Novels Now

American Rust by Philipp Meyer
Spiegel & Grau, 2009
ISBN #978-0385527521
Fiction; 369 pgs

Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good)

Source: Many thanks to the publisher for the copy of this book.

Miss Skeeter move her eyes back to the window, on Miss Hilly’s Buick. She shake her head, just a little. “Aibileen, that talk in there…Hilly’s talk. I mean…”

I pick up a coffee cup, start drying it real good with my cloth.

“Do you ever wish you could…change things?” she asks.

And I can’t help myself. I look at her head on. Cause that’s one a the stupidest questions I ever heard. She got a confused, disgusted look on her face, like she done salted her coffee instead a sugared it. – from The Help, page 10 -

The year is 1962. The place is Jackson, Mississippi. The issue is civil rights. Kathryn Stockett’s best selling debut novel, The Help, is narrated in the unforgettable voices of three women caught up in history and courageous enough to believe things can change simply by sharing their stories.

Skeeter is the white daughter of a cotton farmer. Despite her mother’s wish that she marry a prominent man and become a good Southern wife, Skeeter dreams of a different life for herself – that of a journalist and novelist. Unlike her closest friends, Skeeter doesn’t understand the division between whites and blacks – least of all the hypocrisy of having black women care for their homes and children, but denying them the use of their bathrooms because of fear of “disease.”

Aibileen is the black maid of one of Skeeter’s best friends, Elizabeth. Large, loving and sensitive, Aibileen mourns the loss of her son while wrapping her arms and heart around the white children in her care. Skeeter offers her hope of change – that this new generation might somehow see the racism of their parents and teachers and reject it.

Minny, anther black maid who must face the untrue accusation that she is a thief, is filled with energy, honesty and anger. Her unflagging spirit and kind heart lift her above an abusive marriage and give her the courage to join Aibileen and Skeeter in a project which will shake the racist foundation of a town whose views of segregation have stood fast for far too long.

A Dreft commercial comes on and Miss Celia stares out the back window at the colored man raking up the leaves. She’s got so many azalea bushes, her yard’s going to look like Gone With the Wind come spring. I don’t like azaleas and I sure didn’t like that movie, the way they made slavery look like a big happy tea party. If I’d played Mammy, I’d of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress. - from The Help, page 50 -

Thematically, The Help explores parenting, moral values, the many faces of racism, women’s friendships, and the power of joining our voices in a common cause. Skillfully crafted using three narrators in alternating chapters, The Help is a book which is hard to put down. Stockett is a talented storyteller who takes her time in fleshing out her fascinating and complex characters. I found myself growing to care immensely about Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. I worried about them, found myself cheering them on, and hoped for a positive resolution of their conflicts. There were moments when I had to remind myself that these were fictional characters, not real people. Perhaps it was the power of their stories, the reminder that less than 50 years ago what they were experiencing was part of our historical record, but Stockett’s characters came alive for me. I felt their fears, their joys, their hurts and triumphs. There are very few books which follow me into my dreams – but The Help was one of these. I went to sleep thinking of the book, and woke up wondering what would happen next in the story.

Kathryn Stockett has written an important novel about what it means to be human regardless of the color of one’s skin. Sensitive, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful, The Help is a must read book.

Highly recommended.

The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
Completed August 9, 2009

Set in the turbulent Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960’s, The Help was the debut novel by Kathryn Stockett. Many times, when I read a novelist’s debut book, I think: “that’s not a bad start” or “some flaws but a promising career.” Rarely does a debut knock my socks off – but that’s exactly what The Help did.

The Help was narrated by two black maids, Aibileen and Minny, and a young white woman, Skeeter. Through their stories, we learn about what it was like to be black maid to white employers during the time of segregation. For many maids, the experience was humiliating – backbreaking work for little pay, hostile employers and segregated bathrooms, forks and dish towels. Other maids, however, formed warm and loving relationships with their employers, especially with the children they helped raise. This love, however, was always disguised and hidden. It would be deadly for anyone to know to about it.

To me, the hallmark of a good Southern novel are the excellent characters, and The Help was no exception. I grew angry when the maids were mistreated, cheered for them when something good happened to them and admired the bravery of every woman – black and white – who defied the racial norms to make things better in Jackson. You’ll cheer and jeer throughout this novel – but I don’t think anyone could be very disappointed.

Highly recommended, The Help will go down as one my favorite books of 2009 – a must-read for anyone interested in Southern Literature, race and gender relations and just plain good writing. I wait anxiously to see what the future holds for Kathryn Stockett. ( )
 

Zamora’s Ultimate Challenge by M.K. Scott

Pages: 198
First Published: Feb. 1, 2008
Genre: children, fantasy
Rating: 3/5

First sentence:

The little man, named Jemlock, drew his sword, richly decorated with jewels he’d earned during his many adventures.

Reason for Reading: A very long time ago I read a book with the same premise of two children finding themselves inside a video game and loved it so the premise again intrigued me.

Comments: Two pre-teen boys are left to babysit their two-year old sister while the parents go grocery shopping. They turn on their favourite video game “Zamora’s Ultimate Challenge” to have the face of Queen Zamora talking directly to them. She has taken little Isabella and plans on taking over her soul and returning to Earth in her body so she can eventually take over the planet Earth. All she needs to do is wait a few days for the planets to align. The boys who have always considered the baby a major imposition on their lives are stunned and find a way to enter the game so that they can rescue her and thus save both the video game world and Earth.

