Jolissa
This was such a fun and original read! Kitchens of the Great Midwest pulled me in right away, and I loved it the whole way through.
I had heard about this book in a couple different ways. I'm not sure how I originally found it and added it to my list (I think I saw it locally, in Minneapolis somewhere), but then I heard about it when Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs. Darcy recommended it in her podcast. Luckily for me, when I added it on Goodreads, my friend and fellow LQ contrib Janna let me know she had the book and would lend it to me. Huzzah!
So, thanks to Janna, I got my hands on this one and dove in.
Each chapter is a short story, narrated by a different character. The characters all have something in common – they're somehow connected to Eva Thorvald. She's born in the first chapter and narrates the second chapter, and then we follow her life's trajectory through the characters around her in the following chapters. I've never read something quite like this before, where all the stories are different but fit together so well.
It was hard to believe each story was written by the same author, put in the same book, and still fit perfectly with each other. Each character had such a different voice – there was a really unique feel to each chapter. Some of them made me giggle, some of them made me gasp. Some of the characters I loved, some of them I thought were terrible people. I think that's how the author wanted it to be...at least, I hope 😉
Read the full review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/08/review-kitchens-great-midwest/
I have to admit, I'm sometimes kind of a hyped book snob, in that I tend to avoid them. Hyped books are so hit or miss – sometimes, they deserve all the attention, whereas other times, I just can't understand the hype at all. This one, for me, falls somewhere in between those two extremes. I'm going to have to spoil alert this post, because my only disappointment with this book was the ending. Don't worry, I'll warn you 😉
The Nest is a story about a dysfunctional family of 4 adult children and their aging mother. They've been promised a piece of their late father's invested money, aka “the nest”. However, they can only get it when the youngest sibling, Melody, turns 40. Those are the rules. When eldest son Leo gets into a drug-fueled car accident that needs to be covered up to avoid a public stain on the family name, mom digs into the nest for the money. Bye-bye to all that money they needed so badly!
So, in a nutshell, The Nest becomes a story about the struggle to maintain life with dwindling funds. Supporting families, running businesses, and keeping up lifestyles is no longer guaranteed without that money. Each of the siblings had different plans for that money, and now they've got to adapt.
Some people found this story to be a bunch of used-to-be-rich kids crying and whining over their lost money. While I definitely understand where that comes from, I did like and identify with several of the characters. I thought there was a lot of great character development going on here, and that made this story into a colorful one for me. Each characters' story is different and interesting, and I was drawn in pretty quickly to their fight to keep a sense of normalcy in life.
OK, if you haven't read The Nest and you plan on doing so, you may want to stop reading here, because I'm about to talk about the ending. You have been warned!!
Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/08/review-the-nest/
Like Shakespeare's works, I thought this was a real work of art. I loved the way Winterson reimagines The Winter's Tale, and/but the theme of time is...for lack of better words, intense. If I were to compare this book to a painting, I'd definitely choose a more impressionistic work. Like Shakespeare, this isn't really something you'd pick up for a fun read. It's a bit of a challenge to get through at points, much like Shakespeare, due to thematic passages that are beautiful yet incredibly literary. Having not read The Winter's Tale before, I felt a little lost in the twisted and complicated story at points.
For a longer review, visit http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/07/review-gap-time-jeanette-winterson/
Vinegar Girl is a part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project, and it's based on The Taming of the Shrew, which happens to be one of my favorite Shakespeare plays! So, when I downloaded this book via NetGalley, I was really excited to dig in. I haven't read any other Ann Tyler novels, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
Unfortunately, it's not at all what I expected.
In Vinegar Girl, our main character, Kate, is pressured to marry her father's research assistant so that he'll be able to stay in the country and continue working on an important research project. In the play, the main character is smart, witty and strong-willed. She has a sharp tongue and isn't afraid to speak her mind. Kate, on the other hand, just fell completely flat for me. She resists the marriage at first, then becomes a total pushover.
In the play, there's so much wit, so many playful jokes and comments, and it's so fun to watch. Vinegar Girl had some wit and jokes, which I appreciated, but not nearly enough. The main character of the play, Katherina, does become “tamed” via reverse psychology by her fiancé/husband, but it takes a lot longer than it does in the book, and is just much more witty and funny. I really missed that sharp dynamic between the two characters – I couldn't find it much at all in the book.
Full review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/07/review-vinegar-girl-anne-tyler/
Where'd You Go, Bernadette is one of the best books I've read all year!
The story is a quirky one, and for me, it was the perfect amount of quirky. I read this on the train when I was returning from vacation, and it was wonderfully entertaining for a stretch of hours that could otherwise be considered boring!
The story is, in a nutshell, about family. Bernadette is the mom of the family, and she's definitely not a normal, run-of-the-mill kind of mom. She's a hilariously whacky used-to-be architect living in Seattle with her husband, Elgin (who's a bigwig at Microsoft), and daughter Bee. The story unfolds through a series of correspondences between the main and secondary characters, plus Bee's interjections and narrations at points.
Read the rest of my review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/07/review-whered-go-bernadette-maria-semple/
This book is hilarious, heartwarming, heart-wrenching, and insightful, and I loved it! It had even more depth to it than Ove, and I just couldn't believe how tangled and deep the story got, but I loved every moment of it. And the ending...that ending! Britt-Marie made Backman one of my favorite authors. I highly suggest adding this one to your TBR list! Audiobook, ebook or paper, this one will steal your heart, turn it upside down and all around, then hand it back to you better for having known Britt-Marie.
