The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. ✔✔✔✓

In post-war Warwickshire, young Dr. Faraday is called to the mansion Hundreds Hall to treat a 14-year old maid for illness. Faraday visited the mansion as a young boy, when his parents worked as servants at the Hall, and this visit renews his interest in the mansion, now decaying even as the remaining occupants, the Ayres, struggle to maintain it with limited funds and limited help. There is Mrs. Ayres, whose first child died before either of her two remaining children were born, Roderick, who came home injured from the War, and Caroline, who has taken on much of the physical work needed to maintain the house and grounds. Faraday becomes a regular visitor to the mansion and soon becomes entwined in the mystery surrounding the house. Is the house haunted? By whom? As narrator, Faraday is- to me, at least- impossibly dull, but his thick-headedness only adds to the mystery. There were moments when I could not for the life of me understand why the characters couldn't accept what was so obvious to the reader, but then I realized that's what the author wanted. Either that, or that old-world class-consciousness rendered these people incapable of accepting the changes taking place around them.

This was a good old-fashioned read, almost like reading Daphne du Maurier, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I even read it more slowly than I read a lot of books, savoring the mystery and the excellent writing.

And those two questions I posed earlier? They're not quite answered! Well-done!

FAVORITES OF 2009

My list this year is arranged by my favorite book from each month of the year, plus an extra one which I just couldn't leave out!

January When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson

February The Story of Edgar Sawtelle David Wroblewski

March Rebecca Daphne du Maurier

April Middlesex Jeremy Euginides

May Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout

June Fifth Business Robertson Davies

July The Bible:A Biography Karen Armstrong

August The Angel's Game Carlos Ruiz de Zafon

September Full Tilt: From Dublin to Delhi by Bicycle Dervla Murphy

October Sacred Hearts Sarah Dunant

November The Girl Who Played With Fire Stieg Larsson

December Little Giant of Aberdeen County Tiffany Baker

December South of Broad Pat Conroy

Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil by John Berendt. ✔✔✔

This is a book I've wanted to read for a long time, and I don't even remember why! I know I've always been intrigued by the city of Savannah, Georgia: I see live oaks and huge mansions with lace curtains when I see the name of the city. However often I saw the book and remembered I wanted to read it, I would pass it by, knowing that the right time would come, and that time is now, because I'm hoping we can stop there on our way back to Canada in April.

While the book is framed around a murder, and the 10-year court case surrounding it, Savannah's colorful citizens are the stars of the show: the well-bred society ladies and their various social rituals, Chablis, the drag queen, Minerva the sorceress, the con artist- piano player who hosts tours of his homes in which he is merely a squatter, the young blacks dancing the minuet at the debutants ball, the redneck, fast-driving young man who ends up the murder victim, and the antique dealer whose four - yes, four- separate trials finally ended in his acquittal.

One of our Book Club themes two Christmases ago was "memoirs of a celebrity", and Helga chose the story of Chablis, whose story takes up one whole chapter in this book, so I must read that book, too.

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.