Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters has been getting lots of buzz since its release in January of this year, so I was surprised at how quickly my hold request at the library produced this copy for me.

Brown’s debut novel is the story of the Andreas sisters, Rose, Bean and Cordy—named for the Shakespearean characters Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia–who have returned home to small town Barnwell, Ohio, ostensibly to help care for their mother who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Each of the three, however, have come to lick wounds from injuries that, although we the reader know immediately, each is unwillingly to divulge to her family. They take on their old roles within the family, while trying to reconcile these with the women they have become.

Brown writes convincingly about the complexities of sibling relationships. She captures the dichotomy between old lives and new. She successfully traces the growth of each sister.

And she does it all in the third person plural voice that seems to call for constant attention on the part of the reader. It’s as if all three sisters are speaking in unison and yet, when the actions of one are described, she is portrayed in the third person also. The effect is that the speakers are ever moving—one minute it’s all three telling the story, the next it appears to be Rose and Cordy or Bean and Cordy. This seemed to keep the story’s voice lively. For example:

So this was it, then. She’d been replaced. Bean and Cordy were going to the ones to put everything right…Apparently we could have done it without her all along.
So she was useless, then. We only wanted her if we were feeling too lazy to do what we were apparently perfectly capable of.
If only we’d been there to talk to her, soothe those fears, to tell her that no, we could not have done it without her all those years, it was only now, only after all we had been through, only because we had seen her managing things that we could step in and take up the reins, do our part.

I also enjoyed Bean’s struggle to return to small town living after being in NYC for several years.

The whole drive home she had pictured her stay in Barnwell, imagining an ascetic, nun-like existence that would serve as spiritual penance for what she had done. She would wear drab colors and eat dry bread and her skin would take on the cinematic pallor of a glamorous invalid as she modestly turned down creature comforts. But the reality of that hair shirt was beginning to chafe already. It was Saturday night, for crying out loud. At this hour in the city, she would only just be getting ready to go out, and here she was seriously considering going to bed.

Although all of the sisters have life-changing circumstances to deal with, the tone of the book is upbeat, perhaps a bit too much so to be taken as serious literature. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed The Weird Sisters and was sorry to see the book end.

Four stars out of five.

Link for my Canadian readers:

The Weird Sisters

In 1969 San Francisco, young single mother Lisa Fay finds herself swept into a drug deal and looking at 15 years in jail before parole. Her young son, Wrecker—named for his destructive tendencies—is sent to live with Lisa Fay’s sister, Meg, and her husband Len in Humboldt County, California, although Lisa Fay is not aware of his fate.

Also unbeknownst to Lisa Fay (and system administrators), Meg is brain-damaged following a dental infection and unable to care for Wrecker. Len turns for help to his next-door neighbors at Bow Farm. There, in what amounts to be a commune, live Melody, Ruth, Willow and Johnny Appleseed. This motley crew agree to help out and find themselves falling for Wrecker. Eventually, Melody convinces Len to adopt Wrecker but to leave the actual raising of him to her.

The book covers the time from Wrecker’s arrival at Bow Farm, just before his third birthday, until the time he is twenty. But it’s more than the story (as compelling as it is) of an angry boy becoming a strong and gentle young man.

It’s a story about families, how they form and grow, and how they change. The diverse & flawed characters of Bow Farm, and Len and Meg, become Wrecker’s family, and Melody, his mother. Mother love—both Melody’s and Lisa Fay’s—drives the book.

Sometimes she looked at him and was horrified…(W)hat if she made a mistake? No. What if the mistakes she made (of course she made mistakes, how was she to know how to raise a child like this, any child) mounted up and somehow tipped the scale toward bad? What if she made—a monster? It would be her fault. Everyone would know she had been a BAD MOTHER.

I was hooked on Wrecker from the first paragraph and could seldom put it down. Lisa Fay’s longing for her son and her fear of losing him wove throughout the story, keeping a tension that was balanced by the love and hope on Bow Farm.

Without wasting any words, Wood brings alive the setting:

There was a man on the moon. All across America children sat cross-legged on shag rugs and watched F Troop and Gilligan’s Island, Gigantor, Bewitched.

She is skilled at capturing emotions in a few perfectly chosen words.

She knew how grief could shove you off your moorings. She was afraid that he would drift so far he would lose his way back.

Wrecker is never cliché in its setting or its emotions. As much as it is a story of being foster or adoptive parents, it is not one-sided. I felt as empathetic toward Lisa Fay as I did toward Melody. There are beautiful insights and rich emotion, caught in spare and lovely prose.

I very much enjoyed Wrecker and rate it a solid four stars out of five.

Link for my Canadian readers:
Wrecker: a Novel

A dying soldier in the Great War in Europe extracts a promise from his friend, Jade, to track down his illegitimate half-brother, conceived when the now deceased family patriarch was exploring the Dark Continent.

Set in 1919 British East Africa (now Kenya), amid colonial rule and racial unrest, Suzanne Arruda’s debut Mark of the Lion introduces Jade del Cameron. A young woman raised on a New Mexico ranch and who served as an ambulance driver near the front lines in France in WWI, she is a perfect heroine. Just too perfect.

Not only is she beautiful with her green eyes (what are the chances?), black curls and olive complexion (her mother was Spanish), she has a “mellow contralto voice” (nothing too shrill for our Jade). She’s practical enough to wear trousers on safari while the other women wear skirts, she’s intelligent enough to finger a drug-smuggler and to uncover a murder. And she’s always in perfect control and understanding of her emotions so that men cannot sweep her off her feet without her consent.

Jade’s remarkably (& implausibly) free of the prejudices of the day, and of the condescension of the ruling people of whose society she is part. What’s more, she’s an ace-mechanic, a crack shot, and learns Swahili faster than just about anybody. She can out-climb, out-drive and out-think anybody around, but especially men.

There were many times I felt like gagging on yet another demonstration of her multiple, never-ending, and—oh yes, did I mention—perfect skills.

Be forewarned, the Kenya-set story involves witchcraft among some of the tribal people. Although the suggestion of that made me extremely uncomfortable while I was reading, I forged ahead thinking that perhaps the plot resolution would reveal another explanation of events. Alas, it did not. If you are offended by demonism, give this book a pass, as it is a key element upon which the plot turns.

