally.  An orphan, I was adopted by a man and his gang for their own purposes.  Later I learned that man was Big Brother Wang, his gang, the Red Demons.  Under their constant watching and fussing over me and their strict discipline, by fourteen I’d grown up to be a watermelon seed-faced, full-bosomed, slim-waisted, long-legged beauty, possessing everything desired by men and envied by women.”  (page 4)

Camilla puts on a confident air, but when she is surprised by the talents of the Shadow, a magician at a competing club, and bristled by the critiques of gossip columnist Rainbow Chang.  While she contrives scenarios in which to make herself seem superior and to maintain her place with Mr. Lung, the presence of his son is unsettling.  Readers are taken on a journey through Camilla’s time with the gangs and the adventures that leaves them in suspense about the success of her mission.

However, there are moments when devices such as lipstick cameras are mentioned that may or may not be historically accurate (I was unable to find a history on these objects), and the quickness with which Jinying falls for Camilla is a bit too abrupt.  The quickness of Jinying’s affections could be due to the narration’s point of view, which is Camilla’s as told from sometime in the future about the past.  And while she is uneasy in his presence, it is clearly more about lust than about true love.  The only other points in the book that could distract the reader are the repeated references to her repeated training as a spy and skeleton woman and Camilla’s continued references to Sun Tzu’s strategies and The Art of War.  On the other hand, there are great little historical tidbits from China’s past, including the overthrow of previous kings and legends from Chinese history, that are highlighted by Camilla’s story as an illustration of how even the best strategies do not always work.

More interesting are the parts about her actual training and her need to learn endurance to stave off the pain of torture, as well as her focus on becoming nothing or dead so that the enemy cannot torture her through others, thus depriving herself of emotion and connection to others.  Yip is adept at creating the sense of deception throughout the novel and the dangers around every turn, as she is at creating the illusion of emotion through Camilla and her interactions with others.  Skeleton Women by Mingmei Yip is a novel that is less about 1930s Shanghai and its troubles and more about the women who made it tick and set the stage for change, with or without consciously knowing they would.  Yip creates an allure in the prose that is reminiscent of the skeleton woman’s ability to manipulate the emotions and actions of others. The true test comes when one can coax a skeleton woman into feeling love and the sacrifice that sometimes follows.

About the Author:

Kensington author Mingmei Yip believes that one should, besides being entertained, also get something out of reading a novel. Her new novel is Skeleton Women is about survival, letting go, and finding love and compassion.

Her debut novel Peach Blossom Pavilion is the story about the last Chinese Geisha and also that of courage and the determination to succeed and attain happiness. Her second novel Petals from the Sky, a poignant Buddhist love story, is about wisdom, compassion, when to persist and when to let go. Her third novel Song of the Silk Road is an adventure love story between an older woman and a younger man with a three million award on China’s famous, dangerous route.

For more about the author and her books visit her Website, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

This is my 69th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

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

Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark

September 21, 2012 by

Maribel Campbell Lowe’s Beautiful Lies (by Clare Clark) ensure that she is mysterious to the reader and London society from the beginning, but as the prose unfolds, readers get glimpses into her past as she attempts to navigate her life in the confines of a London society on the verge of change, in which seances and photography are gaining admirers. Married to radical politician Edward Campbell Lowe, Maribel is thrust into a society full of expectation and one that is changing, but her fateful meeting with Alfred Webster, a reporter, could be her family’s undoing.

But the novel also is more about the society around the Lowe’s and the idea of wearing a mask to your family, society, and to some extent to yourself — hiding the truth from even your own consciousness.  Clark blurs the lines between truth and fiction here in the photographs taken and discussed and as Maribel reflects on her past — lamenting tough decisions she made — and assessing her current situation — finding her way in a relationship with a very busy and outspoken politician.

“”It’s a pity you could not be there when Bill took forty of his Indians to the Congregational Chapel at West Kensington,’ Henry said.  ‘That would have made a splendid photograph.  Apparently, they sang “Nearer My God to Thee” in Lakota.’

