Snow Treasure
by Marie McSwigan

The forward to Snow Treasure says:

On June 28,1940, nearly a year after World War II broke out in Europe, the Norwegian freighter BOMMA reached Baltimore with a cargo of gold bullion worth $9,000,000…..The gold, it was reported, had been slipped past Nazi sentries by Norwegian boys and girls!…So that no harm might come to the brave children, the captain would not tell the location of the fiord (where the freighter hid and to which the children brought their sleds).
For many years the story was believed true. But over 60 years later, there is no proof that it ever really happened. We do not know. But we do know that the story captures tjhe courage of many children who, caught up in the war, have helped their country in a time of great danger.

Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Norway in April 1940. This story tells of a group of 25 schoolchildren, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who purportedly moved several tons of gold from a hiding spot which had been carved from the forest and the snow, directly past a Nazi encampment to a designated spot where they buried the gold and built snowmen as markers. This went on for weeks and was supposedly never detected even though the children were mere feet from Nazi soldiers daily.

It’s very difficult for me to believe that this story is true. No doubt the freighter captain used it to deflect attention from the actual resistance fighters who loaded the ship. If it was true, after the war the children would certainly have told people and there would be much oral history to support it.

Tidbit: The freighter Bomma has been renamed in the story as the Cleng Peerson, a little bit of irony since Peerson was a pioneer who led the first group of Norwegians to emigrate to the United States.

I couldn’t warm to Snow Treasure, “a story of courage and adventure”, although I’m aware that it’s considered a minor classic. Part of that is the writing style which seemed dated and a little clunky. In addition, I think it undermines the awareness of the true danger that ones in Nazi occupied countries faced.

Also, I was slightly rankled by the way that the elderly servant Per Garson spoke. His speech had the cadence of a Norwegian speaking English – an effect that was unnecessary and out of place, since he would have been speaking Norwegian like everyone else, and not a second language.

Written in 1942 and published just months after the U.S. entered WWII, it’s a fine piece of war propaganda that encourages all good little boys & girls to support their country during wartime. It no doubt felt to many a child who collected tinfoil & weeded a victory garden like a warm pat on the back for being part of the war effort.

But I’m still only lukewarm.

Reading challenges: This book satisfies five of my reading challenges:Ten Categories Challenge (older than I am), Decades Challenge, the New To Me Authors Challenge, the Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Link for Canadian readers:
Snow Treasure
Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller.

P.S. 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: Marie McSwigan, Snow Treasure, Nazi occupation of Norway, gold bullion, Bomma, Cleng Peerson

The Lacuna
by Barbara Kingsolver

I truly love Barbara Kingsolver’s writing: I think that The Poisonwood Bible is one of my top ten books of all time. So I was prepared to thoroughly enjoy The Lacuna – and I most certainly did.

It’s told in the format of the life story of one Harrison Shepherd, who was taken from Washington and his American father, to Mexico by his mother who was a native of that country. The first two decades of Shepherd’s life are spent in Mexico – first on a coastal island and then in Mexico City at his mother’s serial (mostly married) lovers’ houses or “mistress flats”, with the exception of two years spent at an American boarding school.

In his mid-teens, he finds employment mixing plaster for one of Diego Rivera’s murals. He becomes part of Rivera’s household, and in due course, works as a translator and secretary for Lev Trotsky when Rivera and his wife, the artist Frido Kahlo, provide sanctuary for that enemy of Stalin. Eventually Trotsky and his entourage move households and Shepherd then works directly for Trotsky.

After Trotsky’s assassination, Shepherd leaves Mexico and throws his lot in with the post-war optimism in America. Since boyhood he had been fascinated with the Aztec civilization and he becomes a best-selling author of historical fiction set in that era.

During WWII, the American propaganda machine cranked out pro-Russia messages. Roosevelt gritted his teeth and shook hands with Stalin, Eisenhower accepted a medal from him. After the war, Russia was no longer an ally and so began the anti-Stalin, anti-communism campaign that engulfed a nation and set Russia up as the worst kind of enemy.

I grew up in the 50s and 60s and can testify that we were taught that “communism” was almost the equivalent of a four-letter word: something evil and wicked. The campaign was effective – and it affected Shepherd significantly. (More information than that will be a spoiler.)

Shepherd’s life story is told in various forms: a first chapter that he wrote himself when he briefly considered writing his memoirs; following chapters supplied by either various notebooks of his or are observations of his assistant, Violet Brown. It’s an interesting, if initially a little confusing, presentation. Although Trotsky’s crusade to depose Stalin might be a little tough-sledding to read, it is critical to the plot.

