Karen
This is a good old fashioned melodramatic thriller set mostly in the fictional town of Ruffano, Italy. Armino Fabbio, a tour guide for a Genoan tour company, has a chance encounter with an old woman who reminds him of the nurse who took care of him as a child in Ruffano. When she is later murdered, he leaves his job and sets off for Ruffano to see if he can verify if it really was Marta, his old nurse. As he comes back to the town he left as an 11 year old boy in the chaos of the end of World War II, he is drawn into the intrigues between factions at the university that threaten to engulf the whole town, and he finds that his family drama is at the center of them.
I was instantly drawn in and read this compulsively in two sittings. The melodrama hit the spot. I especially appreciated the mirroring of the town's (fictional) historic drama between medieval Dukes Claudio and Carlo that is essential to the plot.
I appreciate this novel for giving me the opportunity to put "spontaneous combustion" in my tags.
Fallon Kazan and her two brothers, Ovid and Terrence (sometimes known as Cosmo), are adults dealing with the fallout of their mother's apparent spontaneous combustion in the Chilean desert when they were on a family trip as children. Their relationships with each other are turbulent, and Fallon and Ovid have trouble building lives for themselves in the world. Their father, Walter, is a passive man who doesn't know how to help them and may not even think it is his role to help them. This is the state of things in the beginning of the novel. When Ovid has a crisis, things begin to shift in the story. Fallon is led to set off on a journey of discovery in the very car her family was driving in Chile when her mother disappeared in a flash of fire.
In many ways this is a conventional story of adult siblings navigating the aftermath of trauma from their childhood, coming to new understanding of what happened to them, and learning to trust themselves and each other. It was the unexpected elements of the story that made it fun to read. The hints of magical realism in Blue Woman Burning add to the sense that the world of the Kazans is seriously off kilter. Eustacia's over the top personality repeating itself in Ovid, her obsession with him, and his behavior after her exit from their lives suggests not just family drama, but family horror. Fallon's experiences and the people she meets on her epic journey are imaginative and build meaning within the story. I really liked being surprised over and over by what happened next.
I do wish that the character of Walter, their father, had more development. I had so many questions about him. He had enough of a personality to persuade Eustacia not to name her daughter Fallopia and her son Ovum, but almost nothing is said about his reaction to Eustacia's fiery exit. Is his passivity and helplessness in later life because of that or something else? Despite these questions, I really enjoyed the book.
Sometimes you're in the mood for a book about a woman marooned on an island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, battling bears, starvation, and her own demons. If that's you right now, this is your book. Best of all, this novel is based on a true story.
In the novel, Marguerite de la Rocque's parents die when she is a young girl, and her care is left to her unscrupulous kinsman Roberval. Roberval speculates with her inheritance and loses it, so Marguerite's house and lands are rented out and she and her small household are packed off to live in an outbuilding. Roberval's moods are unpredictable and he seems to take pleasure in keeping Marguerite off balance, so we quickly understand that he isn't just unscrupulous with money, he's an all around bad guy. There's no recourse for Marguerite. She's at his mercy and no one is going to hold him accountable for taking her money.
When Marguerite comes of age, Roberval brings her and her nurse Damienne to his house in La Rochelle, and from there on board his ship sailing to New France, where he has been declared viceroy. On the voyage, Marguerite falls in love with his secretary, August, and when Roberval discovers this, he maroons the pair of them (and Damienne) on an island there, with their belongings and some supplies. The story moves from maddening injustice to Robinson Crusoe, as the castaways figure out how to take care of themselves alone on the island, and then to heartbreak as hardships set in.
The theme of religious faith and questioning in this book is handled so well. Marguerite compares her faith to that of her companions and finds herself lacking because she doesn't passively accept her lot, but chafes against her restrictions and tries to make things better for herself. She feels unhappy, complains, and asks for what she wants, while her closest female companions pray much more, and don't complain. Marguerite does experience a dark night of the soul in this book, and while she doesn't come out of it behaving more like those companions, she has more maturity and steadiness than she did before.
A really worthwhile read!