At the story’s end, Miss del Cameron decides to stay on in Kenya, so future stories in this series may include witchcraft as well. Given that, and Jade’s oh-so-irritating perfection, I won’t be reading any more of Arruda’s novels, even though I did enjoy the historical setting of this series debut.

Link for my Canadian readers:

Mark Of The Lion: a Jade del Cameron Mystery

During her amazing half-century-plus writing career, author Agatha Christie jotted notes and ideas for her work in various notebooks and journals. Seventy-seven of these notebooks were discovered by her heirs after her death. Although they are certainly not a complete collection of the scribblers she used, they shed much light on how Christie created her masterpieces.

The notebooks contain character lists, suggested settings, and plot ideas and development, but until now they have been largely ignored, mainly because Christie’s handwriting is nearly illegible. As John Curran worked with the material in preparing Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making, he became familiar with her scribbles and unlocked fascinating insights into the woman and author Christie.

The Secret Notebooks opens with several chapters of summary, giving an overview of Christie’s work, her characters, and her influences, among other things. These chapters I read completely.

I learned why Christie was so successful and remains so popular. She was immensely productive and eminently readable. Curran also points out the secret of the plots that entrance Christie’s readers:

The secret of her ingenuity with plot lies in the fact that this dexterity is not daunting. Her solutions turn on everyday information–some names can be male or female, a mirror reflects but it also reverses, a sprawled body is not necessarily a dead body, a forest is the best hiding place for a tree. She knows she can depend on our erroneous interpretation of an eternal triangle, an overheard argument or an illicit liaison. She counts on our perceived prejudice that retired Army men are harmless buffoons, that quiet, mousy wives are objects of pity, that all policemen are honest and all children innocent. She does not mystify us with the mechanical or technical…

In almost every Christie title the mise-en-scene features a closed circle of suspects–a strictly limited number of potential murderers from which to choose. A country house, a ship, a train, a plane, an island–all of these provided her with a setting that limits the number of potential killers and ensures that a complete unknown is not unmasked in the last chapter.

He also touches on what I have always considered a touchstone of a good mystery book – the fairness.

Throughout her career Christie specialised in giving her readers the clues necessary to the solution of the crime. She was quite happy to provide the clue, firm in the knowledge that, in the words of her great contemporary R. Austin Freeman, ‘the reader would mislead himself’.

The bulk of the book, however, discusses the notes on individual books and contains many spoilers. I found interesting the comparison of plots and plot devices, and settings in various books.

Last fall, I read several of Christie’s novels, checking Fantastic Fiction to find the titles of her earliest works, and thinking to start at the beginning of my collection. I thus completed The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), The Man in the Brown Suit (1924), The Secret of Chimneys (1925), Partners in Crime (1929), and Sad Cypress (1940). Reading the plans behind these, and Curran’s intelligent analysis of Christie’s background work, was fascinating.

I borrowed Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks from the library, but I want to buy a copy for own bookshelf. I plan to put it beside my collection of Christie’s works and to consult it upon finishing one, when the characters and plot intricacies are fresh in mind. As Curran points out: it is possible to read a different Christie title every month for almost seven years; and at that stage it is possible to start all over again safe in the knowledge that you will have forgotten the earliest.

And so Christie’s work continues to transcend every barrier of geography, culture, race, religion, age and sex; she is read as avidly in Bermuda as in Balham, she is read by grandparents and grandchildren, she is read on e-book and in graphic format in this twenty-first century as eagerly as in the green Penguins and The Strand magazine of the last. Why? Because no other crime writer did it so well, so often or for so long; no one else has ever matched her combination of readability, plotting, fairness and productivity.

And no one ever will.

Amen to that.

Links for my Canadian readers:

Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making

The Mysterious Affair at Styles: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

Secret Of Chimneys: a Hercule Poirot Mystery

Sad Cypress: a Hercule Poirot Mystery

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Rohinton Mistry’s third novel, A Fine Balance (1995), won the second annual Giller Prize in 1995, and in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. It also snagged the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, and Denmark’s ALOA Prize, and was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize. It was selected for Oprah’s Book Club in November 2001. All for good reason.

Set in 1975 India during “The Emergency” when the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, “ruled by decree”, A Fine Balance tells the stories of four people who, because of circumstances, end up living together in a small flat.

Dina Dalal, a fortyish widow who grew up in a wealthy family and who jealously guards her independence from her merchant brother, is the official tenant of the flat.

Maneck Kohlah grew up in a small mountain village near the Pakistan border. His father owned the local general store and sold his secret formula Kohlah’s Cola. When the highway comes through the village, his father’s business suffers because of the importation of mass-produced soft drinks.
At seventeen, wanting a career independent of his father, Maneck decides to attend college in the city and obtain a certificate as an air-conditioning technician. Maneck’s mother was a school-mate of Dina’s, and so arranges for Maneck to board with her at her flat.

Uncle and nephew, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, members of the Chamaar caste, considered untouchables, have come to the city to start a new life after a family tragedy of barbaric cruelty. Trained as tailors, they are hired by Dina to sew piecework from patterns provided by an export company. Initially, they only work at Dina’s flat and do not live there. After a series of misfortunes, they end up sleeping in Dina’s veranda, bathing in her washroom, and eating meals with Dina and Maneck.

The co-existence of these strangers from disparate backgrounds begins tenuously but with a little choice.

…in a city where millions were living in slums and on the pavements. And not just beggars–even people with jobs who had the money to pay the rent. Only, there was nothing to rent.

The backstories of these characters create a depth of understanding in the reader and as their story unfolds, we feel emotionally invested in their future.

Even though the characters are skilfully and deeply drawn, A Fine Balance is not simply a character study. There is a blockbuster of a plot filled with the small triumphs and large tragedies of human existence. Although it would seem that India’s political affairs would be the “big picture” of this novel, the effects of those affairs on the population are so dramatic that the fabric of people’s lives becomes the greater theme.

Mistry has made India live. The heat, the dust, the hunger and the thirst, the crowding, poverty, disease, and corruption become real to the reader. Even so, we are appalled when Dina’s brother, a member of the urban merchant or commercial class, says:

My friend was saying last week…that at least two hundred million people are surplus to requirements, they should be eliminated…you know–got rid of. Counting them as unemployment statistics year after year gets us nowhere, just makes the numbers look bad. What kind of lives do they have anyway? They sit in the gutter and look like corpses. Death would be a mercy.

