Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows – Book Review

Apr 132011

Mothers & Daughters by Rae Meadows
Published by Henry Holt & Co, an imprint of Macmillan

Motherhood has changed Samantha. Her life is consumed by her baby daughter and, quite frankly, Samantha likes it like that. Part of it is her fear that motherhood has so changed her that she will no longer be able to create her art, but she also just can’t bear to leave her daughter. Complicating this dance of early motherhood is Samantha’s grief over the death of her mother Iris, just a short time before the birth of her daughter. When Samantha’s brother sends her a box of Iris’s things, she begins to learn truths about her family that have been long hidden.

Mothers and Daughters is told from the perspective of Samantha, Iris, and Iris’s mother Violet. I found Violet’s story to be both the most compelling and the most disconnected from the rest of the book – which sounds like a negative comment, but isn’t. Violet grew up in New York with a spoiled, dissolute mother who could not – or would not – care for her properly, and who ended up putting her on an orphan train. (Side note: I was more than a little shocked to learn about the orphan trains. After reading Mothers and Daughters I did more research on them and understand the sentiments behind them a bit better, but I was furious for large portions of Violet’s story). It makes perfect sense, really, that Violet’s story seems so disconnected from those of Iris and Samantha, because the life she lived as Iris’s mother in the Midwest was worlds apart from the one she lived growing up in New York City in the early 20th century.

I loved Meadows’s writing, and the way her story was constructed, but perhaps the most stunning thing about Mothers & Daughters is just how quickly I connected with the characters. The narration was done on a rotating basis, so the first three chapters contained one chapter in each woman’s voice, and each of them gave me something in their first chapter that made their stories compelling. Often when the points of view switch in a novel like this, a reader will have a favorite character to narrate, but I can honestly say that I did not. I could connect with each woman, even Iris whose story took place in such a different stage of life than my own. Not only was each woman compelling in her own right, their interactions and influences upon one another were fascinating and meaningful, without ever feeling contrived.

Just one teeny tiny thing: I really, really wanted Samantha to have a flower name, with her mother and grandmother named Iris and Violet. Either that, or I wanted for one of them to not have a flower name. I know, I have a weird thing about names, which is particularly odd since if a character’s name doesn’t bother me for some reason, I likely won’t even notice what it is. I know which character is which because of their characterization and am often hard pressed to remember names even upon looking up from the book for a moment.

Overall, I adored Mothers & Daughters. Highly recommended!

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Author’s agent.
* 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 Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry – Book Review

Apr 122011

The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry
Published by Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Ginny needs routine in her life, preferably routine that involves cooking. When her parents both die in a freak carbon monoxide accident on their first trip in years, her schedule is disrupted, to say the least. A panicked episode during the wake convinces her sister Amanda that Ginny can’t possibly stay by herself. Things are going very, very wrong for Ginny, who can’t stand the thought of losing the only home she has ever known, until something strange happens in her kitchen. While cooking from her grandmother’s handwritten recipe, Ginny suddenly realizes that her long-dead grandmother is in the kitchen with her, apparently brought back temporarily by Ginny’s cooking. Rather than being a way for her Ginny to redirect her life, however, bringing back people’s ghosts through her cooking seems to raise more questions for Ginny than it answers.

Okay, first of all, I love this cover. Love, adore, etc. I love the way the net hangs like a dress, how the weight of the peppers give it just the slightest hint of femininity. It is simple, but gorgeous.

I’m not sure if foodie fiction has just recently come onto my radar, or if it has had a huge uptick in popularity, but there is a lot of it out there, it is a trend I have noticed ever since Erica Bauermeister’s The School of Essential Ingredients, although of course it wasn’t new then, by any means. In so many of these books, food or cooking plays a somewhat magical role, bringing people together, healing broken hearts, or just providing people with a satisfying outlet for life. So even though I was excited for The Kitchen Daughter, I must admit that I was expecting something that was mostly more of the same. Bringing back the ghosts of loved ones by cooking their recipes? Of course, definitely the next logical progression for foodie fiction.

Except The Kitchen Daughter was much more than just a ‘food is magic’ rehash, mostly because of the depth McHenry brought to her main character, Ginny. Ginny is undiagnosed, but is likely living with Aspergers. Losing her mother is devastating for Ginny not only because it interrupts her routine, but because her mother is the one who put all of Ginny’s routines in place, and made them all possible. Ginny’s mother sheltered her from the world, so Ginny could avoid being upset. This does position the death of her parents as the perfect catalyst for Ginny’s growth, however, it is perhaps even necessary for any growth to occur. McHenry writes Ginny beautifully, certainly she has personality traits that many would find odd, but she is still wonderfully human and relate-able, she is not an Other with Aspergers. This is something that Ginny must try to make her controlling sister, Amanda, understand, and it is something that she must continually remind herself of as well, with her incredibly moving Book of Normal.

