Source: Library

Review: To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn Ivey

Posted on by Dana
Review: To the Bright Edge of the World, Eowyn IveyTo The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
Narrator: John Glouchevitch, Christine Lakin, Kiff Vandenheuvel
Published by Hachette Audio on August 2, 2016
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 13 hours 27 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

In the winter of 1885, Lieutenant Colonel Allen Forrester sets out with his men on an expedition into the newly acquired territory of Alaska. Their objective: to travel up the ferocious Wolverine River, mapping the interior and gathering information on the region’s potentially dangerous native tribes. With a young and newly pregnant wife at home, Forrester is anxious to complete the journey with all possible speed and return to her. But once the crew passes beyond the edge of the known world, there’s no telling what awaits them.

With gorgeous descriptions of the Alaskan wilds and a vivid cast of characters —including Forrester, his wife Sophie, a mysterious Eyak guide, and a Native American woman who joins the expedition—TO THE BRIGHT EDGE OF THE WORLD is an epic tale of one of America’s last frontiers, combining myth, history, romance, and adventure.

In the Middle Ages, mapmakers used to draw dragons, sea monsters, and other mythical creatures to mark the unknown: “Here be dragons.” Lt. Col. Allen Forrester must have understood the impulse. I loved this epistolary novel about an expedition to explore the fictional Wolverine River in Alaska. The characters come to life through letters, diary entries, and artifacts such as advertisements, photographs, drawings, and much more. I was listening to the audiobook, and I checked out the hardcover from the library so I could examine some of these artifacts as I read.

I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book had I not been participating in the Decades Reading Challenge and needed a book set in the 1880s or 1890s. I didn’t think I was much interested in reading about Alaska or its exploration. However, the book had good reviews, and I thought I’d at least check it out. I’m so glad I did because Eowyn Ivey managed to captivate me on a subject and setting I wasn’t much interested in.

The descriptions of Alaska were lyrical, and I rooted for the expedition to make it. More than that, Ivey transformed Sophie Forrester’s story—waiting at home for her husband to return and taking up photography—into a fascinating tale to equal her husband’s. I particularly loved the coda at the end.

Along with the Forresters’ story, Ivey also weaves the tale of the blossoming friendship between Walt Forrester, a descendant of the Colonel’s brother, and Josh Sloan, who works at a museum in Alaska. Walt wants to bequeath the Forrester papers and artifacts to the museum. I was charmed by their letters back and forth to each other.

The audiobook is excellent, but if you read it, do yourself a favor and have a paper copy on hand to experience the full multimedia experience this book offers.

 

five-stars

Related posts:

The Lace Reader

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Crime and Punishment

Review: Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead

Posted on by Dana
Review: Harlem Shuffle, Colson WhiteheadHarlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Narrator: Dion Graham
Published by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group on September 14, 2021
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 10 hours and 36 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-stars

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..."

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

'Harlem Shuffle's' ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it's a joy to listen to, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

After two back-to-back Pulitzer award-winning novels, Colson Whitehead seems like he wanted to have a little bit of fun. And who could blame him? The subject matter of both The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys is so heavy. As he does in those previous novels, however, Whitehead brings the setting to vivid life. A couple of times, I laughed out loud as I listened to this one. Yet there were also moments when Whitehead’s virtuosity as a writer was fully displayed. Frankly, this one would make a great film, and I kind of hope it gets made.

As well drawn as Ray Carney is, I think perhaps Freddie and Pepper were my favorite characters, but the book is peopled with many memorable (and lovable) characters. I loved the attention to detail. For example, Ray always made observations about the furniture—even when he had a gun trained on him, he noticed the office furniture. I understand a sequel is in the offing, and I’m excited to see what is in store for Ray Carney in the next book.

four-stars

Related posts:

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ahab's Wife

Review: Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram, narrated by Michael Levi Harris

Review: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John MandelThe Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Narrator: Dylan Moore
Published by Knopf Publishing Group on March 24, 2020
Length: 10 hours 26 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-half-stars

