The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker

As often happens, I was intrigued by the title and the book cover for this novel. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of my favorite reads this year, with a really good story, a variety of characters, some mysteries, betrayals, and of course, it held my interest all the way through. I read the book through the Bay County Library.

Here's the book jacket description:

When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how record-breakingly huge the baby boy would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth, and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated--Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future May Queen and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sadsack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers.

Serena Jane's beauty proves to be her greatest blessing and her biggest curse, for it makes her the obsession of classmate Bob Bob Morgan, the youngest in a line of Robert Morgans who have been doctors in Aberdeen for generations. Though they have long been the pillars of the community, the earliest Robert Morgan married the town witch, Tabitha Dyerson, and the location of her fabled shadow book--containing mysterious secrets for healing and darker powers--has been the subject of town gossip ever since. Bob Bob Morgan, one of Truly's biggest tormentors, does the unthinkable to claim the prize of Serena Jane, and changes the destiny of all Aberdeen from there on.

When Serena Jane flees town and a loveless marriage to Bob Bob, it is Truly who must become the woman of a house that she did not choose and mother to her eight-year-old nephew Bobbie. Truly's brother-in-law is relentless and brutal; he criticizes her physique and the limitations of her health as a result, and degrades her more than any one human could bear. It is only when Truly finds her calling--the ability to heal illness with herbs and naturopathic techniques--hidden within the folds of Robert Morgan's family quilt, that she begins to regain control over her life and herself. Unearthed family secrets, however, will lead to the kind of betrayal that eventually break the Morgan family apart forever, but Truly's reckoning with her own demons allows for both an uprooting of Aberdeen County, and the possibility of love in unexpected places.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimimanda Adiche

This is one of our Book Club selections for this year. I started reading it en route to Florida, but just now, at 167 pages, I gave up on it, because I'm bored with it. I've met the three main characters: the twin sisters, and the houseboy, who is probably the most interesting character, but nothing has really happened yet, and I find I'm just not interested in what happens to them. There are just too many good books waiting to be read!

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

This is a lovely story, set in a small town in Wales. Gwenni, 12 years old, is the narrator, her sister Bethan is a shrew, and her mother Magdalen, appears to have some secrets that have caused her to take some powerful tranquillizers, especially after Gwenni's friend, Elin Evans, and her two children, leave town after Elin's husband is found murdered. Gwenni is very close to her father, known as Tada. The Welsh nomenclature was a bit puzzling at first, but this was a lovely story, charmingly told,and the author is obviously well-versed in the way young people can sometimes misinterpret things, or indeed, clarify things that otherwise might not be discussed at all.

Gwenni has a wonderful imagination: I especially enjoyed Mrs. LLewellyn Pugh's fox stole, which Gwenni swears blinked at her in church! And, let Gwenni herself explain the title:

When I sang the note to Mr. Hughes he said it was B flat but he laughed when I said it was the note the Earth hummed. He doesn’t know how the Earth’s deep, never-ending note clothes me in rainbow colors and fills my head with all the books ever written. I could stay up here forever without the need for anything else in the whole world.

SOUTH OF BROAD by Pat Conroy

Twelve years ago, I read Beach Music by Conroy while we were in St. Martin, and enjoyed it immensely, so I put this title on my list of "Must Reads" when it was published. Sandra loaned it to me to take with me to Florida, but I got it read in a matter of days- even had to put the oven timer on to limit my reading time so I could get packing and preparations for Florida done!

Once again, Charleston is the setting, with 10 young people the cast of characters, from their meeting as teenagers at the high school where the main character's mother, Dr. King, is the principal. Leo, her son, has just returned from time in a mental institution after Leo's older brother committed suicide. His friends include Sheba and Trevor Poe, twins from across the street whose mother is an alcoholic and the father is a prison-escapee; Starla and Niles, runaways from the mountains of Appalachia, socialite Molly, her boyfriend Chad. and his sister, star basketball player Fraser.

The story takes place across two decades, from the beginnings of racial integration in the south, through the AIDS crisis of the 80s to a horrific hurricane in Charleston in 1990. It was a really good story, interesting characters, some heart-stopping tragedies, and a travel postcard of Charleston to boot.

One of my favorites for 2009, for sure.

Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker

I loved the cover, and the reviews on Book Browse, for the most part,talked about the charm of this mystery novel, which is set in a small town in France where Bruno is called the Chief because he's the only policeman, his best friend is the Mayor, he's a gourmet cook, etc, etc, so when I found the book n Chapters in Waterloo, I bought it. It's some 262 pages, and it took me a while to figure out why it was taking me so long to get through it, when I realized my attention was drifting away from it quite easily, and I'd have to force myself back. Then I decided to think about why this was happening, and I realized the author was trying to not only set the stage for this mystery, but was giving us a history lesson too, as well as a taste of life in rural France, and a romance with a karate king police investigator. Too much, way too much, and I ended up being interested in no aspect of this book, except of course for the cover which really is charming and sweet. Was the author trying to educate us, or cash in on the charms of Alexander McCall Smith? No contest- Smith accomplishes far more, and I'm sorry I bought this book. I'll donate it to the library, so someone else can hopefully enjoy it more than I did.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

Wow! I love a page-turner, and this was a great one. I read the first in this trilogy last year ( see 2008 entries), enjoyed it okay, but this one was REALLY good, so much better than the first one, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. My only criticism is that the author assumed you had read the first book; I did, but I had forgotten a lot of the details of Lisbeth's earlier experiences. She's a wonderful heroine, completely mystifying to those around her, and she goes through a lot in this book for sure. I enjoy thrillers when they're well-written, which means you just can't surmise what happened and you have to keep reading- you want to- to find out. Great stuff!!

Leaving Earth by Helen Humphreys

This past Saturday, we discussed the novels of Helen Humphreys, and this particular novel sounded intriguing to me, so I borrowed it from Ann. It is based on true events in Toronto in the 30s, more specifically, two women aviators circling the City of Toronto non-stop for 19 days, trying to break an endurance record. On the ground, a 12-year-old girl named Maddy is fascinated with Grace, one of the two women fliers, and even believes that Grace is her mother, not too hard a stretch because her actual mother doesn't appear to care for her. Maddy's family is Jewish, and are persecuted by Nazi sympathizers in the city- I remember reading about this in another novel based in Toronto entitled The Stubborn Season by Laurie Davis. Grace is married to Jack, another aviator who has set a record for endurance flying, and Grace has set off to break this record. Jack, who flies up every eight hours to refuel the two-seater Moth and to bring food, is quite jealous of his wife's attempt, and does everything he can to sabotage the women's efforts.

Humphreys' novels are easy to read, but have a lot of food for thought. This one was my second favorite of them, the first favorite of course being The Lost Garden.

Girl In A Blue Dress by Gaynor Arnold

This is a novel based on the life of Charles Dickens, told from his wife's point of view. It begins with Dickens'/Alfred Gibson's funeral, to which his wife Dorothea ( all the names were changed by the author) has not been invited; she and Alfred have been estranged for over10 years. The novel is a really good picture of the Victorian era: how people lived, their relationships, their family life, their loving and living extravagantly and passionately. But I wasn't all that taken with it, first because I didn't like the fact that the names were changed- and even the titles of Dickens' books, which were referred to many times, were changed as well.

I checked Wikipedia for the bio of Dickens, and certainly many of the facts presented in this story were accurate- Dickens' obsession with his wife's sister, his affair with a young actress, his over-the-top way of living, etc.

I think I'll try to read Peter Ackroyd's bio, entitled "Dickens". Girl In a Blue Dress was long-listed for the Booker in 2008: I don't see that it had enough depth to make it to the short list.

Smash Cut by Sandra Brown

A friend from the gym loaned me this, and it was a good story. I was able to read it very quickly. Brown's characters are all over-the-top: the villain is really bad, knows it, and everyone else knows it too. The lawyer with the dog is the hero, and the gorgeous red-head he meets on the plane is the suspected culprit in her lover's death. Everyone is rich and well-dressed or absolutely helpless and a social misfit. Anyway, it's the only one of her novels I've read - skimmed is more like it. It'd be a good one to read on a long, boring flight.

The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

This was a re-read for Book Club. Our theme this Saturday is Helen Humphreys, a Canadian author who writes beautiful prose and tells a wonderful story in less than 200 pages. I call her a "miniaturist". I read all three of the chosen books - Coventry, The Frozen Thames and Lost Garden - but this one, The Lost Garden is my favorite, so much so that when I found the novel in the BMV near Karen's apartment, I purchased it. It only took one day to re-read it, but it was a pleasure, and I found even more in it the second time. I'm looking forward to Book Club's discussion this Saturday!

