Cariola's 2017 Reading Log

Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, painted by William Larkin (1615)

This year's theme is Scandalous Ladies at the Court of James I. (You can see my discussion of Lady Mary Wroth on my 75 Books Challenge thread.) Frances Howard was one of the most notorious ladies in the court of James I (and not just because of her neckline, which was standard dress for all the ladies of the day). Married at a young age to Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex (she was 14, he 13), the couple were separated until a time when they would be considered mature enough for marital relations. When her husband returned from France five years later (1609), Frances had already fallen in love with the king's favorite--and perhaps lover--Robert Carr, Duke of Somerset. The lovers wanted to marry, but divorce was not an option; annulment, however, was, and Frances filed for one on the basis of non-consummation, claiming that she had tried her best to be a 'true wife' to Devereux, but he had proved to be impotent. Frances's claim had to be backed up by evidence--in other words, a medical inspection to verify that she was still a virgin. By this time, she was deep into her affair with Carr, and her reputation at court prior to that was . . . well, not the best. Claiming that she was embarrassed, Frances was granted permission to wear a veil during the examination, and it was widely believed that a 14-year old cousin stood in for her. Outraged at being shamed in public, Essex testified that he could bring many women forward to verify his manly prowess; he claimed that it was only with Frances that he could not perform because "she reviled him, and miscalled him, terming him a cow, and coward, and beast." The annulment was granted due to the king's intervention, Frances married Carr, but all was not quite happily ever after. The couple was tried for the murder by poison of Sir Thomas Overbury, a one-time friend of Carr's who had angered Frances by advising against the marriage. They were sent to the Tower, tried, and convicted, and though Frances admitted her guilt, her husband swore that he was innocent. Although the couple was pardoned by the king, they were no longer welcome at court and retreated to a country estate where Frances died at the age of 42.


This etching of the Earl and Countess of Somerset was made by Renold Estrack in 1615.

To read more about Frances and her notoriety, click here.




Best of 2017 (so far):
Human Acts by Han Kang
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Autumn by Ali Smith
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
House of Names by Colm Toibin
You Don't Have to Say you Love Me by Sherman Alexie
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Best of 2016:
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
An Unrestored Woman by Shobha Rao
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Currently Reading

The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach

January
1. Victoria: a novel of the young queen by Daisy Goodwin
2. The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch
3. Romeo and Juliet by David Hewson
4. Taking Liberties by Diana Norman
5. The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis

February
6. Promised to the Crown by Aimie K. Runyan
7. A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

March
8. Human Acts by Han Kang
9. A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger
10. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
11. Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey
12. New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
13. The Book of Aron by Jim Shepherd
14. The Clancys of Queens by Tara Clancy

April
15. Autumn by Ali Smith
16. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
17. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
18. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
19. The North Water by Ian McGuire
20. Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag

May
21. The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church
22. Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman
23. The First Diana: Almost a Princess: The Tragic Story of the First Lady Diana Spencer by Sarah J. Freeman
24. House of Names by Colm Toibin
25. The Practice House by Laura McNeal

June
26. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
27. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
28. Midnight Blue by Simone van der VLugt
29. Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb
30. The Visionist by Rachel Urquhart

July
31. Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir
32. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
33. A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall
34. What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
35. Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley
36. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
37. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie
38. Doc by Mary Doria Russell
39. The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
40. Border Crossing by Pat Barker
41. Delicate, Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

August
42. Shelter by Jung Yun
43. A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
44. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
45. Grace by Paul Lynch

September
46. Black Tudors: African Lives in Renaissance England by Miranda Kaufmann
47. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
48. The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall
49. The House at the Edge of the River by Catherine Banner

October
50. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
51. See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
52. The Way to London by Alix Rickloff
53. The Book of the Maidservant by Rebecca Barnhouse
54. Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty

November
55. The Witches of New York by Ami McKay
56. Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
57. 10-Minute Declutter by S. J. Scott and Barrie Davenport
58. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
59. The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott
60. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo
61. The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

December
62. Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samanatha Silva
63. The Good People by Hannah Kent

Nice to see that you will be with the group again next year Deborah. I always enjoy keeping up with your reading.

Welcome back!

Hi Deborah!

Hi, Deborah!

Hi, Deborah!

Hi Deborah!

Hi, everyone! 2016 was a good year of reading, and I'm looking forward to next year's books. Will be back to post my annual Early Modern painting and a few lists before the new year begins.

Happy New Year!

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

Happy reading in 2017, Deborah!

All spruced up and ready to go!

Yours is always such a good 'bookish' thread, Deborah, and such good books, too!

>14 CDVicarage: Thank you. (So I'll start off with a b it of fluff that wasn't very good.)

1. Victoria: a novel of the young queen by Daisy Goodwin

Book Browse may never send me another ARC for review because it took me so long to drag myself through this one. It's the basis for the Brit mini-series soon to come to US TVscreens, and I sincerely hope that it plays better on the small screen than it does on the page. First, in terms of the content and the writing, this should have been labelled a YA historical romance. Victoria is portrayed as a giddy, self-centered, petulant teenager who needs the guidance of her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. But her dependence rapidly develops into a major crush on the much older man. Goodwin goes so far as to suggest that the feelings are mutual, and that Melbourne must sacrifice what the heart wants for duty. Victoria, meanwhile, moons over him and does a lot of foot stamping and huffing out of rooms when she can't have her way. She despises her boring cousin Albert, who has been suggested as the ideal mate; people keeps saying that she needs a man to control her, and he seems to fit the bill. When he comes to visit, she's still mooning over Melbourne, but WHAM! all of a sudden she realizes that she's passionately in love with Albert.

This is a silly book about a silly girl who became a queen that ruled for 50+ years. Surely Victoria deserves better. If not, it's a good thing the Brits survived her rule.

1 out of 5 stars.

Happy New Year, Deborah! Sorry for the late greeting, but I've finally finished with my Christmas and New Year's Day work stretch and now have time to make the rounds.

>17 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. Hope you find sometime to rest after the busy holiday work schedule.

Stopping by to plop my star, and settle in for some good book ideas!

>16 Cariola: Sounds like this one was a dud, for sure! How disappointing. I went to a preview party for the PBS series at WGBH a few weeks ago. We saw the first twenty minutes or so. The production values -- scenery, costuming and cinematography -- all outstanding. Did wonder at how historically accurate it all was.

Will you be watching to see how it compares to the book?

Happy New Year, my friend, and thanks for keeping me sane, particularly over the past several months, over on FB.

>19 michigantrumpet: I have been looking forward to the series, despite the book, so I do plan to watch it. I do know it was historically accurate that Victoria depended greatly on Melbourne, but I find it hard to believe that she went to his home incognito and proposed to him. I may have to do a little research on her--I'm not expert. I just did not enjoy the YA historical romance approach.

The little bit I saw had a good bit on the various intrigues being set into motion at Court, and with her mother's courtiers. At least in the series, she is showing a fair amount of gumption for one with a very protected upbringing and overbearing mother. Perhaps she just had been biding her time until she got her moment to spread her wings.

2. The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch

This author just tries way too hard 1) to be poetic; 2) to be shocking; 3) to be experimental. For me, the end result was a fragmented mess with moments of fine language. I came to the book expecting it to be similar to The Cellist of Sarajevo or A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, a novel with a message about war, but no. I got very tired of the blood, blood, blood, menstrual blood, painting with menstrual blood, post-rape blood, kinky sex blood, photographs of blood, bloody limbs--well, you get the point. Not to mention the detailed descriptions of sex, most of which was sado-masochistic, If there was a message here, I guess I'm just not cool enough to get it. Thankfully.

I listened to this book on audio, and that undoubtedly made it even worse. The reader used the same flat, emotionless, monotone voice that will be familiar to anyone who has attended a poetry reading in the last 40 years. Almost six hours of that was sheer torture.

1 out of 5 stars, solely for some poetic passages that were effective.

Hi Deborah! Long time no see! ;-)
Honestly, you've helped me survive all this election drama in the last few months, and I've very grateful to you for it. I haven't ventured to visit enough threads so far, but gratified to find two amusing reviews. You did tell me Victoria: A Novel was dreadful, but the way you describe it makes it sound positively shameful. Oh please! Zero chances of me reading it now. I haven't delved into Queen Victoria yet, though I'm making my way to her slowly but surely, as I've always held a fascination for the 19th century and she was such a huge part of it. Just recently though I was fascinated by Victorian Britain from the Great Courses with professor Patrick N. Allitt. 36 half-hour lectures on all imaginable aspects of Victorian society. I'm sure even someone more familiar with the period might find his lectures interesting. I also look forward to two books by A. N. Wilson I've had on the tbr for a couple of years now: Victoria: A Life and The Victorians, the latter of which I own in a beautiful Folio edition.

As for The Small Backs of Children... just yuck! no thank you! Glad you ventured out there so the rest of us don't have to! ;-)

>23 Smiler69: There's also a bio of Victoria by Julia Baird that looks pretty good.

I can't believe that so many people have given The Small Backs of Children positive reviews. One person claimed it is the best book ever written. Blech. I added a few points to the review above.

>22 Cariola: Dear heavens! That sounds dreadful. What drew you to it in the first place? I see some reviews where people talk about the role of art in the world. Any interesting commentary about that? Hope all's well with you, Deb.

>25 michigantrumpet: If there's a comment on art, it pretty much passed me by. Yes, there is a painter, a photographer, and a writer in the story. Maybe the message is that art can choose any subject, however sick and disgusting. When I read initial blurbs on this book, I knew it was about the horrible damage that war in eastern Europe did to people, which is why I thought it might be something like The Cellist of Sarajevo or A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (another book in which a child suffering in war is the focal point). In Cellist, there is a message about how art keeps people sane in horrible times; in Constellation, the human spirit redeems itself, despite the ugliness of some human actions. I saw no redemption and no positive message here. If I had to live in the world of this book, I'd kill myself.

Oh, you're off to a rocky start for 2017. You need a better book asap.

3. Romeo and Juliet by David Hewson

I enjoyed Hewson's novelizations of Macbeth and Hamlet, so I thought I would give his version of Romeo and Juliet a try, even though it is not a favorite of mine. I listened to this book on audio, masterfully read by Richard Armitage. In a novelized form, Hewson was able to expand on characters, giving greater depth and backstories to some of the secondary characters, such as the Nurse, Mercutio, Friar Lawrence, and Paris. But others, like the elder Capulets and Montagues and Juliet's cousin Tybalt, remained maddeningly stereotypical. Hewson provides an alternate ending, one laden with ironies. It isn't exactly a happy ending, and it's up to the individual reader to decide if it is, in the end, more bleak than Shakespeare's.

While this was a fast and enjoyable listen, I'd recommend reading the play over the novelization. There, at least, you will find some mighty fine verse.

3.5 out of 5 stars

>26 Cariola: Most definitely crossing that one off my list then, Deb. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was an absolute favorite a few years back. I really want to read more books like that.

4. Taking Liberties (Makepeace Hedley 2) by Diana Norman

This is the second book in Diana Norman's "Makepeace Hedley" series. You may be familiar with Norman's alter ego, Ariana Franklin (Mistress of the Art of Death). In the first novel, A Catch of Consequence, we met Makepeace, a redheaded pubkeeper in colonial Boston. Her adventures took her to England, where she married first a nobleman and then a rugged miner. Near the end of the book, Makepeace sent her eldest daughter back to the colonies, accompanied by her friend Susan and Josh, the artistic son of a black woman who was more friend than slave or servant to Makepeace. Now we learn that the ship that carried them was attacked by either pirates or a British vessel (the American Revolution being in full swing), and Philippa, Susan, and Josh are missing. The main plot focuses on Makepeace's struggle to find Philippa (which doesn't take too long), to learn the fate Susan, and to free Josh from an English prison. In addition, a blockade against the French, who have been aiding the Americans, has trapped her husband on the Continent. How will Makepeace bring him home?

Makepeace's story is intertwined with that of Diana Stacpoole, a recently widowed aristocrat, the long-suffering victim of a sadistic husband. Diana has spent her life confined by the expectations of her class. She thought that her life would improve when he husband died, but her son, the new earl, while not cruel, is just as status-conscious and determined to keep her in check. Diana takes a huge step when she decides to fulfill a former servant/friend's request that she find her nephew, a French soldier who has apparently been captured by the British. The two women meet in the course of their searches and form an unique friendship that will change Diana's life forever.

I don't want to give away too much of the story, but suffice it to say that there is a lot of suspense and intrigue, peppered with smugglers, pirates, and an obsessed Revenue agent. I learned a good deal about the conditions in the prisons at the time, especially in prison hospitals, and there is a running commentary on slavery as well. Norman really did her research (as she always does), and the writing is very fine indeed. There is one more book in the series (but since it focuses on Philippa rather than Makepeace, I'm not quite as eager to read it). I recommend this series if you're a historical fiction plan and like a good, complex, rip roaring tale with strong female characters.

4 out of 5 stars.

Belated Happy New Year to you. Can it be that you are retired two years? I'll be 65 in September. I hope to work until I'm 66, depending on my health.

Are you enjoying your retirement?

You are reading some good books! Thanks for the great review of Victoria. I would have picked that one to read. You saved me time and money.

All good wishes to you!

Hi, Linda. Almost a year and a half retired now. I haven't had a single second of regret. Hope you are able to wait until you are 66. How have you been feeling?

I'm hoping to get to some better books soon. Although I did enjoy Taking Liberties, the other three weren't stellar.

5. The Barrowfields by Phillip Lewis

My response to The Barrowfields is a mixed one. Initially, I was quite caught up in the story of a family moving to the father's North Carolina home town, purchasing an architecturally unique home on a mountainside that had long been abandoned because a family had died mysteriously in it. While the Asters in some ways seem like an ideal family, there's a sense of something dysfunctional about them. Young Henry adores his father, a lawyer who made it rich on a single case and now spends most of his time writing a novel that never seems to be finished, listening to music, and drinking. His mother is a bit of an enabler; she lives her life around her husband's schedule and fetches more drinks whenever she is asked. Henry's sister Threnody is an odd one; she has few friends and relies on the much older Henry for companionship. It is almost like he is the father figure in her life. We're told at the very beginning of the novel that Henry's father "leaves," but that is never really explained until near the end.

