Brogan’s Review: Curiosity by Joan Thomas and Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

My sister Brogan, who guest reviews on this blog on a semi-regular basis, sent me a batch of her reviews recently. Here’s the first of them...

I first heard about Mary Anning by reading a (nonfiction) children’s book with my daughter called Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins. Mary was a young girl in early 19th-century England who dug for fossils and sold them. She discovered a dinosaur before anyone knew what such a thing was—in fact before the word “dinosaur” was coined—and spent the better part of a year at the age of 12 uncovering an entire skeleton. She never married, and she continued to make a living by digging for fossils in her native Lyme Regis.

When I saw Curiosity by Joan Thomas on the library

shelf one day, I was immediately drawn to an adult version of the story, even though the subtitle, “a love story,” perplexed me somewhat, because Mary never married (not that love equals marriage!) and the Jeannine Atkins book suggested a quirky, possibly lonely character in Mary. Well, whatever the case, I definitely wanted to read more about this eccentric woman who was unusual for her time and place.

Before I had a chance to read Curiosity, I also came across Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Well, then I was doubly curious, to think that 2010 brought forth two books about Mary Anning! Chevalier’s take is a little different: she offers the story of an uncommon friendship between two women of vastly different backgrounds and classes: Mary Anning, who came from a family struggling to keep clothed, fed and sheltered, and Elizabeth Philpot, who, though on the downturn of a moneyed family, needed neither to work nor to marry to live comfortably. I was just as eager to read Remarkable Creatures, since women’s friendships are an even stronger draw for me than love stories.

I started with Curiosity, which didn’t draw me in right from the start, as I found it particularly cerebral and hard to follow. But after the first hump I was really caught up in the story, its characters and its detail. I can only describe it as elegant. Joan Thomas plumbs the depths of 19th-century English classism and sexism in this novel, and renders complex characters with conflicting motivations. Here’s an early passage in Curiosity to give you an idea of the language and richness of description that Thomas achieves:

Mary sat and watched her father as he took up the second drawer and began to fit it together. He was working from the light of the window, which showed the sky in three rows of its panes, and then the sea. In the soft sawdust on the floorboards, she could see his footprints like the tracks of animals on the shore. This was a collecting cupboard he was making, with shallow drawers for the curiosities. For the rich, who could afford to hoard what the Annings must sell. It was a strange passion with the high-born, filling their drawing rooms with thunderbolts and snakestones, although they could buy all the china figurines they chose. Richard was lining up the dovetails, bracing the drawer on the workbench. He needed a helper. But he’d apprenticed [Mary’s brother] Joseph to Armstrong the upholsterer on Dorcas Lane. (Curiosity, p. 13)

Remarkable Creatures is much more accessible—there was never a point in the text when I wasn’t sure if I understood what was actually happening—but it also had a tendency towards cliché. Chevalier, it seems, never has a character hold anything back. They speak out, they speak up, they make much drama, but ultimately this is neither very believable, nor in fact very interesting. Mary is constantly in need of rescue in various forms (and always from the more-than-obliging Miss Philpot).

Chevalier misses the boat completely as far as class analysis goes and almost has her own brand of classism towards the Annings: I was irritated that Mary’s father is depicted as a carpenter of poor workmanship, when, really, how long would you last as a craftsperson in a small town if your work was of poor quality? Was it just too hard for Chevalier to imagine that economic structures of the time, and not personal failure, were to blame for the Annings’ poverty? And then when Mary sells her first big find, Miss Philpot comes and instructs Mary’s mother and older brother to invest the money in an apprenticeship for him for a trade—as though only an educated, higher-class woman would have the forethought for such decision-making—and yet the likelihood of someone of a higher class speaking of such private matters with a family seemed quite low to me.

When Lord Henley paid us £23 for the whole crocodile, I wanted lots of things. I wanted to buy so many sacks of potatoes they’d reach the ceiling if you stacked them. I wanted to buy lengths of wool and have new dresses made for Mam and me. I wanted to eat a whole dough cake every day and burn so much coal the coalman would have to come every week to refill the coal bin. That was what I wanted. I thought my family wanted those things too.

One day Miss Elizabeth come to see Mam after the deal had been done with Lord Henley and sat with her and Joe at the kitchen table. She didn’t talk of wool or coal or dough cakes, but of jobs. “I think it will benefit the family most if Joseph is apprenticed,” she said. “Now you have the money to pay the apprentice fee, you should do so. Whatever he chooses will be a steadier income than selling fossils.” (Remarkable Creatures, pp. 111-112.)

It was a strange experience to read two books with the same characters, not just Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot but a whole cast of characters in the town (with some exceptions) as well as the men who come from London to study the fossils. It’s a rare event to have two books cover so much of the same territory—I doubt both these books would have been published had they not come out nearly simultaneously, for whoever wrote the second book would surely have been accused of copying the first. (I do wonder whether Joan Thomas and Tracy Chevalier ever crossed paths in London or Lyme Regis while doing their research… that seems like a story in itself!)

I read Curiosity first, so it did feel to me like Joan Thomas raised the bar, and then Tracy Chevalier—for all that she may be the better known of the two writers—just didn’t hold a candle to Thomas’s achievement. I was interested, though, in the similarities and differences between each rendition. For example, the love story seemed so truncated in Joan Thomas’s book—were 19th-century men really so totally lacking in sexual imagination? However, when it was told in such a similar fashion in Tracy Chevalier’s book—though she chose a different character as the romantic interest—I felt more forgiving of Joan Thomas’s text. But perhaps it should just make me further question whether it’s 19th-century men who lacked imagination or rather 21st-century women writers when imagining 19th-century sex! The bigger question, of course, is about how sex is represented in literature and in our lives as women, which I can’t explain in more detail here without spoilers, but which I think deserves further exploration.