Those who love foodie fiction will love this book – the descriptions of cooking are mouth-watering, and the requisite recipes are included – but if you’re worried that you’ve burnt out on foodie fiction, The Kitchen Daughter still deserves your attention. It is a lovely book with characters who will be just as real as you read McHenry’s words as Ginny’s ghosts were when she cooked from their recipes.

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.

Madre by Liza Bakewell – Book Review

Mar 252011

Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun by Liza Bakewell
Published by W. W. Norton & Company

Madre means mother, right? Well, technically. Madre may mean mother in Spanish, but it means a whole lot else besides that in Mexico. There is an extensive list of madre idioms, nearly all of which have negative meanings along the lines of disaster or whore. How can this be, when mothers traditionally hold a very high place in Mexican society, in a land where the Holy Virgin, the mother of Christ, is so venerated? What question could be more fascinating to a social anthropologist with an interest in linguistics and feminist leanings from the United States living in Mexico? It was this first question, in fact, that turned Liza Bakewell from a social anthropologist into a linguistic anthropologist with a particularly interest in madre and the intersection of gender and language.

“It can be dangerous to say madre in Mexico. Underscored and italicized. His words would blow fire across the screen. A kind of watch-out fuerte, not only powerful, but really powerful. Like a match to gasoline, or a blow to the face.” -p. 47

Out of this fascination came Madre: Perilous Journeys with a Spanish Noun. The subtitle of Madre is really the best description of what this book is. Far from a strictly academic treatise, Madre is more of a travelogue/memoir combo by someone who is simply very intelligent and likes to think deeply about issues of language and society. In spite of this, the chapters are organized topically within the larger subject of madre: talking about piropo and albur, the grammatical dominance of maleness even in a room predominantly female, las mentadas de madre.

Perhaps this begins to explain the origins of the symbolic dilemma of madre in Mexico. The Church believes the bride, once married, is Eve, not the Virgin. -p. 175-176

Maybe it is just me, maybe I missed my calling as an anthropologist, but I think that the intersection of gender, culture, and language is a fascinating place to linger and observe, and I’m so grateful that Bakewell brought me to this particular intersection. Even better, she does not manage to lose a non-Spanish speaking, non-linguist on her journeys. It could be occasionally disconcerting to have the very personal style interacting with the linguistic and anthropological insights, but overall it worked very well.

A very interesting book, if the concept interests you, then I can recommend Madre.

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 Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon – Book Review

Mar 152011

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Published by Harper Books, an imprint of Harper Collins

Always a strong and opinionated young woman, Kamila Sidiqi is not entirely sure what to do with herself once the Taliban overruns her home city of Kabul. She can no longer go to school, or indeed go outside with any freedom whatsoever. To make matters worse, Kamila’s older brother and father must flee to avoid being conscripted or punished by the Taliban and Kamila’s mother leaves with her father, leaving her five youngest children – nearly all in their teens – at home alone rather than risk their lives on a dangerous trip. As the oldest of the children left behind, Kamila is determined to do whatever it takes to care for her siblings, but to ensure that they are materially comfortable, she needs to find a way to make money, not an easy task since the Taliban will generally not let women work outside the home, or go anywhere without a male relative as an escort. Kamila is a resourceful young girl, however, and it is not long before she comes up with a plan: she and her sisters will become seamstresses, taught by their accomplished older sister who is married, but still lives in Kabul. All of the girls will work together to create the dresses, and Kamila will sell them to tailor shops in the market place. Clothing is, after all, one of the few items which people are still in Kabul.

I love portraits of people, particularly women, around the world, particularly when they show the strength of the human spirit through adversity. Looking at “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana” in that light, it was a fascinating book; Kamila and her sisters were incredibly brave and resourceful, finding a way to not only maintain their own household, but to provide work for numerous local girls and women as well.

Unfortunately, Lemmon’s writing and storytelling failed to captivate me. Everything seemed very flat. The danger inherent in their lives was stated, but never felt particularly urgent, nor was the political situation explored with much complexity, which disappointed me. The writing was very straightforward, but to the point where it, too, seemed to lack complexity.

