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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He climbed up there with the book all by himself.

——————————————

Here’s what I read over the past week:

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And then what I reviewed, covers link to posts:

The Love Goddess’ Cooking School by Melissa Senate – Book Review

Jan 102011

The Love Goddess’ Cooking School by Melissa Senate
Published by Gallery, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

All her life, Holly has been somewhat adrift. She tries to have a fulfilling life, including meaningful romantic relationships, but she herself seems unsure of what exactly she wants, and things never quite work out. After her latest failed relationship, Holly returns to her grandmother’s house on Blue Crab Island, off the coast of Maine. Holly’s grandmother is a special women who runs her own Cucinotta, teaches Italian cooking classes, and has been known to tell people’s fortunes – including telling Holly that the love of her life will be a man who loves sa cordula, a dish of lamb intestines with peas. When Holly’s grandmother passes away, Holly inherits everything but her gift of second sight, and must get her cooking skills – and her life – together if she wants to honor her grandmother’s legacy by keeping her store and classes going.

With “The Love Goddess’ Cooking School,” Senate has given us a sweet and well-written book about discovering one’s self and one’s talents. Holly is a likable and well-developed character. I did at times have trouble reconciling her great leaps forward in cooking ability, but I think that Senate supported that well with Holly’s unceasing practice, and the fact that she did grow up around her grandmother’s kitchen in the first place. The romantic angle was somewhat predictable – I knew from the second the love interest first walked into the store that he would indeed be the love interest – but that is not necessarily a bad thing in a fun and uplifting read like “The Love Goddess’ Cooking School.”

Interestingly, of all of the supporting characters, the love interest was perhaps the least well developed, but this did serve to make the book more about Holly and her self-discovery than about the great love foretold by her grandmother, which was somewhat refreshing. The members of Holly’s cooking class were very well sketched, with problems and realities of their own that added to the overall plot without seeming as if they were forced to do so.

Overall a very enjoyable book, and one I would recommend snuggling in with on a cold winter’s day.

Buy this book from:

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

Source: Library.
* 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: Let it Snow

Dec 122010

We’re in the middle of a winter storm until midnight tonight, although we’re only supposed to get 3-5 inches over all that time. Still, though, I think this is going to be sort of a quiet day at home. At the moment, Daniel and I are watching Elmo, hopefully that won’t be true the whole day long. He does like Elmo a whole lot, though:

I think that I’ll probably make my famous fudge (which is mostly just the same as the back of the marshmallow fluff jar, with a few alterations) for my work cookie exchange while Daniel is napping today, because this fudge takes a few days to set. We’re also going to go and make Christmas cookies with my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law after Daniel’s nap. I’m sure that, on the way, we will play in the snow as well, because Daniel has been having a lot of fun with that this week.

Although I had lots of fun taking videos of Daniel this week, I didn’t get much reading done. In fact, I only finished two books, both of which I also reviewed already (covers link to post):

In addition to those two, I also posted the list for my List Exchange Challenge with Nicole, and reviewed these books:

Hopefully I’ll get a little more read this week

Exley by Brock Clarke – Book Review

Dec 062010

Exley by Brock Clarke
Published by Algonquin, an imprint of Workman

When Miller’s dad leaves their family, he announces that he is going to join the war in Iraq, and Miller takes him at face value. Miller’s mother, on the other hand, is adamant that her husband could not possibly have gone to Iraq – after all he was too old, too out of shape, too lazy. When Miller continues to insist that his father is in Iraq and letters start showing up, ostensibly from his father, Miller’s mother put him into therapy. Miller’s doctor, who refers to him as M., is a bit pretentious but does seem to have M.’s best interests at heart – if only because he has a crush on M.’s mother. Everything comes to a head when Miller discovers that his father – or someone he assumes is his father – is lying unconscious in the Veteran’s Hospital. In order to return his father to health and to his own life, Miller decides that he must find Exley, whose fictional memoir, “A Fan’s Notes,” is the one thing Miller’s father is truly passionate about in life. He is certain that if he brings Exley to his father, his father will get well again.

Over the last weekend, I found myself in a bit of a reading funk. I had a hard time picking up or concentrating on anything, until I picked up “Exley.” As might be expected of an author whose first book is titled, “An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England,” Brock Clarke has, with “Exley,” written a quirky and fascinating novel. The most immediate thing that captured my attention was the question of whether or not Miller’s father really went to Iraq and whether he was currently lying unconscious in a hospital bed. This brought up an even more intriguing question: if he had not been to Iraq, was Miller simply misinformed and confused, or is he an unreliable narrator? There is, of course, the issue of the man in the hospital, as well as some letters Miller’s mother intercepted, which she believes that Miller wrote and had someone post from an APO address.