The lifelong friendship of Leah Hanwell and Natalie (Keisha) Blake takes place against the backdrop of Willesden, a working class borough in the Northwest of London that is home to Irish, South Asian, and African immigrants. The two girls lived there with their families as children, did well enough in school to go to university, and have both made it "out" of the neighborhood as adults, but are still very much rooted there. Although the action of the novel centers around Leah, Natalie, and a young man named Felix, Willesden itself is arguably a character in its own right. Its shops and restaurants, alleys and bus stops, parks and churchyards are populated with people who are struggling, joyful, weary, gentle, violent, philosophical, etc. There are some truly delightful scenes that depict the character of the place.
Although I enjoyed the novel, I didn't understand the structure of it. The central section (and the longest), called Host, tells the story of Leah and Natalie's friendship from its beginning when they were girls to a point where Natalie comes to a crisis in her adult life, in 178 sections ranging from as short as one sentence to as long as several pages. The sections before and after Host are fairly traditional narratives, so this read to me at first like notes for the backstory of the novel. After a while I got used to the different pace and structure of that section and it didn't feel so disjointed anymore, but I still wonder about the reason for the style change.
Anyway, if you like novels about female friendship, give this one a try. The two main characters are excellent and their friendship is real.
I was in middle school when Ronald Reagan was elected and a teenager when AIDS was an epidemic. I remember Angels in America coming out and people talking about it, but this is the first time I've read it. Reading and talking about drama is not my forte, but this play (these two plays?) put me back in those times. Although I remember that expectations around masculinity and femininity were rigid and the stigma against being gay was absolute, it's easy to intellectualize it now and forget the feeling of airlessness and stricture the sexual politics of the time had. Not that these issues are all in the past....
In 2025 putting these issues, and the intimate details of the lives of gay men with AIDS, on stage doesn't seem daring, however relevant it might still be. But in the early 1990's it must have been radical. Reading this play now, I am thankful to Tony Kushner and everyone else who insisted on talking about the lives of gay men during the AIDS epidemic, about the lives of gay and lesbian and transgender people in general, and on putting those issues in front of Americans. This play brings the hypocrisy, denial, shame, and racial and sexual bigotry that lurked behind the US's official policies toward gay men in particular out into the light of day, and let some air into the room for everyone to take a breath and see a little more clearly. If we were willing.
This is a great anthology of folktales from around the world and many different cultures featuring women and girls as heroines who solve problems and rescue others with their wisdom, intelligence, and courage, and who make their own destinies instead of having them made for them by others. Each story has a brief commentary (1-2 short paragraphs, half a page at most) by the author at the end. I found the commentary a little uneven, but it's a small enough part of the book that it's easy to ignore. There are end notes and an index in the back, along with a list of selected "further reading," including picture books, young adult books, and secondary literature.
Overall, I really enjoyed this!
This murder mystery set in a upper class girl's school in Dublin has a poignant portrayal of friendship and solidarity among a group of four girls as they navigate high school and teenage social pressures together. Although they are at an all girls' school, the corresponding all boys' high school is right next door and they interact with the boys regularly. When one of the students from the boys school turns up dead on the grounds of the girls' school and the police fail to find the murderer, it leaves everyone at the school uneasy. This story starts when one of the girls brings a postcard that announces "I know who killed Chris Harper," which she found posted in her school, to an ambitious detective in the Cold Case division of the police. The framing of the story is that this Cold Case detective brings the postcard to the detective in the Murder division who was in charge of the case when it first was investigated and the two of them revive the investigation.
The investigation aspect of the story was the least compelling to me. I really wasn't interested in the dynamics between the two detectives, and I found it hard to swallow the idea that the entire investigation portrayed in the book took place over the course of one long day. But I truly enjoyed the part of the book that focused on the friendship between the girls, and the hostilities with a rival group headed by their archnemesis Joanne. If Tana French had left the cops out of it and let the girls figure it all out amongst themselves, The Secret Place might have been really interesting. As it was, it was a pretty good mystery.
I was a fan of Alison Bechdel's comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For back in the early 90s, but this is my first book length Bechdel. I liked it! This is at once a memoir and analysis of Bechdel's relationship with her mother from childhood to the present and a mini course on the life and psychological theories of D. W. Winnicott, who is known for his insights into children's psychological development.
