The Little Paris Bookshop - Nina George

This book , while being an international bestseller, got panned in some of the American press publications. Hmmm. I can't figure out why. Yes, it's got some pat names for its characters. Yes, it's a chick lit story of lost love, paralyzing guilt, loss, insecurity and the toll it takes. It's also a nice gentle read about redeeming one's self in the face of having acted stupidly. It's about taking a chance in one's relationships in order to begin anew. It's about accepting the warped and sometimes odd reasons that people act the way they do. It's about love and friendship. What could be wrong with a gentle story about all that?

This book will never be a great piece of literature that lives for the ages, but it tells a lovely story.  It's romantic, it paints lovely pictures of Paris and the French countryside. It has some pithy, yet thought-provoking statements on life and love. It's not so profound that English professor fossils will gush, but Nina George has delivered a sweet story of redemption and renewal, and that's enough.

That's all I have to say.

The Wishing Thread - Lisa Van Allen

Every year at the turning of the summer season, I start looking around for 'October-y' reads. The perfect read has a bit of magic, maybe some ghost elements, maybe a hint of romance, maybe a touch of horror or mystery. The Wishing Thread gave me just the easy segue into fall that I needed. It's been a busy summer full of piecing quilt tops, canning garden produce, traveling for vacation, and garden puttering. I haven't read for the complete abandon the way I usually do. I've been reading for gaining knowledge and for fulfilling book group obligations. After a particularly demanding (and upsetting read (Ann Packer's The Children's Crusade) for which I won't even bother posting a reaction, I needed a truly light read - one that I could have a few laughs over, one that would make me remember that a good story can be told without gut-wrenching and depressing exposure of the human dark side. Thank-you, Lisa Van Allen.

After Packer's slow and meticulous de-construction of a family, it was a relief to settle into Van Allen's re-affirming story of what family really ought to be about ... losses that make people stronger, make them pull together, make them gently confront each other's foibles, mistakes, screwed up actions with love and forgiveness, make them move forward positively.  What can I say? I like happy endings.

Van Allen's sisters Van Ripper - Aubrey, Bitty, and Meggie have gathered at the Van Ripper homestead to mourn the loss of their Aunt Mariah. After losing their mother to a mysterious disappearance and presumed death years before, the girls were raised by Mariah. Losing her is a hard loss, as she was the relative that stepped in when they lost their mother. She is a matriarch with a strange magical power that has groomed them to live out the Van Ripper tradition of being the area's guardians of mysticism. These women cast spells ...

The loss of Mariah comes at a crucial time for the family and its neighbors. Their old, established neighborhood is in danger of being bulldozed by the city of Tarrytown, New York to make way for an urban renewal project that will gentrify the entire area of the city. Their personal lives are in tatters, but they pull together to make one valiant attempt to save their home and their long-established family's place within the fabric of the neighborhood ... and they do it ... after a fashion.

This is a fast read. Van Allen moves her story right along. Her sisters are a good combination of quirky, straight-laced, and kinky. They're different enough to make the family dynamics interesting, even if they do seem a bit contrived. I can get past that when the story moves as fast as this one does. There's a bit of romance, a bit of psychological angst, a bit of political wrangling, and a bit of humor.

Perfect beach read or curl-up-in-bed and forget the clock read.

I plan to pick Van Allen's next book, The Night Garden, when I get to the library.  I'm sure it will give me another good read. I still have a few other books to clear off the bedside table, though. Next up, Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train, Rachel Cusk's Outline, and Nele Neuhaus's The Ice Queen. Oh, and Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. I'll get back to you.

Cascade - Maryanne O'Hara

Maryanne O’Hara is a new author to me. I came across her book titled Cascade during a late winter foraging trip to my little public library. What I found in this book was a story of a marriage of convenience that unravels as a small town grapples with its almost certain demise. The story of the destruction of the town is loosely-based on the Metropolitan Water District’s struggle in the 30’s to deal with Boston’s evermore demanding need for fresh clean public water. The result became a push to acquire lands in the central part of Massachusetts and the flooding of those lands that created the Quabbin Reservoir. 

In O’Hara’s book the Quabbin becomes the Rappahanock and her fictitious town of Cascade is a compilation of several actual towns that were razed to create a massive reservoir for Boston’s need. Set against that backdrop, enter Desdemona Hart, a young artist and the daughter of one of the artistic forces within her hometown of Cascade. Desdemona is the child of actors and has received an arts education that includes being front and center in her father’s Shakespearean theater during her early years and going to college to receive a fine arts degree. She’s painted in Paris, won art awards at her college in Boston, and is producing new art at a pretty steady pace. 