I started to be less enthusiastic about this novel about halfway through, when Henry leaves for college and starts acting like a moony geek over a girl with the ridiculous name of Story. Story is beautiful. Story is smart. Story is perfect. Story is unattainable. Story is also rather disturbed by some family dysfunction of her own. I hated her. I should be honest and say that I'm not a huge fan of the typical coming-of-age story, and that is what this section feels like. I almost gave up on The Barrowfields but stuck with it to the bittersweet end.

A lot of reviewers have mentioned the beautiful language, and I will agree with that to a point. But it is often a bit overwrought for my taste. Here's an example that had me scratching my head; it describes a Mexican restaurant:

"Alternating red and yellow circus umbrellas provided redundant cover from the sun, and sun-bleached spiral streamers ran along the corner trellises and fell down here and there and then ascended again in improbable Lissajous curves that compressed and decompressed with the atmospheric perturbations of passing cars."

(Alliteration and obscure allusions, anyone?)

So, all in all, for me it was not a bad read but not one that will stick with me for very long. by the time I got to the end, I was more than ready to move on to something else.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

>33 Cariola:

I would call that passage overwritten. I enjoyed reading your review but have no interest in reading the novel.

6. Promised to the Crown by Aimie K. Runyan

This historical novel started out with a great idea: telling the stories of three of Louis XIV's "Daughters of France," women who were sent to French Canadian settlements in the 1670s as potential brides for settlers. The concept was that if traders and trappers married and settled down, they might become more interested in farming and, as landholders, would be more apt to defend French interests in Canada against the encroaching British. The three women, Elizabeth, Nicole, and Rose, become friends aboard ship. Elizabeth has agreed to emigrate after her baker father's death to spare her family the burden of an unwed daughter. Nicole, a farmer's daughter, was jilted when a bad harvest cost her her dowry; having no other prospects without it and unable to bear the pain of seeing her former fiancé with his new wife, the educated Nicole signs on for the New World. Rose, an orphan, was sent to live with her uncle and his wife, but her uncle began abusing her at age twelve, and when his wife found out, she punished Rose by sending her to a strict convent. So all three made sacrifices and hoped for a better future in North America. Every Thursday, the nuns with whom the women temporarily lived opened their parlor to would-be suitors. Although marriage and motherhood was expected of them, none were forced to marry against their own choice. For the most part, this worked out, though not without difficulties and hardships along the way.

While Runyan provides a detailed picture of life in New France, the novel is a bit too much of a standard romance for my taste. The three women were a little too good to be true, the plot held few surprises, and the writing (especially the dialogue) seemed rather stilted and overly simplistic. Runyan's afterword effectively disputes the long-held theory that the women sent to Canada were prostitutes. The book also contains an excerpt from the sequel, which appear to focus on Manon, a Huron girl raised by Nicole who later returned to her people. This did not entice me to continue with the series. But all in all, Promised to the Crown wasn't a bad quick read for idle days.

3 out of 5 stars.

Hi Deb

I thought of you when I picked up (more than a few) books at the local library this week. I found a book that might interest you. I couldn't resist bringing home Crown of Blood The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey. I hope to read it soon.

>36 Whisper1: Hope it's a good one. I have lately rejected two books on the Grey daughters after reading excerpts on my kindle. let me know what you think of this one. Did you watch the PBS series on Henry's six wives, the new one? I think the title is "Secrets of the Six Wives," or something like that. Debunks some of the clichés.

Thanks for letting me know about the new PBS series. I haven't heard of this.

Say, Deb - wondering if you've any experience with the Fifth Wife trilogy by Ford Maddox Ford about Katherine Howard? I saw it on some reading list and was intrigued. Have you read it? Thoughts?

>39 michigantrumpet: I'm in the same position--have had that Katherine Howard edition on my wish list for quite some time. In general, I've found earlier biofiction to be not so good. I just looked at the Amazon description: "highly fictionalized" is usually a warning sign. If you read it, do let me know what you think.

Hmmm. That 'Highly fictionalized' does give one pause. Then there is this review on LT by BooksInTheBelfrey which makes me take a slightly panicked gulp.

https://www.librarything.com/work/1019/reviews/82075913

I have enjoyed some other Ford Maddox Ford, so that won't put me off completely. But I'm not rushing out either.

7. A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

I have long loved the work of artists N.C., Andrew, and Jamie Wyeth and have made several visits to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, PA to see their collection. I have yet to visit the Wyeth farm and studios there, but that's on my to do list. So I was quite looking forward to reading A Piece of the World, which creates a life for Christina Olson, the young woman featured in Andrew Wyeth's best known painting, Christina's World. Sadly, I found it disappointing--in a word, dull. While I do enjoy character-driven novels, if the main character isn't likable or at least interesting, it's hard for me to get absorbed by a novel. And I really didn't find much to like or interest me in Christina.

The novel jumps back and forth between several different eras, most notably 1917-18, when Christina experiences the great disappointment of her life, and the post-World War II years in which Andrew Wyeth executed a series of paintings of Christina, her brother Al, and their picturesque farm in Cushing, Maine. As others have noted, Wyeth plays a relatively small role in the novel, mainly as a vehicle for illustrating what some would call changes in Christina--although I found her to remain pretty much the same throughout. To me, she came across as a bitter woman who let her disability define her, and although she complained about this (which is, of course, understandable), she stubbornly refused to do anything about it.. After an illness as a young child, Christina's legs became twisted, and her condition worsens throughout her life, to the point where she has to drag herself about by the elbows (since she refused to use a wheelchair). At several points in the novel, well-meaning family and friends try to get her to seek medical attention, but she refuses. By the time she finally lets herself get nagged into a hospital stay, the doctors can't do anything for her. She even turns against a number of friends who have tried to help her. As a young woman, she does befriend some young people who spend the summers in Cushing, but eventually a disappointment--one that friends had tried to warn her was coming--leads her to pretty much isolate herself on the family farm, helping with chores and caring for her parents and brothers. It was a hard life--but one that many other farm women of her day also endured. If there was one moment in the book when I REALLY disliked Christina, it was when she guilted her brother Al, who had given up his own dream of becoming a seaman to keep the family farm running, into dropping his plans to marry. If Christina couldn't be happy, then Al had no right to be either. She apologizes for this later, but it's far too late; the woman Al loved has married someone else.

So where does Andrew Wyeth fit into all this? Well, Christina relates to him because he has a limp, which she never fails to mention when she sees him walking towards the farm. She lets him set up a temporary studio on the second floor of the house, and she likes the smell of paint, turpentine, and eggs that emanate from it. He becomes a friend of sorts, offering Christina compliments on her baking, housekeeping, and fortitude, but he is also sometimes brutally frank about her shortcomings. She is appalled by the first portrait of her that he paints, which is realistic but very unflattering, and it is several years before she agrees to pose again for Christina's World.

I'm sure that I will be outnumbered by readers who will adore this novel, but it just didn't do much for me.

3 out of 5 stars.

There have been several Wyeth exhibits around here over the years. One of which focused on Christina's World. So, I would be one of the natural constituents for this book. However, I join you in the weariness over these common-woman-somehow-attached-to-famous-man-of-genius novels. I will say that my understanding from my limited investigation into Christina is that she wasn't a particularly happy woman.

I have always hoped to get to the museum in Chadds Ford.

8. Human Acts by Han Kang

First and foremost: this is not a book for the squeamish. Suffice it to say that the "human acts" described in detail in these seven linked stories are what we would normally label "inhuman acts." It took me several weeks to make my way through this short (220 -page) book, mainly because I couldn't handle too much of the brutality at a single reading. Reading it was shocking, heartbreaking, enraging. What salvages the novel from being pure nightmare is Han's style. Somehow, despite the horrors, she is able to bring us back to a longing for wholeness and a connections to others, and to remind us that there can still be beauty (or at least the longing for it) in a world fraught with sadness and misery.

Each story is told by a different person and revolves around a 1980 massacre in the city of Gwangju, South Korea. Government troops opened fire on protesters, most of them students or young factory workers; it was said that the soldiers had been issued enough rounds to kill every resident of the city twice over. No accurate estimate of those murdered exist: 200? 2000? No one knows for sure. The central figure in several stories is Dong-Ho, a fifteen-year old student who, after seeing his friend Jeong-Dae fall when the bullets rang through the crowd in the street, is fraught with guilt for escaping instead of rescuing his companion. He volunteers to work in a temporary morgue where the dead have been brought,hoping to find Jeong-Dae's body and give him as much of a proper funeral as possible. Two young women, his fellow workers, will later have their own stories to tell, as will Dong-Ho's grieving mother who still, 20 years later, lives every day with the memory of her son's childhood and too-early death. Her story, and that of a young female editor who survived extreme torture but refuses to talk about it, are studies in the persistence of memories, both good and bad. In what may be the most horrific chapter, we follow Jeong-Dae's corpse to the dumping grounds where bodies are stacked one atop the other in a criss-cross pattern, and he, our dead narrator, walks us through the decomposition of the bodies in gruesome detail, until they are doused with gasoline and set afire. In the final story, a modern day narrator (perhaps Han Kang herself) revisits the former site of the home in which she lived until age nine--a place that was home to Jeong-Dae, his sister, and Dong-Ho.

This is one of those books that is difficult to read and difficult to evaluate because of its subject matter. It leaves the reader shaken yet somehow still in awe of the persistence of the human spirit--even if, as one narrator says, the whole purpose of torture was to make it clear that humans are nothing but a lump of flesh. I can't say I "liked" Human Acts, but I admire it. There is value, sometimes, in reading what makes you uncomfortable. The experience can change the way you see the world.

4 out of 5 stars.

9. A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger

Although I'm not usually a reader of mysteries, historical or otherwise, I was intrigued by the appearance of poet John Gower as the main character and his friend, Geoffrey Chaucer, as a secondary character. Holsinger creates a detailed and fascinating portrait at medieval London (or, as he would have it, three cities: London, Westminster, and Southwark), from the court of Richard II to the stews of Gropecunt Lane. The first chapter is designed to draw the reader in, and that it did. A young woman, Agnes Fonteyn, is hiding in the bushes, watching a horrific scene. Another young woman, this one dressed in rich attire, has just shoved a book into Agnes's hands as her pursuer approaches. Viciously beating the stranger, he keeps asking a question that Agnes does not understand--"Doovray libroo?"--before brutally killing her with a hammer. And thus the mystery begins.

Gower, a lawyer as well as a part-time poet, hears rumors of a mysterious book full of cryptic prophecies that describe the deaths of thirteen kings of England, the last being the current young king, Richard II. The book, and cloth that covers it, point towards the king's uncle, John of Gaunt, as the mastermind of the assassination plot. Gower's search for the book and his efforts to unravel its secrets take him from the Inns of Court to the remote libraries of Oxford, from the royal court to the brothels of Southwark. And he is not the only one interested in the book. His friend Chaucer has asked him to find it, and Agnes, her sister Millicent, and their friend, a transvestite prostitute named Edgar/Elinor, at first ponder its mysteries but then decide to seek a buyer. And there are many interested in this burnable book.

Along the way, Holsinger provides plenty of subplots. There's Gower's relationship with his estranged son Simon; Elinor's attempts to save her butcher's apprentice brother Gerald from his brutal master; the power and pull of Kathryn Swynford, Gaunt's mistress; Simon's service to an English mercenary in Italy; and the sad story of the murdered young woman.

So with all this going on, why did my interest start to wane about 2/3 through the book? I can only attribute it to my lack of interest in the mystery genre. Regular readers of historical mysteries will undoubtedly find it more appealing. The book is very well written and the world it creates fully fleshed out; the characters are each, in their own ways, fascinating and sympathetic; and the books structure, a series of short chapters moving amongst the various characters, works well. But I'm just not a fan of the genre and will likely pass on the sequel.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

10. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

What a wonderful novel! When I began it, I was afraid it was going to turn out to be some kind of fantasy or magical realism--neither of which I enjoy. But this is a novel as driven by character and ideas as by plot, and the writing is absolutely beautiful. Sarah Perry also has a gift for creating an atmosphere that totally draws the reader into a specific time and place--in this case, London and the small Essex town of Aldwinter in the 1890s.

Cora Seaborne, newly widowed, seems to have ambivalent feelings about her deceased husband, a wealthy, powerful, but cruel man. In some ways, he shaped her into a new person and a new life; but he also stifled any sense of self that she might have developed. Now on her own, she decides to follow her whims, the primary one being to study paleontology on an amateur level. With her companion Martha, an early feminist with reformist tendencies, and her odd 12-year old son Frankie (who today would likely be considered mildly autistic), Cora packs off to Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning had set off a craze for fossil hunting. But when rumors surface that a strange sea creature, last seen in 1669, may have reappeared in the waters near the small town of Aldwinter, Cora can't resist the opportunity to find something truly remarkable. Her friends Charles and Katherine Ambrose, wealthy aristocrats, provide an introduction to the local parson, Will Ransome, a married father of three with a similar interest in fossils. Will and Cora embark on an unexpected and passionate friendship that threatens to become much more. Their debates on the conflicts between science and faith shape the heart of the novel.

But this is not the only theme running through The Essex Serpent. There are questions about the nature of love in its many forms: friendship, passion, loyalty, empathy, responsibility, parenthood, and more. These are fleshed out through a series of wonderfully drawn secondary characters: Will's wife Stella, an ethereal creature whose illness pulls her into a strange faith of her own making that centers on all things blue; Luke Garrett, a brilliant surgeon in love with Cora; his devoted friend George Spencer, a wealthy young physician who spends his fortune on charitable projects to impress Cora's companion Martha; Frankie, who seems incapable of loving anyone; and the quirky townsfolk of Aldwinter. Questions of class are never far from the surface; Charles Ambrose, for example, believes in a kind of simplified social Darwinism that keeps individuals in the places they are meant to be.

All these elements, characters, and ideas twist and turn and intertwine like the body of the elusive serpent while the plot carries the reader along for the ride. There's nary a dull moment here, and a good number of keen insights and startlingly beautiful passages. The Essex Serpent is an all-around winner, the best reading experience I've had so far this year.

