Selena Montgomery is the pen name of Stacey Abrams. This is not the typical bodice-ripper of old or a gritty “urban” novel in the style of Wahida ClarSelena Montgomery is the pen name of Stacey Abrams. This is not the typical bodice-ripper of old or a gritty “urban” novel in the style of Wahida Clark. This is more Kerry Washington’s Olivia Pope’s role in Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix series Scandal.
The central character is powerful, and that power had questionable origins. What she did was legal, but was it right?
One of the most interesting things about this novel is that the characters do not have especially easy lives. Everyone has something in their background they wish they didn’t, and therefore it is relatively easy to feel sympathy except for the most wicked. There are some surprises, too, which add to the glamour, and one very-difficult-to-resist sheriff with his heart in the right place, throbbing.
The other most interesting thing is imagining Stacey Abrams writing some of the steamy attraction scenes. No, she never loses control of the narrative, but we have curiosity about her own choices. Novels tell us a great deal about the author, despite some writers saying, “it is complete fiction.“ I mean, how can someone write this stuff without having at least thought it in the first place? Kind of revealing, but I come from the never-share-a-stray-thought school of professional development because someone is sure to use it against you.
I like everything about this novel and about Stacey Abrams. She is unapologetic for living her life as big as she can make it, and since it is hers to live, I give her kudos for for it. And when I first encountered Kerry Washington in the role of Olivia Pope, it was difficult to look away. Same here. It is light, romantic fare, but it has enough body to fill the ‘crime novel’ slot on our reading list as well.
Tayari Jones was onto something when she chose the central dilemma of her bestselling novel. She chose a dilemma each one of us would have strong feelTayari Jones was onto something when she chose the central dilemma of her bestselling novel. She chose a dilemma each one of us would have strong feelings about resolving in one way and yet we’d have to admit the other side has a point. In my case, I was quite sure of the most moral response to the dilemma presented, but the moral response was certain to leave everyone dissatisfied. It took real courage, even moral courage of a sort, to stand up for a decision that was, at first glance, unsupportable, even reprehensible.
It is certainly arguable whether the dilemma outlined in this novel could even have been credibly presented by a white author, let alone argued with any degree of realism. A man is accused of a crime he did not commit. He is tried, and jailed. His wife knows he is innocent because she was with him when the crime occurred. However much she knows she must wait for him and work for his release, she takes comfort in the arms of an old friend who is only too happy to wrap his arms around her.
Clearly, were the marriage perfect when the man was jailed, the woman would’ve had trouble coming to terms with her husband’s incarceration. However, the man’s infidelities early in the marriage had left some lingering dissatisfactions, as would happen in any relationship. Small cracks grew imperceptibly over time until the wife, successful in her work and happy with her friend from childhood, no longer felt the same sense of dependence upon her husband, innocent or not. Things had changed.
While wrongful incarceration can happen to anyone (I suppose), I am prepared to believe it happens at greater frequency to people of color. Someone has probably documented this somewhere: it does not seem unlikely given the many other ways we have historically marginalized and obstructed black citizens. Which brings me to the realism of the central dilemma which does not seem to be one likely to be posited by a white author unless that author were a country-and-western songwriter as well. It seems entirely possible that, despite one knowing one’s husband is innocent, one’s feelings may indeed change without intentionality. It is a horrible, difficult dilemma, and it is well-described here. Staying together despite the changes in one’s feelings would be crueler and less rational than making a firm break.
There were also some recognizable elements of genre fiction or even screenwriting included in the character of the writing. For instance, a common feature in romance fiction is a deserving woman trying to decide between two worthy men, one usually more dangerous-seeming than the other. In this case, the more dangerous man does not get the girl, but he dies not go home destitute. Jones makes it work out for him, too, another familiar feature of romance novels, as is the author’s willingness and obvious pleasure in describing lovemaking. I am not sure exactly why the bedroom scenes could be described as though from a romance novel. They were authentic-seeming, and the sense I had of romance novels had nothing to do with the sex of the person doing the describing. It might have had something to do with the details included.
If this novel is critically accepted, it could mark another example of the public’s gradual willingness to accept bleed over from genre fiction into literary fiction, which this novel also does not resemble in one critical aspect: this novel looks, feels, reads like a personal novel, at the same time it introduces larger dilemmas which face us as human beings. When I was listening to the voices who have speaking parts, Celestial, Andre, and Roy, each character seemed to represent a larger group of people who thought like them or who had faced the options these characters had.
Jones uses a Claudia Rankine quote for her epigraph at the beginning of the book:
What happens to you doesn’t belong to you, only half concerns you. It’s not yours. Not yours only.
That seems a particularly suitable quote given the sequence of events in which a man is jailed without cause for a number of years, the thing that happens to him spilling over into other lives as well.
