Melissa Albert | Fiction 2018

Alice Crewe Proserpine is seventeen and lives with her mother Ella as nomads, moving from place to place around the country for all her life.  She never understood why there was constant upheaval, and why she lived in studio apartments, or converted barns, or someone’s couch, or other unsavory places until one day, suddenly, her mom would move them on.

And then Alice’s grandmother Althea dies, who has lived in an old beat up mansion called Hazel Wood.  Alice learns that Althea has a cult of fans who latched on to the one book Althea wrote.  But the book, Tales from the Hinterland, is impossible to find.  It is as though it is destroying itself. Alice has been searching for it for most of her young life.

One day Ella disappears, and Alice takes off to find Hazel Wood, the one place her mother told her never to go.  The adventure begins, as Alice enters Hinterland, the dark fairy tale land.

I found Hazel Wood on a list from Book Riot.  The list was “ten books you might enjoy if you loved The Night Circus.”  Well, I loved The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) and I picked one that sounded like an enjoyable mix of reality and fantasy.  I enjoyed Hazel Wood, though I didn’t fall in love with it.  I particularly liked the first half, where the real world and the fantasy world were interspersed, and we traveled from one to the other.  Around page 200, just over halfway in, Alice bridges the gap to the fairy tale world and we are there for most of the rest of the book, until the resolution at the end.  I didn’t care for the Hinterland story quite as much as the juxtaposition of fantasy and reality as told in the first half.

You might like this, if occasional magic is your thing.  Albert is a good writer.  Her pace is quick and sharp.  She has a predilection for metaphors that sometimes don’t make sense to me, but that is a small complaint.

Melissa Albert  |  Fiction 2019

Time liked it and so did the Washington Post.  I will have to take a pass on this one.  I made it to page 80, but couldn’t bear another moment.  To me, I read a compilation of words from a profession presented as ridiculously ego-maniacal .... psychiatry and analysis; psychiatrists, psychologists, and analysands. Characters were defined not by their qualities or values or even behaviors, but by what they said in analysis and how they described their dreams and their emotional outbursts.  There is still no plot at 30% in.  I am moving on.

Did you read this and enjoy it?  I’d love to hear!

Min Jin Lee | Fiction 2017

Pachinko follows one Korean family through two World Wars, and their life in Japan as it evolves, away from their beloved homeland.  It is not a story of a particularly tragic family, or a wealthy or powerful family.  It is just a family.  A poor family who lost their home in Korea during WW2 and made a life for themselves. You will follow this family through four generations and 80 years, and they will touch your heart, as well as teach you something about our world history.  They endure catastrophe, tragedy, poverty, discrimination, and they manifest wisdom, joy, passion, laughter, and a powerful sense of self.

The word is difficult to find … but we will settle on “saga.”  Pachinko is a 500-page tale of this small family and is an eminently readable saga.  You will come to love the characters and cheer for their triumphs.  I quite like this quote by award-winning author Darin Strauss, “Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a great book, a passionate story, a novel of magisterial sweep.”

I do recommend this book.  It is simply a good story.  Yes, it is long; I read it over the first half of the Christmas break.  A nice time to read such a tale, while it is cold outside.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh | Fiction 2011

I often read a book with a desire to move through it, to soak it up, and move on to the next interesting tale.  But this book, The Language of Flowers, I wanted to savor. The writing, the story, and the exploration of flowers and their meanings all created a delicacy to enjoy slowly.

Victoria is a foster child, experiencing the worst of the foster system, traveling from a group home to a private home to a group home over and over.  Then, at age eight she meets a possible new mother, Elizabeth.  Theirs is a fast and deep bond.  But the fates work against this relationship.  While at its apex, Victoria learns from Elizabeth all about flowers – how to tend, harvest, and arrange them, and above all, the meaning of each flower.  She is a fast learner and this learning is the most fulfillment she has experienced in her young life.

But circumstances interfere and Victoria leaves Elizabeth’s house to finish out her final youthful years in a group home until she is “emancipated” on her 18^th birthday.  With no skills and no family, Victoria becomes homeless, until Renata, a florist, discovers how brilliant Victoria is with flowers.  Of course, Victoria has no reason to trust anyone. She doesn’t even know what trust is, much less love.

