Incendiary Girls : A What She Read Review

Do get yourself a copy and then pass it around:
you won't be disappointed!
Find it at your local bookseller,
via this Amazon link (sample the stories there too)
or via this Indiebound link.

Let me begin by telling you that I've already recommended Incendiary Girls to friends who appreciate the particular gratification of reading a beautifully wrought short story, and that I have two in the queue to borrow my copy, if and when I choose to part with it.

And for those of you who favor a healthy dose of magic with your realism - as I do - Kodi Scheer's first collection is a must-read.

It's been a swell month for the contemporary American short story at my house, as my Dave and I listened to George Saunders read his collection Tenth of December late in March, then I picked up Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove from our amazing "little library" branch's "Happy Go Lucky" shelf (all current best-selling or critically acclaimed paperbacks, two week loans, no holds, no renewals - just happy book luck), and then Incendiary Girls rose to the top of my TBR-for-book-tours pile.

Truth:  Kodi Scheer's stories stand up easily to the works of her two oft-lauded, more experienced, and certainly better-known contemporaries.  In fact, I thought that Incendiary Girls compared favorably to Russell's latest.  Why?  Scheer offers readers equally intriguing and imaginative premises but with consistent depth of character and humor to balance sometimes bleak scenarios. Russell, not so much, on both counts.

Specifics, you say?  Scheer writes in the tradition of contemporary magical realists:  we enter the entirely ordinary worlds of everyday people and occasionally "magical" occurrences simply slip in.  Protagonists generally accept such unusual events - a divorced doctor-mom suspects that her own mother has been  reincarnated into her daughter's horse ("Fundamental Laws of Nature") or a National Guardsman's obsessive-compulsive wife discovers his ear in their laundry hamper while he is still serving in the Gulf ("No Monsters Here") - and react to them as they would any more "realistic" unusual event. We readers stay closely aligned with these protagonists, and - exhibiting an artistic restraint that does this young author great credit - neither we nor they spend much time pondering why such events happen or even what they might mean symbolically.  Instead, we readers receive the gift of pondering for ourselves how the "magical" elements and characters' responses  resonate thematically and symbolically.  I love this sort of stuff, and detest writers who insist on over-explaining, so Scheer's work engaged me completely.

Eleven stories total offer diverse themes and levels of intensity; Ms. Scheer's fictional territory most- times includes anatomical and/or medical details that might be daunting for some readers, and she certainly doesn't shy away from the darker side of human nature, but - as I noted earlier - she nearly always balances intensity with lightness.  I'd especially recommend these stories to fans of Margaret Atwood's and Francine Prose's earlier magical-realistic collections, and to those who remember fondly Richard Selzer's work and the fictions or personal essays of other doctor-writers.

Two thumbs up from me for this new collection, with gratitude to the folks at TLC Book Tours for alerting me to the promise of Incendiary Girls.  Use the TLC link to sample other book lovers' responses to Incendiary Girls.

You can bet I'll be on the lookout for Kodi Scheer's future work as well.

MFB,
L

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train : What She Read Review

Look inside and get it now at Amazon or,
 preferably, at your local independent bookseller.  

What a delight!

I was sorely in need of a swiftly-paced, edifying, amusing, and entirely engaging novel, and this one brought reliable smiles and lofty diversion just when I needed it.

Its plot, focused on a highly unusual day in the life of the current Queen Elizabeth II of England, keeps us guessing with twists and turns, while its wide cast of characters offers an "Upstairs/Downstairs"-esque soap opera loosely related to the current Queen's daily life.

Author William Kuhn (who provides book group questions and  photos from the book on his website) offers us a surprisingly intimate look into the world of the Queen and her staff in a novel that balances light social satire with detailed verisimilitude.  Yet he's not afraid to take on issues I (ever attempting to overcome my status as an ignorant American) wouldn't have considered otherwise, such as how constrained the queen's life might be by the very role from which she receives her power and fame or how the long tenures of her staff members - often of different social statuses - create entrenched rivalries and decades-long misunderstandings.

Paperback cover: Look for it at
your local independent bookseller.

The Bottom Line, plus my action step:   A warmhearted and lively yet well-researched read, highly recommended.  I will be purchasing copies for all my "Downton Abbey"-loving pals, and I will await author William Kuhn's next novel with eager anticipation.  I might even delve into his non-fiction works while I'm waiting.

Those of you who stop by What She Read regularly will likely raise an eyebrow at this glowing review; it's rare indeed that a novel enchants me so utterly that I find nothing to niggle at.   Yet this one offered such reliable diversion that today I offer only praise.

Mrs. Queen Takes The Train is a light romp with a dash or three of social commentary to spice up the story.  As the days darken, what could be more welcome?

MFB,
L

p.s. I offer my gratitude once again to the able professionals at TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to sample this lively new novel.

Telegraph Avenue : A Mom & Me Review

This is a novel that sticks with you.

I read Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue in the spring of 2012 and traveled to Oakland that summer, visiting many of the sites that form the backdrop for its plot.  It was a journey I relished, and many vivid scenes from this novel still leap easily to mind.  I reread Telegraph Avenue and enjoyed it perhaps more the second time around.