There are three big sections in the book, each divided into three voices. The very last section is entitled “Generosity,” which seems a wise way to describe what happens to the characters. Celestial’s choice may not have been the one we immediately think of as moral, but in the end it had more kindness and generosity and wisdom in it than the plain vanilla choice.
I listened to the HighBridge Audio (Recorded Books) production of this award-winning novel, read by Sean Crisden and Eisa Davis. The reading was excellent and allowed me entry into a world I might not otherwise have read with the right emphases. My guess is that we all have a long way to go to make up for years when we did not listen or did not hear properly....more
In the past several weeks I have reviewed two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by Lynn Nottage, Sweat and Ruined. Both were brilliant works, simple in conIn the past several weeks I have reviewed two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by Lynn Nottage, Sweat and Ruined. Both were brilliant works, simple in concept and staging, complex in emotional resonance and social commentary. The prizes awarded for those later plays included the promise of her earlier plays, like this one, which first came to the stage when Nottage was thirty-nine.
It is 1905. An exceptionally-talented unmarried black seamstress, Esther, sews lingerie for wealthy white women and the black prostitutes they envy…envy for their bodies, their freedom, and the fact that the black women are getting nooky while the white wives are not. Esther is not especially pretty but hopes one day to marry. She carries on a long-distance romantic relationship by mail with a man she has never met. Eventually the brawny workman from Barbados who is digging the Panama Canal comes to New York.
The play is visually exciting: there is much color and sensuality in the fabrics Esther chooses for her craft, all bought from an orthodox Jewish salesman named Marks who has a weakness for a good story. He is also unmarried, and like Esther, is engaged to a person he has never met. Esther and Marks are attracted to one another through their mutual love of fabric, but could never consider an alliance, given that she is black and he is Jewish.
Special moments of emotional truth come when Esther describes her epistolary relationship with the man from Barbados to her best friend, Mayme, a beautiful woman wearing herself out working the Tenderloin district for uncaring brutes. Mayme teases Esther mercilessly for her naiveté when it comes to men, but suddenly “acknowledges Esther’s hurt” when the teasing veers into disrespect and Mayme takes Esther’s face between her hands. Moments of tenderness like these punctuate the work; everyone who knows Esther wants to protect her from hurt.
The play showcases black female friendship, and the close sense of community that forms around people of talent who earn little yet depend upon one another to hold one another up. We also see the souring of a marital relationship when the husband is dependent, and the exploitative and ultimately dismissive relationship between a black wage earner and her white mistress who doesn't see the power disparity in their relationship. The interactions between characters so familiar in our society, are nonetheless treated with great sensitivity, subtlety, and particularity.
The play takes only a couple hours to read and yet offers a lot of story and visual excitement…and sound! Mayme, it turns out, is a talented pianist who ends up turning tricks and playing ragtime to a syncopated beat.
Imagine Viola Davis in the role of Esther, which she did play off-Broadway in 2004 at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City, for which she won several awards and was nominated for several more.
As it turns out, the story has the ring of personal history: Lynn Nottage's own grandmother was a seamstress in New York and her grandfather was Barbadian who worked on the Panama Canal. The play is a reimagining of history, since few details are known.
Don Lee’s novels have always resonated with me and towards the end of his latest, I began to understand why. Lee is resolutely plebeian in his writingDon Lee’s novels have always resonated with me and towards the end of his latest, I began to understand why. Lee is resolutely plebeian in his writing: he gives his characters, no matter how wealthy or learned, no place to hide from our judgments of them. The business of living is messy, he seems to say, though some might look like they have an easier time of it, it ain’t necessarily so.
Lee also isn’t snooty about genre: there is a touch of romance hidden within the complexities of the married lives he delivers in Lonesome. People aren’t settled, despite their legal status. The intensely personal and minutely calibrated nature of the characters Lee introduces, however, elevate his art above the ordinary. And reading his work is just fun.
One of the things that Lee does exceptionally well in all his books is give us an idea of what exactly people do in their jobs, and what makes each job an opportunity for creativity and excellence. While many authors might hint at hidden depths, say, in cleaning a celebrity’s suite in a five-star hotel or in laying wall-to-wall carpet in a decaying hovel, Lee takes the worker’s eye view and relishes in explanations of how it can be done elegantly. It’s interesting. Readers develop understandings and sympathies where before there were none. (The government should hire Lee to analyze labor equivalencies in the workplace. We would come out with a far flatter and more just wage structure than we have today.)
At heart, this novel is about the creative process and the winding path each person’s dreams take as their lives progress. Yadin was a musician ever since he can remember, writing songs, both lyrics and tunes, that people want to hear. He sang, too, but experienced such severe stage fright that it began to take a toll on his health. He had to quit touring, and his life narrowed to a pinpoint of casual work & sleep as he tried to cope with his illness. One day, chancing one day upon a few lines of spoken poetry, his capacity for song is awoken again.
