Book Review: The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

This hasn't been the most thrilling year for reading nor reviewing books. Few novels this year stand out for me: Paula Hawkins' Girl on the Train is one, and Anton diScalfani's The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls will definitely be another.

I didn't know what I was getting into with this novel. I thought it was a coming-of-age novel, maybe even a light read. I didn't expect this dark, mesmerizing novel of loss, rejection, and perseverance.

Set in the 1930s, the story centers on 15-year-old Thea Atwell, who has done something bad. We don't know what she's done, only that it involved her twin brother and their cousin, who was like another brother to them. As the book opens, Thea is being deposited at Yonahlossee Riding Camp, which is really just a name for a boarding school for rich girls—or, in Thea's case, a home for girls who have been bad. Her parents can't stand to be around her anymore, and sending her off to school seems like the only option.

Thea has never been around anyone besides her family: her parents, brother, aunt, uncle, and cousin. She's never had a girlfriend, never attended a fancy dinner, didn't know the codes between girls or that they even existed. She's thrown from a comfortable home in which she was the beloved only daughter into a world she didn't know existed.

And she loves it. She loves being part of this sisterhood and, most of all, loves that she gets to spend hours and hours each day riding her horse. She also loves that she is the best rider in the school. But Thea has an insatiable need to be loved and to prove that she is a person of value— she needs to reclaim her position as one who is prized. Why did her world fall apart back in Florida? Why did her parents toss her aside like trash?

Flashbacks lead up to the story of  the Big Event that sent The and her family into a downward spiral. As Thea pieces together what she did wrong, she continues on a similar path at the boarding school. Thea is a complex protagonist, bent on self-preservation but mired in self-destructive behavior. She's selfish with flashes of compassion, unstable yet admiring of stability. She's a 15-year-old girl who doesn't know how to contain her passions and enjoys the power she has over men.

While Thea is a strangely likable character is spite of her self-absorption. The novel is graphic and violent at times, but it's incredibly compelling. I stayed up way past my bedtime a couple of nights reading it. If you're in the mood for something complex and a little dark, this is a great choice.

Book Review: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

Heidi Durrow's The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is a survivor's story. Rachel is the 11-year-old girl who fell, except she didn't fall accidentally: her mother, chased by her own demons and bad decisions, takes flight with all the kids from the top of a roof. Rachel lives.

The daughter of a white Danish woman and a black GI, Rachel now has to learn who she is. Is she black or is she white? Is she poor Rachel or lucky Rachel? And why did her mother do it?

After recovering from her severe injuries, Rachel goes to live with her black grandmother in Oregon. This is a whole new world to her, and her sense of "otherness" is almost more than she can bear. She struggles to find her place in this new world and also to attempt to grasp why her mother could possibly have thought that killing herself and her children was the only solution. The story of Rachel's mother is told through the points-of-view of the grandmother, the neighbor boy who saw the family's fall from the roof, and her mother's employer, who packed up her possessions and read her journals.

The story of Rachel's mother is really never fully explained, but I was okay with that, mostly. I didn't feel like her story was fleshed out enough to come even close to "justifying" her crime, but I suppose that's another story. Likewise, why Rachel's father never comes back for her isn't really clear at all, and I was mostly okay with that. Mostly.

That said, Durrow's writing is wonderful, and Rachel's story is intriguing enough on its own. Perhaps the novel would have lost some of its lovely, sparse narrative had the stories of the parents been deeper. I definitely recommend this one!

Book Review: Secrets of Eden

Chris Bohjalian has got to be one of today’s best American authors. When I think about each of his novels that I’ve read, I’m astounded at the depth and breadth of his subjects, from midwifery to post WW2 to the Great Gatsby to domestic violence, the focus of Secrets of Eden.

Secrets of Eden tells the story of the murder of Alice Hayward by her abusive husband and his subsequent suicide. Well, apparent suicide.  It’s told in four sections by four narrators: the pastor, the state's attorney, an author who writes about angels, and the Hayward’s 15-year-old daughter. The questions each of them asks: what really happened here? 