Mom, on the other hand, read the new paperback copy just this week. 

What's it about?
Essentially, Telegraph Avenue is the story of Archy Stallings, floundering part-owner of Brokeland Records on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, CA, and all those who contribute to the web of relationships in his life.  It's also the story of his teenage son, Titus, and his partner Nate's son, Julie.  And it's the story of their long-suffering and brilliant wives, Gwen and Aviva, who are partners in a progressive midwifing business.   Archie is black, Nate is white; Gwen is black, Aviva is white.  And, in the end, the issues of race and gender in the United States and how they continue to morph from generation to generation form the central themes of the novel.  Finally, motifs of jazz music, film, pop-culture, and the homogenization of all three weave their way through this story.  Oh, and then there's the nearly unavoidable motif (in any contemporary novel written about the U.S.) of The American Dream and its (lack of?) viability today.

How did our responses stack up? 

Mom:
And so it goes…Telegraph Avenue, that is. Life after life unfolding before our eyes (and ears, too, if we’re  reading Michael Chabon’s prose). Sentence after sentence explodes across the pages, drawing the reader into a world most likely don’t know or even realize they would like to know. Until one meets Archy and Gwen, Nate and Aviva, their families, friends and acquaintances.  These are lives lived in a gritty world that includes jazz, a small business in a world where change is inexorably moving into the neighborhood, midwifery,  issues of race and gender, family interactions—in all, a microcosm of life.

Michael Chabon has a distinctive way of putting words on paper, making his characters and their worlds “activate” for us. Those lengthy sentences portray a scene in a way that “normal” sentences cannot: it’s an event that unfolds itself into the mind.

There is a scene in which Nat reminisces about his father, Julius the First (Nat’s son is also Julius). Nat describes an event in his Dad’s life: “A high point in a life, lived at sea level, prone to flooding.” Have you ever felt  that your life was “prone to flooding”?

And how is this for description: “engine heat troubling the atmosphere above its hood.” Who of us hasn’t seen heat making the air waver over pavement or some other object? But did we think of it as “troubling the atmosphere”?

And here’s another language delight. Nat is frying eggs, reminding himself of how his stepmother worked in the kitchen, how she kept things clean with her Scotch Brite pad and “wiping down every surface to a laboratory shrine, leaving herself to contend at the end only with the baking sheets, the big cast-iron skillet and the blast radius of spat fat on the stovetop.”  That ‘spat fat’ drew a picture for me.

Finally, I point you to pages 193-195: one continuous sentence that describes the people and place and sets a scene that continues to unfurl as Chabon’s opus weaves its narrative magic for us.

Me:  I enjoyed this novel even more the second time around.
Setting plays a major role, as does pop culture from the '70's through today.  Here Chabon inhabits characters of many backgrounds and gender identifications, all from a pretty close third person perspective, which is quite ambitious for a writer and sometimes problematic to process for readers.  Chabon's flexing his style-muscles here too, so expect a hefty dose of simile and metaphor, plus leaps in narrative timeline within the multi-character third person narration.  Also - and this was a major plus for me - it's funny. Often.

Who would enjoy it?
* A major plus in this novel is Chabon's successful creation of a richly populated fictional world, so if you enjoy immersing yourself entirely in a novel, this one won't disappoint.
* Characterization drives plot, so if that's your cup of tea, this will be too.
* If you enjoy music, and particularly - though not necessarily - jazz, this book will hold particular appeal, as it will if you lived through the '70's and thus connect easily with many of Chabon's period details and pop culture references.
* If  you've pondered questions of race, father-son relationships, the viability of 'living the  dream' in the U.S.A. today, and what - exactly - love is, then this novel will offer you another chance to explore these issues.
* If you enjoy layered comedy, you'll appreciate this novel even more.

Any "cautions" with regard to content and/or style?
Telegraph Avenue requires a mature reader.  I'm not talking about age, but rather experience and sensibility.  Why, what do I mean?  I mean that you have to persist through the first chapter's exposition to get to "the good stuff" when the plot kicks in during chapter two.  You have to endure sometimes oddly incongruous yet interesting metaphors and similes and accept that pondering them will be part of the experience.  You must accept the gamut in terms of language and characters' behaviors, some of which you might not use or engage in yourself.  And if a good laugh is low on your interest barometer, well, maybe you should lighten up a bit and then pick up Telegraph Avenue.*

So, that's two thumbs up from Mom & Me.  We both feel lucky to have found so many worthy books through our feature here; unusually lucky, really.  Neither of us would have predicted that we'd both genuinely appreciate so many of the books we've chosen to review.

Many thanks, as ever, to all at TLC Book Tours and, this time, to Mr. Chabon and his publishers for allowing us both to enjoy his novel in exchange for this honest review.

MFB,
L

* Please note that some of my comments are simply revised from an earlier post.  I relied on my
copy from last year for the re-read, and did edit after my current read.