Ultimately, A Fine Balance is about man’s inhumanity to man and the indomitableness of the human spirit. There’s plenty of heartache here. The tragedy, sorrow, and loss could overwhelm some readers: this is not a book for those looking for a happy ending. As Maneck, ever the student of air-conditioning observes:

If there was a large enough refrigerator, he would be able to preserve the happy times…, keep them from ever spoiling…but it was an unrefrigerated world. And everything ended badly.

A Fine Balance is a sweeping and powerful novel that has been compared to works of Tolstoy or Dickens. It is a rich study of a difficult time in India’s history, featuring complex and flawed characters.

It will certainly remain on the list of the best books I’ve read this year – perhaps even in my lifetime. I cannot recommend it enough. Five out of five stars.

Link for my Canadian readers:
A Fine Balance

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Richard B. Wright’s 2001 novel, Clara Callan was a masterpiece that won Canada’s two most prestigious literary awards – the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize. I have tried to not to measure the author’s subsequent works by that book, but I admit that my expectations were high when I started his latest offering, Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard.

Unfortunately, this book fell far short of my expectations and I finished it mainly because it was this month’s choice for our local book club, The Loquacious Compendium.

From the dust jacket:

In failing health, Aerlene Ward, an elderly housekeeper in an Oxfordshire manor, feels compelled to confess the great secret that has shaped her life: she is the illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, England’s most famous playwright. But will anyone believe her? Even Charlotte, the young mistress of the house who is writing Aerlene’s words down, is doubtful.

Wright tells a plausible story about Aerlene’s mother meeting and mating with Shakespeare. I’d be very surprised if the real Shakespeare didn’t have more “bastards”, so that revelation in itself is certainly not enough to carry this story. In fact, my complaint about this book is that there is no story. What happens is summed up on the dust jacket.

That said, there were some in our book club who agreed with this blurb:

With a brilliant eye and ear for this rich period of history, Richard B. Wright vividly evokes the seasonal rhythms of rural life in Oliver Cromwell’s England and the teeming streets of Shakespeare’s London as he interweaves the two women.

Certainly, Wright captures the female point of view beautifully and uses it often in his writing. This book is no exception. It’s easy to forget as one reads about Aerlene & her mother Elizabeth that the book has a male author. The female voice is amazingly authentic.

But the blurb also promises that “secrets are revealed, mysteries are uncovered, and futures are forever changed.” Sorry, I didn’t see that. What you’ve found out here is what happens. It’s a glimpse at seventeenth century England, especially London. There’s a brief introduction to Shakespeare, although he plays a minor role and is used mainly as a plot device (and title).

Since the book is well-written, it was suggested at our book club discussion that it might be a good Young Adult choice. However, Elizabeth’s morals leave much to be desired and her actions might not be appropriate reading for that age group.

Overall, I was very disappointed by Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard, but you might be an historical fiction fan who will find it:

An engaging blend of invention and historical detail, a novel full of imagination and delicate emotion.

Many in The Loquacious Compendium did.

Links for my Canadian readers:

Clara Callan

Mr. Shakespeare’s Bastard

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Between 1939 and 1941, architect Frank Lloyd Wright oversaw the construction of a house in the Arizona desert for artist Rose Pauson.

In April 1943, the house burned to the ground and this marvelous example of Wright’s work was lost.

Told in the form of more than fifty previously unpublished letters written between 1938 and 1943–alongside rare site photographs and Wright’s architectural drawings–Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson chronicles the design and construction of the house, as well as the architect-client relationship.
Although Wright and Pauson were friends, there are plenty of disagreements about the bills, design changes, and the copious leaks that riddled the finished project, as beautiful as it may have appeared.

A lover of written correspondence (letters!), I found Building the Pauson House fascinating. Beautifully laid out, it is a feast for the eyes and will be pored over for much longer than the evening it takes to read.

Building the Pauson House: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Rose Pauson

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

In 2006, I volunteered briefly with our wonderful local reading festival Read By the Sea, which invites Canadian authors to the North Shore of Nova Scotia to read excerpts of their work to appreciative audiences. That year, my husband and I had the pleasure of accompanying the authors to lunch, and so I ate chowder in the company of Steven Heighton, Janet Lunn, Lisa Moore, Harry Thurston, Catherine Safer and Deborah Ellis.

Since that summer, I have wanted to read Lisa Moore’s Alligator: A Novel and cannot fathom why I have not done so before this. Ah well, the wait was worth it.

From the dust jacket:

Meet Colleen, a seventeen-year-old would-be eco-terrorist, who barrels down the rocky road of adolescence while her mother, Beverly, is cloaked in grief after the death of her husband. Beverly’s sister, Madeleine, is a driven, aging filmmaker who obsesses over completing her magnum opus before she dies. Frank, a benevolent young man without a family, believes that his success will come from his hog-dog stand–a business he’s desperate to protect from socio-pathic Russian sailor Valentin.

Set in modern day St. John’s, Newfoundland, the book tells its story through alternating chapters about one of the main characters mentioned. Moore’s word pictures shine. Through them, and many seamless flashbacks, she provides character development, background and plot advancement simultaneously.

There’s a housefly near the jar, bluish and iridescent, cocooned in a spider’s web and dust. The fly has been there, lying on the cracked paint of the windowsill, since Frank moved in a few months before Christmas, two days after his nineteenth birthday.

Although most of the characters are satisfactorly developed, to me, Frank was the most clearly drawn of them. Having lost his mother recently to cancer and being left truly all alone in the world at eighteen, he is a sympathetic figure. His loneliness becomes palpable when his thoughts at seeing Colleen dance in a bar emerge:

He wants to tell her about his hot-dog stand and how hard he’s worked to get it and how much money he makes. He wants to say I can make this much money in a night. He doesn’t want to say it, but he wants her to know it.
He would like to say, I don’t do drugs.
He would like to tell her about the Inuit guy who hanged himself in the apartment over his at Christmastime…
He would like to tell her, or have her intuit, how much respect he had for his mother and how empty the world is without her. He would like to explain how he feels like he has a hole in his chest. He would like her to put her hand on his chest and show him once and for all there is no hole.

More than a plot, the book holds a slice of the characters’ lives and their interactions, although there is a climatic event that affects several of them. The prose in this book sings. Moore’s writing style is fresh and seems to move swiftly.

