The Sunday Salon: Holiday Reading

Look at that lovely stack of books! I am planning on lots and lots of luxurious reading time during the next few weeks, until our activities start again in January. I was incredibly lucky at the library yesterday, finding 9 books on my TBR list actually available!

Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass (our January book club book)
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage
Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
At Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy
The Only True Genius in the Family by Jennie Nash
The Ninth Wife by Amy Stolls
The Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Bride's House by Sandra Dallas

So far this year I've read 40 books (yikes--that is really low for me!), and 21 of them have been from my TBR list. And I've added something like 45 books to my list. I usually manage to get several books read during the holidays, but 9 will be challenging!

I started with the Sandra Dallas book. What's on your holiday reading list?

Book Review: Purple Hibiscus

I am absolutely astounded by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun (my 2008 review here). I read the latter a few of years ago and was blown away, and Purple Hibiscus was just as powerful. Adichie is a phenomenal storyteller and a lyrical writer—my absolute favorite combination. Here there is no stilted dialogue, no stiff, trite characters.

Set in Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus is the story of Kambili and JaJa, seemingly privileged children of a rich and powerful man. But there Papa has a dark side. While he treats the community generously, he is religious fanatic and punishes any family member who appears to be backsliding. His wife and children live in constant fear of the next beating; his father and sister live impoverished, barely able to eat, because he won't give them money without an implicit agreement that they will live according to his belief system.

At 15 and 17, Kambili and JaJa are reluctantly allowed to spend a week with their aunt and cousins. For the first time, they are exposed to what family life could really be like. Kambili is socially handicapped ("Is there something wrong with her?" asks her teenaged cousin), petrified of saying the wrong thing or of displeasing her father. She is certain that her Papa will know if she does anything that is unauthorized by him (he sends a schedule along with them to follow). I love how Kambili focuses on her relatives' laughter. The whole concept of laughter and conversation about anything other than religion is completely foreign to her, but she desperately wants to take part in this new life.

The short visit to their aunt's house is a turning point in the lives of Kambili and Jaja, and their life gets much more difficult as a result—but they also gain hope. They know that there is a life outside of their father's compound and people who love them without condition.

This book is difficult to read because of the horrible abuse, but it is so well worth it. I wish Adichie had more novels for me to devour, but I will be reading her book of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck.

Linked up with the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon

Book Review: Backseat Saints

I've had Backseat Saints on my TBR list for quite awhile, so it jumped out at me as I was browsing the library stacks. But I hesitated, thinking "Didn't I not really like the last Joshilyn Jackson book I read?" Actually, I remembered being faintly irritated with the last one I read.

But I checked it out anyway and spent a few days or a week in the crazy world of Rose Mae Lolley, abandoned by her mother and abused by men. I noticed that the reviewers on amazon.com give this book 5 stars over and over again, so obviously there is something wrong with me. I just could not appreciate this novel. It was too snappy for me. I couldn't believe the character of Rose Mae Lolley—she didn't make any sense to me. Oh, I know. That was probably the point of the book in some way, but it just didn't all come together for me.

And I've got a name thing going on again with this book, as I did with The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Rose Mae goes between that name (her given) and Ro (her current). In other words, in the past she is Rose Mae, and in the present she is Ro. Except sometimes she is Ro with Rose Mae trying to get through to the surface. So when she tries to shoot her husband, is she Ro or Rose Mae? I understand what the author was trying to do (bad girl self vs. good girl self); it just didn't work for me. Something was missing—some vital connection. Maybe, for me, the disconnect was in the writing.

Here's the thing: I am a poet. I love books that love and caress the art of writing, that can blow me away with a combination of words or make me ache with something indescribable. I tend toward loving books that are quieter and more thoughtful. Backseat Saints deals with a terrible subject—spousal abuse—and the abuse scenes are very well written. But something didn't connect for me between the powerful abuse scenes and Ro Grandee's snappy comebacks. I guess I wanted her to think more. I couldn't feel her enough.

This isn't a rousing endorsement of the book. Maybe you will like it, but there was too much going on in it for me. A mother who shows back up as a fortune teller in an airport, various saints who appear suddently in the middle of the book, sweet old boyfriends who turn out to be abusers as well, and a whole lot of make-up sex. Too much going on, too fast-paced, too much disconnection. But again, I am apparently the only person in the reading world who doesn't think this is an amazing book. So read it for yourself. The end.

The Sunday Salon: November in Review

Books Read in November
(click for reviews)

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (part ghost story, part tale of decaying estates of England)
• Away by Amy Bloom (based on the legend of the woman who walked to Russia)
• Saving Cee-Cee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman (motherless girl rescued by her relatives and friends)
• Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson

Best Book of the Month
Hmmmm. None of them were phenomenal, but I enjoyed the first three. Backseat Saints, not so much.

Guest Review
My Dad read and reviewed Shadows Walking by Douglass Skopp as part of the book's virtual tour.