Married Love : Review



Find out what all the hype's about: Look inside
at Amazon and read the stellar reviews.


Or: Moments of quiet crisis in ordinary lives.

That's how I might have subtitled this collection.

And, yes, both the crises and the lives seem to fade back into measured calmness or purposeful obscurity by stories' end.

"Married Love" is the title of the first story in Tessa Hadley's most recent collection, but the implied theme doesn't carry through into the other stories in any reliably consistent way.  Love in its many permutations does.

With five of the twelve in this collection published in The New Yorker and others made public in Granta and equally prestigious journals, Tessa Hadley hardly needs me to sing her praises.  Name the major reviewers: They're lauding this collection.

So I will simply state that if you are a fan of the short story, this collection is certainly worth pursuing.    

In Hadley's "P.S." notes on writing Married Love, she discusses the art and the particular merits of short fiction as a genre: "The short form is so good at catching life on the wing, flashes from the intensity and mystery of people's inner lives, their strange motivations, their yearnings."  She adheres to this focus in Married Love and other stories.  If you're looking for subtle shadings of emotion as you inhabit everyday people's the inner lives via the slightly distanced stance of third person perspective (for me, Joyce's Dubliners and Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" came to mind in this regard), this collection will satisfy.

My personal favorites in Married Love featured male protagonists, and I always marvel when authors can "switch genders" believably.  Hadley seems to excel in this regard.  If you're sampling from this collection, I suggest you try "The Trojan Prince" and "Journey Home" first, with "She's The One" and "Because the Night" next.

Thanks, as ever, to TLC Book Tours for offering me the opportunity for my first taste of a short fiction writer I'll be certain to follow in future.  And do see what others thought of Ms. Hadley's collection: click the TLC link above.

MFB,
L

p.s. If you're looking to gift Married Love for the holidays, you can do so via Indiebound.org, betterworldbooks.com, Amazon.com, or any of the electronic platforms.

Flight Behavior : Mom & Me Review



For a summary-sans-spoilers of Flight Behavior, head to the bottom of
this post.

 When "Mom & Me" stumbled upon the opportunity to review one of our mutual favorites' latest novels, we scrambled all over ourselves to be first in line.  And - happily - we queued up in time.

So:  Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior.  The Lacuna's equal?  Her next Poisonwood Bible?  Or Prodigal Summer on steroids?

Me?  I'm saying the last one. Flight Behavior delivers many of the elements on which Kingsolver's fans have come to rely: world issues front and center, a richly developed female protagonist, and prose neatly fitted to Kingsolver's setting and themes. 

Issue-wise, it's as ambitious as anything she's done.  For a novelist to attempt to convert skeptics to acceptance of climate change and its life-altering consequences for ordinary individuals via a story also designed to humanize and elevate the impoverished citizens of Appalachia, well, that's moxie.  And I have to admire Kingsolver's unceasing desire to write about what matters rather than what (necessarily) sells.  I'd rather read her third best book than another Gone Girl or cookie-cutter Patterson paperback any day.  And that's pretty much what Flight Behavior was for me: a valiant effort.

And pleasant to pass the time too.  I used the "tandem read" strategy to immerse myself in Flight Behavior, listening to Kingsolver read it when I was driving and reading it myself when I got home.  Over the course of many days in their presence, I came to feel that Dellarobia Turnbow, and Cub, and Preston and Cordie, and Dovey and Hester and Bear - not to mention the sheep and the scientists and the preacher and the collies and the activists - were indeed my neighbors, be they all the way on the other side of the country and in a fictional world.  I can still see the Turnbows' back pasture, so similar to many I drive by every week;  their serviceable but characterless house, much like my own; and their steeply canted, fir-forested hillside, a hazy mirror to the one I'll likely hike this afternoon. 

So - in my view - Kingsolver has once again deftly accomplished her primary job as a novelist: she has created a world that we inhabit like our own, that we continue to visit in our minds' eyes, and that we call back in memory as we re-see our own world through the prism of hers.

And, Mom?
Flight Behavior--Whose? Yours? Mine? Monarch's? Dellarobia's? Cub's? Hester's? Bear's? Ovid's? Everyone's?

The multiple answers to that question drove me through a book that begins slowly and continues in what, to me, were fits and starts. Momentum here isn't the name of Barbara Kingsolver's game. Her game, as I see it, is to grab us with her confused young mother protagonist in a quandary about her life; then the reader accompanies Dellarobia.  Dellarobia is trying to figure out how she let life lead her rather than taking charge and trying to make life what she would like it to be. Her flight pattern is what moves the book and, as I indicated, the route and timing are erratic.

Flight Behavior describes a year of natural aberration that descends upon a mountain in Tennessee owned by Dellarobia's father-in-law, who has contracted to have clear-cut.  Dellarobia discovers the global phenomenon lurking in these trees; this sets up the book's storyline.

From there, the story makes many twists and turns, connecting all of the main characters to their own lives and to their families. The novel offers us insights into how much people wish life to have certainty and control in their lives and, ultimately, how little most folks have of those characteristics.