It is obvious that George killed Alice. But who killed George? The angle of the gun wasn't quite right for a suicide and, although everyone agrees that George was a scumbag, the state's attorney has an obligation to find his killer. The four narrators, who have four distinct voices, provide different perspectives on the life of George and Alice while investigating and analyzing their own lives.

I thought Bohjalian treated all his characters with unusual respect without any of the usual stereotypes. The Baptist preacher was not a fire-and-brimstone psycho; the attorney was not cold-hearted; the teenage girl wasn't cold and rebellious; and the author angel, while kooky, had her own serious issues that balanced that out.

It's a good psychological thriller, although certainly sad and disturbing, that's beautifully written.

Other Bohjalian novels I've reviewed:
The Double Bind
The Buffalo Soldier
Skeletons at the Feast

Book Review: Love Anthony

Lisa Genova never disappoints. I adored Still Alice and Left Neglected, both stories that explore neurological disorders, and Love Anthony was nearly as good. I say “nearly” because it didn’t hold the same medical fascination nor seem quite as emotionally wrenching as the first two novels did for me, although it does involve the death of a child. But it was still excellent. I plowed through it in one day at the beach. I gave it to my friend Caroline to read as soon as I finished. After a day she handed me the book, wiping away tears, and said, "I don't think it's very nice for a friend to make a friend cry at the beach!" While she was crying, her sister called and asked why she was crying, then asked to borrow the book as well. Why do we like to cry so much?

The story focuses on two women: Olivia, whose autistic son has just died, and Beth, whose life unexpectedly unravels. They have little in common on the surface. The past eight years of Olivia’s life were wrapped up in the frustration and sadness of having a son with severe autism. Beth, on the other hand, seems to be one of those women that Olivia so despises: mothers with “normal” children.

But their paths cross, and they end up unintentionally healing together, although in separate ways. I can’t really reveal more of the hows and whys without giving away the plot, but Genova treats autism with respect and a beautiful understanding. I think the chapters that are devoted to Olivia and the pain of her motherhood are especially powerful.

Genova is a brilliant writer, and I’m always impressed at the way she shares her medical knowledge without ever seeming didactic or as if she’s just throwing information in for the sake if it. I can’t wait for her next novel!

Book Review: The Tenth Gift

The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson is our most recent book club pick. We haven't met to discuss it yet, but so far I've heard a few "I liked it!" comments from fellow members. It took me a long time to get into the book—probably close to 100 pages. But I was traveling and reading only a few pages at night, exhausted mentally and physically. Once I found that I had only two days left to read before it was due at the library, I committed myself to sticking with it and found that I became totally absorbed in the story.

The novel flips between two stories that eventually become intertwined. Julia Lovat is a 30-year-old woman who is dumped by her married boyfriend. As a parting gift, he gives her what he thinks is a book of embroidery patterns, written in 1625. The book turns out to actually be a diary of an English woman, Cat, who was kidnapped by Muslim pirates and sold as a slave in Morocco. The Cat entries leading up to her kidnapping were slow moving and confusing to me, but once she is kidnapped, the pace picked up and the direction became clear.

Julia becomes obsessed with Cat's story and travels to Morocco to trace Cat's path and see if the diary really is authentic. In the course of her investigation, she finds that these events really did happen, and a nice discussion of the history of Muslim raiders in the 17th century is included in the novel. I loved the historical perspective. There is, of course, a healthy dose of romance for both Julia and Cat as the novel progresses.

I'm a big fan of historical novels, especially ones that highlight a particular set of events of which I held little or no previous knowledge. I know almost nothing about Morocco and never thought about Christian Europeans being sold as slaves to Muslims. Julia's part of the story was less enthralling but necessary to tell the story. In all, this is an interesting novel for those who enjoy historical fiction/romance.

Book Review: The Devil and Miss Prym

“You're a man who has suffered and wants revenge,' she said. 'Your heart is dead, your soul is in darkness. The devil by your side is smiling because you are playing the game he invented.” 

A stranger arrives in the isolated village of Viscos, and Paulo Coelho's parable of good and evil begins. The stranger has a bag full of gold bars and a question he demands be answered: are humans good or evil?