When her father becomes ill and the theater begins to fall into decline because of the Great Depression, Desdemona returns to Cascade to care for him. Finding the finances in horrid shape, she accepts the attentions of the local pharmacist. He’s a nice enough guy, but his dreams and goals are far from what Desdemona has envisioned for herself and her art. Setting her dreams aside for the sake of her father, she agrees to marry Asa Spaulding, move to his comfortable farmhouse on the edge of the village, and settle into the life of a hausfrau. One can only imagine the frustration, right?

When a young Jewish artist, the son of  a local itinerant merchant comes to town, Desdemona makes an innocent connection over one of her canvasses. That relationship will have dramatic consequences for her marriage, her art, and the future of the town. She will find in her relationship with Jacob Solomon a muse and a romantic push to confront the poor marriage she’s made and the sad repression of her own strengths as a woman that needs to control her own destiny. 

This was a great read … it’s about promises we make out of love that come back to haunt, prejudices that can taint our lives, roles in marriages that can stifle one’s true self if they’re allowed to, and strength to work through tough social norms and find one’s true place in the world. 

I look forward to other titles from this author.

Landline - Rainbow Rowell

How do you know that you're on or off track in life? Life hums along at fever pace, especially once you hook yourself up with a special someone and especially when children appear to really mix things up good!

Georgie McCool is a woman who knows what she wants in life and goes after it with the skill of a master juggler. She keeps all the balls in the air - best friend/collaborator, successful comedy writing career, adoring husband, cute kids, California home, successful television sit-com ... until her single-mindedness falters. Then, she must try to figure out her life and her relationships. Time becomes a factor. Time zones, Time lines of her life. Time warps. Time deadlines. Holiday time.

This is such a clever story about a woman really stopping to think about and save something sacred to her. It's about loving and considering one's relationship with another person. It's about prioritizing. It's about taking chances. It's about working toward preserving what is good and right with one's life. It's about trying harder in love.

It's a really good (but weird) story.

The Tea Rose - Jennifer Donnelly

A tale about a strong woman - Fiona Finnegan. She belongs to a tight-knit Irish family that eeks a living in the businesses that hug the Thames River, East London of the 1880's. Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the people of Whitechapel, the dock workers are trying to unionize, schools for the youngsters of the working class are few and far between, the women of the Finnegan family work long hours doing laundry for middle class families or working in a sweatshop warehouse at packing and labelling the tea that comes onto the wharves of the Thames. There is much business going on, but the poor don't seem to be able to drag themselves out of poverty. 

The one big dream Fiona has is to save money with her life-long love, Joe Bristow, so that they can marry and start a shop of their own. They long to be their own bosses and live a secure life tending a shop business. When Joe has the opportunity to move across London to Covent Garden and work at a green grocer's wholesale business, the couple agree that its for the best. But life changes and Joe and Fiona are broken apart by one stupid mistake that Joe makes and lives to regret. Fiona's family falls apart when her father is killed in a sudden accident at the docks. Things get far worse as time passes and Fiona begins to fade until one horrific coincidence rattles her so deeply that her sense of righteous indignation brings her back to fighting form.

Fiona gathers her remaining family and sets off to better herself. With a promise to exact revenge on those who ruined her family and her initial dreams, Fiona carves a new path for herself. The story takes a turn and becomes a tale of two countries ... the gritty world of the docks in London and the rough and tumble world of New York's immigrant neighborhoods. Fiona does make her way, but it's not without constant challenge and her own 'demons in the closet' that haunt her and threaten ruin. 

No spoilers here ... this is a novel packed with characters and situations that keep you reading. At times, it's utterly predictable, but the characters are plentiful and colorful. The action is fast-paced and the villians are just so hateful that one reads on just to make sure they get their reward. Fiona Finnegan is an extremely likeable character. Seeing her shed her poor Cockney identity and escape the horrors of Whitechapel and the grinding poverty of the labor class in Britain was enough to keep me reading.

I do love a good romantic tale and this one satisfies. Jennifer Donnelly doesn't shy away from dropping the names of the famous, placing her characters smack dab in the middle of big historical eras, and weaving her story tightly around famous events. I recently read her novel called Revolution and liked that one as well. The Tea Rose was a nice return to a newly discovered author. I'll be looking for her other books as well.