From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events—a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients’ accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

I checked this book out right after finishing Sea of Tranquility because I understood it had many of the same characters as that book. For most of the book, I admit this one was sitting on 4 stars, but I bumped it up by the end because I didn’t want to stop listening once I reached the last couple of hours. It didn’t reach the brilliance of Sea of Tranquility or Station Eleven for me, but it was definitely interesting. Who knew you could write a lyrical novel about a Ponzi scheme? But it is. I can’t really say I liked any of the characters, but I’m not sure you’re supposed to. My favorite parts were the office workers reflecting on what they were doing—Mandel calls these sections the Office Chorus. I understand she has said that the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme inspired her, and she was curious as to what the people working with him were thinking as they engaged in this illegal and unethical behavior. This book explored humanity’s interconnectedness and how our pasts and the people in them haunt us. It was compelling, though I’m not sure it will rise to the top reads of 2023—Sea of Tranquility might.

four-half-stars

Related posts:

Sunday Post #39: The Last Sunday of the Year

Review: How to Hang a Witch Series, Adriana Mather

Stardust and the Rest of the Year's Best

Review: The Orphan of Cemetery Hill, Hester Fox

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Orphan of Cemetery Hill, Hester FoxThe Orphan of Cemetery Hill by Hester Fox
Published by Graydon House on September 15, 2020
Genres: Fantasy/Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 337
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
three-half-stars

The dead won’t bother you if you don’t give them permission.

Boston, 1844.

Tabby has a peculiar gift: she can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous.

As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby’s gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances.

Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery. When a series of macabre grave robberies begins to plague the city, Tabby is ensnared in a deadly plot by the perpetrators, known only as the “Resurrection Men.”

In the end, Tabby’s gift will either save both her and the cemetery—or bring about her own destruction.

I wanted to read this book for two reasons:

  1. I had just finished Hester Fox’s newest book, A Lullaby for Witches, and there was an excerpt of this book at the end. I liked the first chapter.
  2. It is set in Boston, one of my favorite places.

After reading two of Hester Fox’s books (and having started a third), I feel secure in saying Fox is at her best in setting the scene. She evokes gothic New England settings with the practiced hand of the historian she is. The inspiration for Cemetery Hill is the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston’s North End. The North End is one of my favorite areas of Boston. Fox brings 19th-century Boston to life, but in my case, she didn’t have to work too hard since I had seen many of the places in the novel.

Characterization is more of a challenge. I found Tabby to be naive—especially for someone who has had to live by her wits for so long. I didn’t understand why she was so interested in Caleb. I didn’t like him at all, and it didn’t say much about her taste in men that she was that interested in him. He never seemed able to make up his mind what he wanted, and I suppose that’s realistic enough—real people have that problem. More problematic was that Fox didn’t seem to know if he was a decent guy or not, so he just came off to me as confusing. The lead characters just didn’t strike me as real in the way the characters in A Lullaby for Witches did. I don’t have to like characters in order to enjoy a book. Wuthering Heights is my favorite book, and I hate all the characters. I suppose something I have discovered about myself is that if a writer can take me to a place, I enjoy the reading experience, and Hester Fox can certainly take a reader to a place.

This paragraph contains a slightly spoilery detail. The sinister plot at the heart of the book didn’t ring true. I found it easier to believe Tabby was clairvoyant than that the villains in this novel were interested in using her ability to reanimate the dead. Why? What were they hoping to accomplish? That question was never clearly answered. I get why people would want to contact the dead, but I didn’t understand their Frankenstein-like pursuit of reanimation.