‘I am not interested in the Indians as curiosities.  If I am to photograph them it should be as they really are.  The truth, not the myth-making.'” (page 173 ARC)

Maribel is an actress of the first order, as are many of the characters in the novel, as they navigate the complexity of their politics and society at a time when the economy is faltering.  They attempt to hang onto anything that appears true and solid, whether it is Buffalo Bill’s traveling show or spirit photography.  Clark offers very detailed accounts of Victorian society from the clothes to the streets and the economic conditions, but she also provides readers with a stimulating atmosphere that also blurs the lines of reality with those of art.  In many ways, her chain-smoking protagonist’s view of the world permeates the novel so well that the story takes on a mysterious lilt, keeping readers in a state of distanced observation that makes it hard to connect with Maribel on an emotional level.

“Beside the tea chest he hesitated, fumbling in his pockets.  There was the rattle of a matchbox and then the scrape and flare of a match.  Shadows leaped from behind the lines of laundry as he lifted the candle to his face.  Beneath the snarl of his eyebrows his sharp eyes flickered like a snake’s.”  (page 1 ARC)

While the details are appreciated about the House of Commons, the rest of Parliament, the economy, the socialist movement, and other goings on of this era, Clark bogs down the narrative at certain points with these details, which keeps the reader at a distance from her character.  While Maribel smokes obsessively and the prose focuses on it obsessively, the character comes off as careless and even boring at times as she waffles between taking action to improve her happiness and wallowing in the past.  With that said, Clark has written an interesting narrative based upon a real-life politician’s wife who led a double life for many years.

Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark is an unique look at Victorian society plagued by hidden scandals and events that are exaggerated so that they become scandalous by newspapers and reporters.  Disappointingly, the novel drops one of the story lines that was originally set up as one of the things that had the potential to bring down the Lowe family.  Rather the scandals involving politicians and upper class activities uncovered by Webster become the crux of the novel, but the solution to the Lowe’s problem of Webster’s vendetta is unique.  Overall, Clark has recreated the world of the late 1800s and touched upon the hidden lives of many members of society and the masks that humanity wears in public and even at home.

About the Author:

Clare Clark is the author of four novels, including The Great Stink, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize and was named a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and Savage Lands, which was long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2010. Her work has been translated into five languages. She lives in London.

 

 

This is my 68th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

 

To enter to win 1 copy of Beautiful Lies by Clare Clark, please leave a comment below by Sept. 28 at 11:59 PM EST.  You must be a U.S. resident and 18 years or older.

 

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

The Siren of Paris by David LeRoy

September 12, 2012 by

In The Siren of Paris by David LeRoy, Marc is tempted by the siren call of Paris to return to the place of his birth, a place he does not remember but has the enticements of all he desires: love and art. Set in the time before Paris is invaded by Germans during WWII, LeRoy does well in depicting by turns the fear and the indifference Parisians and expats felt when Germany began to advance across Europe.  Once France begins to realize that negotiations with Germany will amount to nothing and Germany begins to take more territory, the fears become overwhelming for many, and there is an anxiousness that pervades the novel’s pages, especially as Marc’s friends panic about returning to the United States and England.

With that said, there are quite a few missed opportunities in the beginning of this novel when Marc is on a diplomatic mission with Mr. Wells (at the behest of William Bullitt, US ambassador to France) and they meet with not only Mussolini, but also Ribbentrop, who goes on a diatribe for 2 hours, and you don’t get any of the conversations!  Instead, LeRoy spends several pages on news reel footage in the local theater afterward when Marc returns and is on a date with Marie.  Missed opportunities like these set off alarm bells that more research could have been done to learn what might have been said by these high-ranking officials conquering Europe.  It also begs the question of whether this story was as well thought out as it could have been, especially given that the transitions between moments in time and locations are often left out and the reader feels adrift until they get their bearings again as to where they are, what day, and whom they encounter.

LeRoy does have a firm grasp of how to make the plot move along and how to make the reader feel the fear of the Parisians and the expats who are fleeing the city as the German’s approach.  From the overflowing train platforms to the rush out of their apartments with their clothes on their backs, the plot moves along quickly and ramps up the tension.  As Marc seeks to leave at the last minute, his friends Dora, Nigel, and David are not forgotten by the narration as their paths homeward are highlighted as well.  However, in many ways, LeRoy has sketched the character of Dora (a subordinate character) better than he has the main protagonist, Marc.

The Siren of Paris by David LeRoy had the potential to be a great novel, but with the poor plot transitions and missed opportunities for historical information and additional characterization, it becomes a chore to read.  The additional framing in the novel at the beginning and end in which Marc is reviewing his life in flashes and the colors of his soul are changing read a bit overly dramatic and take away from the rest of the story.  With so many styles and techniques running amok in this novel, it is hard for readers to feel fully engaged in the story or connected to Marc.  Unfortunately, this reader didn’t even make it halfway through the novel before deciding she’d had enough.  However, if readers are willing to overlook these issues and focus on the fast-paced plot, it could be an enjoyable read for those that like WWII novels.