As always, Kingsolver’s research is impeccable. She brings to life the ancient Aztec civilization, explains the passions of Rivera and Kahlo’s Mexico, and captures the rabid patriotism that was the result of the “committee to investigate anti-American activity”.

The titular lacuna – the round hole – appears throughout the book in different guises, some that surprise.

Besides learning about all of these topics, I hope you’ll be moved to consider the destruction that xenophobia in the form of blind nationalism can wrought.

I rate The Lacuna 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Reading challenges: This book satisfies three of my reading challenges:the Bibliophilic Book Challenge, Support Your Local Library, and 100+.

Link for Canadian readers:
The Lacuna

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller.

P.S. 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: book review, Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna, Harrison Shepherd, communist threat, committee, anti-american activity, Diego Rivera, Frido Kahlo, Lev Trotsky, Leon Trotsky, Violet Brown

Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie,
Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?
The Art of Cookery, William King

Hurray for Flavia de Luce! She’s an intelligent, feisty, funny, and down-to-earth eleven year old and the heroine of this smash hit debut novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Canadian author Alan Bradley.

Set in 1950 in rural England, the story unfolds in Flavia’s family home, Buckshaw – a mansion of many vintages, which is crumbling around her. The estate is just outside The village of Bishop’s Lacey to which Flavia can easily travel on her trusty bike, Gladys.

One afternoon, Flavia’s father opens the door to find a dead bird with a postage stamp on its beak on the doorstep. The next morning, Flavia finds a stranger’s body in the vegetable garden.

Being a lover of chemistry (Flavia says: “What intrigued me more than anything was finding out the way that everything, all of creation – all of it! – was held together by invisible chemical bonds), and an inquisitive person, Flavia decides to solve the mysteries despite police opposition to her involvement.

Okay, I like detective novels with a good mystery. I love books set in the middle decades of last century – especially if they’re in a rural setting – and add points for that rural setting to be in Britain. So Sweetness had a head start in my books.

But this book deserves a spot on everybody’s reading list. It is impeccably written – the characters are satisfactorily developed (except for her father I thought), the plot advances quickly and evenly, there are enough clues to solve the mystery but plenty of red herrings to throw you off the scent. Perfect score!

Bradley has another Flavia de Luce mystery The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, scheduled for release on March 9th (2010). I will be certain to be reading it!

Link for Canadian readers:
The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie

Reading challenges: This book satisfies four of my reading challenges: Support Your Local Library, What’s In a Name (category #1), First in a Series and, of course, The 100+ Challenge.

Technorati Tags: book review, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley, Flavia de Luce, girl detective, girl chemist, Buckshaw, Bishop’s Lacey, Horace Bonepenny, postage stamps, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

Before Kathy Reichs’ Tempe Brennan and television shows like Bones, there was Aaaron Elkins’ Gideon Oliver, physical anthropology professor.

Fellowship of Fear is the first of Gideon’s adventures (currently sixteen books). Published in 1982, it draws its tension from the cold war between Russia and the U.S.

Recently widowed, Gideon has taken a leave from Northern California State University to take on a stint teaching at the United States Overseas College (“bringing college courses to Our Boys in Europe”). His travels take him to Heidelburg in Germany, Sicily, and Madrid.

Unknowingly set up to act as the mule for classified army information, Gideon is set upon by thieves, and nearly killed in an automobile accident and its aftermath. This draws the attention of the Security Police who assign officer John Lau to work with Gideon and protect him.

Gideon is able to win John’s confidence by looking at some charred bones – a tibia and a jaw bone – and accurately determining the height & weight and the age & nationality of the deceased – and that he was left-handed and smoked a pipe (honest).

Gideon is a likeable character, although not a saint. John Lau takes the reader a little longer to warm up to, but that also reflects Gideon’s experience with the relationship.

Although I greatly enjoy the detective work in Kathy Reichs’ work, the tension created by a stalking serial killer is a little too “thrilling” for me. This book, centering on “who’s the Russian spy?”, allowed me to enjoy the forensic work at a tension level I can tolerate. In fact, I more than tolerated: I really liked this book and will probably read at least another in the series.

P.S. If you click through the link in the book title, 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.
P.P.S. Canadian readers interested in this book can click through at the bottom of this post. Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller.

And, yes, they are all affiliate links which means that I earn a small amount if you purchase after you’ve clicked through from this post.)

Link for Canadian readers
Fellowship Of Fear

Technorati Tags: Aaron Elkins, Fellowship of Fear, Gideon Oliver, physical anthrpologist, solving crimes from bones

Ice plays a major role in Joan Clark’s novel Latitudes of Melt,

Ice delivers Aurora from the frigid North Atlantic to her new family in Newfoundland. Ice becomes her son Stan’s career. The huge icebergs that break off the earth’s polar regions and float off the shore of Newfoundland sink ships but are beautiful to swim around. Ice gives the book its title, referring to the latitudes at which icebergs melt.