I would highly recommend Curiosity, even though I know it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as it is quite literary and brooding; and I would not recommend Remarkable Creatures. If you’re into children’s books or have a child to read to (ages 7 to 10), Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins is a beautiful illustrated book and introduces several interesting topics for conversation.

_______________________________________________

Other reviews of Curiosity:

Books Under Skin • Curled Up with a Good Book and a Cup of Tea • Literary Treats • Reading the Past • The Overdecorated Bookcase

Other reviews of Remarkable Creatures:

Age 30 + . . . A Lifetime of Books • Constance Reader • Fyrefly’s Book Blog • Regular Ruminations • She Reads Novels • The Literary Omnivore • Whispering Gums

_______________________________________________

Brogan’s Review: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hmm, it seems like the only person writing reviews for my blog these days is my sister Brogan! Here’s another one for you while I’m away...

I find myself not wanting to say anything critical about Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because it’s so good, and not only is it a good book, but it’s also an important one. The story is set in Nigeria in the sixties and alternates between “the early sixties” and “the late sixties.” It begins by introducing the main characters, Olanna and Kainene, middle-class twin sisters, Olanna with a revolutionary bent and Kainene with a more business orientation. Olanna has a lover, Odenigbo, who is a university professor; Kainene’s lover is a white man from England, one of the few Westerners who has come to Nigeria not to pillage the country but to try to understand it (he is interested in the historical art of the area). Then there’s Ugwu, Olanna and Odenigbo’s household servant, a poor boy from an outlying village who is trying to make his way (preferably up) in the world.

Enter civil war.

The power of this book for me was twofold: one, it totally transported me to another world, a world of jollof rice, houseboys, and multiple languages and ethnic groups (Igbo, Yoruba, English, Fulani and a number of others); and two, despite their obvious differences at the outset, I saw how similar middle-class Nigerian life could be to middle-class North American life, and therefore as I read about the anomie of war I could imagine and dread my own life being so transformed. This is the greatest strength of Half of a Yellow Sun: it makes you care about people who live half a world away, people whose lives are entwined in our own, given that so many resources that support our middle-class lifestyle come from Africa.

I cared deeply about the characters, who are strong, uncompromising and interesting. When Olanna described being afraid of who would die next, I can only say that I shared her fear.

Knowing that this novel is based on actual events made me want to learn more about the history of Nigeria and the struggle for an independent Biafra. (Adichie gives free reign to a number of political discussions in the book, but since she’s faithful to actual conversations, people do not reference their current political situation with the in-depth background information that would have been helpful to someone like me, who knew nothing about the political history of the area and had only a sketchy knowledge of international politics at that time.)

One thing this book made clear was that in such wars, it is not the side with the most legitimacy that wins, or the side with the deepest conviction among its supporters—it is rather the side with the backing of Western powers (and therefore access to weapons), a support that can depend on the vagaries of international relations at the time. But also, that in war there is no “good side,” and the tools of war are brutality on both sides. The war in Nigeria against secessionist Biafra was the first conflict in which mass starvation was deliberately used as a weapon of war (against the Biafrans).

My questions or slight detractions about the book are more on the personal, character level. For instance, one of the women, Kainene, is said to be ugly and is frequently compared to her beautiful sister (by other characters) because they are twins. As a reader, I cared about Kainene’s ugliness, about how this single fact of her life (which she could do nothing about) affected her and how she reacted to it with wryness and sarcasm. However, I also didn’t quite understand it—Adichie writes of “beautiful” and “ugly” as if they are absolute and universal, as objective as describing one person’s eyes as brown and another’s as blue. But beauty is not an objective quality so I found myself wondering what was ugly about Kainene? Adichie only ever describes this ugliness in the vaguest of terms, using words such as “androgynous” and “skinny”—she gives us no details. (She gives no details as to the beautiful woman’s looks either but somehow this mattered less.) Also, both Western and Nigerian men find Kainene unattractive, which, given that standards of beauty are culturally specific, made me wonder further: what is it about this woman’s appearance that so sets her apart? Because Adichie doesn’t explore these details, it seemed to me that she used Kainene’s ugliness as a device and in that way I felt the telling wasn’t compassionate. Casting Kainene as ugly seemed like an idea imposed on the character rather than an organic part of her reality, which I hope would have led to a more sensitive and complete exploration of that reality.

Overall, Half of a Yellow Sun is a phenomenal book. Part love story, part examination of war, it doesn’t evade subtleties (it’s not because you are surrounded by shelling that you know for sure whether you’ve chosen the right lover), nor does it turn away from looking at the crassness of humanity at its worst—which is war—and how ordinary people live their lives in the midst of it.
__________________________________________________

Other reviews:

Book Chatter • Caribousmom • Musings of a Bookish Kitty • pages turned • she reads novels • SmallWorld Reads • The Magic Lasso
__________________________________________________

Review and Giveaway: The Glimpse Traveler by Marianne Boruch

Opening lines of the book:

“There’s rain and there’s rain. Maybe there’s a difference at the edge of a continent.”

Why I read it:

I was born in 1970, a year before Boruch went on the road trip she chronicles in The Glimpse Traveler. I was curious to get my own glimpse into the American counterculture of the 70s.