At first I didn’t think I was going to enjoy this book as for the first two chapters the boy’s spend an awful amount of time complaining and using words such as “stupid” and “shut-up” and basically being very disrespectful human beings. However, once they enter the game the first two rules they are give are 1) Trust yourself and 2) Trust each other and the reader comes to realize that the bad behaviour is a plot point. The book is a lot of fun with the the two boys playing out the levels of the game which they have played before at home but they meet new characters, light-keepers, who help them on their quest. Ultimately the book follows a theme throughout as the boys realize that they love each other and their family and learn ways to show it to each other, physically and through trust.

A fun read with lots of fun characters, mermaids, pirates, giant robot shark, a pegasus, lava monster and more. The publisher recommendation is for ages 10+ but I think that is a little extreme. The book reads more for younger audiences and a limited audience really as I think older children will want more, so I’m recommending this as a fun adventure for ages 8-11.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Fiction
2009 Simon & Schuster
Finished on 4/9/09
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!)

Product Description

From the author of the international bestseller Incendiary comes a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate strangers — one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London.

We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this: This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again—the story starts there…

I went into this book completely blind. Although I’d seen it at work (who could miss that brilliantly colored cover art?!), I had no idea what it was about and hadn’t heard any buzz (no pun intended) about the details of the story. Then I came across Marcia’s enticing review and decided I had to give it a read. Picked up a copy and devoured it in just a couple of days. Unputdownable! I fell in love with Little Bee and Sarah’s son, Charlie (the latter of whom provides a touch of much needed humor in this distressing, yet powerful novel), and know they will join my ever-growing list of memorable characters.

Cleave is a marvelous storyteller. The main characters are fully realized and the dialogue is well executed and realistic. I loved the author’s device for explaining cultural differences by having Little Bee explain how she would describe a particular situation to “the girls from back home.”

I wait for a gap in the traffic and then I ran across to the center of the road. I climbed over the metal barrier. This time a great many car horns were blown at me. I ran across, and up the green grass bank at the other side of the road. I sat down. I was out of breath. I watched the traffic racing past below me, three lines in one direction and three lines in the other. If I was telling this story to the girls from back home they would be saying, Okay, it was the morning, so the people were traveling to work in the fields. But why do the people who are driving from right to left not exchange their fields with the people who are driving from left to right? That way everyone could work in the fields near to their homes. And then I would just shrug because there are no answers that would not lead to more foolish questions, like What is an office and what crops can you grow in it?

Cleave paints a vivid portrait of the harsh realities in an immigration detention center:

Me, I was a woman under white fluorescent strip lights, in an underground room in an immigration detention center forty miles east of London. There were no seasons there. It was cold, cold, cold, and I did not have anyone to smile at. Those cold years are frozen inside me. The African girl they locked up in the immigration detention center, poor child, she never really escaped. In my soul she is still locked up in there, forever, under the fluorescent lights, curled up on the green linoleum floor with her knees tucked up underneath her chin. And this woman they released from the immigration detention center, this creature that I am, she is a new breed of human. There is nothing natural about me. I was born—no, I was reborn—in captivity. I learned my language from your newspapers, my clothes are your castoffs, and it is your pound that makes my pockets ache with its absence. Imagine a young woman cut from a smiling Save the Children magazine advertisement, who dresses herself in threadbare pink clothes from the recycling bin in your local supermarket car park and speaks English like the leader column of The Times, if you please. I would cross the street to avoid me. Truly, this is the one thing that people from your country and people from my country agree on. They say, That refugee girl is not one of us. That girl does not belong. That girl is a halfling, a child of an unnatural mating, an unfamiliar face in the moon.

On an asylum seeker’s newly found freedom:

Outside, the fresh air smelled of wet grass. It blew in my face. The smell made me panic. For two years I had smelled only bleach, and my nail varnish, and the other detainees’ cigarettes. Nothing natural. Nothing like this. I felt that if I took one step forward, the earth itself would rise up and reject me. There was nothing natural about me now. I stood there in my heavy boots with my breasts strapped down, neither a woman nor a girl, a creature who had forgotten her language and learned yours, whose past had crumbled to dust.

On desperation and loneliness:

Three weeks and five thousand miles on a tea ship—maybe if you scratched me you would still find that my skin smells of it. When they put me in the immigration detention center, they gave me a brown blanket and a white plastic cup of tea. And when I tasted it, all I wanted to do was to get back into the boat and go home again, to my country. Tea is the taste of my land: it is bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory. It tastes of longing. It tastes of the distance between where you are and where you come from. And it vanishes—the taste of it vanishes from your tongue when your lips are still hot from the cup. It disappears, like plantations stretching up into the mist. I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other. How sad that must make you—like children who long for absent mothers. I am sorry.

Little Bee on the sad irony of rock music’s popularity:

“Everyone in my village liked U2,” I said. “Everyone in my country, maybe. Wouldn’t that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music. Do you know what? The first week I was in the detention center, U2 were number one here too. That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.”

As I sit here composing this review, I find myself thinking back to The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent novel about a missionary family’s experience in an African village in the 1960s. Both Little Bee and The Poisonwood Bible deal with tragic violence and political unrest experienced in Nigeria and the Belgian Congo, respectively, and yet Cleve’s compelling story of loss and survival never feels preachy or pedantic. Little Bee is an excellent choice for a book club discussion, perhaps even combined with Kingsolver’s novel for comparison.