“The Dressmaker of Khair Khana” failed to challenge me and, as such, I cannot recommend it wholeheartedly for adults, although people with particular interest in the lives of women in the Muslim world may find interesting. I do, however, think that this would be an inspiring and completely appropriate book for younger teens who wish to explore the realities of people in war-torn areas of the world.

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

Source: Publisher, via Net Galley.
* 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.

Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Mockett – Book Review

Mar 142011

Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Matsuki Mockett
Published by Graywolf Press

Life is not easy for a single woman and her daughter in post-war Japan. Satomi and her mother are making a living, but Atsuko’s presence as a smart, engaging, unmarried woman is seen as threat to the other women in their small, rural community. As such, Atsuko and Satomi were always made to feel as outsiders, a situation that was perhaps not helped by Satomi’s status as a musical prodigy. Atsuko is determined that Satomi’s life will be richer and more fulfilling than her own has been, discouraging her from a domestic future in favor of a life that will incorporate Satomi’s artistic abilities. When the unexpected happens, however, Satomi must learn how to make a new life for herself, because the life she has known is gone. The story picks up again with Satomi’s daughter Rumi living in San Francisco, having never known the mother she believes is dead. As new people come into Rumi’s life, however, she finds herself forced to examine her past and learn about the mother who has always been notable only in her absence.

Picking Bones from Ash is a lovely story of identity, family, and fitting in, among other things. The title comes a passage – relatively early in the book, this really isn’t a spoiler – after Atsuko passes away in Satomi’s absence:

I had missed my mother’s cremation and so had not been present when Mineko, Chieko, and the rest of their family had stood around her still-hot remains to remove her bones from the ash. They would have used chopsticks to do this, culling only the most essential parts of her body and placing them inside an urn, which was then set inside a box. – p. 98

Not knowing anything about funerary practices in Japan, I found this passage both shocking and beautiful. The thought of a family gathering around the remains of a loved one and doing something so intensely personal as picking out the bones with chopsticks is somewhat mind boggling, but at the same time, what better way to reiterate the loving bond of family, that you take care of one another even after death. And yet, if this is your own mother, one who you loved dearly, how heartbreaking to have missed such a ritual, to have it attended to only by your stepsisters and their families.

The place of women in the world over the last 50 years, the relationships between mother and daughter and their effect on the relationships of the next generation, the interaction of East and West. Add these things to a compelling story and sympathetic characters and you have a great novel. You also have Picking Bones from Ash by Marie Mockett. Recommended.

We will be discussing Picking Bones from Ash on March 22, 2011 at Linus’s Blanket.

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.

Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum – Book Review

Feb 082011

Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum
Published by Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

The first thing everyone seems to ask about Amaryllis in Blueberry is if it is like The Poisonwood Bible. The comparison seems obvious: an American family from the not-so-distant past, consisting of a mother, father, and four girls, move to Africa for a missionary endeavor. I will admit that, for the first portion of the book, I was unsure whether or not Amaryllis in Blueberry would end up being derivative of Kingsolver’s work, especially as the novel is narrated through multiple voices, as is The Poisonwood Bible. In the end, though, I truly do not think it was. The differences were not merely surface level either, the entire plot and feel of the book was different, all that was really shared was the plot point of a missionary voyage to Africa and the family size and structure, along with a couple of other shallow similarities (youngest daughter beloved of the mother, eldest daughter seemingly obsessed with her looks).

In Amaryllis in Blueberry, we begin with the family at home in the Midwest – although we see forward into their time in Africa immediately – and see them develop as people before they leave for Africa. Instead of coming directly from a strongly held religious belief, Dick Slepy’s decision to move his family to Africa so he can be a medical missionary arises from outside stimulus and he feelings and concerns about his family. The time in Africa is actually a surprisingly small portion of the novel, and even then Africa primarily presents a new setting that challenges the family to face their individual and group problems.

Each of the characters is severely flawed, but not so flawed that they seem absurd and unrealistic as a group, simply flawed enough to be recognizable as messily human. Their flaws as individuals and as a family forms the basis of Amaryllis in Blueberry and makes for a fascinating, realistic novel. Meldrum’s absolutely lovely writing serves to draw the reader immediately into the Slepy’s lives.

A well-written and well-plotted novel about a family’s darkest secrets. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound | Amazon*

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.

Little Rabbit Lost by Harry Horse – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jan 292011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Little Rabbit Lost by Harry Horse
Published by Peachtree Publishing

Little Rabbit, of selfish at Christmas fame, is having a birthday! He and his family are going to a theme park. Of course, flawed child that he is, he is convinced he is all grown up, and that he can – or should be able to – go on any ride he wants, because he is clearly Grown Up now. Frustrated at not getting his way, Little Rabbit wanders off to one attraction he actually can go on, and suddenly realizes he doesn’t know where any of his family is anymore.