Some of the most beautiful, story-moving passages:

"Summer's heat had never really arrived, nor the cold in its turn, and everything living now seemed to yearn for sun with the anguish of the unloved. The world of sensible seasons had come undone." (49)

"From this high part of the pasture they could see in all directions through the barren woodlands. The topography of the farm came clear: the steep, high reach of mountains behind, the narrow drainage of the valley below. It occurred to her how much was obscured in summer by the leaves. With all those reassuring walls of green, a person could not see to the end of anything. Summer was the season of denial." (256-257)

"But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself....A gut-twisting life of love, consecrated by the roof and walls that contained her and the air she was given to breathe." (59, 60)

All in all: "Mom & Me" would recommend this to Kingsolver fans and to those willing to meander through a novel focused on important global-local issues rather than plot.

As always, our gratitude to Trish and all at TLC Book Tours for offering us the opportunity to keep "Mom & Me" growing as we review exciting new titles each month.

MFB,

L

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.” — from Kingsolver's Animal Dreams (my personal second-fave, after The Poisonwood Bible)

*******************************************************************************

Mom & Who? 

Mom's a retired science librarian/tech writer in New Mexico; I'm a high school English teacher in Washington state. We share a love of our imperfectly tended gardens (OK, mine's oh so much more imperfect than hers), lifelong learning (not a day goes by...), Jacques Pepin, travel, show tunes, our two-legged and four-legged family members, and - of course - books.

Once a month or so, we offer up a tandem review about a new book we both suspect you'll enjoy.  We hope you'll find our "dialogue" valuable reading in and of itself, and that we'll inspire you to try your own inter-generational read-along, be it with our picks or with your own.



Looking for that plot summary? 

A Train in Winter : "A Mom and Me Review"

This month, you'll get a "Mom and Me" two-fer: First, today's post on A Train in Winter, acclaimed biographer Caroline Moorehead's historical recounting of women resisters in WWII occupied France.  Then, on November 27, come on back for our tandem review of Barbara Kingsolver's hot-off-the-presses novel, Flight Behavior.

Find it on Indiebound or Amazon, among others.

Background from Harper Perennial
They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera; a midwife; a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of sixteen, who scrawled "V" (for victory) on the walls of her lycÉe; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to one another, hailing from villages and cities across France—230 brave women united in defiance of their Nazi occupiers—they were eventually hunted down by the Gestapo. Separated from home and loved ones, imprisoned in a fort outside Paris, they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.

In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.

Drawing on interviews with these women and their families, and on documents in German, French, and Polish archives, A Train in Winter is a remarkable account of the extraordinary courage of ordinary people—a story of bravery, survival, and the enduring power of female friendship.

Mom's take:
"They had learnt, they would say, the full meaning of friendship, a commitment to each other that went far deeper than individual liking or disliking; and they now felt wiser, in some indefinable way, because they had understood the depths to which human beings can sink and equally the heights to which it is possible to rise." (314)

Reading these words, quite near the end of the book, said exactly what I had been thinking. This is a book full of terror, debasement, betrayal, but also a work of courage, love, forgiveness. And it is a work worth reading, particularly if one has not been exposed to the Holocaust story in a personal way.

Surely there are gruesome passages at which I squirmed and said to myself "How could humans do such things to other humans?" Why would anyone participate? It made me think of what seem unthinkable punishments that have occurred in more recent times. Again, why would anyone participate? The book raises questions about human beings and what defines the word 'human'.

But the courage of the survivors as well as those who did not survive testifies to what
endurance, creativity, depth of feelings, community, mental and emotional focus can produce in humans who are pushed beyond limits.

Sadness was everywhere but especially for the mothers who had left small children behind. Lulu and Madeleine Zani had left babies and were missing their first walking and talking: their children would not know them. "It was a bitter punishment that none had imagined."

So, who were these women and why were they aboard the train? There were 230 of them. They were farmers, shopkeepers, factory workers, seamstresses, a few students, a doctor, a dentist, a midwife, four chemists, a singer, teachers, secretaries. And why were they on the train? They had resisted the occupation of France by the German army.

Forty-nine of the 230 French women on the Convoi des 31000 (the train) returned from 29 months in the German camps. Sixteen women had children waiting for them and 22 of them were reunited with their mothers. But 53 mothers didn't come home, leaving 75 orphans between them.

Sadly, when the women returned home people generally didn't want to hear about the hardships they had endured and, for many of the women, talking about it was too hard emotionally.

The research by Caroline Moorehead is amazing: lots of written materials were located but the authenticity of the book rests for me in the personal interviews with several survivors and/or their families.

And mine:
For me, the first section was a disjointed and often off-putting muddle.  Descriptions of individual women resisters - not to mention their many male family members and fellow-rebels - were brief and so various as to push me out of the text:  no sooner did I solidify one character's identity in my mind than we were off to the next, not to return again until they were killed or boarded the train for part two.  Frustrating.  A hazard of historical writing, perhaps, but a more focused approach, perhaps using ten or so women as signal characters rather than offering just a tantalizing tidbit on each of one hundred or so women, may have yielded a more memorable and engaging first section, in my view.

