Sittenfeld's novel, "American Wife" is the quasi-biographical tale of a recent First Lady, Laura Bush. The character, Alice Blackwell, has a number of things in common with Mrs. Bush: she worked as a school librarian before she was married, she had a similar upbringing, she is generally considered more liberal in her leanings than her husband and probably also more intelligent. As for the dramatic details-- the accident that Alice causes as a teen that leads to the death of a friend, the break-up of her friendship with her hometown friend Dena, the abortion that Alice has, and details about her marriage to Charlie Blackwell-- it is hard for me to say which of those mirror Mrs. Bush's experiences as I have not read a Bush biography. Sittenfeld does list a number of biographies on Laura Bush and works by and about Hillory Clinton as inspiration for her novel.
While I dutifully kept reading the book and enjoyed parts of it, I often found it hard to get inside Alice Blackwell's head, and especially hard to find much sympathy for Charlie Blackwell, the spoiled son of a Wisconson meat packing tycoon, baseball team owner, governor and Republican president. I just don't get what she saw in Charlie and why she stayed with him all those years when he was a liability to her and to his family and an alcoholic. I kept reading to find out and really never did figure it out.
I'm glad I read this novel-- but I still don't know why.
Liz Nichols
Monday, October 18, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Captivity by Deborah Noyes: A review
It took me awhile to appreciate Noyes' "Captivity," a fictional account of a real mid-19th century family of spiritualists who lived in Rochester, NY. The Fox sisters actually did learn how to "rap" up the spirits for seances in the second half of the 19th century. Maggie Fox and her sisters traveled around the country giving demonstrations and seances, and she did exchange letters with explorer, Elisha Kent Kane of Philadelphia. I have rarely thought about spiritualism and have never considered reading about the history of this phenomenon/form of 19th century entertainment.
The chapters alternate between a fictionalized account of how the Fox sisters and their mother claim to hear noises and receive messages from the dead, and the story of Clara Gill and her father, transplants from London to the wilds of Rochester, NY in the 1840s and 1850s. Gill is a fictional character, and it is her moving story of love denied leading to an isolated spinsterhood that is the more compelling story. It is also the more redemptive story. While Maggie is at the end able to help her friend, Clara, to free herself from the ghosts of her past, Maggie is trapped by her ghosts and eventually drinks herself to death.
The central theme of the book comes in a chapter where Pratt, Clara's chaperone is talking with Will, the animal keeper who has fallen for Clara. Will says to Pratt: "...Above and beyond what an unjust world will impose, every person's a slave to choce. We make them, and they make or unmake us in turn." Essentially, the book is an exploration of the choices the main characters make throughout their lives and the impact that those choices have on the themselves and the people around them.
It took awhile for me to care about these characters-- particularly Maggie Fox and her intended, Elisha Kane, but in the end, I found this a fairly deep exploration of the main theme of the choices that make or break each of the characters and their circle of family and friends.
Liz Nichols
The chapters alternate between a fictionalized account of how the Fox sisters and their mother claim to hear noises and receive messages from the dead, and the story of Clara Gill and her father, transplants from London to the wilds of Rochester, NY in the 1840s and 1850s. Gill is a fictional character, and it is her moving story of love denied leading to an isolated spinsterhood that is the more compelling story. It is also the more redemptive story. While Maggie is at the end able to help her friend, Clara, to free herself from the ghosts of her past, Maggie is trapped by her ghosts and eventually drinks herself to death.
The central theme of the book comes in a chapter where Pratt, Clara's chaperone is talking with Will, the animal keeper who has fallen for Clara. Will says to Pratt: "...Above and beyond what an unjust world will impose, every person's a slave to choce. We make them, and they make or unmake us in turn." Essentially, the book is an exploration of the choices the main characters make throughout their lives and the impact that those choices have on the themselves and the people around them.
It took awhile for me to care about these characters-- particularly Maggie Fox and her intended, Elisha Kane, but in the end, I found this a fairly deep exploration of the main theme of the choices that make or break each of the characters and their circle of family and friends.
Liz Nichols
Monday, August 9, 2010
Cook the Books by Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant
The mother-daughter team of Conant-Park and Conant have an imaginative series going with the "Gourmet Girl Mystery" series set in Boston. "Cook the Books" is the 5th in the series featuring not so aspiring social worker, Chloe Carter.
Carter is a somewhat typical 20-something. She has over-spent her credit limit doting on her best friend's baby. She hasn't really found her calling in life, but thinks she should at least give a try to finish a master's in social work (or at least that is what will qualify her to get access to a trust fund from a dead relative). She prides herself on being independent, and it is that stubborn independence that makes her stay in Boston when her boyfriend accepts a job as a personal cook in Hawaii and invites her to come along. She is so hurt that he made this plan without her participation she cuts him off totally, and makes herself miserable in the process.