Poetry and song: the parallels are many. Those readers who relish language will love Lee’s focus on the way words work to draw us in, to inspire and delight us. In addition, there is something terribly exciting and beautiful about capturing the process of creation. Moments of creative flow described on the page are exhilarating for what similarities they bear to one's own experience. We don’t tire reading of someone who has managed to cobble together something unique from scraps; conversely we yearn for more.
Yadin’s mind was busy with “a thread of melody noodling inside his head” as he lay carpet; he would stop to call his landline and leave a message of the tune so he wouldn’t forget. Later, a few words and phrases burbled up from his subconscious which he’d capture on a piece of masking tape with his Sharpie.
Life is complex, and Lee relishes that complexity, carefully unpicking the tangled threads that got us from happy days of infatuation to a limping marriage, paradoxically featuring both not enough sex and too many children. His characters are irredeemably flawed, all of them, though they are talented enough that others may look to them to lead the way. Their failures are heartbreaking, and are perhaps as much like us individually as any characters in any book.
If I have any criticism of this novel, it is Lee’s two strong female characters. Each is carefully drawn and multi-dimensional, Jeanette being Yadin’s long-time companion and the daughter of his boss. The slow reveal of her character’s history is fascinating in its surprises but one has the sense at the end that here is a woman struggling to free herself from a constricting web of her own making. I personally thought she was capable enough (at her age) to have made a more proactive choice than the one Lee chose for her. In the end, she was not an appealing partner for Yadin.
Mallory, the celebrity folksinger, is familiar to the extent that we feel we may have met her before—her type, certainly. Mallory wanted authenticity in her art and had to settle for less to get by, but she was always looking for that real experience again. She had most of what she needed most of the time, but she was aging out of the business of love songs. Lee may have made her harder, less sympathetic, and less vulnerable than strictly necessary. I bought it all until the end when I thought she would have (at her age) made a different choice.
This novel of sophisticated adult dilemmas gives us confused folks who make one choice as young adults and different choices in the fullness of years. Yadin was completely sure, in his later years, what he wanted. Lee did not tie his novel up neatly but showed us the messy lives of people making choices we don't like. If aspects of this novel had romance-genre undertones, the overtones were richer and deeper and far more complex.
Another GR reviewer made the terrific suggestion that this novel would make a great indie film, and he is completely right. In the hands of the right actors, this is a star-making vehicle. All that unrequited or misdirected love can play out as music.
An interview with Don Lee by Terry Hong on the Bookslut blog shows us how Lee agonizes over the publication process of novel-writing, a phenomenon which is examined more closely in this novel when Yadin writes a couple songs and then agonizes over their method of release....more
More than once I have called this series of books about a Chinese-born Canadian my guilty pleasure, but now I wonder why I should feel guilty. Ava LeeMore than once I have called this series of books about a Chinese-born Canadian my guilty pleasure, but now I wonder why I should feel guilty. Ava Lee is a forensic accountant with deep ties to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. For several books in the series she investigated improprieties in international trade and business deals, but then she invested her earnings in new businesses on the mainland as a venture capitalist. Anyone with even a cursory interest in how the world turns is gong to be fascinated by the mysteries revealed in this series.
Ava Lee is smart, savvy, sexy, and…a lesbian…which is no big deal when she is residing in Toronto. In China, however, that lifestyle choice is not appreciated, nor even permitted. At the end of this installment of the series, the author puts a little pressure on those restrictions and I expect we will just see how far they bend.
One of Ava’s investments is in a clothing designer trying to break into the European market. The designer attracts the attention of a major Italian luxury goods provider who doesn’t take kindly to the smallish company rejecting his takeover bid. Ava calls on her friends in the Triads to push back, and the Mafia becomes involved.
What’s so fascinating in this installment is the discussion about sourcing and supply for luxury goods. We must all have had our suspicions about how luxury goods makers were able to survive in the era of Chinese low-cost production and competition, and here we get a few details that might help us to figure out for ourselves how much of those expensive products are actually “Made in Italy,” or perhaps just assembled in Italy.
There is no doubt that shipping plays an enormous part in costs, both time and money, for the materials are often shipped in and [mostly] finished goods shipped out—across the world. Besides the enormous marketing efforts, quality of the scarce materials, plus the real design genius behind some of the products…all of these things add to cost, but a little deep dive into the metrics and the kinds of markups on these products sort of takes away our enthusiasm for these ‘luxury' products: luxury for whom?
Hamilton imagines for us a meeting between the Mafia and the Triads in Macau, that city of casinos, where residents, curiously, live in one the most densely populated areas on earth and yet have the world’s longest life expectancy. He discusses along the way the changes in Macau’s landscape when foreign concessionaires were finally allowed to build, making a kind of Vegas on steroids. Millions of gamblers leave $45 billion there a year, compared to a take of $6 billion a year in Las Vegas.