The Museum of Extraordinary Things - Alice Hoffman

I love this book, but I love just about everything that I've read by Alice Hoffman. She has such a wonderful way of building these magical worlds in which she places her characters. In this book, it's the gritty world of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. This is a place of hard working immigrant factory workers who grind out an existence in the sweatshops of Manhattan and then spend their bits of free time escaping to the seaside attractions of Brooklyn's Coney Island. What makes it 'otherworldy' is that she places us smack dab in the center of this odd little museum of curiosities. One can practically hear the carnie music from Coney Island in the background, as we move with Coralie through the rooms of her home, watching the odd cast of characters that her father has hired to house the Museum of Extraordinary Things. Her father's odd assortment of natural wonders, geological artifacts,  and freakish live specimens feed the public's ghoulish hunger for leering at the deformed and different. For a while, the museum is a success and life for Coralie is comfortable and sheltered.

As Coralie grows older, though, her father's fortunes are slipping lower in status, she learns more and more of his dark side and willingness to compromise her, his own daughter, in order to survive in the business of side-show entertainment. The area along the seashore is being developed and larger, glitzier attractions are being promoted. Coralie's father is faced with finding more extravagant and outlandish acts to draw the public and Coralie becomes fodder for her father's warped imagination. She is pressed into service as 'the living mermaid' in the large water tank at the museum and when that act becomes 'old' is forced to swim about naked to satisfy leering gawkers' prurient urges, safe behind glass, but violated, nonetheless. In rebellion, she comes into her own, growing more emotionally independent and hungry for a true human connection in the world away from the museum and her forced life of exhibition. Her dream life becomes so active and vivid that it contributes to the eerie atmosphere that Hoffman creates around Coralie's bizarre existence.

Running parallel to the life of the girl in the Museum of Extraordinary Things is the story of Ezekial, a young Orthodox Jewish boy, who grows away from his immigrant father. Factory work is just too mind and body-numbing for young Ezekial. He turns his back on his Jewish life and his father and runs the streets of Manhattan. He finds different ways to survive and eke out a living,  first acting as the eyes and ears for a well-known Jewish shyster. When Ezekial comes across a photographer along the waterfront in Brooklyn, he becomes so enamored of the camera work being done by the artist that he follows him around until he is allowed to apprentice. Learning the art of photography opens new doors for Ezekial and he becomes a photography stringer for the local papers, providing news photos of all the grittiest of happenings in the city.

The worlds of Coralie and Ezekial spin closer and closer throughout the novel, and one waits for them to collide, as they will be so very good for each other ... but how will they finally meet and come together? Sigh ... it is a challenge not to throw the rest of the day aside to race toward the end of the story, but I am enjoying the magic of the setting so much that I won't do that. Instead, I'll savor this story a couple chapters at a time and pray that these two poor souls will meet and save each other from miserable and lonely lives. For all the grit and seediness in the lives of these two protagonists, there is a conscious search for truth and beauty and love that they both hope for and dream of - and as a reader, I am rooting for them all the way.

Thanks, Alice Hoffman for another wonderful novel!

Longbourn - Jo Baker

For a woman who loves all things Jane Austen, this book is really quite fun. It is a re-telling of the life and times at the Bennet household during the time when the events of Austen's tome, Pride and Prejudice are unfolding. The characters of the Bennet family are intact with the addition of a strong new cast of characters - the household staff. Yup, Downton Abbey meets Pride and Prejudice ...

I was quite happy with the way Jo Baker told her story. The characters are really strongly developed. Sarah, a young housemaid bridles at the yoke of servitude and wishes for a broader view of the world and a happier existence. Mrs. Hill, the stalwart housekeeper, guards her staff like a barnyard goose, but hides her own hurts and hopes behind the veil of loyalty to the Bennet family. Young James, a mysterious young man who is taken on as the Bennet's footman has a story of his own that slowly unfolds. What's central to the novel, though, is the strange incongruity between wealthy England's dismissal of slavery as a cruel business and the callous class structure that kept the serving and working classes firmly in place at the bottom of the social ladder.  Spending years in servitude without being given the means to form family bonds or homes of their own,  working long hours without notice of their social and emotional needs, being dismissed for any reason - this was surely not an easy life. It was to be endured because it was the only sure way to have a roof over one's head, sure food for one's belly, and a certain amount of protection from the harsh reality of economic conditions in the greater society. UGH ... it all seems so romantic when we see the Austen movies, but it wasn't all it was cracked up to be!

