Mini Reviews - Once Upon a Goat by Richards and Barclay, Pastoralia by G. Saunders, The Long and Living Shadow by D. Winston

I don't feel like any of these require a lengthy review, so here we go again with the mini reviews.  Pardon my mostly-absent week. I spent the entire Labor Day weekend cleaning out my breakfast nook, which I'd turned into a very messy art studio. It had gone well beyond acceptably disordered, so I've moved everything out and now we're just pondering how to bring everything back but make the room orderly. We want to find a storage solution for all the paint, brushes, etc. that is attractive but it may take some time to find. At any rate, I needed a day to recover after spending the weekend hauling canvases, bottles, brushes, and boxes of paint to another room. 

Onward. 

Once Upon a Goat by Dan Richards and Eric Barclay is an adorable picture book in which a king and queen long for a family. When they ask their fairy godmother for a child, the king makes the mistake of saying, "Any kid will do." 

And, a kid is exactly what they get, a baby goat. At first they're horrified and even decide to cast the kid out of the castle after he causes too much chaos and eats the royal roses. But, then it begins to rain heavily and they feel bad about sending the poor little guy out on such a rough night. After bringing him back inside, he slowly becomes part of the family. And, then their fairy godmother returns and sees her mistake. 

Out in the countryside, the fairy godmother peeks around a tree and, sure enough, there's the baby the king and queen asked for — living with a mother and father goat. She intends to switch them but the king and queen have become so attached to their kid that they come up with an alternative solution. Hint: it means the castle is never tidy. 

Recommended - While the storyline in Once Upon a Goat is predictable to an adult, it's super cute and I can imagine it tickling small children. I love the illustrations, love the kindness of the king and queen and their willingness to tolerate a messy castle because they adore their little goat, much like parents who put up with the messes that come with having small children. 

Pastoralia by George Saunders is a book of short stories with one novella. As in many of his collections, there's a "theme park going downhill" story, the novella of the title name, "Pastoralia", and it was my favorite. A man and woman are living in cave, each with his and her own Separate Area into which they retreat at night. They're not related, not attracted to each other. They're supposed to just grunt all day, skin and cook their daily goat, pretend to eat bugs and paint wall art. With fewer visitors coming, they fear they'll lose their jobs soon and occasionally their daily goat doesn't show up in their slot so they must eat crackers, instead. 

Meh - Saunders' theme park stories are wildly creative and absurd. I tend to love them, even the ones that get a bit . . . violent (his earlier work, especially). But, the rest of the stories in Pastoralia didn't thrill me. In fact, I had to flip through the book to remind myself what the others are about and found that I was reading much farther than I should do in order to nudge my memory. 

At any rate, I love George Saunders casual, humorous, satirical writing. But, apart from "Pastoralia", this one just didn't do it for me and it's now my least favorite Saunders book, much as I love him. Second to Pastoralia would be Lincoln in the Bardo [unpopular opinion], which was too scattered for my taste, although someone at Square Books in Oxford, MS told me that Saunders had the audience do voices from Lincoln in the Bardo when he came for a reading and signing. They say his visit was a total hoot. And, my "least favorite" is still worth keeping for the novella. I am getting close to having read all of his books, now.

I like the pulp-fictiony cave woman cover shown above, although the woman who lives in the cave with the narrator is described as fifty-something and not particularly attractive, at least to the man who plays her Partner in Cave. My copy has a deer on the cover. I'm not sure of the point of that and I'm not reviewing for anyone since this is from my home library, so I've opted to put up the cover I like. 

The Long and Living Shadow by Daoma Winston almost doesn't deserve a review. It was seriously awful. But, I finished the book for a couple reasons. 

1. The Return by Daoma Winston, a book that once belonged to my mother, is one of my all-time most reread books. I've read it periodically since . . . maybe my early teens? It's a romantic suspense that takes place in a mansion on a cliff, very gothic and moody and truly suspenseful. I've been considering another reread. I recognized similar elements in The Long and Living Shadow and felt like I needed to keep reading to figure out why a book that was similar in so many ways was such a dud by comparison with another title by the same author. More on that in a minute. 

2. It was short. Mercifully short at something like 157 pages, thank goodness. It truly was a terrible work of writing.

Not recommended - Pass this one up if you see it at a library or garage sale. Dreadful, repetitive, and predictable. The spooky house really wasn't and the greedy relatives were transparent. Possibly the worst thing (the element that most likely made it pale by comparison with my old favorite) was ineffective repetition. Everyone was pudgy but the heroine, who was delicate. The title was repeated a gazillion times, and so was mention of whether or not the widowed heroine was "grown up" at 23. On the plus side, she developed confidence as the book progressed and the book has a bang-up ending. But, that wasn't enough to redeem it. 