Those quibbles aside, I still believe the book is worth 3.5 stars. Why? I really enjoyed the setting, and I found Fox’s evocation of 1850s Boston fascinating. Though the lead characters didn’t interest me, I did like Eli and Tabby’s sister Alice. The book is escapist fun for any reader who likes gothic stories in a New England setting.

three-half-stars

Related posts:

Review: Reckless: My Life as a Pretender, Chrissie Hynde

Sherlock Holmes: Six Stories Catch-Up

Review: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Dave Grohl

Review: Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation, Hannah Gadsby

Posted on by Dana
Review: Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation, Hannah GadsbyTen Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby
Published by Allen & Unwin on March 29, 2022
Genres: Memoir
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

Multi-awardwinning Hannah Gadsby transformed comedy with her show Nanette, even as she declared that she was quitting stand-up. Now, she takes us through the defining moments in her life that led to the creation of Nanette and her powerful decision to tell the truth-no matter the cost.

"There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself."—Hannah Gadsby, Nanette

Gadsby's unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear. Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby's growth as a queer person from Tasmania—where homosexuality was illegal until 1997—to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette—the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling. Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby's tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time.

I had this book on hold in the library for so long that I forgot I’d done so. I was eager to read it because I found Nanette profoundly moving.  If you’ve seen Nanette or Gadsby’s newer show Douglas, some of the material in the memoir will be familiar to you. There are some traumatic details in the memoir that Gadsby elides, while other events are given more context than she has previously given in her show. We are all in charge of our stories and tell them the way we need to tell them, so I was unbothered—this is a memoir after all. I was fascinated by Gadsby’s stories about learning she had ADHD and autism. Her descriptions of how she struggled with tasks and frustrated others felt so familiar to me as I have watched my own children struggle in similar ways. Some parts of the memoir are much longer—Gadsby’s formative years take up the longest chapter—but I understand why the book was broken up the way it was. She is grouping parts of her life together in ways that explain where Nanette came from, so some parts just have to be longer. Gadsby sprinkles footnotes throughout, and they reminded me of Gadsby’s asides during her shows. I’m not sure how they’d impact the audiobook, but I didn’t find them distracting in the hardcover. I’d definitely recommend this memoir to anyone who has appreciated Hannah Gadsby’s shows and wants to know more about her creative process and inspiration.

five-stars

Related posts:

Review: Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

Review: Fiercombe Manor, Kate Riordan

Review: Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

Review: A Lullaby for Witches, Hester Fox

Posted on by Dana
Review: A Lullaby for Witches, Hester FoxA Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox
Published by Graydon House on February 1, 2022
Genres: Fantasy/Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 352
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-half-stars


Two women. A history of witchcraft. And a deep-rooted female power that sings out across the centuries.

Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin. Called instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker.

One hundred and fifty years later, Augusta Podos takes a dream job at Harlowe House, the historic home of a wealthy New England family that has been turned into a small museum in Tynemouth, Massachusetts. When Augusta stumbles across an oblique reference to a daughter of the Harlowes who has nearly been expunged from the historical record, the mystery is too intriguing to ignore. But as she digs deeper, something sinister unfurls from its sleep, a dark power that binds one woman to the other across lines of blood and time. If Augusta can’t resist its allure, everything she knows and loves—including her very life—could be lost forever.

I enjoy a good witch book, and this was a pretty good witch book. As a bonus, it’s set in my current home state of Massachusetts in the fictional town of Tynemouth, somewhere on the North Shore (my best guess, based on its proximity to the real cities of Salem and Boston). Parts of Margaret’s story seemed stilted, I think in part because of the author’s choice to bring her into the present to reflect on her growing power in several italicized sections. The Margaret sections set entirely in the past rang true. I am not sure how else Fox might have accomplished her storyline, but those passages always took me out of the story for a minute. However, I kept turning the pages, wanting to know what would happen. Some of my questions remained unsatisfied, but I’m afraid they’re spoilers. If you highlight the text that follows this paragraph, you’ll see my spoiler questions, but if you don’t want the story spoiled, you can keep reading the paragraph that follows the spoilers section.

Spoilers!