Bechdel is open about her struggles with not feeling loved and valued by her mother (or, secondarily, by anyone else), depicting herself in therapy sessions, in conversations with her mom where she looks for affirmation and doesn't receive it, and in relationships with women who are ambivalent about committing to her. Her use of WInnicott's theories to analyze what might have been going on between her and her mother is a little technical and dry for someone not used to reading psychology texts, but her illustrations and the bits of information about Winnicott's life that she provides helped me through. Virginia Woolf and her novel To the Lighthouse also figure in this book. My favorite parts were when the text of the comic was about something from Winnicott or To the Lighthouse, but the illustration showed Bechdel and her mother having an interaction.
Overall, I'd recommend this if you already like Alison Bechdel or if you struggle with your relationship with your mom. Either way, it's insightful, compassionate, and the illustrations are great.
An accessible book which attempts to establish which of the Mary stories in the four canonical Gospels are about Mary Magdalene, based on biblical evidence, and then interprets the significance of those stories for people in the modern world. I read this book just at Easter, so the story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb was fresh in my mind. I find methods of interpreting ancient texts fascinating, so this topic was interesting to me. Dr. McNutt doesn't think the "woman taken in adultery" or the sinful woman washing Jesus's feet and wiping them with her hair are Mary Magdalene, and offers compelling arguments to support her case. I'd love to see the best arguments on the other side. It's hard to imagine that they would measure up.
A Legacy of Spies revisits the events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold from the perspective of Peter Guillam, who is called in from retirement when the Circus is sued by the son of Alec Leamas. Guillam revisits documents from the operation and tells the investigating lawyers (some of) his part of the story. The gloomy atmosphere of shabbiness, moral ambiguity, and futility that is present in le Carre novels is in full force here, except, strangely, when George Smiley finally enters the scene.
This is the second Kurt Wallander mystery I've read, and it's #2 in a series. The first one I read was #3 in the series, so I'm going backwards in Wallander's life. In this book he is something of a sad sack, drinking too much, thinking about getting out of the police force and taking a job as a security guard, wondering why he puts so much of himself into his work only to get frustration and health problems out of it. While he's in this emotional morass, two dead men in a red life raft wash up on shore and an investigation begins that eventually sends him to Riga, Latvia. At this time, Latvia is still a totalitarian society under the control of the Soviet Union. His movements are watched, and he suspects that the police who are hosting him, who he is supposed to be assisting, are actually in on the crime.
This is a nice, moody mystery of the Cold War era.
Almost 300 pages into this book, author Leigh Clare La Berge describes Carl Van Vechten's 1920 book The Tiger in the House with this sentence: "Indeed, the reader can never be entirely sure whether she is reading a proper academic study or a farce." I might describe La Berge's book the same way. In Van Vechten's case, La Berge cites the lack of politics in the book that takes away from its gravitas. In La Berge's case, it isn't a lack of politics that causes the confusion, but the inclusion of puns, playful metaphors, and a distinct sense throughout the book that the author had a twinkle in her eye as she wrote it. In fact, I feel sure that she wrote the sentence above knowing that it applied to her book as well.
Ostensibly about the way that cats have served as symbols for different elements or forces in political life from feudal times to the present, the book also asks whether Marxism can expand to include non-human animals in its scope. The style is academic, but also a bit mischievous, and includes tiger's leaps of imagination. Nerdy fun for left leaning animal lovers.
The character of Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has deserved a book of his own since the original was written, and I'm glad Percival Everett was the one to write it. This retelling sticks closely to the events of TAHF for the first half of the book, and then diverges for a different storyline that gives James a more active role in what happens to him. That's fine with me. I want a retelling to add something new to the story I already know, and the story Everett tells allows James to reveal more of himself than he would if he were sitting chained up in a cabin trying to keep his temper with Tom Sawyer.
The changed storyline also allows for some pointed conversations between Huck and James about fatherhood, friendship, slavery, and what it means to be a Black person in the US at the time the story takes place (and by extension, today). Having re-read TAHF in preparation for reading this book, I'm so glad this book was written. The relationship between James and Huck needed explication, as James needed character development, and this book provides it in a very moving way.
My dad read this book to me as bedtime stories when I was a kid, and I've read it a couple of times since, but not for many years. I re-read it this week in preparation for reading Percival Everett's James. On one hand I was in familiar and beloved territory, especially in scenes where Huck is lying his head off to some adult and in danger of getting caught. On the other hand, the incessant use of the "N" word is shocking, and it's more shocking to me that I don't remember it being incessant from previous readings.
