Book Review: The Magician's Assistant

I don't know how I missed this Ann Patchett novel. Bel Canto was amazing and State of Wonder was astounding. (I must admit I don't remember Run even after reading my review of it, so that novel must not have made a huge impression on me.) The Magician's Assistant is just delicious. I nearly decided not to read it because magicians are so foreign to me. I have never been mesmerized by their kind of magic. But I'm such a fan of Ann Patchett, and so I began.

Sabine is newly widowed, or more importantly, newly alone and without her best friend of 22 years. The magician Parsifal was her husband by name only. He married Sabine, his assistant, after his partner Phan died solely to provide her with his tremendous inheritance. Parsifal's sudden death throws Sabine into shock and depression. She's alone in a mansion with the memory of a lifetime with Parsifal, and all she wants to do is sleep. But the funeral is barely over when her lawyer reveals to her another shock: Parsifal the magician was indeed a master of deception.

Sabine discovers that Parsifal, her elegant and polished magician who claimed to have been orphaned as a child, was a farm boy named Guy from Nebraska with a living family. Sabine is certain that his family must be cretins for him to have completely erased their existence. When she meets his mother and youngest sister, however, she realizes that they adored Parsifal/Guy. She leaves the comforts of California for Nebraska in the winter, to bask in the adoration of Parsifal's family—including another sister and two nephews— and find out why he left them all behind.

Ann Patchett is a beautiful writer. Her sentences are constructed like the most delicious desserts, to be savored and lingered upon. And what a storyteller! Every character, even the manager of Parsifal's store, is clearly depicted and richly drawn. I can still see even that minor character and smell the rugs at the store. Phan and Parsifal reveal specific information to Sabine often in dreams, adding an Isabel Allende-like magical realism quality to the novel. I don't usually love this kind of thing, probably mostly because no one ever comes to me and reveals vital information in dreams, but it completely works in this novel.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Keeper of Secrets

I read this book a few weeks ago and remember it well, but not because of the title. Sometimes a title just doesn't fit a book, and this is one of those times.

But I digress, and I haven't even started. I liked this book by Julie Thomas, in spite of the title that I could never remember. (Maybe that has something to do with reading Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper earlier this year.) The story follows a 1742 Guarneri del Gesú violin as it is passed—and stolen—from person to person across several generations.

It begins in 1942 with the Horowitz family, a wealthy, cultured Jewish family of gifted musicians. Everything changes for them on Krystallnacht, when all of the family's possessions are confiscated by the Nazis. The family members are sent to concentration camps. Simon, the second son, survives Dachau only because of he is a gifted musician and is forced to play for the guards.

The violin's next life is with a Russian family, who deceptively procured the violin through the horrors of war. Sergei Valentino's beloved aunt believes her father when he tells her that he bought the Guarneri del Gesú, and it is passed on to Sergei when she is murdered. (That's another story line.) Sergei ultimately becomes a billionaire and a great patron of the arts.

Eventually the owners of the violin meet up in the present time, when 14-year-old violin virtuoso Daniel Horowitz decides he'd rather play baseball than the violin. While the stories of Simon Horowitz in Germany and the Valentinos in Russia were superb and positively riveting, this whole plot line was weak. The revealing of the violin's true ownership was confusing and way too complicated. Daniel was a fairly well-defined character, but his interaction with his mother was just silly. And the whole refusing to play violin because he wanted to play backyard baseball was silly, too. I would have liked the novel better without the intrusion of Daniel's story, or with Daniel's story being as compelling as that of the other sections.

That said, I really liked this novel. The Dachau section itself was amazing, even more so for me because my oldest son actually visited Dachau as I was reading the novel. It was terribly sobering to see his pictures of Dachau as I read Simon's story. The author's research on the violin's history was also excellent. Recommended—but be prepared to be annoyed with the contemporary story.

Book Review: Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card was our book club choice for December's discussion. Not only was it one of our member's favorite all-time books as a young adult, but we like to do the book-to-movie thing as a group every now and then.

Ender's Game isn't our typical book club read, and that was kind of the point. We are making a deliberate effort to read books this year in each member's favorite genre. I'm not generally a sci-fi, fantasy, horror, detective, or even mystery reader; however, it is an excellent challenge to branch out occasionally and retry a genre.

Unfortunately, few of our members ended up reading the novel. Word got around that it was filled with violent children, and that was enough to send half the members scurrying away. Who wants to read about six-year-olds beating each other senseless? I admit I began as a reluctant reader, but I quickly got sucked into the story.