This is another one for which I've switched out the cover image. I think my copy must be a reprint as it was published in 1971 and my copy looks very 80s, with the heroine dressed in a feathered gown. In reality, she was a hat-and-gloves-with-suit type of gal, very conservative. The cover above doesn't entirely fit, either, but it does hint of the gothic feel, while the cover image on mine looks like it came straight out of a music video. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The End of October by Lawrence Wright

OK, a little commentary on blogging, first. I disappeared briefly because I was considering giving up blogging but chose not to say I was leaving for good, just in case. I mean, I have to write. I just didn't know if I needed to keep writing about books, if that makes sense. And, sure enough, I decided I'm not done. I need to write about books, at least occasionally. The End of October is really the only book that I've felt like I really needed to talk about. A week has passed since completion, but I still have thoughts and would love to hear what anyone else thinks. I have a few ARCs left but not many, so if I don't mention receiving a book from a publisher, you can assume it's owned or borrowed, from now on.

The End of October by Lawrence Wright is a pandemic novel. When I first started reading it, I referred to it (on Instagram) as "dystopian" but then I started rethinking that and decided it's really a medical thriller, although things fall apart and society becomes a bit dystopian because of the illness. And, while I think it's a bit too long and occasionally dives into unnecessary detail, it still managed to be a page-turner, most of the time. There are some slow bits.

When Dr. Henry Parsons hears that there's been an outbreak of a mysterious illness in Indonesia, he goes there to investigate, telling his family that he'll be home in time for his son's birthday. Instead, he finds a novel virus (yes, much like our current virus situation) that has been contained to an encampment. But, shortly after, the virus begins to spread and one of the people who has been exposed hops on a plane to Saudi Arabia for his once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage, the Hajj, to Mecca. Henry follows to try to contain the disease. There, the virus takes hold with a vengeance and Henry is stuck for months, once the country is locked down.

OK, so hmm. I had so many thoughts about this book. Henry works for the CDC and I had a bit of a problem with the major plot point of Henry being stuck in a foreign country for two reasons:

1) The author repeatedly says Henry is very, very important - I don't think I would have believed an important American government official would be left stranded in another country, anyway, but . . .

2) Recent events show that it's possible to get out of a locked-down country. In fact, a friend's daughter was stuck in Peru when the country locked down. My friend had to make a lot of phone calls to get help from local government, who assisted her in acquiring the right documents and advised her on where to have her daughter go and when. I don't know if the US government charged my friend to get her daughter home but they did send at least one plane to pick up American citizens who had been stranded and wanted to return home (apparently, you could stay or go; it was up to the stranded individual).

So, that bugged me. But, the other thing that drove me crazy was how Henry was portrayed as heroic and a wonderful husband, father, and lover, blah, blah, but he definitely put his job ahead of the family. Having been the wife of someone who travels constantly and has put his job first, sorry, I could not see Henry's choices as heroic.

Having said all that, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who enjoy Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, and whoever else writes medical thrillers (I haven't read one for a while, so I don't know who the current shining stars may be), if only for the ability to compare the book to current events.

The virus in The End of October is different than Covid-19. It's a hemorrhagic virus (eww) like Ebola and it's much more deadly. During the time Henry is stuck in another country, the US is being ravaged by the disease and it's so easily transmissible and deadly that it becomes difficult to obtain food and other necessities. At one point, the electricity goes off and stays off for days.

Anyway, sometimes it can be a bit gruesome but that kind of goes with the territory when you're talking medical thrillers. I didn't rate it at Goodreads and I still don't know how to rate the book. I liked it but didn't love it. I thought it was a pretty quick read but a bit overlong. I probably would not read it a second time. Besides finding Henry a bit too heroic, I thought he was a little distant and difficult to relate to or even like; he's a bit gruff. There are also some weird little details, like Henry losing a cane (he's a little damaged from childhood illness) and not even trying to acquire another one. Either you need it or you don't, right? I just thought that was bizarre. While in Indonesia, he probably could have easily found a branch to whittle into shape but he didn't even try to locate a substitute.

So . . . this review and the last were slightly more casual and I plan to continue that way. I don't want to spent an inordinate amount of time on the computer and am planning to shut down my social media till after the election, soon (except Instagram). Most of my posts will probably be more Instagram-like, with a nice photo of the book and minimal description. I haven't decided whether or not to bother with Monday Malarkey and Fiona Friday. Maybe I'll just post a cat photo when I've got one that I want to preserve? We'll see. I'm feeling my way, right now. Change is good.


