Q: A (Timeless) Love Story by Evan Mandery – Book Review

Sep 142011

Q: A (Timeless) Love Story by Evan Mandery
Published by Harper Paperbacks, in imprint of HarperCollins

Q (Quentina Elizabeth Deveril) is wonderful, the very best thing that has ever happened to our unnamed protagonist (let us call him I). It is not long at all before he knows he wants to marry her, and it seems that she loves him deeply as well. And really, aside from the fact that her father is a bit of an ass, it seems that their relationship is perfect, that their life together will be a happy one. So it comes as a bit of a surprise when I’s future self, who he gives the designation I-60, comes back to tell him that, for her sake as much as his own, he must not, under any circumstances, marry Q. As I strives to follow the advice of his future selves, his world begins to make less and less sense, and the future becomes more and more difficult.

In many ways, Q: A (Timeless) Love Story is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be happy, and whether true happiness can ever result from actions taken solely to avoid pain, as well as of the unexpected ways in which our actions change our futures.

At the same time, however, I, our unnamed protagonist, is a supremely annoying main character. He is quite fully human with foibles enough that he doesn’t become entirely unsympathetic, but he is the height of ridiculousness, going on for pages about his hatred of coat checks and bathroom attendants and the correlation between toffee and the winter solstice. He’s just odd and obnoxious, as can be seen in his internal monologue when he is in the green room of the Stephen Colbert show – with which he is utterly unfamiliar – to promote his strange and unpopular book:

In the green room, they have put out fruit. The spread consists of cantaloupe and honeydew and watermelon. I do not care for honeydew, but I respect it as a melon. -p. 22

It goes on from there, denigrating the watermelon, but it is so eye roll-inducing that typing any more of it is simply beyond the pale.

These passages are supremely successful in showing the reader exactly what kind of person I is, but they do raise the question of why, if Q is really so wonderful, she ever wanted anything to do with him. She is delightful and personable, it seems unlikely that she would care to commit her life to such an awkward man. Unlike I, though, Q is not well-fleshed at all, the reader can get very little feel for who she truly is, beyond I’s perception of her.

Somehow, though, regardless of I’s annoying traits and the lack of characterization of Q and the other characters, Q: A (Timeless) Love Story is an incredibly engaging book. Not even I’s overuse of the word ‘sanguine’ served as disincentive to continue reading.

Engaging with a fascinating concept and message, but an incredibly obnoxious main character, Q is in the odd position of neither being recommended nor warned against. This is a decision that each reader must make for his or herself.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: 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.

The Book of Life by Stuart Nadler – Book Review

Sep 072011

The Book f Life by Stuart Nadler
Published by Reagan Arthur Books, an imprint of Hachette

The Book of Life is the debut story collection of Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate Stuart Nadler. His seven stories are on the themes of faith and family, of coming of age and growing old. Each takes places in the Northeast, generally New York or Boston, and each is captivating.

Like any short story collection, there are high and low points, but in the case of The Book of Life, the high points are so very high, and the low points leave nothing much to criticize. Certainly I’d have liked more from Visiting, more resolution, a longer story in general, but it was only among my least favorite because I was so intrigued by the premise and simply wanted to stay in that world a little longer.

Nadler shows great skill in universalizing the lives of his characters. I do not have alcoholic parents, nor have I ever shared the house with an alcoholic, but still, this line from The Moon Landing, which was one of my favorite stories, just ran so true as I was immersed in the life of the man who spoke it:

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure I remember the way my mother did those things, or anythings, except, of course, how she drank. -p. 72

If you are a fan of short stories, do yourself a favor and pick up The Book of Life. If you are not a fan of short stories, keep Stuart Nadler on your radar, in the event that he attempts longer fiction in the future.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: 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.