What it’s about:

It’s a Thursday, almost spring, in 1971, when 20-year-old University of Illinois student Marianne Boruch meets Frances, a 21-year-old widow, who’s about to embark on a hitchhiking trip to California. Frances casually invites Boruch to tag along. The Glimpse Traveler recounts that memorable road trip.

What worked:

I always find it hard to review books I love, and The Glimpse Traveler is one of my favourites this year. What Marianne Boruch has done in this memoir is nothing short of extraordinary: nearly 40 years after the fact, she has managed to recreate a road trip—and a time period—so wholly that I felt like I was there, in the car (or van), speeding west and drinking in the sights with Boruch’s younger self. It helps that Boruch is a bit of an observer on this trip, which is driven by Frances’ search for answers; the reader can easily identify with her.

Although the title of the book refers to glimpses, there’s nothing choppy about this memoir—in fact I’m astonished that Boruch could remember so much of this road trip so many years later. The memoir’s short chapters drew me in, and Boruch’s occasional tangents only added to the magic of her story. As Boruch says, “Certain moments open and you fall right in, sucked back to some previous elsewhere” (p. 136). This is what she succeeds in doing in this memoir: taking the reader back with her to a moment in her personal history—it’s hard to believe this road trip lasted only nine days—while at the same time giving us a vivid glimpse into a pivotal time in American history.

On a side note, I was absurdly pleased that this book connected me to another of my recent reads, Fire Monks by Colleen Morton Busch (read my review), by mentioning the wildfires that devastated California in 2008. (Boruch and Frances visited Big Sur and stayed with painter Emil White, whose house was miraculously spared from the flames years later.)

What didn’t work:

There was nothing in The Glimpse Traveler that didn’t work: Boruch’s narrative is pitch-perfect throughout this spellbinding tale.
 
Favourite quote:

“Outside it would gradually turn to wheat and grazing land, to full-blown prairie, not simply land wrenched by sweat and axe from its woods. Because hadn’t it always been like this, endless and pretty much treeless? I knew those fields would eventually give way, rolling on and out to mountains I’d heard of, to this thing, the sea, only a word to someone of my land-locked childhood but the dazed, bluest eye of it, multiplied way past eight zillion times.

“That something sharp and tangled caught in me: what to call it exactly? We kept going, into day two’s long afternoon. Forgive me: I’m cutting ahead to that place for a moment, to us waiting for ride number whatever-it-was, dropped there a good long time by this time, midway through Nebraska. Was it the stillness of old wheat cut down to its jagged quick or that distant line of maple and ash? Was it the darkening sense of all those truly hard crossings and betrayals a century before? Our own waiting—not exactly legendary, its little half-teaspoon of not-quite-misery, three hours now, our hope for the flash of a car, that someone going in the right direction was generous. But it did something, to time.” (pp. 16-17)

Final thoughts:

I highly recommend this thoughtful memoir set in a turbulent period of American history.

Thank you to Indiana University Press for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

Other review: Sophisticated Dorkiness

You can also read reviews on the Indiana University Press site.

Author interview: Indiana University Press blog

Excerpt of the book: The Glimpse Traveler
_______________________________________________

Would you like to win a copy of The Glimpse Traveler? Indiana University Press has generously offered to send autographed books to two of my readers. The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only (no P.O. boxes). I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Monday, August 29.

If you are a follower or subscriber, please let me know and I will give you another entry.

Make sure you provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
_______________________________________________

Review: Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

I’m trying something a bit different with this review: a new format that I hope will inspire me to write reviews more often!

Opening lines of the book:

“The afternoon was so cold, so relentlessly gray, few pedestrians passed the long island of trees dividing Commonwealth Avenue, and even the little dogs, shunted along impatiently, wore thermal coats and offended expressions.”

Why I read it:

I picked up Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay at Book Expo America last year—someone had abandoned it in the convention centre. Although I was intrigued by the book’s blurb, I don’t read much historical fiction and I’m not that interested in ballet, so the book went to the bottom of my TBR pile, where it probably would have languished for a long time. However, I was inspired to read it when TLC Book Tours announced they would be touring the book.

What it’s about:

Russian Winter goes back and forth in time between modern-day Boston and Stalinist Russia. It’s primarily the story of Nina Revskaya, who at one time was a star of the Bolshoi Ballet. Now in her seventies, Nina has decided to auction her jewellery, including some pieces she brought with her when she defected from Russia. The story is also told from the points of view of Grigori Solodin, a Russian professor who owns an amber necklace that appears to match several of the pieces in Nina’s collection, and Drew Brooks, the associate director who is handling the jewellery auction.

What worked:

Part literary mystery, part historical adventure and part love story, Russian Winter is absorbing from the very first page. Kalotay’s characters are deftly drawn—all of them feel authentic, from Grigori’s late wife to Nina’s insufferable mother-in-law. The setting comes alive—I felt immersed in Stalinist Russia, an era I know very little about. Nina’s long-buried secrets kept me turning the pages, but I was just as interested in what would happen to Grigori and Drew.

What didn’t work:

I found this book engrossing from beginning to end, so not much didn’t work for me! I did find that Drew’s Russian connection felt a bit forced, like the author was trying a little too hard with the “we’re all connected” angle.
 
Favourite quote:

“In that way, it occurred to her, she and [X] had their work in common: behind-the-scenes, unglamorous but necessary, and best undetected. All that effort, to deliver something beautiful to the public. Of course [X]’s work took real talent, while Drew’s mainly took patience. But both were painstaking, and both required great care and the sort of focused attention that, if you allowed yourself to give in to it, and gave in to the great reward of it, became itself a form of devotion.