February by Lisa Moore

February tells the story of Cal and Helen, from their wedding in the early 70s, through Cal's death by drowning in the Ocean Ranger tragedy in 1982, to 2008, when Helen's son, John, calls to tell her he is about to become a father. This event prompts all sorts of memories in Helen, and it is these memories which shape the book. It is a short book, very easy to read, and it's interesting how Moore frames the story around the Ocean Ranger, describing it as it actually occurred, and also how it constantly weaves its way through Helen's memories. Lisa Moore lives in Newfoundland, and this is the first of her novels that I've read.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

This is how the book jacket for this book reads:

"We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it...

This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again..."

This novel is about politics, ethics, refugees, friendship, moral responsibility, plus how terrible human beings can be to each other. It is truly shocking, and certainly raises questions in your mind which linger after the book is read. I didn't really like Sarah, one of the two female narrators, but that statement alone is worth exploring further to find out why I reacted that way.

I'm not entirely sure what happened at the end, either. I just know Sarah made another bad decision.

Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie

This is the fifth of a series of mystery novels involving two Scotland Yard investigators: Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. The series takes place in England, this one in a small university town where a poet, Lydia Brooke, is found dead, probably from suicide, but five years after her death, a professor named Victoria McLelland, who is writing a biography of Lydia, suspects from her research that Lydia may have been murdered. Victoria is Duncan's ex-wife, and she calls him in to help her investigate. Then Victoria herself is found dead. This is a well-written literary mystery, and I'll look for subsequent books in the series. A light read, but it certainly held my interest.

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant writes historical fiction based in 16th century Italy. Her first two books, The Birth of Venus, set in Florence, and In The Company of the Courtesan, set in Venice,were rich in detail, written with sensuality and color, evoking Italy at that time. So, I had no hesitation in purchasing Sacred Hearts, especially as it concerned a young nun in a convent in the city of Ferrara in 1570.

I think it must have been my exposure to nuns and convents in Chauvin, Alberta, which gave rise to my endless fascination with the topic. Every Wednesday morning at 8:00 am, I took piano lessons in the front room of the convent from the Mother Superior, who was probably the best piano teacher I ever had, and I recall vividly how , at a couple of minutes to eight, my footstep on the front porch of the convent would announce the sweeping, black-vested exit of some four or more nuns from the small chapel, which was just off the room where I had my lessons. I was 10 years old when I began working with her- I don't even remember her name!- but I loved that swishing by me to the kitchen, from whence the most wonderful aromas of toast would come while I had my lessons, accompanied by their low, happy chatter: they certainly were not silent nuns, as these were in Dunant's book.

Three nuns are foremost in this wonderful story: Suora Zuana, the dispensary mistress, Madonna Chiara, the abbess, and Serafina, the young novice, sent to the nunnery by her family after she falls in love with her singing teacher. Zuana is gifted in working with herbs and remedies for various ailments, Chiara is elegant, informed, and probably my favorite character: I loved how she would smooth an already perfect fold in her habit, move silently to the altar rail for communion, or sweetly but accurately skewer her enemy - Suora Umiliana- with well-chosen words with not a hint of anger in her voice. Serafina is gifted with a high, soaring voice which entrances everyone after she finally adapts - in a way- to the life that she herself did not choose. These three nuns finally collaborate in an extravagant but intelligent scheme to save their convent, plus Serafina's life.

So, what did I learn from this book? Well, there is a wonderful paragraph in which Zuana describes the freedom she has within the cloister - freedom to have the authority she has in her dispensary, which she certainly would not have had in the outside world - freedom from:

"fathers to rage at the expensive uselessness of daughters, no brothers or sisters to tease and torment younger sisters, no drunken husbands poking constantly at tired or pious wives.....here no one's womb drops out of her body from an excess of pregnancies, no one dies in the sweated agonies of childbirth, nor has to suffer the pain of burying half a dozen of her own children"

I also learned that dowries were given to convents when a novice entered the nunnery, and this helped to finance them, as well as ensure the novice would remain in there. The more powerful politically the family, the more power the nun had behind the walls: Madonna Chiara's family was wealthy enough that she would easily rise to the position of abbess.

All in all, a great read, and highly recommended.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Well, I fell for it- the book was offered at 40% off, and I liked Da Vinci Code, so I got easily suckered in. And I did enjoy the first 350 pages, but it grew to be boring, so I skimmed through to the end. While I accept the author's premise- the lost symbol of the title ends up being "our limitless human potential" - the villain's main reason for cutting off one man's hand, among other gruesome things, was that the head of the Masons in Washington had turned his back on his own son! Seems a weak excuse for a lot of blood, tattoos, blood sacrifice,being buried alive, and so on. As an expose of the Masons, it was enjoyable, and I did learn a few things - for instance, the fact that a physical body weighs less after death than before, proving I suppose that one can actually weigh the human soul - but I decided that Dan Brown is an adult's J.K. Rowling, and I only read the first two of her Harry Potter books. Brown writes well- his characters are introduced gradually, as well as important plot details- and I liked the fact that the object of everyone's search- Peter Solomon- is not found until near the end, so Brown obviously planned things out well, and probably stepped back many times to judge the effect of certain things on his reader. I expect there'll be a movie- I won't bother going to see it. Anyway, I was disappointed in the movie of Da Vinci Code, too. When am I going to read a" sit down and get totally immersed" book??? It's been a while!

The Lost Symbol was a good book to take along on our trip to Ottawa, however, because I was still reading the most interesting parts at that point. And Katherine's monologue at the end is good, too: I agree that what we call God is within us, not above us; that we do have limitless abilities, we just have to harness them and cultivate them: become Creators ourselves.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Winner of the 2009 Booker, I bought this to read because it's from the Tudor period, and tells the story of Cromwell, whereas so many novels from this time focus on Anne Boleyn or Elizabeth. I enjoyed the first 350 pages, but it was hard slogging after that. The reasons are explained much better by these reviews:

In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's arch, elegant, richly detailed biographical novel centered on Cromwell…characters are scorchingly well rendered. And their sharp-clawed machinations are presented with nonstop verve in a book that can compress a wealth of incisiveness into a very few well-chosen words." - The New York Times - Janet Maslin.

"Unfortunately, Mantel also includes a distracting abundance of dizzying detail and Henry's all too voluminous political defeats and triumphs, which overshadows the more winning story of Cromwell" - Publishers Weekly (YES!!)

"It should appeal to many readers, not just history buffs. And Mantel achieves this feat without violating the historical record! There will be few novels this year as good as this one." - Library Journal ( NOT SO SURE ABOUT THAT)

"The characters, including Cromwell, remain unknowable, their emotions closely guarded; this works well for court intrigues, less so for fiction. Masterfully written and researched but likely to appeal mainly to devotees of all things Tudor." - Kirkus Reviews ( RIGHT ON)

"This is a burstingly large book, so densely peopled that the cast-list alone takes up five pages.( GOOD THING IT WAS THERE) It rattles back and forth across the Channel and reaches, sometimes confusingly, back through time. Much of Cromwell's past is told in flashbacks - somnolent, slippery sequences that add to the novel's dreamlike sense. For all her meticulous historical reconstruction, Mantel's world remains a strange place, permeated by the many dead. None the less, it is both linguistically and sensually vital, stacked with images and phrases that linger in the mind." - The Guardian (UK), Olivia Laing

"Enfolding cogent insights into the human soul within a lucid analysis of the social, economic and personal interactions that drive political developments, Mantel has built on her previous impressive achievements to write her best novel yet." - The Washington Post, Wendy Smith.

More confusing to me was having to follow carefully her use of the pronoun "he". I found I had to backtrack a lot to make certain I knew who was being referred to: too much energy required from the reader. I did like Cromwell: he was a clever man and she portrays him vividly, as she does just about every detail in the book. It was obviously well-researched. But I can only give it two stars, and admit that, as a reader, as much as I like to be informed, I have to be entertained,too.

The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

Mary Gooch is morbidly obese, and on the eve of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, her husband, Jack, disappears, leaving $25,000 for her in their joint bank account. She sets off on a journey to find him, and ends up finding herself as she escapes a weary, confining life in Leaford, Ontario. Lansens also wrote The Girls, which is another of my all-time favorites, and this one is unforgettable,too. Some of Mary's adventures belie reality, but the search she goes on is far more important, what she learns about herself, and how the people she meets shape her new future.