There is no bloodshed in this novel, but I have to admit I was expecting it every second once everyone arrived at the Italian restaurant on Macau to talk an unreasonable and profane billionaire magnate into moderating his expectations. That man did not fit the mold I was expecting for someone “with everything.” He seemed too disbelieving that anyone would refuse his incentives, and too rude when he finally got the message. There was something authentic missing in his characterization.
After all this time, after 9 episodes of Ava’s experiences, I am still trying to come to grips with author Ian Hamilton, and why he does not seem prurient when describing the sex life of a woman. First, Ava is pretty restrained, and in all that time has had only one fling…a one-night stand with a hotel manageress in Iceland. Second, Ava has had a steady girlfriend in Toronto whom she barely ever saw, from readers’ point of view. And thirdly, it occurs to me that maybe the male Hamilton has an easier time writing about a gorgeous sexy woman than he does a man. That’s a bit of a challenge for him.
All in all, I always enjoy reading about Ava’s next challenge, where she’s been, and what she ate. There have to be some advantages to making millions of dollars after all, and it is a lot easier (and I argue even more fun) to read about it than it is to actually go out and do it. It looks like she’s off to the Philippines in the next installment and I have to admit a little danger does my heart good. This novel was a little more talky than usual, but a lot happened in a couple days. It takes time to explain.
Recent reporting in the New York Times discusses the case of a Chinese-born Canadian billionaire banker who has been thought to have been abducted from Hong Kong, North Korean-style, and kept under some kind of arrest in mainland China. Apparently some Chinese officials are purchasing large shares in national power companies for their own enrichment, like what happened in Russia when the Soviet Union dissolved, and they don’t want their machinations known. I wouldn't mind seeing Hamilton wading into this criminal circus and political controversy, just for fun. Many thanks to author Hamilton, editor Yoon, and publisher Anasi for the high-class entertainment....more
Louise Miller is remarkably accomplished in this debut novel about a family-less pastry chef escaping an affair with her boss in Boston, a married manLouise Miller is remarkably accomplished in this debut novel about a family-less pastry chef escaping an affair with her boss in Boston, a married man, and landing at the Sugar Maple Inn in Guthrie, Vermont. All of our senses are engaged just by contemplating the premise: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. Miller adds the umami ingredient, voice. Her main character, Livvy, has the wit to speak her mind and the cooking talent to go with it. What she doesn’t have before she moves to Vermont are the comforts of a home where people will love her for just who she is.
Romances are written to a formula, and some do it better than others. Miller manages to include every element of a rockin’ romance, including a prudently unconsummated sex scene with said boss late in the proceedings that proves her bonafides when it comes to one of the more difficult things to write well: sex. That this is a debut is reason for romance-lovers to celebrate. The story was inventive enough to encourage us to believe that there is more where that came from.
(view spoiler)[We are treated to the Coventry County Fair prize-winning apple pie recipe at the end of the book, though anyone who has baked before knows there is always a magic ingredient in successful baking: skill or luck. What we didn’t get, alas, were recipes for the three-tier wedding cake for Margaret’s arch-rival’s granddaughter, Emily White, which included coconut with passion-fruit curd, devil’s food with rum ganache, and lemon with fresh raspberries and white chocolate cream, all covered with fondant. But you can search those out and practice a little until her next novel yields more suggestions. (hide spoiler)]
Miller herself is a pastry chef in Boston, though she gives Livvy “a splashier career” than her own. In an interview conducted by her publishers, Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, Miller tells us
"Actually, writing a pastry chef character gave me a surprise benefit: it made me more mindful in the kitchen. I found myself paying closer attention to everything I was making—especially to the tasks I can perform without thinking, like making chocolate mousse or crème brulee—wanting to capture all the details."
Truthfully, it would not have bothered me a bit to have a few more clues to successful baking left in. Who isn’t completely obsessed with BBC TV’s The British Baking Show?
"I find that writing about food is a million times more difficult than actually making food. Baking requires precision, and I had to fight the urge to include every step of the process when writing about making dessert. Many of the baking scenes had to be edited several times because they sounded too instructional."
I don’t bake often, but when I do, I want to make sure it turns out. A few more hints to winning techniques wrapped in a romance fondant wouldn’t go astray in this reader’s opinion. Besides, if we learn a few things along the way we may not feel so guilty taking a day or two to read about someone else pursuing their dreams.
When asked why she chose this particular story line, Miller admits that she has always been a city kid:
"I think the allure comes from the fantasy that life will be vastly different—a slower pace, a life more connected to the land and to the seasons, with space to grow a big garden, to own a little piece of land and to know it well. Life in the city requires constant negotiation—with your neighbors, with the people on the subway, in line at the coffee shop, in traffic—part of the attraction is being free from some of those pressures."