“The thought made Drew feel less alone, or perhaps more happily alone, sitting there cross-legged on the sofa. It was the comfort of knowing that she was not quite so strange, that there were other people who found delight in private challenges and quiet lives. People who lived in their thoughts as much as in the real, physical world. It was a reminder that true dedication to one’s work, to one’s art, was in fact—no matter how quiet or minor it might seem—a show of faith, a commitment. As for what Jen and Stephen and Kate said, that Drew spent too much time in books and in her mind, well, it was probably true. But it was also true that the internal world was an expansive one, always growing, full of possibilities that the real one did not necessarily offer.” (pp. 269-270)

Final thoughts:

I highly recommend this book, whether you are interested in ballet or not!

Thank you to Harper Collins for providing me with this book to review. (With thanks to Staci and Ana, who helped inspire my new review format.)
_______________________________________________

Russian Winter was on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in April and May. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Library Queue • Luxury Reading • nomadreader • A Few More Pages • We Be Reading • Books Like Breathing • Chefdruck Musings • Book Addiction • red headed book child • Redlady’s Reading Room • The Calico Critic • Wordsmithsonia • Historical Tapestry • Man of la Book • In the Next Room • Life in the Thumb

Recommended review: she is too fond of books

Other reviews:

a book blog of one’s own • Beth Fish Reads • Bookfan • Booking Mama • Boston Book Bums • I’m Booking It • Kittling: Books • Lisa’s Other Bookshelf • Medieval Bookworm • Misfit Salon • Reading the Past • Red Room Library • S. Krishna’s Books • Sophisticated Dorkiness • The Black Sheep Dances • the book nest • The Crowded Leaf • Tottenville Review

Interviews with the author: Man of la Book • Tottenville Review

Guest posts by the author: Booking Mama • Book Reporter
_______________________________________________

Review and Giveaway: Home to Woefield by Susan Juby

Home to Woefield by Susan Juby (published in Canada under the title The Woefield Poultry Collective) is the story of Prudence, a YA-author-turned-organic-farmer, who inherits a dilapidated and scrubby farm from her Great-Uncle Harold. Delighted with this opportunity to make her dreams come true, Prudence enlists the help of several locals: Earl, the gruff 70-something foreman who came with the property; her neighbour, Seth, a celebrity blogger who hasn’t left his house since an unfortunate incident involving his high-school drama teacher; and 11-year-old Sara Spratt, who’s looking for a home for her prize-winning chickens. Told in the alternating voices of these four characters, Home to Woefield is a side-splittingly funny and thoroughly modern back-to-the-land tale.

I briefly entertained the notion that I wasn’t going to like this book—for the first few chapters, I was a bit worried that Juby was making fun of her characters, who initially seemed like they were going to be caricatures of people whose passions (organic farming and blogging) are dear to my heart. For example, Seth introduces himself like this:

“Let me paint a picture for you in words. People don’t take my skills seriously, but there’s an art to it. There really is. When I was on a roll, I used to update my blogs eight, sometimes twelve hours a day. That’s eight or twelve hours of writing. Stephen King is probably one of the only other guys who writes that much. Him and James Patterson, although King’s the only one of those two worth reading. I wasn’t creating books, but there was definitely some storytelling happening. My mother used to call my blogging mental diarrhea, and my former father, Prince of Pubs, used to ask me if I was some kind of pervert because I was on the computer so much.” (p. 8)

However, it didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong I was—as it turned out, I snorted and giggled and guffawed through the whole book (and Seth turned out to be the character that cracked me up the most). I read parts of the novel out loud to Mr. B and found myself howling with laughter all over again (who knew that sheep shearing could be so funny?). Juby’s characters are wacky and original—more than once, she retells the same moment from two or three or four points of view, each as funny as the last.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t a very realistic story—although Juby does touch on some sensitive subjects such as alcoholism and family dysfunction—but it’s hilarious, quirky and sweet. If you’re in the mood for a laugh, this is the funniest book I’ve read in a long time—in fact, I can’t remember the last time a book made me laugh so much or so hard. I highly recommend it.

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

Home to Woefield is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in March. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Sara’s Organized Chaos • BookNAround (spoiler alert) • Colloquium (spoiler alert) • A Musing Reviews • A Bookworm’s World • Rundpinne • The Lost Entwife • Reviews by Molly • Tina’s Book Reviews • Book Club Classics! • Chrisbookarama

HarperCollins Canada also organized a Woefield blog tour:

The Written Word • Shelf Candy • Daisy’s Book Journal • The Literary Word • Failing the Rorschach Test • Burning Impossibly Bright • Mrs Q Book Addict

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • faerie writer • Hey, I want to read that • Leafing Through Life • Rayment’s Reading, Rants and Ramblings

Interviews with the author: Daisy’s Book Journal • Night Owl Reviews

Check out Phase II of the Great Hen Bag Giveaway on Susan Juby’s blog. (I want that hen bag!)

Susan Juby is going to be on Blog Talk Radio with Book Club Girl on Tuesday, April 5, at 7 p.m. ET.
_______________________________________________

Would you like to win a copy of Home to Woefield? Harper Collins has offered to send a copy to one of my readers. The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only (no P.O. boxes). I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Friday, April 8.

If you are a follower or subscriber, let me know and I will give you another entry.

