Devourer of Books

The Debutante Ball is a group blog for debut authors.  The fourth class of authors is currently discussing things bookish (and lots of other things as well!) at www.thedebutanteball.com.

Our spotlight today is Deb Emily!

Who is she?

Emily is an American living in Cambridge.  She has a BFA in acting and an MA from a Museum Professions program.

What did she write?

“The Whole World,” coming from Delacorte Press in May, is a mystery told by five narrators.  Polly and Liv are American students studying in Cambridge, where they fall for a graduate student, who subsequently disappears.

Her best blog post so far…(in my opinion)

People + Books

Link Love

Emily’s introductory post on The Debutante Ball
Emily’s blog posts on The Debutante Ball
Emily’s website

This review is part of “Debutante Ball Week” on DevourerofBooks.  All this week I’m featuring reviews from the 2009 class of The Debutante Ball and spotlighting the 2010 Debs.

Earlier this year, I read and really enjoyed Erica Bauermeister’s “The School of Essential Ingredients.”  The one thing I would have liked to add to the book was the actual recipes for some of the delicious-sounding food that was made in the book.  Erica listened to her readers on this, and started doing a series of guest posts featuring recipes from the book.  When she contacted me and asked if I would like to host a guest post/recipe and a giveaway, I jumped at the chance.  I’m hoping to try out this hot chocolate on a cold, dreary day this winter.  See the end of this post for a giveaway.

We’re moving deeply into winter, Thanksgiving handing the holiday baton over to the festivities of December.  Kitchens are filled with the smells of rosemary and turkey, pumpkin and cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  And hot chocolate, the way that luxurious smell comes floating up to your nose, the first sensation of whipped cream meeting your lips as you sip your way to the molten chocolate underneath.

It’s magic, really, which makes it only natural that Lillian used hot chocolate to tempt her mother back into the real world in The School of Essential Ingredients.  But I realized pretty quickly when I was writing Lillian’s story that it couldn’t be just any hot chocolate.  It had to be a version that would remind you of the hot chocolate you drank after playing all day in the snow, yet would also be full of the sensuality that only comes with adulthood.  A recipe that would remind Lillian’s mother of the world she had given up.

As I was writing Lillian’s story I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, playing with ingredients.  I loved the idea of adding orange and cinnamon, the combination of summer and autumn they create.  Coffee and chocolate played off each other in an equally satisfactory way.  But something was missing, and I couldn’t think of what it would be.

I went to the Mexican grocery store in the Pike Place market in Seattle and I asked the woman there for something special.  She humored me, suggesting cinnamon, and sent me on my way.  But as I was going up to the counter with a red and yellow box of Mexican chocolate in my hands, she came around the end of the aisle, a small bag in her hands.

“Perhaps a bit of anise,” she said.

It’s in there, with the proviso that a little bit of anise goes a very long way….

Hot chocolate and coffee

1 cup milk

5 curls orange rind

1/2 stick cinnamon

4 T Mexican chocolate

anise

1 cup coffee

whipping cream

Put milk, orange rind, cinnamon and chocolate in a saucepan and warm through.  Add a touch of anise.  Add to coffee and top with whipping cream.

If you want to see more recipes or learn more about The School of Essential Ingredients, you can go to www.ericabauermeister.com

In addition to my fantastic family, one of the things I’m very thankful for is reading.  To celebrate this weekend, I’ve been trying to make a little extra time for reading.  I didn’t post anything yesterday because I was (mostly, at least) unplugged, but I did start reading.  So far I’ve finished “The Girl on Legare Street” and gotten nearly 100 pages into “Shutter Island,” a book I had previously abandoned because it just wasn’t captivating me, but that I picked back up after effusive praise from Jenn at Jenn’s Bookshelves .

Hopefully I’ll finish that today, then onto I’m not sure what.

The Madness of Queen Maria by Jenifer Roberts

Maria I of Portugal became, in 1777, the first Queen regnant of her country.  She came into power at a difficult time in European history.  Monarchies were being challenged all around her, from the rebellion of British colonies resulting in the United States to the Revolution in France.  The monarchy in Portugal had already suffered greatly under her father, who allowed the unpopular the Marquis of Pombal to essentially run his country.  The very religious Maria immediately dismissed Pombal, who had been trying to fashion a more secular society and who had even plotted to deny Maria the succession in favor of her more secular son.