Fantasy is a big part of successful romance. The most reassuring thing about this novel was that Livvy and her fellow characters all progress to some kind of personal dream fulfillment in the course of the story. Livvy creates her own family with strong bonds, and her friends manage to wrestle her to the ground long enough for roots to form. She is not finished growing, but we leave knowing she has a solid foundation for a good life and successful career. And that is how we feel about Louise Miller, too.
This is a fine book to escape the summer heat, so rustle up a copy when it comes out August 9, 2016 and settle in for a journey that begins with flambé and ends with homemade apple pie....more
This marvelous collection of the extant fragments of verse attributed to Sappho is a glorious spur to the imagination. Sappho was a lyricist, a poet, This marvelous collection of the extant fragments of verse attributed to Sappho is a glorious spur to the imagination. Sappho was a lyricist, a poet, a musician. It is unknown whether or not she was literate in reading and writing, but her work was collected in writing, and reprinted, but little has survived the centuries. Only one full poem, the ode to Aphrodite, survives whole at twenty-eight lines.
Sappho was known and lauded throughout the ancient world for the beauty of her poems accompanied by the lyre. She wrote nuptial songs mainly, it seems, for the tenor of the fragments suggest the happy circumstance of a marriage. The Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that Sappho taught young women the arts of courtesanship, seduction, marriage which may (I speculate here) be one reason why she was so universally adored and admired.
Can we all agree that to be a brilliant courtesan requires great intelligence: a deep understanding and acceptance of human nature and desire, and enormous self-control and discipline? Add to this her apparently unparalleled skill as a poet—alas! We do not have enough of her work surviving to adequately judge, but the fragments set us to dreaming and are an undeniable spur to writers and lyricists alike. We will have to trust her contemporaries and sup upon lines like
Eros shook my mind like a mountain wind falling on oak trees
and
you burn me
Anne Carson has chosen to reprint fragments attributed to Sappho, sometimes single words, separated by brackets to indicate lost fragments. The blank spaces are fruitful places for meditation on what was once there. Sometimes the few words jump from the page
] ] ] ] robe and colored with saffron purple robe cloaks crowns beautiful ] purple rugs ] ]
and
]Dawn with gold sandals
If many of the song or poem fragments were composed for weddings, just that concept brings a host of associations and an understanding of Sappho’s history. There is more to learn about her as an individual (she had three brothers, was married with a child, was exiled to Sicily in her twenties it is thought) but not much more. It is thought she lived from 610 B.C. to 570 B.C. A collection of her work was published during the Middle Ages in nine volumes but has not survived. Our imagination will have to suffice.
That the work of an individual has so inflamed the public imagination for such a long time is cause enough for wonder. One fragment shows an awareness of her fame
someone will remember us I say even in another time
Sappho was a “honeyvoiced…mythweaver,”
]nectar poured from gold ]with hands Persuasion
The surviving fragments are a kind of spur to the creative mind. When writers or lyricists find themselves stuck, they could do much worse than flip through this book for its inspiration. To my mind Sappho addresses writer's block:
for it is not right in a house of the Muses that there be a lament this would not become us
Apologies to Anne Carson and publisher AA Knopf for not being able to reproduce the high quality typesetting and lovely spacing in this book. If this review is at all intriguing to you, try to lay your hands on a printed copy from 2002. The formatting is as informative as the print. Also, I put pictures in my blogpost....more
Staying on an island off the coast of Maine can be a peak summer experience, and Brenda Bowen gets full points for imagining what a relief it would beStaying on an island off the coast of Maine can be a peak summer experience, and Brenda Bowen gets full points for imagining what a relief it would be to leave New York in August. She places four out-of-sorts New Yorkers by the ocean; taken out of their usual environment and away from family and friends, they should be able to see their lives with some perspective and clarity. The book is meant to be a light-hearted summer romance but I found myself unable to be convinced by the characters.
Wealthy New Yorkers are a breed apart, and while Bowen gave us several examples of the type, I found them confounding and by the end acting outside of the character that Bowen had crafted for them. It was jarring to see an adult act with the kind of petulance Caroline exhibited: for example, after the “hat party” given on the island late in summer, she threw into the woods “for the raccoons to eat” the 100-year-old cloche she had borrowed from the house where she stayed. She is an actress, so that may go some ways to explain her sense of entitlement, but after a month on the island getting in touch with her better self, it echoed the childishness of the whole book.
(view spoiler)[Another character, Rose, was a quiet, capable, composed poet: what on earth was she on about when her husband wanted to cast Caroline for the film of his novel? He's a writer. That's what they do. He may have been infatuated with Caroline. Have you ever met a man who didn't trip over his member once in awhile? He didn't actually do anything. (hide spoiler)] Although we could see the tie-ups planned for the end telegraphed all through the novel, the satisfaction one gets from a romance is that everyone gets something totally unrealistic but really wonderful by the end of the story. By denying that to us, Bowen broke the golden rule of romance.