Make sure you provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
_______________________________________________

Review: Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro

1. As I read Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro, I felt as if I had been waiting for this book, as if somehow Shapiro’s story was meant for me. On the surface, this is a strange notion, as Shapiro and I have little in common: I didn’t grow up in a deeply religious family, my parents are both alive, I don’t have a son who almost died as an infant (in fact, I have no children), I’m not a novelist or memoirist, I didn’t move out of Brooklyn after 9/11 to a farmhouse in Connecticut, I don’t have an impossibly difficult relationship with my mother as Shapiro had with hers. And yet, so many times I found myself nodding yes yes yes in recognition as I read this book.

“I was always racing. I couldn’t settle down. . . . I often felt a sense of tremendous urgency, as if there was a whip at my back. I was fleeing something—but what?” (p. 2)

2. “Anxious, fearful, lonely, resentful, depressed—troubled by a powerful and, some would say, deeply irreverent sense of futility” (p. 11), Shapiro decides to “climb all the way inside the questions and see what was there” (p. 12). Exploring the Orthodox Jewish traditions she grew up with, along with yoga and meditation, she seeks a middle ground between her very religious childhood and her rejection of faith as a young woman.

“Could I find and hold on to a deeper truth than the whir and strum of my daily life, which seemed designed to ensure that some day I would wake up—after the years of packed lunches and piano practice and rushed dinners—and wonder where it had all gone?” (p. 16)

3. Told in 102 short chapters or vignettes, Devotion chronicles Shapiro’s spiritual journey. Sometimes these vignettes are stories, sometimes they are barely more than single moments, flashes of the present, “moments of being,” but each is a piece of the puzzle, a stone in the stream. Inspiring, brave, funny, open-hearted and wise, Devotion invites the reader to follow Shapiro on an incredibly personal journey that will likely resonate with anyone who is searching for meaning in their own lives.

“Yogis use a beautiful Sanskrit word, samskara, to describe the knots of energy that are locked in the hips, the heart, the jaw, the lungs. Each knot tells a story—a narrative rich with emotional detail. Release a samskara and you release that story. Release your stories, and suddenly there is more room to breathe, to feel, to experience the world.” (pp. 16-17)

4. Devotion is a primer, a light shining ahead of me on the path, an inspiration to my own journey through doubt. I highly recommend it. I know I will read it again and again.*

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me this book to review.

*I’ve already read this book in its entirety twice (and dipped in and out of it as well).
_______________________________________________

Devotion is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in February and March. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Kelly’s Lucky You! • Book Club Classics! • {Mis}Adventures of an Army Wife • Books Lists Life • nomadreader • Coffee and a Book Chick • Colloquium • The 3 R’s: Reading, ’Riting, and Randomness • Books in the City • English Major’s Junk Food • The House of the Seven Tails • Boarding in my Forties • Man of La Book • Chefdruck Musings

Other reviews:

A Design So Vast • Beth Kephart Books • Between the Covers • catching days • Coffees & Commutes • MostlyFiction Book Reviews • Smilin’ Buddha Cabaret • The Daily Grind of a Work at Home Mom

Interviews with the author: BookPage • Linus’s Blanket • Shambala SunSpace

Read more Devotion-style vignettes: Devotion blog

The author is also available and very enthusiastic about doing Skype chats with book clubs.
_______________________________________________

“I had stepped into a stream and was now being carried
along by an unfamiliar, powerful current.”
(Devotion, p. 29)

Reading Devotion inspired me to create the Stream of Suggestions Reading Challenge. This is my first review for this challenge.
_______________________________________________

Review: The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change—and When to Let Go by Eileen Flanagan

You are probably familiar with the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” In The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change—and When to Let Go, Eileen Flanagan, a leader in her Quaker community, attempts to answer the question: How do we develop the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can change and the things we cannot? Using her own experiences and challenges as well as the stories of people she interviewed from a diversity of spiritual/religious backgrounds, Flanagan structures her answers around seven spiritual lessons: “The Courage to Question,” “Knowing Yourself,” “Seeking Divine Wisdom,” “Shifting Your Perspective,” “Practicing Loving Acceptance,” “Letting Go of Outcomes” and “Finding Wisdom in Community.” Each chapter includes an exercise as well as a series of questions to reflect on. The focus of this book is both personal and global: Flanagan examines how we can make changes (or accept what we cannot change) in the wider world as well as in our personal lives.

I was a bit worried that this book would be too Christian or too preachy for my tastes, but that was far from the case. In fact, Flanagan demonstrates that the spiritual lessons in this book can be applied by anyone, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or simply a believer in a higher power. There were only a few stories that made me slightly uncomfortable (specifically the ones of people who had heard the voice of God).

While reading The Wisdom to Know the Difference, I had an “aha” moment about the importance of accepting the way things are before you can figure out whether or not you can change them. In one particular area of my life, I had been yearning for the way things were instead of coming to terms with the way things are now, which has made it very difficult for me to see my options with any clarity (having things return to the way they were is obviously not an option). Already, letting go of what was has made a difference—and has shifted the way things are in a positive way. It was worth reading this book just for this insight.

Another point Flanagan makes that has gotten me thinking is that each of us has a purpose or calling. As Flanagan says, “While getting in sync with this loving design does not mean that you will be giddy with joy every minute of the day, finding your purpose often brings both serenity and courage, not to mention clarity about what you should try to change and what you should just let go of and accept”
(p. 85). I have known for a while that I’m not “in my lane” (to borrow a metaphor Flanagan uses), but reading this book has prompted me to reflect further on the fact that I don’t know what or where my lane is—among other things, I’m hoping the Discernment Exercise Flanagan proposes in chapter 3 will help with this.