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – Book Review

Aug 232011

By Nightfallby Michael Cunningham
Published by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan

Peter Harris’s life looks great on the surface. He has a smart, lovely wife, a grown daughter, and a relatively successful art gallery. Of course, his gallery is stuck around relatively successful, unable to break free. Plus, his relationship with his wife Rebecca has grown strained of late, and his daughter will barely speak to him. Into this barely held together veneer comes Mizzie. Mizzie, whose nickname is appropriately short for “mistake,” is Rebecca’s much younger brother, a brilliant but wild young man whose presence disrupts the fragile balance of Peter and Rebecca’s lives.

By Nightfall is a very complex book, one well-suited to discuss with a book club. I’m not sure I really understood Peter and his motivations, and I’m not sure I can without taking it through with other people. The reader is very much inside Peter’s head, which male in such a way that it became almost entirely foreign to me. Because Peter had lost any real connection with Rebecca – or any of the women in the book – there was no female viewpoint, no matter how miniscule, until the absolute end. This made for a novel that I had a difficult time accessing. It was quite readable, technically well-written, but I failed to truly engage, because I failed to truly empathize with Peter.

I suspect I will have more complete thoughts after discussing this with BOOK CLUB today, but for now I leave you with these somewhat unformed thoughts.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, for BOOK CLUB.
* 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.

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai – Audiobook Review

Aug 192011

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai, narrated by Emily Bauer
Published in audio by Highbridge Audio; published in print by Viking, an imprint of Penguin

Synopsis:

Liberal librarian Lucy Hull is not exactly what one would call happy in her life in Hannibal, Missouri. The one bright spot in her life is 10-year-old Ian Drake, the most spirited, voracious reader in Hannibal. Ian is also quite possibly gay, and the son of incredibly conservative Christian parents who have him enrolled in a religious program designed to turn him straight. When Ian runs away from home, his first stop is the library, where Lucy finds him early one morning. Somehow they end up in her car, with Lucy basically stuck continuing on with him in order to avoid the appearance of having kidnapped him.

Thoughts on the story:

Lucy is an incredibly obnoxious character from the get-go. Her self-righteous indulgence gives The Borrower a feeling of being about ISSUES. Now, my personal beliefs line up more or less with Lucy’s, but her attitude is an incredible turn-off, as is her inability to admit agency for anything that happens in her life. This combination of character traits garners no sympathy for her in the early pages of the book, as much as she feels that she has been trapped into the pseudo-kidnapping. Luckily much of this self-righteousness wears off over the course of the book, making her bearable by the end.

One particularly interesting device in The Borrower is the co-opting of children’s book plots such as Where’s Spot and The Very Hungry Caterpillar to show Lucy’s physical and emotional state of being. It is certainly clever in a book where the main character is a children’s librarian, but nearly every time it simply seems to go on too long. It also seems a little strange that the books whose plots are co-opted are geared to such young children, when Lucy’s favorite patron at the library is 10.

Thoughts on the audio production:

I must say, if I had encountered The Borrower in print, I’m not sure I would have even bothered to finish it. It was only Emily Bauer’s young and naive voice that began to give me a modicum of sympathy for Lucy as she began to realize just how much of a mess she had made of things. Bauer’s narration wasn’t perfect – her Russian accents left something to be desired, which is a bit of a problem in a book with multiple Russian characters – but in general I think that she added a good deal to my enjoyment of the story.

soundbytes picture Overall:

This ended up as a fairly engaging listen despite some significant problems in the beginning. If you are going to experience it, I recommend audio.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Publisher, via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
* 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.

Agoraphobics in Love

Aug 162011

Agoraphobics in Love: A Short Story by Lisa Tucker
Published by Simon & Schuster

Losing both of her parents at once caused Emily to retreat inwards – both into herself and into her house. When the thought of leaving home becomes unbearable, she finds solace in an online board for agoraphobics, where she meets Jules, a former ad director who lives within driving distance – if it weren’t for the fact that neither of them is willing to get in the car and drive.