About the Author:

In writing his first novel, The Siren of Paris, David LeRoy drew upon his longtime interest in philosophy, the visual arts, myth, storytelling, psychology, and Ocean Liner travel. During a visit to France to study art in the fall of 2012, LeRoy became intrigued by the French Resistance, particularly when his research revealed the role of Americans in the Resistance, as well as the limited means of escape from Europe as the war escalated. LeRoy holds a bachelor of arts in philosophy and religion.

This is my 66th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

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Across the Mekong River by Elaine Russell

August 29, 2012 by

Across the Mekong River by Elaine Russell is part PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and part immigration story set just after the end of the Vietnam War.  Nou Lee and her family were forced to flee Laos following the Vietnam War after her father fought with the special forces alongside the Americans.  His life and that of his family were threatened by the succeeding communist government, forcing them to take flight in the middle of the night across the Mekong River.

Across the river that takes some of the lives in an explosion of gunfire and rapids, the family finds itself in a refugee camp in Thailand.  To be Hmong family means duty and hard work for the good of the entire family from grandparents to cousins and aunts and younger siblings, and above all respect for culture and ancestors.  The hard life this family has seen from their days in Laos and in Thailand where they struggle to feed their children makes the dream of freedom in America even more alluring.

“On another, taller mountain deep in the woods, we built small shelters, tying bamboo poles together against trees and covering them with thatch.  I think we were there six months, maybe longer.  We could only plant a small vegetable patch and search for food in the forest.  But somehow our husbands found us and brought whatever supplies they could carry.”  (Page 22)

“A barbed wire fence surrounded Nong Khai Camp.  Three Thai soldiers stood sentry at the gate, brandishing their rifles.  As we drove into the compound, I did not know if I should feel afraid.  Officials would explain that the guards were for our protection so no one from outside could take advantage of us.  Through the barbed wire, I watched the Thai farmer we had just passed driving his water buffalo into his field.  He never looked our way, as if we did not exist.”  (Page 36)

Her parents struggled to keep the rest of the family safe and together as they remained in camp in Thailand, and when the promise of America came, many were reluctant to go for it meant change and adjustment.  In 1982, the Lee family moves, taking with it their hopes for a new future and freedom, but hanging over this new adventure are the ghosts of the past, which threaten to pull them back into the abyss and keep them from finding their place.  Nou, a young girl in a strange land and with no knowledge of English, is thrust into an unknown school and unfamiliar culture that since the Vietnam War has bred prejudice against those from Asia.

Her adjustment into the new world is anything but seamless and she’s forced to bury her resentments of her mother and family deep as she navigates peer pressures and bullying, even from her own Hmong family members.  As the family moves to better opportunities, her previous experiences have colored her perception of Americans and adopts a new name and a new life.  Although her thrift store clothes and restrictive customs tell her true story, she is leading not only a double life, but a triple life when Dang Moua enters the picture and her mother begins to talk of marriage and children.

Elaine Russell has a gift for bringing out the nuances of the Laotian culture, particularly that of the Hmong people, in the multiple family points of view she uses.  In addition to the cultural norms, she easily weaves in the ravages of war and its effect not only on the fighting soldiers, but the families they leave behind who face torturers face-to-face.  Across the Mekong River, the Lee family finds freedom, but it comes with a price.  Struggling to maintain their cultural identity in a melting pot of America, the Lee family not only struggles with the secrets of their shared past, but the secrets they now keep from one another as they vacillate between being truthful and relying on age-old customs that elders are to be respected and never questioned.  Russell has created a tale that leaves a deep impression on the emotions of the reader and raises questions about what it means to be American as an immigrant.

About the Author:

Elaine Russell graduated with a BA in History at University of California, Davis, and an MA in Economics at California State University Sacramento. She worked as a Resource Economist/Environmental Consultant for 22 years before beginning to write fiction for adults and children. She became inspired and actively involved with the Hmong immigrant community after meeting Hmong children in her son’s school in Sacramento and reading Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Since then she has been to Laos many times to research her book and as a member of the nongovernment organization Legacies of War.