In the news: Kidman vying for film rights

Final word? Can I say I loved this before Oprah smacks her logo on the cover and claims it for her book club?!

Amazing Journey

Skeeter Phelan just graduated college and is trying to go about her day to day living like a good white Southern woman should. She is a active member in the Junior league, she plays Bridge with her friends, and even goes out on a date that her best friend Hilly set her up with. Her over bearing mother wants nothing more for her daughter than to marry, live in a nice house, and have a black maid. So what’ s wrong with her? Why isn’t this enough?

Skeeter has her own aspirations and dreams big for a southern white woman. She wants to actually make use of her college degree and become a writer. She sends her resume to Harper and Row in New York City. Amazingly she actually hears back from the editor. Not with a job but with some sound advice. Skeeter quietly follows it.

On her path to becoming a writer, Skeeter starts to question the norms of the southern society she lives in. This is when she forges an unlikely friendship with two black maids. The book is narrated in turn by Skeeter and the two maids, Aibileen and Minny.

This is an amazing book about race relations in the south during the Civil Rights era. Reading this book was like Kathryn Stockett put me in a rocket and transported me back in time to the 1960’s south! I lost hours of sleep and had a hard time prying the book out of my hands.

The character and plot development were stellar, that of a seasoned writer. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this is Stockett’s first novel! I rarely read a book more than once because there are so many that I want to read however, this book is worth a return visit! I see quite a promising writing career ahead for Kathryn Stockett and cannot recommend this book highly enough!

5/5

Terra Cooper is about to complete high school in three years. She smart, ambitious and even though she doesn’t realize it, an extremely talented artist. But Terra has spent her entire life hiding behind a port-wine stain birthmark. Years of laser treatments and creams have done nothing to diminish it, and she now wears a “mask” of cover-up so she can feel normal.

But Terra’s reasons for wanting to complete high school so fast doesn’t have as much to do with her birthmark as it does getting away from home. She wants to attend college as far from home as possible. Across the country in fact. Her father, a disgraced cartographer has made her life a living hell. He is mean as a snake, constantly criticizing every move she makes. But it’s not just Terra that lives in constant fear from her father. It’s the entire family. Both Terra’s brothers have “escaped”. Her oldest brother, Merc is now a lawyer in China. He doesn’t ever call or write. And Claudius is now in college, and is always “too busy” to come home. Terra’s mother, who takes most of the brow-beating, turns to food to quell the harshness that Grant constantly doles out. And she has gained an enormous amount of weight. It’s a viscous circle for her mother. Grant constantly tells her she’s fat, and yet she turns to food to blot out the pain.

On a trip home from yet another doctor’s appointment, Terra and her mom, stop for coffee, and get into an auto accident. It’s here they meet the Fremont’s. Norah, the gorgeous coffee-buyer from Seattle and her adopted son from China, Jacob. Although Norah seems to have it all: money, beauty, a high-power job — looks can be deceiving. Her husband has just left her for a much younger woman. When an unlikely friendship is formed between the mothers, Terra and Jacob start spending time together. And it’s through Jacob that Terra starts to question everything she has ever thought the word “beauty” meant.

Justina Chen Headley has taken a pretty big leap with this book. In today’s world when young girls are bombarded with images of what is deemed “beautiful”, Headley has tried to re-write the definition. And it’s admirable. I know how young girls think. I remember what it was like growing up. I was the “smart” girl in my group. Definitely not one of the “beautiful” people. It’s hard on young girls when the barrage of the media defines super-model looks as beauty. And even though we have all heard that true beauty is on the inside, it doesn’t make it any easier to understand. And that is the lesson this book tries to convey.

At times heartbreaking, North of Beautiful is a wonderful book. Grant comes across as such a horrible person, it’s hard to feel anything for him but revulsion. Any father that would deem to tell his own daughter how ugly she is isn’t worth anything in my book. And his constant degrading comments to his wife just makes me cringe.

But read on a little farther and you find that both Terra and her mom, with a little help from the Freemont’s, come to grip with who they really are. The four take a trip to China…and it’s certainly a trip of self-discovery. The transformation is fantastic. This book is a must-read for any person who has ever felt they didn’t quite muster up to standard. For anyone who had ever felt they were far from perfect. Personally, a book like this should be a must read for every teenage girl. Justina Chen Headley has created some unique characters to which we can all relate. And I, for one, am certainly glad to say I read it! 4.5/5

 
Still I Rise is a graphic history book about the struggles, heroic, and triumphant history of African Americans. It mentions all of the largely known history but it also tells of more little known facts and of important people who helped shape how America is today.

Something I certainly didn’t learn in my school history books was that of indentured servitude which lead to slavery. I didn’t enjoy my history classes back in grammar school or high school because the text books were dry.

This book would make students want to learn the history of African Americans! It is a short book but the details of the history included are rich in detail. It is well researched, well written, and beautifully illustrated.

This is my first time reading a graphic book. There have been some that sound good but I have been hesitant. I visualize a comic strip, like the Sunday funnies in the newspaper. I just couldn’t believe that they could be taken seriously. Still I Rise has changes my view point! If you haven’t read a graphic book, this would be a good place to start!

Highly recommended!