THE BINDING CHAIR by Kathryn Harrison

This book has been on my list for some time, so when I found it in a used bookstore, I picked it up right away. The setting is Shanghai in the early 1900s where May-Li, a young Chinese woman, fights to save her life by running away from an abusive marriage, becomes a courtesan, then marries an Australian. As the title implies, she had her feet bound as a young girl- this story goes more deeply into the reasons for the binding than Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and it also explores the sexual fetishes around the custom. Then there is Alice, May's Caucasian niece, who also seeks freedom from a rigidly British upbringing, and who has more in common with her Chinese aunt than her English mother. I did get lost in there for a bit, while May is recovering from an addiction to opium, but the story is engrossing, and well-written. Some interesting characters suddenly appear, but their place in the story is well -laid out, and they give direction to the plot. This could have been what I call a "commuter read", but when a book is well-written and it informs me, I'm a happy reader!

Peony In Love by Lisa See

Set in seventeenth century China, this historical novel is based on a famous opera, The Peony Pavilion, written in 1598 by the poet Tang Xianzu, as well as The Three Wives' Commentary, published in 1694, and written by the three wives of Wu Ren, the husband in this novel and a collaborator of the commentary on The Peony Pavilion. This commentary was the first book of its kind to be written and published by women anywhere in the world.

Peony is the first wife, who sees and meets her husband-to-be when she is fifteen, and attending a performance of The Peony Pavilion in her home. Like the main character, Liniang, Peony starves herself to death, thinking that the young man she met could never be her husband, only finding out the day she dies that she was betrothed to him by her father. Chinese customs of the afterlife come into prominence here, and Peony watches over her family and her lover, from the Viewing Platform. She becomes very involved with the second wife, and much later, the third, directing both of them from her ghostly position to write this commentary.

The novel is rich in detail and custom, but I must admit I enjoyed the author's note more at the conclusion of the novel, where she explains things more historically. It was fascinating to learn that women, who for the most part led sheltered lives in their homes, reached out through writing to find the freedom - and romance- they lacked in their lives, and according to See, there were thousands and thousands of women whose works were published during this dynasty, the Manchu. The opera itself was based on a much earlier time, but the poet was actually writing about life in the Ming dynasty, which preceded the Manchus.

The Peony Pavilion has been banned, suppressed, and even a performance at Lincoln Centre in 2000 was delayed by the Chinese government by barring the actors, costumes, and sets from leaving the country.

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

When I read Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys earlier this summer, there were several references to Virginia Woolf, and so I decided to read one of her books. I read the first 35 pages of To The Lighthouse in total confusion - I didn't want to read about the author or her writing ahead of time- then turned back to the beginning, read the Foreward VERY carefully, then began again, reading more intently. It soon became clear that Woolf wrote in "stream of consciousness": her books are a window into the mind, the sub-conscious. Those millions of thoughts that we have at any given moment are put into words by Woolf, so even as Lily Briscoe is painting the cottage, we read all those thoughts, without any connection between them. Difficult, or what? I finally realized that I'd never totally digest all this, just as all those random thoughts we have can never be completely retrieved, and then my reading began to flow a little bit better, but it still wasn't easy! I also cheated a little and read up on Woolf in Wikipedia. She must have done a lot of self-examination to be able to write like this, and she also must have been absolutely brilliant. The novel divides itself into three parts, and I have read the first, longest part. I had to leave it- just too much concentration was required- but I'll come back to it. At least I don't have to worry about remembering what happened!

I tackled this book in between the two Dervla Murphy books.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

I first read this book in 2007, and since it was chosen for our October 2009 Book Club selection, I re-read it in just over 24 hours, and enjoyed it no less the second time. The first time I read it, I was most intrigued by the description of footbinding, but this time it was the "nu shu" writing, a secret script invented by women and used by mothers and "sworn sisters" as a secret messaging system in Hunan province in Southern China. The novel is set in the 19th century.

Snow Flower and Lilly, the narrator, are "sames": chosen by a matchmaker because they share certain attributes that ensure a lifelong friendship. Secret Flower and Lilly, when they are not together, communicate by the means of a secret fan, on which they send messages written in "nu shu". Their friendship spans most of their lives, even though they marry and raise children, and endures through beatings, loss of children, war, and betrayal.

This is a richly detailed book, with vivid descriptions of Chinese life, traditions, and rituals. The foot-binding description made me wince often, and it was surprising to learn that the shape of the bound foot, with the toes turned in to the heel, is considered erotic by men because the deformed foot is basically the same shape as the penis ! Girl children, as we know and as they learn right from birth, are considered worthless, but there are definite patterns which they must follow, and their lives, which are often filled with grief, neglect, physical and emotional abuse, and often starvation, are dignified by the value they place on these friendships with other women.

The author is part-Chinese, and has spent many years researching for this book. It was extremely easy to read, but was also very informative, and nowhere did I sense the author was manipulating her readers, or her characters. I also have the next book by See, entitled "Peony In Love" and she released a third one this year, entitled "Shanghai Girls", which I will also read.

Full Tilt: From Dunkirk to Delhi by Bicycle

This was a fascinating read about Murphy's first travelling adventure, back in 1963, fulfilling a dream she'd had since the age of 10, to travel to India by bicycle. She has many adventures and misadventures: being attacked by wild dogs ( she had learned to use a shotgun), being horribly sunburned on one arm from travelling east, incurring a cracked rib from a nasty altercation between two Afghanis on a bus, by being accidentally hit with the butt of a rifle, being threatened physically by a young officer in Azerbaijan who although he had a gun, became the victim himself when Murphy used " unprintable tactics to reduce him to a state of temporary agony"...

It's impossible to note all the adventures she had, all her observations, the many, many people she met, so I decided to concentrate for my notes here on her accomodations throughout the journey- and these are just examples!

In Slovenia, she asks a girl on a street about lodgings, and the young woman takes her home. This happens time and agin in her travels: people would drive by, stop and give her the names of friends and relatives along the way and urge her to stay with them.

In Persia, she learns to deal with hotel bedrooms without locks- you balance empty bottles on top of the door. " As creating empty bottles is one of the few things I'm good at, this is an appropriate suggestion". (I think Dervla likes the odd drink now and then!)

She often stayed in police stations: in Persia, where the gendarmeries is known as a force existing primarily to protect tourists. She awoke once to find a bunch of men all watching her sleep!

People wanted to speak English, so this was another way she was invited into homes. Her travelling by bicycle also established an instant rapport, although people would often stop to tell her she was nuts, or to offer advice about drinking enough water and using sunscreen. She encountered problems getting a visa to travel through Afghanistan because she was a woman travelling alone on a bicycle, but with a little subterfuge, she managed to get one.

In one town in Afghanistan, she was directed to what was termed a Class A hotel, which was so named because it had an eastern-style lavatory ( i.e. a hole in the floor) with a flush overhead, and an empty toilet-paper holder. When she flushed, she received a shower of rusty water.

She describes " a good sleep on carpets in a corner of a tea-house". Also, a visit to a chief's house in Afghanistan, who lived in " a mud compound, where the chief, his five wives, fourteen sons and uncounted daughters, 38 grandchildren and sundry cousins all lived in a various apartments around a courtyard through which flows a swift stream with weeping willows and birches lining its banks."

A Tourist's Hotel in Bamian where there was "(a) no food or drink of any description, (b) no light, (c) nowater, (d) no heating and (e) only one thin blanket on each bed. As we were now 8550 feet above sea level, (e) was not funny." She and two young Indian men scrape together a meal from their provisions and raid empty rooms for more blankets.

She describes a midday nap on a mountainside in Pakistan only to wake and find that nomads had erected a tent over her to shield her from the sun.

In a tiny Himalayan village, she shares "six stinking blankets with six stinking children", although she adds that she prefers their company and their situation to their wealthier neighbours down in the valleys. Later, she has to purge herself of fleas!

High up in the North-West province of Pakistan, she meets some travelling Afghanis, and sleeps " snugly in sheepskins in a circle of Afghans around a fire which we kept up all night".

Her accounts of travelling in the high Himalayas were the most interesting- intense, debilitating heat, extreme cold, glaciers, lack of food- and of all the countries she travelled through, her favorites were Afghanistan and Pakistan, least favorites were India and Azerbaijan. Time and time again I was placed in awe by her thirst for adventure, her comfort level with travelling alone in totally deserted country, and her detailed descriptions she wrote in her diary, which later became this book.( How could she write so extensively in a diary after a day of cycling from 5:30 a.m. to 4:30 pm?)

Now that I've read this book- the Dervla Murphy book I wanted to read right from the beginning, the one I purachsed- her most recent- probably deserves another look, to see the journey by train through Siberia which she took at the age of 75, and also alone.