The book follows two journeys, one when Victoria is eight and living with Elizabeth, and the other when she is 18 and out on her own.  And flowers and their meaning are at the center of both journeys.

This is a beautiful book, another debut novel.  It is finely crafted and hard to put down, even though it wants to be relished.  I highly recommend it.

David Lagerkrantz | Fiction 2019

Lagercrantz took over the Dragon Tattoo series with Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist after Stieg Larsson died in 2004, so you may very well already be familiar with the primary characters in The Girl Who Lived Twice, Lisbeth and Mikael.

I believe Lagercrantz does quite a good job of carrying forward the Larsson legacy.  That’s a hard task!  The Girl Who Lived Twice is fast-paced, interesting, a mystery and thriller.  I enjoyed it, especially the author’s ability to move the story forward at a good pace.

There are two plots that interweave.  One is Lisbeth’s hate for and revenge for her sister, who Lisbeth THINKS she wants to kill.  The other is Mikael’s search for the identity of, and the story behind, a homeless man who dies on the streets, but has a colorful Everest history!  The Washington Post couldn’t resist this statement in the opening line of their 08/23/2019 review, “Salander irons an abusive husband's dress shirt with him in it.”  Piques one's interest at least!

However, Lagercrantz has too many characters and not quite enough of Lisbeth and Mikael.   He put a character list at the beginning of the book, but unfortunately, only included major characters.  It is not the major characters that the reader has trouble keeping track of!  So, I was confused at times.  Hence, three hearts.

Sarah Winman | Fiction 2017

Ellis and Annie and Michael are in love with each another.  It is a nearly perfect love.  Tragic, yes, but also full of soul, depth, authenticity, tenderness, laughter, play, learning, exploration, and intensity.

If I were an English Professor, I would assign this book as a study of character and relationship development.  Ellis and Michael are particularly strong souls, whom we discover so much about.  Winman has done an extraordinary job of delving into the hearts and souls of these two men, and providing us with a window.  Though the location and the timing, recent decades in Oxford, add much context and beauty to the tale, they are not central to the story line.  In some ways, this could be three people anywhere.

The reviews on this are all-or-nothing.  People love this book or hate it and are bored to tears.  People think Winman did a superb job with character development, or a truly lousy job.

I wish this was a book club because I would like talk about the roles that were played by sunflowers, swimming, mothers, and floorboards.  My friend Rene recommend this short novel.  I will be eager to hear if you love it or hate it ...

Tracy Chevalier | Fiction 2019

The broderers did exist and did create embroidery for Winchester Cathedral.  Louisa Pesel was renowned for her designs and she has a history of accomplishments before leading the project to embroider for the cathedral.  Interestingly, embroidery was taught to men in WWI as a form of occupational therapy, to help them deal with their physical and mental trauma.

From the very first page I anticipated that this would be a novel that was finely written with much attention to detail.  And I was not wrong.  Chevalier (this is her 11th novel) is a master of character development and scenery description.  She places you right in context, in her main character’s heart and mind.  She is perhaps most famous for The Girl with a Pearl Earring.  

The time is 1932.  Violet Speedwell, 38, lost her brother and her fiancé in World War I.  She is now one of the “surplus women” of her time.  Too old to marry, not likely to have children, “spinsters” in the awfullest sense of that word.

But Violet strikes out on her own, leaving her hyper-critical mother behind.  Moving to Winchester from Southampton, she takes a room in a boarding house, is a typist for an insurance company, and soon discovers the broderers, who are embroidering kneelers and cushions for Winchester Cathedral.  She demonstrates her talent and becomes one of them.  Of course, this action opens her to become self-sufficient (if quite poor), develop friendships, learn about the art of bell ringing, and perhaps even to fall in love.

This is a story of the times after WWI in England, of friendship, of the strict roles men and women held at this time, of maturing into one’s own person, and of the beauty of needlepoint.  Though the topic might seem rather odd to some readers, its uniqueness is part of its charm, and I am giving it a full four hearts.

Recommend by numerous publications as one of the best books of 2019 including The Week, Time, Real Simple, Goodreads, and Overdrive.