This time around I also recognize more clearly how subversive this book is on the subject of race and slavery, in Huck's worry about how helping a runaway slave is "wrong" according to the social rules he's been raised to believe, and how there must be something wrong with him for not being able to turn Jim in, and in so many other subtle and not so subtle details of the story.
If you can set aside the horrifying callousness towards black enslaved people, the grim blood feud that kills off an entire family, and the grifters out to rob as many people as they can, Huck Finn's adventures are also hilarious and beautiful in parts. But the hilarity is also mixed up with callousness. I agreed with Jim that they'd had enough of kings and dukes, but honestly, I'd had enough of Tom Sawyer's insistence on prolonging Jim's imprisonment so that he could mimic the Count of Monte Cristo or other romantic escapes from prison.
This is an important piece of Americana, a great satire on American morals and conscience during slavery, and a classic adventure tale all in one, and it's ripe for a retelling from James's side. I'm looking forward to seeing what Percival Everett does with it.
A satirical novel in which Americans elect a fascist as President, who then remakes the country into a totalitarian state, complete with firing squads and concentration camps. The hero of the novel, Doremus Jessup, is a newspaper editor in the fictional Vermont town of Fort Beulah.
Unfortunately, my book club chose to read this in November 2024, as Donald Trump was re-elected President, so it felt sickeningly real. If you've got the stomach for it, let it poke holes in your complacency.
Set in the not-very-distant future, this is a novel about pulling Earth back from the brink of catastrophic climate change. The bureaucratic sounding Ministry for the Future is an agency of the UN, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, and tasked with figuring out how to accomplish that impossible seeming goal. It's headed by Mary Murphy, an Irishwoman with a strong memory of the Troubles, with staff from all around the world. Chapters are from the perspectives of many different people (and other entities!) experiencing changes. A few characters return repeatedly (Mary Murphy and her staff among them), while others pop up only once.
The opening chapter is a heart rending description of people in a town in India experiencing a catastrophic heat wave. I had to put the book down for a couple of days after reading it, but given the subject matter I was surprised that that was the hardest chapter to read. The story wrestles with whether drastic enough change can be brought about quickly enough without violence. Some of the chapters go quite in depth on banking and world economic systems and don't read like a novel at all. This is a wide ranging, kind of shaggy novel with an optimistic heart.
Kate Bowler's cancer diagnosis when she was a young mother came as a shock. As a professor of theology who studies the Prosperity Gospel and its adherents, it also put her directly in the path of some of the toxic messages American society, and in particular some evangelical communities, send to people suffering adversity. Her memoir is a readable and somewhat lighthearted (given the topic) story about how she grappled with her illness amid the cognitive dissonance.
I read this for a book club.
Alice and Eileen are two young Irish women who have been friends since college, now out making their way in the world. Alice is a novelist who has published two successful novels and has recently recovered from a mental breakdown. She's renting an old rectory in a seaside village 3 hours from Dublin. Eileen works for a literary journal and shares an apartment in Dublin with roommates. Part of this novel is the text of the long emails they exchange about how they're feeling about life, with existential questions like what one should do about the suffering of people living in deep poverty or under oppressive regimes. The rest of the novel follows Alice and Eileen as they navigate their relationships with young men Felix and Simon. Alice meets Felix, a warehouse worker who doesn't read novels, on Tinder. Although their first meeting is inauspicious, they keep meeting and surprisingly, Alice asks Felix to come with her on a work trip to Rome (and equally surprisingly, he agrees). Eileen has known and loved Simon since she was a young girl, but although they are close friends and occasionally have sex, they have never been in an acknowledged Relationship.
There are occasional romantic moments, but these relationships are spiky and uncomfortable. Alice and Eileen are smart and capable young women, but they are both uneasy with their places in the world and with the vulnerability that is necessary for "Relationships" to grow. The epistolary parts of the novel are the easiest to read, I think because Alice and Eileen are comfortable with representing themselves in writing, where they have control over how they come across. Their in person interactions with each other and with Felix and Simon are painful at times, because all their insecurities, resentments, and fears are so close to the surface. So, I admire this book, but it is not a cozy read.