This is an incredibly quirky book, with Miller expounding on things his father taught him, which his father learned from Exley, and calling people by their initials and speaking in imprecise dates as his father and Exley both do as well. Although not for the easily offended, Exley is an immensely enjoyable book which I can highly recommend.

Thanks to Beth Fish Reads, who has helped me to become more aware of the imprints I love over the past year, beginning with her Amy Einhorn Perpetual Challenge. Follow her blog for regular spotlights of some of her favorite imprints.

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.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver- Book Review

Nov 262010

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

Although Barbara Kingsolver and her family enjoyed the time they spent living in Tucson, Arizona, the severe water shortage and lack of locally grown food was something that always somewhat bothered them. So the family packed up and relocated to their land in Appalachia to experience an entire year eating locally so that they could pay close attention to what they were actually eating, and so they could reduce the oil used for their food to travel to them. Over the year they primarily utilized their own land and the local farmers’ market.

Wow. Not only does Kingsolver have beautifully lyrical prose, but she and her family are totally hardcore as well. All four of them completely bought into this project, eschewing all forms of quick convenience food – not that they relied heavily on it to begin with – but also locally out of season fruits and vegetables. Of all of the books I read for Harvest Week, this was the one that most inspired me to want to get off of my butt and do something. There were times that I got somewhat frustrated feeling that what Kingsolver was able to do would not be feasible for a good number of families, but that annoyance was mitigated by the fact that Kingsolver acknowledged this fact and made suggestions for how to do what was possible. In many ways this was actually a very practical book. As Kingsolver narrated the family’s story, her husband wrote short articles bringing their story into a larger context, and her college-aged daughter did a sort of wrap-up for most chapters, including recipes and sample meal plans for the week.

The chicken report: Chickens played a pretty prominent role in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” particularly in the life of Kingsolver’s youngest daughter who adored the birds and had a very well thought out business selling eggs. What really captured my attention, though, was a different breed of poultry. Kingsolver raised a brood of heritage turkeys, and some of the facts she shared about the type of turkeys most of us buy at the supermarket put me off my Thanksgiving dinner just a bit. For instance, we have so screwed with the genes of our factory farm turkeys that mature birds are “incapable of lying, foraging, or mating!” I mean, is that even a real bird at that point?

“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” is a fantastically well-written and very inspirational book, and I highly recommend it.

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

Source: Personal copy.
* 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.

Coop by Michael Perry – Book Review

Nov 232010

Coop by Michael Perry
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of Harper Collins

After spending his early life growing up on a farm, Michael Perry has returned, this time with his step-daughter and pregnant life. The family’s aim is relative self-sufficiency, or at least living from their land – and Perry’s writing work. His wife Annaliese, who plans to deliver the baby at home with the help of a midwife, will be homeschooling their daughter Amy (theoretically they are both doing it, but in practice it is largely Annaliese), and all of them will be working to get their farm working again. Pigs and chickens populate their lives, as Perry recalls his youth on a nearby farm and the lessons it has taught him, and those he has still to learn, about his adult life.

“Coop” has the feel almost of being Perry’s diary, or a recording of his thoughts over this year of his life. He travels effortlessly between the past and the present without being overly obvious about where he is going, but also while managing to give the reader a roadmap to what is happening when. It was this highly effective subtlety that really impressed me about “Coop.” Perry’s remembrances of his past always tied in with what was going on in the present, as might be expected with the diary or journal feel that “Coop” had, but he never belabored the point. Instead, Perry gives his readers the tools necessary to make the connections and he trusts them to do just that, not even titling his chapters. And you know what? It worked. I got the themes, I understood the trains of thought, and I felt that Perry respected me as a reader by not explicityl spelling every last thing out for me. He is also brutally honest about his life and hardships and is always hardest on himself without being obnoxiously self-deprecating, which is hugely attractive in this sort of memoir.

The chicken report: Perry had both laying hens and meat hens. I’m really only interested in the former, I have no desire to butcher my own meat. I loved his love of the chickens, and his descriptions of their personalities. I thought he walked the line between loving the birds and not becoming too attached very well and, even more impressively, he helped his young daughter do the same.