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Haunting of Henry Davis by Kathryn Siebel

Henry is new to Barbara Anne's 5th grade class. He's super nerdy-looking and nobody wants to have anything to do with the new kid. He sits alone sketching when he's not working on a project with the kids at the table he and Barbara Anne share. Then, one day, Barbara Anne and Henry start sneaking out of the lunch room early and they slowly get to know each other. Henry's not so bad, really. But, there's one really strange thing about Henry: he's being haunted and the ghost is following him around everywhere.

Barbara Anne comes up with an idea. They need to find out a little about Henry's ghost so they can figure out how to get rid of him. Once they figure out his name is Edgar, they begin to uncover other clues. And, then the two classmates who share a table with them join in. Who was Edgar? How did he die? And, how does the scary old lady in the neighborhood know about him? Once they find the answers, maybe they can help Edgar move on.

Recommended but not a favorite - It took me a while before I became really engrossed in The Haunting of Henry Davis. That seems to be a common problem with the middle grade books I've read, this year. Is it me or the books? I can't say. Maybe a little of both. At any rate, the clues were dropped slowly enough to keep the story a little mysterious, although adults probably will be familiar enough with the events around Edgar's death to guess what happened to him, early on. I did, but that didn't bother me at all.

I liked the growing friendship between Barbara Anne and Henry, as well as the way the other two kids ended up helping out and becoming friends with them. And I enjoyed the story once it got cranked up. The ending is lovely. I did have a little trouble with the author occasionally mentioning a new person and then describing them in the following sentences. In fact, I got so confused when that happened the first time that I literally went back and started the book over again, thinking I'd missed something (not a big deal; I was still in the first or second chapter). Nope, it was just a stylistic thing, I guess. Other than that and a slow start, I thought The Haunting of Henry Davis was entertaining, if not a personal favorite.


©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold and Suzanne Kaufman

Pencils sharpened in their case.

Bells are ringing, let's make haste.

School's beginning, dreams to chase.

All are welcome here. 

All Are Welcome is a cute rhyming book that takes place at a school and shows the children arriving, doing their everyday schoolwork, going to lunch, playing on the playground, being read to, drawing, raising their hands to be called on, playing musical instruments, etc. Each verse ends with, "All are welcome here," and the characters portrayed show a vast diversity, as you can see from the cover image.

This is one of my favorite spreads (you should be able to click on the image to enlarge it):

The inside of the book jacket is also a poster that says "All are welcome here" and shows a diverse range of children holding hands, great for classroom use.

Recommended - A lovely story about embracing diversity with bright, cheerful illustrations that show happy children enjoying learning. I love it!

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit

Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit
Copyright 2016
Alfred A. Knopf - YA/Holocaust/WWII
232 pp.

Anna still was not certain what precisely was meant by this word "war," but it seemed, at least in part, to be an assault on her cookie supply, and of this she simply could not approve.

~from p. 9 from Advance Reader Copy (some changes may have been made to the final print version)

In the November cold, resting out of doors for the very first time, and beset on all sides with what seemed like the world congress of inconvenient tree roots, she hardly slept at all.

~from p. 39 of ARC

I don't feel like I can possibly do Anna and the Swallow Man justice, so I'm going to link to my friend Jill's Goodread's review. I don't think it's got any spoilers, although it will make a lot more sense after you've read the book. And, you definitely should, particularly if you are interested in a completely unique view of the Holocaust. It is achingly beautiful, brilliantly written, heartbreaking storytelling.

In brief: 

Anna's father is a professor of linguistics in Krakow, Poland. In 1939, he is arrested while Anna is being watched by a friend. Locked out of their home and unsure where to go, she meets the Swallow Man, a lanky stranger who is as fluent in many languages and dialects as her father and Anna, herself. He refuses to share his name and insists that Anna not use her name in public, as well. Anna follows him as he walks around Poland and across borders, teaching her how to live off the land and how to behave when they are around people, particularly the Wolves and Bears (Germans and Soviets).

Years pass, Anna grows, a third straggler joins them for a time. Will they survive till the end of the war?

Highly recommended - I'm surprised this book has been marketed as YA because it's definitely a dark read, but the author has said perhaps the marketing not a bad thing, maybe that choice has opened up the readership. And, when I think back, I realize that I read books about the Holocaust when I was pretty young. My first real peek into WWII was a "Drama in Real Life" in Reader's Digest that I read when I was 10 years old. The Holocaust a crucial part of our history and one that should never be forgotten. Anna and the Swallow Man is the kind of book that really brings home the horror, deprivation, and evil of the Holocaust, and yet at the same time it portrays the compassion and hope that kept a portion of the Jewish population alive when so many were trying to exterminate them.

Anna and the Swallow Man will stay with me for a long, long time, I'm sure. It's the kind of book that should be read repeatedly, studied, and discussed. Heartfelt thanks to my friend Paula for sending it to me.


©2016 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Mini Reviews - Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen and Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

I need to do some catch-up, so it's mini review time, again.