5/5

The Laws of Harmony by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Fiction
Copyright 2009 Harper
Finished on 2/5/09
Rating: 4.5/5 (Terrific!!)

Publisher’s Blurb:

In 1989 Sunny Cooper escaped to Albuquerque. Fourteen years later she’s still there, struggling to make a living, to shore up her floundering relationship, and to forget her childhood on a commune, where a freak accident killed her younger sister, Mari.

Just when the “normal” life Sunny craves appears to be within reach, another accident—the sudden death of her fiance, Michael, and revelations that their relationship was not what it seemed—will turn her world upside down. Once again Sunny escapes, this time to the town of Harmony on San Miguel Island. But a surprising discovery sparks an emotional encounter with her estranged mother and forces both women to reexamine the truth of their memories. Only by making peace with the past can Sunny finally step out of its shadow and into a new life.

Mary Doria Russell. Marisa de los Santos. Jeanne Ray. Rosamunde Pilcher. Barbara Kingsolver. Patricia Gaffney. Elizabeth Berg. Lorna Landvik. Jodi Picoult. What do these authors have in common with Judith Ryan Hendricks? Well, they’re my favorite female authors and I’ve read nearly every single book they’ve written, most of which line the bookcases in my home. I’ve met a couple in person, have a few signed copies of their early novels, and have recently received ARCs of their latest works, accompanied by warm and chatty emails. These are the authors that bring great pleasure to my reading experience; the ones who thrill me when I learn they’ve written a new book; the ones I rave about to friends and customers; the ones who don’t seem to write fast enough for me!

I discovered Judith Ryan Hendricks several years ago when I happened upon her debut novel, Bread Alone. I don’t recall anyone recommending the book to me, so I must’ve fallen for the cover art and blurb. I thoroughly enjoyed the book—so much so that I re-read it prior to reading the sequel (The Baker’s Apprentice). I also loved Hendricks’ stand-alone, Isabel’s Daughter, and was absolutely thrilled to learn she had written a fourth book.

Hendricks sets her stories in some of my favorite locations (the Pacific Northwest) and places I’d love to visit (Santa Fe). She has also made mention of two small beach communities in Southern California (Del Mar and Leucadia), both of which are towns I’ve lived in. In addition to the great settings, Hendricks’ culinary details are also of great appeal to this reader. I discovered and sampled a wonderful recipe for homemade bread in Bread Alone and found my mouth watering as I read the description of several baked items in The Laws of Harmony. Oh, how I wish she had included a recipe for her blackberry brownies!

After spending a couple of weeks cruising the San Juan Islands, I find myself drawn to books describing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Bread Alone and The Baker’s Apprentice take place in Seattle, but this latest novel takes the reader out of the city and into a friendly community very much like those I encountered in the summer of 2007. I was immediately drawn into Sunny’s life, eager to see what awaits her in Harmony on San Miguel Island. This location reminded me so strongly of Friday Harbor, that I found myself wondering if it was the basis for Hendricks’ fictional community. Could her Ale House be the same as the similarly-named pub on the corner of Front Street (same street name!) in Friday Harbor? It really doesn’t matter one way or another; I loved living vicariously through the characters’ lives, reminded of my own experiences in the years I’ve visited that particular area. I could easily envision Sunny catching a ferry out of Seattle, serving customers an icy cold beer in the Ale House, hanging out with friends in a small independent bookstore, buying fresh seafood at the local fish market, and learning to ride a motorcycle on the windy country roads outside of town. At times, I found myself wishing to trade places with Sunny!

On ferry travel…

Everybody else rushes ahead, apparently knowing exactly where they want to sit. I follow the smell to the cafe, get myself a greasy bacon-and-egg sandwich and take it to an empty seat up front. The boat shudders with the exertions of the big engines as the pilings on either side of us begin to slide away and the window in front of me becomes a giant movie screen of water and sky.

All around me people eat and talk, read newspapers and kiss, play cards and pound on their laptops, oblivious to the gentle pitch of the boat and to the fantasy world just outside the windows—rippling blue-green water, rocky islands upholstered in conifers, shreds of mist. Each time I start to eat, there’s something that distracts me, makes me pause with the sandwich halfway to my mouth—a perfect, toylike red lighthouse or a log cabin tucked into a secluded cove, or the white ellipse of a boat lying at anchor on a glassy bay. I star transfixed, finally forgetting about the sandwich.

I loved reading the detailed passage in which Sunny learns how to ride a small motorcycle for the very first time. My husband has come to own a few motorcycles in recent years and I only just recently rode as a passenger for the first time a little over a year ago. I have my own helmet and Kevlar-padded jacket, but I don’t own a bike, nor have I ever ridden alone. And I wouldn’t say that after reading the half dozen pages describing how to ride a motorcycle, I’m capable of hopping on a bike and riding off into the sunset. However, I do feel like I have a better understanding of how the clutch, throttle, shifter and brakes work on a motorcycle. As Sunny says, it’s so illogical!

On riding a motorcycle - alone - for the first time…

“Feet up!” he yells, and the bike magically balances itself. It feels like flying. I hear myself laughing inside the helmet, like a little kid with the training wheels off for the first time. Suddenly I understand the thrill of this, and then almost as suddenly I see the driveway fast approaching. Shit! How do I brake? My mind’s gone blank.