Alligator is a Canadian best seller, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canadian and Caribbean region), and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year award. I look forward very much to reading Moore’s latest novel February

This is a stop on my Literary Road Trip through Atlantic Canada.

Solid four of five stars.

Links for my Canadian readers:
Alligator
February

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Alligator: A novel, Lisa Moore, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Literary Road trip, Read by the Sea

Intrigued by Nicola Upson’s stylish mystery An Expert in Murder featuring Josephine Tey, and memories of reading The Daughter of Time as a teenager, I decided to give Tey’s Inspector Alan Grant series a try.

The first book in the series, Man in the Queue, also known as Killer in the Crowd, was written by Elizabeth MacKintosh (who later wrote under the names Gordon Daviot and Josephine Tey) and first published in 1929 under the name Gordon Daviot. It concerns the murder of an unknown man, apparently struck down as he stands in a ticket queue for a London musical comedy.

Inspector Grant is presented with a body that no one claims and that has no identity. From this, he builds a case, discovering who the victim was, and tracking down a prime suspect. The casework is fascinating. There are no dramatic breaks yet, bit by bit, the case comes together.

I was intrigued by how the legwork was carried out in 1929: officers reporting by telephone often using the only phone in the area–one at a post office, no squad cars-just the trains and foot, the cultural prejudices evident, and the attitude that “it isn’t any of our business to fit psychology to people or to provide motives or anything of that sort…Fit them with watertight evidence and provide them with a cell, and that’s all we have to bother about.” Not surprisingly then, the police charge the wrong person. Only a last minute confession from the real killer saves the case.

I found the pacing to be consistent throughout and, as I’ve said, the details come together smoothly as the case is steadily built. However, the plot device of the unbidden confession stretched the limits of credibility and didn’t really put Inspector Grant in the best light. Although he had a “funny feeling” that all was not right, without that confession he would have proceeded with the charge against the wrong person. I will make allowances, though, as this was Tey’s first mystery — and I will definitely continue with the series.

3.5 stars out of 5

Links for my Canadian readers:
The Man in the Queue
An Expert In Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery
The Daughter of Time

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.
Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue, Alan Grant, Inspector Grant, Elizabeth MacKintosh, Gordon Daviot

Josephine Tey was a pseudonym used by real-life writer Elizabeth MacKintosh in the mid twentieth century. Although she also wrote books and plays under the name Gordon Daviot, it is her mystery novels–particularly The Daughter of Time–written mostly as Josephine Tey that are best remembered today. Nicola Upson has cleverly placed the real-life character of Josephine Tey in a new mystery series featuring fictional Detective Archie Penrose.

In the first book of this series, An Expert in Murder, Tey becomes involved in a murder that seems connected to her popular play, Richard of Bordeaux (which actually launched the career of young John Gielgud). Traveling to London from her home in Scotland for the last week of her play’s hit run, she befriends a young fan who is murdered shortly after the train arrives in London. Another murder within the theatre itself seems linked and the race is on to find the murderer before (s)he strikes again.

The details of 1934 England, especially the behind the scenes theatre atmosphere, are intriguing and seem true to life. The characters are engaging and the story’s pacing is even. Despite the fact that it might be a little easy to figure out who the murderer is, motive is harder to make out until it’s revealed, and this is an absorbing read.

I will definitely read more in this series – and it’s also inspired me to read through Josephine Tey’s Detective Grant mystery series, beginning with Man in the Queue. I’ll be posting a review of that later this week.

Link for my Canadian readers:
An Expert In Murder: A Josephine Tey Mystery

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.
Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: An Expert in Murder, Josephine Tey, Nicola Upson, Archie Penrose, John Gielgud, Richard of Bordeaux, Gordon Daviot, Elizabeth MacKintosh

Yesterday, I reviewed the captivating new book A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition by Madame Leon Grandin. (Be sure to enter to win your own copy.)

Today, the translator, Mary Beth Raycraft talks about her research into the personal life of Madame Grandin. By means of this research, Mary Beth, who teaches French at Vanderbilt University, has brought this real nineteenth century woman to life in the twenty-first century.

Looking for Madame Grandin by Mary Beth Raycraft
As someone who has lived through a successful PhD dissertation, I must admit that dusty old books and grand European libraries are welcome companions. Spending days perusing nineteenth-century French etiquette books in Paris’ Bibliothèque nationale was my idea of the perfect research adventure. All of that changed, however, when Madame Léon Grandin’s lively travel account of her stay in Chicago during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition fell into my lap.

A colleague had recommended that I consider translating the unusual memoir so while at the Paris library, I took a look at it. The sense of humor and breezy tone Madame Grandin uses in her descriptions of American women, food, fashion, homes, and city life in New York and Chicago, immediately caught my attention. But I was frustrated at the lack of biographical information available about this energetic young Parisian woman. So began an archival adventure that took me from museums and cemeteries in Paris and New York, to the French Archives nationales, to Ellis Island ship manifest records, and finally to an obituary notice, as I tried to uncover information about the elusive Madame Grandin.

A stumbling block, however, was that she had published her book under her married name. Tracking her husband’s career as a successful Parisian sculptor was the most logical first step. During a visit with a sculpture specialist at the Musée D’Orsay, I learned that Léon Grandin had worked on the Columbian Fountain for the World’s Fair in Chicago. At the Montparnasse Cemetery, I found his gravestone but no mention of his wife. A trip to the Paris Archives was daunting as I wondered if I would discover any useful information. As Linda Colley points out in the introduction to her remarkable biography The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, A Woman in World History, “women seldom left any extensive mark on the archives unless they had the misfortune to be caught up in some particular catastrophic event.” Fortunately, Madame Grandin did indeed find herself in a sticky situation that merited a handwritten note on her birth certificate.

The scrawled handwriting on the birth certificate indicated that she had remarried in New York in December 1901. It quickly became clear that two parallel plots were at work in her story. While Madame Grandin was commenting on relationships between men and women in Chicago, her own marriage was apparently starting to unravel. Less than two years after her return from Chicago, she left both her husband and France behind. A ship manifest in the Ellis Island records revealed that she returned to New York in July of 1895 in the company of a young French man named Alexandre Ferrand and was expecting a child. Through New York census documents, I discovered that the family first lived in Manhattan and later moved to Staten Island. Upon discovering her last address, I was able to track down a copy of her death certificate and obituary. It turns out that I had been looking in a cemetery on the wrong continent, as she died and was buried on Staten Island in December 1905 at the age of forty one. At the time of her death, she was the president of the Staten Island branch of the Alliance Française and an active participant in the French-American community.

