Book Review: How to Be an American Housewife

"America consists primarily of Caucasians. It is understood without explanation or question that in the United States a Japanese person will not be considered as equal. … Therefore, you must work as hard as you can to prove yourself more than equal—the most polite, the best worker, an adept English learner, the most well-turned-out Housewife your husband could ever ask for. This is your duty, to both your home country and to your new one."

Margaret Dilloway's How to Be an American Housewife is first the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and secondly the story of her daughter Sue. Shoko knows who she is: she has made deliberate choices throughout her life to get to where she is. But Sue lives in a fog of identity crisis, mostly due to the complete lack of communication between her and her Japanese mother. Sue craves an American mother who offers praise and warmth; Shoko is surprised to learn, when her daughter is an adult, that Sue perceived her as critical and cold.

Although Shoko closely followed the guidebook How to Be an American Housewife when she came to America, she is truly Japanese, and she learns early on that she will never be American enough. But she is tremendously tenacious in the face of life-long assimilation. She recognizes that her adult children are miserable, but she doesn't sit around bemoaning her failure as a parent. She did the best she could, and it is up to them to get their lives together.

But Shoko is very ill and requires a serious surgery. Her biggest regret is that she never made amends with her beloved brother, Taro, who completely disowned her when she married an American. She asks Sue to travel to Japan with her and carry a message to Taro. From here the story shifts from Shoko to Sue and her teenage daughter, Helena, as they journey to Japan.

Sue's story is just as enjoyable as Shoko's story. We can't help but root for this woman who has tremendously low self-esteem as she discovers her roots in Japan. As she discovers who her mother was and meets her Japanese family, her whole world makes sense. She has, for the first time in her life, a positive sense of self.

I really enjoyed both Shoko's and Sue's stories. I loved how the book wrapped up all the stories in the end, drawing the two cultures together in a hopeful way. This is an interesting view on post-WW2 through the eyes of a Japanese woman, adding still another perspective to the WW2 experience. (See my reviews of WW2 books here, including a few on the Japanese-American experience.)

Book Review: The Forgotten Garden

Oh, Kate Morton, how I love you!
The House at Riverton was wonderful.
The Distant Hours was simply delicious.

But The Forgotten Garden? It was just, well, it was everything I could possibly want in a novel. A mystery with a ghost story feel. Romance, lost love, found love, familial love, orphans, good guys, villains, a manor, a secret garden (and speaking of that, well-done cameos with real life figures), fairy tales, and did I mention suspense?

Well, and then, of course, Kate Morton is a writer of astounding grace and perspicacity. I mean, I know that no one is perfect and all that, but quite possibly, Kate Morton is a perfect writer. Really.

OK, so here is the story in a nutshell: a little girl is lost on a big ship while waiting for the Authoress to come back to get her. But the Authoress never does, and when the ship lands in Australia, the little girl, assumed to be an orphan, is adopted by the dockmaster and his wife. When she is grown, the dockmaster tells Nell the truth—or as much as he knows of it. Chapter by chapter, the truth is gradually uncovered, sometimes by Nell and sometimes by her granddaughter, Cassandra. Who is the Authoress? Who is Nell? Why was she left alone on a ship bound for Australia?

The cast of characters reaches far back into the life of the Authoress. You'll meet a man in a black suit, a Dickensian harridan, an obsessive uncle, a kindly old fisherman, a beautiful invalid, a wicked aunt, and, of course, a garden maze that follows many twists and turns and dead ends. 

Please read this book. And please, Kate Morton, MORE!

The Sunday Salon: April in Review

Books Read in April
You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark: From my review: "I apologized profusely to my book club for having it on my list."
More Like Her by Liza Palmer: From my review: "Liza Palmer is chick lit without the fluff and feathers."
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I haven't reviewed this yet but it was amazing.
Watership Down by Richard Adams. Multiple re-read. Taught this in British Lit class.
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton:  From my review: "Morton is a superb writer and mesmerizing storyteller." (Actually read in March but reviewed in April.)

Favorite Book of the Month
Watership Down. I love this book so much. I first read it 30 years ago when I was in high school. It is the first novel I can remember my father and I sharing as reading peers. My students were "eh" about it. Some of them loved it, some said "It's a book about rabbits!"

Books Read Aloud (to 11-year-old)
Heidi by Joanna Spryri
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok
True Sisters by Sandra Dallas
Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani
The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler
Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens

Now Reading
Norah: The Making of an Irish-American Woman in 19th Century New York by Cynthia Neale

Book Review: You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

Sigh. Yes, I read a book titled You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl. Not only did I read it, but I picked it for book club! Just to clarify, I submitted a long list of what I thought were excellent choices, and I stuck this one at the end of the list. The other books were all intense (Room, for example), and I thought this one might bring some levity. So all the other books were rejected ("too depressing"), and this one made the cut.

I loved Celia Rivenbark's Stop Dressing Your Six Your Old Like a Skank and We're Just Like You Only Prettier. I laughed and laughed and laughed! But this book? This one was actually horrible. I apologized profusely to my book club for having it on my list. There was absolutely nothing funny about it. It was embarrassing, actually.