Christine Coulson  |  Fiction 2019

It is my fault this book is receiving one heart.  I seem to have misheard or misunderstood the interview I listened to on NPR.  The author is a 25-year veteran of the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  As I understood from the interview, this short book was filled with vignettes written by the pieces of art in the Met.  It sounded as though the pieces of art were going to speak and tell a story.  In the first chapter, this is what happens.  A 1749 chair crafted for the Duchess of Parma is eager to attract a modern-day child to her lap, to drool and wiggle.  She cheers this little guy on!  But mom reaches out in the nick of time and grabs the little boy before he is able to put his rump or even his fingers on the chair.  The chair was sad.  Ingenious!

In the second chapter, the Director of the Museum is looking for a Muse to bring to a meeting.  The curators of numerous exhibitions bring more than a hundred art pieces to the Director’s office.  The Three Graces, naked, headless, and inextricably linked together, are sent back.  “They shuffled out clumsily. The stuttering step of the conjoined, silent in their headless disappointment.”  (pg 16) Zeus’s nine daughters disagree over whether the Director is “a real creep” or “hot” or “a total god.” (pg 17)  Broken and naked women muttering among themselves arrive from the Romans and Greeks section, and the Director simply stares.

These chapters were absolutely delightful!

And then, they were done.  I made it through 2/3rds of the book, but Coulson left her artwork behind and told stories of some of the 2200 members of the Met staff.  Unfortunately, since she spent 25 years there, she must have assumed these stories were unique and bizarre and interesting, but you could tell the exact same stories (in a different physical setting) about the high technology and hospital organizations I have worked in.  Not interesting.

Maybe she is inspired by her own Muse and creates other stories from works of art by the end of the book, but I perused to the end and didn’t see any more.  She certainly seems to have the ability to do so.

I SO wish she had written what I though she had written, rather than what she actually wrote!

Heather Anderson | Nonfiction 2019

Heather Anderson was the fifth person overall and the first woman to hike the Triple Crown (the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail) in one year.   She holds the women’s Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the Appalachian Trail, and the FKT on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), having bested the male holder of that title by four days.  She is humble and not much interested in publicity.  She tried marriage and a job for a while, but they just didn’t take.

This is the autobiographical story of her 60-day record breaking PCT hike. This is no Wild.  Heather, whose trail name is Anish, is clearly a highly experienced hiker. Since 2003, she has hiked over 30,000 miles ... longer than the equator.  Thirst tells her story on the PCT, a solo hiker who does things her way (she hikes in sundresses!) for an average of 42 miles a day.  Aptly titled, she began in the desert at the south terminus on June 8 .... the hot dry desert.  This is a serious hiker’s journey.   As she is traveling alone, she is also quite introspective.  I found her philosophizing to be insightful and timely, though her self-esteem could use some reinforcement.  If you like wilderness adventures, you will eat this one up. (Or should I say, “drink” it up.)

Heard on OPB.

Joshilyn Jackson | Fiction 2019

The story opens at a neighborhood book club.  Suddenly the woman renting the Air B&B down the street, Angelica Roux, knocks on the door and decides she is going to join.  Pouring excessive amounts of alcohol for all who are in attendance (none of which does she contribute), powerful Roux takes over the book club, eventually getting the drunk women to play an adult version of “Never Have I Ever” and revealing secrets about themselves they would not reveal to anyone.

I thought at first, this was going to be rather silly.  But it doesn’t take long to figure out that Roux is one very evil person, with her eyes set on blackmail.  As the tale progresses, it actually becomes a thriller, with Roux manipulating our major character, Amy Whey, through her painful past that Amy has held secret, even from her beloved husband, Davis.  Amy can neither give her what she wants – cash – nor reveal the sins of her past.  So she must figure out how to out-maneuver Roux.  And Amy has no experience at such detective work and maneuvering.

Roux's son Luca and Amy's daughter Maddy form another subplot, and scuba diving plays a major role in this drama from Pensacola, Florida.  This book was recommended by Time magazine in an article called “Summer Thrills.”  It is worth your time.  About half-way through, you may be turning pages as fast as I did.