Although I had hoped to find a photograph of the author, the only portrait that remains of this woman is the one that emerges from her account and from ship manifests, census records, and birth and death certificates. In the end, the back story of Madame Léon Grandin’s cross-cultural journey through late nineteenth-century Paris, New York and Chicago revealed itself to be every bit as intriguing as her memoir and worthy of the international scavenger hunt.

*********

This article was reprinted with permission from the University of Illinois Press blog.

A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition

During the summer of 1892, a twenty eight year old French school teacher traveled to America with her husband, who was contracted to work on his country’s exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition being held in Chicago in 1893. Monsieur and Madame Grandin spent a total of ten months in America, and visited New York, Niagara Falls, Philadelphia, Milwaukee (“sightseeing” during the great fire there), and Washington D.C. in addition to their extended stay in Chicago. Throughout her journey, Madame Grandin took notes that formed the basis for a travel memoir which she later published in France. Now we are able to read Madame Grandin’s account in English.

As the translator Mary Beth Raycraft points out, Madame Grandin’s perception of what she encountered in America was shaped by her experience as a citizen of Paris. For example, while Americans were awed by the newly invented Ferris wheel which occupied the center of the Chicago fair’s midway and could hold two thousand passengers, Grandin saw it as “a failed attempt to upstage the Eiffel Tower of the (last previous World’s Fair) Paris 1889 exhibition.”

Throughout her notes, Madame Grandin compares the two cultures, noting differences in such diverse topics as marrying (love versus a dowry), child-rearing methods (rewarding versus punishment), art (“in general..not the natural tendency of [America]”), and construction methods (“In America, saving time is more important than saving lives.”)

She also found humor in comparing the two cultures. For example, she says:

When you take the train (in Chicago), you can buy an insurance ticket in case a catastrophe interrupts the trip. All of the men get insured and their wives count on it. In France, all the husbands count on the death of their in-laws.

It is a combination of Grandin’s wit, her passion for her subject matter, and those very subjects that made A Parisienne in Chicago captivating. As Arnold Lewis points out in his Introduction to Chicago, the account “is ultimately a coming-of-age, or, more accurately, a coming-to-realization, story.”

This edition of A Parisienne in Chicago is so much more than the translation of Madame Grandin’s material. Mary Beth Raycraft has written a fascinating introduction that you must read to get maximum enjoyment from the book. (I found even the informative footnotes to Grandin’s text very interesting.) Professor Raycraft’s inter-continental research provides not only information on how other French travel writers of the day perceived America, but also a personal back story that brings Madame Grandin to life and provides proof of her “coming-of-realization”. Tomorrow, I’ll be publishing an article by Professor Raycraft explaining how she found this intriguing material.

This book is a “must-read” for history enthusiasts and travel buffs. In addition, I recommend that you read the last sub-heading in the introduction, “Madame Grandin’s Life after Chicago”, after you’ve read the rest of the book. By doing this, you will find there is enough “plot” to satisfy even fans of historical fiction (even though the account is non-fiction).

There are a score of black and white illustrations such as the one below (“Bird’s-Eye View of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893”) included in the book. You can find many of these images on the book’s web-site. The publisher’s site has a list of the blogs that are hosting this blog tour in April.

Although I received my complimentary copy of this charming book from the publisher, that has not influenced my review in any way.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
by Eva Rice

From Publishers’ Weekly:
An impulsive taxi ride with a stranger in 1950s London indelibly changes Penelope Wallace’s life in Rice’s sparkling debut. At 18, Penelope lives with her younger brother, Inigo, and her terribly glamorous, young widowed mother in a drafty, rundown, English estate house in the countryside. With the loss of the man of the house, financial pressures mount, threatening sheltered Penelope’s family manse—and what’s left of her family’s place in society. She finds a kindred spirit in the outspoken posh Londoner, Charlotte Ferris, who has a “great gift for circumnavigating normal behavior,” when they both reveal their passion for American singing sensation Johnnie Ray. After agreeing to accompany Charlotte’s aspiring magician cousin, Harry Delancy, to his former girlfriend’s engagement party to make her jealous, Penelope begins her journey through a world of smart parties, fashionable teas and simmering romance.

When I was thirteen in the late 1960s, I came upon a stack of my mother’s old records. They were 33s but they looked like 78s, so their “quaintness” immediately intrigued me. But more important than how they looked, was how they sounded: from them came the dulcet tones of a man of whom I had never heard–Johnnie Ray.

I loved listening to those records but despite my best efforts, my friends never came to share my enthusiasm for Johnnie. Even their parents gave me odd looks. So I was delighted to be able to share the thrill of Johnnie with the two young protaganists of The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Penelope and Charlotte, who eventually score front row seats for Johnnie’s London concert.

I greatly enjoyed this book–and not just for Mr. Ray’s high-jinks.

English society, with its class system, has long fascinated me. It was interesting to see how far removed from its center Penelope was, living a train ride outside of London. Despite the fact that her family no longer has any money, she’s accepted into this society on Harry’s arm because of her family home – Milton Magna, the albatross that shapes the future of Penelope, her brother and her mother.

Rice makes the contrast between the glittery parties and simple country life, between having money and having a name, between English and American class systems. She shows how American music and culture overtook England long before the “British Invasion” of America in the 1960s.

My mother’s older sister, Loretta, had married an American soldier…and had moved to the United States after the war….My mother liked to give the impression of being appalled by her sister’s willingness to embrace a country she considered deeply vulgar, but secretly she was envious as hell, and who could blame her? She and I were fascinated by stories of refrigerators in every kitchen, proper washing machines and spin dryers, drive-in movies and Coca-Cola. (My brother) Inigo (was) obsessed by the new wave of American music…

The only complaint I have is that, after making me salivate at the dresses on the cover of the book, there was very little detail about the party clothes. I’d really liked to have known more than just it was “sparkly mint green dress”!

But don’t let that minor problem stop you from reading this delightful novel. Four stars.

P.S. If you want to see & hear Johnnie Ray, there are some videos on YouTube under several misspellings of his name. Coincidentally, we just finished watching the 1954 movie There’s No Business Like Show Business (we found it at Zip.ca, Americans might try Blockbuster.com ) in which Ray has a couple of solo numbers.