I love discovering new music, so I’m especially happy when an author incorporates real music into a narrative. Hendricks’ main character listens to a CD entitled Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories), a Charlie Haden/Pat Metheny collaboration. It’s a simple arrangement combining the music of an accoustic guitar and bass into soothing pieces. I’ve listened to the sample tracks and have decided I need to own this album.

After all this gushing, I do have one complaint. Even with 478 pages, this book simply wasn’t long enough! As I turned that final page, I was sorry to see Sunny’s story come to an end. While there weren’t any holes in the plot, I felt there was more to reveal and I hope we haven’t read the last of Sunny and her life on San Miguel Island. Either way, you can bet that The Laws of Harmony will be one of my favorite recommendations and that I’ll eagerly await any news of a fifth book in the coming years!

Honora Kelly of Galway Bay had her life worked out. She was to become a nun. Her parents wanted this for her and she was quite willing. She was just about to start her days in the convent when she saw a mysterious man and his horse rising out of the sea. This man, Michael was to change her destiny forever.

It was love at first site, Honora wasn’t going to be a nun after all. Yes, her parents were disappointed as they wanted a better life for her. Yes, in Ireland, the convent was a better life. However, her parents really liked Michael and eventually agreed to giving their daughter’s hand in marriage.

Michael and Honora Kelly made a life for themselves farming. They raised horses and a variety of crops. Most of the crops went toward paying rent to the brutal English landlords but the potato crop was for the family. They had an abundant supply of delicious, life sustaining” pratties”. Enough to sustain their growing family.

Then the potatoes blight happened. It was the beginning of the potatoes famine for the entire country. The first year, they we able to selvage a few pratties. They found a way to survive. However, the second year there was nothing to selvage. Michael had to walk miles to work breaking up rocks for the government for pennies a day. The family lined up for soup every night, and every once in a while Honora’s father, a fisherman, had fish to sell.

The third year it was announced that there would be no more government jobs or soup lines. The land lords wanted the Irish families to leave and if that meant dying, that was fine with them.

Michael and Honora made the gut wrenching decision to leave their beloved country and head for “Amerikey”.

This book has something for everyone. It is Irish historical fiction, a family saga, a story of the American immigrant experience, and even a romance. It started off a bit slow for me however, there was quite a bit of Irish mythology at the beginning that wasn’t to my taste. I’m sure that there are other reader who would enjoy this part.

Within about 75 pages, I really warmed up to the story. So much so that I became a part of the Kelly family every time I picked up the book. I experience their joy’s, sorrow’s and triumphs along with them. I even felt that pangs of hunger that the family suffered. Mary Pat Kelly has a poetic writing style that sweeps the reader in. Her strong characters are well drawn out and is the landscape and back drop. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading more by Mary Past Kelly.

4/5

People are forever asking me what it was like to grow up in a commune, and it’s a question that has no easy answer. Northern New Mexico was Commune Central in those days, and each of the twenty-odd settlements had its own vision, its own quirky dynamics, its own culture. And, of course, no two children ever grow up in the same family, so if you asked both me and my brother, Hart, what it was like, you’d get two completely different perspectives. I think he was pretty happy. - from The Laws of Harmony, page 2 -

Judith Ryan Hendricks’ fourth novel, The Laws of Harmony, opens in New Mexico and is narrated by Sunny Cooper - a 32 year old woman whose life is suddenly wrenched out from under her. When detectives arrive at Sunny’s door to inform her that her fiance Michael has been killed in a fiery car crash, Sunny’s grief is quickly replaced by confusion and then anger when she discovers Michael was keeping secrets from her.

There was an aura about him - daring, adventurous, carefree, almost joyful - but with a darkness just under the surface. Like you could scratch him with a fingernail and find something you might not really want to see. - from The Laws of Harmony, page 68 -

The tragedy opens a floodgate of memories from Sunny’s childhood growing up in a commune - the drugs, sex and rock n’ roll; her close relationship with a brother who has since disappeared from her life; the sister she lost to a freak accident; and the strained connection she still has with her mother. On an impulse, Sunny sells nearly all her possessions and quits her job, heading west to a new future in the tiny town of Harmony on San Miguel Island.

I’ve entered a different world, and my heart suddenly lifts. It seems I’ve finally slipped the gravitational pull of New Mexico, and the past is dropping away behind me like a spent booster rocket. - from The Laws of Harmony, page 146 -

The Laws of Harmony is a novel about personal growth, the impact of the past on our future, and the delicate connections we make with other people. Sunny’s journey is not just a physical  one from New Mexico to Harmony. Her memories do not simply stop the moment she leaves the desert and arrives on the fog enshrouded island of San Miguel. Sunny’s journey from despair to hope and her gradual understanding that she cannot walk through life alone is what drives the narrative…and it is a compelling and satisfying story.

Hendricks is a capable and talented writer whose prose is filled with warmth, humor and a deep understanding of what it means to be human. Half way through the novel, I found myself immersed in Sunny’s world, comforted by the rich descriptions of food, and not wanting the novel to end. Although there is a bit of a mystery in the book, it is not the mystery which kept me turning the pages. Hendricks’ ability to create character is her strength, and it is the characters who engaged me.

The best novels are those which leave the reader with a more acute awareness of what motivates a character - and a better understanding of  how a character’s life might parallel our own. The Laws of Harmony does both those things. The writing is accessible and honest. Judith Ryan Hendricks has written a novel which women especially will love. If you are looking for a comfortable and gratifying summer read, look no further.

