The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp – Book Review

Sep 202011

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp
Published by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan

Little K was a prima ballerina, the lover of the last Russian tsar. A woman whose determination brought her into the beds of many members of the imperial family, but whose brilliant future was derailed when Russia as she knew it began to disappear, along with her beloved Tsar Nicholas II, and something where the concubine of the Romanovs was a dangerous thing to be. But perhaps it would be best to let Little K introduce herself in her own words, as this is a story she has been endlessly remembering for the past 50 years:

My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages. But the world I was born to, the world I was bred for, is gone, and all the players in it are also gone – dead, murdered, exiled, walking ghosts. -p. 3

Mathilde Kscessinska is a fascinating subject through whose eyes the reader can explore the fall of tsarist Russia. As a member of the Imperial Ballet and daughter of well-respected Catholic Poles as well as the mistress of Tsar Nicholas II and at least two other members of the imperial family, she had a unique point of view for the fall of the empire, particularly as she also had the benefit of hindsight from her Parisian exile. Sharp excelled in creating Little K’s voice. There was a sort of learned regal quality to her thoughts, a self-aware verbosity that spoke of a women reaching to achieve a higher station. Occasionally this resulted in mild distraction, such as when commas extended sentences far too long, or when Little K would digress into future events while telling her story. Still, overall it was done to good effect.

Although some of the more minor characters are easily confused, Little K’s story is a dramatic and interesting one that is told well. Recommended.

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.

October BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

Sep 192011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharpe (Tuesday, September 27 right here), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In October we will be reading another offering from Picador, The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer.

marriageartist picture

We will be discussing The Marriage Artist on Tuesday, October 25th on Nicole’s blog.

From the publisher:

When the wife of renowned art critic Daniel Lichtmann plunges to her death, she is not alone. Lying next to her is Benjamin Wind, the very artist Daniel most championed. Dedicating himself to uncovering the secrets of their relationship, Daniel discovers a web of mysteries leading back to pre–World War II Vienna. Ambitious, haunting, and stunningly written, The Marriage Artist is an “elaborate psycho-political-sexual puzzle, with…hard truths, startling visions, and eerie insights into the mystical and memorializing powers of art, and that endless hunger we call love” (Booklist).

If you would like to be considered as a participant for October, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, September 21. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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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.

BOOK CLUB – The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

Jul 262011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture Welcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson, which was released at the end of June from Other Press (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

When a young, pregnant woman, Lillie, is found floating dead in Richmond’s reservoir, the cause of death is originally thought to be suicide, but soon the evidence piles up so that murder is suspected. Before too long, the police pick up Lillie’s cousin Tommie, with whom she had been having a fling. As it becomes more and more obvious that Tommie was with Lillie the night she died, he is put on trial for her murder, his own life hanging in the balance.

theresevoir picture Before we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Caribou’s Mom
Devourer of Books
House of the Seven Tails
Indie Reader Houston
Linus’s Blanket
That’s What She Read

If you plan on participating in today’s BOOK CLUB, please consider subscribing to comments at the bottom of the page (please use the TOP subscription option, the second option will subscribe you only to replies of your own comments). I will be updating this post with new questions and ideas over the course of the day.

Here we go…

First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
I suspect some people will be put off by the distant language. Did you find yourself able to engage with the story and characters?
Fictionalizing true crime can be difficult. Do you think that Thompson struck a good balance between the different genre elements of his story?
Richmond reacted quite strongly to Lillie’s death and Tommie’s accusation. What does their reaction tell us about the mood of the town post-Civil War? Was the level of engagement a believable part of the story for you?
Thompson tells Tommie’s story by alternating between the storyline of the trial and his earlier life and interactions with Lillie. Was this method effective?
Do you believe Tommie’s final story of what happened to Lillie? If not, what do you think really happened?

12 review copies of The Reservoir were provided by Other Press in order to facilitate this discussion. Thank you!

The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson- Book Review

Jul 202011

The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson
Published by Other Press

When a young, pregnant woman, Lillie, is found floating dead in Richmond’s reservoir, the cause of death is originally thought to be suicide, but soon the evidence piles up so that murder is suspected. Before too long, the police pick up Lillie’s cousin Tommie, with whom she had been having a fling. As it becomes more and more obvious that Tommie was with Lillie the night she died, he is put on trial for her murder, his own life hanging in the balance.

The Reservoir has just a bit of a slow start. I read about 35 pages and put it down for a week, without ever particularly needing to pick it up again. Once I finally picked it up again, however, I finished the last 300 pages in just two sittings in under 24 hours. Thompson has brought 19th century Richmond to life.

The based-on-a-true-story events of The Reservoir are viewed at somewhat of a remove, with distant language, but it worked in this case. Tommie is removed from his own life, awaiting the outcome of his trial. The narrative distance also contributes to the questions about whether or not Tommie is a reliable narrator in his tales of what happened to Lille, of what really happened.

After a slow start, The Resvoir is a truly engrossing, beautifully-written literary historical mystery.