Reading Challenges: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets satisfies five of my reading challenges: the Typically British Reading Challenge, the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters-Indigo link for Canadian readers:
Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

Or better yet, buy from a independent book seller.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice, Penelope Wallace, Inigo, Milton Magna, Charlotte Ferris, Marina Hamilton, Rocky Dakota, Johnnie Ray

The Body in the Belfry
by Katherine Hall Page

This is Book One of the Faith Fairchild series

This book is the beginning of a growing list of “Body in the _____” series. Its heroine is Faith Sibley, a native New Yorker who has started a gourmet catering service. She meets and falls in love with Tom Fairchild, a young minister who whisks her away from her beloved home town to a much different life in rural Massachusetts. Faith is trying her best to fit into the role of pastor’s wife in a small town where everyone’s family goes back several generations and where everyone knows everyone else’s business. While taking a walk with her baby son, Benjamin, Faith discovers a dead body in a belfry. The body is that of Cindy Shepherd a young, willful girl who had made plenty of enemies in their small town. The suspects include Cindy’s fiance, and several men with whom she had had affairs and was subsequently blackmailing. Faith’s curiosity and unofficial investigations eventually lead her and Benjamin into grave danger. (Karen Potts on Amazon.com

This is the first Katherine Hall Page work that I’ve read and, once again, I praise the web-site Fantastic Fiction where I can find out what series an author has written and the chronological order of the books in each; and our public library system which allows me to borrow from other library systems in our province – in this case, it was the Halifax Regional Library that lent me this book.

I recognize that The Body in the Belfry is not great literature. Maybe it’s not even great mystery. But I liked it.

I liked Faith Fairchild, whom various reviewers have called unlikable, a meddler and a snob. A snob she may be–especially about food and clothes–but she is not unlikable. And if she and her ilk didn’t meddle, how would we have the mystery?

Having left the city to live in the country seven years ago, I identified a little with Faith on that score. Faith has just moved and is in that difficult transition period that befalls all who make that move. Maybe she’ll mellow with time. If not, then her “snobbery” will continue to highlight the charming and not-so-charming idiosyncrasies of her fellow townspeople.

Despite the red herrings, the mystery wasn’t overly tight. I guessed the killer half-way through, although I had a harder time nailing the exact motive.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed this time with Faith and I’m quite sure I’ll read at least a couple more in the series (there are 18 now–it’s certainly a busy little town with a lot of dead bodies). Hall Page has a wicked sense of humor: for example, Faith reflects that her catering business Have Faith had initially been mistaken by some as “an escort service for the guilt ridden”, and perhaps as the series continues, the mysteries will be more polished.

I’m willing to give it a go. Three and one half stars out of five.

Reading Challenges: The Body in the Belfry satisfies four of my reading challenges: the First in a Series Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Body in the Belfry, Faith Fairchild mystery, Katherine Hall Page, Aleford, Fantastic Fiction

Beside a Burning Sea
by John Shors

From Hilary Hatton at Booklist:
It’s the fall of 1942, and the U.S. hospital ship Benevolence is cruising the waters of the South Pacific when it is torpedoed by the Japanese. Only nine people survive, and they eventually wash up on an island: the captain Joshua, and his wife, Isabelle, a nurse; Isabelle’s sister Annie and a woman named Scarlet, both nurses; Ratu, a teenage Fijian stowaway; Jake, a black engineer; Nathan and Roger, two officers; and Akira, a wounded Japanese soldier.

Okay, first of all, let’s look at the survivors of this accident. One: the captain of the ship. The captain. Don’t they go down with their ships anymore? Two: three nurses. One just happens to be the captain’s wife. The captain’s wife, even though they were not together on the ship at the time of the torpedoing. What are the odds?

The next nurse just happens to be Annie, the captain’s wife’s sister. The captain’s wife’s s….you get the idea. )The third nurse is a “throwaway”: the character that can be killed off by the danger that stalks them all.)

While it is only a matter of time before Japanese naval forces reach the island, the more immediate danger is Roger, who is a ship’s officer, but also a spy for the Japanese. It’s Roger who tipped the Japanese that, unbeknownst to the captain, the hospital ship was carrying ammunition and other supplies of war.

Roger is drawn as a mentally unstable, sadistic, misogynistic, and overly proud man. No explanation is needed: after all, he’s the traitor.

The captain Joshua, the engineer Jake (the token black, who just happens to be the one who had befriended the ship’s stowaway – who also survived) and the other officer Nathan are, of course, kind, helpful, chivalrous, co-operative and generally nice guys. No explanation is needed: after all, they’re Americans.

Then there’s Akira, a wounded Japanese soldier who was on the ship because the rules of war were that hospitals treat all wounded, regardless of nationality. Because Akira’s Japanese, the author spends the entire book explaining and justifying how it is possible that he might be human; a decent and kind human who is in love with Annie. (And how Annie could possibly love him.)

The Japanese who land on the island are all wicked, wicked. The Americans who come and bomb and kill the Japanese are heroes. Are we twelve years old?

Beside a Burning Sea is a romance and, really, I shouldn’t have been venturing into this territory. I have no patience with such juvenile characterization and plot coincidences. The roster of survivors reminded me of a (quite bad) story that I wrote for a seventh grade English composition.

If that’s romance literature and you enjoy it, then have yourself a read. But this is nowhere near being literature. I know I sound like a book snob when I say that, but I find that as I get older and realize that my time to read is running out, I want to read solid fiction (and my snackies of cozy murder mysteries). If I’m going to read romance, at least let it be disguised in a half-decently written story (such as The Diplomat’s Wife.)

How about you? How important is the writing–the plot development, the characterization, the style, the objectivity of the author–to you, if you like the genre?

I borrowed Beside a Burning Sea from my public library.

Beside a Burning Sea satisfies six of my reading challenges: the What’s In a Name Challenge, the 10 Categories Challenge, the Historical Fiction Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Beside a Burning Sea, John Shors, WWII hospital ship

The Diplomat’s Wife
by Pam Jenoff

From Patty Engelman at Booklist:
After working in the Jewish resistance in Kraków, Poland, Marta Nedermann is rescued from a Nazi prison by American soldiers. A simple gesture of human comfort by a soldier named Paul is etched in her mind, and when she sees him again in a camp for displaced persons in Salzburg, Marta is overjoyed. They meet again in Paris and become engaged, only to have Paul die in a plane crash. Marta is now scared, pregnant, and alone in a strange city. Simon Gold, an English diplomat, needs her language skills, and he wants her as well. They marry, and two years later, the English government taps Marta for help in finding a traitor in the British intelligence corps, sending her on an undercover mission.