The problem? Rivenbark tries much, much too hard in this "humor" book, to be funny. In her other books, I thought I would like her as a person. In this book, I knew for sure I would run the other way. She is waaaayy too snarky. She swears way too much. She sounds like a 10-year-old just finding out that some words are "naughty." It's embarrassing. I mean, I was embarrassed for her as an author. I just wanted to call her and say, "Please stop."

I think only one person besides me finished the book for book club. A few people read some and called it quits. As one member said midway through, "When is this going to get funny?" It doesn't.

And so that is all the time I am devoting to Rivenbark. I'm not even going to take the time to put a picture of the book in my post. I will probably never read another one of her books. The end.

Book Review: More Like Her

I absolutely loved Liza Palmer's Conversations with a Fat Girl, so I was excited to get a chance to review More Like Her. First off, I have to say that the blurb on the back of the book threw me off. It didn't really reflect the essence of the novel, making it sound more about "what goes on behind white picket fences" and less about the main character, Franny.

The novel really is about Frances and her journey to self-discovery. The character Emma, who is murdered by her crazy husband, is lightly drawn, as are Franny's two friends, Lisa and Jill. And that's absolutely fine, because Frances is a fantastic character. As I recall from her Conversations, Palmer has an uncanny ability to capture the thoughts and insecurities we probably all have at times. How do I measure up? Why can't I be more like so-and-so? Am I flawed and abnormal? Why is this all so easy for everyone else?

Franny has spent a lifetime putting up walls, and as events unfold, she understands that she has to start allowing her real self to be shown. But as she says, "Freedom, with all its possibilities, just feels cold and lonely. I want to go back to my tower. I need those walls. I need the protection."

You know how it is when you discover something about yourself that is obvious to others but not to you. You kind of want to shove it back down, but you know you need to look it in the face. So often our self-perception is just warped, sometimes we just have quirks that need tweaked. This novel is really about self-revelation—and choices. Knowing what to keep and what to discard, what to refine and what to tear down.

Liza Palmer is chick lit without the fluff and feathers. She knows real people. Her characters are people we know—are us— and they talk like real people, too. If you haven't read her, check her out!

Book Review: The Distant Hours

Kate Morton is waaaaay up there on my list of favorite contemporary authors. I loved The House at Riverton, and I think I love The Distant Hours even more.

The novel begins with a lost bag of mail and a letter delivered to Edie's mother 40 years too late. Edie is fascinated to learn that her stodgy mother once lived in a castle with a famous author and his three daughters. From here the novel journeys to Milderhurst Castle, past and present, and into the lives of the three spinster sisters: Juniper, Percy, and Saffy. Edie and her mother are also wrapped up in the story, as are a cast of other characters who skirt on the edges of their lives.

The Distant Hours is a gothic novel full of mystery, suspense, romance, and hauntings. It isn't a ghost story, but it feels like one in a heart-palpitating, edge-of-your-seat kind of way. Morton is a superb writer and mesmerizing storyteller. Her prose is lyrical and her characters so well-drawn that I can still see them clearly, weeks after finishing the book. This is one of those books that I thought about during the day and couldn't wait to get to in the evenings. I read the last part slowly, reluctant to come to the end and leave the fascinating Blythe sisters.

Morton manages to let the castle keep some secrets and yet tie up the stories in a satisfying way, and I love that. Although the story is terribly sad in many ways, she manages to wrap it all up in an optimistic fashion. She does a masterful job balancing the haunting quality of the book with the practicality of modern day Edie, who is a young woman scorned in love.

I highly recommend this novel! Fortunately, I still have one more Morton novel, The Forgotten Garden, to enjoy.

Book Review: Baby Lit Series

Reviewing baby board books is not something I would normally do, since my youngest is 11. But when Gibbs Smith, publisher, offered review copies of Jane Eyre: A Counting Primer and Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Primer, I absolutely could not resist.

Both are by Jennifer Adams with art by Alison Oliver, and I am madly in love with them. I only wish the publishers had also sent me Pride and Prejudice: A Counting Primer and Romeo and Juliet: A County Primer as well. I mean, these books are just cool. Everything about them is right, from the feel of the thick pages to the colors to, of course, the text and artwork.

Jane Eyre, being a bit of a spooky novel at times, is a bit of a spooky baby book. Little might have no clue what's going on, but I can imagine my kids having the line on the 3 Candles page stuck in their heads throughout childhood: "It is always dangerous to have a candle lit at night." Imagine them having been read this dozens of times in their childhood and then, at age 14, actually encountering this scene in Jane Eyre! Fantastic!

As much as I love the novel Jane Eyre, I have to admit I am more smitten by the Alice in Wonderland board book. The art is fabulous. If I had a baby, I'd probably buy a second copy of the book just to frame all the pages. I mean, seriously. Look at the Cheshire cat and the caterpillar:

Fantastic!

I am so happy that I have a brand new baby nephew to share these books with. These books are reviewed as "a must for every savvy parent's nursery library," and I must say that my brother and his wife are bound to be savvy parents. They need these.

Quick. Go buy these for every new baby in your life!