Read Alouds (with 10-year-old)
Born in the Year of Courage by Emily Crofford
The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop

Added to My Ever-Growing TBR List
Wherever you Go by Joan Leegant (reviewed by Bibliophiliac)

Currently Reading
When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro

Book Club News
Our book club had its first weekend retreat. We had a blast! We also picked upcoming books for the next several months. Not surprisingly, all of my book choices were rejected because they sounded too depressing. Instead, we have a couple of mysteries, a memoir, and a humorous one. I've been reassured that we can read a depressing book after the winter months. Our upcoming books are:

• Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass
• The Sex Lives of Cannibals
• She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb (I've read this one and LOVE it)
• You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

We also went to see The Help together. I read the book a year ago and loved the movie. Those who had just read the book were disappointed that so much was left out but enjoyed the movie. Fortunately, I don't remember details from a year ago!

Book Review: The Little Stranger

I've had Sarah Waters on my radar for awhile, so I picked up The Little Stranger on the to-be-shelved stacks at the library. So...this book actually gave me shivers. I was even scared when I awoke in the middle of the night and had to walk down our hallway to the bathroom. C-r-e-e-p-y!

The Little Stranger is a ghost story, although I didn't really know this when I began reading it. That's probably good, because I wouldn't normally willingly pick up a gothic ghost story novel! The story centers on Dr. Faraday and his obsession with Hundreds Hall, where his mother was once a servant, and its strange inhabitants, the Ayres family. Hundreds Hall is a decaying house, once the center of a great estate, where strange things begin to happen. The brother goes crazy, the mother unhinged, and Faraday and the sister, Caroline, engage in a strange dance. Faraday is insistent that the family keep Hundreds Hall intact, in spite of its obvious haunting.

This reminded me somewhat of Diana Satterfield's The Thirteenth Tale. And although I liked Satterfield's novel much better, this one was extremely engaging, providing just enough shivers, excellent writing, and memorable characters. I definitely recommend this and will keep Sarah Waters on my TBR radar.

Book Review: Away

I picked up this book by Amy Bloom on the to-be-shelved stacks at the library solely because of the book cover. Yes, I know the adage. In this case, I nearly tossed the book aside after the first 50 pages. It was so disturbing.

But I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. This isn't a book I'll throw at my book club and demand they read it. They don't, as a whole, like wading through tragic, depressing novels to get to the happy ending.

And Away is disturbing, depressing, and tragic. Lillian is a Russian Jew who witnessed the slaughter of her entire family, lost her three-year-old daughter, and then made her way to America alone in the 1920s. She does what she can to survive, including becoming the mistress of a Yiddish theatre director and his actor son. When a cousin arrives from Russia and informs Lillian that her daughter, Sophie, is actually alive, Lillian is determined to head to Siberia to find her.

Lillian is a focused, determined young mother on a quest, and she'll do anything to find her daughter. Traveling by train, boat, horse, and foot from New York City, she ultimately ends up traveling alone in the Alaskan wilderness, hoping to cross into Siberia. Along the way she meets an array of people, from exceptionally kind to exceptionally perverse.

One of my very favorite parts of the novel—and I absolutely loved this—is that Amy Bloom ties up all the loose ends of the cast of characters when they step out of the story. When Lillian leaves the director and his son back in New York, Bloom tells the reader what happens to them. When she parts ways with the prostitute in Seattle, Bloom follows through, in just a few paragraphs, with the rest of the prostitute's life. I loved that.

Away is loosely based on Lillian Alling, a woman who attempted to walk from New York City to Russia in 1927. The book is sexually explicit, disturbing, and terribly tragic—but at the end, I am glad that I continued reading. Without Bloom's device of following the futures of the characters, I'm not sure I would have been so satisfied. But I absolutely love closure, and she does it so very well.

Book Review: Saving Cee-Cee Honeycutt

In Beth Hoffma's debut novel, Cee-Cee Honeycutt spends her first 12 years in cold Ohio with an unstable, unhappy, and ultimately crazy mother who lives completely in the past, reliving her days as the Vidalia Queen in Savannah. Cee-Cee, a social outcast, is known in the small town as the crazy lady's daughter. Her father rarely makes an appearance, and when he does, her mother is even more miserable.

When her mother is killed in a car accident, Cee-Cee's great-aunt Tootie rescues her, much to the relief of Cee-Cee's cold and detached father. Cee-Cee is introduced to Savannah, Georgia, a world that is completely different from the only one she has ever known. A typical cast of quirky southern chick lit characters become Cee-Cee's circle of friends: the black housekeeper, the exotic neighbor, the rich snob, and, of course, Aunt Tootie.

I liked this book. It has moments of fluff and predictability, but I actually really loved Cee-Cee, Aunt Tootie, and Oletta, the housekeeper. The stereotypical neighbors were fine for a little diversion and levity, but the saving of Cee-Cee story was really sweet and well done. This is one of those perfect reads for between heavier (or depressing, as my book club friends insist) novels.