Review of Evie Wyld's All The Birds, Singing

This review is from an advanced electronic reader copy supplied by the publisher via NetGalley.

Jake Whyte is a good bloke. Problem is, she's a woman. A very damaged woman, physically and emotionally. We don't know why, and are given tiny hints as to why throughout her story. Jake is scared. Scared of something that is killing her sheep, and might be after her.

Jake is living with her sheep on an island off the coast of England. She is from Australia, and they saved her in a way. But they also make her more vulnerable. She is scared of an animal that has large teeth and is bigger than any predator ever seen on the island. But it has also made her more vulnerable, causing her to look outside of herself, both to help others, and to help herself. 

This book is suspensefully crafted, leaving the reader wondering if they will ever understand Jake, or what "animal" seems to be taunting her. Readers should not expect an ending with a neatly tied bow on it, that is clearly not Wyld's style. 

4/5 stars

Review of The Bear by Claire Cameron: Harrowing yet insightful.

(This is from an electronic advanced reader copy from Netgalley, via the publisher.  This book will be on sale February 11, 2014.)

I guess I need to start by addressing my strange and urgent need to to read this novel. I saw a blurb and a link to Ms. Cameron's website for this book somewhere on my daily literary travels on the internet, and just felt a desire to obtain and read a copy of this book immediately.  Something about a wild animal/predatory attack on a human has always fascinated me and catches my ear and my imagination.  I've had an interest in sharks my entire life. Growing up on Long Island, learning to swim in the Sound, and seeing jaws at an early age struck some primal chord within my eight year old self.

A few years back, a very sad documentary came out by a German filmmaker, Werner Herzog,  about the bear enthusiast and nature lover, Timothy Treadwell, who spent thirteen years in Katmai National park in Alaska living among the wildlife and closely interacting with them. Treadwell filmed and focused on the bears in the park. Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending; Treadwell and his girlfriend were eaten by the very bears they loved and wanted to protect. (You can learn more about the film here or read Roger Ebert's excellent review to learn more.). These bears are blameless, as are the sharks. We humans invade their territory and of they're hungry,thus they bite. Seeing the title of this novel and hearing the synopsis of it made me anxious to read it, as it brought to mind the aforementioned case, as well as a few other bear attacks over the last few years, even closer to home.

Another angle of this book that caught my attention was the fact that is told from the point of view of a five year old girl.  Most of my reader friends know about the phenomenal success of the Emma Donoghue novel, Room, in which the narrator is also a five year old, a boy, in terrible circumstances. A five year old narrator is not really looking back that far into their life; they are innocent and honest, unencumbered by too many cynical observations. Donoghue's story teller, Jack was eloquent and heartbreaking, and Ms. Donoghue did an excellent job with that. A five year old narrator can easily sound annoying, or worse, inauthentic.

Claire Cameron takes us on a camping trip the Whyte family: five year old Anna, baby brother Alex (he is three, so toddling and growing up, as she so often observes), and her parents. What happens to them is horrific, and the unfolding of the story is very much based around the actual bear attack in the darkest hours of the night. Anna describes the bear attack, mainly through what she hears and what she already knows in this world. Five year olds are sheltered. They are babies still, but on the cusp of having a different awareness of life. Anna also intuits there is a problem with her parents' marriage.  Her observations are frighteningly immediate, even if they are not anything like the observations of an adult. In fact, based on her previous experiences, she describes a very nuanced scene regarding the bear attack, her brother, their situation and her feelings.

This novel is very much about family, love, and the comfort of familiarity. These two children are so tuned in to themselves and their surrounding with all their senses: taste, smell, and touch,  as well as the obvious sight and sound, which all play a huge part in every thing they do. They survive off their primal child wit. And Anna's mental ability to handle fear and threats to their well being is absolutely believable and amazing at once.  Theirs is the kind of story you read in the paper or hear on the news, and your jaw drops. 

