Madame Bovary’s Daughter by Linda Urbach – Book Review

Aug 172011

Madame Bovary’s Daughter by Linda Urbach
Published by Bantam, an imprint of Random House

Berthe Bovary is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in Madame Bovary, if only by the virtue of being one of the least developed. Finding herself a penniless orphan at the end of her parents’ story, Berthe goes off to her grandmother’s house and then to a workhouse, and then Flaubert feels no need to tell us anything else about her.

It is at this point that Linda Urbach picks up Berthe’s story, beginning with her moving to her grandmother Bovary’s house. Urbach balances the beginning of her story quite well, addressing both Berthe’s current situation and some of the background of her parents’ story. In fact, Berthe’s memories lend additional depth and meaning to moments of Emma’s story, such as the moment when Emma is effectively dumped by her first lover.

“Felicite gave Berthe one of the apricots to eat. Beautiful as it was to the eye, the flesh of the fruit was pulpy and strangely without flavor or sweetness.” -p. 108

Berthe is an engaging character, and her story is an interesting one. As a young woman finding her footing, it follows very well from her mother’s story that she would be attracted to the world of fashion, growing up surrounded by Emma Bovary’s beautiful clothing and then going to having nothing. Unfortunately, Madame Bovary’s Daughter suffered a bit from the at malady of historical fiction where the character becomes involved in every major advancement in his or her field.

“What followed was to be known thereafter as the world’s first fashion show. After much commotion, Worth’s models came out one by one, dressed in his most recent creations.” -p. 391

Of course, Berthe’s character is associated with this leader in the world of fashion at the time, but that doesn’t go quite far enough to explain just how influential she is claimed to be.

That historical fiction foible notwithstanding, Madame Bovary’s Daughter is a fun book that provides some much needed closure to Berthe’s story. Recommended.

Nicole and I had the opportunity to speak with Linda for our most recent episode\ of What’s Old is New, a show about Madame Bovary.

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Source: Publisher for an episode of What’s Old is New.
* 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.

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.

Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans – Audiobook Review

Jul 292011

Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans, narrated by Kirsten Potter
Published in print by Random House, published in audio by Tantor Media

Synopsis:

In Apollo’s Angels, Jennifer Homans tells the story of 400 years of ballet’s history, a history which, until now, has been unwritten.

Thoughts on the story:

Ballet is ballet is ballet. Or so I thought, before reading Apollo’s Angels. I had no idea that there were national differences even today, or that political movements such as the French and Russian Revolutions were so expressed through the art of ballet. Weighing in at almost 700 pages in print and close to 24 hours in audio, Apollo’s Angels is certainly a commitment, but it is a pleasant one. Homan succeeds in writing a book which is informative about the history of ballet and the way that ballet serves as a mirror of social and political history, while at the same time is not overly technical. There were certainly passages here and there that lost me briefly talking about specific steps, but even though I have not taken ballet since I was five years old, I was never lost for long, and was engaged enough to stick through those technical sections to return to the history.

The one place Homan did lose me was at the very end, in which she makes an argument for the disappearance of ballet in the near future which does not seem to be hinted at or backed up in any way by the 600 odd pages that precede it. Still, though, it was a very short passage in comparison with the rest of the book, and was not enough to permanently leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Kirsten Potter did an absolutely lovely job narrating Apollo’s Angels, the casting was really just perfect for the book. For my full thoughts on the audio, please see my review for Audiofile Magazine.

soundbytes picture Overall:

I was more interested in Apollo’s Angels for the social and cultural history than for the ballet itself, but ballet was a fascinating way to impart this history. I think this would work well in print or audio, although I don’t think I’d have done as well with it in print, as I would likely have gotten bogged down in the technicalities of dance. Recommended.

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: Audiofile Magazine.
* 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.