Lost Lake is the latest release by Sarah Addison Allen. I've read all of her books and rushed out and find a copy of Lost Lake during release week.  It took me about 4 or 5 days to locate a copy and then I spent the next evening gobbling the book down.

Kate has spent her first year as a widow in a daze. On the day Kate and her daughter Devin are due to move in with Kate's mother-in-law, Cricket, she "wakes up" after finding a postcard from her Aunt Eby's lakeside cabin business, Lost Lake.  Kate spent the last, best summer of her life at Lost Lake and now she has a sudden urge to return.

At Lost Lake, she finds that her widowed Aunt Eby is on the verge of selling her business to travel the world but Eby's hesitant to say goodbye to Lost Lake for good.

There's a wonderful hodge-podge of characters in Lost Lake: Selma, who seems bitter about the special charms which have helped her acquire (but not keep) a large number of husbands; Lisette, a French woman Eby once saved and who is unable to speak; Jack, a guest who is painfully shy and in love with Lisette; Buhladeen, who is everyone's friend and comes up with the idea to host a goodbye party for Eby; Wes, the boy Kate spent her last best summer with, now a grown man who is wounded by his dark past: Lazlo, the wealthy developer who wants to tear down the cabins to create a new development. And, there's an alligator who talks to Devin.

Highly recommended - I had a little trouble getting into Lost Lake because Kate sounded a bit too much like me in some of her pains and yearnings but with the advantages of youth and money to change her life.  Eventually, though, I got over myself and was swept away. I closed the book with little joyful tears streaming down my face. As usual, Sarah Addison Allen has succeeded at telling a lovely, wise, heartwarming story with her own special touch of magic. I particularly loved the alligator.  Lost Lake is an especially meaningful release because it's Sarah's first published novel since her battle with late-stage breast cancer ended in remission.  I hope she will live a long, long time and write many more books.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill has gotten a lot of gushy praise. The first time I opened it, I gave up in frustration. I didn't like the dislocated style: a paragraph or two about the protagonist as her romance progresses through marriage and child to affair with factoids (some seemingly random, some relevant) interspersed throughout.  It was an odd, jolting manner of storytelling.

The second time I opened the book, I did so at the urging of other bloggers, who advised me that Dept. of Speculation requires patience but eventually the story comes together. Michele of A Readers Respite told me there were so many little gems that she thought she might need to reread it with a highlighting pen. Andi of Estella's Revenge loved it. And, there's definitely some truth to Michele's statement about all those little gems. I think I enjoyed the random quotations and tidbits of information as much as or more than the storyline that wove through them (although I did love the way the story ended).  Often, I found myself setting the book aside to go look up more about a particular topic.

Meh, you might like it (aka "iffy on recomendation") - While I did eventually like the way Jenny Offill pulled together this story of a struggling marriage and a wife-gone-bitter in the end, the truth is that I always felt far too distant from the characters -- even the narrator -- to become fully engaged.  So, I gave it three stars and if I ever touch my copy again it will be to for the same reason Michele mentioned - to highlight those little interesting tidbits scattered throughout.

Other reviews:

Michele's thoughts about Dept. of Speculation at A Reader's Respite
Andi at Estella's Revenge reviews Dept. of Speculation


©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith

Everything moved too fast and New York City was dirty and full of itself, but Cora's eyes had been opened by being in the heart of it, the movement and roar, the tallness of the amazing edifices, the sun at such an unfamiliar high remove, flat sidewalks that stretched to infinity, mysterious steam shooting up from the middle of the street, diamonds in shop windows, flags of affluence flying from department stores and banks, doormen dressed like English gentry, flowering trees and marble mansions.

~p. 100 of A Star for Mrs. Blake (Advance Reader Copy - some changes may have been made to the final print version)

A Star for Mrs. Blake is a fictional tale based on a true event.  From 1930 - 1933, the mothers of WWI soldiers buried in France were given the opportunity to visit their sons' graves at U.S. Government expense.  Mothers of soldiers killed in the line of duty were known as "gold star" mothers because of the banners hanging in their windows. When a soldier was killed, his family would change out their blue-star banner for one with a gold star, which symbolized death.  I know this practice continued at least through WWII because I have the banner my grandparents had hanging in their window while my father was serving in WWII.  You can read a little about the Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages, here.

Mrs. Blake is Cora, a single mother and volunteer librarian from Maine who came home from college with a baby, a new name, and the tale of how her husband died of cholera. Her son Sammy has been gone for over a decade and now she is taking care of her deceased sister's children. Life in Maine is harsh. She loves the girls but will always miss her Sammy, whom she chose to have buried in France. When Cora is sent a letter about the opportunity to travel to France, she jumps at the chance to view Sammy's grave, see where he died and make new friends.