From Publishers’ Weekly:
Marta goes on a dangerous mission to Poland, where a Communist takeover is imminent and where the seesaw plot takes more than one surprise twist.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from The Diplomat’s Wife, having not read Jenoff before.

The mystery was more than decent: although the identity of the mole was not difficult to figure out, the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ were not so evident–in fact, were a complete surprise.

But, at its heart,The Diplomat’s Wife is a historical romance. And that is my only complaint: the accidental meetings between Marta and Paul were just too numerous to be believable. But then, I don’t care for romances and have a very low tolerance level for such devices.

If you do like historical romance, then you’re in for a treat with this. Enjoy!

I read this courtesy of my local library.

The Diplomat’s Wife satisfies four of my reading challenges: the Historical Fiction Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
The Diplomat”s Wife

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Diplomat’s Wide, Pam Jenoff, Marta Nederman, Paul Mattison, Polish resistance, Polish underground, WWII, World War 2, communist takeover of Poland, Simon Gold, historical romance,

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Graphic novel version by Nunzio DeFilippis & Christina Weir; Illustrated by Kevin Cornell

When Fitzgerald penned Benjamin Button in 1922, he enthusiastically called it “the funniest story ever written” and hoped to write more pieces like it and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Publishers and the public, however, had a different idea as evidenced by an anonymous letter by a reader in Cincinnati:

Sir–I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic. I have seen many peices (sic) of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of stationary on you but I will.

I had a somewhat more favorable reaction to the story of the unfortunate Mr. Button, who was born an old man and grew younger rather than older.

I was unable to find a copy of the full text of Fitzgerald’s story, but the graphic novel edition purports to be “complete with Fitzgerald’s original text”. I suspect that the text included was indeed the author’s but I’m not convinced that it was the full text of the story since Fitzgerald tended to be wordy. Nonetheless, there was more than enough, along with the illustrations and the speech bubbles, to tell the story in detail.

The 2008 movie starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett was a tour de force of digital enhancement. It won Academy Awards for Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects, as well it should have. (Rent DVDs online with Zip.ca or Blockbuster.com )

Critics were divided, some (NY Times, Variety) seeing it as a wonderful film and others, not so. I’m on the side of the Times.

Generally, I like movies that are based on books to stick fairly closely to the original. In this case, I’m willing to make an exception. Other than the title and the general concept of a man “aging” younger, there are NO similarities between Fitzgerald’s story (hereafter called the “book”) and the film.

In the book, Benjamin was born in a Baltimore hospital in 1860, as fully grown adult–a seventy-year-old man–who can talk & thinks like an adult. He’s raised by his father, spending company in his early days with his elderly grandfather. When he is in his early twenties, and appears about fifty, he marries a younger woman who likes “older men”. As the years pass, Benjamin loses interest in his wife as she becomes middle-aged and he grows younger.

His troubles applying to Yale (at 18 but looking 60), his time in the army during the Spanish-American War that began in 1898, his subsequent years as a football hero at Harvard (at 60 but looking 18), and his attempt at re-enlistment in 1914 for the Great War are wryly comically portrayed by Fitzgerald.

As the years progress, Benjamin hands over the family Wholesale Hardware business to his son Roscoe, and as an moody adolescent ends up living with Roscoe and eventually attends kindergarten with his grandson as he thinks more and more like a child.

The movie has Benjamin being born in 1918 in New Orleans as a wizened baby who is literally thrown away by his father and lands on the steps of an old-age home where he is taken in by one of the attendants and raised as her own.

The old age home is a clever device – who would question an old man there, even if he acted like a three year old, which he did, since the movie version has Benjamin born as a child physically and mentally. That works until dementia sets in when he looks about 12 years old. Then the script picks up the book’s version of his regressing intellect & knowledge.

The love story that is central to the movie version is completely an invention of the screenwriter, and is completely opposite to what happens in the book.

And the movie version made the elder Mr. Button’s fortune the result of buttons, rather than hardware. You decide if that clever or if it’s cheesy. I rather liked it. After all, the whole story is a fantasy.

Differences aside, I greatly enjoyed the movie and much of my enjoyment came from the period sets throughout the twentieth century. Some critics make the charge that the movie is too long, coming in at just under three hours, but I think that it needs that time to progress through the decades and to tell Benjamin’s story: a man who seemed not greatly affected by major history (other than the World Wars) and who just seemed to have life happen to him, rather than to make life happen.

Brad Pitt played Brad Pitt – in various make-ups and with a multitude of digital enhancement, both to look young and to look old. Cate Blanchett, also the recipient of age-altering techniques, was far more credible as Daisy (a tip of the hat to Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby name for his wife Zelda).

Although I was initially disappointed that I was able to get only this graphic issue of the story, I found the book to be a pleasure to read (and to re-read). It, no doubt, is true to the original story and makes it accessible to both younger and older readers alike.

The book reminded me of the Illustrated Classics of such books as the Prince and the Pauper that my brother & I devoured in the mid-sixties. But they were comic books. This is an elegant, 5.75 x 8.25 inch hardbound edition whose sepia toned pages are a treat to read.

My copy is overdue from my local library.

Benjamin Button satisfies three of my reading challenges: the Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button And Other Jazz Age Tales

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, F. Scott Fitzgerald, graphic novel, Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt, 2008 Academy Award for Make-up, 2008 Academy Award for Visual Effects, 2008 Academy Award for Art Direction, growing younger, Hurricane Katrina, on-line movies in Canada, order movies on-line in Canada, DVDs by mail in Canada, DVDs by mail, Blockbuster online, Zip.ca, Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, Kevin Cornell

Raven Black
by Ann Cleeves
This is Book One of the Shetland Island Quartet and winner of the 2006 Duncan Lawrie Dagger (U.K.) for Best Crime Novel

On the remote island of Shetland, Fran Hunter is walking home when she spots a splash of red in the deep, white snowdrifts, with black ravens flying above. What a perfect picture it makes, she thinks. But on closer inspection, she finds that the “perfect picture” is the dead body of local teenager Catherine Ross, whose red scarf has been used to strangle her. Suspicion immediately falls on recluse Magnus Tait, who was accused–but never convicted–of kidnapping another girl eight years earlier. Policeman Jimmy Perez, assigned to the case, isn’t convinced of Magnus’ guilt. As he investigates, he uncovers a web of sinister secrets, strange superstitions, petty rivalries, thwarted love, and illicit affairs–the dark underbelly of Shetland’s tight-knit community.