Silverland by Dervla Murphy

Oh dear, I didn't finish this one, not because it was not well-written, but because the locale was so boring! I first heard about Dervla Murphy when she was interviewed on CBC Radio. She's an Irish woman who has travelled all around the world in mostly exotic or barren locales either on bicycle, pony or on foot, and some of her adventures were amazing. The travel theme was chosen for our first Book Club meeting this fall, so I tried to get her first book which relates her solo trip by bicycle from Ireland to India; however, I mistakenly gave the library the sub-title rather than the title of the book, so weeks went by and in desperation, I ordered her most recent book from Chapters. This is the book I've just set aside. Murphy is travelling through Siberia by train- she began the trip a year previous, but broke her knee and couldn't continue, so this book relates the continuation of her journey. But such a barren landscape- snow and ice everywhere, boring industrial cities, pompous bureaucrats at every turn, surly hotel-keepers, terrible food in many cases- I'd consider this the trip from hell! However, she did meet many interesting people, and I did learn about the various peoples who make up Siberia- they're not all Russian, but there are native-type people called Ewenk and another one I forget just now. So I read some 150 pages, but the history is boring, there are few sights, and I just didn't relate to it at all. One city she says she fell in love with because no cars were allowed! Anyway, I'm not completely giving up because, having discovered my mistake with the title of the book I originally wanted, I've ordered it from Inter-Library loan. We'll see!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The nameless narrator of this book, a very contemporary young man, is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what appears to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns all over his body. As he slowly in recovers in hospital, and facing the thought of living what remains of his life as a monster in appearance as well as in soul, a beautiful sculptress of gargoyles named Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists they were once lovers- in medieval Germany. Over the course of his stay in hospital, she tells him stories of their past life, as well as stories of deathless love in four other countries. The narrator becomes addicted to morphine, which is depicted in the story as a snake which has coiled itself around the base of his neck.

This was an excellent read - one that's been on my list for a while. There are some very explicit scenes as the narrator describes his career as an actor in pornographic movies, and I sometimes wondered where all this was going, but it ended up being a voyage into his soul. The stories of their past, and the four related narrations were very well told, and my interest only waned a little when Marianne is creating gargoyles at a frenetic pace, because she knows when she completes the last one, her life will be over. During this time, he is rehabilitating himself from the morphine, so many of the characters in those four related stories show up in his drug dreams.

Davidson is Canadian, this is his first novel, and it took him seven years to write it!

Too Close To Home- Linwood Barclay

A thriller which I read in one day- couldn't put it down!  A family of three is murdered while a neighbour friend is hiding in the house, but is it the neighbour's family who were the true targets?  Easy to read, yet not juvenile in the writing, this was a good way to spend a quiet Friday.  I even read it during commercials while watching Tiger at the PGA!

The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Zafon is an excellent story-teller whose first novel, The Shadow of the Wind, I thoroughly enjoyed, so when I heard about his second novel, I wasted no time in purchasing it for my birthday.  I found time throughout the rainy days we had to read it, and I found it thoroughly engrossing. He is a wonderful story-teller with a great sense of colour and mood: the novel is set in 1930s Barcelona - the predominant colours here are black, grey and white- there's lots of rain, mist, shadowy homes, eerie public buildings, scenes  in which there is lots of rich detail, only to be re-visited and find them abandoned for years.  The narrator is David Martin ( with a Spanish accent on the "i") , a writer who finds himself contracted to one Andreas Corelli to write a new religion, even as he is ghost-writing a novel for a rich friend, and trying to finish one of his own for some shady lawyers who have him also under contract.  David lives in a huge mansion which has always fascinated him, a place full of old smells and hidden rooms, mysterious visitors, and one which is visited frequently by three police officers, who think David is responsible for some murders they're investigating. The highlight of the book for me is his visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, which also appeared in Zafon's first novel, and it is here he finds a book which leads him to discover the truth about the former inhabitants of his home. I can't say whether I completely understood what was happening- there were lots of odd twists and turns, and I ended up wondering how many of these characters, including David, were actually alive, but it didn't matter: I enjoyed the ride!

The Third Man Factor by John Geiger

"The Third Man Factor is an extraordinary account of how people at the very edge of death experience a sense of an incorporeal being beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive" (book jacket)

The book relates the experiences of 9/11 survivors, mountaineers, divers, prisoners of war, sailors, aviators, and astronauts, all of whom have escaped traumatic events to tell similar stories of having sensed the close presence of a helper or guardian. 

The incidents themselves are fascinating, and, if nothing else, reveal the strength of human beings to survive, and their resilience. The most famous, of course, is the Shackleton Experience of hiking across the Antarctic under harrowing circumstances but with the unwavering conviction that there were not two men travelling, but three, one of whom was always at Shackleton's right, not always visible, but an unseen presence.

Geiger discusses how in the early years of Christianity, monks and hermits retreated to the desert to seek spiritual renewal and communion with God through fasting, self-inflicted pain, meditation and prolonged prayer.  He also cites the vision quest of the tribal peoples of Africa, Asia and North America. the phenomenon of angels ("humans can indeed perceive disembodied entities") He also explains how humans seek out company: we are social beings and we need one another.  Monotony and extreme physical exertion are the enemies, and the knowledge of a presence nearby can be a tremendous motivator to survive. It can also be a ghostly apparition, a manifestation of a guardian angel, or hallucinations brought on by medical conditions like low blood glucose, high-altitude cerebral edema, or cold stress.

Geiger sets out to explain what neurological research has found. A scientist named Critchley was the first to seriously study accounts of the Third Man among the normal population and he was certain that its origins lay not outside the body, but within.

In 1976, Julian Jaynes, an American psychologist provided a context in which the Third Man could be viewed as the product of brain processes.  Until 3000 years ago, the human brain was divided into a right-brain "god-side" which appeared like an omnipotent being who dispensed advice and commands, while a left-brain "man-side" listened and obeyed.. "These voices are always and immediately obeyed.  These voices are called gods.  To me this is the origin of gods.  I regard them as auditory hallucinations."

External triggers such as extreme stress, cold, hunger, thirst are factors involved in appearances by the Third Man, but there is also an internal variable: an openness to experience, which Geiger calls the "muse factor": a person's willingness to explore, consider, and tolerate new and unfamiliar experiences, ideas and feelings."

The Third Man could also be a doppelganger: "an extension of one's own corporal awareness into extracorpoeal space". This is probably closest to my own interpretation of the Third Man: a presence that comes when the traveller most desperately needs it.  The mind creates another persona which aids and supports, not necessarily delivers, but reaches those areas of the psyche which facilitate survival and endurance. "The explorers and survivors in this book had pushed them to the bare limits and they reached the point of sufficient extremity to have experienced an additional unaccountable companion on their journeys."

Time and again, these people who experienced the presence of the Third Man, are convinced that the experience was produced by the brain as a coping mechanism.  Its origins were within, not without. "This benevolent being exists not outside of us, but within.  It is a real power for survival, a secret and astonishing capacity of mind, part of our social hardware. I call it the angel switch...It's the ultimate and quite beautiful example of how we are social animals- that in our time of deepest solitude and needs, our brain or mind finds a way to reassure us that we are not alone, and that fellow-humanity feeling is what ultimately makes the difference between life and death"

Stanley Park by Timothy Taylor

I browsed my own shelves for something to read over the days leading up to and after David's wedding: an unusual exercise, because supposedly every book is on my shelf because I want to read it- the only question is "What do I want to read NOW?"  So I decided on Stanley Park.  Caryn, at Smoothwater, was reading this when we first visited there, and I could see as I was reading it, why she enjoyed it- I do recall her telling us that only that morning a new worker had accidentally run over a small animal- I don't remember what- and she had come out to find the animal was still warm, and it was marinating in her kitchen ready for eating that evening.  My stomach twinged a bit when I heard that, and as a group we decided we wouldn't tell the other girls about her comments.

Now I know why, because in this book, Jeremy, a Vancouver chef who's opened a new restauarant, who also has connections to the homeless in Stanley Park, changes the opening night menu.  I quote:  "...a dozen plump Canada geese, a dozen grey rock doves, six canvasbacks, four large rabbits, fifteen grey squirrels, four huge racoons, and a huge swan".  At this point, wasn't I happy this was fiction?  The fish course was to include goldfish, flatfish and periwinkle.  The menus, of course, would not state the true source, so needless to say Jeremy got himself into a pile of trouble.

The novel was also too long - some 475 pages.  There were interesting side-plots, and I had nothing else to read with me, so I trudged through this, and skimmed through the last 50 pages or so. 

Yuck...