The Devil and Miss Prym is called a "novel of temptation," and that temptation is in ancient one. The stranger offers this impoverished, dying village enough gold to change their lives and save their village—but they have to murder one of their own to get the gold.

Will they sacrifice one of their own, or will they spit in the face of the manipulator? The stranger wants Miss Prym to find out. She is the only young person left in the village, and she is confident that they are good people who will refuse to murder a fellow villager. The stranger is skeptical. He's seen the worst in mankind, and he is convinced that all men are inherently greedy and evil.

“So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being.”

Coelho's approach to this classic battle of good and evil is lovely. I wanted to underline sentences on every page. He captures profound truths in simple dialogue, and I wanted to make big canvases for my walls out of some of his phrases. The details of the story itself were excellent. It's the kind of novel I can close my eyes and still picture certain scenes. To be fair, the story didn't always capture me—it took me a good half of the book to really delve into it and become interested in the characters and their dilemma. But once I really immersed myself in it, I loved it.

This is a novel a friend and I are considering for a book club at our church. The book took me awhile to really get into, and sometimes I didn't understand everything that was going on because of my initial lack of attention; but I but I think it will be excellent fodder for lots of good discussion.

Book Review: This Boy's Life

I've had this memoir by Tobias Wolff on my TBR list forever. I saw the movie years ago and always meant to read the book, but I just never got around to it. I'm so glad I finally did. I love memoirs, especially ones that read like this— poetic but not sentimental, filled with insights but not didactic. It's really exactly what the title promises: one boy's life.

As the book opens Toby Wolff, soon to become Jack, and his mother are running away from an abusive man. She's divorced from Toby's father, who lives on the East Coast with his older brother. Toby and his mother clearly adore each other, but he can't seem to be "good," in spite of his desire to please his mother. Toby gravitates toward the wrong crowd and finds himself doing all the things he knows he should do: fighting, vandalizing, lying, cheating. Eventually his mom remarries, and they move to a desolate town in Washington. Dwight, the stepfather, is a controlling dictator who is often proud of Toby for his transgressions, yet punishes him severely. Much of the tension in the book is between Toby and himself and Toby and Dwight, his stepfather.

Toby isn't a run-of-the-mill bad boy. He's smart about things. He carefully erases his report cards to show excellent grades, makes excuses that somehow seem legitimate, and even forges recommendations so that he can get into a prep school. In his heart he truly believes that he's a good kid, a smart kid, one destined for a better life as soon as he gets out of his podunk town. But he just can't stop making bad decisions.

I read in an interview with Wolff in The Paris Review that "Though a private man, Wolff is open about his nagging suspicion that his good fortune in life—his arrival at the age of fifty-eight with his family intact, a home in a warm climate, a place to write and teach, even a dog—is a fabrication that could burn to the ground at any moment." That makes perfect sense after reading this memoir. A good, stable life seems always just out of reach to the boy Toby, and yet he knows that he is somehow made for that life.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wolff's boyhood story and plan to add the memoir of his tour of Vietnam to my TBR list.

Book Review: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

One of the best things about being part of a book club is that I get to read genres that I wouldn't usually read. We are a diverse group in terms of our preferred genres; and in order to give everyone an opportunity to read from "their" genre, we have a yearly meeting in which we pick our upcoming reading year. We each come to book club with three books we'd like to read, and we explain our books. From there, we vote on one book from each person's list, so we end up with 10 books for the next year. We've been doing this for two years, and I've really enjoyed stepping outside my reading zone. But at the same time, this has reaffirmed my love for my usual reading zone!

All that to say, Laurie King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice is a mystery—not my usual genre—and I loved it. I didn't love it so much that I'll rush out and read any others in the series, but it was refreshing, fun, engaging and quite well written. This novel introduces Mary Russell, a brilliant teenager who is soon to become the apprentice of none other than Sherlock Holmes. I am not a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, and I'm sure this book would be even more meaningful to those who are, but I loved the concept of fiction taking place inside another fictional world.