Coming from a family of Maine islanders myself, I found Bowen’s glee at island life too shrill and too expensive for my taste. Her book is not aimed at ornery cusses from New England I suspect, though these folks want reminders of the beauties of island life. Bowen is writing for people, as we say in New England, "with more money than brains." Perhaps people at the beach like to read about being on a beach, or maybe she is writing for the millions of folks stuck in a hot, crowded city in August…
Writing a book, even a summer romance, is hard work (all those words!) and one senses the author was hoping to write, as she puts it, “incredibly lucrative trash.” She has a terrific marketing team behind her, so she may be able to pull it off. But sorry, no, this is no The Enchanted April....more
This is such a famous book. I suppose it does give some a leg up in interpreting the signals of modern society. I don't think I could have said so mucThis is such a famous book. I suppose it does give some a leg up in interpreting the signals of modern society. I don't think I could have said so much in so little space. However, it did not break any sonic barriers for me. Bright young thing that I am....more
I was never the ideal reader for this book. I did not intentionally shun it, but I never gravitated towards it. My operating theory is that voracious I was never the ideal reader for this book. I did not intentionally shun it, but I never gravitated towards it. My operating theory is that voracious readers seem to have a second sense for what will interest them and they instinctively avoid things that are not going to show the author in a flattering light. If my librarian hadn’t pressed this into my hands in awed and hushed tones of recommendation, I would never have picked it up. In a way, I wish she hadn’t.
The central theme of this book is worthy of discussion and consideration. It tells the story of a talented, successful thirty-something man, Will, who is injured in a road accident. He is left a quadriplegic, paralyzed below his neck. He is susceptible to many illnesses and has painful, progressively declining health. Will decides he does not want to live any longer. His family is heartbroken and convinces him to think about it for six months. They hire a young woman without nursing experience to provide daytime care and companionship.
Moyes couches the “right to die” issue in language that appears stronger on one side, at least to my mind. On an ordinary day I think I should quite like books that raise and discuss, through characters’ words and actions, important moral and ethical choices that face us. But Louisa as a character was not as thoughtful nor coherent as the argument requires. Will was a much better proponent for his side of the argument.
Some people say I am a harsh critic, and they may be right. All I know is that Louisa set my teeth on edge and I could not wait to be rid of her. I did finish the book: we had a long snowstorm outside and I shoveled longer and threw snow with more force as I listened than I would have had I not had Louisa’s inchoate feelings propelling me.
I was reminded at times of Maeve Binchy (in a good way) and Jodi Picoult (in a bad way). Moyes had Binchy’s romantic storyline where characters' up-and-down lives turn out with everyone getting what they want or deserve. And Moyes had Picoult’s unfortunate tendency to instruct from the mouths of characters, setting us a dilemma and then explaining both sides. ...more
Where was I when this came out in 2007? When I discovered this title recently in someone else’s TBR list, I immediately added to my own. The novel is Where was I when this came out in 2007? When I discovered this title recently in someone else’s TBR list, I immediately added to my own. The novel is an absurdist romp with a heart of gold (and romance). I belly-laughed through the first bits, looked askance at the portion where the Prime Minister’s aide imagines a quiz show in Pakistan, and couldn’t wait to find out the result of the ridiculous, bound-to-fail salmon fishery in Yemen. I wanted to believe, as the sheik says.
This worthy novel has already been made into a Golden Globe-nominated film starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt which was released in 2011. I look forward to seeing what Director Lasse Hallström has done with the absurdist concepts, poking fun at government spending on dubious projects which serve only to keep current officials election-worthy. Torday captures the dueling-memo mentality of government bureaucracies competing for limited funds, and the stilted, unsexy email correspondences of working spouses.
And yet, there is more than mere farce in the developing faith our fisheries expert has in the doomed project, and in his blossoming love for his “estate agent” colleague. I listened to the 2007 Orion production of the audiobook supported by a full cast including Downton Abbey star Samantha Bond (you’ll recognize her voice immediately) along with John Sessions, Andrew Sachs, Andrew Marr and many more. The audiobook is a brilliant success as each character is enunciated by actors with great skills. This audiobook production ranks among the best I have heard in recent years and is well worth seeking out.
I look forward also to seeking out more of Torday’s titles. And I adore the covers for his books. I note the publisher remains an imprint of George Weidenfeld & Nicholson throughout his list. These exceptionally fine covers could be done in-house at the publishers, but more likely they are created by a friend. What a great gift to the author, and to us, to see two artistic talents melded. Kudos Torday, et al! ...more
Galilee Garner can be as prickly and sensitive as the roses she breeds in her southern California backyard, but when her teenaged niece arrives on herGalilee Garner can be as prickly and sensitive as the roses she breeds in her southern California backyard, but when her teenaged niece arrives on her doorstep unexpectedly, temporarily homeless and motherless, Gal manages far beyond providing nutrient requirements.
