The Threadbare Heart by Jennie Nash- Book Review

May 052010

The Threadbare Heart by Jennie Nash

Lily and Tom have always had nearly the perfect marriage, which stands as the perfect foil to the multiple marriages of Lily’s mother Eleanor. Lily and Tom are committed to each other, Eleanor was happy to move onto the next man as soon as one is out of her life; Lily and Tom are perfectly content with their professors’ salaries, Eleanor has been known to marry for mutual financial and social benefit; Lily and Tom believe in love and choosing love, Eleanor believes love is basically a joke.

However, as Lily and Tom move into middle age, Lily starts to wonder if their marriage is as strong as everyone has always thought. It starts with Tom becoming angry with Lily for indulging in foods she knows are triggers to her debilitating migraines and admitting just how frustrated he is with her for not doing what she can to better control them. Next thing Eleanor knows, Tom is longing after an avocado farm in California, a purchase that would move them out of the Northeast and to California near Eleanor and their children. Once they arrive in California, Eleanor becomes reacquainted with a man who was once one of the more handsome boys in her high school class and she becomes worried about all the time Tom is spending with a young woman who works for the avocado grower’s association. Now Eleanor must sort out for herself what is and is not real in her life.

So I really liked this book, but OH MY GOSH! Stay away from plot summaries! The description on the back of the book is such a spoiler (I didn’t give anything too much away here)! You can obviously still enjoy the book if you know what is going to happen, but the events that are mentioned on the back of the book don’t occur until 2/3 of the way through the book. I assumed that said event would occur near the beginning and the majority of the book would be dealing with the aftermath, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Despite the fact that the back of the book had a major case of spoiler-itis, I thought this was a great work of women’s fiction. Although Lily was clearly the main character, Nash also takes us inside the heads of Eleanor and Lily’s son Ryan who is struggling with his young marriage. I loved how all three generations were struggling with questions of love and intimacy and how all had something to teach the others, even if indirectly. The questions raised by “The Threadbare Heart” in regards to whether or not love is a choice and the relationship between love and comfort or complacency were fascinating and I think this was a very well thought-out story.

A very thoughtful work of women’s fiction exploring real, everyday marriages and the themes of love and loss. Highly recommended.

In case you missed it, I’m giving away a copy of this book this week.

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

This review was done with a book received from the publisher at the author’s request.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

BEA Plans?

May 042010

Okay people, I’ve started looking at the BEA website but:

a) It is not the world’s most user-friendly website

b) Seems silly for each of us to duplicate one another’s work

So here’s what I want to know: what events are you most looking forward to at BEA? When and where are they? I’ll compile all the answers everyone gives and post them next week so we can ALL benefit.

Also! Let me know if you want to meet up while we’re at BEA! I’m coming in really late on Tuesday night and leaving around noon on Saturday, so I’m available to meet up Wednesday and Thursday and, of course, at Blogger Con on Friday.

The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor – Book Review

May 042010

The Blue Orchard by Jackson Taylor

Verna Krone’s family has very little money and her father is of a very advanced age. In order to help support her parents and younger siblings, she has to leave school at the age of 14 in order to be the hired girl for another family. Unfortunately, the man of that house is completely unable and unwilling to keep his hands to himself, and Verna finds herself ‘in trouble.’ Although a potion from a midwife keeps the neighbors from finding out what was done to Verna at the hands of her employer, this was all simply the beginning of her trouble with men.

Verna pretty much has one crappy job after another – and during the Great Depression – and one crappy boyfriend after another. Eventually, though, she manages to make it through nursing school and ends up employed by a a black doctor, Dr. Crampton, who is not only in the center of political life, but also the purveyor of ‘illegal surgeries’ to end unwanted pregnancies. As Dr. Crampton’s political influence begins to wane, Verna’s life begins to fall apart.

This was a very interesting story, made even more interesting based on the fact that this story was based largely on the story of the author’s grandmother – right down to her name. Knowing that this was a largely true story gave it much more power. That being said, I thought it got just a little bit slow in the middle. I think that much of her soul-destroying work history could have been elided, as I thought her early story and her time working for Dr. Crampton were the most interesting aspects of her story.

Although I think the work could have been a little shorter, the storyline was very interesting and the writing was fantastic. Taylor writes “The Blue Orchard” in present tense which can occasionally pull me out of the story, but I think that in this case it lent itself to a feeling of immediacy and envelopment in Verna’s life. I was so engaged in the story that I actually had to go back after finishing the book to see whether or not Taylor had continued to use present tense throughout the entire novel, because I honestly had no idea.

A very interesting novel about a woman trying to make her way in the world during a very difficult period, and constantly questioning her own beliefs about the prevailing mortality of her time. Recommended.

Buy this book from:

Powells.*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.*
Amazon.*

This review was done with a book received from the publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell – Book Review

May 032010

Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell

Claude Monet was an impetuous young man, determined not to spend his life in his father’s store. Originally a caricaturist, when Claude is challenged by a painter friend to try landscapes, he falls in love with painting and knows he has found his life’s work. Although Monet was convinced of his own talent and that of his friends, Parisian society failed to recognize them in the same way. The artists were always short of money and hounded by their debtors. In the midst of his attempt to make a living from his art, Claude met a beautiful young woman named Camille working in her uncle’s bookstore. Convincing Camille to model for him begins a great, loving, and often rocky relationship between the great painter and his muse.