Finally, there was one passage in the book that particularly stood out for me:

“Disciplined spiritual practice can be one of the benefits of being part of an organized religion or a community like AA. For those who have rebelled against the rigidity or sexism of a traditional religion, it can be tempting to adopt the comforting or fashionable aspects of various traditions, while avoiding the hard parts. You may wear Buddhist beads, attend a Native American sweat lodge, visit a friend for Passover, or go to church on Christmas, but never participate in a community that challenges your False Self. In fact most religious traditions have practices that are difficult, like tithing or fasting, which are meant to strip away your selfish parts and develop qualities like gratitude and compassion. By practicing one tradition deeply you can benefit from such challenges, which can also help to transform your attitude.” (p. 145)

Because I grew up in a secular household—we didn’t even go to church on Christmas or Easter—I haven’t exactly rebelled against a specific set of beliefs. However, I have certainly been a dabbler, trying out elements of Eastern spirituality (yoga, Zen Buddhism, mettā) and flirting with Unitarian Universalism and neopaganism at various points in my life. When I was younger, I shied away from joining any type of spiritual or religious community for fear of censure and constraint; recently the benefits of both regular practice and community have become more obvious to me—and Flanagan’s words are a further nudge in that direction.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference is an insightful and thought-provoking book that deserves to be read slowly and reflected upon in depth—something I didn’t have time to do as much as I wanted to before writing this review. I highly recommend this book—it’s definitely one I will be rereading.

Thank you to Eileen Flanagan for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

The Wisdom to Know the Difference is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in December and January. Visit these other blogs for reviews, interviews and giveaways:

Patricia’s Wisdom • Constantly Evolving • arriving at your own door • Awake Is Good (interview) • Serenity & Style • Always Well Within • emilyism.com • Evolving Beings • Liz Lamoreux • Evenstar Art • Enchanted Oak • I’m just F.I.N.E. • change therapy • Knowing the Difference

Other reviews:

Book Fetish • Guinevere Gets Sober • New Consciousness Review • The Power of Slow • Spirituality Practice

Guest posts or articles:

“Living the Serenity Prayer” @ beliefnet • Guinevere Gets Sober • “How Religion Changes Lives” @ The Huffington Post • Without Wax

Interviews with the author:

The Creative Competitor • Embody Your Vision • Lynn Dove’s Journey Thoughts • Beyond Blue • Read the Spirit • Selling Books • She Writes • The Social Work Podcast (with transcript)
_______________________________________________

Green Books Campaign Review: The Find by Kathy Page

This review is part of the Green Books Campaign. Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on “green” books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on the Eco-Libris website.

The Find was printed on FSC-certified paper from mixed sources that’s 99% recycled (including the cover) and Ancient Forest Friendly. For more information about the environmental characteristics of the paper used to print The Find and to take the green book quiz, visit Webcom, the print provider for McArthur & Company Publishing.
_______________________________________________

The Find by Kathy Page is the story of Anna, a palaeontologist with a secret who makes an amazing discovery, and Scott, a high-school dropout who is caring for his alcoholic father. A chance meeting between the two leads Anna to confide in Scott and later ask him to join her on her dig. As both internal and external conflicts plague the project, Anna becomes increasingly dependent on Scott.

I haven’t been reading much fiction lately, so I approached this novel with some trepidation, almost convincing myself in advance that I wouldn’t like it. However, from the first chapter, Page’s vivid descriptions pulled me right into Anna and Scott’s world. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the opening scene: “Outside: a wall of water, the deafening roar of a million tiny parts. The rain sang and drummed, raced downwards, pooled, spurted from guttering, burst in gurgling torrents from downspouts, bubbled from blocked drains” (p. 9). (Can’t you hear that rain?) As mentioned in the blurb on the back of the book, The Find is a complex story about “discovery, inheritance and fate”—it’s a multifaceted novel that almost reads like a literary thriller. (I stayed up late at night to finish it!)

There are a multitude of characters in this book—much more so than in many novels (where main characters often seem to know such a limited number of people). Anna especially is surrounded by friends, family and colleagues, which I occasionally found confusing, as I had trouble keeping some of the more minor characters straight. By the same token, their inclusion in the story helps to ground it in reality and makes the ending of the book all the more poignant.

My favourite quote:

“It seemed to her that life was sometimes terrifying, at other times shot through with bliss. So much in it, all at once: the creep of continental plates, the code in your genes, the smell of cooking, the memory of your mother’s voice calling you out of your dream. Extinctions and creations. The rush of birdsong at dawn. A woman’s belly, tight with the life inside. There were so many discoveries: those you went looking for, yearned for so much that it hurt, and others which lay waiting and which, if you knew of them, you’d do anything to escape, and behind each of them, another. A switchback ride, a dream of flight.” (p. 157)

The Find offers the best of all worlds: descriptions that draw you in without distracting from the story, realistic characters who face difficult choices, and a complex plot that keeps you turning the pages until the very end—with the added bonus that it’s published on one of the greenest types of text paper available. I highly recommend this book, especially if you are a fan of Michelle Richmond or Janette Turner Hospital.

Thank you to Eco-Libris for organizing the Green Book Campaign and to McArthur & Company for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

Other review: Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf (which gives away a lot more of the plot than I did!)

Interview with the author: BookClubBuddy
_______________________________________________

Review and Giveaway: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

I almost didn’t request a review copy of The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are—Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life by Brené Brown because I really dislike the cover; however, the book’s subtitle called to me. Then I read the back blurb, which includes this passage:

“Brown explores how we can cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough, and to go to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging.”