Highly recommended.

To find someone suddenly gone, to see them one day and not know that this will be the last day you see them, to not have the moment register until hours, days later, or years, is never easy. How we catch ourselves as life moves forward, thinking about that last moment and about what we might have done differently, if only we’d known. [pg 110]

Jackina Stark

304 pages

Audrey Eaton is a widow. She kisses her husband Tom goodnight and later awakens to find he has not come to bed. She gets up and finds that he has passed away quite unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Overcome by grief at the loss of her husband, Audrey shuts down. She basically disengages from her life and gives up participating in all the things she loves. She stops listening to music, reading, and really conversing with the people around her. In short, she is just going through the motions.

Fifteen months later, Audrey begins recording her thoughts in a journal and an idea begins to take root. She will take a road trip with no specific destination or time frame planned. After informing her children and their families what she is doing, Audrey packs her bags, her laptop, her husband Tom’s bible,and she takes off. When she begins reading Tom’s bible and comes across his notes in the book of John, she begins the true journey that will heal her heart.

Tender Grace is a story of the deepest pain we face in life and of the tender graces that God uses to show that we do not walk alone. Audrey becomes a widow after having retired young to travel and spend time with her husband after their children are grown. She is at a complete loss and trapped in the desire to have her old life back. She has much of her life ahead yet ahead of her and she realizes that it has been so long since she has been grateful for what’s around her. Her need to come to grips with her loss and move on are beautifully written and Audrey seems real. I read this book almost entirely with a lump in my throat.

I highly recommend this one and will definitely look for more by Jackina Stark. (5/5)

Here’s what I need to confess about Peter and me: We were not exactly in love anymore. After fifteen years and three children together, we were often other places besides in it. We were under it, sometimes. Or above it. Or against it. Or in arms’ reach of it. Or in shouting distance of it. Or rubbing shoulders with it. But not in it. Not lately. Not since Baby Sam was born. Baby Sam was, you might say, the straw that broke the Love Camel’s back. And now that camel was lying in the desert in the baking sun. All alone and very thirsty. - from Everyone is Beautiful -

Lanie Coates has just moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts from her childhood home in Houston so that her husband Peter can pursue his musical dreams. The couple moves into a tiny apartment with their three children, all under the age of five, and Lanie finds herself overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling less than beautiful. When she makes the decision to change her life and begins to pursue her own dreams, Lanie soon discovers that beauty and happiness are more than skin deep.

I always know I am reading a terrific novel when I start reading pages out loud to my husband.

“Listen to this,” I said more than once while reading Everyone Is Beautiful…and in between my laughter I shared Center’s wonderful prose with my husband who laughed along with me. Center’s sense of humor is evident on every page of her engaging novel, and even though I do not have children of my own, I was able to relate to Lanie’s puzzlement over her little boys’ fascination with their penises (called “noo-noos” in the novel) or her embarrassment when a neighbor drops in to see the three boys  parading naked through Lanie’s house plastered with Maxi pads. Time and again, Center sets up scenes and dialogue which ring true.

Katherine Center’s sophomore effort is full of her signature humor and astonishing insight into women’s lives. Although the novel revolves around a young mother’s life, the story is for every woman. Center touches on a universal truth: that women, in nurturing those they love, often lose themselves in the process. In a society which celebrates physical beauty and bone-thin bodies, many of us feel we are falling short. At the end of a long day of caring for others - whether it be our pets, our children, our aging parents - often while juggling jobs and trying to maintain a happy marriage…many women give up their own dreams or sacrifice personal time which might enrich their lives on another level. So when Lanie cries over her stretch-marks and laments her lost youth, most female readers will empathize.

Everyone is Beautiful is a celebration of all women and the beauty within them:

Laughter is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Big boobs should have a big ass to go with them. It’s more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous, than to sit pretty for pictures. A woman’s soft tummy is a miracle of nature. Beauty comes from tenderness. Beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. Beauty comes from the tragedy that each person’s life is destined to be lost to time. - from Everyone Is Beautiful -

For any woman who has been too hard on herself, or felt under appreciated or overworked, or simply tired…Katherine Center’s novel will be an affirmation of their inner beauty.

Highly recommended.

Katherine Center’s debut novel, The Bright Side of Disaster, is beautifully written and one I can highly recommend (read my review). And for those readers (like myself) who can’t seem to get enough of Center’s wonderful sense of humor and spot on depictions of women and the challenges they face, look for her third novel Get Lucky due out in the near future. To read more about this author and her work, visit Katherine Center’s website.

Lisa McMann
248 pages

Janie Hannagan is back in Lisa McMann’s sequel to Wake which I reviewed last month. There is reportedly a sexual predator at Fieldridge High and Janie and Cabe are assigned to figure out who it is. Janie is also given some more information about her role as a dream catcher and what the future holds for her.

I was so excited to get this book from the library last weekend. I enjoyed Wake very much and had heard reports that Fade was even better. It’s definitely darker. Part of that is because of the nature of the crime that Janie and Cabe are trying to solve(Janie is the bait, YIKES!) and part because the future in store for Janie is dark.

I found this to be a page turner just like Wake. However, the sexual predator aspect as well as the use of date rape drugs was a bit disturbing. I can understand that stuff like this actually does happen though. I didn’t feel it was glamorized at all and I can see it as helping kids understand what’s out there.