Okay, I really enjoyed this book. I know it is sort of trendy for people who are serious about art to hate on the Impressionists these days, but I love them. Actually, Impressionist works are pretty much the only paintings I like to look at. However, apart from learning about pointilism in 4th grade (we learned about and tried our hand at many Impressionist styles, but pointilism is the only one I distinctly remember), I really knew almost nothing about the Impressionists, and particularly about how the movement began. In a day when one can buy Monet’s water lilies emblazoned on almost anything, it seems strange to think that he was not an immediate success in his art. In fact, though, the entire school of Impressionism failed to meet with success for quite some time.

I think Monet’s lack of initial success was the most interesting aspect of the book for me, because it so strongly informed his relationships. For instance, Claude loved Camille deeply, but his lack of ability to provide adequately for them put a strain on their marriage that was exacerbated by her bouts of depression and her childhood growing up very well off. The other major set of relationships in the book was between Monet and his Impressionist friends. I loved the tension between them supporting one another with their limited resources and their pain over their lack of success as young men.

“Claude and Camille” gives historical context to Impressionism, contains a (complicated) love story, and includes equally complicated and yet rich relationships between friends, what’s not to like? Highly recommended.

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

This review was done with a book received from the publisher for a blog tour.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

TSS 2: Mother’s Day Giveaway

May 022010

Last summer I read Jennie Nash’s “The Last Beach Bungalow” and really enjoyed it. So, of course, I was very excited to hear that she had a new book coming out, and even more excited when she offered me a copy for review.

Nash’s new book is called “The Threadbare Heart,” and I’ll be starting it later today. Here’s the publisher’s description: (Note: I’ve whited out the publisher’s description so you can still see it if you want, but won’t be forced to, because after reading the book I realized that it is RIDICULOUSLY spoilery. If you don’t want to be spoiled but do want to know what the book is about, you can check out my review).

A photo of her sons. A doormat from Target. Twenty-three tubs of fabric. Somehow it comforts Lily to list the things she lost when a wildfire engulfed the Santa Barbara avocado ranch she shared with her husband, Tom. He didn’t make it out either. His last act was to save her grandmother’s lace from the flames-an heirloom she has never been able to take scissors to, that she was saving for someday…

As she negotiates her way through her grief, mourning both the tangible and intangible, Lily wonders about her long marriage. Was it worth all the work, the self-denial? Did she stay with Tom just to avoid loneliness? Should she have been more like her mother, Eileen-thrice-married and even now, approaching eighty, cavalier about men and, it seems, even her daughter’s emotions?

It’s up to Lily to understand what she could still gain even when it seems that everything is lost. Someday has arrived…

“The Threadbare Heart” is going to be released this coming Tuesday – right before Mother’s Day – so Jennie is sponsoring a Mother’s Day contest on this and about 25 or 30 other blogs. The winner from each blog will receive a signed copy of “The Threadbare Heart” and will be entered in the grand prize drawing to win a ‘book club in a box’ of 10 signed copies of the book, a call to your bookclub from Jennie, and a rum cake. I’m really contemplating entering on someone else’s blog just to try for the rum cake!

Here’s what will happen:

Sometime this week leave a contest entry on ONE of the blogs participating, about 250(ish) words on your favorite fictional (book, film, whatever) mother-daughter pair: who made you laugh, cry, explore your own relationships, whatever. If you are entering here, as I hope you will, please leave your response in the Google Form below.
On Mother’s Day, each blogger will post their the favorite response (so, by entering, you’re giving me permission to post your entry, along with your name!). I will simply choose the response that most appeals to me. If multiple responses are roughly equal in my estimation, I will choose via Random.org.
On May 16th Jennie will choose her favorite entry to win a grand prize, and the blogger on whose blog the entry originally appeared will win a gift certificate to Powells (but, alas, no rum cake!)

TSS: Unitasking Failure

May 022010

Last week I talked about the fact that I wanted to try an experiment in unitasking. I was doing really well on Monday until about 3:30, when I got tired and no longer really felt like being too productive. Since then, I really haven’t been doing well at all. Part of the issue has been sleep, I didn’t sleep well last Saturday or Sunday night, and since then we’ve been teaching Daniel to put himself to sleep, which hasn’t yet resulted in great sleep for us, although he’s starting to get pretty good.

With Daniel’s sleep issues, I didn’t get a whole lot read this week. Here’s what I finished in print:

And one audio:

I also read half of section three of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” for the Classic Reads Book Club discussion and part four of “Wolf Hall” for my #WHall Twitter discussion.

I read “The Devil’s Highway” because Luis Alberto Urrea is going to be at an event at my favorite indie bookstore, The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn this coming week. He’ll be there for Cinqo de Mayo to celebrate his new work “Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush.” There will be books and margaritas – what could be better???

Here is what I reviewed last week (covers link to posts):