  1. I never found out exactly how Augusta and Margaret were related. I worked on the assumption that she’d be a direct descendant until Margaret was killed before her child could be born. After that, I didn’t know how Augusta could be related to Margaret. 
  2. I also wanted to know more about Augusta’s family history. Fox teased several times that there were some big reveals buried in the boxes of mementos of her father, and Augusta sifts through them a few times, even finding Margaret’s comb and a family tree with the name Montrose, the maiden name of Margaret’s mother. “Bishop” was also on the family tree, and Bridget Bishop was executed during the Salem Witch Trials. Fox wouldn’t be the first writer to use Bridget Bishop as a real witch, if that’s the case—Deborah Harkness makes her protagonist in A Discovery of Witches a descendant of Bridget Bishop and a real witch.
  3. What exactly happened to Margaret? Did she vanish? Is she still out there, lurking? 

I understand some character names from Fox’s other books appear in this book as well, but this was my first book by Hester Fox. I liked it enough that it will not be my last. She reminds me a bit of Brunonia Barry in how she captures Massachusetts’s witchy history, and I really liked the idea that Augusta worked in a museum—the former home of a prominent family. There is a hint of Barry’s characterization from The Lace Reader and A Map of True Places in this book. I will always have a soft spot for Brunonia Barry because I won a trip to Salem, MA in connection with her book A Map of True Places, and I’m convinced it was a sort of beginning that led to our moving to MA two years later. I will also always have a soft spot for Salem, and truthfully, I’d love to live on the North Shore one day.

I really enjoyed Fox’s comment in her acknowledgments, offering “thanks and admiration” to “the many museum workers and volunteers who are actively decolonizing the field and making museums more equitable places, both for the audiences they serve and in the stories they tell.” This idea plays out in the novel in how Augusta and her co-workers work to remember the stories of the women of Tynemouth. For far too long, the stories of so many people have been forgotten, and this is especially true of women and people of color. Fox tried to include both in this novel. She was more successful in capturing the women, but I appreciated watching Augusta try to uncover forgotten stories for her exhibit.

four-half-stars

Related posts:

Review: The London Séance Society, Sarah Penner

Top Ten Book Club Books

Dragonfly in Amber (audio), Diana Gabaldon

Review: The Bookshop on the Corner, Jenny Colgan

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Bookshop on the Corner, Jenny ColganThe Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
Published by HarperCollins Publishers on September 20, 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 368
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-half-stars

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

If you’ve read my previous post, you know my cat doesn’t have long to live, and it’s been difficult to read anything. I haven’t listened to audiobooks like I usually do on my walks because I find it hard to concentrate. I thought if I found a sort of cozy read, something of a love letter to books, I might do all right, and I was right. This book was just what the doctor ordered. It’s not great literature. It’s not going to change the world. It’s even pretty corny and twee. It’s like a Hallmark Channel movie made into a book. But it was kind of nice to disappear into Nina’s world in Kirrinfief, a place I desperately wanted to be real as much as I wanted the lovely children’s book Up on the Rooftops to be real.

I really enjoyed Jenny Colgan’s characters, especially the ancillary ones. Fair warning: this is the kind of book where the minor characters sort of steal the show whenever they’re on the page and the main characters are more of a vehicle for the story than anyone you fall in love with.

The one thing I didn’t like about this book was the title. I read somewhere that the book’s title only appears in the American edition, but I’m not sure that’s true. The title is misleading because Nina buys an old van and converts it into a mobile bookshop, so it’s not on any corner. The cover art makes no sense, given the novel’s story. I read that the original title was The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, which makes more sense as it’s the name of Nina’s mobile bookshop.

I’ll probably read more of Jenny Colgan’s books. This book isn’t for everyone, and I suspect some people would hate it for being so twee, but if twee is what you need, it’s perfect. It was perfect for me, at this moment.

four-half-stars

Related posts:

Review: The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Delirium, Lauren Oliver

Review: The Lais of Marie de France

Mid-April Reading Update

Posted on by Dana

I finished a couple of books this week and decided to roll the reviews together.

Mid-April Reading UpdateA Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
Published by Random House on January 12, 2021
Length: 14 hours 44 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.