This is my 63rd book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

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

Flight From Berlin by David John

July 30, 2012 by

With the London Olympic Games already under way, Flight From Berlin by David John is a novel that can demonstrate the political turmoil beneath even the most beloved sporting event across the globe.  It is set during the 1936 Olympic games in Germany just as Adolf Hitler is gaining more power, and British journalist Richard Denham is fully aware of the brutality the Nazis hope to hide behind the spectacle of the games.  Mrs. Eleanor Emerson is an Olympic hopeful whose father, a senator, is very much against the United States’ participation in the games and who eventually gets kicked off the team when her rebellious behavior aboard ship gets her into all kinds of trouble with her father’s nemesis.  Fate conspires to bring these two together as Emerson is offered a job as a reporter for William Randolph Hearst’s media empire given her connections with the team.

Embroiled unwittingly in a cloak-and-dagger search for a secret that could stop the rise of Hitler, Emerson and Denham run through the Berlin streets, attend society parties, and hide in back alleys as they seek to interview the only Jewish athlete on the German Olympic team.  The rebellious streak of Emerson draws Denham to her, but she’s intrigued by his passion to uncover the truth even without considering the consequences.  John’s prose is quick paced and appropriate for the old world espionage feel of the novel, and the relationship between Denham and Emerson is one of convenience and mutual respect.

“How strange, how small the things that change history, turn it from its darkened course, send it eddying off down new, sunlit streams.”  (Page 2 ARC)

However, the fast-paced nature of the story often takes over too much in that the relationship between Denham and Emerson is not fully realized and when declarations of love occur, it seems to be too soon.  While John does use the cliched oops moment of overhearing a conversation in the garden, the story is intriguing enough to keep the reader’s attention.  Meanwhile, the chapters on the Hindenburg are very well done and demonstrate the awe people at that time would have felt at seeing such ingenuity.

“It was like a film set built from an Erector set.  A gargantuan spider’s web of bracing wires and girders radiated out from the central axis, and looking along the corridor’s length was like seeing infinity reflected between two mirrors.  The air was much colder.

Together they walked along the corridor between towering gas cells, which hummed quietly with the vibration of the engines.”  (Page 66 ARC)

Flight From Berlin by David John provides the right mix of thrill and historical elements to anchor readers into the time between WWI and WWII when Germany was hosting the Olympic games and Hitler was hovering the line between diplomatic peace and alienating the entire world.  Denham, a former WWI soldier, is forced to recall his training and the tragic things he saw during the war, but it also enables him to remain sympathetic to the Jews and others he meets while working in Berlin on his journalistic stories.  Emerson is a socialite who is used to getting her way either through charm or her father’s connections, but she has to learn to be more observant of the world around her and that she has her own strength to get her through.  Another gem in the novel is the notes in the back about what characters were real and which were fictionalized.

About the Author:

DAVID JOHN was born in Wales. He trained as a lawyer but made his career in publishing, editing popular books on history and science. In 2009 he moved to Germany to write Flight from Berlin. He lives in Seoul, South Korea, where he is researching his second novel.

This is my 56th book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

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

The Rose of Fire by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

July 18, 2012 by

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, author of The Shadow of the Wind, is like many other authors these days in that he is pumping out short stories for digital devices.  The Rose of Fire is one such story, but this story tells the tale of how the Cemetery of Forgotten Books was born at the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century.  The labyrinth of books is an intriguing idea, and Zafón’s prose is at once lyrical and absorbing, transporting readers into another time and place.

As fear and suspicion are around every corner, many Spaniards keep to themselves in the hope that they will be spared the wrath of the church.  Raimundo de Sempere, who knows too many languages to stay outside the church’s suspicion, is a printer who is asked to translate a mysterious notebook found on Edmond de Luna, the only surviving man of a ship left battered and adrift near Barcelona just after a plague has ravaged the city.

“Edmond de Luna could see himself reflected in those eyes that resembled huge pools of blood. Flying like a cannonball over the city, tearing off terrace roofs and towers, the beast opened its jaws to snap him up.”  (ebook)

Zafón has created a tantalizing back story for his series of books about the library, and for those who have not read his previous books in the series, The Rose of Fire serves as an introduction to that fantasy world he’s created in which magic and nightmares come alive.  While the story is enchanting and absorbing, it is likely to leave readers wanting more in the way of character development that would likely come with a longer piece of work.  In many ways, this ebook release achieves its goal of ensuring the reader will look for more of the author’s work, but it seems to be a means to an end only, rather than a well developed short story.  With that said, Zafón is a talented author who creates believable worlds full of adventure and conflict.