And I knew I had to read the book. I cannot tell you how often I stress about the things I’ve left undone, not to mention feeling paralyzed by my own perfectionism. Brown is a researcher who has dedicated much of her career to studying shame, empathy, fear and vulnerability; in listening to people’s stories, she started to identify what she called wholehearted research participants, i.e. people who were leading amazing lives by “living and loving with their whole hearts.” This prompted her to ask “What did these folks value? How did they create all of this resilience in their lives? What were their main concerns and how did they resolve or address them? Can anyone create a Wholehearted life? What does it take to cultivate what we need? What gets in the way?” To answer these questions, Brown came up with 10 guideposts to wholehearted living: cultivating authenticity (letting go of what people think); cultivating self-compassion (letting go of perfectionism); cultivating a resilient spirit (letting go of numbing and powerlessness); cultivating gratitude and joy (letting go of scarcity and “fear of the dark”); cultivating intuition and trusting faith (letting go of the need for certainty); cultivating creativity (letting go of comparison); cultivating play and rest (letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth); cultivating calm and stillness (letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle); cultivating meaningful work (letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to”); and cultivating laughter, song, and dance (letting go of being cool and “always in control”).

Here are some of the things that stuck with me:

1. Brown talks about writing a blog post on the “‘dig deep’ button,” which she defines as “a secret level of pushing through when we’re exhausted and overwhelmed and when there’s too much to do and too little time for self-care” (p. 3). She turns this concept on its head, explaining that when wholehearted people get exhausted, they get:

• Deliberate in their thoughts and behaviors through prayer, meditation, or simply setting their intentions
• Inspired to make new and different choices
• Going: They take action

Ironically, while I was writing this review, I realized that I was relying on my own “dig deep” button, soldiering on and pushing through even though it was past two in the morning. (I think I already need to reread this book!)

2. Brown talks about how “one of the greatest (and least discussed) barriers to compassion practice is the fear of setting boundaries and holding people accountable” (p. 16). As she points out, “When we fail to set boundaries . . . we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who [a person is], which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice” (p. 19). This makes sense to me and yet I find it very hard to practise. (Why is it so scary to set limits?)

3. According to Brown, “the . . . one thing [that separates] the men and women who [feel] a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it . . . is the belief in their worthiness” (p. 23). This finding is a bit depressing because for those of us who struggle with feeling worthy it’s such a catch-22: I feel like I don’t belong because I feel unworthy of belonging; I feel unworthy of belonging because I feel like I don’t belong. Although there are no easy answers, Brown does offer some hope: it is possible to cultivate a sense of worthiness by sharing our stories and letting go of our attachment to what other people think.

4. Brown describes herself as a “take-the-edge-off-aholic,” a concept that resonated for me. She says she can definitely say “today I’d like to deal with vulnerability and uncertainty with an apple fritter, a beer and cigarette, and spending seven hours on Facebook” (p. 72). My own numbing tools of choice (some of which veer towards addiction) are food, the Internet, television, sleep, lack of sleep, book buying, reading and busyness. And the funny thing is that in the middle of writing this review, when I was feeling stuck and vulnerable and my negative self-talk was starting up with the How could you leave this to the last minute again?, I procrastinated by watching Brown’s TEDxHouston talk, and it was only when she said “We numb vulnerability” that I realized that I was avoiding my own feelings of vulnerability by watching this video! (Listening to this talk is a great introduction to the concepts she discusses in this book and will give you a very good idea of whether this book is for you.)

5. Brown’s research shows that, “Without exception, spirituality—the belief in connection, a power greater than self, and interconnections grounded in love and compassion—emerged as a component of resilience” (p. 64). She also found that, “Without exception, every person [she] interviewed who described living a joyful life . . . actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice” (p. 77-78). I’m still at the point where I have what she calls “an attitude to gratitude”: it’s something I think about, but not something I practise (at least not yet).

My only complaint about this book is that I wish it was longer (it’s only 130 pages excluding the endnotes): I wanted more stories and more details about who the wholehearted were. I also found that her final chapter about the research process was a bit short on details: it didn’t satisfy the sociologist* in me. Having said that, if any of the concepts she discusses resonate with you in any way, I highly recommend this book!

Thank you to Hazelden Publishing for sending me this book to review.

*I have a BA in sociology.
_______________________________________________

The Gifts of Imperfection was on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in September and October. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Silver and Grace • Simply Stacie • evolution you • Patricia’s Wisdom • Living Outside the Stacks • this full house • overstuffed • From Marriage to Motherhood • Rundpinne • Cynthia Lou

Read an excerpt from the book: Sober 24
To practise some of the things Brown writes about, participate in her Perfect Protest (watch the Protest Dance on the Being Joy blog for inspiration) and/or confess something imperfect about yourself on Karen Walrond’s Chookooloonks blog.

Visit Brené Brown’s blog: Ordinary Courage
_______________________________________________

Would you like to win a copy of The Gifts of Imperfection? Hazelden Publishing has offered to send a copy to one of my readers. The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canadian residents only (no P.O. boxes). I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Thursday, November 18, 2010.

For one entry, please let me know why you are interested in reading this book.

If you are a follower or subscriber, let me know and I will give you another entry.

Make sure you provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED._______________________________________________

Review: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors, so when I was asked if I wanted to review her latest novel, The Lacuna, I jumped at the chance. But then the book sat unread on my shelf for ages—I felt intimidated by its size and its “historical fiction-ness.”