Tethered by Amy MacKinnon – Book Review

Jul 282011

Tethered by Amy MacKinnon
Published by Broadway, an imprint of Random House

Three years ago, a young, unidentified girl was found sexually abused and dead, another body for Clara to prepare. Clara, who survived her own childhood only by the grace of a God she no longer believes in. The one place Clara was able to find solace as a child was in the funeral home where her mother’s wake was held, although she still had to hold herself at a remove from those around her to function, touching only the dead. When a young girl named Trecie begins hanging around the funeral home Clara’s first reaction is annoyance, which is quickly replaced by worry, when it becomes apparent that Trecie may be involved with the same people who murdered Precious Doe.

Tethered has some hallmarks of a mystery: the main character becomes involved to a certain degree with a law enforcement officer and tries to solve a crime before someone else gets hurt. What Amy MacKinnon has done with Tethered, though is so much more. She has created a beautiful literary and psychological novel with the interest value of an extremely compelling mystery. Clara’s character is particularly interesting. Her own childhood abuse gives her a rich, complicated persona, which lends depth to the storyline. Equally deep and deliciously complicated is MacKinnon’s writing.

I’ve often thought there’s something reptilian about Mike’s eyes. No, not the coldness, it’s more about the layers. There’s a certain ambiguous quality to them. Like an alligator before it slips underwater, hiding its intent beneath the transparent shield that covers the cornea, allowing the animal to see as it protects itself from harm. It’s the same with Mike.

Tethered is a beautiful, occasionally painful novel and an absolutely compelling read. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

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.

Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen – Book Review

Jul 272011

Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen
Published by Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House

Lena is determined that she is going to win the school’s Bible verse recitation. As the only African American student in the school, a member of the only non-white family in town, she knows that, as much as most members of the town are not hostile towards her and her family, they only see her skin color and not her mind. Getting what you wish for is not always a good thing, though. Between Lena’s success over the white male student who everyone thought was a shoe-in and her father rising in the estimation of his employer, racial tensions begin to surface in their small town. Now, Lena must decide whether she believes in vengeance or forgiveness.

Words by Heart is a great look at faith and racism for young readers. Sebestyen walks a line very well of not shying away from the realities of hatred and the negative consequences, without writing a book too overwhelming for middle grade readers. Largely this is done by the strong message of faith and forgiveness. Lena’s father, in particular, is a proponent of forgiveness and attempts to teach her to forgive as he tries to do.

This is the sort of book I wish I had found when I was younger. While I could definitely appreciate both the story and the message, I know it would have meant quite a bit more to me if I had approached it as a pre-teen. I’m glad I read it, though, if for no other reason than that now I know about it to read with my own children when they are at an age to learn about the horrors of hatred and freedom of forgiveness.

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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 Alphabet Book – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jul 022011

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.

The Alphabet Book by P. D. Eastman
Published by Random House Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House

Thanks to Daniel’s letter obsession, we’re always looking for good alphabet books, and The Alphabet Book by P. D. Eastman is a a classic. Unlike A to Z, The Alphabet Book tends to stick to more conventional (and real) words, providing enrichment by having at least two words beginning with each letter (a bird on a bike, a cow in a car, an octopus with oars). Because it was written in the 1970s, there are some entries that are a bit dated, but I’m just going to consider them cultural history, because chances are decent that the turtle with typewriter is the among the only exposure Daniel will even ever have to typewriters.

This book is perfect for Daniel because each entry has at least one thing that he can correctly identify with the name beginning with the relevant letter, but it pushes him to expand his sentences and add the extra word as well.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

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.

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly – Audiobook Review

Jun 092011

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, narrated by Emily Janice Card and Emma Bering
Published in audio by Listening Library; published in print by Delacorte Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House

If you posted an audiobook review today, Thursday June 9th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

Synopsis:

Andi should have everything going for her: well-to-do family, great school, brains, beauty, and musical talent. Somehow, though, none of that means anything since the death of her little brother, Truman; a death Andi witnessed and for which she blames herself. Andi is angry, at herself and at the way her parents fell apart after Truman’s death. Nearly flunking out of school and not particularly well liked by much of anyone but one friend and a guitar teacher, Andi is even considering suicide.