This is the first Ann Cleeves work that I’ve read and, once again, I praise the web-site Fantastic Fiction where I can find out what series an author has written and the chronological order of the books in each; and our public library system which allows me to borrow from other library systems in our province – in this case, it was the Annapolis Valley Regional Library that lent me this book.

The Shetland Islands seem a romantic setting for a murder that is decidedly unromantic. Cleeves draws the Shetland island community as closed and suspicious of outsiders, as it likely is–much like most other islands around the world.

If guilt for this murder has to be pinned on someone local, then simpleton Magnus Tait is the obvious choice. Most people in the community have already decided he was responsible for the disappearance of a young girl eight years previous. But the reader knows Magnus didn’t do it – or did he?

The setting is a little bleak, the detective a little low-key, the subject matter a little dark (but not as taut as, say, a Kathy Reichs serial killer novel), but the plot advances steadily and evenly and there are plenty of clues to the identity of the murderer. But, since there’s also plenty of red herrings, it’s unlikely you’ll figure out who it is until the end of the book. Cleeves manages to make nearly everyone in the area appear to be a possible suspect. In my mind, that is one of the marks of a really good mystery. And this is one.

I’d like to read the other four books in this series (White Nights, Red Bones, and Blue Lightning). Recommended for mystery fans.

A solid four out of five stars.

Reading Challenges: Raven Black satisfies six of my reading challenges: the Colorful Challenge, the First in a Series Challenge, the Book Awards Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
Raven Black

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Raven Black, Ann Cleeves, Shetland Island Mystery, Jimmy Perez, Magnus Tait, Shetland Island Quartet, Duncan Lawrie Dagger, 2006 winner, Fantastic Fiction

One Hundred Shades of White
by Preethi Nair

Maya, her mother Nalini, and her brother Satchin have left a carefree life in India to come to England. But when Maya’s father disappears, leaving only deceit and debt behind, they are left to fend for themselves in a strange, damp land. Maya, though, doesn’t know of her father’s betrayal. Nalini, determined to preserve her children’s pride, tells them that their father died in an accident and, as their struggle to make a life begins, whole realities are built on this lie. But even a white lie cannot remain hidden forever—and when the truth resurfaces, it changes everything

The title refers to that lie — that husband/father Raul dies a hero’s death rescuing a young boy from the path of an oncoming car; the truth is that Raul had a second family in America and deserted Nalini and the children in London. Nalini muses:

My mother said that to lie is the coward’s way and that truth is whole, like black or white. But what if there are a hundred shades for truth?

Not knowing the truth about her father leads Maya to think in a certain way about her life, her relationships and her mother’s relationships. When she learns the truth, her world shifts beneath her.

I thought the characters of Nalini and Maya were well-developed and the contrast between the warm, fragrant, familiar life in India and the cold, plain, foreign way of life in England was made very clear.

There’s a decent story in this book, which is told alternately through the eyes of mother Nalini and daughter Maya. BUT the book is rife with spelling, grammatical and structural errors that were serious distractions from the plot. Nair’s editors let her down big-time on this one.

I would normally have given this book 3.5 stars (out of five) but I can’t really recommend it as it stands. I’ll have to give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.

Reading Challenges: 100 Shades satisfies four of my reading challenges: the Colorful Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
One Hundred Shades Of White

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Technorati Tags: Preethi Nair, One Hundred Shades of White, 100 Shades of White, life in India, immigrants in England, deserted by father

Bud, Not Buddy
by Christopher Paul Curtis

This book won the 2000 Newbery Medal for “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children” and the award is well-deserved.

Set in Flint and Grand Rapids Michigan in 1936, the story covers three tumultuous days in the life of Bud Caldwell, orphan, age 10. Bud’s single mom died when he was six and he has lived in the orphanage and various foster homes since. Bud’s already wise to the system. So wise that he can feel sorry for the six-year-old who’s being sent to a foster home in the most recent “deployment” from the orphange.

…Six is a real tough age to be at. Most folks think you start to be a real adult when you’re fifteen or sixteen years old, but that’s not true, it really starts when you’re around six.

It’s at six that grown folks don’t think you’re a cute little kid anymore, they talk to you and expect you to understand everything they mean. And you’d best understand too, if you aren’t looking for some real trouble, ’cause it’s around six that grown folks stop giving you little swats and taps and jump clean up to giving you slugs that’ll knock you right down and have you seeing stars in the middle of the day. The first foster home I was in taught me that real quick.

(If that doesn’t break your heart, what will?) To cope with his world in which children must be “too wise, too soon”, and can’t trust any adult, Bud has composed “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself”. Sprinkled randomly throughout the book (#3, #63, #29, #16 etc), they’re a melange of timeless childhood advice, hilarious reasoning, and poignant realizations.

Bud’s busting out of the padlocked shed his newest foster parents have locked him in, and he’s off to find his unknown father. When she died, his mother left a half-dozen small stones inscribed with letters and numbers, and five different flyers for the jazz band Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators. Bud is convinced that Herman E. Calloway is his father.

This is a young adult book that will be enjoyed by adults and adolescents alike. Bright and polite Bud narrates his own story and, although he relates the precarious position of an orphan during the Great Depression, he never sounds like he feels sorry for himself. Life is full of unpleasant situations but with his self-authored book of “Rules and Things…”, he can find a way to deal with anything. You’ll be uplifted by his story.

I rate Bud, Not Buddy 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Reading challenges: This book satisfies no fewer than six(!) of my reading challenges:Ten Categories Challenge (Young Adult), the Book Awards Challenge, the Historical Fiction Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Chapters/Indigo link for Canadian readers:
Bud, Not Buddy

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

My copy of Bud, Not Buddy was borrowed from the public library.

Technorati Tags: Christopher Paul Curtis, Bud Not Buddy, 2000 Newbery Medal winner, award for children’s literature, Herman E. Calloway, Flint Michigan, depression-era orphanage