Book Review: Brooklyn

I’ve had this book by Colm Toibin on my TBR list for a few years, but it really jumped out at me as I was searching the library shelves for books to take with me on our trip to NYC. The timing was perfect. I read this immigrant’s story while staying in Chelsea, just a couple blocks away from the subway stop where the main character disembarks, leading to one memorable scene.

Eilis is the youngest sibling in an Irish family, and her sister and brothers come up with the funds to send her to Brooklyn, hoping that she will be able to have a better life there. Eilis seems powerless to refuse and is swept along with their plans, although she really has no desire to relocate to America. She is a girl who hasn’t yet found herself, having always been under the shadow of her vivacious, beautiful and compassionate sister, Rose.

Once in Brooklyn, Eilis becomes more solid. She has a sharp mind for bookkeeping and begins taking classes at Brooklyn College while working full time. She handles her new life with careful study and composure, figuring out the best way to navigate this surprising new world.

She balances waves of homesickness with determination to succeed in America. Eventually she meets Tony, an Italian, and comes to the proverbial fork in the road.

That’s the story in a nutshell, but Toibin is a graceful, unhurried storyteller. He takes time to consider the small details in Eilis’s life and those of other characters without necessarily drawing everything into the main story. So much that happens serves to round out Eilis’s character, and we are part of her growing process.  There are small “a-ha” moments, times when Eilis reflects on the way the world works and how she fits into it.

Brooklyn is a coming-of-age story, a romance, a slice of life, an immigrant’s story, all rolled into a tightly written but luxurious novel.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

Book Review: The Lost Book of Mala R.

In The Lost Book of Mala R., Rose MacDowell introduces Mala, a gypsy girl in Texas in the 1940s, who is kicked out of her clan for causing disaster. She was like a bad luck charm to her people, and they wanted her gone. She hitchhikes to California to find the woman who had helped raise her for a short time, who had provided her with enough education that she could write a journal. She fills her journal with spells, recipes, predictions, and a jumble of thoughts.

Half a century later, the journal shows up in a yard sale and finds its way into the lives of three suburban wives, all struggling with identity and marriage. Linda must face a summer with her 10-year-old spoiled step-daughter; Christine, after struggling with years of infertility, finds out she is pregnant at the same time her husband is suspected of murder; and Audrey, whose husband has become a health-nut, falls into an affair that gives her life new meaning. Mala's journal speaks to each woman in a different way, and they all try a spell to solve a problem in their lives.

Woven in with the present-day story of the three women is Mala's own story, which I really loved. I wasn't quite as involved in the stories of the three suburbanites, as their characters weren't as developed, but Mala's story was fabulous. I wanted much more of her story! But the three modern-day women did have intriguing stories, and I read eagerly each night for the resolution of each.

I really enjoyed this book, although now that I think about it, the Mala story didn't really add to the stories of the three ladies, nor did their story really heighten her story. I'm not sure either needed the other; they were only marginally intertwined. That said, I'm not bothered that the two fed off each other somewhat. I was completely engrossed in the book, wondering what would happen with all the stories. MacDowell is a wonderful writer, lyrical and detailed, with memorable scenes.

Linked up with Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books

The Sunday Salon: February in Review

Books Read in February
(click for my reviews)

• A Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay: "I had such high hopes for this newest novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key, which I absolutely loved."
• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien: "What words can I use to describe the book? Haunting. Terrifying. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Brilliant. It's a war story, a love story, a study of lives stopped and started again but never the same. Please, please read it."
• The Escape Artist by Diane Chamberlain: "I'm occasionally a sucker for total drama, and somehow Diane Chamberlain sucks me in every time."
• She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb: I haven't reviewed this one yet. It was our March book club book, and a re-read for me. For once, I think everyone in book club loved the book! In fact, five of us drove through a crazy storm with tornadoes reported all around us so that we wouldn't miss the discussion of this book! OK, it's actually because we love book club itself, but whatever. The book is great.

Best Book of February
The Things They Carried. Absolutely stunning.

Books Read Aloud (with 11-year-old)
Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan
House of 60 Fathers by Meindert de Jong.

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer


Currently Reading
The Lost Book of Mala by Rose MacDowell
Pride and Prejudice (re-read, for British Lit)

Book Review: The Escape Artist

For some people it's Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult, but Diane Chamberlain is my guilty pleasure. Her books are full of coincidences and crazy events, but somehow I just love them. The Escape Artist is my third Chamberlain novel. I loved The Midwife's Confession and The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes (see, even the titles are telltale cheese), and I liked this one just as well. They're just good, satisfying tales of improbable events.

The Escape Artist tells the tale of Susanna Miller, who takes her baby and runs when she loses custody of him to her ex-husband and his new wife. She travels across the country to reinvent herself. Of course she is always terrified that she'll be caught, but she also misses her boyfriend. She eventually meets another guy and tries to start a new life, but of course the story can't be as simple as that.