5 out of 5 stars.

>46 Cariola: Wow, hit by a BB! On the Wishlist it goes.

Fabulous review of The Essex Serpent, Deborah! I'm thrilled that you and Heather liked it; it was chosen for this year's Wellcome Book Prize longlist, so I'll buy a copy of it next month.

>46 Cariola: Into the BlackHole it goes! Thanks for the recommendation, Deborah.

Hope you all love it as much as I did. I'll be pulling for it to win the Wellcome Book Prize and will be VERY surprised if it doesn't make the Booker list.

I'm not sure it qualifies for the Booker because of the dates. I first heard people raving about it last spring.

If that's the case, they made a big mistake in not nominating it. Not sure when it came out in the UK, but it just recently came out here in the US.

Checked Amazon.uk--it came out in late May.

11. Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey

Stephanie Storey imagines a rivalry between two artists, the very young Michaelangelo, whose Pieta had just stunned viewers in Rome, and the aging master Leonardo DaVinci. Her research discovered that the two men were both working in Florence from 1501-1505, Michaelangelo on his David and DaVinci on the Mona Lisa. Although there is no evidence that the two ever met, she imagines a rivalry that becomes the heart of the novel. Told in chapters alternatively focusing on the two artists, she fleshes out their personalities, details the political turmoil of the times, and studies their successes and failures. Much of Michaelangelo's story revolves around his love for his family, even after his father banishes him for following his drive to sculpt. DaVinci is torn between so many interests that most of his projects remain unfinished.

While I enjoyed the novel, it's not one that really impressed me or will stick with me now that I've finished it.

3 out of 5 stars.

>52 Cariola: Yes,well their track record isn't too great these days is it.

I've wanted to read it ever since I first heard about it so I'm really glad you liked it since I trust your taste.

12. New Boy by Tracy Chevalier

I tried. Really, I tried. But I couldn't make it past the halfway point. This is just dreadful. Please don't waste your time on it.

Tracy Chevalier sets her adaptation among fifth and sixth graders in the 1970s. I can't think of a more inappropriate setting for Shakespeare's great tragedy, Othello. OK, so the kids are prejudiced. So they haven't been around many black kids, let alone any from Ghana. I don't know about you, but I can only take so much of kids swinging on flagpoles, spinning on merry-go-rounds, and playing kickball. The famous strawberry embroidered handkerchief becomes a pencil box that O (Osei) trades for Dee's Snoopy pencil box. Mimi (Emilia) French kisses Ian (Iago) but isn't sure she wants to go with him. Dee gets reprimanded by her teacher, Mr. Branbant (Branbantio) for touching O's hair. Are you barfing yet? Well, I am, and I'm not going to put myself through any more torture. Frankly, I don't care what happens in the end because I don't care about any of these silly kids. I expected better from Chevalier. This is awful, just awful. The worst in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, by far.

1/2 out of 5 stars.

13. The Book of Aron by Jim Shepherd

I wasn't sure that I would like this book; admittedly, I've been a bit burned out on Holocaust novels. However, The Book of Aron quickly grabbed my attention, and I finished it in two days. Several factors make this story unique. First, instead of focusing on the horrors of life in the prison camps and the inevitable tragic ending, Shepherd sets his story mainly in the Warsaw ghetto and focuses on daily life and the struggle for survival. Second, his protagonist is a 12-year old boy. Aron's age and the fact that his life has been a struggle even before the Nazi invasion render him a more detached narrator than we see in most other Holocaust novels. He takes life as it comes: the sudden death of his younger brother, the lice that cake his head and body, the lack of food, the typhus epidemic, the sudden acts of violence, the disappearance of family and friends, the extra people that are moved into his already crowded home--all this just happen, and Aron moves on. He isn't an unfeeling boy; in fact, his friends tease him about his frequent tears. But they also have a phrase that they repeat about him: "Sh'maya only cares about himself." Sadly, this is the way a lot of people must have acted if they wanted to survive. Aron becomes good at scrounging and stealing, and he later joins up with a group of boys who smuggle items through a hole in the wall surrounding the ghetto. He even agrees to become an informer for an acquaintance who has joined the yellow police, a group of Jews working with the invaders.

But if there is one person Aron admires, it is Dr. Janusc Korczak, a real-life educator and children's advocate who became well know for his radio show, The Old Doc. Aron watches him from afar as he works to save as many children as possible, has a number of conversations with him in the street, and visits a performance by the children in his orphanage. Korczak becomes a major figure in the last half of the novel.

While not a happy read (what Holocaust novel is?), it kept my interest and made me aware of some of the harsher details of life for Poland's Jews outside of the prison camps. Despite the distance Aron maintains and some of the unpleasant things that he does, I was empathetic towards his struggle.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

14. The Clancys of Queens by Tara Clancy

In fairness, I'm not going to rate this book because I only made it about halfway through (but having read over 100 pages, I'm counting it in my annual total). Life is too short and I have thousands of TBRs; one of them is bound to be more appealing. let me start by saying that I am not a huge fan of memoirs. But what I found irritating about this one is the writing style. It's 90% pure description, and I felt like I was being overloaded with minute details rather than experiencing any character development or insights. Here's an example, describing her as a child riding to her uncle's home in the back of a limo:

Popping open the seat belt that only two minutes ago I'd promised my dad I'd keep on for the whole ride, I unpeel the sweat-glued backs of my thighs from the leather seat and slide across the bench until I'm sitting at the very center with my feet propped on the carpeted hump in the floor. Then , in an attempt to spread myself out and make the space feel a bit smaller, I chest-pass my overnight bag all the way across the car to the bench seat opposite me. The bag is a nylon, eighties-style gym duffle, and looking at it lying there all small and limp has the opposite effect, but it feels good to be flinging shit around anyway.

At this point she launches into a minute description of every switch on the control panel and how she pushes every one on and off (windows, moon roof, locks, radio, mood lighting, temperature, intercom) and everything that is each of the drawers: "a refrigerator egg holder-style caddy holding a half dozen highball glasses . . . I pull the square crystal stopped from the first of three spirit-filled decanters . . . a tiny television, but I don't find a single Smurf, Jetson, or Flintstone . . .an ice bin filled with half pint glass soda bottles . . . " And on and on and on.

Or this on a flower bed: ". . . .a Technicolor jumble of hollyhocks,hibiscus, alium and gladiolas, brimming with bees and butterflies, which happened to frame the entrance to the next stop on my tour, the Barn. Though it had once been a fully functional, class, big red barn, Mark had turned it into one huge sitting room. He put in a proper wooden floor, added paned windows and double-glassed doors on the westernmost side, and faced all the chairs and sofas in that direction for watching the sunset. . . "

This style of writing just wears me out. I couldn't finish the book, but someone else might enjoy it.

>57 Cariola: - Great review and good information to know if I ever decide to read The Clancys of Queens.

>58 lkernagh: Thank you.

15. Autumn by Ali Smith

Like many of Ali Smith's books, there is an element of the experimental about Autumn. The plot is relatively thin--a young woman sits in a nursing home with a 101-year old former neighbor, and both ponder the past and the future, mostly inside their heads--and tumbles back and forth through time, but neither of these are flaws but rather but part and parcel of the experiment. This is a book that can't be pinned down to a mere plot description because it is so much more. It's about philosophy, the meaning and structure of time, and the role of memory. It's a critique of a world in which we face Brexit, Trump, renewed sexism, fear and hatred of immigrants, a demanding bureaucracy, suspicion and disconnection from one another, technology overload, disrespect for education and the arts, the need for love in such a world, and more. The key to enjoying this book is to simply go with its flow; let it take you where it wants you to go. Many segments have a dreamlike quality that is intensified by Smith's use of language. There are bits of poetry interjected, and some passages play on words (Smith is particularly fond of anaphora, the repetition of an initial word of phrase in succeeding sentences). Passages from Brave New World, The Tempest, A Tale of Two Cities, Keats, and more filter through the narrative. Images recur in different forms; "leaf/leaves" is perhaps the most apparent--an image particularly suited to the season of the book's title. The two main characters, Elisabeth Demand, a 30-something art historian who is about to lose her job, and Daniel Gluck, her slowly dying one-time neighbor stand at opposite edges of the season, one more fading summer than autumn, the other more early winter than fall.

So on to the characters. When Elisabeth and her mother first moved to their neighborhood, she found a friend in Daniel, a man who introduced her to art and music and opened her mind to new ideas. Daniel is the person who introduced her to the work of Pauline Boty, a now mostly forgotten pop artist who was the only woman at the heart of this '60s movement, and Boty becomes the topic of Elisabeth's PhD dissertation. Elisabeth shares professional memories of her research on Boty, including her rather tragic biography. But in his "long sleep" before death, Daniel's memories are much more personal. Elisabeth's mother is a strong secondary character who adds to the themes of the perseverance of hope, the necessity of love, and the possibility of change--all of which come as something of a surprise, as indeed they do in real life.

Autumn will not be for everyone, particularly not for those who prefer a linear plot, a straightforward narrative, and a readily decipherable theme. But if you are willing to let go and let the book carry you along, you might find yourself well-satisfied with the experience.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

16. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

It's the 1860s and Lib Wright, a nurse trained by Miss Nightingale herself, is about to begin a new assignment in a small Irish town.She is surprised to learn that her charge, 11-year old Anna O'Donnell, is reputed to be a miracle: she hasn't eaten for four months yet seems to be in glowing health. Lib's task, shared with another nurse, a nun named Sister Michael, is to monitor the girl 24/7 to ascertain whether or not she has eaten so much as a morsel. A non-Catholic (and in fact perhaps not a believer of any denomination), Lib is irritated by what she deems ignorance and superstition. Of course someone has been sneaking food to Anna, Lib assumes, and she is determined to find out how it has been done. In two weeks' time, she and Sister Michael are to report their findings to the town committee that hired them. Is Anna a saint or a fraud?

Lib is determined to maintain a professional detachment, tracking vital statistics in her notebook and scouring the girl's room for hidden crumbs. Yet she is drawn to Anna, a sweet and intelligent girl whose health suddenly starts fading. Her seemingly blind acceptance of her fate as "God's will" maddens Lib, but neither Anna's parents not her priest and not even her doctor will urge her to take nourishment. It is William Bryant, a visiting journalist, who helps Lib to begin unraveling the mystery of Anna's fast.

What appears to be a simple story with a lot of local color becomes more complicated in author Donoghue's hands, and it is fascinating to watch Lib herself change as she sorts out the subtle clues to Anna's past. And Lib, we learn, is not without secrets of her own. I've long been a fan of Donoghue's work, and The Wonder does not disappoint. I was gripped by the story and finished the novel in just a few days.

4.5 out of 5 stars

>61 Cariola: I enjoyed The Wonder I find that Emma Donoghue is a great story teller

>63 Cariola: I've loved most of her novels. Surprisingly, though, I haven't read Room--the subject matter just seemed too creepy for me (although I did see the movie).

>56 Cariola: Adding that one to the BlackHole!

>60 Cariola: I loved that one too.

>61 Cariola: Another one that needs to go into the BlackHole.

Great reviews of Autumn and The Wonder, Deborah. Both books are relatively high on my wish list, and I may pick them up later this month.

>65 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I've finally latched on to a streak of great books! Hope you enjoy these.

17. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Life is hard for citizens of Japanese-occupied Korea in the midst of World War II: food is scarce, males are conscripted into the army or as slaves, young girls are promised jobs but end up as comfort women. Sunja manages to live a more comfortable life than most in her mother's boarding house. She remembers the strength and perseverance of her deceased father, Hoonie, who was born with both a club foot and a cleft palate yet managed to provide for and love his family and help his neighbors whenever he was able. At 16, Sunja is seduced by an older man, believing that he will marry her; but when she tells him that she is pregnant, her reveals that he has a wife and three children in Japan and offers instead to make her his paid mistress; she refuses. Fortunately, a handsome Korean Christian minister whose life was saved by the ministrations of Sunja and her mother takes her as his wife, and the two of them move to join his brother in Japan, where, surely, life will be better.

Thus begins a generational saga of the struggle of Korean immigrants to Japan. I admit to being ignorant of the longstanding prejudice and harsh treatment of Koreans there, which is in many ways comparable to what African Americans suffered here in the US. Children are bullied because for their ethnic features and traditions, families are forced to live in a ghetto where few can ever hope to own their home, job discrimination abounds, options are limited and cause stereotypes to persist, etc. Even as recently as the 1970s, Korean boys had to register with the government at the age of 14, after which it would be determined if they could stay in Japan or were going to be deported.

I was moved by the story of Sunja, her husband Isak, her sons Noa and Mozasu, her brother-in law and his wife, and the rest of their growing (and, sadly, diminishing) family. The women especially showed strength and ingenuity, always finding a way to survive, if not to get a tiny bit ahead. Secrets and lies inevitably lead to conflicts, as with any other family, and the ups and downs of these hardworking people made for fascinating reading. My interest began to drop off, however, with the youngest generation. The characters in the last third seemed less fully realized, and the section seemed to rush through to the ending--a rush that nevertheless, for this reader, seemed to drag.

If you are wondering about "pachinko," it's a kind of upright pinball game popular in Japan, often associated with gangsters because it is a form of gambling for prizes. Sunja's youngest son enters the business but does his best to stay honest. Every night, the owners rock and tilt the pachinko machines to throw them off a little from the day before--just enough to ensure that the players' chances of winning decrease. I'm sure the author intends it to be a metaphor for the way the Koreans in Japan held on to a little hope, although the odds were stacked against them.

Pachinko would have been a solid four-star read for me, if not higher, except that my interest really waned in the last third. Bringing the story into the 1980s and beyond apparently meant bringing in a lot of drugs, alcohol, and sex, which I found rather boring and off tone from the rest of the novel; I just didn't care much about the aloof, self-destructive younger characters, even though I know I was supposed to feel that the years of intergenerational oppression were what brought them to this point. Still, I learned a lot from this book, including some things that put the current hostility between Japan and North Korea into perspective.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Happy Easter, Deborah!

Great review of Pachinko, Deborah.

Thanks, Darryl. I've been on a streak of very good books at last.

18. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

Once again I am in disagreement with the majority. In the past I've quite enjoyed some of Sebastian Barry's novels, but others have been less satisfying. This one falls into the latter category. One reason may be that I am just not much interested in the "Old West." This is the story of Thomas McNulty, a teenage immigrant from County Sligo, and his lover, who is always referred to with an adjective: "handsome John Cole." The two boys are sent to Wyoming and parts further west with a troop of US soldiers to hunt down Indians, and the scenes of slaughter are truly appalling--not just shooting and stabbing and clubbing, but frightened women and children huddling in huts that are burned down with them inside. And yes, we get full descriptions of the remains. Once the Civil War begins, they are sent to Tennessee where they slaughter rebels and more Indians--more of the same. Early on in the book, the boys are paid to dress as women and dance with lonely men; I guess this is Barry's way of setting up their gay romance, but it's pretty tacky. Thomas and John Cole later adopt an orphaned Sioux girl that they name Winona--their way of setting up a gay family. How contemporary of Mr. Barry! Eventually the boys get in troubles that they can't easily talk their way out of.

So why didn't I like this book? Well, as one reviewer on Amazon pointed out, there are many, many HUGE geographical, historical and common sense errors (such as the cavalry reaching California without having to cross the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada; or Winona being bitten by masses of mosquitos in Tennessee--in December while also being "raw with the cold"). This is sloppy research and sloppy detailing, and no amount of good writing can redeem it. I also felt the descriptions in the book were overwrought; I would have liked more character development instead. I'm sure it was the author's intention to maintain a kind of flat narration in a story that could easily fall into the maudlin, but it was so flat that it was boring. In the end, for all the reasons stated above, I simply could not suspend my disbelief or engage with any of the characters. I suspect that a lot of the praise the book has received is due to its difference from most of Barry's earlier novels, but it just didn't work for me.

2 out of 5 stars.

Some excellent reviews here, Deb. Have had to skip what you've written about Human Acts and New Boy until I've had a chance to formulate and write up my own impressions. (hate to read others' reviews before I've done my own. I can say that Han will be getting a thumb's up from me. Chevalier, not so much.

Loved your thoughts on Essex Serpent and Book of Aron. Jim Shepard teaches at Williams College here in Western Mass and I've heard him speak and do readings a few times. A wonderfully engaging and approachable speaker. I think that comes through in his writing.

19. The North Water by Ian McGuire

If violence is not your cup of tea, you'd best skip The North Water. In addition to the gory details of whaling, seal hunting, and bear killing, the author offers up people getting their brains bashed out with bricks, stabbings, stranglings, rape (of both males and females), skewering--you name it, if it's violent and repulsive (lots of shit and vomit), you'll find it here. Of course, it adds up to a brutal picture of life among hardened sailors on a whaling voyage which is, I'm sure, partly rooted in research. But this particular ship seems to have more than it's share of criminal types. The captain and the ship owner are in it not so much for the profitable whale oil as for the insurance they hope to collect in sending the ship to be smashed by icebergs (with little thought to the men who will lose their lives). The worst among them is a man named Drax. In the very first chapter, we find him stabbing a man, bashing another with a brick, raping and murdering a child, and his personal crime wave continues throughout the novel. The only redeemable (but certainly not admirable) character is Irish doctor Patrick Sumner, who joins the crew because, having been framed for a crime in India and drummed out of the army, he can find no other work.

While I admired some of the writing, I found it hard to "like" a book so full of violence, explosions of bodily fluids, and the worst of human behavior. I couldn't help but compare it--unfavorably--to His Bloody Project, a novel that, while violent, at least gave the reader some psychological justification to back it up.

3 out of 5 stars.

20. Ghochar Ghachar by Vivek Shanbhag

Ghachar Ghochar is a very short and darkly comic novel that explores the problems a family encounters when making the socioeconomic leap from scraping by to being well off. The unnamed narrator lives in a small house in Bangalore with his parents, sister, and uncle. When his father loses his job, he decides to risk it all and start his own spice company with his younger brother. They purchase large amounts of spices wholesale and repackage them in smaller, more convenient packets. The business is successful, the family moves to a larger home, and the son collects a comfortable monthly salary for doing nothing at all.

But the change in status is not totally positive. The family members that struggled together are now more often at one another's throats, and they seem to have more ties to the objects they purchase than to one another. When the narrator marries the girl of his dreams, trouble rears its ugly head. Anita is appalled to learn that her husband doesn't really work; how can a man have any pride or sense of identity if all he does is sit around and rely on his family's money and a future inheritance? She questions the ethics of his shady uncle and the family's cruel rejection of a woman with apparent ties to him.

The framework here is that the narrator is telling his story to Vincent, a waiter in a cafe that he frequents and who he seems to believe has special insights. There's an unexpected twist at the end--one that came a bit too abruptly for this reader. I would have liked the author to have fleshed out the story a bit; there's definitely room for some deeper characterization. It's a quick read, good for an evening's entertainment.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

21. The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church

This novel has gotten a lot of high praise from readers whose opinions I trust, but it did absolutely nothing for me. About 1/4 through, I remarked that it seemed like chick lit--just another story about a young woman who marries an older man (her professor) and gives up her own dreams to support his. I hoped things would change as I got further into the book, but no. The husband got more selfish, the wife more passive but also more whiny, and then she enters into a clandestine affair with a hippie 20 years her junior. So the husband may work in Los Alamos and Meri (whose silly full name is Meridian) may have dreams of becoming an ornithologist, but that doesn't elevate it above standard chick lit fare. Oh, and there's a big statement supporting women in science stuck on at the end. Blech. I gave it two stars for the info about crow communities.

2 out of 5 stars.

22. Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman

Upon finishing this novel, I wished that I had read a decent biography instead. I didn't know too much about Margaret Sanger, aside that she was a crusader for birth control, but this book made her pretty superficial and unlikable. Driven by the memory of her mother going through 18 pregnancies, Margaret, who started out as a nurse, devoted her life to helping women learn about family planning. Well, that and, if you buy what this novel puts forth, screwing just about every man that she encountered. No sooner do they meet than Margaret is feeling an electric spark and recognizing how attractive she is, and before you know it, she's lifting her skirts wherever she happens to be. (And the writing in these scenes is just awful--repetitive and cliché.) I guess this makes more sense now that I know that she hung around with the socialist/free love crowd in the early part of the century (Jack Reid, Emma Goldman, etc.), but it got tiresome, almost like a Hollywood tell-all namedropping famous lovers. She expresses some guilt about being a "bad mother" to her three children, and on the whole, Terrible Virtue does depict her as one. But of course, motherhood is supposedly one of the sacrifices she made for her cause. She feels especially guilty about her daughter's death; young Peggy came down with pneumonia during one of her speaking tours, and although Margaret made it hope to nurse her in the hospital, she blames herself for not having been there to prevent the illness in the first place. Throughout the book, she sees all the women who come to her for advice as Peggys, and she is haunted by dreams of her dead daughter, with whom she tries to converse through mediums. My guess is that the author intended to portray her as a woman who suffered from the personal sacrifices she made in order to change other women's lives, but she often came across to me as selfish, ambitious, and vain. This novel sparked enough interest in Margaret Sanger to send me off to look for a reputable biography, but I really can't recommend it.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

Wishing you a lovely weekend, Deborah.

>78 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul! Hopefully my next book will be a winner!

23. The First Diana: Almost a Princess: The Tragic Story of the First Lady Diana Spencer by Sarah J. Freeman

This was truly awful. It was promoted as a biography of Diana Spencer, granddaughter of John and Sarah Churchill, the first Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, but it became clear a few pages in that it was an "imagined" biography. For one thing, there isn't much research to go on: Diana died childless at age 25, so she really didn't leave much of an impact. For another, it is crammed with really bad dialogue, most of it between Diana and her grandmother, who is caring for her in her last weeks (she died of tuberculosis). The writing itself is on the level of what I would expect from a 7th grader: a simple vocabulary, lots of repetition, overly emotional, and heavy on description of objects in the room. Every time the Dowager Duchess addresses her granddaughter, she calls her "my dear little Di." That soon got exceedingly irritating! As Diana's life was short and uneventful, so, too--thankfully--was this book. All it covered was her deathbed days and some reminiscences of her grandmother's plan to marry her to the Prince of Wales (which didn't work out) and her unhappy marriage to the Duke of Bedford, which resulted in several miscarriages.

In an Author's Note, Freeman announces that she plans to write more "biographies" of women in history about whom little is known, using "artistic license." Let's hope she learns how to use more art and less license. I would have given this book a solid rating of 0, except that then it wouldn't count in the overall rating, and I want to be sure that any potential readers are forewarned.

Note: Amazon's blurb says that this book is a #1 Best Seller. I'd like to know where. Maybe within the author's own family?

1/2 star, just to make an impact on its overall rating; it doesn't deserve even that.

Stopping by with "Hellos" and making note of the reading you have been doing lately. Very happy you mentioned upfront to avoid the McGuire novel "If violence is not your cup of tea." Duly noted and avoiding.... ;-)

>81Happy to spare your stomach and your sensibilities.

24. House of Names by Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin can always be counted on for excellent writing and intriguing topics. In this new novel, he retells the story well known from the Oresteia in sections focused on Clytemnestra, her son Orestes, and her daughter Elektra; only Clytemnestra's sections employ a first person narrator (and one is a ghost). The novel begins with the familiar story of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to appease the gods and gain a fair wind to pursue his enemies. While his action led to victory in the Trojan War, it also spurred the downfall of his house as Clytemnestra carries out her revenge and together, years later, Orestes and Elektra avenge their father's murder. In addition to giving the reader a deeper window into the psyches of these characters, Toibin fills in the missing years, imagining what had happened when Clytemnestra sent her son into safety, only to have him spirited away by the henchmen of her lover and accomplice, Aegisthes, with a group of kidnapped boys. One of the book's most interesting sections is when Orestes escapes with two friends, Leander and Mitros. The three end up settling for five years with an elderly blind woman whose sons have been conscripted to the wars. This unexpected pastoral sojourn ends up being one of the few positive representations of family in the novel--but, alas, it is all too short.

Orestes grows into a man of promise with the potential of being a better warrior and a better king than his father, yet, regardless of what he does, he can never quite fill the place that was meant to be his. Toibin leaves the reason for his failure somewhat vague. Is it because he succumbs to the control of his vengeful sister, Elektra? Or because he loses the respect of Leander, his friend and lover? Perhaps he has just been away too long, or perhaps he and his family are cursed?

Initially I wondered why Toibin didn't include the points of view of Aegisthes or Agamemnon. I can't be sure, but I think it may be because he wanted to focus on blood--blood spilled and blood as one's genetic inheritance, and the way that blood influences a family and the events surrounding it for generations. To do that, the focus clearly had to remain on Clytemnestra--herself the result of a violent rape--and her offspring.

My only complaint is that House of Names has a rather abrupt, somewhat unfathomable conclusion that left me unsatisfied. I feel like I need to go back and reread the last section, since I don't quite know what Toibin was attempting to do here. But all in all, it was a good read (especially on the heels of some really bad ones).

4 out of 5 stars.

25. The Practice House by Laura McNeal

It's the 1930s, and orphaned sisters Leenie and Aldine McKenna live unhappily with their maiden aunt in a small Scottish town, longing for adventure. It comes their way in the form of two American Mormon missionaries. Leenie falls in love with one, marries, and moves to New York, and Aldine soon follows. But ultimately she wants more than a life dependent on her sister. She answers an ad in the paper for a teaching position in Kansas. But all is not as it seems. When she arrives, Aldine discovers that Ansel Price, who posted the ad, had not yet secured a salary for her nor a place to stay. She ends up moving in with Price, his wife, and their three children and assumes her role in the classroom.

And thus begins the novel's main conflict. It's the Great Depression, and Price is a farmer in the Dust Bowl: they are having trouble making ends meet, and the last thing Ellie Price wants is another mouth to feed--especially a pretty, cultured one with a charming accent. Ellie wants to move the family to her sister's home in California where life seems to be better. As to the Price children, the youngest, Neva, who suffers from a chronic respiratory condition caused by the dust, adores Aldine--as does their son, Clare (Clarence, or as Aldine pronounces it, to his ear, "Clay-dance"). Charlotte, the oldest, shares her mother's resentment. When Ansel himself becomes totally captivated by Aldine, you just know that hardship and tragedy will follow, and they do.

While the story was somewhat cliché, I did enjoy the depiction of farm life in Dust Bowl Kansas and the details on the Harvey Houses, a chain of hotels/restaurants established near train depots in the West. Ellie and Ansel both worked at the Emporia Harvey House when they first me, and Aldine takes a job there when the Prices leave Kansas. In California, an influential older man falls for Charlotte and creates a job for her as teacher in a "practice house"--i.e., an expanded home economics classroom--where high school girls can learn to cook, sew, and keep house. So overall, an OK story with some interesting background information.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Great reviews of House of Names and The Practice House, Deborah. I'll definitely read Tóibín's latest novel, and hopefully it will be chosen for the upcoming Booker Prize longlist.

Hi Deb. I'm sorry to be so out of touch.

>44 Cariola: I checked to see that I own a copy of this book. I'm going hunting through the book piles to find it.

I was going to ask if you are reading more since you retired. But, in looking at all lthe books you read, my question was answered.

All good wishes for a great summer.

Hi, Linda. Be prepared for very graphic violence in Human Acts.

I actually think I'm reading fewer books now, but that's in large part because I'm no longer rereading things I'm teaching and not listening to books on a daily commute.

Every time I see the pic at the top of your thread, I'm distracted by her strange chest/cleavage.

Deb

Perhaps we can get together this summer. It would be great to see you again.

>88 Nickelini: That was the idea back then--same as now! There are actually portraits of Queen Anne with the "neckline" being more of a "breastline," going entirely below the breasts.

>89 Whisper1: That would be lovely, Linda. Let me know when you are free--I plan to be around all summer.

26. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

The novel begins in a Middle Eastern town besieged by rebels, a situation that becomes increasingly worse. Two young people, Nadia and Saeed, meet at a night class and begin to fall in love. In their separate ways, each of them is torn between tradition and the new. Saeed is religious, keeping to his daily prayers and (at least initially) vowing to remain chaste until marriage; yet he smokes pot, likes jazz, and keeps a fashionably stubbled beard. Nadia dresses traditionally in a black robe but never prays (she wears it to deflect male interest when she is on the street), loves her city, and has had lovers before Saeed. Their falling in love parallels their city's falling apart. Things get so bad that people stretch black plastic trash bags over their windows or push furniture to cover them; passing by your window has become an open invitation to snipers. After Saeed's mother is killed, the couple move in with his father, and they begin to talk about the rumors they have heard of secret doors throughout the city through which, for a price, one can escape. Saeed's father refuses to leave his home, but he and Nadia decide to pay an agent who promises to lead them to one of the magical doors. At first they fear they have been swindled, but then the day arrives, and they pass through the first in a series of doors, first to Mykonos, then to London, then to a newly created city in California. Their travels tell the story of refugees and the problems they face as they struggle to find a place to fit in and to settle down.

In many ways, the book is a parable of the present. We see a country torn by religious fanaticism; people fleeing in hopes of a better life but ending up in tent cities or as squatters; "nativists" blaming the newcomers for crime, loss of jobs, the burden on social programs, etc. And along the way, as life becomes a little less dangerous with each step, things begin to change between Nadia and Saeed as well.

There were many things that I admired about this book: the often lyrical language, the depiction of a city under siege and freedoms restricted, the persistence of two lovers hoping for a better life, the many parallels to situations we see almost every night on the news. I have to admit that I'm not quite clear on the theme or message Hamid wants to convey, or exactly what he means by making a parallel between the rise and fall of the lovers and the refugee crisis. It seemed almost that he was saying that people will bond in times of crisis, but when life is going smoothly, they focus on themselves and just move on . . . And I'm not fond of magical realism, so I found the mysterious doors rather annoying as a device to move Saeed and Nadia from one city to another. If only it was that easy for a refugee to get from Syria to a holding camp in Greece to a European sanctuary city to the USA (and these refugees can cross back over any time they wish). My solution was to just ignore the doors and follow the characters wherever they went. Despite these few frustrations, Exit West retained my interest enough to merit four stars.

4 out of 5 stars.

27. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken

I've always liked Al Franken--both his comedic talent and his work in the Senate--but this is the first of his books that I've read. To a great extent, it's biographical. There's a little about his parents and his early life, how he met his wife Frannie, the birth of his first child, and so forth, but most of the book is focused on his decision to run for the Senate, his first campaign, his adjustment to the political life in DC, and his relationships with his colleagues in Washington. (Who would have guessed that he is friends with Jeff Sessions and that Sessions' wife knitted his first grandchild's favorite blanket?) Of course, there's a good bit of humor thrown in (the episode of a campaign stop at a Native American ritual where he was told NOT to dance is hilarious), but much of the account is honest and straightforward. Franken comes across as a caring man who truly want to honor the memory of his friend Paul Wellstone by doing his best for the people of Minnesota. It's pretty up-to-date: Franken describes going to the Trump inauguration and his conflicts with Jess Sessions, Betsy DeVos, and others in confirmation hearings. He doesn't touch on the most recent White House "scandals," although he does at one point refer to Trump "becoming what we all feared he would be."

I listened to the audio version, read by Franken himself--probably the best option.

4 out of 5 stars.

I love Al Franken

28. Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt

It's 1654, and Catrin, a young widow who lives in a small Dutch farm community, is plagued by rumors that she was somehow involved in her husband's sudden death. When the opportunity to take a housekeeper position in Amsterdam arrives, she jumps at the chance. Catrin enjoys her life in the big city and is especially intrigued by her mistress's painting lessons, even though her mistress hasn't much talent; she longs to try her hand at painting herself. But her past catches up with her, and Catrin feels compelled to move again, this time to the smaller city of Delft where she finds as a pottery painter, relying on her talent in in depicting scenes in midnight blue. Will she be able to escape her past once again, or will her secrets come to light?

On the whole, this was an interesting story that depicts the hardships and limitations faced by women in the seventeenth century and the strength of those who, like Catrin, took them on. Details of life in the art world and the rise of the Delft pottery industry are also intriguing, and Catrin befriends a number of artists, including young Vermeer. The plague features prominantly--as does, inevitably romance (wait--make that plural). But Midnight Blue is more than the usual historical romance. There are a number of twists and turns as the plot develops, and Catrin is a fairly complex character, if somewhat defined by the times in which she lives. Simone van der Vlugt is a Dutch writer, but a few of her books have been translated into English; however, since they are all crime novels or thrillers, I will not be looking for them.

4 out of 5 stars.

Midnight Blue sounds interesting. Just checked and my local library doesn't have it so I'll have to checked elsewhere like Amazon. But that is an odd touchstone - only shows up in German.

29. Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb

Todd Aaron, a man in his 40s, has spent so much time in an institution (Peyton Living Center) that he is known as one of their "ambassadors," assigned to give tours to incoming patients. It's never exactly stated what Todd's problem is, but clearly he is on the autism spectrum. His voice (as narrated by Bronson Pinchot) is flat, except when he is overly anxious or afraid; he doesn't like to be touched; he has some odd habits and practices repetitive gestures. Things happen to and around Todd, but he doesn't react as most people would; he has little sense of appropriate v. inappropriate and is often taken advantage of This is his story, narrated by Todd from the perspective of the world as he sees it. He takes us back to memories of the father who brutalized him, the mother who loved him and carted him off to a series of doctors and institutions, the brother who was cruel to him. We see what it's like for Todd to almost fall in love with the one-eyed Martine, to long to be welcomed into his brother's home, to fear the staff member he calls Mike the Apron.

Call me jaded, but I found this novel just a bit too sweet and many of the characters stereotypical. I stuck with it to the end, but overall, it was a mediocre read/listen for me.

2.5 out of 5 stars.

30. The Visionist by Rachel Urquhart

Polly Kimball has had a rough life on the family farm. Her drunken father sexually molests her, beats and belittles her mother, and tried to drown her baby brother in a bucket, leaving him brain damaged. When she hears him mumbling about a plan to be rid of his family and sell off the farm, she knows that she has to do something to get them to safety. When her father rolls home in a drunken stupor and flops into bed, Polly hitches up the horse and cart, bundles he mother and brother into it, and goes into the house for one last look at the man who has tormented them all. Later she says that she wanted to see him asleep, vulnerable, weak, and that she dropped the oil lamp she was holding by accident when he turned towards her. The last thing she remembers seeing as they drove off is the house in flames and her father, afire, stumbling into the yards.

With no money and no other recourse, Polly's mother May decides it would be best to leave her two children in a nearby Shaker settlement, expecting that they will become members and stay there for life. When Polly gets caught up in antics of a Shaker meeting, many of the residents believe that she is a Visionist, sent by Mother Ann to give them words of wisdom. Many, especially her roommate Sister Charity, believe that her arrival is a blessing, but Elder Sister Agnes is less sure . . .

Meanwhile, several lawyers and businessmen and a fire inspector are looking for the Kimballs, hoping to buy or take by default the homestead and land that originally belonged to May's father.

I was initially drawn into this novel and hoped that it would provide insights into the Shaker community, but I really didn't learn much that I didn't already know. Polly's story is a sad one; she is a young girl who has had to learn how to survive. The wrangling over the Kimball property was not a direction that I expected the book to take, and I don't really think it was the best option. Urquhart tells the tale in sections alternating between three narrators: Polly, Sister Charity, and Simon, the fire inspector.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Catching up with your reading, Deb. I think you've saved me from a couple stinkers I might otherwise have tried. Unfortunately, I'm obligated to review New Boy because I got an ER copy of it. I thought the premise of this retelling sounded a bit of a stretch, but I was willing to give Chevalier the benefit of the doubt. I must at least TRY...

>98 laytonwoman3rd: I stuck with New Boy as far as I could for the same reason. I have liked quite a few of Chevalier's books, but this one is truly awful. I wasn't keen on At the Edge of the Orchard either.

31. Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to read any new books on the Tudors. Yes, I am rather a Tudor junkie But the point is: what is there to learn that's really new? And in fictional accounts, most new approaches are highly unsatisfying, usually sexing up the heroines and adding a lot of anachronistic 20th-century feminism. At least Alison Weir did not fall into that pit; thankfully, she's too much the historian first. That, however, creates another stumbling block for the reader: Truth be told, Katherine makes a boring protagonist. She is too good, too righteous, too oppressed, too long-suffering, and, sadly, just too darn attached to that loser Henry. It would be pitiful to see her on her deathbed, praying for Henry's eternal soul and mooning over memories of the honeymoon days, if only I didn't want to slap her and scream, "It's over, capiche? Snap out of it!"

Of course, one can't totally blame Katherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, for not wanting to give up her rights and title as queen and for refusing to be locked away in a convent, as Henry wished. But in Weir's depiction, she never once gets angry at Henry for rejecting her, whine as she will about being his "one true wife" in God's eyes. When the Catholic church has been dissolved and your ex sets himself up as the head of the new Church of England whose archbishop declares your marriage invalid, it's over in everyone's eyes but your own (and maybe the Pope's, but his only intervention was to excommunicate Henry, to whom it no longer mattered). History is history, however, and it would be pointless to hope for Katherine to turn over a new leaf and either fight harder or start a new life--that just wouldn't have happened.

So here we are, with yet another dull novel about a dull woman. Weir just came out with a novel about Anne Boleyn, so apparently she plans to walk us through all six wives. (And unfortunately I bought this one before I started on her Katherine novel. At least Anne is more inherently interesting, so there's so hope.)

I'm giving this one 3 stars out of 5, just for not bastardizing the history.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy

32. It has been twenty years since Roy published a work of fiction, the Booker winning The God of Small Things. In between, she has focused on political causes and nonfiction, also mostly political in nature. One of her pet causes is the struggle for Kashmiri independence from India, and, sadly, her enthusiasm for the cause overwhelms this much-anticipated new novel.

The novel opens with a metaphor that won't be clear until nearly the conclusion: the vultures are dying, hanging in the trees or leaving empty spaces among the branches. Roy then moves to the story of the novel's most interesting and empathetic character, a child named Afta whose mother tries to hide the fact that he is a hermaphrodite for as long as possible. But gender will out, and Aftab soon becomes Anjum, dressing and acting like a woman and eventually moving in with a small "family" of hijra--hermaphrodites, cross-dressers, and transgender persons who, the author tells us, will never be accepted because they have no firm identity or place in Indian society. Traditionally, the hijra live on the outskirts of society, often making a living by begging or prostitution; they are known for invading wedding parties, hoping to get paid to remove their raucous presence. By taking us inside this little group, Roy shows us the depth of their familial relationships as well as their rivalries. Anjum is particularly resourceful: she sets up a thriving, if not exactly five-star, guest house on top of a cemetery near an approved protest area. Most of the guests are, in one way or another, involved in political causes--protesting, fleeing persecution, waiting for the time to strike.

It's at this point that the novel takes a sharp turn away from Anjum to focus on Tilo, a woman whose great love, Musa, is a Kashmiri terrorist. This section takes up at least half of the book, and have to admit that I struggled to complete it at this point. Any thought of a cohesive plot went out the door as the various points of the plot spun back and forth through time, and the narrative, while holding glimmers of interest, focused mainly on political diatribe (the Kashmiri cause). I started to find the characters, who often disappeared or went in disguise, confusing. Roy attempts to link back to the characters in Anjum's guest house, but it's hard to keep everyone and everything in order (which leads me to believe that the book might be appreciated more on a second reading--preferably with a guide). When the story returned to the guest house inhabitants at the end, I did feel a sense of things coming together--but I was left wondering just what I had missed in that very long central section. I am sure that Roy wanted to make statements about freedom and oppression (the more you defeat us, the more you destroy yourselves), gender, family, class--maybe too many big ideas for one novel.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is an ambitious work, but perhaps not a wholly successful one. The writing itself is stellar, and Roy shows her ability to create intriguing characters. As I mentioned, a rereading might do it better justice, but I'm not sure that I would be inclined to pick it up again.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

PBS has a new series on the wives of Henry VIII- I saw part of the first -" The Six Queens of Henry VIII"

I think that might be the one with Lucy Worsley--she's very good.

33. A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall

I can't quite explain why I downloaded this audiobook as it's just not the kind of thing I usually enjoy. Maybe it was the fact that it interweaves the stories of five different characters (a frame to which I'm partial), or maybe it was because it's set mainly in Kew Gardens, a place that I loved visiting. Had I paid more attention to comparisons to Audrey Nifffenegger and Curtis Sittenfield, I probably would have passed on it. Tor Udall's first novel focuses on the interrelated stories of five people, each of them drawn to Kew, and each of them suffering from some kind of loss. There's Jonah, a recently widowed musician/music teacher; Chloe, an emotionally damaged young artist and master of origami; Milly, a little girl who seems to wander aimlessly through Kew with no parents in sight; Harry, an introverted gardener who seems to trust no one; and Audrey, Jonah's wife, whose life has been blighted by a series of miscarriages. Audrey is the link that eventually brings them all together. Initially, I thought the book was relying a lot on flashbacks, but I came to realize that only some of the characters were on "this side"--or, perhaps more rightly, that some of them had not yet let go and passed over.

As stated, this isn't exactly my usual fare, but there were some things to admire. Udall did create empathy for each of the suffering characters, and there are glorious descriptions of Kew through the seasons and the effects of nature--particularly plants--on the human psyche. This line from Amazon's blurb may say it best: "This novel is a love letter to a garden and a hymn to lost things."

3.5 out of 5 stars.

What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons

Well, the hype for this very short and very self-indulgent fictional memoir eludes me. Thandi was raised in Pennsylvania, her father a light-skinned African-American professor and her mother a "colored" South African. This sets up the narrator for conflicts of race, nationality, class, generation, etc., all of which are pretty stereotypical, in my opinion. Initially it's just a coming of age story, how Thandi resists her mother's conservative values as she seeks out darker-skinned friends at school and refuses to straighten her hair. But the attachment between the two women is revealed when the mother develops cancer, and Thandi drops out of college to care for her. Her grief forms the latter part of the novel. I had no interest whatsoever in this young woman's various explorations of sex and drugs, periodically interrupted by news from South Africa that feels like an attempt to add something intellectual to the book and to make a more significant contribution to a discussion of race. A real disappointment, thankfully short and quite forgettable.