First, don't let the violent children scare you away. It is immediately obvious that these are not normal kids nor is this the Earth we know. This is a world in which children are bred to be geniuses and soldiers. It is their responsibility to save Earth from the hostile aliens, known as the Buggers.

Ender is chosen, but his brother Peter, who is nearly as brilliant, is not. Ender, though a fierce soldier, has a compassionate side, but Peter is cruel and psychotic. Ender is the absolute cream of the crop, and he is recruited at age 6 to begin the intense training that will turn him from boy to military commander. While he knows he was born for this, Ender must leave his parents and his beloved sister, Valentine, who is the one person that knows him completely and adores him.

Most of the novel goes through Ender's military training at Battle School, which I found surprising engrossing. Again, this is really not my kind of a book, but I loved it. Ender is a sweet, brilliant boy who basically always makes good decisions. You just can't help but root for him.

I am not sure this was the best book club choice since half (or fewer) of the members actually read it; however, I am really glad that I stepped outside my usual genre for this. And I really can't wait to see the movie!

Book Review: Nowhere but Home

I loved Liza Palmer's Conversations with the Fat Girl and liked her More Like Her, so I was excited to get a chance to review Nowhere but Home (published by William Morrow 2013).  I like coming home tales, ones that challenge the "you can't go home again" conversation.

In this novel, Texan-turned-Yankee Queenie Wake is fired from her chef's job once again, and she finally admits a sort of defeat and heads back to her tiny Texas town. She's the daughter of the town's deceased tramp, who bestowed upon her the unfortunate name, Queen Elizabeth. She and her sister—the mother of the town's quarterback— have always been considered the city's trash. But she's been gone for a decade, and Queenie realizes that she doesn't have to accept that title anymore.

The novel takes a fascinating twist as Queenie accepts a job at the local prison, cooking last meals for death-row inmates. I found this part of the novel particularly intriguing. I never considered that this  is actually a job, and yet it must be fulfilled. I appreciated Palmer's thoughtful and insightful treatment of both Queenie, the inmates, and the prison staff.

Besides the coming-home theme and the wonderful look into last meals, Palmer includes a satisfying romance. As one might predict, the daughter of the town tramp and the son of the town's richest family once had a secret and powerful romance.  The are bound to meet up again, and their story unfolds bit by bit.

I think what I loved the most about this novel, besides the death-row parts, was the unraveling of all of Queenie's assumptions. She realizes in the course of the novel that she didn't always know the whole story and that many of her decisions and choices were based on only partial information. This is generally true for all of us, of course, but I enjoyed watching a character have "a-ha!" moments, moments of redemption.

Palmer is funny, insightful, and a great writer of dialogue. Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale

I read this book by Diane Setterfield many years ago and absolutely loved it. (My woefully short review is here.) I just spent a lovely weekend re-reading it for book club. This is one of those times I am grateful that I can rarely remember what happens in books and movies because I had forgotten everything that happens in this wonderful novel.

First of all, Setterfield is a beautiful writer. Her prose is poetry, her insight speaks to my core. Next, Setterfield is a masterful storyteller. This is a book that is hard to put down, the kind you keep thinking about as you go about your day and can't wait to get back to when your day's activities are finished. I even took the luxury of reading this one on the couch during the day, which I don't usually do.

This is a kind of ghost story, a mystery, a love story, a story of families gone horribly wrong and also being repaired or forged anew.  It's a story of discoveries and confirmations. Famous author Vida Winter is dying, and she wants someone to tell her true story. She picks Margaret, a quiet young woman who works in her father's bookstore.  Margaret reluctantly enters into this relationship as Vida Winter's biographer but ultimately does everything she can to find the truth in Vida's tale.

The novel was a big hit in our book club, and we rarely all love a book. One of our members pointed out that it is extremely disturbing. There are scenes that are hard to scrub out of one's memory, although I assured her that I had no recollection of those scenes these many years after reading it for the first time. We all agreed that we wanted to underline whole paragraphs because Setterfield's writing is so beautiful, especially when she is talking about the power of families and the necessity of books.

I'm glad I had a chance to read The Thirteenth Tale again, and I am excited to see that Setterfield finally has another novel due to be published in November, Bellman and Black: A Ghost Story. If you like Kate Morton, you'll love Diane Setterfield.

Linked up at Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: The Dovekeepers

I didn't know what I was getting into with Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers, but I had been told by a friend that this was her book club's favorite. And wow! She was right—this was an absolutely stunning novel.