The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

Spring 1941 in England- Gwen Davis is a gardener who volunteers to reclaim the gardens at an estate outside London as a war effort.  She finds a hidden garden, really three gardens, and she realizes the first time she finds them that she is the first person to find them since they were abandoned, and that she was meant to find them.  

she is in charge of a group of Land Girls, while soldiers under the command of Captain Raley reside in the house, awaiting orders to go into combat.  Jane is a frail young woman whose fiance is missing in action.  All three of these characters are dealing with loss, as are all the other characters, who do chalk drawings of their past on the blackout curtains. The lost garden consists of three parts, Longing, Faith, and Loss.  Gwen sets out to find who created this garden, who is the white figure that keeps stealing chickens, and who are the people everyone has left behind. She herself is mourning a mother who never loved her, as well as the author Virginia Woolf ( I really must read To The Lighthouse)!,

This is a beautifully constructed novel, only 182 pages long. Humphreys manages to pack a lot of information and images into such a short novel that you feel it was much longer.  As the book jacket says, it is "word perfect".

I especially enjoyed how she related Virginia Woolf to the story: she is certain she followed her one evening on a busy London street, and nowWoolf has died without Gwen ever speaking to her.  But, upon hearing Jane read To The Lighthouse to her friend David as he knits a sweater for his fiance back home, Gwen realizes that she has shared her life with Woolf: the book is the shared intimacy.(page 156)

"There is VW, dipping her pen in ink, looking up from the page with Lily on the lawn, to the view outside her window.  Here am I, looking across the room to the the summer dark beating against these mullioned panes.  There is Jane reading the words aloud to a young soldier sitting beside her.  It is a place we have arrived at, this book.  The characters fixed on the page.  The author who is only ever writing the book, not gardening or walking or talking, and while the reader is reading, the author is always here, writing.  The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book is the contract between you.  And this is what you're doing, being in the book, entering it as one enters a room, and sees there, through the French doors to the garden, Lily Briscoe painting on the lawn."

The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong traces the beginnings of the Bible from the earliest books of the Old Testament, tales of the gods Yaweh and Elohim, describes the many influences that helped form the sacred texts of the Old and New Testaments, and how the 66 books of the Bible were created, interpreted, and developed into the Holy Book. She also describes the multiple ways in which the Bible has been interpreted over the years, from the ancient reformers who didn't use scripture to conserve their traditions, but to evoke radical change, to the fundamentalists of today who see the Bible as heralding the last days of the world.

What did I learn?  Well, to start with, I read the book quickly once, then again more slowly and more intensively.  The subtitle describes Armstrong's book as a "biography", and that it is.  I decided just to take note of certain things which I found most meaningful to my understanding.

1.  The two times the temple of Israel was destroyed was integral to the development of (a) The Torah when Israel was in exile in Babylon in 586 BC, and (b) the advent of Christianity and the gospels when the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 CE.

2. Augustine(c580-662) was the first "born-again" Christian, upon picking up the Bible and reading it.  He, although responsible for much of the dogma of the RC Church, also emphasized the need for charity" the Bible was about love, charity was the central principle of Torah and everything else was commentary.

3. The Puritans' arrival in the New World can be seen as an Exodus, similar to the Israelites leaving Egypt.  They even called the New World "New Canaan".  But the New World also had its slaves:

"although Americans were committed to liberation and freedom, for 200 years there was an enslaved Israel in their midst."

4. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a monk who, after seeing the whole Bible for the first time, became fascinated with the book, saw it as integral to faith,  believed Christ was the central figure of the Bible,became the first "born-again" Christian, challenged the church on the Pope's power to forgive sins, translated the Bible into German, and basically, I think, developed the form of worship used today- scripture, songs, hymns, etc.

5. Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Sephardic Jew who became the pioneer of the historical-critical method :

"the manifest contradictions in the Bible proved that it could not be of divine origin; the idea of revelation was a delusion; and there was no super-natural deity- what we called 'God' who simply nature itself".  He was excommunicated, and became the first person in Europe to live successfully beyond the reach of established religion!

6/ The issue of  the Bible vs science in creation, the Scopes trial, the contest deciding on the side of rational thought, only made the fundamentalists more vehemently literal in their interpretation of Scripture, and moved them to the far right of the political spectrum, where they have remained.

The Bible is: a subversive document, a spiritual activity, a commentary on the Golden Rule.

KEY TERMS TO REMEMBER:

Apologia:  a rational explanation

Dogma: term used by Greek-speaking Christians to describe the hidden, ineffable traditions of the Church, which could only be understood mystically and expressed symbolically.

Exegesis: the art of interpreting and explaining the biblical text.

Gnostic: a redeeming "knowledge"

Hermeneutics: the art of interpretation, especially of scripture.

Midrash: exegesis; interpretation, with connotations of investigation, quest.

Shekhinah: the divine presence on earth.

Talmud: "teaching study"

Torah: "law"

The Manticore by Robertson Davies

This is the second novel in the Deptford Trilogy, and David Staunton, Boy Staunton's son, is the leading character.  David has gone to Europe for psycho-analysis from a German psychiatrist: he was the character in the first novel who called out in the presentation by the magician/ illusionist Eisingrim "Who killed Boy Staunton?" and realized that it was his very soul that had called out. The analysis takes up the major part of the novel, and I did find it rather slow-going, despite the fact that events of the first novel were re-told from David's point of view, which certainly was insightful. 

The Manticore is depicted on the cover: it shows a man's face. a lion's body, and a "bite" in the tail, being held by a chain to a woman dressed in white.  Apparently all these images depict the various parts of a person's makeup: the anima, the devil's advocate, the Shadow.  Pretty psychological stuff, and in rather a lot of detail.

Will I go on to read World of Wonders?  Let's see....

The Black Tower by Louis Bayard

The story of the lost king of France, Louis- Charles, who was supposedly executed after his mother, Marie Antoinette. Vidocq, an ex-convict who has transformed himself into a detective ( the world's first?) sets out to find the real Charles, aided by Hector Charpentier, son of the medical doctor who attended the prisoner Louis- Charles, and who may well have spirited him out of the Black Tower, where he was imprisoned.  A literary historical fiction thriller, well-written, and not at all predictable.  So many mysteries have only one trail, but this one has many interesting twists and turns, and also paints a vivid picture of life during the Restoration, the period following Napoleon's death.

Tea Time For The Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith

It's hard to believe this is the 11th No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book!  And no less charming than the first one-

I've also been following the series on HBO Canada.

 This time, Precious reluctantly loses  her beloved little white van, Grace Makutsi has a rival for her fiance's affection in Violet, a former classmate at the Secretarial School, Fanwell, one of JLB Maketoni's apprentices, becomes more familiar to us, and Precious and Grace solve the mystery of why the soccer team is always losing!

At the end, Precious is determined to find her little white van and get it going again, so we'll look for #12!

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

Vassanji says it best in his Introduction to this novel, the first in the Deptford Trilogy:

"On a winter's day in Deptford, a village of 500 in Southern Ontario, Percy Boyd Staunton, a boy of about 11, throws a barrage of snowballs out of spite at his friend and rival Dunstan Ramsay, who is on his way home for dinner following an afternoon of sledding.  The last snowball contains hidden in it a stone.  Dunstan ducks the ball and it hits the young bride Mrs. Dempster, out on a walk with her husband, the Baptist minister.  The pregnant Mrs Dempster gives birth prematurely; the baby, Paul, barely survives; and the woman becomes "simple"  Dunstan Ramsay is wracked with guilt.

"The throw of a stone, literally and metaphorically, sets the novel in motion; a trilogy is born....It determines the life trajectories os two of the Deptford boys, Dunstan Ramsay and Paul Dempster, and it will return to demand a reckoning from the third, the privileged "Boy" Staunton"

Mrs. Dempster becomes a saint to Dunstan: he believes she raised his brother from the dead, he sees her face before him when he is injured in the war, and she saves the tramp in the pit from a life of crime.  She is only ten years older, and Dunstan ends up caring for her for the rest of his life.  Throughout his life - Dunstan writes this as a memoir to his headmaster at UCC- Dunstan meets many interesting characters: Blazon, the priest, Leisl, who is a form of the devil, Leola, Boy's first wife, Diana, the nurse who saves his life in England, but the two other boys, Boy and Paul, and Mrs. Dempster are the unifying characters.

I've been intending to read this trilogy, and after dipping unsuccessfully into about four different books, I settled on this one and became immersed in it immediately. Once more, it is well-written, beautifully crafted, the characters are interesting and varied, there are humorous parts, like the welcome-home parade in Deptford, and the opening of the novel is oustanding.

Now, I move along to the second in the trilogy!

OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout

Winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Literature, this is a novel in 13 stories.  The central character, who appears in all of the stories in various ways, is Olive herself, larger than life, matter-of-fact, striding through each and every story, a former Grade Seven Math teacher, she knows most everyone in the town of Crosby, Maine, and we get to know some of them,too.  It's like walking through a town, wondering what goes on behind closed doors, but here you get to enter these various lives.  It's a story of ordinary people living extraordinary circumstances: alcoholism, death, drugs, loss, betrayal, told with such a wide range of emotion and excellence.  You don't forget Olive easily, and you see yourself in her,too.

Wikipedia has extensive articles on Olive, and I saved a Globe and Mail Interview.  Check Oprah and Book Browse.

I'll recommend this for next year's reading list for Book Club.

THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley

Eleven-year old Flavia de Luce is an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, living in a decaying family mansion with her father, her two sisters, Feelie and Daphne, the gardener, Dogger, and Mrs. Mullet, their cook. A series of events : a dead bird on the doorstep with a postage stamp pinned to its beak, a mysterious visitor who is found dead in the garden,to name just two, keep Flavia busy as she tries to clear her father's name of murder.  This was a very quick read, and fun to read - lots of capital letters and dialogue to keep the eye moving along the page.  Apparently there will be more adventures for Flavia: she's a little like Nancy Drew!

I bought this at BMV, around the corner from Karen's apartment.I believe Bradley is Canadian, although this is set inEngland.

COVENTRY by Helen Humphreys

Harriet Marsh is a fire-watcher, standing on the roof of Coventry Cathedral on November 14, 1940. Twenty-two years earlier, she had said farewell to Owen, her husband of two days, who left to fight in WWI and was killed.  This book- only 175 pages long - tells the story of the bombing blitz that hit Coventry that night and nearly destroyed the whole city. Along with Harriet on that roof is a young fire-watcher named Jeremy, who lives with his mother, Maeve, a painter, and the book tells the story of how these three people endured that night, and how their lives were intertwined by love, loss and remembrance.

The book is beautifully written, and every sentence has meaning.  At one point, Harriet is taking refuge in a field ,is reminded of a Russian story in which a horse suddenly appears, when she sees a donkey before her: "The good thing about books is that they remain themselves. What happens in their pages stays there. Harriet does not like the idea of the story bleeding through into real life. She trusts a story and doesn't trust real life.  But what makes her trust a story is the knowledge that it will stay where it is. that she can visit it but that there is no chance it will visit her."

La's Orchestra Saves The World - Alexander McCall Smith

I picked this up at the library and read the whole thing in a matter of hours. The story is set in WWII England, where La, a young widow, moves to Suffolk to start her life again, and with the help of an airman from a base nearby, starts a little orchestra.  She also meets a Pole who moves in and out of her life for many years.  The novel is about the healing power of music, the strength of people in times of war, the warmth and character of people who live in small communities.

I don't know how McCall Smith manages to turn out so many short novels, but they're all so charmingly written, but are completely natural.  There's no artifice about them, but they're beautifully crafted to reach the reader.

I'd ike to read them all!

THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED - Wally Lamb

There's a lot in this book: I guess that's why it took 700-odd pages to tell it all, and why the author took 9 years to write it. It's a captivating story ( I wanted to say "marvellous" but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to using that word) starting with the killings at Columbine, where the narrator, Caelum, is a teacher whose wife, Maureen, hides in a cabinet in the infamous library while many of the killings took place.  Maureen then suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, ends up becoming addicted to prescribed tranquillizers, runs over a promising young athlete while driving her car in a haze of drugs, and goes to jail for five years.  Her husband Caelum then becomes the centre of attention in the story as he seeks his true roots back on his family's farm, where they have moved. Connected to his story is the story of his prison-reform ancestors, and the prison where Maureen is jailed, which is on the family farm property. 

So we have the past, the present and the future, everything is connected, cause and effect plays a large role. Hurricane Katrina, the building of the Statue of Liberty, September 11, college students studying mythology and how that shows in their lives, a soldier back from Iraq, the Miss Rheingold contest, Mark Twain- it's all there.

Lamb is obviously trying to portray how we are all connected,too, as humans, and that we have a responsibility towards one another.  Fortunately, the one subject he almost successfully avoids completely is religion, but he  does acknowledge a " higher power".  The hour he first believed is when he finds hope for the future with the coming birth of his "daughter's" baby, at the same time as he finds reconciliation with the past.

Well-done, on the whole.  At one point, I nearly gave up, because he hadn't really set the reader up for the addition of new characters, and after 300 pages, I suddenly felt I was adrift, trying to make the connection, but at the same time wondering if I cared enough to do that. I'm glad I stuck with it, though.

DREAMS OF MY FATHER by Barack Obama

I feel a little guilty for confessing that I didn't finish this.  Sorry, Barack, I think you're wonderful, and your story is interesting enough, but not enough to sustain my interest when there are other books I'm just itching to read.

It's written well, too, but seems a little bloodless at times: maybe you didn't go deep enough into your experiences.  Was this almost like an assignment to present yourself to the public before you were nominated for President?Like, tell them just enough so they get to know you and perhaps even understand you a little, but don't tell them too much, y'know?

BOOK LIST FROM FALL 2008

Here are 12 books I really enjoyed.  By the time you’ve read them all, I’ll probably have another 12!

Three Day Road – Joseph Boyden  .  Set in Moosonee and the trenches of World War I, this is the story of two native boys. 

Rockbound: Frank Parker Day.  Canada Reads winner in 2005. Rockbound is an island off the south shore of Nova Scotia.  It’s the story of two families.

The Birth House - Ami McKay. The story of a midwife in Nova Scotia, her friends, neighbours, and their lives as wives and mothers.

Water For Elephants – Sara Gruen.  Life in a circus: the animals, the workers.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan- Lisa See . Set in China, it’s the story of a friendship between two girls. Foot binding is described at length: and I complain about bunions!

Shadow on The Wind- Carlos Ruiz Zafon. A boy searches for the author of a long-loved book and stumbles on several mysteries about the book and the author. A juicy, long read.

The Way The Crow Flies – Anne-Marie MacDonald. A fictional representation of the Stephen Truscott case.

An Audience of Chairs – Joan Clark.  The story of a woman who is bipolar and how in the end she saves herself, mainly because she enjoys life so fully and completely.

Late Nights on Air- Elizabeth Hay.  The story of a radio station in Yellowknife, the people who work there, and a long, momentous canor trip.

The Book of Negroes – Lawrence Hill.  Aminata, abducted into slavery at age 12, the sea voyage to North Carolina, and her life in America and Nova Scotia, then back to Sierra Leone.

The Law of Dreams- Peter Behrens.  Peter is 15 when his family starves to death in Ireland as a result of the potato famine.  This is the story of how he survives to eventually come to Canada.

Strawberry Fields – Marina Lewycha.  A group of berry-pickers in England and their road trip through England. Very entertaining and illuminating.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

This was a re-read, to prepare for our Book Club presentation this coming Saturday.  I enjoyed it even more the second time.  I think this must be historical fiction at its very best, because the story is woven through the historical events so well that the two are almost inseparable: one is not the vehicle for the other, at least not obviously so.

There are events here I never knew about: the Black Loyalists most obviously, plus the fact that the slave trade started so early and was so widespread. It was the Portuguese who first sailed away from Africa with captives in the 15th century!

The author really cares for his subject, and this has been borne out by the related reading that I have done.

It should be a good discussion at Book Club this Saturday!

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

I'm quoting Lisa Genova:

STILL ALICE is about a young woman's descent into dementia through early-onset Alzheimer's disease.  Alice is a 51 year old psychology professor at Harvard when she starts experiencing moments of forgetting and confusion....she at first attributes these signs to normal aging, too much stress, not enough sleep, and so on.  But as things get worse....she eventually sees a neurologist and learns that she has early-onset Alzheimer's."

This was a scary book to read, because I can see little things I do that are similar, and it makes you wonder.  I think the author is more of a professor than a writer, but she has found a way to communicate to her audience how the patient feels: how she matters: to herself, her family, her colleagues.  The speech  Alice gives, starting on page 250 is quite illuminating, as is the conversation with the author at the book's conclusion.

I just didn't feel it was a "novel": it wasn't literary at all, but I understand what the author was trying to do.

Book Count as of today

I think I read 24 books in Florida! Amazing!