And then she gets dragged to Paris over Christmas break by her father, who has been appointed to do the DNA testing on a heart purported to be that of Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Furious at being dragged along by her father like a child, Andi is suddenly motivated to work on her senior project by the promise of a plane ticket home. At roughly the same time, she discovers a very old diary, written by a girl around the time of the French Revolution; a girl who, it seems, knew Louis XVII; a girl who was in political trouble.

Alexandrine’s story begins to exert the same, or even stronger, pull over Andi as a trip home, and Andi begins to lose her present troubles in those of the past.

Thoughts on the story:

Early on, Andi is very difficult to take. The reader truly wants to sympathize with her, after all, this girl witnessed the death of the brother she so dearly loved. The evidence is pretty clear that she wasn’t this horrible before Truman’s death. But really, Andi is horrible. She is rude, vindictive, and self-loathing, whiny, a difficult character to like. It isn’t until she gets to Paris that this begins to change. Donnelly has Andi on a very believable arc of growth, but that does require allowing her to continue to be awful just to the point where she strains the reader’s empathy. By the time Andi starts to grow, you are so relieved that you no longer have the unbearable urge to slap her, that you fall headlong into the book.

Perhaps the best part about Revolution is how Andi and Alexandrine’s storylines converged. Both are fascinating and engaging, and they mirror one another in not overly obvious ways – the parallels are clearly there, but Donnelly sees no need to beat her reader over the head with them. When the storylines come together, though, that is when Revolution becomes impossible to put down.

AudiobookWeek picture Thoughts on the audio production:

As I mentioned earlier this week, I often have trouble with the narrators of young adult books sounding too old. Emily Janice Card was probably just on the cusp of this for me. Certainly she didn’t sound quite like the seventeen year old that Andi is. After pondering it for the first 30 or 45 minutes, though, I decided she was analogous to the 30 year olds that play high schoolers in movies and sitcoms. Clearly most actual high school students don’t sound/look like that, but it is close enough that you can still suspend your disbelief.

If anything, Emma Bering sounded even older than Emily Janice Card, but for Alexandrine, that worked. Both Andi and Alexandrine had been through a lot in their lives, but in Andi’s case it turned her into a petulant child, while Alexandrine was forced to mature very quickly. With this characterization in mind, the different aged sounds of their voices worked perfectly, and the fact that Bering gave Card a voice to sound younger than worked very much in the favor of the audiobook, keeping everything reasonable for girls in their late teens.

Apart from possibly sounding slightly old, both women were amazing narrators, breathing life into their characters. I would not hesitate to listen to anything either of them narrated.

Overall

This was an amazingly well put together book. The amount of research required, as well as the necessity to create parallels between the girls that felt natural, could have resulted in an awkward info dump, but Jennifer Donnelly wrote an incredibly moving story that was expertly narrated by Emily Janice Card and Emma Bering. You can’t go wrong with Revolution in print or audio.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound: Audio/Print*

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.

Doc by Mary Doria Russell – Book Review

May 262011

Doc by Mary Doria Russell
Published by Random House

You may think that you know Doc Holliday, doesn’t everyone? He is one of the most well-known denizens of the Wild West, a hard-living man famous for the shootout at the OK Corral. A roughneck, what else is there to know about him?

And yet, the real Doc Holliday, John Henry Holliday, was not the uncouth man of legend, but a Southern aristocrat who saw his family lose nearly everything in the Civil War, and had his own hopes of a living ruined by the Panic of 1873. He was a witty man, extremely well-educated and well-read. He might have been perfectly happy to remain in Georgia, or even move up North where he went to college, except for disease which would change his life, his future:

He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive. In all that time, he was allowed a single season of something like happiness. -p. 1

It was this tuberculosis, the same disease which killed his beloved mother, that forced John Henry away from his beloved uncle and extended family. There were rumors of people who moved to the American West going into remission, being cured by the drier weather, and so he had to try it. Trained as a dentist, he moved West, only to bed confronted by the reality of the Panic of 1873, which left most people without any extra money for dental work.