1.5 out of 5 stars.

35. Bad Dreams and Other Stories by Tessa Hadley

Tessa Hadley's short stories are always deceptive, in a good way. They come off as small tales of ordinary people (a child plagued by nightmares, a housekeeper, two sisters at odds over the sale of their parents; home), often in mundane situations. But what Hadley brings to their stories is a remarkable level of authenticity of character. She has mastered the language of thought, of interior emotions like few other writers today. These are people who think as we tend to think, who feel in the ways that we often feel, and yet she conveys this not through vague, abstract words but through concrete objects, visual snapshots, lingering sounds, metaphors. It's quite a skill, and it serves her well.

The ten stories in this collection vary greatly yet are all linked by a moment of self-discovery. In "Abduction," set in the 1960s, a teenaged girl left home alone on break accepts a ride from three unknown boys. It might have gone the way of Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are you Going? Where Have you Been?" but Hadley is too perceptive to fall for that trap. In "One Saturday Morning," a 10-year old opens the door to an unknown acquaintance of her parents while they run errands. Their conversation, and the one that she overhears when her parents come home, give her a first peek into adult life and a moment of maturing empathy. Claire, the focus of "Flight," is a successful woman who returns to visit her working class sister, using the birth of a nephew as an excuse for reconciliation, but perhaps her intentions are not as altruistic as she would like to believe. A housekeeper reads her employer's diary, uncovering secrets that change their relationship. A designer is called on to create a trousseau for a former classmate.

Simple stories, simple moments, extraordinary insights into human nature conveyed through Hadley's perceptiveness and masterful style.

4 out of 5 stars.

36. The Heart's invisible Furies by John Boyne

This is the autobiography of a fictional character, Cyril Avery. Born out of wedlock in 1945 to an Irish teenager who was drummed out of the parish by her priest, Cyril is adopted by an upper class couple who constantly remind him that he is not "a real Avery." But this is not the only thing that sets him apart from the other boys: he realizes at an early ago that he is homosexual and obsessed with Julian, the son of his father's barrister. Cyril's story becomes the struggle of so many young men forced to closet their sexual identity in the 1960s, ''70s, and '80s. When he leaves repressive Ireland for Amsterdam, he finds true love for the first time--but, alas, when the AIDS epidemic hits, renewed bigotry against gays disrupts his life yet again. His story manages to end end on a higher but rather contrived note with the acceptance of newly-found family.

I almost gave up on this novel about halfway through, when it seemed to lose all its humor and became a gay coming of age story, but I stuck with it. Boyne is attempting something rather epic here, letting one man's story stand in for the history of homosexuality over the last five decades and in several locations. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. He also strives to bring the characters full circle: unknowingly, Cyril keeps running across his birth mother, and the figure of Julian, his first crush, makes several reappearances. An interesting effort, if not always successful.

4 out of 5 stars.

37. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie

I've come late Sherman Alexie's work, having read only a handful of poems and a few short stories, but I certainly know him by reputation as our foremost contemporary Native American writer. Much of his fiction is suspected to be autobiographical, but You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is his only declared memoir. It focuses on Alexie's conflicted relationship with his mother Lillian, and it is through the lens of that relationship that nearly all the events described in this book are filtered. Lillian was a generous woman, always ready to help a neighbor in need; she taught the dying Spokane Indian language (but not to her own children), and she created quilts that embody tribal history. But as a mother, she was often neglectful and sometimes downright cruel. She was a drinker, and she ignored the pain that Sherman endured at the hands of bullies; she let the electricity get shut off in the middle of winter, yet she worked through the night finish a quilt, the payment for which would get the electricity turned on again. When Sherman was only 11, she told him that she was a child born of rape, and he later learned that his sister had been told that Mary, their eldest sibling, was also the child of a rape. (The photo on the book's cover is not of his mother and Sherman but of Lillian and this sister, Mary.) Sherman is as haunted by the fact that she revealed bits of her secrets to each child as by the history of rape in his family tree. Yet the maternal ties kept binding, no matter how far away Sherman moved, no matter how long he went without visiting his mother, despite successes and failures, health crises, and happy moments. And of course, Alexie's memoir is in many ways the story of the rez and the Native Americans who grew up there--the bullies, the criminals, the ones who died young of drugs, booze, or violence, the too-young mothers of too many children, the hopeful and those who had lost all hope.

Alexie tells his story in a series of 78 short essays and 78 poems, and the combination is powerful. I listened to the book on audio, read by Alexie himself, and I can't recommend it highly enough. He is, of course, the perfect reader of his own history and his own words. At times, emotion overwhelms his voice, but this only adds to the poignancy. I was left both sad and uplifted, and with a desire to read more of Alexie's work.

5 out of 5 stars.

38. Doc by Mary Doria Russell

I wasn't sure quite what to expect from this book, which was a gift from my LT Santa last year. I put off reading it for a while, mainly because I am not a fan of fiction set in the Old West--cowboys, gunfighters, all that stuff. What made this book work for me is that is is very character driven, and the characters are very well drawn. John Henry Holliday, a young, tubercular dentist from Georgia, moves west in hopes of recovering his health, first to Texas, then to Dodge City, Kansas. Three he meets a host of well-known western figures: Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp and his brothers Morgan and James, and a Hungarian whore named Kate who stays with him for the last nine years of his life. Doc establishes his dental office (and even crafts a set of teeth for Wyatt), but he makes his living mainly by gambling--with the help of Kate, who keeps an eye out for easily duped visitors that he might engage in a few rounds.

Dodge is a crooked town run by crooked politicians--not the best place for an honest lawman like Wyatt. Much of the novel unravels the local corruption, including the murder of an Indian boy of whom both Doc and Wyatt had been fond. And just where does Bat Masterson get the money for all his fine clothes? Little mysteries unfold amidst the growing friendships at the heart of the novel, and even minor characters--like Wyatt's woman Mattie Blalock or the German priest who occasionally comes to town--are so unique that they earn the reader's interest and empathy.

In the end, I still can't say that I'm much interested in the Wild West, but Russell has spun a darn good story here and has brought her characters to life.

4 out of 5 stars.

39. The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout

Stout's brief book is designed to help laypersons identify the sociopathic persons around them. Often charming and charismatic, the sociopath plays on the emotions of others while he himself is devoid of any conscience or sense of empathy for others. They feel no sense of guilt, shame. or remorse and look at life as a series games designed to dominate and "win" over others. Stout provides several extensive examples to illustrate the primary traits of sociopaths. Her goal is to warn "the rest of us" to be wary of the 4% of the population who are sociopaths. If you've ever found yourself in a relationship--with a colleague, friend, or even family member--that leaves you wondering what happened and how you didn't see through this person's sick game, you will appreciate Stout's tips and the explanations that leave you knowing that you are not alone.

And it's not a bad read for Americans in the midst of the Trump regime . . .

3.5 out of 5 stars.

40. Border Crossing by Pat Barker

I loved Barker's Regeneration trilogy and her other historical novels. This one takes a quite different turn, and I can't say that it appealed to me at all. The main character, a psychiatrist, saves a young man from drowning in a suicide attempt, and to his surprise, he recognizes a former patient against whom he had testified in a murder trial. Danny Miller, then ten years old, was convicted of killing an old woman, in large part on the basis of Tom Seymour's testimony. But over the years, he began to question his own analysis. When Danny asks to see Tom professionally in order to come to terms with his past, the lives of both are affected.

Border Crossing is described in blurbs as a psychological thriller--which probably explains why it did nothing at all for me.

1 out of 5 stars.

Stopping by to get caught up. Looks like you have had a great batch of reading... except for >105 Cariola: and >111 Cariola:, that is.

>112 lkernagh: Yes, I've been on a run, trying to read a bunch so that I can actually have hopes of making my goal of 75 books read by the end of the year. There are some good ones in there!

41. Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff

I enjoyed Groff's last two novels, Arcadia and Fates and Furies, so I decided to try this 2009 contemporary short story collection. Each story features a woman in a crisis situation, the result of which changes her life. In "Lucky Chow Fun," the teenage female captain of an otherwise all-male high school swim team, joins the guys for a night out at a shady Chinese restaurant where events lead her to consider the lives of the young women who live and work there. An American woman, "The Wife of the Dictator," is observed by the women in the compound as her marriage and her husband's situation alter. An attorney who has given up work to be a stay-at-home mom befriends a charismatic but rather crazy woman who she meets in a poetry class. A Midwestern farm girl on her honeymoon falls in lust with an international playboy--a lust that lasts her entire life--in "Sir Fleeting." A group of hotel guests skirt around their varied relationships, all wondering about the strange woman upstairs and the possibility of a crime in their midst in "Fugue." My favorite of the nine stories here is "Watershed," which focuses on a young widow who blames herself for her husband's accidental death. Here, Groff creates a tone of mourning that runs as an undercurrent through the entire piece, even as the narrator tells of their childhood and the years-later chance meeting that led to the return of the wife, a professional storyteller, to her small hometown and their marriage.

If you are looking for an uplifting read, this probably isn't it. Most of the stories do not end end happily, and most involve a crime, or at least a serious mistake. But Groff is a wonderful writer, and she has a talent for conveying atmosphere in subtle ways.

4 out of 5 stars.

42. Shelter by Jung Yun

Let me start by saying that this was a difficult read, not because of the writing, but because of the violence, the familial dysfunction, and the unlikable, self-absorbed main character. Kyung Cho, a 35-year old professor, and his Irish-American wife have been living way beyond their means, and it is catching up with them. How could a smart man get into such a bind? Well, for one thing, he is constantly competing with his extremely wealthy father, who is also a professor but one who is valued for the grants he brings to the university; in fact, Kyung feels certain that he never would have been hired had it not been for his father. For another, as Kyung later reveals, he strives to give his wife Gillian (whose lower middle class background he constantly brings up) everything she wants; for him, it's a way to express love, which he seems unable to do in the usual ways. As the novel begins, Kyung and Gillian are preparing to sell their house, and they soon learn that, in a bad market, they will have to take a loss.

But then an unthinkable tragedy strikes Kyung's parents: they are brutally attacked in an armed home invasion, along with their young Bosnian maid. In its wake, secrets and emotions boil to the surface. We learn that Kynug was raised in a loveless, abusive household: although he tried, as a boy, to protect his mother from beatings, she turned her own rage on him. The tragedy could be a chance for healing between the parents and son, but none of them seem open to the possibility. It is Gillian who insists that all three victims--Mae, Jin, and the maid Marina--stay in their home to recover, despite Kyung's resistance. He is so lacking in empathy that he suggests his parents pay to send Marina home to war-tone Bosnia, where her parents will surely disown her because she has been raped. In fact, the only emotion he expresses is angry resentment that his 4-year old son forms a bond with Jin, something he himself never shared with either his father or his son. And resentment towards the church "family" that seem more capable of nurturing his parents than he is.

As I said, this is an emotionally difficult read, and the tension continues to build, right up to the last page. We learn more about the family dynamics and personal secrets as long-held facades fall apart as secrets are revealed and more tragedy strikes. There were times where I wanted to shake Kyung and tell him to open his eyes. How could he not see that he was repeating his parents' habit of emotional isolation? Instead, he praises himself for not hitting his wife and child, but the damage he does is just as bad. In the end, I am still wondering what he will do with the rest of his damaged life. Nevertheless, this well-written novel kept me involved and gave me a number of things to think about.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

43. A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert has visited World War II and European society under the Nazis before. In this novel, a small Ukranian town is overtaken by the Nazis, and all Jews are to report for transport--to where, they do not know. The novel is told from the points of view of several different characters: a teenage farm girl, a Jewish mother and father whose sons have escaped the round-up, a Russian army deserter who joins up with the invaders, an engineer assigned to assist with the transport, and an SS officer haunted by the orders he follows, and various townspeople who try to help their Jewish neighbors hide or flee. As the story unfolds, the lives of many of these characters intersect in unexpected ways. And all of them are drawn as realistic but unique individuals. Rather than depicting in detail the horrors of the holocaust, Seiffert focuses on these characters and the conflicts, both internal and external, that they face. Some are heroes, some are cowards, some simply do what they must to survive, but all, in one way or another, are caught up in the darkness of the Nazi regime. Seiffert's understated style is perfect for her subject matter and encourages the reader to reflect on the novel's multiple themes.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

>116 Cariola: Thanks for that review Deborah. It goes straight onto the to do list!

>117 PaulCranswick: Hope you like it, Paul.

>116 Cariola: same here- onto the wish list!

44. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

I've been reading Lauren Groff's work chronologically backwards, first Fates and Furies, then Arcadia, followed by her short story collection, Delicate Edible Birds. I finally got around to The Monsters of Templeton. I must say, it has been an interesting way of seeing her development as a writer: after reading all four, I can see how her writing has sharpened and her characterizations have deepened, and she has thrown off some of the stylistic devices and strategies that really didn't work all that well for her. For one thing, I'm not a fan of magical realism, and I am glad to see it go. I'm not exactly sure what the sea creature is doing in The Monsters of Templeton, aside maybe to make a parallel with the human "monsters" in the novel or to symbolize the individuality of the place we call home and how often that place is misunderstood.

Willie (Wilhemina) Upton has returned home to Templeton, the town founded by her ancestors, and to her one-time hippie, commune-living mother. A grad student in archaeology, Willie had an affair with her professor and attempted to run down his wife with an airplane. Now, she is pretty sure that she will be dismissed from the university--and that she is pregnant. On the day that she arrives, a dead monster rises out of Lake Glimmerglass; people believe that it is the legendary creature they have always referred to as Glimmy. Scientists and journalists flock to town for the chance to see the creature, who will soon be hauled off for examination.