The last chapter of the first section and the entire second section were much more focused and engaging, mirroring the myriad other accounts of transport in crushingly over-crowded cattle cars and dire circumstances at Nazi-run concentration, work, and death camps.  Such subject matter cannot fail to move any reasonably empathetic reader to horrified anger and even to tears.  This holds true for A Train in Winter as well, although my previous background in the history of this time period made the exercise of reading part two one of  teeth-gritted determination to honor those who died by re-visiting my knowledge in stomach-turning detail.  No shortage of awful events here.

As I was reading this history, Diane Ackerman's work of historical journalism The Zoo Keeper's Wife kept coming to mind, as did Elie Wiesel's harrowingly focused and intensely brief memoir Night and Marcus Zusak's novel The Book Thief.  All these treat related subject matter, yet with the developed central character(s) I yearned for in A Train in Winter.  I can recommend the latter two books without reservation, and Ackerman's as worthwhile for those intensely interested in the subject matter.  My mom says that Suite Francaise by Irene Nemerovsky sprung to mind for her.  If you found any of those titles worthy, A Train in Winter may be the next history book to add to your list.

In a nutshell: We both found this book's content well worth confronting.  For me, the construction of part one and the conflict between how this book was billed and what it actually turned out to be left me frustrated. For Mom, they didn't: she accepted A Train in Winter on its own terms and appreciated it for what it was rather than waxing vexed over what she (we) thought it would be.  As with our collaboration to review our first "Mom and Me" book, The Good Muslim, our conversations about A Train in Winter made reading and reviewing time well spent.

Our mutual thanks to Trish and all at TLC Book Tours for offering this opportunity.

MFB,
L

Mom & Who? 

Mom's a retired science librarian/tech writer in New Mexico; I'm a high school English teacher in Washington state. We share a love of our imperfectly tended gardens (OK, mine's oh so much more imperfect than hers), lifelong learning (not a day goes by...), Jacques Pepin, travel, show tunes, Tignanello handbags, our two-legged and four-legged family members, and - of course - books.

Once a month or so, we offer up a tandem review/virtual dialogue about a new book we both suspect you'll enjoy.  We hope you'll find our "dialogue" valuable reading in and of itself, and that we'll inspire you to try your own inter-generational read-along, be it with our picks or with your own.

These Things Happen : Review

A vibrant, fresh coming-of-age novel, the first from an Emmy and Peabody Award winning writer?  Don't mind if I do.

A contemporary fiction for mature young adults (Oxymoron? no.) that will be read with relish by adults as well, one that's both laugh-out-loud funny on nearly every page and surprisingly moving in all the right places?  Hand it over pronto, please.

And shift over a seat, John Green, Libba Bray, and David Levithan, 'cause a worthy peer just stepped up to the table.

It's These Things Happen.  And he's Richard Kramer.

What's it about?  (From the PLC Tour site.)

THESE THINGS HAPPEN takes place right now, even as we speak … it’s the tale of a modern family, set among Manhattan’s progressive, liberal elite, the adults all prominent in their professions, rearing their children to be the same, confident that nothing much can harm them, ever.

The story starts when WESLEY BOWMAN, 16, sharp and funny and defiantly individual, moves downtown from his book editor mother’s home on the Upper East Side home to live with his father and his partner for the fall term of school; Wesley, becoming a man, feels the time has come for him to more closely know (his words here) the “man from whom I did, actually, spring.” Kenny, who came out after his marriage to Wesley’s mom ended, is a much-honored gay-rights lawyer, a regular on Rachel Maddow, Charlie Rose, a frequent contributor to the Op-ed page of the New York Times.

But Wesley, when he moves in, finds his father distant and inaccessible; he has much more luck connecting with his father’s partner, George, a former actor/dancer who now runs a theater district restaurant. George is present, genuinely interested, fully at ease with himself; all the things Kenny is not. He and Wesley become like father and son, really, and not because George is in any way trying to supplant Kenny. It’s just that these things happen.

Then everything changes. When Wesley’s closest friend surprises him and everyone else when, after being elected class president, he comes out at the end of his acceptance speech. The two boys find themselves at the center of an act of violent, homophobic bullying (even though Wesley is straight). Within the family, tolerant facades crumble as George, suddenly, becomes suspect. Wesley’s mom values and cares for him, and has worked to have a relationship with him, as she suspects this will assure the presence of Kenny in Wesley’s life. But, now, with Wesley in the hospital being held for observation (“When did I,” she wonders, “turn into someone whose kid is held for observation?”) isn’t it her duty to wonder and worry about what might have been going on when her back was so progressively turned? Did she fail to keep her son safe? Does she, indeed, know him? Does she know George, so delightful and pleasing, an author of agreeable evenings? And, more worryingly, does this accomplished, insightful, deeply curious woman really, in the end, know herself?

Why does this novel rise above so many competent yet cookie-cutter works featuring teen protagonists?

First, Kramer's created richly nuanced, smart, funny, and likable characters.  He demonstrates compassion for each character's imperfections, while offering us qualities to admire and aspire to in his protagonists and supporting characters as well.  