Griffin Reed is a reporter who hasn't been able to do the job he loves since a horrendous injury took a chunk of his face during the same war that took Sammy's life. He lives in Paris because  he can't bear the thought of going home the way he is, wears a tin mask painted to make him look as normal as possible and is addicted to morphine. When he meets Cora, he is inspired to write an article about one mother's experience.  

The way Reed had talked about his hometown, it was sunny all the time and everyone had an orange tree and lived in the desert, where they were scalded into madness by their own greed, which made California sound like a Bible tale with a moral no one could explain.

~p. 187 of ARC

There's a lot more to A Star for Mrs. Blake than I can possibly go into. A young soldier from a long line of Army men who served heroically is in charge of the group of mothers that includes Cora; and, a young nurse accompanies them to see to their health and well-being. There are several other mothers with dramatically varied backgrounds in Cora's bunch - a Russian who escaped the Jewish pogroms, a poor Irish immigrant, a wealthy socialite and a mentally unbalanced woman who has been in and out of mental hospitals for many years.  Cora has a fiancée in Maine but she's not entirely sure he's right for her. 

There are little battles of personality as the mothers tour France and there are plenty of other surprises to the plot.  Griffin Reed doesn't come into the book until well into the story but he's very important because he has a story of his own; and, it is Griffin who helps Cora find peace in a surprising way. 

I was a little jarred by the introduction of Griffin Reed because I was accustomed to the book being about the mixing of personalities and the various stops on the pilgrimage but Reed's presence added a new dimension to the story, both because of his importance to Cora and because he is a man who was permanently damaged by the same war that killed the young men whose graves the mothers are visiting. 

Highly recommended - Interesting characters, well-researched settings and some very surprising moments in A Star for Mrs. Blake made the time and place come to life.  I was unfamiliar with the pilgrimages but now I want to know more.  Entertaining and, at times, deeply moving, I loved the interaction between characters but I particularly loved the exciting bits of tension (spoilery, sorry) and the touching surprises toward the end of the book.  I closed the book with fat tears streaming down my face. 

In other news:

Happy Groundhog Day!  I hear we get six more weeks of winter. I'm okay with that. Winter is great in Mississippi.  A break from pollen and heat and never-ending yardwork!  Squee! The groundhog is usually wrong but one can hope.  

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Mini Reviews: Nick & Tesla's High Voltage Danger Lab by Pflugfelder & Hockensmith and Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell

I've fallen a little behind so I'm going to do mini reviews, today. Well, sort of mini.  My reviews have been growing longer, lately, so size is a relative term.

Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab by Pflugfelder and Hockensmith is the first book in the Nick and Tesla series published by Quirk Books. I won a copy in a Facebook contest and Eric at Quirk Books not only replaced the book when it disappeared in the mail but also sent the next two titles, which I'm very much looking forward to reading.

In Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab, siblings Nick and Tesla are sent to live with their Uncle Newt, a crazy inventor, while their parents are spending the summer working in Uzbekistan. To fill the time, they make a bottle rocket and launch it but Tesla's special necklace from her parents gets caught on the rocket and lands on fenced property with terrifying guard dogs. In order to distract the dogs so Tesla's pendant can be recovered, the two build a "Robocat Dog Distractor" fueled by Mentos mints and diet cola. Unfortunately, they're not able to retrieve the pendant but during the attempt they discover fishy things are happening on the grounds, make two new friends and, well, the plot thickens. Nick and Tesla eventually solve the mystery, recover the pendant and discover some new facts about their parents.

Highly recommended - Slightly wobbly writing is offset by an enjoyable mystery, an adventurous story and instructions for several science creations that you can make at home. What a great blend of ingredients for youngsters, teachers and anyone else who can stand a little nerdy fun! I told my husband about the robotic cat and he said, "Did they tell you not to use a glass bottle?" "No," I replied, but I told him the instructions specifically listed a 2-liter plastic bottle amongst the supplies. "When Howard did that, he got a couple chunks of glass in his hand," Husband told me. Howard was his childhood-to-college best friend (and the best man at our wedding). From the look in Husband's eyes, just mentioning the robotic cat brought back fond memories.  But, definitely don't use glass to build your robot.

On a side note, engineer husband found the Nick and Tesla books quite exciting and eagerly flipped through Nick and Tesla's High-Voltage Danger Lab to look at instructions for various gadgets you can build at home, once I introduced him to the subject matter. He was like a kid in a candy shop.  I love it when something lights up my husband's eyes that way.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell is a book of short stories that was sent to me by my sweet friend Sandie, whom you may know from her blog, Booksie's Blog.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I opened Vampires in the Lemon Grove, although it was all over the book-blog world, last year.  The first story is the title story, "Vampires in the Lemon Grove," which is about two elderly, lemon-eating vampires who have marital difficulties after one of them develops a fear of flying. The following stories become weirder and weirder, but the writing is so sharp that my copy is packed with Post-its and I don't know that I ever felt the urge to abandon it, although I definitely thought my head was on the verge of exploding into a shower of lemony chunks, at some points.