This was a book that evoked many emotions in me. There were tears of both sadness and happiness, and there were times when I just had to put the novel down.  This book reminds you what sponges children are, and how they latch on to every word spoken and every move made.  So teach them well, and they can survive.

5 stars

Taking down the tree

It is now December 9, and I have still not taken down our Christmas tree. Unlike most of our friends and neighbors (who put the tree up on Thanksgiving evening!), we do not put our tree up until it is nearly Christmas.  I like it that way. I have an old fashioned tree: a mishmash of ornaments (no themed trees around here!) and tons of lights. I enjoy its soft light in the evenings, and its fragrance. The tree is a warm reminder of life that goes on throughout the year, even in the darkest winter. I just love our tree.  It must stay up until Epiphany, January 6, and after that, it comes down as the schedule allows. Looks like this one will be around until Saturday!

My Favorite Books of 2013

So, here we are already in 2014, and I posted this list on my Facebook page in December.  I though maybe this would be a great way to start off the New year. I need to pay more attention to this blog, I get so many good ideas, and I'd like to be more active here in 2014. So without further ado...

These are my favorite reads of 2013:
Fiction:
1. Longbourn by Jo Baker
2. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent 
3 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson 
4. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
***These top four are basically interchangeable. They are listed randomly, because I can't pick one. I love them all. Note all four were highly anticipated reads by me for this year, as well as for many other folks.
5. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
6. Arcadia by Lauren Groff
7. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
8. Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
9. Schroder by Amity Gaige
10. Harvest by Jim Crace
11. Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
12. A Tale for the Time Being Ruth Ozeki

Non Fiction
1. The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo
2. How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore
3. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand

Honorable Mentions
1. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
2. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. Familiar by J Robert Lennon
4. The Paris Wife by Paula McClain
5. The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
6. The House Girl by Tara Conkin
7. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
8. The Storied Life of AJ Fikrey by Gabreille Zevin
9. The Impossible Life of Greta Wells by Sean Andrew Greer
1. You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt
11. The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam
12. Instructions for a Heat Wave by Maggie O'Farrell

I may have forgotten a book or two. Heck, I could add a lot more to the HM list.
They aren't in any particular order either.

"You can reinvent yourself with a different alphabet": A review of Elliott Holt's You Are One of Them

This is the story of two little girls, growing up in 1980's Washington DC: Sarah and Jennifer. Sarah's family is dysfunctional. The death of her little sister, Isabel at age 4. Her father, an Englishman leaves his family and returns to the UK, seemingly because of Sarah's mother's inability to cope with Isabel's death, and her obsessive behavior regarding the possibility of nuclear war between the US and the USSR. Sarah is a quiet, loner of a girl, until a new family moves in across the street. The Jones family is all American and seems perfect to Sarah, especially their daughter, Jennifer. Sarah and Jennifer becomes fast friends.

They two school girls share secrets and swimming, and spend lots of times together. For Sarah, the Jones family and their complete normalcy is a respite from her mother's somewhat paranoid antics. When Sarah announces to Jennifer she is writing a letter to Yuri Andropov, the current head of the USSR, and Jennifer also writes a letter. However, the outcome of what happens when one of those letter receives a response from Andropov himself.

Sarah is an unreliable narrator: a smart girl who underestimates her own intelligence and likableness throughout her life and the novel. While Sarah is quiet and studious, Jennifer is popular and confident. But Jennifer isn't as smart as Sarah, and she is capricious and disloyal. Sarah struggles with both her mother's problems and fears, and her own more rational apprehensions. She feels abandoned by both her dead sister and her dad, who has remarried and has another child. She uses Cold War terms to deal with the pain: sister and father are both "defectors." It was easy for me to identify with the reserved, intelligent and thoughtful Sarah.