Second, the novel explores the complexities of a variety of salient contemporary topics, from parent-child relationships to blended families to "coming out" as a teenager to surviving in these times of economic uncertainty.  The events in this page-turning, smart new novel range from lightly comic to downright heart-breaking, and that's just the way most readers like their coming-of-age novels. 

And finally, the writing itself sings. When I read to review, I post a sticky note at every telling turn of phrase, every sentence I wish I'd written myself, so I can return to these tasty morsels as I pull my thoughts together.  Here's These Things Happen, with stickies.  Few were the pages I didn't mark.
To my mind, these are hallmarks of a book destined to endure, and to offer fruitful re-readings over the course of a lifetime.  I think this is one of those books.

And you don't have to take my word for it.  First, hop over to the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon to read the first pages of this novel, or to the book's featured page at its publisher, Unbridled Books.

Then go get it for yourself.

MFB,
L

p.s.  My actions?  If Richard Kramer comes to town on his book tour, I'll get myself to his appearance.  And he's inspired me to start saving for another trip back to NYC a.s.a.p.

In a Nutshell:  Recommended, for mature young adults and adults too. While the plot events and themes of Richard Kramer's first novel require a mature reader, it's the perfectly-pitched language and smart, decent, endearingly imperfect characters that will keep you reading and leave you wanting more from this new voice in contemporary, young adult fiction. 

Virgins by Caryl Rivers : Review



Available as an e-book at Amazon
or Barnes and Noble.


In a word: enjoyable.

Our narrator/protagonist Peg voices the episodic tale in an often-comic, candid tone, and our author, Caryl Rivers, negotiates each chapter's arc with sure-handed pacing and natural dialogue, crafting pleasing situational comedy and teen drama.  The "big questions" of teen life today are here for the exploring, as are concerns particular to young people growing up in strong religious traditions during eras of political upheaval and social change.

I suspect that this coming-of-age novel, set primarily in a Catholic girls' high school in the '50's, would entertain just about anyone who knows anyone who grew up Catholic, and many who don't as well.  Fans of "period fiction" and lightly humorous page-turners will find this book appealing too. (I'm thinking that Janet Evanovich fans might take to this one based on narrative voice, for example, although it's not in the mystery genre.)

I'd recommend this reprint of an '80's "classic" to anyone who appreciates a novel that's frank and immediate and easy-to-read.  Personally, I think that some of the explicit (though not egregious) sexual content would be more appropriate for adults and late teens than the younger "YA" set, but other than that, this novel should still hold a wide appeal as a "slice of life" from an era gone by.

I'm grateful to Ms. Rivers and TLC Book Tours for offering me the opportunity to enjoy and then review this novel, and I look forward to reading other reviewers' reactions on this Virgins Virtual Book Tour.

MFB,

L

Action:  I'm going to ask my mom how some of the experiences depicted in the novel - particularly the rebellious pranks and the characters' internal conflicts around politics and religion - compare with her own experiences in a much smaller Catholic girls' school in roughly the same time period.  I've not yet probed her much about her high school years, so I'm glad that this novel heightened my curiosity about that period in her life.

p.s.  In deciding whether or not to sample Virgins, I perused Rivers's bio, and found myself impressed.  Perhaps you will be too, and then decide to give the novel a go:

About Caryl Rivers (from the TLC website)

Caryl Rivers has been called “one of the brightest voices in contemporary fiction.” Her novel Virgins was an international critical success, published in the US, UK, Sweden, Germany and Japan. It was on many best seller lists and in paperback (Pocket Books) sold more than a million copies. Her novels deal with American women trying to find a foothold in a rapidly changing world. She was included in the book Feminists Who Changed America from the University of Illinois Press.

She is a nationally known author, journalist, media critic and professor of Journalism at Boston University. In 2007 she was awarded the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for distinguished journalism. She is the author of four novels and nine works of non-fiction, all critically acclaimed. Her books have been selections of the Book of the Month Club, Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club and Troll Book club. The Chicago Tribune says of her,  “Few other writers are as funny as she, and none funnier. Yet she is capable of wrenching your heart and soul.”  There are film offers in place for the new edition of Virgins.

Her articles have appeared in the New York Times magazine, Daily Beast, Huffington post, Salon, The Nation, Saturday Review, Ms., Mother Jones, Dissent, McCalls, Glamour, Redbook, Rolling Stone, Ladies Home Journal and many others. She writes frequent commentary for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune and Womensenews. Of her book Selling Anxiety: How the News Media Scare Women, Gloria Steinem says it “will save the sanity of media watchers enraged or bewildered by the distance between image and reality.”

She has co-authored four books with Dr. Rosalind Barnett, senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis—the latest (2011) being The Truth About Girls and Boys: Confronting Toxic Stereotypes About Our Children. Articles based on the book won a Casey medal for distinguished journalism about children and families and a special citation from the National Education Writers association.

Love, In Theory : Review



Find it now at Amazon or - for an e-copy -
at UGAPress.  Your local bookseller can order
it for you too!