The Lacuna, Kingsolver’s most ambitious novel to date, is the fictional memoir of Harrison William Shepherd, a half-Mexican, half-American boy growing up in the early twentieth century. Kingsolver paints this story on a wide canvas that stretches from Mexico to the U.S., from 1929 to the 1950s and from the Great Depression to the McCarthy era and the heights of yellow journalism. Told mainly through journal entries, letters and newspaper clippings (both real and fictional), The Lacuna seamlessly blends historical fact with fiction. Many of the characters are recognizable historical figures (Frida Kalho, Diego Rivera and Leon [Lev] Trotsky being the main ones). I know relatively little about this period in history, but it’s clear that Kingsolver has thoroughly researched it, and she immerses her readers in the sights and sounds of this period, sprinkling the text with both American slang and Spanish words. (Though I made a list of over 100 terms I was unfamiliar with, for the most part they are understandable enough from the context or explained within the novel—I just wanted to look up what they meant exactly.)

In many ways, Shepherd nearly writes himself out of his own narrative—in his journal entries, he often refers to himself in the third person—but this device works (mostly) as he is very much an observer of the events transpiring around him, especially as a child and young man. My favourite section of the book is set in Mexico during the time he spent with Frida and Diego—Frida is especially memorable: prickly and yet sympathetic, her character leapt off the page.

However, Shepherd’s later life in the U.S. fell a bit flat for me: his self-effacing habits became somewhat frustrating because it is in this period that he is most actively affected by historical events (or at least more participant than observer)—the highlights of this section were his vivid letters to Frida.

These are a few of my favourite quotes, to illustrate the richness of Kingsolver’s language:

“An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave.” (p. 258)

“I didn’t say what Frida would have. That you can’t really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece: the birthday like an invisible piñata hanging great and silent over his head, as he stands in his slippers boiling the water for coffee. The scarred, shrunken leg hidden under a green silk dress. A wife and son back in France. Something you never knew. That is the heart of the story.” (p. 325)

I want to say more about the epic scope of this book, which deals with themes of identity and the intersection of art and politics (among other things), but I already feel like I’m giving away too much of the plot. Suffice it to say that The Lacuna is a breathtaking story, well worth reading (which I devoured in three days in the end!).

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

The Lacuna is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in September and October (along with several other of Kingsolver’s books). Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Lit and Life • Presenting Lenore • ’Til We Read Again • Raging Bibliomania* • The Lost Entwife • In the Next Room • Bookworm’s Dinner

*Skip the first paragraph to avoid spoilers.

Other reviews:

A Book Sanctuary • Amused, Bemused, and Confused • Fyrefly’s Book Blog • Mari Reads • Ratskellar Reads • The Parenthesis and the Footnote
_______________________________________________

Review: I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

I picked up I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman while I was at BEA this spring. I happily snatched it up without even looking to see what it was about because I’d read and enjoyed her earlier book, What the Dead Know. So I was more than a little dismayed to realize Lippman’s latest is a serial killer story (have I mentioned how much I don’t enjoy those enough yet? I still keep reading them though!). I’d Know You Anywhere is the story of Eliza, a happily married 38-year-old mother of two, who one day receives a letter from death row inmate Walter Bowman, the man who held her captive for six weeks the summer she was 15—she was the only one of his victims to escape alive. When I hit chapter 2, which is a flashback to 1984 told from Walter’s point of view, I almost put the book down. But Lippman’s writing drew me in and in the end, I’m so glad I kept reading!

I’d Know You Anywhere is not your standard mystery: for one thing, it’s a howdunit rather than a whodunit. Moreover, since the perpetrator has been identified and apprehended, there’s no sleuth of any kind. The novel flips back and forth between the present (told mainly from Eliza’s point of view but also from the points of view of several other people who have been directly affected by Walter’s crimes) and the past (told from Walter’s and then Eliza’s point of view). The story examines the consequences of violent crime on the lives of the people left behind: a survivor (in Eliza’s case), some of the victims’ family members and several other people who get involved in the case.

Two things really struck me about this book and kept me reading. The first is that Lippman does a great job of getting inside her characters’ heads, including Walter’s, who is portrayed as a human being who does monstrous things rather than as a monster. For some reason, his delusions got me thinking about the ways in which we all, to some extent, delude ourselves and the harm we do to ourselves and others in the process. Second, unlike other books I’ve read with sociopaths or psychopaths in them, this book didn’t scare me. I was horrified by Walter’s actions, of course, but ultimately the book is hopeful in a way that all those other books were not.

After reading only two of her books, Laura Lippman is fast becoming one of my favourite writers!

Thank you to Harper Collins for providing me with this book to review.
_______________________________________________

I’d Know You Anywhere is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in August and September. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

red headed book child • Shhh I’m Reading • Staircase Wit • A Bookworm’s World • Thoughts from an Evil Overlord • Proud Book Nerd • Books and Movies • Wordsmithsonia • Raging Bibliomania • Lesa’s Book Critiques • My Random Acts of Reading • Jen’s Book Thoughts • nomadreader • Book Chatter • In the Next Room • Bibliofreakblog • Café of Dreams

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • Bookin’ with Bingo • Caribousmom • Girls Gone Reading • KellyVision • Life... with Books • Luxury Reading • Material Witness • MostlyFiction Book Reviews • Nashville Book Worm • On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever • Presenting Lenore

Interview with the author: Murderati
_______________________________________________