I loved the way the plot is unfurled like an exotic carpet for the reader to carefully examine, close up for themselves. Sarah grows up, in the shadow of both her parent's failed marriage, with the disappointments of childhood still following and grieving her. I didn't know too much about the plot, except that one of the girls has a response to her letter and life changes dramatically forever for Sarah. Fast forward to her college years, and we learn more about Sarah's parents, as most young people gradually understand their parents as they grow older. Sarah's trip to Russia also reveals so many things the young Sarah might not have understood as unsavvy child.

I have to say, while there were points where I felt the plot was slightly weak, I truly enjoyed both the writing and the elegant way the author allows the story to unhurriedly unfold. Nothing in the story feels forced. No storybook endings here, but that is hardly the point of this book, which is about how well you think you know people: especially family and friends, those you are closest with in this world.

I grew up in the 1980s (I'm a little older than Sarah by 4 years), so this book naturally appealed to me. I remember worrying about the missiles the two greatest powers on the planet had pointed at one another. I was influenced by musicians like Sting and U2, and was watching "The Day After Tomorrow" the night it first aired. If any of these touch points ring a bell with you, this book might be for you.

Joanna Trollope's Sense & Sensibility (The Austen Project)

***SPOILER ALERT***:If you've read Sense and Sensibility before, no need for a spoiler warning here. But if not, you might just want to go into this one cold, and just try it. While I have problems with this kind of book, there are certainly worse books of this type around. Skip my review below though!

I am a big fan of Jane Austen. Generally, I am not a fan of sequels or prequels written by someone other than the original author This yea do I go in for fanfiction. I read Longbourn earlier this year (one of my favorite books of the year), and also one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year as well. I had heard about the Harper Collins Austen Project, and when I saw this on Vine, i decided to take a chance. I have never read anything else by Trollope, so I was taking a chance, since I don't think her fiction is in line with my normal reading habits.

I re-read an Austen every year, and coincidentally, Sense and Sensibility was this year's. So the original was fresh in my mind. The reluctance on Trollope's part to deviate from the original story was disconcerting. I read Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy last year, a riff on Jane Eyre, and while the story was most certainly reflective of Jane Eyre, Livesey manages to make it very much her own story, as well as Gemma's. Trollope sticks very closely to Austen's plot and characters, which for me, with the contemporary setting, was a problem for me.

The plot is identical to Austen's: the Dashwood family (mother and three daughters) are forced out of their comfortable home by Isabel's (te Dashwood girls mother) stepson and his wife. Isabel is not only as sensitive as her daughter Marianne, she is a full fledged, perimenopausal hippie, and she and Mr Dashwood were not actually legally married, making matters more precarious for her children. So we do see some more actual character development in her than we do in the original novel. Same situation with Margaret, she is a tad more developed than in the original novel. Marianne and Elinor are practically the same as in the original, which results in Elinor's martyrdom, and Marianne's ninnydom. Because the innocence and sweetness of the Austen characters doesn't carry over, and instead, Elinor seems long suffering and Marianne, with her romantic ideals and artistic sensibilities just translates as annoying and narcissistic, unfortunately.

Trollope uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, cell phones, computers and cars liberally to bring her characters into the 21st century. Even Mr. Middleton's business is high tech and world wide. Yet that just seems heavy handed. I would have preferred Trollope had let the girls be old fashioned letter writers: keeping their same personalities and using these devices to "update" them seems forced and dull. This is where the story needs to deviate from the original, especially along the lines of the family's money problems, and the highly important talk of marrying for money. There's a name for people who marry for money, and I believe it translates on both sides of the pond: gold digger. And while these girls are not necessarily gold diggers, all the talk of money and marriage makes me cringe. It is just completely anachronistic. And while it is a major theme in Austen's books, that is because it is a fact of life of her time. Women had to worry about who they'd marry and how much cash they'd have, because women couldn't work. Yet here in the year 2013, women CAN work and do. Two able bodied women cannot work in this story. Granted, Marianne's constitution is delicate, but even that illness (asthma, which also killed their father?) seems anachronistic and bizarre in this day and age, with so many medicines to control these kind of conditions. It just didn't work for me.