Agoraphobics in Love is a lovely short story. Tucker manages fantastic characterization and a perfect story arc in the 50 pages of her narrative. Emily and Jules are both engaging and easy to relate to, even for readers without agoraphobia. I found myself wanting more than anything for their pseudo-love affair to work out.

If Tucker can do this with 50 pages, I’m very much looking forward to what she will do in a novel.

Tucker’s short story – which includes the first four chapters of her new book, The Winters in Bloom – is available now as an ebook for only $0.99. Buy it from your preferred ebook retailer.

About The Winters in Bloom, coming September 13 from Simon & Schuster:

Together for over a decade, Kyra and David Winter are happier than they ever thought they could be. They have a comfortable home, stable careers, and a young son, Michael, who they love more than anything. Yet because of their complicated histories, Kyra and David have always feared that this domestic bliss couldn’t last – that the life they created was destined to be disrupted. And on one perfectly ordinary summer day, it is: Michael disappears from his own backyard. The only question is whose past has finally caught up with them: David feels sure that Michael was taken by his troubled ex-wife, while Kyra believes the kidnapper must be someone from her estranged family, someone she betrayed years ago.

As the Winters embark on a journey of time and memory to find Michael, they will be forced to admit these suspicions, revealing secrets about themselves they’ve always kept hidden. But they will also have a chance to discover that it’s not too late to have the family they’ve dreamed of; that even if the world is full of risks, as long as they have hope, the future can bloom.

One Day by David Nicholls – Book Review and Giveaway

Aug 102011

One Day by David Nicholls
Published by Vintage Books, an imprint of Random House

One Day is a book with a novel premise. On July 15, 1988, Dexter and Emma finally have an almost-fling, after Emma having had a crush on Dexter for years. Luckily, they end their near-tryst as friends, and One Day continues to check in on them every year on July 15; some years they are moving together, others they are moving apart, but always they mean something to each other.

The concept is fabulous, but it also has inherent problems. Only checking in one day per year means that there is always a lot of back story to fill in during the in between periods, which leads to quite a few letters as literary devices and exposition disguised as internal monologue. This made Dexter and Emma’s story much less powerful than it might otherwise have been. On the other hand, by the end it is clear just how powerful Nicholls’ structure truly is.

In all honesty, I didn’t totally love One Day, primarily because of the problems with the structure listed above. However, I’m very excited about the movie coming out on Friday, August 19th (website | Facebook page). I think much of what required exposition in print can be conveyed with visual cues such as setting and body language in the movie.

________________

On August 3, I was lucky enough, along with a group of bloggers, to be able to speak with David Nicholls about the book and movie. My portion of that interview can be found here.

I also have a prize pack provided by Focus Features for one lucky reader, filled with:

A paperback copy of One Day, movie tie-in edition
Clear cosmetic case
Necklace
Moleskin Journal
(prize pack valued at $30.95)

To enter, fill out the form below by 11:59 pm Central on Monday, August 15. US-only, please.

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Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Big Honcho Media.
* 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.

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close – Book Review

Aug 092011

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
Published by Knopf, an imprint of Random House

The post-college years can be a relationship minefield. You begin to drift away from the friends who marry and have children significantly before – or after – you do; finding new friends and lovers becomes more difficult as you are no longer routinely thrown together in school with people in a similar age bracket and with similar interests. It is this limbo in which Isabella, Mary, and Lauren are firmly stuck. They are out of college and on their own: in nice apartments in Chicago and crummy shoebox ‘apartments’ in New York; in good relationships and dating idiots who cannot spell their names correctly; in nice, stable jobs and the worst of the worst waitressing jobs. In the middle of all this, they are scraping up cash for bridesmaids dresses, wedding shower presents, wedding presents, and baby shower presents, as it seems that everyone they know seems to be moving into that settled state of coupledom and familydom.