Thirty-eight, unmarried, and with no children of her own, Gal is a strict disciplinarian. She teaches high school science and coaches the Science Team in addition to showing her roses in national competitions. Although schooled in the scientific method --do this and then this to get that result--she knows there is also an elusive, intangible, unquantifiable factor involved in successful rose-breeding and in life called “luck.”
Dilloway has written a story that engages our senses (sight, smell, touch) and our whole mind: we are presented with constraints and conditions that must be taken into account when cogitating the deceptively “small” and everyday ethical questions Gal encounters as she teaches, and as she competes in rose shows. I would not be surprised to learn that Ms. Dilloway was schooled in philosophy, so much does this charmingly light and easy read recall the work of Alexander McCall Smith, Scottish philosopher and author, whose series The Sunday Philosophy Club likewise raises sticky ethical issues we often encounter in our own lives.
This novel qualifies as a romance, though it is not typical in any way. For one thing, our main character is crusty and opinionated—rendering her unlikeable in the eyes of many. But she is clever, too, and principled, and a very good teacher. She also has a life-threatening condition which hampers her activities and constrains her choices. While her illness precludes some opportunities, it has also given her opportunities. It is when Gal realizes her bounty and discovers not what she lacks but what she already has, that she becomes a person that people want to have as a friend.
I am a sucker for books about gardening, its failures and its delights. I also like books about people managing to overcome--or manage in spite of--things in their physical or psychological makeup that would hold them back from living a full life. This novel raises plenty of important issues that we might encounter in our own lives, and gently guides us through possible outcomes. ...more
In an interview Craig Thompson told his audience that artists must become vulnerable if their work is to mean anything. This dark and agonized work haIn an interview Craig Thompson told his audience that artists must become vulnerable if their work is to mean anything. This dark and agonized work has a great deal of nakedness in it, both literally and figuratively, and a lot of staring directly at human experience and trying to make sense of it. It also looks with a colder, more dispassionate and assessing eye at the overlap in the religious teachings of Christianity and Islam.
This is Thompson’s fourth published work, and one glance inside gives some idea why it took six years to complete. The graphic work is fantastically detailed and patterned, which over more than six hundred pages becomes claustrophobic and oppressive with patterns repeated again and again in different combinations. This is partly due to the size of the pattern, which seems to become more and more compressed as the story progresses, and the more-black-than-white palette.
The patterns are beautiful, and may represent mathematical principles that sustain the progress upon which the world is built, but by the end I got the distinct impression Thompson was asking us to question even that progress: is it good? Who is it good for and how can it be modified to suit a different world with better outcomes? One is not accustomed to such weighty questions in the work of graphic artists.
Thompson is unique in many ways, but certainly the source of his questioning may come from his fundamentalist Christian upbringing in rural Wisconsin, an upbringing he explores in his second graphic novel and the first large-scale project of his career, Blankets. Thompson freely admits he still believes in God, but he is less sure now how best to worship him.
That his father was a plumber Thompson credits with the understanding that water is precious. This book is plumbed through with references to the primacy and importance of water in our world, our lives. This aspect of the book was another piece that elevated the story-telling to something essential.
Some discussion among reviewers condemns the sex, violence, and numerous representations of the naked human form depicted in this work as gratuitous. I will argue that is not the case. There is no question that the storyteller in this case is frightened by and ashamed of his powerful sexual feelings, but his arousal is well within the bounds of normal male sexuality and should, in fact, educate readers about the conflicted emotional trauma that can accompany the physical manifestations of desire.
In the years Thompson worked on this book, he learned to appreciate and to write some Arabic script, but never learned to speak. His translators and friends in the endeavor to understand Islam—its culture, science, and art—reviewed the story he created to check for realism and racism. In the end, any understanding readers take away about the religion or culture of the region belong to Thompson alone, but I suspect he feels confident in his depiction.
Simply sketched, the story is as follows: a light-skinned girl and a dark-skinned boy find themselves orphaned in the desert. They make a life and grow up together for a period of years before they are violently separated. They spend a long period of time hoping to find one another again and then one day, they do. The story has an impetus and emotion even without the later personality-defining moments of coercion and despair depicted with the same pitiless camera-eye that captured their earlier life.
If I say that there are many complications and observations along the way, it will give you scant warning for the deluge that is to come. This work is huge, covering enormous ground, picking up and putting down again many topics worthy of examination and discussion. It is overwhelming, as it undoubtedly was to write. I have never determined how an editor deals with slimming the opus of an auteur. The only thing I can think of is that cut pages or threads could be sold separately once the work has been published to acclaim.