Initially, Maria was a quite popular queen.  Then, nine years after her accession, Maria lost her husband and confessor in the same year, and the madness that stalked much of her family made itself manifest in her.  Maria’s madness presented largely as religious mania and intense fear of hell.

I felt incredibly sorry for Maria while reading this account of her life.  Neither she nor the King her father were given anything approaching sufficient education as a ruler.  Certainly her parents could not have helped the madness she inherited (although, come on, maybe a little less marrying within their own family and the royal family of Spain might have mitigated everything!), but she was set off to a poor road by her lack of proper education for one that would rule a country.  She was also ruling at such a difficult time, and my heart nearly broke for her when she and her court had to escape the country to Brazil during the Napoleonic Wars.  She clearly wasn’t sure what exactly was happening to her and became extremely alarmed when the people of Brazil tried to welcome her with a 21 gun salute.

This was a very well-written, accessible piece of history.  It has been said it reads like a novel; you certainly are not going to mistake it for the latest Jodi Picoult, but it is smooth and avoids the excessive dryness that many historical works suffer from.  You may get more out of it if you have some grounding in Portuguese history – I must say I was a bit lost towards the beginning having no idea who the Marquise of Pombal was – but even if you come to it knowing nothing about Portugal, like I did, it is a very informative and interesting book.  Also quite a short one, at around 150 pages.  If anything, I wish that the section on Maria’s madness had been a big longer.

Oh!  And if you read it, check out the fantastic list of Portuguese words and personages in the appendix.  I wish I’d discovered it before I got to the end of the book, I might not have been quite so in the dark about the Marquise of Pombal initially.

Buy this book from:
The Book Depository (ships worldwide, most places for free)

This review was done with a book received from the author.

Now & Then by Jacqueline Sheehan

Anna O’Shea has been having a very bad time of it.  After her third miscarriage, her husband left her for the office manager of their dentist’s office.  To add salt into that wound, the office manager was already pregnant, something that Anna had desperately wanted to be.  Anna leaves home for a bit with her travel-writer friend to England, Scotland, and Ireland.  Shortly before leaving Ireland, an old woman hands Anna a package wrapped in paper.  There is no time to open it before going home, however, and definitely no time once she gets there.  Anna arrives home to messages from her mother that her brother p is in the hospital after having been in a car crash.  That isn’t even the worst of it!

It turns out that Patrick’s accident occurred as he was traveling from Massachusetts to New Jersey where his son, Joseph had been arrested and was being held in juvenile hall, he was supposed to pick Joseph up.  Anna is dispatched to go pick up her nephew and inform him about his father’s accident.  As Patrick is going to be transferred to another hospital, Anna takes Joseph back to her house for a good night’s sleep before they go to see his father.  During the night, however, something in Anna’s luggage calls to Joseph.  When she wakes up and sees that he has the package from the old woman, she angrily grabs at it and suddenly they are both being whisked back through time to Ireland of 1844, where they become separated and must figure out how to find one another and return to their own time.

I was skeptical for a lot of the first part of the book.  I don’t mind a bit of fantasy mixed into my fiction.  I loved “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” for instance.  I didn’t really feel that initial time travel was well justified.  I didn’t have a problem with not yet knowing WHY they went back in time, I figured that would be explained later.  What I didn’t believe is how quickly Anna figured out what happened.  Even as they were being pulled backwards through time, she thought to herself ‘hey, we’re time traveling!’  I would expect it to take more time, for her to have to figure out what was going on.

Anna and Joseph’s characters started to grow on me partway through the book, however.  I liked the way that Sheehan developed them during their time in the past.  Their love stories were fairly well drawn, considering that she was trying to develop two separate love stories in the same book.  By the end, I would say that I definitely enjoyed the story, particularly the way that Sheehan resolved the question of why they traveled back in time and what resulted from their discovery.

Buy this book from:
Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*

*****Giveaway*****

I have four copies of “Now & Then” to giveaway.  I’m sending them out myself, so I can send up to 1 of them anywhere in the world, and up to 1 of them to Canada.  The other two will be US-only.  This giveaway will end Monday, December 7th.  Please fill out the following Google Form to enter:

This review, along with the giveaway, was done with books received from  the publisher.
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