In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

My husband and I listened to this on audiobook. He has been trying to get me to read George Saunders since an aborted attempt at Lincoln in the Bardo. I just couldn’t follow that one on audio, but I do want to try to read it in print. I see this book as a companion to Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. Essentially, it’s a master class in how literature works using short stories by several Russian authors as a focus for analysis. If I had to pick a favorite short story, it would probably be “The Nose” (Chekov) or perhaps “Alyosha the Pot.” The book has a wonderful cast of narrators, including Rainn Wilson, B. D. Wong, Glenn Close, Phylicia Rashad, and Nick Offerman. Saunders narrates the analytical parts. I bought a print copy for use in my classroom. I’m not yet sure how I might use it, but I can see the potential.

Mid-April Reading UpdateThe Familiars by Stacey Halls
Published by MIRA on February 19, 2019
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 335
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
three-stars

Young Fleetwood Shuttleworth, a noblewoman, is with child again. None of her previous pregnancies have borne fruit, and her husband, Richard, is anxious for an heir. Then Fleetwood discovers a hidden doctor’s letter that carries a dire prediction: she will not survive another birth. By chance she meets a midwife named Alice Gray, who promises to help her deliver a healthy baby. But Alice soon stands accused of witchcraft.

Is there more to Alice than meets the eye? Fleetwood must risk everything to prove her innocence. As the two women’s lives become intertwined, the Witch Trials of 1612 loom. Time is running out; both their lives are at stake. Only they know the truth. Only they can save each other.

Rich and compelling, set against the frenzy of the real Pendle Hill Witch Trials, this novel explores the rights of 17th-century women and raises the question: Was witch-hunting really women-hunting? Fleetwood Shuttleworth, Alice Gray and the other characters are actual historical figures. King James I was obsessed with asserting power over the lawless countryside (even woodland creatures, or “familiars,” were suspected of dark magic) by capturing “witches”—in reality mostly poor and illiterate women.

I love reading books about witches, “real” or not, and I wanted to like this book more. It was compelling enough for me to finish; however, some of the author’s choices were perplexing. I didn’t find the protagonist, Fleetwood Shuttleworth, to be all that engaging, and I kept thinking about how much more interesting the story might have been if the protagonist had been one of the accused witches. It seems like a missed opportunity to me to have a relatively privileged outsider tell the story of the Pendle Witch Trials. Also, Fleetwood rides a horse all over Creation while hugely pregnant. I’m not sure how she got on the horse, never mind rode it, in that condition. Granted, I’m not a horsewoman, so what do I know. Another issue I had was that Fleetwood discovers early in the book, within the first few pages, that her husband is secretive, and she finds he’s hiding even more important information. They have a falling out, and it seems implausible when they reconcile. The author didn’t really lay the groundwork for that reconciliation to make sense. Still, I did learn some things about this interesting historical event.

Related posts:

Review: Things Half in Shadow, Alan Finn

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

Review: What the Wind Knows, Amy Harmon

Review: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Good Lord Bird, James McBrideThe Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Narrator: Michael Boatman
Published by Penguin Audio on August 20, 2013
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 14 hours 35 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857; the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery forces. When John Brown, the legendary abolitionist, arrives in the area, an argument between Brown and Henry s master quickly turns violent. Henry is forced to leave town with Brown, who believes he is a girl.

Over the ensuing months, Henry, whom Brown nicknames Little Onion, conceals his true identity as he struggles to stay alive. Eventually, Little Onion finds himself with Brown at the historic raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, which was one of the major catalysts for the Civil War.

An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with McBride s meticulous eye for detail and character, THE GOOD LORD BIRD is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival.

I absolutely loved this book, and I think listening to the audiobook was a major reason why. Michael Boatman’s narration is excellent. I loved his characterization of John Brown and Owen Brown in particular. In style, this book reminded me a great deal of Mark Twain, particularly Huckleberry Finn. McBride’s portrayal of John Brown is sympathetic yet realistic. Through the voice of his narrator, Henry, we have a full picture of a complicated man: a religious zealot called by God to end slavery and a man who truly believed all people are equal. I honestly haven’t read enough about the real John Brown to know if the characterization is completely accurate, but it definitely rings true.