There are little bits of her writing that will make you stop to reread or nod your head in recognition at some observation of human behavior. Like this:

That summer Nal was fourteen and looking for excuses to have extreme feelings about himself.  

~p. 54, from "The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979"

Although many of the stories were just a bit too weird for me, I really began to have fun when I reached "The Barn at the End of Our Term," a story that begins by describing a reincarnated U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, now a horse living with a number of other reincarnated presidential horses, a few regular horses who aren't the least bit interested in politics and a smattering of other farm animals. Although I'm not entirely certain I understood what the author was trying to say, I got the impression that the farm was a form of purgatory and one need only jump the fence to move on to heavenly realms.

To Rutherford, this new life hums with the strangeness of the future.  The man has a cavalry of electric beasts that he rides over his acreage: ruby tractors and combines that would have caused Rutherford's constituents to fall off their buggies with shock.  

~p. 116, from "The Barn at the End of Our Term"

Rutherford humorously decides his wife has returned as a goat and follows her everywhere, while the horses debate whether the barn is heaven.

[James Buchanan's] nostrils flare with self-regard.  "I am being rewarded," Buchanan insists, "for annexing Oregon."

"But don't you think Heaven would smell better, Mr. Buchanan?"

~p. 117

I could quote this book all day. Another of my other favorite stories tells the tale of participants in the annual Food Chain Games, for which people gather in the Antarctic to cheer on the whale or the krill.  Team Krill has never had a winning year.

Perhaps it is odd to have rules for tailgating when the Food Chain Games themselves are a lawless bloodbath.  And that is what a lot of fans love about the games: no rules, no refs, no box seats, and no hot pretzels -- not below the Ross Ice Shelf! So take these rules of mine with a grain of salt. That said, I've seen too many senseless deaths over the years. Some people think they can just hop down to the South Pole with a six-pack of Natural Ice and a sweater from the Gap, and that is just not the way we do it for the Food Chain Games. The Team Krill vs. Team Whale match takes place every summer in the most dangerous and remote tailgating site in the world. With the -89° F temperatures and the solar radiation, not to mention the strong katabatic winds off the polar plateau, it can be easy to lose faith and fingers.

~p. 135 from "Dougbert Shackleton's Rules for Antarctic Tailgaiting"

Recommended for lovers of weird but wonderful writing.  Mind officially blown, ready for more from Karen Russell.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook

Schroeder was forced to steer a weaving course between the bomb craters that pocked the cobbled road and the rivulets of people walking in dazed, languid fashion, going nowhere in particular, carrying the remnant objects of their old lives in parcels, sacks, crates and cartons, and a heavy, almost visible, disquiet. They were like a people thrown back to the evolutionary stage of nomadic gatherers.

The ghost of a tremendous noise hung over the scene.  Something out of this world had undone this place and left an impossible jigsaw from which to construct the old picture.

--from. p. 8 of The Aftermath 

The Aftermath by Rhidian Brook is going to end up on my Best of 2013 list, for certain.  I have loads of Post-its marking vocabulary words, which I'll note below.

From the cover flap:

While thousands wander the rubble, lost and homeless, Colonel Lewis Morgan, charged with overseeing the rebuilding of this devastated city and the denazification of its defeated people, is stationed in a grand house on the River Elbe.  He is awaiting the arrival of his wife, Rachael--still grieving for their eldest son--and their only surviving son, Edmund.  But rather than force the owners of the house, a German widower and his rebellious daughter, out onto the streets, Lewis insists that the two families live together.  In this charged atmosphere both parents and children will be forced to confront their true selves as enmity and grief give way to passion and betrayal, to their deepest desires, their fiercest loyalties and the transforming power of forgiveness.  

The next paragraph calls the book "emotionally riveting" and I absolutely agree with that but what I loved most about The Aftermath was the flawed characters.  Everyone was flawed in some way, whether embarrassed by someone superior, nervous in the bedroom (even after many years of marriage), inattentive to important details happening in close proximity, arrogant, cheerfully expectant to the point of being too optimistic or single-minded in their radical thoughts. The characters were  extremely human.

The Aftermath is set in post-WWII Hamburg, 1946.

One last quote I found interesting:

He reflected on the absurd logic of the equation: they blow up a soap factory which employed two thousand Germans, made something everyone needed and had no military value whatsoever and, in return, the Russians sent the Germans bread.  It was like balancing Hell's ledger.