First of all, I didn't realize when I began the novel that all roads were leading to the real story of Masada, a mountain fortress where 900 Jewish rebels held out against the Roman army until it was no longer feasible. I probably skimmed the book flaps, so I was through at least a quarter of the book before it clicked. I had to read up on Masada a bit to get some context, and that helped tremendously.

The Dovekeepers tells the stories of four extraordinary women who end up at Masada: Yael, a young woman whose father despises her because her mother died in childbirth; Revka, the Baker's Wife, who watched her daughter brutally murdered; Azizah, who is more comfortable as a warrior than as a woman; and Shirah, known as "the witch of Moab." The stories are told separately but are interconnected, all touching each other and building to an incredible ending. All but two women and five children killed themselves at Masada. As the reader figures out, two of these four women will survive. But who?

I loved Francine Rivers' Mark of the Lion series, which chronicles a similar time period. I've been immersed in Old Testament stories my entire life, but I love having the culture—the religious and social customs—fleshed out and vividly portrayed. Hoffman is simply masterful at creating this world with all its violence, passion, religious fervor, sorrow, and utter despair.

The book takes work for the reader. You have to really concentrate on the characters and carry them through from section to section, remembering who is who. This is a novel to concentrate on, not to read in snippets here and there. But it is so worth it. Highly recommended, both on a historical level and as a novel of the endurance of the human spirit.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: What Alice Forgot

I almost put this book by Liane Moriarty back on the shelf. After reading the inside flap, I thought it sounded silly and wondered why I had it on my TBR list. Plus, I didn't like the cover. But because I am determined to make a dent in my TBR list this year, I checked it out. And I'm so glad I did!

The book's description makes it sound silly and flippant, but this book is anything but silly. Alice has a terrible fall, bangs her head, and wakes up in the hospital—and she's lost 10 terrible years of her life. Alice has no memory of having become a cold, brittle, callous woman who wears expensive clothes, has a personal trainer, does her kids' science projects so they'll win everything, and has filed for divorce. She remembers only that she is expecting her first child and is blissfully married to the love of her life.

It isn't one of those terrible amnesia stories but an incredibly thought-provoking tale of: how did I become this person? How did I stray so far from who I really am—and who am I, really? I found myself rooting for the old Alice, cheering for her as she ditches her rich and snotty friends. At the same time I felt incredibly sad, knowing that her lifestyle before her head injury is so common and so damaging to kids and marriages.

In the end, it's a book largely of do-overs. What if you had the gift of being able to forget all the horrible mistakes you made in a decade—but had to forget the births of your children and all those precious memories, too?

Highly recommended.

Linked up with the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon

Book Review: Expecting Adam—A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic

"Now I think that the vast majority of us 'normal' people spend our lives trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are hip, imperturbable, omniscient, in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward and scared and bewildered. … Living with Adam, loving Adam, has taught me a lot about the truth. He has taught me to look at things in themselves, not at the value a brutal and often senseless world assigns to them."

In the memoir Expecting Adam, Martha Beck and her husband John are a young couple caught up in the crazy haze of graduate school at Harvard and new parenthood. Harvard looms like an overbearing, impossible-to-please parent in every corner of their world; the pressure to succeed at Harvard eclipses everything else in their lives. Their world consists of tag-team parenting, little sleep, constant rushing, and determination to stay on top.

And then Martha discovers that she is pregnant again, just as they were starting to figure out how to balance Katie, their toddler, with Harvard and John's new consulting job in Singapore. Martha writes that "motherhood had made me the odd person out among my classmates; they were polite and kind to me but understandably less than fascinated by the details of my life as a nursing mother. I would show up at class after a night in the emergency room, where Katie had been put through a battery of hideously painful tests to determine the cause of some raging illness, and pretend that I really cared abut the contrast between Karl Marx's view of historical necessity and Max Weber's."

Martha is violently ill during pregnancy, barely able to function. A couple of women she barely knew show up at her door, bearing food and emotional support, and she makes actual true friends for the first time in her adult life. Every day is  a struggle for Martha and for John during the weeks that he is at Harvard, but they manage—barely.

Martha was violently ill during her first pregnancy, too, but this one is different. She has all kinds of dreams and intuits that something is not right with this pregnancy, and yet rather than panicking, she feels oddly comforted. She finds out much, much later, even years later, that John had similar experiences.