I love it when historical fiction asks me to research, too, and this book had me checking out other sources so I could learn about John Brown. Confederate President Jefferson Davis once said that what he feared was “thousands of John Browns.” It’s interesting to ask what might have happened had John Brown not conducted his raid on Harper’s Ferry or engaged in the skirmishes in Bleeding Kansas. Would the war have happened later? Would the South have organized in the face of ardent abolitionism? In any case, it’s difficult for me not to admire his dedication to the cause of freedom for African Americans at a time when that was not just unpopular but illegal. His tactics were violent, but it’s probably true that nonviolent protest would have accomplished nothing. After all, it took a bloody war to resolve the question of slavery, and the question of racism is still open.

I appreciated McBride’s invention of Henry as a narrator. He offered an opportunity to interpret John Brown’s actions through the lens of one of the enslaved people Brown was attempting to free and also to offer an outside perspective that is both sympathetic and critical of Brown. This balance makes it easier for McBride to draw a more complex picture of Brown and his followers than if he had chosen a narrator from among them or even a further outsider.

There is a chunk of the story in the middle when Henry is separated from Brown that I didn’t find as enjoyable. During this section, Henry is working in a hotel/whorehouse and falls in love with one of the prostitutes. However, he is disguising himself as a girl, so it’s complicated. I’m wondering now, as I finished the book, if that section added to the story or not. I suppose it depends on whether the reader sees this as a story of John Brown or a story of Henry Shackleford. I tend toward the former, and I will admit that part of the book slowed down the story’s momentum a bit for me, but not enough for me to dock any stars.

One literary aspect I appreciated was McBride’s clever use of motifs. For example, on several occasions, Brown wants to stop and pray when the group is in danger, and his son Owen is often the one to tell him to wrap it up so they can get out of danger. Another example is Brown’s directive to Henry to “hive the bees,” or try to rouse support for Brown’s cause among the Black population. He brings both motifs back touchingly at the end of the novel. We know how John Brown’s story ends, but McBride managed to make it satisfying and true to the characters he created. The first thing I did upon finishing this book is to check out Deacon King Kong, another of McBride’s novels. I wanted more. I can’t wait to watch the film!

five-stars

Related posts:

November Reading Round-Up

Sherlock Holmes: Behind Again

The Man with Two Left Feet, P. G. Wodehouse

Mid-March Reviews

Posted on by Dana

I’m in spring break for school and catching up on some recent book reviews.

Mid-March ReviewsKeep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith
Published by Atria Books on October 6, 2020
Genres: Nonfiction
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-stars

Perfect for fans of Anne Lamott and Cheryl Strayed, this is an inspiring and uplifting collection of essays and quotes on creativity and resilience by the award-winning author of the viral poem Good Bones.

When award-winning poet Maggie Smith started writing daily Twitter posts under the title “Keep Moving” in the wake of her divorce, they unexpectedly caught fire. People around the world connected to her short, inspiring quotes which brilliantly captured the complexities of the human heart. Funny, wry, and profound, Maggie’s writing has been and continues to be a form of healing for herself and countless fans.

Now, you can experience her outstanding and healing prose with this powerful and evocative collection. Featuring some of her most popular posts and essays, Keep Moving also includes new and never before published writing. Gorgeously and lovingly wrought, this is the perfect gift for anyone looking for a daily dose of optimism and spiritual nourishment.

This book is mostly encouraging aphorisms and short meditations. I found some of it helpful, hence four stars, but I prefer Maggie Smith’s poetry.

Mid-March ReviewsDavid Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Narrator: Richard Armitage
Published by Audible Studios on February 9, 2016
Genres: Classic
Length: 36 hours 30 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

David Copperfield is the story of a young man's adventures on his journey from an unhappy and impoverished childhood to the discovery of his vocation as a successful novelist. Among the gloriously vivid cast of characters he encounters are his tyrannical stepfather, Mr Murdstone; his brilliant, but ultimately unworthy school-friend James Steerforth; his formidable aunt, Betsey Trotwood; the eternally humble, yet treacherous Uriah Heep; frivolous, enchanting Dora Spenlow; and the magnificently impecunious Wilkins Micawber, one of literature's great comic creations. In David Copperfield—the novel he described as his 'favourite child'—Dickens drew revealingly on his own experiences to create one of the most exuberant and enduringly popular works, filled with tragedy and comedy in equal measure.