Girls in White Dresses is less a cohesive narrative than a collection of anecdotes about Isabella, Mary, Lauren, and their friends as they attempt to navigate young adulthoood. Rather than causing the readers to feel disconnected from her characters, though, Close’s structure lent her story a sense of universality. No matter what your post-college path or choices, it is likely that you will identify with one or more of the girls’ stories. Many of the vignettes in Girls in White Dresses are laugh out loud funny, as is this scene at a bridal shower when the bride’s mother’s friends all begin singing My Favorite Things:

They kept singing and started swaying back and forth. Abby was standing unfortunately close to the woman who’d started the singing, and the woman wrapped her arm around Abby’s shoulders, forced her to move in time with the music, and looked at her with an encouraging smile until Abby started to sing along with her. A few of the women were snapping their fingers. Lauren looked at Isabella and Mary and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?” -p. 171

Others, however, are poignant and thoughtful, as when Lauren and Isabella discuss a recently-divorced friend who has elected to keep her married name:

“Why wouldn’t she go back to Beth Bauer?” she asked Lauren. “She doesn’t have any kids. It’s so weird.”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “Maybe she’s afraid no one will remember who she is.”
“Maybe,” Isabella said. The thought left her uneasy. -p. 249

Close’s humor and grace is intensified by her lovely and engaging prose, creating in Girls in White Dresses a book that readers will be hard-pressed to put down.

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: 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.

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman – Book Review

Aug 082011

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins

It is hard to tell which is more soul-crushing: the corporate acronym-obsessed behemoth of a company for which Tom Violet works, or the incredibly embarrassing impotence he suffers whenever he and his wife try to make love (she really wants for them to have another baby). A visit from his father, the Pulitzer Prize-winning famous novelist isn’t exactly uplifting either, with Tom’s own novel sitting in a desk drawer. Really, the only bright spot most days is Tom’s lovely young subordinate at work, Katie, on whom he has an entirely inappropriate crush. This slow death but emotional and intellectual suffocation is not the future Tom had hoped for, so he decides he is going to make a change for the better in his life.

Domestic Violets is laugh-out-loud funny, right from the beginning. Think Office Space, but with a single protagonist who is older and slightly more mature, with a lot more problems in his life than just his job.

I do this sometimes. I react to thing based on what characters in movies would do. That’s kind of ironic, considering I’ve always thought of myself as a book person. At least I think that’s ironic. That word gets misused a lot. -p. 3

“She’s teaching Catcher in the Rye again this year. I guess her kids love it.”
Curtis shakes his head. “Well of course they do, Tommy. The only people who can actually get through that self-indulgent tripe without throwing up are teenagers and the criminally insane.” -p. 12

At the same time, though, Domestic Violets is a very real and at times quite moving novel. Despite this being a quintessential WMFUN (white male fuck up novel), Tom is an incredibly sympathetic character. After all, who among us doesn’t dream of doing what we love, instead of what pays the bills? Besides that, he really does love his wife and family, he just doesn’t always make the best decisions.

“It’s easier to love someone at first, when you’re young and you don’t know anything about anything. But it gets harder as you go along. Love is tough today. There are a lot of distractions.” -p. 177

Funny, smart, and meaningful, what else do you want in a book? Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* 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.

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister – Book Review

Jul 192011

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
Published by Putnam Adult, an imprint of Penguin

Kate is officially clear of cancer, but is now facing something potentially even more terrifying: whitewater rafting through the Grand Canyon with her daughter. When her friends gather to celebrate her recovery, though, they convince her that she should take advantage of the years returned to her and go for it. If Kate is going to face her fears, though, she is determined that the rest of her friends – a very heterogeneous group of women, who originally befriended one another during a baby holding circle for Sara and her twins.

Bauermeister is a master of connected stories that read more like a single, complete unit than disparate pieces. Her debut novel, The School of Essential Ingredients, followed a group of people taking cooking lessons with a very special woman. Joy for Beginners is even more wonderfully cohesive; all of the women are friends, so their lives intersect and intertwine in lovely, natural ways.