Willlie is shocked to find that her mother, Vi, has become a born-again Christian and is dating a bland pastor that her daughter dubs Reverend Milky. She is further shocked to learn that the man she always thought was her father is not, and Vi refuses to give her the name of her real father, instead merely giving her the clue that he is also descended from one of Templeton's founding fathers (or mothers). It is up to Willie to unravel the mystery, and she does so by delving into letters diaries, other historical documents, and the novels written by the town's best-known citizen. Along the way, of course, there's a potential romance, and Groff adds an interesting relationship with Willie's longtime friend, Clarissa, who is trying to beat lupus back in San Francisco.

While I enjoyed the novel overall, it was a bit too busy for my taste. It's as though Groff couldn't quite trust one plot to make for a good novel and spun off into several subplots that weren't knitted together as smoothly as they might have been (if they were necessary at all). Her later novels show more maturity and a willingness to trust on depth of character rather than quirkiness and variety and over-complication. I'm now a fan of Lauren Groff's work, and I'm glad that I have finished reading all of her books and can now wait impatiently for the next one.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Just wanted to stop by and wish you a very Happy Birthday, Deborah. xx

>121 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul. It was a quiet one.

45. Grace by Paul Lynch

The great Potato Famine has begun in Ireland. A young girl's mother drags her out of bed in the middle of the night, hacks off her hair with a knife, gives her a pair of trousers and some binding cloth and shoved her onto the road with the word, "You be the strong one now." Grace is supposed to find work dressed as a boy and send her wages home. Her younger brother, Colley, sneaks after her, bound for adventure. Instead, tragedy after tragedy ensues as the entire nation falls into starvation and despair.

So, is this a bleak novel? Yes, most certainly. But it's saved by moments of humor, by Grace's perseverance, and by Lynch's lyrical descriptions of a land both beautiful and horrific and a people determined to survive. The image that sticks with me most is the long line of people, often shoeless and in rags, placing one foot in front of the other, believing that to keep moving is to keep alive and that something better might be just down the icy road. The things Graces sees and the things she must do--well, we should consider ourselves lucky that they aren't the components of our daily lives. And it never seems to stop: even when she finds herself tossed onto a cart collecting the dead, Grace isn't allowed to die. She is 'resurrected' by the leader of a questionable sect comprised only of penitent women. And soon she is on the road again, trying to make her way back home to Donegal.

I've left out the horrific details of Grace's journey--too many spoilers for anyone choosing to read this book. And I won't reveal the ending, except to say that after two years, the crops come back, so, you can imagine, things start to get a little better. (That's just historical fact: if everyone had starved to death, there'd be no Ireland as we know it today.) Despite it's bleakness, there is much to admire here, both in the characters and the writing.

4 out of 5 stars.

46. Black Tudors: African Lives in Renaissance England by Miranda Kaufmann

Kaufmann has focused on an intriguing topic about which little is known. Unfortunately, I did not find her book very enlightening. The fault, however, is not entirely hers: it lies in the fact that there are virtually no narratives of black lives in the period, and she is forced to rely on sketchy details in court documents, letters and chronicles. As a result, Kaufmann falls into speculation and digression to fill in the spaces. What we do learn is that few blacks entered England as slaves, and those who did so as slaves to foreign visitors could assert their right to freedom. Those with talents were given the chance to use them and were, for the most part, respected in society. We often read Othello as a reflection of Tudor racism, but Shakespeare does show us that the protagonist was admired for his military genius and accepted into Venetian homes as an equal--at least until his elopement with Desdemona. Kaufmann's work, however, indicates that there was little prejudice against interracial marriage in Tudor England. I came away from the book wishing for a more detailed description of the lives of individual black residents, but, alas, that has to remain the work of fiction.

3 out of 5 stars.

47. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie

Thomas Builds-the-Fire is a young man with a talent for telling stories and writing poems and song lyrics, living on a Spokane reservation. One day he sees a black man on the road, carrying a guitar. It turns out to be the famed guitar player, Robert Johnson. Johnson's hands are severely scarred and burned, and he's looking for a woman who is supposed to heal him. Thomas tells him about Big Mom, and Johnson believes she is the one he seeks, so Thomas drives him to the edge of the mountain where she lives. Later, Thomas discovers that Johnson has left his guitar behind, and that's when the adventures begin. The guitar is magical, almost playing on its own and turning anyone who picks it up into a prodigy. Thomas teams up with two troubled "friends" (guys who picked on him relentlessly in school), Junior and Victor, to form a band, Coyote Springs. At this point the story focuses on the band's short but rapid rise to semi-fame as an Indian band. Along the way, they pick up two sets of back-up singers, Indian wannabes Betty and Veronica, and, later, sisters Chess and Checkers Warm Water.

While I enjoyed this novel, I don't think it compares to Alexie's best. It's a bit disjointed: the story focuses on Thomas but then goes off into the dreams, nightmares, and memories of all the other characters, too.

3.5 stars.

48. The Best Kind of People by Zoe Whittall

The Woodburys seem like the perfect American family. George, descended from one of the town of New Avalon's founding families. teaches science at a local prep school where he has been named Teacher of the Year consistently since tackling a would-be shooter in the school about 10 years ago. His devoted wife Joan, is a trauma nurse who manages to keep on top of household management and her children's lives despite working midnight shifts. Son Andrew, an attorney in New York, seems to be happily settled in with his lover, Jared. And daughter Sadie, a beautiful, gifted, popular student with a bright future, may be the star of the family. But a knock on the door on a Sunday evening throws the entire family off balance: the police have come to arrest George for sexual misconduct and attempt rape involving several girls on an overnight school outing.

The novel focuses on the reactions of the family and the community. Some assume automatically that George must be guilty while others come to his defense. The family members, of course, are particularly affected, and Sadie in particular spins out of control. She is the first to question her father's innocence, and she resists the "we're all in this together" mentality to the point of moving in with her boyfriend, his mother, and the mother's stalled novelist pothead boyfriend. Yet Sadie also resents being used by the school secretary who partners up with a pro-men's group to defend George. Andrew's relationship with Jared becomes strained as he rejects his partner's offers to come to New Avalon to lend support. And Joan? The best she can do is keep working, join a support group for women whose husbands are in jail, and visit George regularly while awaiting the trial.

While I got caught up in the family dynamics and the way George's situation affected everyone around him, like other readers, I was bothered by some obvious flaws. I, too, got tired of Sadie's sex and drugs escapades, her fantasizing over Kevin, a pot-bellied pothead in his 30s who freeloaded off his girlfriend Elaine, and her fall into "bad company" from the other side of town. Was Joan, the ideal mother, really so wrapped up in herself and George's case that she couldn't see what was happening to her chjld? And as one reviewer here pointed out, there are a LOT of legal missteps that the author could have better researched. For example, why would such an otherwise upstanding citizen be denied bail because he is deemed a flight risk? It wouldn't happen. And worst of all was the novel's conclusion. Talk about deus ex machina. It made no sense: the characters made decisions that were totally unrealistic and out of sync with everything the author had told us about them, simply for the effect of a contrived ending. This caused me to drop my rating for the book by a full star. It's horrible to like a book for 380 pages, only to be disappointed by the last 50.

3.5 out of 5

>120 Cariola:

After reviewing The BEST KIND OF PEOPLE, I chose The Monsters of Templeton from my two unread fiction shelves.

It's certainly a weird diversion from George, Joan, and Sadie,
but both books make me wonder again why authors don't solicit or hire reviewers before submitting books for publishing.

Yes, they have editors, family, and friends for readings,
but critiques outside the inner circles could bring writing up closer to 5 stars.

ps. not being familiar with English queens, I enjoyed reading VICTORIA.
The Monsters of Templeton was a near-Nancy P., with my review at one star.

>123 Cariola: I must go and find that one. Thanks for the splendid review, Deborah.

Have a lovely weekend.

>128 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I think you will like Grace--a very sad and sometimes horrifying but lovely novel.

49. The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner

It took me longer than usual to finish this book, mainly because of its extremely slow pace and my general lack of interest in the subject and setting. Unlike other readers, I did not find the characters unique but pretty much the stereotypical ones you'd expect to find in a novel set on an Italian island that is described as "sweet" and "nostalgic." Bombastic count with a superiority complex; his beautiful but cold and calculating wife; the gentle wido who loves to tell stories; the blind midwife who nevertheless "sees" everything; the young priest who is a little too human for his own good. Well, you get the picture. To me, the first part of the novel was the most interesting, the story of Amedeo, an orphan taken under the wing of his local doctor. He becomes a doctor himself and takes a position on Castellamare, a very hot and rather poor island within sight of Sicily, shortly before the First World War. (The people often pay for medical care with chickens and fish--an overused trope.) A city boy, Amedeo initially feels like an outsider, but in time, he grows to love the island and its people. After a stint in the Italian army, all he wants is to return to Castellamare and never leave it again. Two hobbies set Amedeo apart: photography and his transcription of the myths and legends of the island. Both are referenced throughout the novel.

The novel opens on a stormy night when Amedeo is called upon to deliver two babies, one his wife's and the other his mistress's. The conflicts between these two families set a foundation for the story. Different sections focus on the doctor's burgeoning family through the generations and the centrality of the bar that Amedeo and his wife Pina bought, restored, and reopened, called The House at the Edge of Night. Along the way, we learn of the conflicts and connections among various islanders.

About halfway through, I started to get bored and began to skim the interminal long, dull sections. I just could not get into this book, but I stuck it out until the end. The writing is fine enough but heavy on description, and there are a few characters who stand out (notably Amedeo and his daughter, MariaGrazi), so I'm giving it a rating of 3 stars. which is a bit higher than my overall response.

A shaky 3 out of 5 stars.

50. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

(I just finished reading some reviews of this book on LT. Yikes, people are giving away WAY too much of the plot! I will do my best not to repeat that faux pas.. Any plot details below are revealed in the first few chapters.)

Buzz may already have told you that Shamsie's latest novel is a modern-day spin on Sophocles's Antigone. It focuses on the intertwined relationships of two families. At 28, Isma is the de facto head of the Pasha family, three siblings who hold dual British and Pakistani citizenship. Her absentee father, a jihadi warrior, was assumed to have died on the way to Guantanemo long ago, and her mother had died seven years earlier when the twins, Aneeka and Parvaiz, were only 12,. Now Isma is ready to start living her own life, having won a scholarship to an American university. But without her steadying influence, things start to go awry. Parvaiz succumbs to the recruitment tactics of a radical Islamic group, and a frantic Aneeka begs her sister to come back to London to help to bring their wayward brother home. When Isma hesitates, Aneeka takes extraordinary measures to accomplish the task on her own.

British Home Secretary Karamat Lone is a politician with his sites on the Prime Minister's seat. He married a wealthy American designer whose money helped propel him to power. Once there, he decided that the best way to advance in his career would be to turn his back on the Muslim community, which he has done with a vengeance. Daughter Emily is away at an American university, and son Eamonn is a handsome, charming, but rather aimless young man. When members of the two families meet, relationships become complicated, and, if you know the story of Antigone, you won't be wrong to expect a tragic turn.

I've had mixed feelings about some of Shamsie's earlier novels, and I wasn't too sure about this one as well. However, the further I got into the story, the more engaged I became. The book is divided into sections devoted to the viewpoints of the main characters (Isma, Eamonn, Parvaiz, Aneeka, and Karamat). The first section is mostly setup and goes rather slowly, although it does establish the relationships among the Pasha siblings and brings Eamonn into the picture. As his seemingly strange but passionate relationship with Aneeka develops, the plot thickens, and by the time I reached Aneeka's section, I could not put the book down until I finished the novel. That part is not a simple straightforward narrative, as are the others: its short section consists of some brief but beautiful poetry, salacious newspaper reports, TV news voice-overs, and official government statements, all of which help to build the tension and lead to an unexpected conclusion.

Home Fire was long-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, and rightfully so; I'm rather surprised and quite disappointed that it didn't make it to the short list. Shamsie has come into her own with this novel, her best so far, in my opinion.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

51. See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

Australian Sarah Schmidt takes a whack at the well-known story of the Lizzie Borden case. She structures her novel in chapters devoted to key figures: Lizzie Borden, the accused murderer of her father and stepmother; Bridget, the family maid, who was at home at the time of the murders; Emma, the older sister, staying with friends during the initial events; John, the sisters' maternal uncle; and a wholly fictional character, Benjamin, a thug hired by John to threaten Mr. Borden, supposedly on Lizzie's behalf. We are never witness to the murder or the trial or to any post-trial events: Schmidt focuses instead on each character's observations and psychological responses. Lizzie comes across as a spoiled, immature, perhaps mentally unbalanced woman in her early 30s. Her sister Emma says time and again that Lizzie always gets her way and that even their strict, stingy father gave in to her every whim. Emma's own happiness--a desire to see Europe, dreams of becoming an artist, even a possible marriage--have been constantly thwarted by the expectation that she will, as her dying mother asked, "take care of Lizzie." Uncle John seems to be a little too close to Lizzie. A shady character, he has a history of borrowing money from his brother-in-law but never paying it back. Did he--or Benjamin, a deranged young man who lives only to make enough money to return home and kill his father--have anything to do with the bloody axe murders? Or was Lizzie finally pushed over the brink when her father killed her pet pigeons? While we never get a definitive answer, Schmidt clearly believes that this is the case.

The book left me feeling that I had only half the story and with more questions than I had when I started it. I wanted to know more about Bridget, the only apparently "normal" person in the household. Indeed, an entire novel from her point of view would probably have been more interesting. I'm not sure just what role Benjamin is meant to play. Is he a foil to Lizzie, meant to show how he recognizes in her one of his own kind, capable of murder? Or are we to suspect, despite what he tells us, that he is the real murderer that got away? With the entire family barfing up the mutton that has been simmering on the stove for days, why does no one suspect it has been poisoned or gone bad? (Lizzie at one point asks Bridget if there is any prussic acid in the house--a rather heavy-handed hint.) What exactly was it that turned Lizzie against her stepmother, a woman she had called Mother for years but then began referring to as Mrs. Borden?

The novel had it's interesting moments, but, for me, too many holes to recommend, even for fans of the unsolved murders.

3 out of 5 stars.