My husband and I listened to this one. First, it’s completely easy to understand why this novel has always been popular and remains a classic. It’s a delight from start to finish. Betsey Trotwood has to be one of the most brilliant characters ever conceived, and David’s old nemesis Uriah Heep is horribly realistic (surely Charles Dickens knew a guy like this, right?). Richard Armitage’s narration is amazing. His acting talent is on full display in the various voices; his Uriah Heep is entirely unctuous. Every time he says “Uriah writhed,” you can feel it. Gross. To be fair, Dickens’s writing suffers a bit from the addition of an annoying-young-damsel-who-is-supposed-to-be-attractive-for-some-reason-no-one-can-figure-out. I noticed it in A Tale of Two Cities and to an extent in Great Expectations, but Dora takes the cake. I thought she was stupid and annoying and completely incompatible with David. What a cast of memorable characters. What a great book. I’m glad I finally read it.

Mid-March ReviewsSongs in Ursa Major by Emma Brodie
Narrator: Kristen Sieh
Published by Random House Audio on June 22, 2021
Length: 10 hours 45 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
three-half-stars

A scintillating debut from a major new voice in fiction, Songs in Ursa Major is a love story set in 1969, alive with music, sex, and the trappings of fame.

Raised on an island off Massachusetts by a mother who wrote songs for famous musicians, Jane Quinn is singing in her own band before she's old enough to even read music. When folk legend Jesse Reid hears about Jane's performance at the island's music festival, a star is born—and so is a passionate love affair: they become inseparable when her band joins his on tour. Wary of being cast as his girlfriend—and haunted by her mother's shattered ambitions—Jane shields her relationship from the public eye, but Jesse's star power pulls her into his orbit of fame. Caught up in the thrill of the road and the profound and lustful connection she has with Jesse, Jane is blind-sided by the discovery she makes about the dark secret beneath his music. Heartbroken and blackballed by the industry, Jane is now truly on her own: to make the music she loves, and to make peace with her family. Shot through with the lyrics, the icons, the lore, the adrenaline of the early 70s music scene, Songs in Ursa Major pulses with romantic longing and asks the question so many female artists must face: What are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams?

I wanted to like this book more. It suffers from the fact that Daisy Jones & The Six and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev exist and it’s not as strong in comparison. This novel is sort of a thinly-veiled story of James Taylor and maybe Joni Mitchell set mostly on a fictionalized version of Martha’s Vineyard. I think there are some anachronisms to start with. For example, “What Would Jane Do” based on “What Would Jesus Do?” might be a bit out of time. While the WWJD saying goes back to the 1800s, its resurgence only dates to the 1990s. It felt out of place for Jane Quinn’s fans to pick it up. At one point, Jane’s record label guy (I forget what exactly his role was, but he discovered Jane) had an answering machine. I guess they existed prior to the 1980s, but they were not widely used. The fact that things DID exist doesn’t mean they were WIDELY USED, hence the feelings of anachronism. These were the two most glaring issues, but they were not the only ones. The other issue was a spoilery plot point. I won’t divulge it, but it felt like a cheat when it was revealed because the author used third-person limited and focused on Jane. It’s one thing for Jane to keep something from Jesse, but it’s another for her to keep it even from the reader. I understand why the author felt the need to save the secret, but I didn’t like the way it was handled, and it was at that point that the book lost me. If you’re going to have a protagonist lie to the reader, you need to pull it off with a bit more finesse. I finished it because I’d become invested, and I did enjoy part of the journey, which is why it ultimately landed on 3.5 stars.

Related posts:

Review: The Widow's War, Sally Gunning

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann

Review: Tartine Bread, Chad Robertson