And then they find out the life-changing news: the unborn baby, a boy, has Down Syndrome. They are shocked beyond words. This is Harvard, the land of geniuses and IQs off the charts. There is no room in Harvard for anything "less" than "perfect." Terminate now, they are told over and over again. John's Harvard mentor, some kind of demi-god, tells John that his career is over if they have this baby.

John and Martha, though both raised in Mormon homes, aren't religious. Both are staunchly pro-choice. But the idea of aborting their baby is abhorrent to Martha and ultimately to John. They have no idea what they will do with a baby with Down Syndrome, but Martha's skills as a researcher kick in, and she finds out everything she can (which, at the time, wasn't much).

From the moment they find out they are expecting Adam, everything changes for Martha and John and Katie. They go from living a life of outrageously high expectations to a life of quiet expectation and joy.

"I really thought there would be a miracle," said John softly… "I really thought God would fix him."
I considered that for a minute. "Maybe he didn't need fixing," I said. "Maybe he's the only one of us who was never broken."
John looked at me. "Are you broken, sweetheart?"
"I was," I said. "Not anymore."
"Same here," said John. He paused, then gave me a smile—not his manic Harvard grin but a real smile, one that contained all the sorrow of the past months, along with the joy. "So," he said, "there's your miracle."

By the time Adam is born, John and Martha are changed people. They are ready to escape the Harvard life and embrace a calmer life focused on nurturing relationships.  As Martha says, "I have had to unlearn virtually everything Harvard taught me about what is precious and what is garbage. I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kidn of beauty that directly nourishes my soul."

Highly recommended. Martha's writing is fantastic and the story is one you can hardly put down.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: The Story of Beautiful Girl

Oh my goodness. Having a head cold is kinda miserable but kinda awesome—awesome because I was too miserable to do anything but lie in bed and read for two whole days. I read three novels. I'm thinking about maybe faking a cold each month.

The Story of Beautiful Girl by Rachel Simon: I can hardly even say how much I loved this. The story is about Lynnie, a beautiful inmate at the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded; Homan, a deaf man who is also locked away there; and Martha, a widow in her 70s who becomes tangled in their lives.

Lynnie and Homan are madly in love and have managed to escape the institution—but only for long enough for Lynnie to give birth to a baby girl. They seek refuge briefly with Martha, and Lynnie begs her to hide the baby. Martha does—for decades.

The rest of the novel spans 40 years or more, reflecting on Lynnie's and Homan's childhoods and reasons for being at the institution; detailing their terrible lives within the facility; following Martha and Julia's life together; and unfolding how their lives, forever intertwined, ultimately are restored.

I absolutely loved this novel. Simon is a compassionate but not overly sentimental writer. All the characters were richly drawn and practically palpable. She has obviously done tons of research on this history of mental institutions and institutional reform. I have put her memoir Riding the Bus with My Sister, her journey of riding a bus with her intellectually disabled sister, on my TBR list. Highly recommended!

Book Review: The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb

Like most kids, I was fascinated with the Guinness Book of World Records, especially the editions with the medical anomalies: the Chinese conjoined twin brothers who were married to sisters, the "caterpillar" man, the lady with half a twin coming out of her belly, the tallest man in the world, and the smallest couple ever, General and Mrs. Tom Thumb. I think a part of me, as a child, never really believed those people to be real—they must be some trick of Guinness's.

But Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump—Vinnie—was a real person, and The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin is her fictionalized story, based on Vinnie's journals, various historical documents, and lots of imagination.

You've probably see photos of the tiny famous couple, General and Mrs. Tom Thumb. They were tiny humans (she was 2 feet, 8 inches tall), born with a form of proportionate dwarfism, touted by the great P.T. Barnum himself as "perfectly formed people in miniature." This is Vinnie's story, one of defying the odds and become first a schoolteacher and then a worldwide star, known as the "Little Queen of Beauty," who dined with royalty and attended parties with the Astors and other society kings and queens. It's also the story of a young woman torn by her love for his sister and her love for a man she can't have, a woman who can't seem to find her own real identity.

I absolutely loved this novel. Melanie Benjamin is a fabulous storyteller; Vinnie's voice comes through loud and clear. Vinnie is pragmatic, courageous, and terribly smart. I loved the friendship formed between Vinnie and Barnum, as well as the relationship—especially the moments that almost happen— with her husband, Charles Stratton (AKA, Tom Thumb).

I think Vinnie would love to know her story has been told, fictionalized though it is, and I suspect the great P.T. Barnum himself might find it amusing—and partly true. Really excellent read!