We will be discussing The Reservoir right here on Tuesday, July 26 as part of BOOK CLUB, all are welcome to attend.

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.

August BOOK CLUB giveaway – By Nightfall

Jul 112011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The Reservoir by John M. Thompson (Tuesday, July 26 right here), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In August we will be reading another offering from Picador, By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham.

bynightfall picture

We will be discussing By Nightfall on Tuesday, August 23th on Nicole’s blog.

From the publisher:

Peter and Rebecca Harris, midforties, are prosperous denizens of Manhattan. He’s an art dealer, she’s an editor. They live well. They have their troubles—their ebbing passions, their wayward daughter, and certain doubts about their careers—but they feel as though they’re happy. Happy enough. Until Rebecca’s much younger, look-alike brother, Ethan (known in the family as Mizzy, short for the Mistake), comes to visit. And after he arrives, nothing will ever be the same again.

This poetic and compelling masterpiece is a heartbreaking look at a marriage and the way we now live. Full of shocks and aftershocks, By Nightfall is a novel about the uses and meaning of beauty, and the place of love in our lives.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for August, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, July 13. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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The Convert by Deborah Baker – Book Review

May 172011

The Convert by Deborah Baker
Published by Graywolf Press

One might think that a young Jewish girl growing up during WWII in New York would, if anything, feel a strong kinship to her Jewish roots. Logic seems to suggest that the intense suffering of one’s people might make one more determined than ever to hold onto faith and cultural identity. Such was not the case, however, with Margaret (Peggy) Marcus. From an early age, Peggy was obsessed with the idea of Arab peoples and Islam. For her, the creation of the nation of Israel was an equal injustice to the people of Palestine as anything the Jews had ever suffered, the repeated lauding of Zionism by those around her was endlessly disturbing to her and, in the end, caused her to renounce her religious and cultural heritage. Before long, Peggy turned to Islam and became Maryam Jameelah, moved to Pakistan, and began producing copious writings against the tyranny of materialism and lack of spiritualism in the West. It is this transformation that Baker attempts to address in The Convert: A Tale of Islam and Extremism.

I say that Baker attempts to address this transformation, because I question the effectiveness of her approach. The storytelling was very nonlinear – from Maryam’s trip to Pakistan, to the extensive history of the man who would serve as her guardian, back to her childhood, and then through her early years in Pakistan. It seemed that this flow may have followed Baker’s own discovery of Maryam’s story, but that is not completely obvious. If it was Baker’s plan for The Convert to have a feel similar to the discovery journey approach of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she needed to insert herself farther into the story, and give the reader a better idea of her background and biases; if it was her plan to write a more objective tale, she needed to be much less in the story. Baker directs at Maryam what can only be described as a rant at the end of Chapter 8, a moment that seemed very much out of place with the rest of the book.

The Convert is the type of book that really requires the reader to have the full story on the author. At the very end, in Baker’s note on methodology, it becomes apparent that many of the letters presented in a straightforward manner throughout the book were actually edited, and even rewritten, events moved from one letter to another, by Baker, in an attempt to make her story flow more smoothly and make more sense. She does succeed in making roughly the middle third of the book, comprised primarily of Maryam’s letters, flow very nicely, but at what cost? Without any idea about Baker’s biases and motivation, this is very problematic, as the reader is left without any idea to what extent letters were changed and to what purpose. It is hard to know how far to trust Baker, especially in light of the aforementioned rant.

The idea behind The Convert is a fascinating one: what makes a young woman of privilege drastically change her life and travel to what would to her be a very foreign country and rail against her native land? Sadly, the execution just was not there.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, for Book Club – discussion today.
* 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.

June BOOK CLUB Giveaway – The Reservoir

May 092011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of The Convert by Deborah Baker (Tuesday, May 17 on Nicole’s blog), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In June we will be reading another offering from Other Press, The Reservoir by John M. Thompson.

theresevoir picture

We will be discussing The Reservoir here on Tuesday, June 28th.

From the publisher:

On an early spring morning in Richmond, Virginia, in the year 1885, a young pregnant woman is found floating in the city reservoir. It appears that she has committed suicide, but there are curious clues at the scene that suggest foul play. The case attracts local attention, and an eccentric group of men collaborate to solve the crime. Detective Jack Wren lurks in the shadows, weaseling his way into the investigation and intimidating witnesses. Policeman Daniel Cincinnatus Richardson, on the brink of retirement, catches the case and relentlessly pursues it to its sorrowful conclusion. As the identity of the girl, Lillie, is revealed, her dark family history comes to light, and the investigation focuses on her tumultuous affair with Tommie Cluverius.

Tommie, an ambitious young lawyer, is the pride and joy of his family and the polar opposite of his brother Willie, a quiet, humble farmer. Though both men loved Lillie, it’s Tommie’s reckless affair that thrusts his family into the spotlight. With Lillie dead, Willie must decide how far to trust Tommie, and whether he ever understood him at all. Told through accumulating revelations, Tommie’s story finally ends in a riveting courtroom climax.