~p. 202

Highly recommended - The writing is graceful and erudite, the pacing natural, story intriguing, and characters so sharply drawn that I realized after closing The Aftermath that I never had even a remote sense of disbelief.  I felt very present and emotionally connected while reading The Aftermath, whether fascinated, frightened or appalled.

Vocabulary!!  Some of these are obvious in context but I still feel like writing them down. Brackets are used to shorten some of the sentences if the full sentence is not necessary to get a clear picture of the word's usage.

debouch:  emerge, issue

" [. . . ]where the Elbe veered up and debouched into the North Sea."

conurbation: A large area consisting of cities or towns that have grown so that there is very little room between them.

"The map--pulled from a pre-war German guidebook--failed to show that these conurbations were now a phantom city comprised only of ash and rubble.

quadripartite: Consisting of or divided into four parts.

"His uniform was fitting garb for a governor in this new, quadripartite Germany [. . . ]"

oedemic: It took me a second to realize this is the British version of "edematous", meaning swollen, or containing an excess of fluid in tissues or organs.

"Close up, they gave off the oedemic stench of the starving."

jejune:  dull.

Wilkins was perfectly jejune about it, sharing intimacies like a young lover unable to contain himself, including, once, a poem he had written, "To His Petal," which contained the line "I will water you, my flower, and flood you with my love." "

antiphonal . . . antiphony:

antiphony: Responsive alternation between two groups, especially of singers.

"Lewis was trusting that the faded grandeur, the serving of tea, the antiphonal sounds of clinking cutlery, and the thick carpeting would create the ambience of comfort and reassurance he required for his difficult announcement.

rebarbative: repellent, irritating

She'd once been lithe in times of changed circumstance, but here she seemed quite demotivated, found everything rebarbative."

reredos: A usually ornamental wood or stone screen or partition wall behind an alter.

"He was running his fingers over the filigree on a collapsed and cracked reredos depicting the sequence of Jesus's life in four scenes: nativity, baptism, crucifixion, resurrection."

sophistry: A reason or argument that sounds correct but is actually false.

"I think that is a sophistry. In 1939, a nationalist was a Nazi." (In response to: "I was--I still am--a nationalist, but that doesn't make me a Nazi.")

abstruse: difficult to comprehend

He'd gone to some trouble choosing [the painting], taking the Morgans' provincial sensibilities into account: nothing too outré, nothing too abstruse.

syncretism: The combination of two different forms of belief or practice.

"But "Minister hands out food parcels to grateful Germans" was surely going to be the shot of the day, providing the syncretism everyone needed [. . . ]"

deliquesce: to dissolve or melt away

"[. . .] the animal passed on without a backwards glance and deliquesced into the night."

sensecent . . . senescence: The state of being old.

"It could have been his weak chest [. . .] although in recent weeks he'd looked well: less cadaverous than usual and with some pink to his complexion; no longer the senescent man Edmund had first encountered."

boffin: [Britishism] A nerd or geek. Believed to originate as an acronym for "Back Office Intelligence", i.e. where a lot of such people found themselves working in WWII. (More at this site, which indicates it's less negative than "nerd", more a term of endearment.)

"He could never fully decipher a woman like Rachael, but he needed no Bletchley Park boffin to break this code."

demontage: dismantling

This sentence was written on a sign at a protest at a German factory in the book: "Stop the demontage!"

serried: crowded or pressed together

"[. . .] this crowd had been reassuringly shabby and serried [. . .]"

langoustine: a small edible lobster (I realized I knew this one when I read the word by itself, without context, but I'm still putting it in here because I marked it.)

"The candlelight cast a grotesque shadow on the wall behind him, making a giant dwarf of him and turning the tongs into a metallic langoustine."

architrave: The lowest division of an entablature resting in classical architecture immediately on the capital of the column.  Merriam-Webster illustration of a classical column showing the architrave.

"Icicles hung from the architraves of the great house at the park's centre."

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat

Copyright 2013

A. A. Knopf - Fiction

256 pp.

To be released 8/27/13

First sentence:

The morning Claire Limyè Lanmè Faustin turned seven, a freak wave, measuring between ten and twelve feet high, was seen in the ocean outside of Ville Rose.  

Claire of the Sea Light is partly about Claire, a young girl who goes missing on her 7th birthday, when she is told to gather her possessions. She is being given to a shopkeeper by her father. Claire's mother died in childbirth and her father, a fisherman, wants to give her a chance at a better life.  

But, the story is not just about Claire. Claire's life serves as the framework for a novel that encompasses the lives of a number of interconnected people in the coastal town of Ville Rose, Haiti, where a only a small percentage of residents are wealthy and the rest are desperately poor.  