In all honestly, this books is still a little too old for Daniel. It is a little more complex than most of the other books we read together. However, it does seem to keep his attention most of the time. There are so many things for him to look at on each page, things he can point to and ask me about. These are fairly complex pages, though, and in some moods that can be just too much. On every page, though, is Little Rabbit with his red balloon, something that Daniel could track from page to page to keep himself centered and concentrating on the book.

“Little Rabbit Lost” is a book I am going to keep reading to Daniel over and over. It might be a little over his head, but it keeps his attention, and it uses fabulously rich language. Little Rabbit’s balloon isn’t big, it is “enormous,” as his brothers and sisters ride the roller coaster, the “zoom,” and when Little Rabbit gets into the bouncy house he “clambered on and jumped and bounced.”

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

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 Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown – Book Review

Jan 202011

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
Published by Amy Einhorn Books, an imprint of Penguin

Sisters Rose, Bean, and Cordy – real names Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia, courtesy of the renowned Shakespeare scholar who is their father – have never gotten along particularly well. Rose is responsible to the point of being overbearing, Bean craves attention and makes sure she gets it, and Cordy just floats irresponsibly through life. Dependable Rose has always stayed in close proximity to her parents, but Bean and Cordy, long out doing their own things, are finally brought home – ostensibly, at least – by their mother’s battle with cancer. In reality, all three sisters have serious issues of their own which make them reexamine the lives they had been living, and they must return home to recoup. Although being suddenly returned to one’s childhood home with one’s siblings understandably causes lots of stress, the sisters also begin to learn to support one another in their lives going forward.

The first thing that any reader is going to notice about “The Weird Sisters” is the plural narration. I do not mean that each of the sisters narrates, I mean that they narrate together as if they were a single entity. Think of it as the spirit of their sisterhood looking back on these events from a point sometime in the future. This may sound odd, but it was the perfect touch in a book that deals with families, sisters, and Shakespeare. The plural voice gave hope for their eventual cohesion, and spoke beautifully about the bond they shared, even if they were loathe to admit it at the beginning of the book.

This was a beautifully written and wonderfully moving book. Each of the three sisters tugged on my heartstrings in their own way, and one of them (if you’ve read the book already, or once you have, come back and guess who!) brought me to tears near the end of the book, something that doesn’t happen to me terribly often with literature. “The Weird Sisters” is one of those books which I will be going back to again and again. I’m already planning to listen to the audio version, and I will be going out and buying a hardcover to keep permanently in my collection to replace my ARC (incidentally, both of these things are also true of “You Know When the Men Are Gone” by Siobhan Fallon, also out today from Amy Einhorn Books).

Highly recommended.

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

Source: Publisher, via a trade show.
* 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.

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton – Book Review

Jan 182011

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton
Published by Harper Paperbacks, an imprint of Harper Collins

When Martin’s brother Leon disappears without a trace, Martin is forced to leave his, admittedly not very happy or successful, life in New York to return to his family’s home in North Carolina. Having the family – obviously excepting Leon – back together again forces the Owenby family members to confront both their past and present secrets.

It is difficult to do justice to “Under the Mercy Trees” in a synopsis, as it is very much a discovery of who the characters are in the present, and what past events have shaped them. Newton draws her characters in a way that makes them immediately compelling. Martin, who is sure that he cannot live as a gay man in a mountain town of North Carolina, Ivy, who sees the ghosts that surround any family and any place, the rest of their friends and family, all of them are fascinating, even when they are being petty or unlikable.

Although I wouldn’t classify this as a mystery, precisely, I was engrossed the entire time reading this by the question of what happened to Leon, as well as the lesser mysteries of what exactly happened in the lives of the families all those years ago.

A fabulous read and a haunting debut, I think that “Under the Mercy Trees” has a fairly wide appeal, and it is a book I definitely recommend.

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

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.

TSS: Literary Cute Attack

Jan 162011

Even better than reading recently has been seeing how much Daniel, my 18 month old, is learning to love books. He loves being read to – won’t go to sleep without a book and someone singing him the ABCs, actually – and likes to flip through his books and look at the pictures and tell himself the story. He has also, lately, been grabbing my books away from me. He says “mine” and then spends a pretty good amount of time leafing through them as if he is actually reading them. I caught a really cute picture of him at the library that just made me ridiculously happy:

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