“Because Newfoundland was roughly between 46 and 51 degrees north, it was smack in the middle of the latitudes of melt.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes I wonder how I can have read so many books in my lifetime and never have heard of some authors that apparently have quite a following.

One of those authors is Miss Read, the pen name of Dora Jessie Saint, an English novelist, by profession a schoolmistress who began writing for several journals after World War II and eventually produced a series of novels from 1955 to 1996. In 1940 she married her now late husband, Douglas, a former headmaster. Read the rest of this entry »

First, let’s be sure you have this right. This is NOT the “daughter-in-law rules” as in “the cat rules, the dog drools” but as in rules of behavior for daughters-in-law or “101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-In-Law”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Crummey was born & raised in Newfoundland, lives there still, and has set all of his meticulously researched novels & collections of short stories thus far in this beautiful, windswept, and harshly-demanding Canadian province.

GALORE is set in the outport villages of Paradise Deep and The Gut, joined by the Tolt Road over the headland between them, in an undefined period that covers most of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. The novel chronicles the lives of two rival families (the Sellers and the Devines) for six generations, and I often referred to the genealogy chart at the front of the book, especially during my first reading.

Inspired by the works of Read the rest of this entry »

Since I saw the trailer for this great-looking movie with Meryl Streep, due to open August 7, 2009, I seem to have a fascination with Julia Child and her famous book Mastering The Art of French Cooking (You can read my review of Julia Child’s My Life in France here.)

The movie is based on that book – and on this one: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. For Canadian readers

When Julie Powell was an adolescent, she stumbled upon a Joy-of-Sex-type book in her father’s bathroom cabinet. Read the rest of this entry »

John Payzant was born in Halifax Nova Scotia on Canada’s Atlantic coast. But, like so many Atlantic Canadians, he spent most of his working life in Toronto Ontario as an investment dealer on Bay Street, considered to be Canada’s version of Wall Street.

In 2004, he decided to trade in city life and move to the small town of Lunenburg near his birth city. Lunenburg’s historic waterfront is also on the Atlantic.

Since his city friends thought Read the rest of this entry »

Inspired by the delightful movie trailer for this summer’s Julie & Julia I borrowed My Life in France from the library. (My Life in France for Canadian readers)

Julia Child, born Julia McWilliams the daughter of an ultra-right wing Republican, was raised in a “comfortable, WASPy, upper-middle-class family in sunny & non-intellectual Pasadena CA”. Although having served with OSS during WW II in Ceylon & China, she describes herself in her early thirties as “unpolished”. She had seen nothing of the world outside of her native U.S. and her war posting. Read the rest of this entry »

Buy it at Amazon.com

Buy it at Amazon.ca

Before reading A Life’s Design: The Life and Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison, I had never really given much thought to the design of everyday utilitarian items such as clock radios, hair dryers & plastic trashcans. From time to time, I may have thought: “That’s so easy to use” or “Oh – that’s a clever feature – I wonder who thought of that” without really giving any credence to the fact that someone had really designed it. Read the rest of this entry »

“Heather Summerhayes was six when her four-year-old sister Pam was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis and given only months to live. ‘Sixty-five roses’ was the way Pam pronounced the name of the disease that forever altered the lives of her siblings and parents.”
Sixty-Five Roses: A Sister’s Memoir
For Canadian readers – Sixty-Five Roses: A Sister’s Memoir
When Pam’s mother told the girls that Pam might die, Heather–the older sister, protector and defender–told Pam that she would die with her. From that moment forward, Read the rest of this entry »

In her early thirties, the Elizabeth Gilbert “went through a divorce, a crushing depression,(and) a failed love.” To recover, she embarked on a year-long trip around the world, alone. Her plan: to spend four months in each of Italy (to experience pleasure), India (to explore spirituality), and Bali (to find life balance).
Eat, Pray, Love
For Canadian readers: Eat, Pray, Love

The premise of this “memoir of self-discovery” is a fascinating idea, but Gilbert moans throughout of the terribly hard times that she endured that precipitated the trip.

Give it up, Liz. Read the rest of this entry »

Having read Joseph Boyden’s amazing Three Day Road, I was more than eager to read his second novel Through Black Spruce

Three Day Road was set during The Great War, a time period I particularly enjoy reading about. And, of course, the ending left every reader wondering what had become of Xavier Bird.

I was disappointed when I opened Through Black Spruce, as it is set in the present day and so seemed completely unrelated to Xavier. Nonetheless, Boyden pulled me in with his skillful prose that paints pictures in just a sentence. The first chapter ends Read the rest of this entry »