My thoughts:

I was surprised how little of the book is actually dedicated to Claire (whose full given name translates to "Claire of the Sea Light", hence the title), instead using her story to explore the lives of people in the city and how they intersect, mostly through violence and heartbreak. In general terms, I think the story is about the difficulty of life in Haiti, even for the wealthy, but you could also say it's about life and death, love and heartbreak, kindness and violence. The publisher's description mentions "secrets" that gradually come to light and those tend to be pretty horrifying - rape, murder, affairs.  There are acts of kindness, also, and Claire's deceased mother is described as an especially gentle and kind person, but the good is definitely overshadowed by by the bad.

I honestly didn't have a lot of patience with Claire of the Sea Light, which surprised me because I've wanted to read a book by Edwidge Danticat for many years and jumped at the opportunity to read her latest.  All the dots were connected, eventually, but the story leapt around too much and was perhaps a bit too sad for me, at this moment.  

Recommended but not a favorite - I'm hoping this was simply a case of bad timing. Claire of the Sea Light's characterization is excellent and I liked the book more on reflection than during the reading, as I pondered the connections and how the author used Claire's story to describe the intersecting lives, the dysfunctional legal system and disastrous poverty and violence in Haiti. I couldn't find a Ville Rose in Haiti maps so I'm assuming the author took a real area and fictionalized it, based on the fact that she tossed in a bit of history about Pauline Bonaparte's unfinished castle.  I will definitely give the author's work another try, but I found Claire of the Sea Light an average read. 

Vocabulary moment:

"Some years they'd actually made a profit from their wild vetiver, which was not only good for the soil but also much sought after by two perfume company suppliers in the nearby southern city of Les Cayes."

vetiver: (noun) - A fragrant extract or essential oil obtained from the root of an Indian grass (Vetiveria zizanioides), used in perfumery and aromatherapy.

I received an ARC of Claire of the Sea Light from Alfred. A. Knopf in return for an unbiased review.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell

Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Copyright 2013
Alfred A. Knopf - Fiction
290 pp.

She rented a one-room walkup in which everything was something else: the tiny bathtub masquerading as a counter in the kitchen, the bed hiding upright in the wardrobe like an assassin.

~p. 73 of ARC (changes may have been made to the final print version)

Early morning in Gillerton Road.  The loamy not-quite dark peculiar to big cities is only just giving in to light.  The brick terraces are still in shadow, the sky is the color of old milk and the trees along the pavements have gathered up the remaining gloom into their branches.  The previous day and the day yet to come hang in a balance, each waiting for the other to make a move.

~p. 103 of ARC

It is 1976.  In the midst of a heatwave in London, Gretta Riordan's husband goes for his daily walk and doesn't return.  Robert is a creature of habit and a kind and loving man.  His sudden disappearance, followed by the discovery that he's cleaned out his bank account is shocking.  After a distraught Gretta informs her family, her grown children all return home one by one to help figure out what has happened and locate their missing father.

From the cover:

As the siblings tease out clues about their father's whereabouts, they navigate rocky pasts and long-held secrets, until at last their search brings them to their ancestral home in Ireland, where the truth of their parents' lives -- and their own -- is suddenly revealed.  Wise, lyrical, instantly engrossing, Instructions for a Heatwave is a work of exceptional intelligence and grace from a writer at the height of her powers.

My thoughts:

Because I'd just exited a book I absolutely could not bear to put down, I wasn't "instantly engrossed" in Instructions for a Heatwave, although I suspect that it would have grabbed me sooner at just about any other time.  It took a couple days before I managed to shake the characters from Is This Tomorrow out of my head and get involved with the Riordans.  But, I kept reading in the hopes that the characters  in Instructions for a Heatwave would pull me into their world and about 1/3 of the way in I did become thoroughly immersed in the story. Instructions for a Heatwave is a work of skilled, elegant writing with excellent characterization and an extraordinarily satisfying ending, definitely recommended.  This is my first Maggie O'Farrell book and I will seek out more by the author.

Cover thoughts:

You may have noticed this photo in my sidebar:

 

The cover image at the top of this post is the final American cover.  The ARC I received was actually rather plain, just a white cover with a photo of a redhead (the author's photo, near as I can tell).  Occasionally, if I like a different cover better than what I've got, I'll go so far as to print out a copy of the alternate cover and replace the cover I dislike.  That's just one of my little eccentricities; I like a pretty cover.  So, I printed out the British cover, which I think is absolutely gorgeous and a total grabber, re-covered the book and photographed it while reading.  I love bright, colorful covers. The illustration of a key on the American cover is relevant.  When Robert disappears, he has the key to the family's shed in his pocket. But, I found the key image frightfully dull.  I would look right past the American cover and pick up the British version if they were on the same display.  

My thanks to A. A. Knopf for the advance reader copy.

©2013 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.