Do all books, all stories have a "best audience", that group of readers for whom the writer's insights and singular style hit right in their literary sweet spot?  I think so. 

So I'll say this:  I thought that Love, In Theory by E.J. Levy would hit right in that sweet spot for me.  Sadly, it didn't, but I don't necessarily fault the writer or myself; we simply weren't the perfect reader-writer fit. 

Why?  Well, these stories - in the main - feature a somewhat detached stance on the part of their various narrators, plus quotable humor of the sort one might scribble down when a colleague snaps out a tasty bon mot that cracks up the whole lunch table, or when a friend posts one of those breezily ironic,visual-plus-verbal "postcards" on Facebook.  Both of those features work just fine for me.  But after a few such stories, one bled into the next due to the repetition of these qualities. 

But isn't the recurrence of an author's stylistic quirks an inevitable downside to a short story collection?  Often, the answer is yes.  Which is why I don't want to disparage Levy's writing.  In my experience with short fiction collections, the danger of sameness is always present.  Only true virtuosos, true masters of the form, can produce a collection with varied textures, structures, perspectives, characters, and insights.  We can hardly expect that from anyone's first collection.

An aspect of these stories that may be a draw for "perfect fit" readers is their content focus.  For the most part the fictions feature:
* Love as the theme, filtered through theories from a variety of disciplines (hence the title), resulting in that distanced stance I noted above.  Many who are in the throes of an imperfect passion or a love recently lost will find solace here, and perhaps a means to reflect upon their lives in comparison to the characters featured.
* Moderately to extremely well-educated protagonists addressing the highest, most passionate emotions in a rather cerebral manner, "emotion recollected in tranquility".  (This added to the moderate sameness of tone, despite differing protagonists.)
* Quiet finishes.  Reflection marked the final sentences of many stories, with one surprising and notable exception: My favorite story was the sole offering that surprised me with its final paragraphs and left me pondering for days.
* Many wry-smile-worthy insights about stories and writing and art.  Loved these: it's where reader and writer synced up.

I suspect that if I had encountered a single E.J. Levy short story in The New Yorker or some such, it may have made a stronger, more lasting impact on me.  And one singular story packed such a wallop that I'd like to use it in my classes some day.  I'll be writing Ms. Levy to beg her permission to explore "Small Bright Thing" with students and friends.

Looking for another view or for more details on Ms. Levy and her writing?  Hop on over to Love, In Theory's tour at TLC.

My gratitude to Ms. Levy, her publishers at The University of Georgia Press, and all the fine folks at TLC Book Tours for allowing me to sample the early work of a writer who promises to keep producing worthwhile short fiction for many years to come.

MFB,
L

p.s. My action is to take what I've learned through reading this collection straight into my classroom.  We'll pay particular attention to writers' choices of narrative distance and how they interact with other short story elements to create an intended (or unintended!) effect in the reader.  Looking forward to it!

Diving Belles : Blog Tour Review



Find it at your local bookseller,
Indiebound or Amazon.

If you visit here regularly, you probably know how much I love short fiction. 

That shiver of surprised illumination that zings up your spine at the last sentence of a stellar short story?  I crave it.

And the first few stories of Lucy Wood's collection did just that.  She's a promising new voice in the tradition of Margaret Atwood's early collections, Angela Carter (if you haven't read her novel Nights at the Circus or her short story collections, you should), and current American short fiction phenom Karen Russell.  And somehow Wood's consistently foreboding tone - a sense of the quiet menace in the everyday - reminds me a bit of Emma Donoghue too. 

What's Diving Belles about?  Well, most of the stories are set in Cornwall (Wood's home), but we're definitely in magic-real territory here: absolutely my favorite flavor...

• Old lady braving the dangers of descending into the deep in a bottomless diving bell to search for her mer-husband, disappeared lo these twenty or so years?  Done.  And we've got our title story nicely in hand.
• House spirits chronicling the lives of their home's inhabitants, the humans' arrivals and departures in stark contrast to these creatures' own static, house-bound lives?  Done. Let's call it "Notes from the House Spirits".
• Twenty-something waitress turning - for the umpteenth time in her life - to stone?  Fine. But before she joins the ring of stone-townspeople atop the seacliff, let's join her for the afternoon as she cheauffers her scatter-brained ex-boyfriend on errands, and statue-fication silently creeps in (and don't let's tell him it's happening again, OK?).  That's the premise for "Countless Stones".
• And what if your mom - abandoned by dad for a younger woman - took to plastering her eyes each morning with an unguent that opens them to the sight of her green forest-elf lover?  What if you too sampled that goo?  Then you'd be smack dab in the middle "Of Mothers and Little People".
• And so on.

So who would enjoy Lucy Wood's first collection of short stories, Diving Belles?  Anyone with a taste for making the ordinary fresh again, with a spirit open to spirits, with an interest in the interior voices of characters at once utterly individual and next-door neighbor familiar.  Fans of the harsh coastal beauty of Cornwall and the ancient magic hidden there in every moor and meadow  will find this book's settings especially appealing.