When I was a teenager, I read through nearly all of Agatha Christie's mysteries in one summer, and this novel reminded me of those wonderful days when I had nothing else to do but bask in the sun (ignorant of the harmful UV rays) and read, breaking occasionally for a dip in the lake. My reading is done now in 30-minute chunks at most before I go to sleep each night. This novel, however, did absolutely hold my attention.

And I take it back. I just might read through all the Mary Russell books. There is something intensely comforting about a solid, clean, well written mystery.

Book Review: The Scarlet Pimpernel

I've heard this book title for what seems my entire life, and I at last read the novel at the encouragement of a friend who said it was the book that made her start loving to read. I was looking for the perfect book for my 9th/10th grade British Lit class, which is composed of 15 boys who shrivel at the name Jane Eyre and six girls. Pride and Prejudice was just not going to work for this particular class. Fortunately, The Scarlet Pimpernel turned out to be exactly what this class needs.

The story takes place in the midst of the French Revolution, when the guillotine seems to never stop its grisly job. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the English hero, a master of disguise who rescues French nobility from their fate right just at the last moment, much to the embarrassment and fury of the revolutionaries. Lady Blakeney is the brilliant but unhappy young wife of Sir Percy, a dunderheaded English aristocrat. In her zeal to save her brother from the guillotine, Lady Blakeney comes up against the Scarlet Pimpernel, and the story goes from there.

I'm starting my students off with a bit of French Revolution history before they begin the book, and I think we'll need a chart to keep all the characters straight at first; but I anticipate that once they are several chapters into the book, they will really love it. We'll plan to watch the movie together when we finish the book.

The Scarlet Pimpernel (by Baroness Orczy) is not on a single "classics" or "top 100" books to read list that I have ever run across, and I'm not sure why. This is a fabulous, entertaining story. True, it's a little slow at places and somewhat contrived, but what a great novel: it's full of adventure, romance, suspense, and history. It really is a perfect British lit book for reluctant readers especially. It's easy to read, although the first part moves slowly, and the twists and turns just don't stop. Highly recommended.

Book Review: The Widower's Tale

This, my first book finished in 2015, was a really wonderful way to start the year. I actually began reading this novel by Julia Glass in December but had to put it away so I could read our book club's book.

Glass's style feels familiar, like Anne Tyler and Gail Godwin mixed with a little John Irving. (Or maybe it's only the "widow" part that is Irving-esque to me.) I read so much Southern lit that it is refreshing to me to read a novel that takes place in New England. (And to I used to think New York and New England were the hub of the world.)

Percy Darling has been a widower for longer than he was married. He's raised two daughters and is settling at last into a quiet retirement from his career as a Harvard librarian. He lives alone in the historic and secluded house that he and his wife bought when they were newlyweds—until his troubled daughter, Clover, begs him to turn the barn into a preschool. Because he feels that the preschool will give Clover a chance to start over, he agrees—and everything about his life changes

I thought this was going to be a  novel with a bumbling older man and an array of preschoolers who change him, but it was absolutely nothing like that. Percy is a thoughtful, quirky man who adores his daughters and their families but is happy to remain somewhat detached from their lives. The proximity of the preschool, howeveer, forces Percy to participate in life.

There are several stories that are intertwined within the novel: the developing relationship between Percy and one of the preschool moms; the life of Celestino, a landscaper (this one was interesting but never felt like it was fully explored/explained); Percy's grandson, Robert, and his involvement in an ecoterrorist group (sounds strange, but it kind of worked); Percy's girlfriend's life; Ira and Anthony, a gay teacher and his partner; and Percy's daughters and their lives. It sounds like a lot, and at times, I had to backtrack a bit to figure out what was going on; however, all the stories were intriguing. Loosely woven together at times, but intriguing.

Julia Glass is a wonderful writer. I found myself really adoring Percy. The side stories were interesting, but I'm not sure how much all of them contributed to the novel. They were perhaps not integral to the story of Percy, but still interesting. Regardless, I will be seeking out other novels by Julia Glass,  in hopes that I'll meet other characters are richly drawn as Percy.