Ms. Baker has added a wonderful addition to the story of the Bennet family and the staff that cares for them, but no spoilers here. There's sure to be a movie adaptation for this novel and if not that, then a PBS production for the Austen fiends. I'll climb on board that fan wagon when it happens.

Delicious! - Ruth Reichl

Let me just say that I love Ruth Reichl. She knows food and she knows New York City. She's not one to languish over her storyline in that she moves things right along, but still holds back certain details that intrigue. It's exactly what she's done with her latest novel. It's obvious from the start that young Billie Breslin has a strange 'something' in her past, but what it is remains a mystery until far into the book. Instead, Billie's  refusal to work in the kitchen after the first few pages of the book tease the reader. Her letters home to her sister reveal a tight family on the west coast, even as she makes her way as a young administrative assistant at Delicious!, a prominent foodie magazine based in NYC. She meets a host of interesting folks as she settles into her job and is introduced to life in the city - everyone from the editor-in-chief with his darling mutt to the cantankerous chef in the magazine's test kitchen. Especially endearing is the lovable Italian family that runs a popular neighborhood cheese shop and hires Billie for a weekend gig at the shop. Then, of course, there's the handsome Complainer who stops into the shop every weekend to mix it up with the shop sales folk. It's a fun blend of people that all come together to tell a story of a magazine that is closed abruptly and the mystery that surrounds its headquarters and a room full of correspondence between James Beard (a past employee of Delicious!) and a young fan during the WWII era.

This is a rich novel, full of small details about foodie trends, past and present. Reichl drops names of famous chefs and restaurants, also current and past. There are scenes where dinners and their menus get top treatment, all while moving the story line along. It's a fun read that will no doubt, inspire a few recipes in tribute to the book! Oh, and the girl gets the guy at  the end ... equally satisfying too when you've been reading chick lit. 

The American Heiress - Daisy Goodwin

 

 

 

 

 

For those caught in the thrall of the PBS series, Downton Abbey, Daisy Goodwin's book will be a fun read.  The American Heiress  is loosely based on the life of real-life heiress, Consuelo Vanderbilt. Her strict upbringing by her exacting and strict mother served to prime her for an excellent match with one of the unattached and financially strapped European nobles of the late Victorian era. Daisy Goodwin has taken snippets of Vanderbilt's experience and built a novel around them. In it she tells a bittersweet story of a young heiress who marries for love, but who is sadly confronted with a social world that confounds her with its rules, social back-biting, moral hypocrisies, and sad truths.

 

Cora Cash, Goodwin's heroine, is a likeable character. She's young, beautiful, rich, head-strong, and full of sassy American confidence when she travels with her conniving mother and lady's maid to Europe, in search of a foreign husband with a title of nobility. She is all too successful and within six months, she has married an English duke, had her whirlwind honeymoon in the Mediterranean, and is ensconced at the family home in the Dorset countryside. She tries to negotiate the world of turn-of-the-century England with a confident and forthright manner, but her marriage is stymied by family secrets and disloyalty from the beginning. Still, she must buck up and make the best of it, fight to make her husband open up to her emotionally, work to maintain an upperhand in her household, and negotiate the intricate social scene of the British nobles in her husband's (and now, her) circle. Her riches, she finds, cannot always solve all her problems or buy happiness.

 

This book will never sit beside Edith Wharton's books or Henry James' work, but it can be compared to them in that it exposes the social mores and manners of the Gilded Age, details some of the inequities in the class systems of America and England during that time, and gives incredible detail into the lifestyles of the upper and under classes. The running of the country houses and the city mansions of the rich was as intricate as the workings of factories and small national governments, for crying out loud ! Getting a good picture of these workings and then adding the drama of the main players within several of these families and their staff has been the stuff of many a novel and television mini-series. The American Heiress is one more in long list of stories that many a reader will find addicting. It held my interest - a fast and easy page-turner. I half expect Ms Goodwin to write a follow-up of some sort... if she hasn't already.