Based on a true story, The Reservoir centers on a guilty and passionate love triangle composed of two very different brothers and one young, naive girl hiding an unspeakable secret. A novel of lust, betrayal, justice, and revenge, The Reservoir ultimately probes the question of whether we can really know the hearts and minds of others, even of those closest to us.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for June, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, May 18. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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BOOK CLUB – Galore by Michael Crummey

Apr 262011

Welcome to BOOK CLUB, which I run with co-conspirator Nicole from Linus’s Blanket. Today we will be chatting about Galore by Michael Crummey, which was released at the end of March from Other Press (website | twitter | facebook). For those of you reading this post, please remember that this discussion is likely to contain spoilers.

Here is the synopsis of the book I wrote for my review:

Paradise Deep and Gut are insular, isolated Newfoundland communities. Theirs is a hardscrabble life where nothing much changes, in many of the families one generation seems largely interchangeable with another, a constant cycle of birth and death, and birth again. But then, a whale washes ashore. A beached whale represents a bounty for a community that does not have the resources to catch more than cod, but when they slice open the whale’s stomach, a strangely pale man tumbles out. Named Judah due to a disagreement about whether it was Judas or Jonah who was swallowed by the whale in the Bible, the mute man is s subject of fear and wonder for the community by turns.

It is a bit difficult to say what Galore is about, because, at its heart, it is simply about the people of Gut and Paradise Deep. Even Jonah’s odd appearance – both in how he comes to the community and in how he looks – is not truly at the heart of this novel. Instead it is the people, the community as a whole, even.

galore picture Before we get started, here are some of the reviews of readers who will be participating today:

Caribou’s Mom
Devourer of Books
House of the Seven Tails
Indie Reader Houston
Linus’s Blanket
Picky Girl

Here we go…

First off, what were your general impressions of the book?
Is this a book you would have read had you not been reading it for a book club?
Judah was seen alternatively as a kind of curse or lucky charm for the community, did how he was seen by others change how you saw or felt towards him? How you felt towards the people around him?
It wasn’t until 30 odd pages into Book Two that I knew when Galore was set, when we were told that King-Me died sometime before the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The timeline became more clear towards the end of the novel, but until then seemed that it could have taken place almost any time. Do you think this was a conscious decision on the part of Crummey? Did it enhance or detract from the story for you?
Newman, the doctor, finds Newfoundland too fantastical to believe in when he is back in the states. Do you agree with his assessment? If so, was the land still believable to you while reading?
The end FASCINATED me. Thoughts? Opinions? Theories?
What kinds of questions did you have during your reading? Were they answered?
Do you have any other questions for the group?

Additional questions from Amy:

Has anyone read Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Do you think the comparisons between him and Crummey are valid? If so, in what ways?

12 review copies of Galore were provided by Other Press in order to facilitate this discussion. Thank you!

Galore by Michael Crummey – Book Review

Apr 252011

Galore by Michael Crummey
Published by Other Press

Paradise Deep are Gut are insular, isolated Newfoundland communities. Theirs is a hardscrabble life where nothing much changes, in many of the families one generation seems largely interchangeable with another, a constant cycle of birth and death, and birth again. But then, a whale washes ashore. A beached whale represents a bounty for a community that does not have the resources to catch more than cod, but when they slice open the whale’s stomach, a strangely pale man tumbles out. Named Judah due to a disagreement about whether it was Judas or Jonah who was swallowed by the whale in the Bible, the mute man is s subject of fear and wonder for the community by turns.

It is a bit difficult to say what Galore is about, because, at its heart, it is simply about the people of Gut and Paradise Deep. Even Jonah’s odd appearance – both in how he comes to the community and in how he looks – is not truly at the heart of this novel. Instead it is the people, the community as a whole, even.

What is particularly amazing about Galore is just how meaningful and riveting it is, given the number of people and the length of time covered. Although the Devine family – who shelter Jonah to the point of marrying him to a daughter of the family – and the Sellers family are certainly the major players, Crummey has created a rich cast of characters, each with their own particular foibles. The drama of the communities spans more than a century, the majority of that time passing in the second half of the book. This seems like it should be a recipe for a shallow and confusing story, but this is not the case. Certainly, I had to flip back and forth to the family tree at the front of the book more than once to remind myself of how certain people were related, but the characters have surprising depth and are surprisingly compelling given how many of them there are.

Galore is a masterfully written book with beautiful language and fabulous character development. The mixture of day-to-day life and fantastical happenings is particularly well done. Highly recommended.

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.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp – Book Review

October BOOK CLUB giveaway – The Marriage Artist by Andrew Winer

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham – Book Review

BOOK CLUB – The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson- Book Review

August BOOK CLUB giveaway – By Nightfall

The Convert by Deborah Baker – Book Review

June BOOK CLUB Giveaway – The Reservoir

BOOK CLUB – Galore by Michael Crummey

Galore by Michael Crummey – Book Review

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Protect Your Website:

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BOOK CLUB Giveaway:

Listen Up! Audiobook Week 2012

Recognition

Regular Features/Special Events