Book Review: The Moonflower Vine

I put Jetta Carleton's The Moonflower Vine on my TBR list because it was listed on The Neglected Books Page and sounded like something I would love. My book club thought it sounded so good that it made the list of 2013 books to read. The good news is: I loved it. The bad news: Jetta Carleton only wrote one other novel, Clair de Lune, which I quickly added to my TBR list.

The Moonflower Vine opens from the point of view of Mary Jo, the youngest of four daughters, as the family reunites for its annual two week vacation on the old homestead. The sisters are grown and have their own lives 11 months of the year, but for this short time, the ties of family ground them, bind them, and comfort them. The novel then backtracks to tell each family member's story in his or her own voice.

Matthew Soames is the father, a school teacher and farmer who falls in love too easily. His wife Callie is illiterate and content to be so, which frustrates Matthew. Their four daughters just don't turn out the way they imagined they would, and much of the book is about how they cope with the ups and downs of growing children who inevitably go away, whether physically or emotionally or both.

Each section tells a portion of a family member's life, a slice of something life-changing for him or her, and offers a secret that each member keeps. The stories were thoroughly engrossing and beautifully told. I wanted to savor this book, to make it last for evening after evening. Carleton is a lyrical, poetic writer who beautifully captures the smells, tastes, textures, and emotions of being a parent, a daughter, a teenager, a woman. She reminds me in many ways of Willa Cather, although this novel is less melancholy and wistful than Cather's novels.

I am definitely going to check out more of the lesser known classics on the Neglected Books Page. Who knows what other treasures await?

Book Review: Interred with Their Bones

The New York Times called Jennifer Lee Carrell's Interred with Their Bones a "feverishly paced action adventure." Honestly, my only feverish pace was to hurry up and finish it so that I could say "I read it" at book club.

Basically, this book is a hunt for a lost Shakespearean play, coupled with the perennial question: who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? Way too much happened in this novel. I got hung up on the little things, like how do these people afford to fly all around the world? How do they just happen to get flights so quickly? When do they sleep? Why does Kate keep involving innocent people in her quest, knowing they will be murdered? How did Kate go from being a Harvard professor to a director at The Globe in her late 20s? And how can they just leave all these dead bodies around? And has the author actually ever been in a cave? Please. You can't just go crawling around in an unknown cave and stumble upon—oh wait. I don't want to give that away. Actually, I was so perplexed that I don't even know what they found, except more dead bodies.

I know. I'm so trivial, but I have a really hard time becoming involved in a book when I am distracted by such details. Not only were too many things happening that seemed disjointed, but the characters were rather flat and terribly unfeeling. This book is compared a lot to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and I must say I liked the latter much better. I probably shouldn't admit to that, but there you go. 

I guess if you are absolutely enthralled with all things Shakespeare, you might enjoy this for the Shakespearean discussions. But if I hadn't felt compelled to finish this because of book club, I would have thrown it across the floor by page 50. Sadly, I wasted three entire weeks of my reading life on this book—that's how long it took to conquer these 416 tortuous pages.

Book Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

My first read of 2013 was a re-read: Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I read this years ago in a women's lit class during graduate school, and, in fact, wrote what I remember as being a darned good paper on it. Of course that was 25 computers ago and the paper is long since lost.

I'm a big fan of the Brontë sisters, and unfortunately I think Anne gets terribly neglected. Everyone reads (or says they've read) Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but outside of English types and diehard classic lit lovers, I don't think many people know of Anne's amazing novel.

Anne exposes the ugly side of Victorian chauvinism in this novel, exposing the physical and emotional abuse that women endured by their hedonistic, spoiled husbands. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall created quite a ruckus when it was published in 1848 for its boldness and honesty.

The story centers on Helen, a young woman who has married the handsome Arthur, much against the wishes of her guardians. Even before they are married she senses that something is not right, but she goes through with it anyway. Within a month Arthur shows his true colors: he is selfish, excessive, shallow, and he is an alcoholic. (Anne's brother, Branwell, was an alcoholic.) He leaves his young wife for months at a time to party with his friends, returning diminished, ill, and crotchety.

Helen is resigned to a life of a terrible marriage until Arthur starts turning their little boy into "one of the guys," giving him wine and teaching him to curse and demean his mother.

And I'll stop here before giving anything else away. This is a fantastic novel, just as relevant today as it was 150 years ago. I can't help but be amazed at the strength of Anne's writing and her determination and courage in writing such a strong criticism of the double-standards that existed in Victorian society—and still exist today.