Now Chloe desperately needs a part time job, and she responds to an ad to assist a cook book editor with the editing of a new cook book. The son of a famous chef is supposed to be working on the book and is making a mess of it. Chloe saves him organizationally and in terms of the recipes he is planning for the book. She proposes that they meet up with a friend of her former boyfriend, Digger, a chef who is about to open a new high profile restaurant in Boston. The night before the arranged meeting Digger is killed in a fire that sweeps through his apartment. Chloe has to discover who killed Digger and why while she juggles her work schedule, her school and clinical internship schedule, and resolving her feelings for the former boyfriend, Josh, who has returned to Boston for the opening of Digger's new restaurant.
The authors manage to keep the reader's interest throughout the book. Both authors are social workers, and Conant-Park is married to a Boston chef, so they write about things they know. They are able to legitimately endow their character with the kinds of skills and perception that make for good storytelling and great powers of observation for solving crimes.
I'm surprised I've missed the earlier books in this series and will make up for that by reading some of the previous books in the series.
Conant also has a well know series of mysteries for dog lovers, and I am familiar with some of the books in that series.
Liz Nichols
Carter is a somewhat typical 20-something. She has over-spent her credit limit doting on her best friend's baby. She hasn't really found her calling in life, but thinks she should at least give a try to finish a master's in social work (or at least that is what will qualify her to get access to a trust fund from a dead relative). She prides herself on being independent, and it is that stubborn independence that makes her stay in Boston when her boyfriend accepts a job as a personal cook in Hawaii and invites her to come along. She is so hurt that he made this plan without her participation she cuts him off totally, and makes herself miserable in the process.
Now Chloe desperately needs a part time job, and she responds to an ad to assist a cook book editor with the editing of a new cook book. The son of a famous chef is supposed to be working on the book and is making a mess of it. Chloe saves him organizationally and in terms of the recipes he is planning for the book. She proposes that they meet up with a friend of her former boyfriend, Digger, a chef who is about to open a new high profile restaurant in Boston. The night before the arranged meeting Digger is killed in a fire that sweeps through his apartment. Chloe has to discover who killed Digger and why while she juggles her work schedule, her school and clinical internship schedule, and resolving her feelings for the former boyfriend, Josh, who has returned to Boston for the opening of Digger's new restaurant.
The authors manage to keep the reader's interest throughout the book. Both authors are social workers, and Conant-Park is married to a Boston chef, so they write about things they know. They are able to legitimately endow their character with the kinds of skills and perception that make for good storytelling and great powers of observation for solving crimes.
I'm surprised I've missed the earlier books in this series and will make up for that by reading some of the previous books in the series.
Conant also has a well know series of mysteries for dog lovers, and I am familiar with some of the books in that series.
Liz Nichols
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Murder at Longbourn by Tracy Kiely
Tracy Kiely's "Murder at Longbourn" is an excellent first mystery novel. It will be of particulary interest to the cozy-lovers among the mystery reading set.
The sleuth is newspaper reporter (fact-checker, actually) Elizabeth Parker, who goes to Cape Cod to assist her Aunt Winnie at the aunt's B and B for a mystery dinner. Things heat up quickly when a guest is shot and it becomes apparent that the mystery play is being used as a cover for murder. Parker pits herself against a police detective who seems bent on fitting the evidence to point toward Aunt Winnie as the prime suspect.
While Kiely presents a fairly conventional cozy, she never lets it get too predictable nor the characters too stereotypical. For these reasons, I found it hard to put the book down once I started it and I polished it off in a couple of holiday weekend sittings.
I look forward to more Elizabeth Parker mysteries, with or without the B and B setting.
Liz Nichols
The sleuth is newspaper reporter (fact-checker, actually) Elizabeth Parker, who goes to Cape Cod to assist her Aunt Winnie at the aunt's B and B for a mystery dinner. Things heat up quickly when a guest is shot and it becomes apparent that the mystery play is being used as a cover for murder. Parker pits herself against a police detective who seems bent on fitting the evidence to point toward Aunt Winnie as the prime suspect.
While Kiely presents a fairly conventional cozy, she never lets it get too predictable nor the characters too stereotypical. For these reasons, I found it hard to put the book down once I started it and I polished it off in a couple of holiday weekend sittings.
I look forward to more Elizabeth Parker mysteries, with or without the B and B setting.
Liz Nichols
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The world of Henry VIII comes alive through "Wolf Hall." British author, Hilary Mantel seems to invade the mind of King Henry's Secretary and close confidant, Thomas Cromwell, to enlighten readers on the Renaissance times of King Henry's court.
The book follows the life of Cromwell from his teenage years when he fled his home in Putney to avoid further abuse from his father, Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, to near the end of his life following the execution of Thomas More. In between Cromwell held a number of posts as a soldier of fortune in France and Italy, a woolen merchant in Amsterdam, the advisor of Cardinal Wolsey, and then the go-to advisor to King Henry. He was an educated, accomplished and astute man who managed to keep his head while everyone else seemed to be losing theirs. While history shows Cromwell to be quite a ruthless inquisitor, as was his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, it is easy to sympathize with him and to see him as simply a man of his time and circumstances.