 

 

 

Arcadia Falls - Carol Goodman

I would place this book squarely in the realm of 'chick lit' - can't see my husband or a guy curling up with it. That being said, I loved it. Carol Goodman writes pretty formulaic plot lines ... an intelligent female professional on a quest to learn something about a topic that she is studying, writing about, researching for career, whatever becomes embroiled in a series of mysterious events that ultimately become dangerous. Her plots have elements of psychological drama within her characters, strong connections to art history, classic literature, mythology, and folklore, archaeology, and architecture. She writes a good descriptive scene that can be heavily atmospheric with mystery, foreshadowing and 'creepiness'. She moves the plot right along in her novels and that's my only criticism. Sometimes her characters have coincidental discoveries that are just too pat ... there is no dilly-dallying around or agonizing to find information that will help them solve mysterious puzzles or gain hidden clues.

Enough on style, though. Arcadia Falls is a good page-turner. Quick plot synopsis - young widow with bratty teen-aged daughter takes a job at a small arts-oriented private boarding school in southern New York state. Her PhD has been side-lined by the financial mess that her husband left when he dropped dead. She must settle the finances and begin working,  hence her English degree affords her a job teaching English to young boarding school students. Her PhD thesis has gotten her the job, as the school was begun as an artist colony by the subjects of her thesis - two female artists of the Arts and Crafts era of American art.

Moving into their 'love nest' on the campus of the school, she begins to look closely at their relationship and the mysterious death of one of the women. Meanwhile, her daughter becomes involved with a circle of students that, on first impression, seem like fine upstanding kids ... but wait.

Like I said ... chick lit, but so satisfying. A nice break from weightier novels, memoirs, and young adult reads that have occupied me of late. Carol Goodman doesn't have to change her formula. I'll always buy her newest story and save it for when I need a fun, easy read. I've had this title on my bookshelf for several months ... this snowy weekend is just the perfect time to read it because it was in just such a snowstorm that one of the characters in this book .....

 

The Shoemaker's Wife - A Short Take

I share books with my sister, Mom, and friends. We lay stacks of books aside after we're done reading them, reserving them for certain people in our lives. I have a stack of what I call, 'chick lit' that I put aside for Mom. She reads and passes on to my sister and sisters-in-law. The books make the rounds and then we gush over them or pan them ... it's the family best seller list taken to the phone or family party. I'm sure you, dear readers, have some system to for recommending or bashing the books you read.

This is the latest book that I will be passing to Mom. She will love it - me, not as much as some of Ms. Trigiani's other books. I do really like Adriana T's world of Italian women. She wowed me throughout her entire 'Stone Gap' series. I loved her strong female characters set in real world settings. In this, her latest book, she has drawn on inspiration from her grandparent's emigration to America and their romance and family life to create the world of Ciro and Enza Lazzari. It's a story of strong connections to Catholic church, family, the family place in northern Italy, and the struggle to maintain close ties to family when emigration to America becomes a necessity. It's a story of faithful work for family, constancy in relationships, understanding the motives and circumstances of family members that seem cruel when one is young and understandable as one ages and faces the vicissitudes of life. It's a story of strength and character. All this is placed against the background of the early to mid-1900's. - and that is where Ms. T runs into trouble, as far as I'm concerned.

While her characters are rolled up in the world of NYC immigration and the adjustment of the minorites to American work, very little of the bias toward immigrants, working world upheaval, and politics of the era are even touched on. While Ciro is placed smack dab in the center of WWI as an American doughboy, the great pandemic of 1918 is not even mentioned. The Great Depression and how it effected American workers? Nowhere to be seen. The build-up to WWII ... nowhere. She writes closely to family day to day experiences and the relationships within the small town that Enza and Ciro move to in Minnesota, but never touches on the larger American fabric of change and politics. I found that a great weakness in the storyline, but perhaps I am stuck between genres ... this is an example of realistic fiction and not historical fiction, I guess. That line seems blurry here and it's a fine line to be walked by Trigiani.

That being said, I still liked the book! It fulfilled a need for a nice, undemanding story to follow a gutsy post-WWII novel of intrigue that made me really pay attention to details. I floated through The Shoemaker's Wife. I wondered how Ciro and Enza would finally get together and was pleased when they did. I was saddened by the fates of certain family members and happy at how others fared across time. I rooted for Enza and her dear friend, Laura to make it big in America. Predictably, they did - with all the joy, sorrow, luck, and fulfillment that one would wish for hard-working American immigrants. This is a story of the American dream fulfilled. Mom will love it.

I'll continue to snap up Adriana Trigiani's books. She writes excellent 'chick lit' - good solid stories of strong Italian women ... and if she ever is at an author event near me, I'll make the pilgrimage to listen to her speak about her writing, her inspiration, and her attitudes toward the publishing world. She's a keeper.