It certainly wasn’t John Henry’s fault that he couldn’t make a living at his profession. No reasonable person would have thought so, but who is reasonable at twenty-two? -p. 19

Unable to sustain himself with his chosen profession, and feeling terrible about that fact, John Henry consigned himself to a life as an often drunk professional gambler who practiced dentistry on the side, earning his nickname around that time from his passionate live-in whore (this was actually her job) girlfriend, Kate.

Just one paragraph into Doc I already knew why Mary Doria Russell is beloved by so many readers. That first excerpt I quoted is the opening of the book. As an opening it is beautifully written, and immediately engaging. It causes the reader to feel sympathy for John Henry by the first comma. The second sentence provides the chills, and the third the curiosity of what the one season of happiness was, and why the rest of his existence didn’t qualify as such.

More impressive, though, than the stellar opening, is the fact that Doria Russell manages to keep up the interest and quality of writing throughout the roughly 400 page book. Her writing remains amazing, and her characters are all fascinating, even the most bit players. There is not a particularly steady flow of time, but that works to Doc’s advantage, glossing over the less interesting parts of history, using just enough exposition to impart what is necessary for the story, before getting back to the real meat of it all.

If I have one disappointment about Doc, though, it is where Mary Doria Russell chose to end her story. The majority of the action ends as John Henry and the Earp brothers are deciding to move from Dodge, Kansas to Arizona, where they will become so famous in Tombstone. Doria Russell has so much insight into Doc’s life and fleshes him out so well as a character, I would have really appreciated her take on the situation at the OK Corral, because I cannot quite seem to get my head around exactly what happened. Still, this is a minor qualm, because the book in no way feels unfinished where she does end it. On the contrary, it is a very natural ending point, and to tell that story as well would probably add another 200 pages on, at least.

Doc is one of those books that will make you wonder why you haven’t read more from its author. When I finished it I was ready to drop everything else and read every word that Mary Doria Russell had ever written. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do just that.

Very highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, at GLIBA.
* 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 Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips – Book Review

May 182011

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
Published by Random House

Arthur Phillips’s father is a two-bit forger and con artist, but, still, when he claims to have discovered a lost Shakespeare play, Arthur believes him. At first.

That might be the shortest synopsis I’ve ever written, but The Tragedy of Arthur is a difficult book to summarize without giving too much. The story builds upon itself and circles back around in such a way that it is difficult to know how much is too much.

The first section is a memoir-ish introduction to the titular play. The tension between Arthur – who, by the way, has apparently a very similar history to the novelist Arthur Phillips, which may cause some readers to wonder how much is fact and how much fiction – and his father is masterfully done. The voice of a child terribly scarred by his parent seems dead on. The majority of what Arthur does is in response to his childhood and his father in one way or another, right down to his feelings towards Shakespeare, his father’s favorite author:

I have never much liked Shakespeare. I find the plays more pleasant to read than watch, but I could do without him, up to and including this unstoppable and unfortunate book. I know that is not a very literary or learned thing to confess, but there it is. I wonder if there isn’t a large and shy population of tasteful readers who secretly agree with me. -p. 1

Everything was put together so well, I found myself second guessing what I knew to be true about the book, conflating Arthur the character with Arthur the novelist. The alleged lost play was simply the icing on the cake, the thing that completed The Tragedy of Arthur and made it worthy of its ambition. I cannot wait to read more of Arthur Phillip’s work.

Highly recommended.

For a more indepth discussion of the book and Phillips’s inspiration for it, please check out my interview with him on my podcast, What’s Old is New. For those who are so inclined, you can also listen to the original spoilery intro and Arthur’s notes on the play.

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.

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Devourer of Books

Madame Bovary’s Daughter by Linda Urbach – Book Review

One Day by David Nicholls – Book Review and Giveaway

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close – Book Review

Apollo’s Angels by Jennifer Homans – Audiobook Review

Tethered by Amy MacKinnon – Book Review

Words by Heart by Ouida Sebestyen – Book Review

The Alphabet Book – Saturday Story Spotlight

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly – Audiobook Review

Doc by Mary Doria Russell – Book Review

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips – Book Review

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