About the Author:

Carlos Ruiz Zafón is a Spanish novelist. Born in Barcelona in 1964, he has lived in Los Angeles, United States, since 1994, and works as a scriptwriter aside from writing novels.

This is my 53rd book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

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

The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard

July 16, 2012 by

The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard is a story of change, struggle, and perseverance in the great Smoky Mountain town of Fox Hollow between the 1960s and 1970s (around the time of the Vietnam War).  Layla and Ed Tompkin live a hard life, carving it from the mountains that surround their home without a feminine hand to guide or support them.  Layla spends parts of her day during the week with the Yeagleys, who tend to take the Bible and its teachings literally, while her father works to keep them clothed and fed.  After a tragic accident, Layla is rendered mute and must find her way once again in the face of adversity.

“Looking at the gaunt, unshaven face of her sister’s husband, sapped of its usual outdoor burnish and as vacant as an abandoned house, Avis could barely breathe.  She retrieved a hankie from her pocket, pressed each eye and gave her nose a vigorous, head-clearing blow.  In an attempt to squeeze her crumbling composure back together, Avis clutched the balled-up fist of one hand with her other and began again.”  (Page 15 ARC)

Layla’s accident renders her different from her fellow classmates and neighbors and her father’s decision to keep them out of church on Sunday, further separates her from the community, until she is seen as a healer.  The community is very willing to turn to her in times of ailment or crisis, even when they have their own community doctor available, but they continue to see her as an outsider.  It’s almost as if the community is using her, and she’s almost too willing to help.  However, as Layla grows up and becomes a woman, it is clear that she becomes more conflicted about her role in the community and while she enjoys providing comfort, even she is not convinced of her powers.

Leonard’s prose is folksy, which is appropriate given the community she is describing and the situations she is portraying.  Layla is a quiet and unassuming girls swept into a role that she has little control over until she becomes an adult.  Given the choice, she relies on the teachings of her father to weigh the pros and cons of her decision and choose what is best for her upon her high school graduation.  In a community where God plays a large role and where struggles are the norm, Layla must face her fair share and more of these troubles, but through her gifts, she discovers the power of empathy and connection as a way to heal herself and others.

As Layla comes in contact with the severely injured and broken — soldiers of the Vietnam War — she must contend with feelings she never thought would be hers to feel or to dream about.  Leonard does well portraying the maturation of Layla while maintaining her naivete about certain things, and she easily demonstrates the psychological and physical pains of soldiers from the Vietnam War.  However, when Damian appears into Layla’s life, it is out of the blue and would have been better choreographed in another way, especially given his connection to the community doctor’s son, Brian.  Despite this minor flaw of a “convenient” meeting and what it stirs up in Layla, The Healer of Fox Hollow by Joann Rose Leonard is heartfelt tale of adaptation, survival, and love filtered through the heat of the sunset over the Smoky Mountains.

About the Author:

Wisconsin born JOANN ROSE LEONARD was Texas-raised and has chigger bite scars to prove it, theatre-trained and frostbitten at Northwestern University, and worked as an actress in New York.   She studied mime in Paris with Marcel Marceau while dubbing films into English to earn her daily baguette; raised 9 kids (2 human, 7 goats) in State College PA, where she was founder and director of MetaStages, the youth theatre program at Penn State University, and, with her husband, Bob, a retired professor and theatre director, has relocated to CA to be nearer their sons, Jonathan (DJ Child, an award-winning music producer and founder of the multi-media company, Project Groundation) and Joshua (actor/filmmaker including The Lie, Higher Ground and The Blair Witch Project.) Joann is author of The Soup Has ManyEyes: From Shtetl to Chicago; One Family’s Journey Through History, “From Page to Stage,” a chapter in Holt Rinehart Winston’s Elements of Literature and two collections of multicultural plays, “All the World’s a Stage Volumes I & II” (Baker’s Plays).   In her research for The Healer of Fox Hollow, Joann discovered that the truth the novel is based upon is infinitely stranger than the fiction she wrote.

For more info on Joann and her work, please visit her Website.

This is my 51st book for the New Authors Reading Challenge 2012.

***To win a copy of this book, you must be a resident of the United States or Canada and be over age 18.

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