Because her mistress shows her off to her dinner guests, Luzia Cortado's "milagritos," little pieces of magic that make her life of drudgery as a kitchen maid a bit easier, get her noticed by a nobleman who is trying to win the favor of King Philip of Spain. She gains a patron and is entered in a contest for holy magicians, the winner of which will be presented as a gift to the King. In preparation, her patron's servant (or familiar) Santangel, who is a striking man with white hair, light eyes, and a presence that strikes fear in people's hearts, gives her lessons in how to develop her magic.
Everyone in this book has a very human longing for something--a better social position, a more secure life, a life with beauty and pleasure in it, a chance to be powerful, love, what have you. The longing propels them, but it doesn't lead them where they expect or hope to go. This fact of life is explicit in the story. It's Valentina's longing that gets everything started, and at the end almost everyone's life has been completely altered.
The Familiar turned out to be more of a romance than I expected, but it's well written, with an unusual plot. I enjoyed the historical setting of late 16th century Spain, with the shadows of King Philip, Elizabeth I of England, and the Inquisition.
A very sweet book about looking past appearances, allowing yourself to change, healing from trauma, and finding your people. The main character is an adult in his 40's just trying to get through life and meet his responsibilities when he is presented with a task that pushes him to ask more from life.
In the world of this book, magical people exist and there is a lot of hostility towards them. All magical people must register with the government so that tabs can be kept on them, and most non-magical people are fearful and suspicious of them. The main character Linus's work situation is comically hostile and Linus is basically shut down, distanced from his emotions, just to survive. As a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), he investigates the "orphanages" where the magical youth are housed to render judgment on whether the orphanage is doing its job properly and should be allowed to remain open. Because of his ability to distance himself emotionally from his work, Linus is sent to Marsyas Island where some very unusual children are being housed. The children are unusual indeed, and so is their caretaker, and Linus's ability to keep his distance begins to falter.
At first I wasn't a fan of the overly black and white situation in this book with an adult main character, and the sweetness of what he finds at the orphanage on Marsyas Island. But as I read on, it won me over. It's a YA book for adults. It's an encouraging hug. It's really pretty good!
This biography of Virginia Hall tells an amazing story of a tough, independent young American woman who was out to blaze a trail for herself in the 1930s working abroad for the State Department when she suffered a disabling accident that effectively ended any chance she might have had to become a diplomat. However, she went on to distinguish herself working for first British and then American intelligence during World War II by organizing and aiding the French Resistance as an undercover agent. She endured physical and emotional hardships living in occupied France, evaded capture by the Gestapo and the French police in spite of their best efforts to find her, and was instrumental in helping to liberate France from the Nazis. There are many edge-of-your-seat moments, both for Virginia Hall herself, and for her many comrades who weren't able to evade capture. The book has an index, end notes, and a bibliography, plus photos.
The one thing that disappointed me was that at times the tone of the book was a little too much like a fan magazine. I thought the facts spoke well enough for themselves that I didn't need to be told repeatedly in so many words what a hero she was, and that sexism held her back in her career. Otherwise, highly recommend this book about a war hero I had never heard of before.
This family drama concerns the Madigans, an 21st centurt Irish family whose four children are coming home from far flung places to visit their mother, Rosaleen, for Christmas. Rosaleen has hinted that she is going to sell the house they all grew up in, so there is some consternation among the siblings, Dan, Emmet, Constance, and Hanna. We get to see the siblings as children together, and then individually as adults, before we see them back together as a family. We see their weaknesses and faults, their attempts to manage their relationships with their mother and siblings, and where the family rifts are. Rosaleen is a formidable character herself, with the power to raise storms within her family and then quiet them. If you like complex family relationships, this is a great book for you.
Isaac Fitzgerald's memoir of growing up in Massachusetts, first in Boston, and later in a rural part of the state, is a unique story about growing up with a troubled childhood. His family was colossally unhappy, and although he describes the unhappiness in ways that make his father and maternal grandparents look pretty bad, the book is anything but bitter. He describes using drugs and alcohol from the age of 12, and for long periods his use was heavy, but he never describes himself as an addict or as realizing that he needs to stop, although his drinking and drug use apparently destroyed some important relationships. I would describe this book as the most joyful memoir of growing up with a troubled childhood I've ever read. Not that his experiences growing up were joyful, but the author's attitude towards his younger self is forgiving and compassionate.