Perry seems to respect me as a reader and, as such, I respect him greatly as a writer. This is not the world’s fastest read, but it is a book worth taking your time with; I definitely recommend it if you are interested at all in the life of a man and his family returning to the farm.

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 Red Thread by Ann Hood – Book Review

Nov 152010

The Red Thread by Ann Hood
Published by W.W. Norton & Co

After losing her daughter – and subsequently her marriage – in a tragic accident, Maya Lange moved across the country and began the Red Thread Adoption Agency, helping families adopt baby girls from China. None of Maya’s new friends, clients, or coworkers know about her loss, they simply know she is completely devoted to her job and to bringing families together with the little girls destined to be part of their family. The latest batch of families seeking new additions includes Maya’s good friend, Emily, who is desperate to make her marriage – which is her husband’s second – feel like a family, despite her sullen stepdaughter who wants nothing to do with her.

Instead of focusing solely on Maya, or solely on Maya and Emily, Hood gives roughly equal time to each family contemplating adoption, in addition to writing chapters from Maya’s point of view as she works to help these families bring home babies and works out her own painful personal history at the same time. I was actually somewhat worried when I discovered that so many characters were receiving sections from their own point of view and that each Chinese family whose daughter would find a new home would have their story briefly told as well. Often novels with large ensembles do not work well for me because they frequently seem to sacrifice good character and even plot development for too many points of view, and “The Red Thread” had only 300 pages to tell all of these stories.

My fear was totally unfounded.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how she did it, but Ann Hood managed to evoke in me an intense emotional connection to the story she was telling and to the plights and lives of all of the families involved, even those Chinese families whose stories were given only a few pages. Maya’s story brought me to the point of tears more than once, and books very rarely make me cry (other than a few Harry Potter deaths, which still get me every time). Part it may have been that this is a highly personal story for Hood who also lost a child and went through the adoption process, but I think it is just as much the fact that she is a phenomenal writer whose backlist I now can’t wait to read.

The writing was gorgeous, the plotting was perfect, and the characterization was superb; it was emotionally engaging without being emotionally manipulative. I can very highly recommend this “The Red Thread.”

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

Source: 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.

A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein – Book Review

Nov 092010

A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
Published by Algonquin Books

Doctor Peter Dinzinoff seems to have it all: good friends, lovely house, successful practice, loving wife, and the child for which he and his wife had to try so hard. Really, it isn’t even an illusion of having it all, other than some tension between Pete and his son, his life really is going splendidly. Until it isn’t any longer. By the opening of “A Friend in the Family,” Pete has been kicked out of the house with his wife contemplating divorce and removed from his medical practice. He can no longer bring himself to answer his best friend’s phone calls and his son won’t speak to him. As he sits in his garage apartment and awaits a civil trial that could change his life for the better or for the worse, he begins reminiscing on what exactly brought him to this point, and remembering all the ways in which he has really been a very lucky man.

I have been reading a whole lot of really fabulous books lately, and “A Friend of the Family” is another in that line. Please prepare yourself for gushing (this seems to be happening at least once a week – not that I am complaining!).

“A Friend of the Family” is one of those books that I loved so much it is almost difficult to say why. The main thing is that Grodstein purely and simply wrote a book that I didn’t want to put down and, when I had to put it down, I counted the minutes until I could pick it back up again. Even more amazingly, she did so without histrionics or manufactured suspense. Although this is not a mystery per se, the reader is left wondering what exactly happened to cause Pete to lose everything. This desire to understand what happened flows out of a genuine regard for Pete and his friends and family created by Grodstein’s impeccable character development and sustained by flawless structure of the novel, with brief glimpses of the present amidst the flashback narrative. It does not always work well to have the majority of story told as flashbacks, but it definitely did in this case – I think it helped that the flashbacks proceeded in chronological order, so as not to perplex the reader. Although I knew it would break my heart on his behalf, I simply had to find out what happened to Pete, as if he were a real person whose story I was hearing.

Love. Very, very highly recommend.

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

Source: review copy
* 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 Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown – Book Review

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton – Book Review

TSS: Literary Cute Attack

The Love Goddess’ Cooking School by Melissa Senate – Book Review

TSS: Let it Snow

Exley by Brock Clarke – Book Review

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver- Book Review

Coop by Michael Perry – Book Review

The Red Thread by Ann Hood – Book Review

A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein – Book Review

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