Janie’s gift has some strings attached to it which we learn about toward the end of the book. There’s no real resolution to this aspect so, of course, I am hooked and now waiting for the next book, Gone, which comes out in 2010.

Even though I enjoyed Fade, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Wake. I am not sure if it’s because Fade is darker or if it’s because I was just really into the different idea of the storyline in the beginning. I still liked it a lot though and would recommend it to lovers of YA. I am definitely looking forward to the next book. (4/5)

Some people are too stupid to be afraid on a runaway horse. Some people seize up. Some people turn cold and clear inside, like Clay, and only start to shake afterward. Annie sails into trouble like she wants it to last forever, like she can skim off from fear only what’s precious. She almost never comes off. - from The Mechanics of Falling, page 90 -

Catherine Brady’s latest collection of stories explore the various ways individuals respond to the unexpected events in their lives - will they seize up? Turn cold inside? Face things head on? Will they get back up after a fall, or give in to it? By exploring the ordinary lives of her characters, Brady reveals the extraordinary turns of fate and the gradual insight which swells inside us all when life does not go as expected.

In Scissors, Paper, Rock Natalie, an aging photojournalist, resists conforming to the changes in her profession and her behavior is accommodated at work. This irritates a co-worker, Liz, until a seemingly minor incident illuminates a deeper issue and forces Liz to examine her own values and sensitivities in the light of another person’s crisis.

Natalie’s visits reminded her of the happy time when her children were small, and they taught her over and over how to let each day happen as it would, centered on the wobbly axis of their needs and not her own intentions. The sick days that disrupted her plans were also enticing pools of time in which she might spend an entire afternoon reading in bed with a feverishly hot child pressed against her or playing endless rounds of scissors, paper, rock, in which no strategy could defeat the illogic of the hierarchy that set paper over rock, an open hand over a fist. - from Scissors, Paper, Rock, page 78 -

One of my favorite stories of the collection - Much Have I Traveled - involves Nina, married twelve years to her college professor, who examines the base on which her marriage turns during a weekend visit with friends. Nina and Carter’s marriage reveals itself gradually not only to Nina, but to the reader as well. When Brady describes a pond clotted with algae, it becomes a metaphor for the evolution of Nina and Carter’s relationship which has begun to shift under the shadow of Carter’s newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis.

When the pond became clotted with algae scum a few years ago, the channel from the creek slowly filling in, Nina had accepted this next small loss, the pond growing murky the way her memories of summers here as a child had silted up over time. They couldn’t really afford to keep up the property that had come to her, and they could not pay to dredge the pond. But Carter started digging a new channel from the creek and enlisted their guests in daily labor, flinging stinking muck on the grass, scoring the earth with shovels, tearing rocks from the creek bed and carting them in wheelbarrows to line the raw trench. - from Much Have I Traveled, page 162 -

In all of Brady’s stunning and beautifully wrought stories, there is a shift or change either inside the protagonist or within the primary relationship - boyfriend/girlfriend, daughter/father, husband/wife. The internal struggles of the characters are often paralleled with external events or catalysts. In Seven Remedies, a middle-aged woman finds herself juggling work, major house repairs, and rebellious children - but it is her struggle to communicate with her Mexican housekeeper which grants her the most insight into her relationships and what her life is all about.

She cannot get used to the construction noise, the sound of blows raining down as men rebuild her house. The gods have poor aim too. There are only these bungled missives that may or may not encode ruin. Or maybe it’s that Laurel misjudges the peripheral cues she’s given. The kind of peripheral cues - right turn after the yellow house, second left after the light, there’s the bus stop - she is forced to rely on when she tries to talk with Mayda, nothing ever precisely located. There’s just stumbling on. - from Seven Remedies, page 189 -

Brady creates memorable and complex characters whose inner lives are rich with doubt, fear, faith, and conflict. The characters encounter such things as  infidelity, violence, medical decline, issues of aging and single parenthood. A simple story becomes an intriguing look at deeper issues through Brady’s careful and wise prose. I often found myself re-reading certain passages, teasing through them just to listen to the perfect rhythm and finely tuned nuance.

Short story collections like The Mechanics of Falling are rare - the ideal blend of excellent writing and good story telling, giving the reader a wealth of detail about the characters while leaving room for interpretation of what will happen next. A good short story makes the reader think while pulling them deeper into the lives of the characters. Catherine Brady has written eleven outstanding stories which compliment each other perfectly.

Highly recommended.

See more reviews of this book through TLC Book Tours.

Catherine Brady has published two other collections: Curled In The Bed Of Love (co-winner of the 2002 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2003 Binghamton John Gardner Fiction Book Award.) AND The End of the Class War (a finalist for the 2000 Western States Book Award in Fiction).

Drood by Dan Simmons

Pages: 775
First Published: Feb. 9, 2009
Genre: historical fiction, mystery
Rating: 5/5

First sentence:

Comments: Where to start with a book of over 700 pages? If I were to have written this review immediately after finishing the book, and closing my hanging jaw, one word would have sufficed, “Wow!”