52. The Way to London by Alix Rickloff

I simply could not get into this one. The characters are overly familiar stereotypes and the plot is predictable. Lucy Stanhope, the pampered protagonist, is so unlikable that you just know she will end up being reformed by love and circumstances, and you know by the second chapter that the man who will spur that reform is going to be the same young officer who flirts with her by the side of a ritzy hotel pool in Singapore. By the time I got 30 pages in, I was bored to death, and it was a real struggle for me to finish the book. I heaved a sigh of relief when I did and quickly moved on to something more original.

2 stars. Maybe I should revise that . . . downwards.

53. The Book of the Maidservant by Rebecca Barnhouse

Margery Kempe's memoir has become a standard syllabus inclusion for feminist literature courses. Well-off but not noble, Margery bore 14 children before claiming to have had a vision of Christ telling her to become abstinent. She got her husband to comply by paying off his debts. As her visions increased, so did her hysterical crying when she experienced them. Some claim this was a ploy for public attention, but others believe that she was a true visionary. Although she was illiterate, she dictated her quite fascinating memoir The Book of Margery Kempe, to a scribe.

The Book of the Maidservant is just that: the story of the maid who accompanied Kempe on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Kempe had been warned that her maid would cause her trouble, and perhaps, from her point of view, she did. But according to Barnhouse's novel, the maidservant (here named Joanna) suffered considerable trials of her own along the way, including harsh treatment by Kempe, continuing harassment from a would-be rapist, being taken advantage of other pilgrims who loaded her with more and more work, and getting lost and separated from her mistress in Rome. Kempe does not come off well here: Barnhouse obviously adheres to the opinion that Margery was an ambitious, indulged woman who broke the rules of medieval English society and used religion as a way to exalt her status and to get her own way. Nevertheless, her novel is an engaging look into the customs and class structure of the times, and Joanna is a very likable, if somewhat hapless, character. She creates a solid picture of what these pilgrimages must have been like, especially for those who, like Joanna, had no choice but to make them.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

54. Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty

This is a quiet but powerful little book. It examines the long marriage of an Irish couple, Gerry and Stella, who live in Scotland, through the device of an extended weekend holiday to Amsterdam. As with many marriages, theirs has fallen into dull routines: Stella becomes increasingly involved with the Catholic church while Gerry lives under the delusion that his wife has no idea how much he drinks. Gerry thinks they are just on a short midwinter break, but Stella uses the possibility to consider leaving the marriage to fulfill a promise she made to God years ago in the aftermath of a tragic event. MacLaverty takes us into the mind of each character, reflecting on the past, present, and possible future. The book is a realistic exploration of a marriage, told in beautiful, vivid language. Bernard MacLaverty has yet to disappoint me.

4 out of 5 stars.

55. The Witches of New York by Ami McKay

Beatrice Dunn, age 17, has started to see ghosts. Convinced that she is a witch, she feels she needs some professional training outside of the small upper Hudson town where she has lived with her Aunt Lydia since her parents died and responds to an ad for a shopgirl in a New York tea shop with a strange addendum: "Those averse to magic need not apply."

The shop, Tea & Sympathy, is run by two white witches, Adelaide Thom, a fortune teller and mind reader, and Eleanor St. Claire, a healer. Seeing her partner getting more and more worn out, Adelaide has placed the ad for help, unbeknownst to Eleanor; applicants will be entertained in person for one afternoon only. When a long line of would-be assistants appears outside the shop, Eleanor dismisses them all. But when Beatrice, late due to an accident, appears and swoons on the doorstep, Eleanor invites her in--and so begins a partnership of three.

The novel is set in 1880, at the height of Anthony Comstock's morality campaign, and those who practice magic are one of the targets of his followers. It's chock full of fascinating characters, in addition to the three witches. There's Sister Piddock, devoted follower of a fire and brimstone (and likely mad) preacher who is bent on closing Tea & Sympathy. Quinn Brody, a one-armed veteran who has taken up his father's "scientific" research into the world beyond. The incarcerated madwoman who marred Adelaide's face with acid, determined now to finish her off. Plus a real demon, two invisible spirits called Dearies, and Perdu, a very prescient talking raven. The setting is also colored by ongoing reports of the progress of erecting Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park and by the blossoming woman's suffrage movement.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but was disappointed as several threads of the story were left hanging at the end. As other readers have suggested, this probably indicates that a sequel is in the works; in fact, the character of Adelaide is the grown-up character Moth from another of McKay's novels, The Virgin Cure (which I have not read).

3.5 out of 5 stars.

>136 Cariola: I really liked The Virgin Cure and have this book on my book pile!

>137 torontoc: I'll have to look for that one! The title put me off when I saw it a while back.

56. Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

I'm not quite the devoted Elizabeth Strout fan as many of my fellow readers. I thought Olive Kitteridge was just OK, and I didn't care much for My Name Is Lucy Barton, but I really enjoyed Anything is Possible. For one thing, I love collections of interconnected stories. The characters here all live in the small, economically depressed town of Amgash, Illinois, and their stories reflect memories of growing up and maturing in this small, fairly typical American community. There's a good deal of lingering pain from extreme poverty, bullying, neglect, abandonment, PTSD, and abuse, yet the stories never come across as maudlin or hopeless. In fact, each character rises above his or her pain to work towards understanding the past and finding a more humane future. Lucy Barton, now a successful New York novelist, makes an appearance, returning to Amgash to visit her sibling for the first time in years. We also encounter a school janitor who reaches out to Pete Barton, a somewhat crazy recluse hanging on to old resentments; a Vietnam veteran determined to hide his pain; a high school counselor pushing against her loneliness; a divorced bed and breakfast owner negotiating the distance between hostess and guests; a resentful 'ham' actor; a daughter who, afters many years, visits the mother who left the family to join her lover in Italy; and many more. Each character's story contains a link to another character, creating a sense of a community whose members, even if now geographically or economically distanced, will always be interconnected. The writing is subtle but effective: Strout creates characters that are entirely believable and whose thoughts and feelings are exquisitely expressed. After reading Anything Is Possible, I will be going to back to see if I missed any other gems by this author.

5 out of 5 stars.

57. 10-Minute Declutter by S. J. Scott and Barrie Davenport

Not much new here--pretty much the same suggestions you've heard on Oprah and every other place that addresses clutter.

3 out of 3 stars.

58. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Wingate uses the tried-and-true (if by now rather cliché) two-narrator strategy, one a contemporary young woman and the other a child living around 1940. Avery, a lawyer, is the daughter of an ailing South Carolina senator who is being groomed to take over what has become an almost-hereditary post (her grandfather also held the senatorial seat). She's engaged to a young man she has known since childhood and is particularly close to her grandmother, an Alzheimer's sufferer who recently moved into a cushy nursing home. While visiting her grandmother one afternoon, Avery runs into another resident, May Weathers, who mistakenly calls her Fern. A photograph of four sisters in May's room attracts her attention--because she recognizes one of them as Grandmother Judy. This sets Avery on a search for the connection between the two women.

The other narrator, Rill Foss, is the eldest of five children--"river rats"--living with their parents in a houseboat. When Rill's mother goes into a difficult labor and has to be taken to the hospital, she is left, with the help of an old man and a teenage boy, to watch over her siblings. Instead, the police arrive and take the children into custody, claiming that their mother gave birth to twins that died and their parents signed them over to the state. The Foss children become victims of a real-life scandal: Georgia Tann, director of the Memphis Tennessee Children's Home Society, made millions of dollars kidnapping children from poor families and selling them to wealthy adoptive parents. Rill tells the story of their time at one of Tann's group homes and of her struggle to keep the siblings together and reunite them with their parents.

Rill's story is both fascinating and brutal, but the "mystery" that Avery tries to unravel is rather dull and, unfortunately, falls into the expected romance. The characters in this modern-day narrative are all rather weak and cliché, especially her mother, the typical sugar-coated, socially ambitious Southern woman who is hard as nails beneath the surface. Wingate uses Avery as the means to connect to Rill's story--a connection that, again, is perhaps a a little too facile.

(I noticed that nearly all of Wingate's other novels has the word "sisters" in the title, so I guess this is her hook.)

3 out of 5 stars.

This is a time of year when I as a non-American ponder over what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for this group and its ability to keep me sane during topsy-turvy times.

I am thankful that you are part of this group.

I am thankful for this opportunity to say thank you.

>142 PaulCranswick: That's so nice, Paul. Thank you, too, for being a friend.

59. The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

When a young husband takes his life by turning on the gas in his Brooklyn apartment, his pregnant wife is comforted by a small group of nuns from a local convent who dedicate their service to the sick and poor. Annie is given a job in the convent laundry, where her daughter Sally grows up. The nuns--Sister Immaculata, Sister Jeanne, Sister Saint Savior, Sister Lucy and the rest--adore young Sally and are thrilled when it seems she has received "the calling." But is she truly suited for this life?

Hoffman's novel explores the inner motivations of her characters, secular and religious. Some are motivated by sheer love, some by faith, some by desire or ambition, still others by the need to sacrifice or to be admired. The relationship between Sally and her mother is a particularly complicated one, especially when Sally learns that her mother is not quite the suffering widow she had always thought. The nuns, a little family onto themselves and almost substitute mothers to Sally, engage in quiet conflicts over what would be the best road for her future. I especially liked the realism with which these women are portrayed: the nuns are neither saints-on-earth nor the typical caricatures of cruel nuns found in so many historical novels, they are real women who, like everyone else, have multiple emotions, needs, and regrets, who sometimes make mistakes but can also be nurturing and forgiving. Hoffman creates a clear picture of life in early 20th-century Brooklyn, the importance of family and community, and the influence of religious devotion.

4 out of 5 stars.

60. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I did not enjoy this book. The description sounded good: a Nigerian woman has difficulty accepting the fact that her husband has taken a second wife. The reason: she has not been able to produce a living son. That, however, is a small part of the story; the second wife plays only a small role and disappears quickly. The real story is of two mismatched people in a marriage that has suffered not only from the lack of children but from a desire to own one another. Each goes to desperate lengths to deceive the other. Bottom line: I didn't like these characters, I didn't care if they got hurt, and I didn't care if their marriage survived.

1.5 out of 5 stars.

>143 Cariola: "a clear picture of life in early 20th-century Brooklyn," That phrase will get me every time. Onto the wishlist it goes.

61. The Second Mrs. Hockaday by Susan Rivers

Placidia was only 17 and not even thinking of marriage when widower Major Gryff Hockaday swept her off her. She had a single day to decide whether to accept his proposal. Only a few days after they married, the major was called back to join his Confederate troops, and Placidia was left to manage the farm, oversee the slaves, and care for Charles, her husband's toddler son. As the situation deteriorates, Placidia finds herself charged with a crime, but she is keeping her secrets.

The novel is told in the form of letters and diary entries. Most of the action takes place in 1864-65, and the early letters are between Placidia and her cousin Mildred, but later sections set in the 1890s focus on how Achilles, the son of Placidia and Gryff, uncovered his parents' secrets and changed the way he thought about them and himself.

I can't say much more without giving away too much. I found the novel held my interest and that the author did a great job of heightening the suspense while slowly revealing the truth. The novel explores the hardships of women left alone to manage while their men are at war, as well as the dark side of slavery, but it also depicts a marriage that, although sorely tried, survives because of love.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

It is starting to get a tad dangerous coming over here, Deborah. Two of your last three books book bulleted me with the power of a tommy gun. Not difficult to guess which two.

Have a great Sunday.

Wishing you all good things this holiday season and beyond.

It is that time of year again, between Solstice and Christmas, just after Hanukkah, when our thoughts turn to wishing each other well in whatever language or image is meaningful to the recipient. So, whether I wish you Happy Solstice or Merry Christmas, know that what I really wish you, and for you, is this:

Merry Christmas, Deborah! I hope that we can meet up again in Philadelphia next year.

I agree with you about Home Fire. I was disappointed that it wasn't chosen for the Booker Prize shortlist, and I liked it better than Burnt Shadows, which I also loved.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

62. Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

Well, it was Christmas, so I decided it would be a great time to read this new novel about Dickens writing A Christmas Carol. As it begins, Dickens's publishers inform him that his latest, Martin Chuzzlewit, is a total flop, and they ask him to pen something new for Christmas. The financial threat of a failure causes Dickens to put the skids on plans for a big family holiday, which is particularly galling to his wife Catherine, who has just given birth to their sixth child. She hustles the family off to Scotland, leaving Dickens to work on his Christmas novella--but his ideas are slim. However, he finds inspiration in a young actress, Eleanor Lovejoy.

For much of the book, Silva makes Dickens seem like Scrooge himself, and I wasn't any fonder of him when he began stalking Eleanor. (At one point, he literally goes into her house while she is not at home to have a look around, even rummaging in her trunk of private treasures.) But when it becomes clear that this will be a friendship, not a romance, and when a supernatural element is injected, I was a little more forgiving. But it was still just an OK read for me.

63. The Good People by Hannah Kent

When Nora Leahy's husband suddenly drops dead in the field, she begins to wonder what has brought her such bad luck. First her daughter and only child, Johanna, dies of an unknown illness, then Johanna's husband drops off their 4-year old son Michael, who is no longer the lively, talkative, beautiful boy she once met, now her husband Martin suddenly gone. Michael is a burden: he no longer walks or talk, just wails and screams and flails and soils himself. Nora takes her neighbor's advice and hires a 14-year old girl, Mary, to help care for him. Soon the neighbors begin to talk, suggesting that Michael is a changeling--a fairy left in exchange for the real Michael--and the cause of all her grief.

The locals have always trusted Nance, an elderly wise woman known to be familiar with the Good People (fairies) to cure their ailments. But when the cows run dry, the butter won't churn, a woman fails to conceive and another gives birth to a stillborn child, people want a scapegoat, and suspicion is thrown upon Nance. It doesn't help that the new priest is denouncing her folk cures and the general belief in fairies, urging people not to go to her. When Nora calls upon Nance to send the evil fairy back to his people and return her grandson Michael to her, things take a turn for the worse.

While I enjoyed the book (and Hannah Kent writes beautifully), it didn't compare to Burial Rites, Kent's first novel, except in its bleak tone. She depicts well the poverty and cruelty of a farming town in 1820s Ireland. The story is based on true events; even so, its hard to believe that people were so willing to blame every misfortune--including a sadly disabled child--on the supernatural.

4 out of 5 stars.