Wondering about Wood's style?  Here's an excerpt.

My thanks to all at TLC Book tours for the opportunity to sample this fledgling effort from a young writer who's destined to entertain us for many years to come.

MFB,
L

p.s.  Here's Lucy Wood, reading a section of "Notes from the House Spirits":

The Good Muslim by Tamima Anam : Mom & Me Review

Find it at Indiebound or Betterworldbooks
and/or sample her prose at Amazon.

Here's a new feature for y'all:  Mom and Me.  She's a retired science librarian/tech writer in New Mexico; I'm a high school English teacher in Washington state. We share a love of our imperfectly tended gardens (OK, mine's oh so much more imperfect than hers), lifelong learning (not a day goes by...), Jacques Pepin, travel, show tunes, Tignanello purses, our two-legged and four-legged family members, and - of course - books!

Once a month or so, we'll offer up a tandem review/virtual dialogue about a new book we both suspect you'll enjoy.  We hope you'll find our "dialogue" valuable reading in and of itself, and that we'll inspire you to try your own inter-generational read-along, be it with our picks or with your own.

We decided to begin this feature with Tahmima Anam's new novel, The Good Muslim, thinking that its focus on mid-to-late 20th century Bangladesh would bring us into an unfamiliar culture through an engaging narrative.  The plan:  Read the book in its entirety, then shoot each other a few questions along with our general reviewish thoughts.  Our mutual thanks to Trish and all at TLC Book Tours for offering this opportunity, and to Tahmima Anam for her worthwhile new novel.

What's It About? The Good Muslim is primarily the story of Maya and Sohail, an idealistic brother and sister who both participated in Bangladesh's war for independence from Pakistan during the early 1970's.  He was a rebel soldier, she a doctor who aided victims of war.  The story traces their shifting relationship after the war and highlights the aftermath of that war's violence: female rape victims shunned by their families, PTSD-afflicted soldiers turning to fundamentalist Islam to cope with their lingering guilt and fear, plus military coups followed by martial law quickly replacing hard-won democracy.

Mom's Take:

I found this book to be engaging from the start. I almost always find stories that take me to a different culture experience appealing. There’s nothing like a good novel to help the reader absorb without having to work at it!

The realities of the wars between neighboring countries all over the world include the horror for the combatants, the effects on families at home, the terror for the women like Pilar and her companions, and the aftermath for all.  Sad though the story is in many ways, many moments struck me as universal. Maya—the independent daughter, Sohail—the independent son, loving one another but not able to understand the other. Religion is comfort for Sohail and his followers but not so much for Maya.  Rehana, the mother, like mothers everywhere wishing the best for her children, hoping that they will enjoy and help one another, suppressing her own needs, helping her neighbors. Zaid, Sohail's little boy, wanting so much to be loved by his father, finding solace with Maya: how many children today must look outside immediate family for sustenance? Class warfare—after being united in war the haves still want to have and the poor continue to strive to be noticed: Maya rises to cause change...

Some of my favorite passages were those with Maya and Rehana and I loved the tenacity of Joy in his love for Maya. I also related to Bangladesh because of my long-standing interest in Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus and his mini-banking system to help the poor of the country.

My take:

Who would find value in this book? Anyone who wants to experience history and a perhaps unfamiliar culture through the lives of original and well-developed characters would find satisfaction in these pages.  It's a story about the aftermath of war, so you can expect to see some quite regrettable actions and references to wartime violence against both men and women.  However, it's done quite tastefully, so mature teens could certainly appreciate the story and learn through this novel.

Both Mom and I thought that this novel was certainly worth our time, and that our newly refined understanding of this period in Bangladesh's history - not to mention the daily life of one family during this time period - sparked our curiosity about the current state of that nation.  I recognize that novelists like Tahmima Anam are probably not setting out to educate us about an entire culture but rather crafting fiction with that cultural foundation, yet when a novel's setting is new or unique to us, the urge to generalize from singular lives to entire cultures is tough to resist!

My Actions:
 This novel reminded me just how lucky I am to live in a time and place of relative plenty and power for women.  In her acknowledgements, author Asam thanks her parents for their example as socially engaged citizens.  Perhaps this novel was written - in part - to give voice to the then-voiceless and to empower people now to stand against religious extremism, institutionalized misogyny, and military dictatorships.  So I'm going to write to my Women for Women International "sister" in Afghanistan.  (Backstory: WfW provides education and assistance to female victims of war.  After my first years sponsoring sisters, I stopped writing because my sisters were illiterate and didn't respond.  I did have one sister who wrote to me after her sponsorship year was over, but I couldn't get back in touch with her. I'm ready to try again.)  PLUS, I will find at least one action to support returning veterans in my own community.

Now come on in and eavesdrop: The Mom and Me Dialogue is on the next page. (Just click "read more" below.)  Warning: Although we won't reveal specific spoiler moments, our conversation led us to discuss some aspects of the entire novel.) 

Then hop over to the other blogs on The Good Muslim's virtual book tour with TLC.