Thompson’s willingness to look closely at who we are evinces in me admiration and gratitude, not censure. I look eagerly forward to what he decides to do next, whether it be drawing, writing, or something else of his choice. He is extraordinary in every way....more
I was attracted to this author by the title of his first book In Praise of Older Women but thought the title of this book appropriate to the world we I was attracted to this author by the title of his first book In Praise of Older Women but thought the title of this book appropriate to the world we now live in. An Innocent… is a big comic novel, first published in the early 1980s, and has more stomach-dropping twists and turns in it than the big ride at the carnival. There is good in the world ”but evil is stronger,” says a lawyer late in the action. Whether or not the author agrees is still a question, for the open warfare between good and evil continue to the very last page.
Lawyers take most of the heat in this novel, which makes it almost seem quaint considering what Americans have learned about the financial field since then. While lawyers manage to fleece clients and double-cross their peers, it is still puppy-doo compared with what realtors and investment bankers managed to accomplish in the new century.
But of the writing: there is so much here of human nature and human foible that it is funny at the same time it is painful. Thanks to the author’s foreshadowing, one sees disasters before they arrive, but one never anticipates the next little bit the author throws at one after that. I can’t really tell you much about this book because even a sketch gives much away, but it begins with a young man seeking sunken treasure, surely a delicious thought… ...more
I read this years ago and realize now that I did not review it. The book is startling in its revelations. I remember thinking at the time that there iI read this years ago and realize now that I did not review it. The book is startling in its revelations. I remember thinking at the time that there is NO WAY I would reveal this much about myself to the world at large. It was as though we, girlfriends all, were standing at her closet, rifling through her clothes, discussing her figure flaws, commenting on what looks best, falling finally into intimate details of life and love, snickering over the painful bits. There was so much intimacy it took my breath away. But Gilbert's essential open-hearted enthusiasms broke through my defences and I really liked her by the end, and hoped the best for her. I loved being along for her ride of discovery, and she told me things about women and men and and Italy and meditation that I'd not really ever thought about before. I have enthusiastically recommended this book to others, none of whom ever seem as impressed as I. The sheer nakedness of this memoir left me round-eyed and exhaling long sibilant sighs, accompanied by head shaking. By India, I was laughing out loud with her--she'd won me over. ...more
I am a sucker for stories about vets and the animals they care for. This was an advance I picked up at BEA this year and I liked the way it began. It I am a sucker for stories about vets and the animals they care for. This was an advance I picked up at BEA this year and I liked the way it began. It actually reminded me of Susan Richard's memoir, Chosen by a Horse, in that the opening scene was of a woman going to take some abused horses from their environment. Caring for the horse helped the horsewoman through her own painful divorce. But this was fiction, and great friends and handsome men show up with food, support, and love...it was a fun read, but romance. I always have to make a conscious judgement to continue reading romance. If I hadn't been reading & listening to Rory Stewart's Prince of the Marshes at the same time, I probably would have given up. But the one leavened the other, and I liked the ending. Things weren't tied up neatly but one felt this was one of those real moments when no one knows what will happen next. The characters were robust and unique. I didn't get people mixed up or confused, and there was a long list of participants. I passed the book to a group of vet friends. I think they might enjoy it....more
I wrote this review several times already and must have (several times?) mistakenly erased it. Anyway, I had to create a new bookshelf for this--RomanI wrote this review several times already and must have (several times?) mistakenly erased it. Anyway, I had to create a new bookshelf for this--Romance--because it sometimes veered into phrases like "I hoped I looked pretty enough for him..." and "his strong arms enveloped me..." I was in the wilds of New Hampshire and hadn't the will, nor the means, to find something more challenging, so I finished it. As murder mysteries go, this was relatively harmless: two suspicious deaths and two beatings. The real puzzler for me was the original crime on which all this was premised. The life-changing violence of the original crime would not be covered up today, and granted, the crime happened years ago, but one has difficulty swallowing this one. Too many people involved and the crime too heinous and with too many ramificiations...it's very close to unbelieveable. Along with the coffee-drinking, which even the characters protest....more
To my way of thinking, this could be classified as Romance. The best sort of Romance, I might add. There is a love interest, between a man (who neededTo my way of thinking, this could be classified as Romance. The best sort of Romance, I might add. There is a love interest, between a man (who needed psychic rehabilitation after being an exuberant capitalist with no restraints) and a woman (who runs a tropical fish shop and is an animal rights activist). But the main story is a love interest between an anti-pet corporate maven who adopts and learns to love an ex-fighting pit bull mix brindle...an unlikely match, but it happens. There isn't much else here, except regret and reconciliation, hubris and humility, anger and forgiveness, love, laughter, and hope. It is a tender story, quickly absorbed, and easy on the psyche. Well done....more
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