I can't help it. I'm occasionally a sucker for total drama, and somehow Diane Chamberlain sucks me in every time. Seriously, if you need books that you can't put down, are full of a range of coincidences that you somehow don't even roll your eyes at, and have these fantastic characters, get a stack of Chamberlain's novels. You might feel a little sheepish, but it'll be worth it.

Book Review: The Things They Carried

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are now. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, with there is nothing to remember except the story."

When I was in college, I took an intense class on the Vietnam War. It was taught by a history professor and a psychology professor, who served two tours in Vietnam. I loved this class with every fiber of my being. I cannot even begin to list all the books we read and all the ones I read later about Vietnam.

"They carried USO stationery and pencils and pens. The carried Sterno, safety pins, trip flares, signal flares, spools of wire, razor blades, chewing tobacco, liberated joss sticks and statuettes of the smiling Buddha, candles, grease pencils, The Stars and Stripes, fingernail clippers, Psy Ops leaflets, bush hats, bolos and much more."

But that was all before Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It was published just a few years after I graduated from college, but somehow I just wasn't ready to read any more Vietnam War novels for a long time after being immersed in that class. And now my oldest is in college and had to read something by Tim O'Brien for a class. He loved it and picked up a bunch of O'Brien's books at a used book store, including The Things They Carried, which he then declared about the best book he has ever read. (And, like his parents, he is a prolific reader, and, like his mother, an English major.)

"They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

And so I finally read it. I was hooked from the very first line, and I was reluctant to put it down each night to sleep. I carried it with me during the day when I wasn't reading it. I carried the language of Tim O'Brien—the absolutely beautiful poetry, the lyrical longing, the heartbreak.

"They carried the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces."

The Things They Carried is a novel—a work of fiction. It's also a memoir—a work of creative nonfiction. And it is for sure a work of poetry. Blended together, the line between truth and fiction (what really happened to Tim O'Brien, the author, and Tim, the soldier) is blurry. The stories he tells may or may not have happened exactly like he tells them, at least to him. But in the collective face of war, they are true to the core.

What words can I use to describe the book? Haunting. Terrifying. Heartbreaking. Beautiful. Brilliant. It's a war story, a love story, a study of lives stopped and started again but never the same. Please, please read it.

"And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

Book Review: A Secret Kept

I had such high hopes for this newest novel by Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key, which I absolutely loved. (My review here.) And while A Secret Kept wasn't nearly up to par with Sarah's Key, I did enjoy it.

The story focuses on Antoine and Melanie, brother and sister in their 40s, who take a birthday vacation to the sea at Noirmoutier Island. As children they spent many happy summers there on the beach with their family before their mother died. They spend the weekend reminiscing, wishing that they'd had more years with their mother, who died so young. On the way back to Paris, Melanie tells Antoine that she remembered something disturbing about their mother. Before she can disclose the secret, they are in a car accident and Melanie is seriously injured.

So. We wait for the secret to be revealed for many, many chapters as Antoine's life back in Paris falls apart. His wife has left him for another man, his children are hellions, and he hates his job. Melanie gradually heals and finally tells him the secret.

I'm not going to tell you the secret. It's not what I expected, and it was kind of a let-down, frankly. It seemed kind of contrived and trite. Perhaps I am a jaded reader who wants a fresher secret.

So, I really liked the book for a long time, but after the secret was revealed I kind of felt a bit manipulated. I don't know why. But I did still really enjoy Antoine's story, which turned out to be happy. Now of course you must read it, as you'll want to know the secret. Go ahead! de Rosnay is a great writer.

The Sunday Salon: January in Review

Books Read in January (click for reviews)

• The Sex Lives of Cannibals by Maarten Troost: Travelogue. Bored of life in America and anxious to make a difference in the world and have an adventure in the process. Maarten and his partner head off to the remote island of Tarawa in the South Pacific.
• An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy. Multigenerational story of a family in India.
• Room by Emma Donoghue. I knew this one would have to be good; it's on everyone's must-read list. It was.
• The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash. What does it mean to be a genius? Claire has lived under the shadow of her photographer-father's famous genius for her whole life. Could she possibly be one, too?
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Re-read for the British Lit class I teach.

Best Book of January
Room. Absolutely fantastic.

New Year Updates
• Best of 2011 (and links to all my reviews)
• Updated TBR List

Books Read Aloud (with 11-year-old)
The Battle for the Castle by Elizabeth Winthrop
Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Foreman Lewis


Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List

1. The Evolution of Adam by Peter Enns
2. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
3. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
4. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
5. The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson
6. The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton
7. When We Were Strangers by Pamela Schoenewalt
8. How to Be an American Housewife by Margaret Dilloway
9. The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
10. Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin
11. The Girl in the Italian Bakery by Kenneth Tingle

Currently Reading
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien