Review: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Opening lines of the book:

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder.”

Why I read it:

I read Maisie Dobbs, the first book in this series, a couple of years ago and loved it, so I jumped at the chance to read the second book during the March Is Maisie Month read-along.

What it’s about:

The year is 1930 and Maisie Dobbs, who calls herself a “psychologist and investigator,” has just been hired by a self-made businessman to find his runaway 32-year-old daughter. When three of the daughter’s friends are found dead, Maisie must dig deep to find out what happened to these women. Is the missing daughter the killer or the next victim?

What worked:

Jacqueline Winspear gets two things very right in this series. The first is Maisie herself. I love Maisie. I love her intelligence, her reliance on her intuition and gut feelings, her belief that coincidence is “a messenger of truth,” the fact that she meditates and that she can tell how a person is feeling just by imitating their posture. The daughter of a costermonger, Maisie was sent into service at age 13; however, she has also been educated at Cambridge and served as a nurse in World War I. As a result, she is now neither “upstairs” nor “downstairs,” which gives her a unique perspective on the world.

The second thing that Winspear gets right is the historical setting. I didn’t know much about this period before I read these books, but Winspear does an excellent job of portraying the cost of the Great War on civilians, nurses and soldiers alike. She also manages to make all her characters fully human—I felt for all of them, including the “bad guys” and unsympathetic characters. Having read these two books, I feel like I have a much better idea of what it would have been like to be living in England between the two world wars.

What didn’t work:

Because I reread the first book in the series just before reading this one, I found myself a bit dismayed that the end of Maisie Dobbs, which is so poignant, is recapped so bluntly at the beginning of Birds of a Feather. Mind you, I’m not sure I would have noticed this if I hadn’t literally just finished rereading the first book before starting the second.

[MINOR SPOILER]

I also found myself somewhat annoyed with the possible-love-interests plot points in this book: while it’s pretty obvious what the men in question see in Maisie, it’s not so clear what she sees in them. I found her interactions with them to be totally lacking in chemistry. I can’t help but hope that romance doesn’t become the focus of any of the subsequent Maisie books!

[END OF MINOR SPOILER]

Favourite quote:

“While she walked, Maisie remembered feeling a prickling of the skin on her neck while she stood in the upstairs hallway of [—]’s house, outside the room where her body lay. She had not shied away from the sensation but had instead silently asked, What is it you want me to see? Never before at the scene of a crime had Maisie felt such a duality of sensation, like a fabric that on one side is smooth and satin-like but on the other, rough with a raised pile. She knew that the last person who had come to the house came with a terrible burden, a burden that was no lighter for having taken [—]’s life” (p. 61).

Final thoughts:

Since I read the first two books back to back, I can’t help but compare them and I do think I liked Maisie Dobbs more (especially on second reading). However, Birds of a Feather is more of a classic mystery than the first one, and it kept me guessing until the end (although I did figure out the significance of one element of the story before the final reveal). If you are interested in World War I and the Interwar Period or just want to read a mystery series featuring a strong and quirky female sleuth, I highly recommend the Maisie Dobbs series. I generally never read books in series back to back, but I’m very tempted to dive into Pardonable Lies right away—I can’t wait to find out what happens to Maisie next!

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To celebrate the hardcover publication of Elegy for Eddie (book 9, out on March 27, 2012) and the paperback publication of A Lesson in Secrets (book 8, out today), Harper Books is sponsoring the first annual March Is Maisie Month, which includes a TLC book tour of all the books in the Maisie Dobbs series thus far.

Visit these blogs for other reviews of Birds of a Feather:

The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader • A Few More Pages • Wordsmithsonia [spoiler alert!]

For a complete list of bloggers participating in the March Is Maisie Month read-along, visit the TLC Book Tours site.

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • Devourer of Books • Hey, I want to read that • Literate Housewife • nomadreader • She Is Too Fond of Books • Shelah Books It • The Written World • We Be Reading • Whimpulsive

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Brogan’s Review: The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest by Aminatta Forna

This is the second of two reviews by my sister Brogan that I’m posting during my vacation...

Whenever my grandfather arrived he seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Although I’m sure he must have carried his clothes in a bundle, he never appeared to have anything resembling luggage. And when he walked into the compound there was no evidence of the means of transportation he had taken, no bush taxi disappearing in a whirl of dust, no car or bus. Not even a bicycle. He looked as though he had just come from the end of the road instead of Magburaka, where he lived, a whole day’s travel away. By necessity, since there were no telephones and no mail service to speak of, he arrived unannounced and would stay for a few days or sometimes a few weeks.

[. . .]

Pa Roke wore mukay, pointed leather shoes, that men used as slippers with the back trodden down. He would slip them off and cross his bare feet at the ankle. Likewise my father took off his sandals. This signaled the beginning of their sessions. They talked for hours together in Temne, who knows what about, since I couldn’t understand a word they said. (pp. 50-51)

Some books just take you away, out of your day-to-day world and into a world of different colours and events than anything you know. Even though the subject matter is difficult, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Quest by Aminatta Forna was one of those books for me. Forna tells the true story of her father, Mohamed Sorie Forna, who was executed in 1974 in his native Sierra Leone. He was a prominent former Minister of Finance of the country, part of its first democratically elected, post-independence government in the late sixties. Forna was 10 when she lost her father, and much of the book is devoted to her vivid memories of him before he was taken as well as of her childhood in Africa (mostly in Sierra Leone) and Great Britain (mostly in Scotland).

The book goes back and forth in space and time, but Sierra Leone is its real anchor, and the stories of Forna’s life there are the ones that really felt like they transported me to a different, yet not alien, reality. I loved the scene where Forna and Milik, the cook, discuss storytelling and conventions of storytelling (morals of the story are quite different in African stories), and when Forna can’t figure out why the story Milik has just told doesn’t meet with her European sensibilities, he says, by way of ending the conversation: “You wouldn’t go back to find a devil. Just like you wouldn’t buy a dead chicken.” Some months later, Aminatta tells her grandmother in Scotland she shouldn’t buy dead chickens, and her grandmother, a little startled, asks, “Whatever makes you say that, dearie? You don’t think I’m going to kill it myself, do you?” (pp. 134-135). The cultural reference points are so different that it makes perfect sense not to buy a dead chicken in Sierra Leone, but what else would you do in Aberdeen? Because Sierra Leone is her homeland, Forna doesn’t turn it into exotica, neither romanticizing it nor condescending to it in any way.

The story itself is multi-layered. It’s a political story, of a man who was a doctor and became a politician for all the right reasons, who was eventually executed by the very prime minister who made him part of the government. It’s a personal story, of a girl whose father was taken from her without explanation and without his resistance, a child whose life already included being part of three different family configurations—along with her two siblings, she lived with her parents while they were together, then with her mother in Scotland, and then with her father and stepmother in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It’s a story about culture, about multi-generational, non-nuclear, sometimes polygamist family structures, and the Africa of ordinary people. And finally, it’s a story of government corruption, the whys and wherefores of the execution of 15 men, the botched trial, the motivations of those who lied and created lies to serve their own purposes.

The one aspect that detracted from my enjoyment of this book was when Forna applies her journalist’s dedication to tracking down all those involved in her father’s trial. I just could not keep track of the many many witnesses she interviewed, nor of their exact relationship to the story. I sympathized with her need to be thorough and her need for a moral evaluation of the players (what did they do, and were they sorry about it?), but at a certain point I just couldn’t follow them all anymore.

I wondered if I would even be able to read this book, because the mere words Sierra Leone inspire a shudder in me, given my knowledge of the recent atrocities during the civil war in that country. However, I actually think my capacity to read about such events has been increased by reading The Devil That Danced, and I’m not sure there’s an entirely rational reason why, other than the opening of the heart that happened to me while reading this book. For one thing, I now feel like I care about this country in a different way, and for another, Forna’s description of her trip back to Sierra Leone during the war and of a couple she met then who are both war amputees made the horrors of war come down to a more individual, more compassionate level.
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Other reviews:

GhanaWeb • The life and times of a Heather
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Brogan’s Review: Still Alice by Lisa Genova

This is the first of two reviews by my sister Brogan that I’m posting during my vacation.

“If the piece of notebook paper with her mother’s recipe on it still existed, Alice didn’t know where it was. She hadn’t needed to refer to it in years. It was a simple recipe, arguably better than Marty’s cheesecake, and she’d made it every Christmas Eve since she was a young girl. How many eggs? It had to be more than six, or she would’ve taken out only one carton. Was it seven, eight, nine?

“She tried skipping over the eggs for a moment, but the other ingredients looked just as foreign. Was she supposed to use all of the cream or measure out only some of it? How much sugar? Was she supposed to combine everything all at once or in a particular sequence? What pan did she use? At what temperature did she bake it and for how long? No possibility rang true. The information just wasn’t there.

“What the hell is wrong with me?

“She revisited the eggs. Still nothing. She hated those fucking eggs. She held one in her hand and threw it as hard as she could into the sink. One by one, she destroyed them all.” (pp. 65-66)

Lisa Genova’s ear for the Alzheimer’s patient’s experience in Still Alice is impeccable. Although I’m not particularly familiar with the details of such an experience, this fictional version rang true to me. So true, in fact, that it was spooky. When I put the book down halfway through and couldn’t remember who had recommended it to me, I was unusually disturbed, actually distressed, until it finally came back to me.

Alice is a successful and driven Harvard professor in psycholinguistics when she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 50. We meet her before her personality has been impacted, and the book follows her month by month (each chapter is a new month) as the disease and her life progress. We get to know her husband and her three grown children, and we also follow her to medical appointments, which orients the reader in terms of Alice’s deterioration, as well as providing information about the disease itself.

Genova’s writing reminds me in parts of Margaret Laurence (whom I admire greatly). In the following passage, Alice, who is about to go for a run with her husband, has gone back into their summer home, but she can’t remember why. She begins to retrace her steps to try to remember, thinking (twice) it may have been for her fleece, but never coming to the real reason for her back-track. Eventually she gives up and heads back out, when:

“Just as she reached the front door, an urgent pressure in her bladder announced itself, and she remembered that she really had to pee. She hastened back down the hall and opened the door to the bathroom. Only, to her utter disbelief, it wasn’t the bathroom. A broom, mop, bucket, vacuum cleaner, stool, toolbox, lightbulbs, flashlights, bleach. The utility closet.” (p. 149)

These startling moments have such perfect tempo and are so imaginable that they are simply chilling, even though nothing like them has ever happened to me.

What worked less well for me were some of the plot elements in the book, particularly aspects of the ending, which also felt like it happened too quickly. By the end of the story, Genova seemed unsympathetic or at least not attuned to Alice’s husband, John. In addition, some of the sibling dynamics between Alice’s children felt forced.

The speed of the ending and the lack of empathy for John may have been inevitable, given that Genova gave herself the near-impossible task of telling the story from Alice’s point of view, and Alice’s vision of what is going on around her becomes less and less coherent with time, as does her understanding of what is happening within her. In that way the last third of the book reminded me of Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, where the telling remains sympathetic but the distance between reader and narrator increases to the point where it stops being in any way familiar.

However, Genova never loses sight of Alice—her telling is absolutely faithful. The stories she chooses to tell about what happens to Alice are stories of the human heart’s capacity to love. And yes, this book will make you cry. Several times.

I am left thinking about what Still Alice is meant to leave with its readers. Yes, it is an injunction to be more sympathetic towards Alzheimer’s patients and to consider them as full human beings in spite of their impairments—she is, still, Alice. Also, Genova is clearly bent towards a vision that medical solutions will eventually eradicate or transform this disease. But more than that, Still Alice is about the heart, about the particular displacement of self that love is, its flows and its allowances, whether it is love for one’s parent, one’s spouse, one’s children, or even, oneself.
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Other reviews:

Bibliophile by the Sea • Books on the Brain • Daisy’s Book Journal • Life in the Thumb • Life... with Books • Musings of a Bookish Kitty • Reading on a Rainy Day • The Infinite Bookshelf
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Review: Wishing for Snow: A Memoir by Minrose Gwin

Opening lines of the book:

“I am the daughter of the woman who wrote this poem. My mother was born in the July heat of a Mississippi summer in 1921.”

Why I read it:

I’m a big fan of memoirs, and I was curious to see how the author’s mother went from being a “cheerful, perceptive young girl” to a mother with a serious mental illness.

What it’s about:

In Wishing for Snow: A Memoir, Minrose Gwin becomes the archivist of her mother’s life, sifting through old papers, diaries, letters, scrapbooks, clippings, cards, pictures and poems to find the woman she never knew. Erin Taylor Clayton Pitner, was, as Gwin puts it, a “crazy mother”: erratic, violent and unable to nurture her children. But she was also a poet, and, as Gwin discovered when reading her mother’s childhood diary, she had once been a perceptive child with a bright future. Wishing for Snow is Gwin’s attempt to come to terms with her mother’s downward spiral into darkness.

What worked:

Wishing for Snow has an unconventional structure: Gwin doesn’t tell her story chronologically or with flashbacks, but instead circles around and around, approaching her mother’s life from multiple angles and interspersing her narrative with Erin Taylor’s poems and diary entries as well as lists, letters, recipes and song lyrics. Although this circling structure might sound repetitive, it never felt that way: instead, it gave the memoir a sense of immediacy and poignancy. Memory, after all, is not linear. Gwin writes with a poet’s sensibility, weaving together the disparate pieces of her mother’s life while reflecting on her own childhood and the impact her mother’s mental illness had on her. I especially appreciated that she included so many of her mother’s poems in this memoir: at times, they made me wonder if, had she been born under a luckier star, Erin Clayton Pitner might have become a household name.

What didn’t work:

At the beginning of the book, Gwin goes through her mother’s family history, which I found quite confusing, in part because many of the relatives are described but not named. Because I’m interested in such things, I sketched out Erin Taylor’s family tree going back two generations on her mother’s side and even then I couldn’t make sense of it. Gwin clearly tells us that her mother’s maternal grandmother had seven children, but her mother seems to have five aunts and two uncles on that side of the family (which adds up to eight children, if you include Erin Taylor’s mother!).
 
Favourite quote:

“After a few nights, I begin to dream that [the pillows from Mama’s sofa, which have been discarded in the storage shed,] are unhappy. They want to be dry-cleaned. They want to come inside and lie on my couch. They are thinking they can toast themselves in front of the fire and look out the window. They are wanting us to rest our heads on them and take dreamy naps on hot summer afternoons, or throw them at each other in fun.

“One night I dream that they are climbing over the lawn mower and working the lock to the shed. The next day I gather them up fast and throw them in the garbage can. For days I picture them there, wounded by this unseemly treatment, like cousins who knock at the door and are turned away for no good reason.

“At 8:17 on Tuesday morning I am watching from behind my curtain for the garbage truck to round the bend in my street. I fully expect that there will be some accident, a spillage, and the pillows will make their getaway. Then, the clank of the truck making the bend and, before I can take a deep breath, the garbage men have picked them up and thrown them into the back of the truck. This, I feel, is a miracle of vast proportion.” (p. 6)

Final thoughts:

Wishing for Snow is not always an easy read, nor does it offer easy answers, but it is a moving and unforgettable tribute to a talented poet and difficult mother.

Thank you to Harper Perennial for sending me this book to review.
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Wishing for Snow is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in July and August. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Cozy Little House • Reviews by Lola • Knowing the Difference • Lisa’s Yarns • Natty Michelle • Good Girl Gone Redneck • Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books, and Brainstorms

Recommended review: Lit Endeavors (also part of the TLC Book Tour)
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Review: Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch

Opening lines of the book:

“On June 21, 2008, lightning strikes from one end of drought-dry California to the other ignited more than two thousand wildfires in what become known as the ‘lightening siege.’”

Why I read it:

I’ve long been interested in Zen Buddhism and I was curious to read this story about Zen in action.

What it’s about:

In June 2008, after lightening started over two thousand wildfires across the state of California, Tassajara, the oldest Buddhist monastery in the United States, found itself right in the fire’s path—at the end of a single unpaved road deep in the wilderness. Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire at the Gates of Tassajara by Colleen Morton Busch is the story of the five monks who stayed to save the monastery after everyone else was evacuated (including the firefighters).

What worked:

Fire Monks is an extraordinary, multifaceted story and Busch does a good job of weaving together all the strands of her narrative: the story of the fire itself, the personal stories of the players involved, some of the history of Zen Buddhism in the U.S. and of Tassajara in particular, and the politics of firefighting in California at the time. While on one level the book reads like an adventure story, its main appeal (to me at least) is as a study of Zen Buddhism in action. Though most of us are unlikely to be in a position to meet fire as these monks did, as Busch points out, “fire [is] the perfect metaphor for anything that comes uninvited and threatens to hurt us or the people and places we love” (p. 2). I found the story both moving and enlightening.

What didn’t work:

The large cast of characters was confusing at times, but a list of the main ones is included at the beginning of the book, which helped enormously. The one thing that I didn’t always follow was the politics between the different levels of firefighters involved. Although it was necessary to include some of this in the book to provide context for why certain decisions were made—this was the third wildfire that Tassajara faced, but the only one where the monks were left to their own devices—I was also least interested in this aspect of the story.
 
Favourite quote:

“The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that you cannot step in the same river twice. A Zen master might add cheerfully: You cannot step in the same river because there is no river, there is no actual you. The river and you and your steeping are in a dynamic and interrelated state of constant change. Maybe it is the river that steps into you. Maybe there is only stepping, no one to step or thing to step into.

“In Zen, you can’t really make a ‘wrong’ decision. But you can’t make a ‘right’ decision, either. You can only respond moment to moment in a way that feels the least harmful and deluded, the most compassionate and true.

. . .

“As a ring of flame looped around Tassajara, David felt a palpable beat of hesitation, a flickering thought that maybe they’d gotten themselves in over their heads. But then, as individuals, and as a small sangha within the sangha, they acted. They made an effort. They moved toward a river of fire.

“They didn’t so much make a decision as manifest, collectively and without words, a mind already decided. They just got to work, doing something extraordinary with the mind they cultivated in their daily practices and activities. On another day, it might have been a bell that needed ringing, a soup that required stirring, a broom that needed picking up. At one o’clock on [that] afternoon, it happened to be a fire hose.” (pp. 180-181)

Final thoughts:

If you have any interest at all in Zen Buddhism (or wildfires), this book is essential reading. I have a feeling it will be one I will want to read again.

Thank you to Penguin USA for sending me this book to review.
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Fire Monks is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in July. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

Man of La Book • Broken Teepee • English Major’s Junk Food • The Road to Here • The Lost Entwife • Debbie’s Book Bag • the little reader • Book Journey

Recommended review: Book Club Classics (also part of the TLC Book Tour)

Other reviews: Brevity • Firefighter Blog • Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky • Monkey Mind

Interview with the author: SF Weekly Blog

One Zen Buddhist priest’s take on why he hasn’t read the book: No Zen in the West
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Review: Long Gone by Alafair Burke

Opening lines of the book:

“Alice Humphrey knew the kiss would ruin everything.”

Why I read it:

Although I’m generally not a fan of thrillers, the premise of this one sounded very intriguing and I was in the mood for an exciting read.

What it’s about:

After several months of unemployment, Alice Humphrey is offered a job that sounds too good to be true but also too good to resist: manager of a new Manhattan art gallery in the trendy Meatpacking District. Only a few days after the opening of the gallery’s first (and very controversial) show, Alice walks into a nightmare: the gallery has been cleaned out and the man who recruited her for the job is dead on the floor. Alice soon finds herself the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

What worked:

Long Gone by Alafair Burke did come with a warning of sorts, blurbed across the top of the cover, in fairly big letters: “Should come with a warning . . . highly addictive” (according to Karin Slaughter). Except I paid no attention to the warning—not being much of a thriller reader, I’ve never read Slaughter, so didn’t know I should trust her judgement. Instead I innocently started reading this book in the middle of the week, on a day when I needed to eat and work and then sleep. But forget eating, working or sleeping—I needed to know what was going to happen to Alice! Thank goodness I’m a freelancer who can take a “mental health” day without telling anyone it’s because I’m addicted to a book!

Long Gone is more than Alice Humphrey’s story; it’s also the story of Joann and her teenage daughter Becca (who has a secret or two), and of Hank Beckman, who’s obsessed with a man who may have had something to do with his sister’s death. Burke juggles all these well-rounded characters expertly—I was intrigued to see how they would connect (although I did guess one link before it was revealed) and thought the three story lines added to the narrative tension.

What didn’t work:

Unfortunately, the ending to Long Gone didn’t live up to the rest of the book. Up until the pieces started falling into place, I was willing to buy the whole story, but the ending seemed too far-fetched (and kinda came out of left field too). Plus I hated the fact that one of the stories was tied up within another one (we hear what happened to the characters from one of the three narrative strands via another character, rather than directly from them)—it made their story seem lesser somehow, not worthy of having its own separate ending.
 
Final thoughts:

Generally, if I dislike the ending of a movie, it’s a deal breaker, but I tend to be more forgiving when it comes to books (maybe because I’ve spent more time with the characters). Despite my disappointment in the ending of Long Gone, I recommend this one if you’re looking for a day or two of addictive escapist reading!

Thank you to Tina at Bookshipper for giving me this book to read.
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Other reviews:

Bookshipper • Book Twirps • In one eye, out the other • In Real Life • Jen’s Book Thoughts • Lazy Day Books Blog • Linus’s Blanket • Sarah Reads Too Much • Views from the Countryside • Whimpulsive • Zelda’s Reviews

Interview with the author: A Conversation with Alafair Burke @ Mulholland Books • Linus’s Blanket
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Brogan’s Review: Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted one of my sister Brogan’s reviews. Without further ado, here’s her review of Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk.

I picked up Arlington Park because I’d read another book by Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, which I found quite interesting and which made me want to read one of her novels. Arlington Park is set in an upscale London suburb by the same name and follows the lives of a few families in the neighbourhood—particularly from the women’s point of view—without any particular thread between them, other than the occasional meeting or dinner date. It takes on their varying levels of disgruntlement with, and understanding of, their lives as they are.

I was reminded of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in the way that Arlington Park is written, dramatically yet dispassionately, very “third person,” sometimes flowing into a description of the weather or the street without any connection to character at all. Also in a similar way to Woolf, Cusk at times zooms in on a small detail or a moment that becomes metaphorical even to the characters as they are living an experience:

“She gave Amanda a raffish smile with her yellowed teeth. Her small blue eyes in their striated pockets of skin twinkled with suggestion. Sometimes Amanda had seen her and Max going out for the evening and Jocasta looked beautiful. The sight of her then caused Amanda to feel that there were certain people she lacked the ability to perceive, just as she often failed to see in famous paintings what it was that they were famous for. It gave her a sensation of instability, like vertigo.

‘We’re just boring,’ Amanda said.

Jocasta looked astounded and slightly embarrassed by this reply.

‘Oh, darling!’ she cried. ‘You’re not boring—nobody’s boring! I didn’t mean to suggest that at all, you poor thing!’” (p.55)

Each chapter introduces a new character and a new point of view, until about three quarters of the way through when Cusk brings us back around to some familiar names. This rhythm feels comfortable. The different characters are all almost equally interesting, and I found myself reassured by the return of some of them so I could situate myself and return to people I cared about. However, I did find myself wanting more of them… not just in a good way, of wanting more of the book after it ended, but also wanting something more of significance. Why give us these characters, some of whom we come to care about, if they are nothing but solitary, singular, strange? What was Cusk trying to say about them, or about modern life? I felt like there was something more, and it didn’t ever manifest; she was on the cusp of saying something, but she stopped.

Some of the characters (Liz, Christine) are rather vacuous, which Cusk presents as a not-too-positive aspect of this suburban existence, but in her keenness to present them without judgement, I found myself wondering at some points how much I wanted to read about them. As they seem to learn nothing nor grow in any way during the narrative, why do I want to spend my time in reading an exact rendition of them? I also felt that because some of these characters are rather similar to each other—again, a point I think Cusk was trying to make about suburbia and our lives in it—I felt that the characters “slipped” sometimes, and I didn’t actually feel like I knew any of them, or like they had any character; whatever she wrote as coming next didn’t feel like it flowed from what had come before.

On the other hand, some interactions are rendered brilliantly, as when a few of the Arlington Park women go over to Amanda’s house and they spend the whole time talking to each other and not to Amanda (specifically about her house and her husband), not to be insulting but just as a style of conversation, which felt very real—and alienating, as I think it was meant to. Or the scenes with Juliet, one of the few recurring characters, during which she has inner dialogues with herself, trying to understand where she is in her life, her relative non-success as a mother and teacher (in that she doesn’t stand out), when as a student she was exceptional.

This book is exquisitely written, with some characters rendered in such a breathtakingly precise way that you can’t help but care about them and want to know more about them. It is trying to do something difficult, which is to ask critical questions about people who are asking very few of those questions of themselves, by portraying them exactly as they are.

I wanted more from this book than what was there, but this is definitely a worthwhile read, and I will be watching for more from Rachel Cusk.
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Other reviews:

Book World • Catching Days • Curled Up with a Good Book • Eve’s Alexandria • Lovely Treez Reads • Mostly Fiction Book Reviews • Torque Control • Vulpes Libris • Women’s Literature – Book Reviews
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Review: What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen tells an extraordinary story: after being infertile and on hormone replacement therapy since the age of 30, forty-four-year-old Cohen begins experiencing mysterious symptoms that lead her to suspect she has cancer. Doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with her for months until an emergency CAT scan finally reveals the truth: Cohen is six months pregnant. Cohen is a playwright and solo theatre artist with an adoptive daughter and a wonderful fiancé who is 10 years her junior. Being pregnant at that point in her life was definitely not part of her plan. (And what I’ve mentioned so far is just the tip of the iceberg of craziness that is this pregnancy.) What I Thought I Knew is an engrossing read—once I started the book, I didn’t want to put it down. Cohen structures her memoir much like a play—it’s written in three acts, which are in turn divided into multiple scenes—and this gives the story both immediacy and power. Throughout the book she also makes lists of what she knows, which only serve to highlight how much in fact she doesn’t know about what’s going on. Still, her dark humour and wit only worked to a point—they occasionally felt forced to me, like she was trying too hard. In contrast, my favourite parts of the book were the solo theatre sections, which deal with the one class she continued to teach throughout this period. Cohen writes the story of her student Dani Athena with a quiet thoughtfulness that I wished she had applied more often to her own story, which instead builds to a near-hysterical pitch. Nevertheless, I admire Cohen for being so honest and upfront about what she went through during this very difficult period of her life. Her story is definitely one that deserves to be heard.

What I Thought I Knew won the Elle Magazine Literary Grand Prix for Nonfiction in 2009.

Thank you to BookSparks PR and Penguin USA for sending me this book to review.
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BookSparks PR organized a blog tour of What I Thought I Knew from October to December:

Reviews:

Entertainment Realm • Always with a Book • 5 Minutes for Books • The Book Chick • My Book Views • Reading at the Beach • Chocolate Reality • Luxury Reading (spoiler alert!) • Bookfan • cindyREADS • Bless Their Hearts Mom • Teresa’s Reading Corner • Booking Mama (spoiler alert!) • Schlough’s Bookshelf Review • Books and Needlepoint • Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews (spoiler alert!) • All about {n} • The Divining Wand • Rundpinne • Chick Lit Central • Bermudaonion’s Weblog • BookNAround (review & interview) • Book Addiction • ’Til We Read Again • A Bookworm’s World (review & guest post) • Books, Movies & Chinese Food • Crazy for Books • Bookhounds • At Home with Books • Everyday I Write the Book (spoiler alert!) • Books and Movies • Bookin’ with Bingo (review & interview)

Guest posts:

Parking Lot Confessional • My Book Views • Reading at the Beach • Chocolate Reality • Luxury Reading • Bless Their Hearts Mom • Book End Babes • Booking Mama • Books and Needlepoint • The Eclectic Reader (interview & giveaway) • Lori’s Reading Corner • The Page 99 Test

Interviews with the author:

AuthorScoop • mom logic • Chocolate Reality • Teresa’s Reading Corner • The Divining Wand • Chick Lit Central

Other reviews: Shhh I’m Reading • Of Books and Reading

Excerpt from the book: The New York Times
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Review: The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

Thirteen-year-old Moxie Roosevelt Kipper, the main character in The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, feels that she’s never been able to live up to her wacky name, so on the eve of going to a new school, she decides to reinvent herself. But should she become a Mysterious Earth Goddess (MEG), a Hale and Hearty Sports Enthusiast (HHSE), a Detached, Unique, Coolly Knowing Individual (DUCKI) or an Assertive Revolutionary Activist (ARA)? Instead of picking one new personality, Moxie opts to mould herself to her audience—and keep her “square-headed music habit” to herself—with predictably disastrous results.

I could identify with Moxie’s desire to reinvent herself: I tried the same thing when I went to high school, except that my solution to the “weird name” dilemma was to change my name rather than my personality. However, this was short-lived: on the first day of classes, the only girl who knew me in the whole school shrieked out my new name in the hallway and I knew instantly that I wasn’t destined to become a Laura (my middle name). In any case, it was easier to be an Avis in my English high school than it had been in my French elementary school.*

But back to the book. Although I found the girls Moxie met at school to be a bit stereotypical, the two teachers in the novel, Mr. Tate and Mrs. Hay, are engaging, fully developed and quirky characters—not surprisingly, they were my favourites. Mr. Tate, her piano teacher, gives Moxie some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when he tells her he wants her to tackle Variation 28 of the Goldberg Variations by Bach (which is apparently “the iceberg to the Titanic of many a hopeful virtuoso”**). He says:

[To tackle Variation 28], you have to leave the comfort of those ten pieces you play perfectly and be willing to get messy. Be comfortable with the sound of your own struggle as you try to work it out, even if it sounds like you’re practicing with mittens on. Let it be a work in progress. The only way you’re going to learn how to play it is to learn how not to play it first.** (pp. 67-68)

This is sound advice whenever you’re learning something new, especially if you’re a perfectionist, as I am, and hate making mistakes.

Unfortunately, I found that a few of the plot twists were fairly predictable and some of the embarrassing things that happen to Moxie were a bit over the top (I especially didn’t like the physical comedy situations she found herself in, but then I’ve never been a fan of physical comedy). However, they may appeal more to younger readers (this book is intended for ages 10 and up). In any case, the payoff at the end of the book more than makes up for any of the book’s shortcomings: it is simply brilliant (and brought tears to my eyes). The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt is a fun book that doesn’t take itself too seriously but manages nonetheless to impart an important message about the value of being yourself.

Thank you to Tina at Bookshipper for giving me this book to read.

*In French, the word avis means opinion, advice or notice (and is pronounced ah-vee).

**The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and may not be exactly what appears in the final book.
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Other review: 5 Minutes for Books (scroll down) • Booknut • Bookshipper • Semicolon (scroll down)
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Review: The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow + Giveaway

When I was younger, I looked upon groups of women having a good time in a public place with a certain amount of envy: although I’ve had close female friends since high school, until fairly recently most of my friendships had been one on one and I often felt uncomfortable in groups. So I was very curious to read The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow, the extraordinary true story of a group of 11 women friends who met in childhood—mostly in preschool, kindergarten or first grade—and thus have basically been friends for their entire lives. Because these women are about my age, I was surprised that I didn’t identify with them more, but then I didn’t grow up in the Midwest, didn’t have a lot of friends in high school (nor was I popular) and don’t have children now. This didn’t stop me from enjoying this book, however. As Zaslow says in his introduction, he has set out to write “the biography of a friendship, meticulously reported,” and in this he has succeeded. Because there were so many “girls” (and I must admit I bristle a bit at this term), he necessarily focused on some of them more than others, but the stories they shared made me laugh and cry and cry some more. (I also developed a little bit of a crush on Marilyn’s dad, a pediatrician and “beloved figure in Ames.”) Stories of mean-girl behaviour, secrets and the loss of loved ones (including one of the girls) are interspersed with lighter stories of celebrity encounters, goofy behaviour and girl bonding in the next generation. Occasionally, the way Zaslow wrote about Kelly, the most outspoken (and nontraditional) member of the group, rubbed me the wrong way, but overall this was a fascinating look at a unique friendship.

Thank you to Penguin USA for sending me this book to review.
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The Girls from Ames is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in April and May. Visit these other blogs for reviews and giveaways:

Simply Stacie • Silver and Grace • chaotic compendiums • Rundpinne • Luxury Reading • Book Nook Club • Suko’s Notebook • Feminist Review • Bookworm with a View • Cafe of Dreams • Janel’s Jumble • Anniegirl1138 • Peeking Between the Pages • Life in the Thumb • lit*chick

Other reviews:

Boarding in My Forties • Book, Line and Sinker • Mother Daughter Book Club • Nonfiction BookPage • Offenburger.com • Story Circle Book Reviews • Walking with Scissors Reviews
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Would you like to win a copy of The Girls from Ames? Penguin USA 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 Monday, May 17.

For one entry, please answer this question: How old is your longest friendship? Mine will be 28 years old in September: I met my best friend in grade 7 in September 1982. I also have several other female friendships that are 15+ years old.

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

Please be sure to provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.
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Updated Review: My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

At the beginning of this week, Hachette released a new edition of My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, which I reviewed last year. To mark the occasion, I’m reprinting my review with revisions to reflect the new edition. (Come back on Monday for a 10-book giveaway + my period story!)

When I started reading My Little Red Book, a collection of women’s stories about their first periods edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, I initially felt mildly disappointed because many of the stories seemed too short and, well, too ordinary somehow, not “literary” enough. And yet by the time I finished the book I felt moved to tears (and inspired to write about and reflect on my own experiences of menstruation). Covering some 90 years of women’s history (from 1916 to 2008) and including 99 essays and poems by women from all walks of life, the power of this anthology is not so much in the individual stories—although many of them are powerful in their own right—but rather in their collective impact. From funny to heart-rending, embarrassing to empowering, each of these stories illuminates what is, after all, a “momentous occasion” (as Nalebuff put it) in every woman’s life.

Highlights of this book for me were: “Hot Dog on a String, 1993” by Ellen Devine, who writes about witnessing something sacred as a child; “Ink Blots and Milk Spots, 1987,” an imaginative retelling of first blood by Krista Madsen; “The Simple Vase: Part I, 1997” and “The Simple Vase: Part II, 1997,” two versions of the same event written by mother and daughter Laura and Rebecca Wexler; “Blood Month, 1979” by Sandra Guy, who writes poignantly about growing up without her sister; and “Twelve-Step Program, 1946” by Marcia Nalebuff (the editor’s grandmother), a touching piece about a grandmother saying exactly the right thing.

Other reviewers have suggested this anthology is particularly good for preteens and mothers of preteens; while I wouldn’t disagree, I would add that My Little Red Book is likely to be of interest to all women.

What’s new in the new edition: There are seven new stories (so 99 instead of the original 92), including stories by Judy Blume, who also reflects on how her experience influenced her writing of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Diablo Cody (as well as a contribution by a man, which I found a bit odd). Rachel also updates her introduction with a P.S. that mentions some of the things that have happened since the publication of the first edition (for example, “menstruation activism is now a real term”). In addition, the book is now illustrated with Rachel’s tiny (but very cute) drawings. The one thing I miss are the little pink panties, which used to be on the cover!

Hachette has generously agreed to sponsor a giveaway of 10 copies of this book on my blog! Come back on Monday for all the details.

Review: Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten

Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten is a collection of 15 stories (including one graphic essay and a spoken-word poem) targeted at young adults. Its contributors hail from all over the world: China, Croatia, England, Grenada, Hungary, India, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Russia, South Africa and the U.S. About a third emigrated to Canada as children; most, however, moved here as adults. (Only one is a second-generation Canadian.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Here are my thoughts on a few of the essays:

In “Snapshots from the Fringes,” Rachna Gilmore shares the story of how a beloved book—Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery—had a profound impact on her life. This story brought tears to my eyes, perhaps because I also read the Anne books as a teenager—and can identify with feeling a sense of both belonging and not belonging in PEI, which I visited every summer as a child (my father grew up there).

“A Caravan of Words” by Rachel Manley is probably my favourite essay in the book because it’s about cats and words and Montreal (even though she doesn’t love Montreal as I do)—and the anecdote about how Manley became the official Jamaican interpreter in Toronto is absolutely priceless!

The hardest essay to read was “You’re Not from Around Here, Are You?” by Linda Granfield, who came to Canada from the U.S. to go to university and found that Canadians didn’t live up to their reputation for being polite and tolerant. Instead, she found that anti-American sentiment was rampant—during the Gulf War, she felt she was living in fear in her adopted country. While I don’t want to belittle her experience, and I know firsthand the pain of being excluded based on your cultural background, I was uncomfortable with the fact that she used the word “racism” to describe this type of discrimination. At the same time, this piece made me squirm in recognition: anti-Americanism is unfortunately alive and fairly socially acceptable in Canada.

The weakest piece in the book was “Under the Armpit of Noah,” the spoken-word poem by Boonaa Mohammed. Perhaps it’s because I’m not generally a fan of spoken-word poetry—and no doubt the piece would have a greater impact if it was performed—but I found it didn’t sustain my interest in the same way the other stories did.

Finally, I had to wonder why the story “Shadow Play” by Rui Umezawa was included in this anthology. Although Umezawa now lives in Toronto, this essay is not about Canada at all—it takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

Exoticism, like accents and ethnicity, is something we often think only other people or places have—especially if we are white and North American. But in fact, everyone has an accent and an ethnicity—and every place can be exotic if seen from the outside, as evidenced from the stories in Piece by Piece. At the same time, a book like this is also a reminder that anyone can be an outsider, and most if not all of us have felt like outsiders at some point in our lives.

Other reviews: Movable Hype • Quill & Quire • Rover • Sal’s Fiction Addiction • Spin Me I Pulsate • What If?

You can also read an interview with the editor: Torontoist

Read Teresa Toten’s introduction to the book (and her powerful story): “My Piece”

Thank you to Penguin Canada for sending me this book to review.

Review: Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

Janes in Love by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg is the sequel to The Plain Janes (read my review) and completes the story arc. I loved The Plain Janes—however, my feelings about the sequel were mixed. I did like some aspects better, although overall I enjoyed this book less.

What I liked:
– The device of writing to Miroslaw allows Main Jane to meditate on a series of important questions: What is art? What is the purpose of art? What is the price of art? I thought this was very well done.
– Although the story ostensibly focuses on the Janes’ search for love, friendship is portrayed as being just as important as romantic love.
– My favourite two-page spread in either book follows the two pages pictured below: I really felt like I was there, peeking over Main Jane’s shoulder (and sharing her excitement) as she opened her package.

Click on photo to enlarge

What I liked less:
– The plot point left hanging at the end of The Plain Janes is glossed over in this book.
– I felt like I was missing something with respect to Theater Jane’s crush. Where did he come from?
– The secret admirer subplot seemed contrived and didn’t really go anywhere—I didn’t see the point of it.*
– The focus on love and the Janes’ quest for legitimacy made the story and their art less edgy.

If you’ve read and enjoyed The Plain Janes, you must read this book, which provides a satisfying ending to the story. I just wish there were more in this series to read!

To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
bildungsroman (review of both The Plain Janes and Janes in Love) • FOB Comics • Hypothetically Speaking • Kids Lit • The Zen Leaf

Read an interview with author Cecil Castellucci:
Girls Read Comics

I read a library copy of this book.

*And, as it turns out, I may not have understood this subplot at all—my sister Brogan, who also read the book, was left with the impression that the secret admirer was someone other than who I thought it was. (If you’ve read the book, please don’t reveal this person’s identity in the comments, but feel free to email me and let me know who you think it was.)

Brogan’s Review: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis

These last couple of weeks have been mad work-wise, so I haven’t had a chance to finish any of the reviews I’m working on. Luckily my sister Brogan has come to the rescue. Here then is her third review to appear on my blog...

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis is one of those slim books with an obscure title that you might think I would have found on the bottom shelf of a dusty second-hand bookstore, but in fact it’s quite a popular book—it’s even on a short waiting list at the library where I requested it. Part of the CBC Massey Lectures series, this book tells the stories of a variety of cultures around the world, of peoples who over centuries have adapted to and thrived in harsh, difficult environments with the tools that they could fashion from their immediate surroundings and only such possessions as they could carry. From the people who could sail the open Pacific ten centuries before the common era without the benefit of compasses or the written word, to the desert peoples who know to dig for tubers when there is no surface water anywhere for six months at a time, this book describes a range of human experience and skills that is inspiring and rich. These stories are honed in the context of our world where cultures are disappearing faster than endangered species.

The particular brilliance of this book is its detail. It gives shape, colour and texture to worlds as different as we could imagine, and it reflects on the first contact of colonizers and their vast misinterpretations of the cultures they encountered, from the Amazon to the Andes to Australia.

An environmentalist since my teenage years, I had a more nihilistic approach in those years, when I could relate to the notion that maybe all this planet really needed was for humans to disappear in order for the situation to improve. However, Davis indicates that humans have not always been destroyers of their environment—in fact this is limited to a few runaway cultures, including ours—and that it is the precious, historical/pre-historical knowledge of indigenous peoples who know how to interact with and live within the world that will save us, if anything does.

I wouldn’t qualify this book as an easy read. It doesn’t shy away from the ugly truths of our times, and after finishing it I didn’t entirely feel the buoyancy and hope that Davis manages to express. However, he does light the spark of celebrating human diversity, and the fact that it is fast eroding is no less reason to cherish and honour it. In Davis’s words:

Together the myriad of cultures makes up an intellectual and spiritual web of life that envelops the planet and is every bit as important to the well being of the planet as is the biological web of life that we know as the biosphere. You might think of this social web of life as an “ethnosphere,” a term perhaps best defined as the sum total of all thoughts and intuitions, myths and beliefs, ideas and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity’s greatest legacy. It is the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all we are and all that we, as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species, have created. (p. 2)

To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
Books & Company • Lindy Reads and Reviews • recycled minds

or these sites:
Quill & Quire • The Globe and Mail • The Walrus

Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind: Thoughts on Teacherhood by Phillip Done (guest review)

I recently received a surprise book in the mail, which I passed on to my friend Louise, as it sounded like her type of book (and I already have a towering pile waiting for my attention). Happily, she also agreed to review it. Here then is her review...

Both as a former third-grader and as an adult who reads stories to children, I thoroughly enjoyed Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind: Thoughts on Teacherhood by Phillip Done (rhymes with phone). Parts of Close Encounters are laugh-out-loud funny, others are moving, and one chapter in particular is downright sad. Done’s sense of humour had me giggling out loud on the bus and gasping with laughter at my desk. His descriptions of the trials and tribulations of a male third-grade teacher are priceless.

One thing bothered me though—the author’s tendency to address his female students as sweetheart and honey. It creeped me out. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the professional stance now expected of adults working with children, but I wouldn’t dream of calling my audience members by anything other than their names.

Aside from that, I would recommend this book to anyone who knows a third-grader, remembers being in the third grade or just needs a good laugh. The stories in this book ring true, and the author is honest and generous in his telling of them. Done says that he started this book when he wrote some tips for a niece who was going into teaching. I think other new teachers might benefit from his 20-plus years of experience.

For other reviews of this book, head over to these blogs:
A Bookworm’s World • Better with Books • Bonggamom Finds • Fabulous Miss S • Mama’s Mouth • Selfish Mom • Starting Fresh

Thank you to Hachette for sending me this book for Louise to review!

Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg (Brogan’s review)

Here is my sister Brogan’s second review...

I actually picked Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg off the library shelf (where I work)—which, despite my occupation, is a rare way for me to come across a new book to read, especially one that flies to the top of my to-be-read pile. I was attracted to it because years ago I read and loved Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World by Leah Hager Cohen, which is also about the hearing child of two deaf parents.* Hands of My Father is the story of Myron Uhlberg, born in 1933 in New York City. He tells his unusual story of being the eldest born to two deaf parents, and as such, as soon as he began to speak, he began to interpret for them.

The parts I loved most about this book were when he focused most intensely on his parents’ story, and their struggle, given the prejudices of the day. The history of New York in the 30s and 40s was filtered through this other lens of deaf-versus-hearing world, and the hearing world comes across as cruel and intolerant (people assume his parents are mentally impaired).

At about the midpoint of the book, there seemed to be a lull, where Uhlberg filled in the gaps with various remembrances of his life and boyhood, which felt self-indulgent and frankly a little boring. The strength of the story was in the relationships within the family, the tangle of responsibility and love, the pressures of interpretation. (I wondered if this was unfair of me, to be less interested in the son than in the parents, but I still think this was a weakness in the text, where the narrative felt adrift and didn’t pick up until a couple of chapters later.)

I also thought the book focused quite heavily on Uhlberg’s relationship with his father and left me with questions about his relationship with his mother. Did she not interact with the public world in ways that required her son to interpret for her? It’s not that she isn’t present—her storytelling is vivid and intimate, as reported by Uhlberg.

Overall, I thought Hands of My Father was worth reading for its insight into another world, for its love. One of the most touching stories in it was when Uhlberg described a serious accident his father had. When they returned from hospital, his mother flung herself into her husband’s arms:

As young as I was, I understood what her reaction meant: she had not, after all, lost her only partner in silence in this alien hearing world. And even at that early age the thought came to me: What would it be like if one of them died and the other had to go on living? How would they endure the loss?

I knew deep down that in some way I had aged this day, and that I now understood the isolated world of my deaf father and mother as I never had before. (p.194)

In this way, the book is as much the love story between Uhlberg’s parents as it is anything else. It’s a beautiful and moving story, for the most part delicately told.

*I recommend that book, too.

Visit these blogs for other reviews:
Adventures in Motherhood • Blogging for a Good Book • Life Is a Patchwork Quilt • mango missives • Tales from a Teaching Mama