The format of this extremely thick book is often hard to read because it covers so much of the stream of consciousness thought process of the great Cromwell with smatterings of dialogue to break the lengthy internal monologues. Still, once I got the flow of it I found it an extremely interesting, enlightening and unique novel. The author must have one foot in this period of British history to have pulled off a work that gets so deeply into the psyche of important figures and events from the 1500's.
I do wonder about the title. It comes from the estate of the Seymour family, who reached ascendancy after the events of this book. It would have been better called Austin Friars, the long-time home and work place of Cromwell. I guess "Wolf Hall" is a sexier, more dangerous-sounding name that befits the events of King Henry's break from the Church in Rome and his stormy marriage to Anne Boleyn.
I highly recommend this book to any lover of Tudor history or British historical fiction.
The book follows the life of Cromwell from his teenage years when he fled his home in Putney to avoid further abuse from his father, Walter Cromwell, a blacksmith, to near the end of his life following the execution of Thomas More. In between Cromwell held a number of posts as a soldier of fortune in France and Italy, a woolen merchant in Amsterdam, the advisor of Cardinal Wolsey, and then the go-to advisor to King Henry. He was an educated, accomplished and astute man who managed to keep his head while everyone else seemed to be losing theirs. While history shows Cromwell to be quite a ruthless inquisitor, as was his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, it is easy to sympathize with him and to see him as simply a man of his time and circumstances.
The format of this extremely thick book is often hard to read because it covers so much of the stream of consciousness thought process of the great Cromwell with smatterings of dialogue to break the lengthy internal monologues. Still, once I got the flow of it I found it an extremely interesting, enlightening and unique novel. The author must have one foot in this period of British history to have pulled off a work that gets so deeply into the psyche of important figures and events from the 1500's.
I do wonder about the title. It comes from the estate of the Seymour family, who reached ascendancy after the events of this book. It would have been better called Austin Friars, the long-time home and work place of Cromwell. I guess "Wolf Hall" is a sexier, more dangerous-sounding name that befits the events of King Henry's break from the Church in Rome and his stormy marriage to Anne Boleyn.
I highly recommend this book to any lover of Tudor history or British historical fiction.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler
This is my first "Peculiar Crimes Unit" mystery. Fowler has four in this series so far and is working on another one. "Bryant & May on the Loose" finds the two modern-day Holmes and Watson clones casting about to restart their disbanded police department special unit which has fallen to the budget ax. The old partners are not doing well in retirement and when May is called out to the scene of a beheadded body in the Kings Cross district, he jumps at the chance to bring back his old unit.
As someone who has not read one of Fowler's May and Bryant series before I did get a bit confused about some of the characters and police protocol, but I found myself absorbed in the details of London ancient lore, the history of different districts and buildings and the like.
I will definitely pick up the next in this series and go back to see what I missed with the first few books in this series.
Fans of British police procedurals and those who enjoyed the antics of Sherlock Holmes and his associates will get a kick out of this mystery. Same is true for those who enjoy reading about London, its history and lore.
Liz Nichols
As someone who has not read one of Fowler's May and Bryant series before I did get a bit confused about some of the characters and police protocol, but I found myself absorbed in the details of London ancient lore, the history of different districts and buildings and the like.
I will definitely pick up the next in this series and go back to see what I missed with the first few books in this series.
Fans of British police procedurals and those who enjoyed the antics of Sherlock Holmes and his associates will get a kick out of this mystery. Same is true for those who enjoy reading about London, its history and lore.
Liz Nichols
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Heat Wave by Richard Castle
Since "Castle" is one of my favorite shows on TV I was pleased to see the book we've been hearing about on the show all year, "Heat Wave." Boy, was I disappointed.
Even when I don't like a book I can usually persevere through the first few chapters. Not this time. I could only get a few pages in before I put it down.
I have never seen a more poorly written book to get published. It is obvious that some non-English speaking hack was hired to ghostwrite the book from some screenwriter's outline. American idoms are absolutely killed. Sentences are awkward and without any nuance. Some phrases are laughable. At one point a bruised rib injury is called an "intercoastal" injury. What's that?
All I can say is ABC and the producers of "Castle" blew it big time. They've damaged the reputation of the show by putting out an almost illiterate piece of drivel.
Liz Nichols
Even when I don't like a book I can usually persevere through the first few chapters. Not this time. I could only get a few pages in before I put it down.
I have never seen a more poorly written book to get published. It is obvious that some non-English speaking hack was hired to ghostwrite the book from some screenwriter's outline. American idoms are absolutely killed. Sentences are awkward and without any nuance. Some phrases are laughable. At one point a bruised rib injury is called an "intercoastal" injury. What's that?
All I can say is ABC and the producers of "Castle" blew it big time. They've damaged the reputation of the show by putting out an almost illiterate piece of drivel.
Liz Nichols
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