MIDDLESEX: Jeffery Eugenides

I've known about this book, and its central theme, for some time, but I didn't think I'd like it.  I didn't like the title, or the author's name, believe it or not: I thought it would be too intellectual, deeper than I wanted to go in my reading.  Mildred read this, and mentioned several times last summer how much she enjoyed it, so I was a little more interested.  When I had a coupon for Borders, I bought it, and read it while returning home from Florida.

Am I ever glad I did!  I loved it: it's a big, rich, funny, touching family story, beginning with Desdemona and Lefty, who are brother and sister, also third cousins, who end up marrying one another.  Calliope, the "girl" in the novel, is their grand-daughter: raised as a girl, she discovers her true sexuality on her 16th birthday. Calliope has inherited a recessive mutation gene, passed on through families where there is incest or inbreeding.

This is a Greek-American family: the story starts in Greece before the first war, then continues in the depression years in Detroit.  Middlesex is the name of the family's street addres in Detroit"; it's an unusual house, without any standard doors; Calliope's father has made his money  in hot dog stands all across America.  The fact that the street address is used as the title  is significant, because so is Calliope: with characteristics and physical traits both male and female. Calliope, incidentally, was the name given to the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry.

Eugenides won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel and deservedly so: it is a sweeping portrait of America: its politics, sexual mores, coming- of-age, cars, scams, hitch-hiking, a real trip through time. Eugenides, in his interview with Oprah, which is worth a second-look online, calls the book " a modern myth".  He also acknowledges that, although the word "hermaphrodite" was chosen because of its Greek derivation: the Greek god Tiresias was a hermaphrodite, he does acknowledge that a better word, and one without  pejorative connotations  would be "intersex".

CUTTING FOR STONE: Abraham Verghese

A family saga , set mostly in Addis Ababa,  with medicine at the central focus.  Sister Mary Praise gives birth to twin sons, Shiva and Marion, delivered by the twins' father, Dr. Thomas Stone.  Sister Mary dies in childbirth, Dr. Stone disappears.  The twins are raised by two other doctors, Hema, a gynecologist, and Ghosh, a GP who becomes the surgeon at the Missing Hospital after Stone leaves.

The twins grow up to become doctors themselves; Marion comes to America after he is threatened by arrest after being unwittingly implicated in a rebellion.  Shiva is also a doctor, but not formally trained as such. Typically, the twins are mysteriously connected , coming to age as Ethiopia is on the brink of revolution, but a shared passion for Genet, their childhood friend, tears them apart. 

Marion finally meets his father, and they are reconciled, but not before Marion's life is threatened with illness, an illness which brings the twins back together again.

There is some excellent story-telling in this novel, although I found the medical parts somewhat lengthy and boring.  Verghese is himself a medical professor, so he is very familiar with the field. I've never read a book set in Ethiopia, and I remember Haile Selassie from my own girlhood, so I found that interesting.

Not riveting reading all the way through, but I'd give it three stars for sure!  The novel is well-organized to keep the reader on course: we don't find out near the end what really happened between Sister Mary Praise and Thomas Stone.  I just found there were parts when I thought" Ho-hum, this is boring" and then he'd catch my interest yet again.

The term "cutting for stone" comes from the Hippocratic oath, and the inference is that a surgeon must always think of the overall well-being of his/her patient.  The Stones were surgeons, and one Stone saved another by cutting away part of himself.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM by Kate Atkinson

Well, well, well, yet another book by Kate Atkinson, this one her first novel, and  not a mystery novel, as were the others I read this winter.  

From the book jacket:   Ruby Lennox begins narrating her own life at the moment of her conception and from there takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the twentieth century as seen through the eyes of a girl determined to learn more about her family and the secrets it keeps.

Set in Yorkshire, the book is extremely rich in detail and wit.  It's Atkinson's wit that I enjoy the most, I think: the scenes when the family goes on a summer farm trip with the next-door neighbours, the wedding scene in Chapter 10, are hilarious as much for her wry observation of life with the Lennox family as for the situations.

The novel is about family, but more specifically, I think, the relationship between mothers and daughters.  Ruby's mother, Bunty, was about as bad a mother as you can get, but there were reasons for her behaviour.

This is worth considering as a recommendation for Book Club next year. There is a Readers' Guide available on-line at Picador: I bookmarked it.

The book was published in 1999, and Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread Prize for best first novel in Great Britain for this book.

Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

I really can't remember whether I read this book when it first came out some 40-odd years ago, but I had been thinking about reading it when it showed up in a small bookstore in Apalachicola, Florida.  I just felt it was waiting for me to buy it, and read it.

I found the first 100 pages or so quite interesting, but then it became a chore, perhaps because it was such a static sort of setting, many of the characters were indistinguishable from one another in name, circumstance, bias, whatever, and I began to see everything in a sort of grey/black/white: no colour, no accent to the situations. Even the zarzuela dancers seemed colourless, although they were actually quite dramatic characters in the story.

I understood that this was a voyage of life itself, and that the various characters represented all that is both good and bad in all of us, but I just couldn't eat it up like I expected I would. I began skimming, and once I even put it aside, but somehow I picked it up again and started where I'd left off.  This happened yet again near the end, when by this time I really didn't care what happened to these people.

Maybe it would have made a better play- I'll try to see the movie and decide again. In summing everything up, I  am glad I perservered through to the end, but I won't miss it!

CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson has probably been my favorite author this winter. I name her, even though I loved David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle, because this is the third of her books that I've read, and I still have her very first one to read.

Case Histories is the first of three novels involving the retired police inspector, and now investigator Jackson Brodie, and what a piece of work he is!  He's very attractive to women- in this one we meet Binky Rains, the old woman who left him 2 million pounds ( and Jackson was wondering why her only nephew, Quintus, was trying to kill him..) His ex-wife hates him, he is about to get involved with Julia in this book- we meet her again in one of the later stories. He's having trouble with his teeth in this book, requiring several emergency visits to his dentist, his house is burned down at one point, he's beaten up and put in hospital, yet he befriends a poor homeless woman, Lily-Rose.

Atkinson is a master at creating separate stories, then slowly intertwining them, with Jackson, often unwittingly, as the axis upon which they all eventually coincide. For example, Binky Rains' home backs onto the home where Olivia disappeared. Also, Shirley Morrison, the sister of Michelle, is a nurse at the hospital where Jackson is taken when he's beaten up.

There are three cases:  Olivia, the beloved younger sister of three older girls, who is taken from a tent at night and never found; Laura Wyre, who is struck down by a knife-wielding stranger in her father's office, and Michelle, who struck her husband down with an axe.All three of these took place some 30 years earlier, but all of them contact Jackson to try and find some sense of closure: except for the third case: he ends up in bed with the murderer's sister, then finds out she's married.

The best thing about Atkinson's books is her sense of humor- there's a wryness there which is completely engaging: not the charm of Alexander McCall Smith, but a detached , bemused tolerance of all her characters, unlovely and unloveable as many of them may be. She sees, and writes convincingly about, the humor and the sadness in each of these situations. Theo, the overly obese father of Laura, who was absolutely besotted with his daughter; Amelia, whose dress and appearance show her complete lack of fashion sense, Binky Rains, with her "high society" accents : "bleck" for black- you can almost hear her saying it.

I wonder if these novels would ever be made into TV shows or movies by the BBC.  They'd be wonderful!

FOUR SHORT STORIES - Somerset Maugham

I wanted to read something by Maugham, and I found this small volume ( only 67 pages long) at the library, and I read the whole thing in an hour.  This particular volume was a Hallmark publication, and the drawings in it are by Henri Matisse!

1. The Ant and the Caterpillar - a version of the Aesop fable, where a businessman, George Ramsay, has a ne'er-do-well brother who is constantly asking his brother for money.  Sure enough, it's the ne'er-do-well who finds a rich widow.

2.The Verger - is fired by the church's new vicar because he can't read.  He then starts a tobacco store which grows into a successful enterprise.

3.Mr. Know-All is a passenger on a ship who annoys everyone because he is an authority on every subject.  When the subject turns to pearls, he makes an error on purpose.

4. The Colonel's Lady - A colourless wife of a cheating husband publishes a book of poems that portrays a passionate affair, much to the consternation of her husband, who can't figure out what anyone could see in her to begin with!

I enjoyed these.  Must find some more.  These are the kinds of short stories I enjoy.  The best volume of short stories I think I ever read was I, Richard, by Elizabeth George. 

THE FALLS by Joyce Carol Oates

I've recognized Oates' name for some years now, but this is the first of her novels that I've read.  I chose this one because it's on Book Browse's site, which I consider to be a pretty good recommendation. Also, I'm discovering through my reading this winter that I am most completely satisfied by a longer book: one where I can revel in the characters or the plot, see it unfold over time.  In going through Book Browse's list of books over 500 pages ( the list is called Doorstoppers), several of my all-time favorites showed up there : A Fine Balance, Where The Crow Flies,The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, plus Elizabeth George's novels.