Part of what worked so well about Joy for Beginners is the fact that each of these women were at different stages of life, and in different places in their life. There is something for nearly every woman to identify with. Even better, however, is the fact that all of the women are real and genuine enough that the reader can empathize even with the ones whose lives least closely resemble her own.

An absolutely lovely book. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, at request of the author.
* 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.

Snakewoman of Little Egypt by Robert Hellenga – Audiobook Review

Jul 152011

Snakewoman of Little Egypt by Robert Hellenga, narrated by Coleen Marlo
Published in audio by Tantor Audio, published in print by Bloomsbury USA

Synopsis:

Newly released from prison after being incarcerated for six years for shooting her husband, Sunny just wants to move on with her life, starting by getting a college degree. She has requested that the prison not notify her abusive, snake-handling husband of her release, and headed to the college where her dead uncle once worked as a janitor. He rather conveniently left her $80,000 and apparently nobody at the university has a problem admitting a felon who didn’t complete high school, so she is set to study French and biology. Before long, Sunny finds herself involved with Jackson, her uncle’s friend, and finds Jackson becoming increasingly intrigued by her ex-husband’s church or snake-handlers. Nothing good can come of Sunny’s old and new worlds colliding.

Thoughts on the story:

Where oh where to begin? There are so many serious issues with this story that I’m sure I will not manage to list all of them, so let me start by saying I wonder just exactly how it made it past an editor. I can see how it might have been picked up initially, because the idea of the plot is strong, but there are so many serious errors in execution -especially in the second half – that I’m surprised it is at large in the marketplace.

To begin: the info dumps. It is quite obvious that Hellenga did extensive research for Snakewoman of Little Egypt, but he has the worst case of ‘let me show you what I know’ of any novelist I have ever read. Everything from kettle drums (which are not really drums, you know) to the interaction between squirrels and snakes. If Hellenga looked it up, he was damn well going to let you know about it. 98% of it was completely superfluous and distracted from the limited emotional life of the characters (more on that in a minute). Simply cutting all of these extra digressions, none of which particularly added anything, would have made Snakewoman of Little Egypt 100% better, although perhaps still not good.

Perhaps most importantly, there was no real character development. Nobody grew, nobody changed, and the reader was never given any indication of anyone’s real internal life. What happened between Sunny and Jackson having sex and them becoming a couple? How did Claire feel when she found out that her affair with Jackson was being ended because of his new relationship with Sunny? Instead of treating us to any of these insights, Hellenga spends his time in Sunny’s head as she wonders what sex was like between Jackson and his pygmy girlfriend.

In addition to these issues there were phrases repeated ad nauseum – including, among other things, the phrase “superhuman erection” to describe the feeling of holding a snake – and bulky, unrealistic dialogue added for exposition and the furtherance of plot at the expense of internally consistent story. OH, and the fact that every damn thing comes back to sex for Sunny and, to a lesser extent, the entire cast of characters.

The worst part is that the first half of the book actually showed a fair amount of promise, but everything went downhill after Jackson uttered the phrase “superhuman erection” for the second time about halfway through the book.

Thoughts on the audio production:

This is the part that makes me sad, because Marlo’s narration really is quite good. I wasn’t crazy about the voice she gave to one of the minor characters, but she was excellent at distinguishing between characters and switching between accents. Even her skilled narration, though, can’t save this trainwreck of a book.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Marlo’s narration does give the book some grace, but the audio format also accentuates the repeated phrases and inhibits skimming over info dumps, so I would advise just staying away from this book in general.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: 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.

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Devourer of Books

Q: A (Timeless) Love Story by Evan Mandery – Book Review

The Book of Life by Stuart Nadler – Book Review

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – Book Review

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai – Audiobook Review

Agoraphobics in Love

One Day by David Nicholls – Book Review and Giveaway

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close – Book Review

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman – Book Review

Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister – Book Review

Snakewoman of Little Egypt by Robert Hellenga – Audiobook Review

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