This was not the worst thing I've read this year. I think anticipating what was going to happen next (and knowing exactly what that would be), made this book a bit of a slog for me, especially after reading it this summer and enjoying very much: I have two daughters who are close in age, and while they are both serious musicians, I think of them as very much an Elinor and a Marianne (although the older one is our Marianne!). I might be convinced to try another of these rewrites of Austen, but if I was making a suggestion for a friend who loves Austen, I'd tell them to read Longbourn by Jo Baker: the writing is far superior with original characters and plot blending in seamlessly with that of the Bennett family, as well as some re-imaginings of what really goes on behind closed doors there. It was brilliant while this book is just so-so.

For more info on this series of books, all rewrites of Austen books by contemporary writers, click here: The Austen Project

3.5 stars

Little Review time: 4 quickie reviews!

There are a few books I read this year recently that have yet to be reviewed, so I'm going to do a quick little review of those books now!

The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindall:  Gone Girl meets Gatsby? Not quite sure how to describe this little "thriller" set in Roaring 20s New York City.  Rose, plain, hard working orphan girl meets glamour girl, Odalie at the police department, where Rose works as a typist.  Odalie has a mysterious past, as well as an unusual present. Rose is intrigued, obsessed even, with the seductive woman.  Crazy ending...fun read.  (I read this one because one of my bookish friends called me and asked me to, so we could discuss the crazy ending!)  4stars

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri:  I'm giving this one 4 stars because it IS Jhumpa Lahiri, and her writing is amazing. However, this one came up a bit short compared to The Namesake, or even Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds, which I adored.  Subhash and Udayan are two brothers, close in age, who grew up in Calcutta. But their paths diverge as the grow into young adults: Udayan becomes a radical and Subhash goes to Rhode Island, to go to college.  Tragedy strikes, changing the lives of the Mitra family in ways they could hardly imagine on both sides of the oceans that separate the brothers.

I just adore Lahiri's writing, and she does have a way with a story.  I just had a funny feeling that something was missing here. And my book group friends pretty much felt the same way. Definitely worth reading if you are a Lahiri fan.   4 stars

The Headmaster's Wager by Vincent Lam:
This was a book I selected to read and be the moderator for on an online (Facebook) book group. Initially, I was hesitant and a bit worried, since I was not sure if I would like this book, the premise sounded weird.  Do not fear, I was immediately sucked into this story.  It reads like an Amy Tan story (the close family ties, hopes and dreams of a Chinese family for their future and children), but is set in Vietnam during that terrible conflict.

Percival is a person with many faults, but his worse fault may also be most beneficial to his survival: he is in constant denial of the actual situations in front if him. Whether it is about his son, his father, his ex-wife, his new girlfriend, or the person he entrusts his family business to, he really never seems to be able to acknowledge what the truth is.  Percival's story is both painful and illuminating, and his experience as a Chinese national in Vietnam in the 1970's will have the reader nervous. Tons of symbolism and interesting statements for discussion here, this would truly be a great read for any book group. Historical fiction at its best!  5stars

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand:   Incredible story of a determined and strong American soldier, Louis Zamperini, during WW2 who overcomes the most insurmountable and horrific treatment as, first, he survives a plane crash on the open water for over a month, and then, spends 2 years as a Japanese prisoner of war, under a brutal and sadistic camp leader.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you know about this incredibly popular book, and the man it is about. This kind of story should be required reading for all American high school students: not just because it about the Greatest generation and one of its biggest heroes, but because Zamperini is NOT perfect. He is a flawed human being, with many emotions and hopes and dreams like any other person on this planet, and even after his odyssey in the Pacific, he still struggles. Very human. I had to stop reading this several times, due to the highly charged subject matter!

My only criticism of this book is that often, Hillenbrand's technique for trying to end chapters on a cliff hanger where there is none can be a little trying at times. No need to manufacture suspense here, truly. The story is so amazing, there is no way anyone can be bored by it.  4 stars

Next up: my top reads for 2013 coming in a few days.