The Falls is set in the area of Niagara Falls, on the American side.  A young man, married earlier that day, climbs over the railing and plunges into the Falls.  His widow, Ariah, spends seven days beside the Falls, waiting for her husband's body to be found.  Dirk Burnaby, a young lawyer and well-known in the community, comes to counsel her and ends up falling in love with her.  They marry, and raise a family; he is a very successful litigation lawyer, she teaches piano at home. 

Dirk becomes involved with the community group seeking charges against the developers of the  Love Canal, ends up being vilified by the very men he worked with before: all pillars of the community, like himself, and is eventually murdered: his car ends up in the Niagara River and his body is never found.  By this time, his marriage to Ariah is over, because of his overwhelming dedication to seeking damages for residents and children affected by the radioactive waste, and with his death, Ariah tries to wipe out their children's memories of him as well.

Then the children grow up, and we see how Ariah's obsession with them, plus their unfolding awareness of the scandal surrounding  radioactive waste, leads them to uncover , pretty well individually, the mystery of their father's life and death.

The Falls is a revealing story of the American family in crisis, plus the greed and corruption of American industrial expansion and how it affects those same families.  There is some redemption in the end, as Chandler, Royall, and Juliet find some personal happiness, and escape the damaging clutches of their mother, whose whole life has been affected by that first tragedy the day of her marriage.

I'm reminded in some ways of Taylor Caldwell's novels, which I read all through my teens.  One review I read likened Oates to Theodore Dreiser, whose name I always associated with An American Tragedy.  This type of fiction, which I guess could be labelled as historical fiction, is much more substantial than books like Beneath A Marble Sky, which almost seems gratuitous in comparison!

This is book number 18 that I've read since coming to PCB this year!

REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier

I was between-books on reserve at the library, so in scanning the shelves, I came across an old favorite: I can't even remember how long ago I read it- I was probably a teenager.  So I lost myself once again in the beauty, atmosphere, and romance of Manderley, Max De Winter, Mrs. Danvers, and of course Rebecca.

What I love about this novel is the author's craft: she's a master of the mystery novel.  The title of the book is Rebecca, and the story is about her, of course, but she is dead at the time of the novel.  Also the narrator, Max's second wife, never names herself: we only know her as Mrs. De Winter.  Manderley itself is a major [presence in the novel, and it is interesting that the inquest into Rebecca's death, to all intents and purposes, is held at Manderley, not the small court which made the decisions. No wonder this has been named one of the best 100 books of all time!

BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo

Here's another really good story: four families in a small town, Thomaston, New York: the Lynchs, Marconis, Bergs, and the Beverleys. Louis ( known as Lucy) is now 60 years old, and he and his wife Sarah (Berg) are about to visit an old friend in Italy.  Lucy, whose story is told in first-person narrative, tells the story of his growing up, while the others, most notably Bobby Marconi and Sarah Berg, tell their story in third person.  We see how the four families are connected, then finally converge, but the interesting thing about the book is the fact that the town itself and the store the Lynch family runs, called Ikey Lubins, are as much characters as the family members;amidst all this is a river spewing forth waste which affects the health of many of the people.  It's a nostalgic look back, to be sure, and not so pleasant at times, but there's a depth and richness to the story that had me reading late at night. There are some weaknesses: Nan is just a bit of fluff, I'm not sure why new characters appeared near the end of the story, and I really think the novel could have been a good 100 pages shorter.  Maybe I was getting restive about the ending, but I felt a definite let-down about 100 pages from the end.  This is the third of Russo's novels that I've read: the others are Nobody's Fool, which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, and Empire Falls, both of these stories about small-town America .

Beneath A Marble Sky by John Shors

Whenever I finish reading an exceptional book, as was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the book that comes next on my reading agenda usually suffers tremendously by comparison. Beneath A Marble Sky is historical fiction based on the building of the Taj Mahal: the Emperor who had it built in memory of his wife, his three children, Dara, who was his heir, Jahanara, the heroine of the story, and Amangjeb, who did become the next Emperor, plus the architect/Builder Prasad Isa, who becomes Jahanara's lover and the father of her daughter. There was certainly lots of historical detail in this book, lots of it interesting, but it was all a little too long, and I became bored.  It wasn't even poorly written, but I did begin to think that maybe historical fiction, like this one at least, is just a pumped-up romance novel: I felt the same about the book Marrying Mozart. I was also disappointed because I've been looking for this book for some time: as usual, I was attracted by the title and the subject, and ended up buying it at Borders when I finally found it this winter. I hate being disappointed by a book I've bought!

THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski

Well, well, well, here's a new addition to my all-time favorite list.  I LOVED this book!

Edgar is a mute, although not deaf, who speaks by signing.  His family breeds and raises an exceptional breed of dog named Sawtelles after the family name- and they are an exceptional dog, most especially Almondine, who has been Edgar's protector and mentor since before his birth.( The chapter relating how Almondine searched throughout the house for something she already knew was meaningful was beautiful, as was the chapter when she decides to search for Edgar after his long absence.)

Not only a beautiful story, but beautifully written as well- there were parts I read again just to savour them once more. As Stephen King says on the jacket, I envy the person who is presently reading this book- I didn't want it to end.  But end it did, and in a fitting way.  I must admit to some nervousness as I got to the end, because so often a good book just doesn't seem to make it through to the end, but this one did not disappoint me at all.

I purposely did not read any reviews of this book while I was reading it, although I had seen the title often on best-seller lists previously.  In the meantime, I've been singing its praises to everyone I know who loves a good book, and most especially those who love dogs.

AUDITION by Barbara Walters

This is a long book, or at least it seemed so to me, because I read a large-print edition.  But Barbara does repeat herself quite often, even though she has a lot to relate, for sure. I didn't realize her family situation: father the developer of the Latin Quarter revue, her autistic sister, etc.  She seems to carry a lot of guilt over her sister all throughout her life, and at times you really just want to say:"Get over it, Barbara".

She also seems to be a person who wants it all: she is close to her family, has many, many friends, and yet talks about being lonely quite often. She certainly was a flag-bearer for women in TV journalism, and I respect her for that, but I don't think she could have been all that easy to get along with.

I admit I skipped some parts of this: chapters that discussed things or people I wasn't interested in.  Of course, the most interesting chapter was"Monica". 

Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir

Historical fiction of the life of Lady Jane Grey, also known as the "nine-days queen".  She was queen in between Edward VI and Queen Mary, who ordered Jane's execution.  Jane was the innocent victim of Northumberland, who was trying to grasp power for himself, as well as her scheming parents, who saw advantage for themselves in promoting her accession.  She was 16 when she was executed.

Alison Weir has written over 10 books on this time period, all of them non-fiction: this is her first in the fiction genre.  It's not all that different, I guess, but as she explains, she could take a few more liberties.  

ONE GOOD TURN by Kate Atkinson

Jackson Brodie, the retired inspector, has followed his girlfriend to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, where she is appearing as an actress. He witnesses a man being brutally attacked in a traffic jam - the apparent victim of a case of road rage- which sets off a chain of events involving many other observers at the scene.

Atkinson is my newest favorite mystery writer- a master of the use of coincidence, in that she drops little comments along the route of her story to inform the reader, and to deepen the mystery.  She dovetails everyone's story together so cleverly, and with a gently amusing detachment.  

In this novel, I particularly enjoyed Martin Canning's character- himself a mystery writer who seems to bumble from one situation to another, living in a dream world of his own making, and nearly completely oblivious to the dangers around him.

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery

In a very elegant apartment building in Paris, there is a 54-year-old concierge named Renee, who takes great pains to hide the fact that she reads philosophy, adores both War and Peace and Japanese culture.  On the 5th floor lives " la famille Josse", the youngest of whom, a 12-year-old named Paloma, also hides her superior intelligence as she tries to find meaning in the world as she observes the ironies and idiosyncracies of life. As the novel opens, she has decided there is no meaning to the world, so she will take her own life on her 13th birthday.  Eventually, after a Japanese gentlemen moves into the fourth floor apartment, Renee and Paloma meet, immediately recognize the intelligence of the other, and become friends.  This was a very interesting book, sometimes a bit hard to read because of the language, but very charming in its own way. A philosophical fable, social satire, and great literature.

The author is French, and the novel has been translated into English.  Apparently it's been a runaway bestseller in France.  I was drawn to it by the title- 

"Madame Michel ( Renee) has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress,but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary- and terrible elegant."