Wilkie Collins is the narrator of this book, being a memoir of his life from the time of The Woman in White’s end of serialization to minutes before his death. Written in an authentic Victorian sensationalist novel voice the book is incredibly brilliant. What starts off as a simple tale of Collins’ life and his friendship with Dickens takes a wild turn into murder, mayhem and the supernatural. The reader is taken along for a ride through opium dens, laudanum addiction, underground catacombs and an underground city in London, cemeteries and crypts, Egyptian cults, mesmerism as a science, and well, the list is endless. More of a summary would be a disservice to future readers. You must let the plot (or should I say multiple plots) unfold for yourself.

Filled with wonderful, eccentric characters; most of whom were actual real-life figures, one becomes fascinated with them all from the highest of character to the lowest of the low. As per a Dickens novel, the characters come and go, some shining briefly as main characters only to leave rather quickly while others are around from beginning to end. The writing is superb, simply superb. The Victorian style is followed to a “T”, including having certain people named Mrs. G______ and swear words printed as d___n. Never does Simmons loose beat with the style and language of original Victorian novels. I presume this book is an homage to Wilkie Collins’ style, but as I have never read him I can only surmise.

The beginning 300 pages or so are what one could call slow-paced presenting an interesting story of Collins and Dickens’ friendship, their scandalous affairs concerning women, their failing health and their addictions; Collins with opium and Dickens with mesmerism. While I’m calling it slow paced that is only in contrast to the rest of the book where unbelievable things start to happen and the reader is surprised and surprised again and again as twist after turn takes the story to a place you will not see coming a mile away. The reader is taken through the writing process and life happenings of both Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood as the author entertains all sorts of possible reasons for how these books’ plots came to be.

This is a book that has left me wanting more. I’ve read plenty of Dickens’ but none of Wilkie Collin’s work and that must be remedied some time soon. Along with wanting to read his work, I want to read a biography of both men having known nothing about them as people previous to reading this book. After I read the book I Googled them both and was very surprised at how much of the biographical aspects of this novel were based on reality. They are both extremely interesting (and eccentric) men.

This book is not going to be for everyone. If you’ve never read Victorian novels or either Dickens or Collins you’ll probably have no interest in reading it anyway. But if you have, well, you are in for a treat. I read D.J. Taylor’s Kept a year or two ago and thought that was brilliant but Drood sweeps it under the carpet. A fantastic ride which makes me want to read some Simmons’ The Terror even more now than I did before, which was a lot since I have always been very interested in the Franklin Expedition. Don’t let the 775 pages deter you from reading this book, it took me ten days to read and I found myself flying through the pages as I could not put the book down. Lovers of Victorian literature I have one thing to say to you: “Read this book!”

["]I remembered a story Johnny Leahy told right before our wedding. Fado,” Maire said, and winked at me. “Johnny was out fishing where Galway Bay meets the sea. They’d caught nothing, no fish, all day. When the sun sank beneath the waves, some boats turned back to shore, empty. But Johnny and his da stayed on. A slip of a moon rose, then disappeared. Complete darkness and still they waited. Then, long after most would have given up, the mearbhall - a kind of glow - started up from the deep, lighting up the sea. And suddenly all manner of fish - whiting and herring and great creatures Johnny couldn’t put a name to - came swimming up through the mearbhall and into the nets. The glow lasted until the morning star appeared. At the dawning of the day, they saw they’d netted a great catch.

“Mearbhalls come, Johhny told me, only on the darkest night. But no fisherman is able to say when or where. A gift, he said, like life itself.” - from Galway Bay, page 474 -

On the cusp of entering a convent, sixteen year old Honora Keeley discovers a man in Galway Bay.

He stood, foam swirling around his long legs, hands at his sides - not covering himself. Looking me right in the eye - smiling.

“You’re not drowning at all.”

“I am,” he said. “I am drowning in your beauty. Are you a girl at all, or are you a mermaid?” - from Galway Bay, page 8 -

Thus begins Mary Pat Kelly’s novel Galway Bay - a book filled with memorable characters, and love of country and family. But, Galway Bay is first and foremost a family saga which spans nearly sixty years (between 1839 and 1893). It tells the story of the Kelly family- first in Ireland on Galway Bay and then as they move west to America and settle in Chicago. Historically, the novel covers a sad period in Irish history. The Great Starvation (1845 - 1852) killed approximately a million Irish men, women and children when blight wiped out the potato crops and the English government turned a blind eye to the tragedy. The Irish population was further reduced by another million due to mass emigration. Galway Bay’s stalwart and courageous characters also experience the American Civil War(1861 - 1865), the assassination of President Lincoln (1865), the Great Chicago Fire (1871), and the Chicago World’s Fair (1893).

Mary Pat Kelly based her novel on her great-great grandmother Honora Kelly, and it is this character who drives the narrative through her determination to survive and carry the stories of Ireland all the way to America. Weaving together the lives of Honora, her siblings and parents, her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, Kelly unravels a history of the Irish people - including their lore, religion, and work ethic.

Kelly is a good storyteller and makes the reader care about her characters who come alive on the pages of her book. I did find her style of switching from past to present tense a little confusing at times.

I walked between Mam and Granny, carrying Bridget. Da and Michael were just ahead, deep in talk of some kind. They get on so well. Michael’s part of the Keeley men now, with is own fine children, his loneliness filled. - from Galway Bay, page 127 -

But after a time, these tense switches simply became part of the overall writing style of the book and I began to ignore them.

Galway Bay is a sprawling novel and the time period it covered is enthralling. As with all good historical fiction books, this one begs to be devoured long into the night.

Recommended.