Full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/06/audiobook-review-britt-marie-fredrik-backman/
Eskens is a great storywriter - I definitely felt the need to go on to the next chapter immediately after finishing one, which is ultimately what you want in a suspense novel such as The Life We Bury. This is not my favorite genre, but my book club will be able to meet the author this month, which is really awesome! I'm very much looking forward to meeting Eskens. Despite the need to keep turning the pages, I gave the book 3 stars because I felt that some of the details were just a little to easy and too predictable. The premise of the book is basically an investigation into a 30-year-old murder case, taken on by a college student. Without giving too much away, I felt like some of the clues he came upon were just a bit too convenient. All-in-all, though, I'd call this one a page-turner.
For more (and longer) book reviews of mine, visit www.literaryquicksand.com.
For some reason, I'm really attracted to novels from this same time period - a time of western expansion, when life was constant work. Work to keep a house, to make a living, to grow and slaughter your own food. It's just so different from how we live today (at least, a lot of us). These stories always have such romance to them; romance for nature, growth and hard work.
It's for this reason, coupled with Chevalier's unique way of crafting a story, that I really enjoyed this book. In fact, I gobbled it up, page by heart-wrenching, romantic page. Although the main narrator of the book was tough for me to connect with (a life-hardened young man), she expertly pulled me into his head, and I understood him. I could feel how conflicted he was throughout, and how affected he was by his scandalous, difficult and life-wrenching childhood.
Full review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/06/review-edge-orchard/
If you're looking for a summer page-turner, The Girls in the Garden is a title to add to your list! I started reading this one a bit slowly, but when I got to about half way, I couldn't put it down and had to finish it that day. Jewell is clearly a masterful suspenseful storyteller, and I'd pick up any other works by her in a heartbeat.
Full review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/06/review-girls-garden-lisa-jewell/
This book examines what it's like to be a young teen girl in a way I've never seen done so well. Cline masters the awkwardness, the need to be wanted, the struggle to belong, the blossoming of sexuality, the ability to see parents as humans with flaws, and the idolization of those who seem outwardly to have it all. She so expertly delves into how thoughts and ideas and emotions shape Evie as she searches for herself. Some of these thoughts are so deeply painful, yet so beautiful to read:
“Even possessing that small amount of money tindered an obsessive need in me, a desire to see how much I was worth. The equation excited me. You could be pretty, you could be wanted, and that could make you valuable.”
And this one:
“I wanted to be told what was good about me. I wondered later if this was why there were so many more women than men at the ranch. All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you – the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”
I lost myself in this book. I connected on a visceral level to parts of Evie's experience, having been an adolescent girl myself. My thoughts, of course, were never as profound as Cline's artful (and sometimes disturbing) portraits of what's going on in Evie's mind.
Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/05/arc-review-girls-emma-cline/
This book was both easy and difficult to read at the same time. It was easy because the writing style was simple, but the jumping around in the story and following so many different story lines was difficult. It was sort of like a big puzzle that you put together really slowly. There were also approximately a gagillion characters, and I had problems keeping them all straight and remembering who they were. After I had a whole half page in my reading journal filled with a list of characters, I just stopped writing them down.
The story, though, was interesting and enjoyable to read. It held my attention, and I was definitely excited about what might happen next. However, I felt like I didn't have any time to connect with any of the characters. I liked a couple of them, but there was too little time spent on each one. So you'd be reading a part of the story about a character you loved, but then you'd be jerked away to another part of the story, possibly in a whole other decade, before or after the collapse of civilization.
Read my full review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/05/review-station-eleven-by-emily-st-john-mandel/
Furiously Happy is, in my humble opinion, something that should be read by anyone who struggles with any kind of depression, anxiety, or other mental illness, as well as those close to someone who does. Lawson uses absurd and hilarious stories along with some really serious truth nuggets to shine a light on the stigma of mental illness, and what it's really like to live with it.
The daughter of a taxidermist, Lawson loves taxidermied animals (mostly the craziest looking ones she can find). That's why the cover of the book features a taxidermied raccoon with a crazy look on his face and his hands in the air :D. The premise behind the term “furiously happy” is this: Lawson is determined to make the good days of her life so furiously happy that they carry her right through the bad ones. She takes those good days and she fills them with moments to remember, and that's what she thinks about during the next week when she's too anxious and depressed to leave her bed. No matter how dark the current day, she knows that those moments will come again on the next good day.
One of my favorite paragraphs:
“Without the dark there isn't light. Without the pain there is no relief. And I remind myself that I'm lucky to be able to feel such great sorrow, and also such great happiness. I can grab on to each moment of joy and live in those moments because I have seen the bright contrast from dark to light and back again. I am privileged to be able to recognize that the sound of laughter is a blessing and a song, and to realize that the bright hours spent with my family and friends are extraordinary treasures to be saved, because those same moments are a medicine, a balm. Those moments are a promise that life is worth fighting for, and that promise is what pulls me through when depression distorts reality and tries to convince me otherwise.”
That passage is so beautiful, I can't even come up with the words to describe it.
Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/04/review-furiously-happy-by-jenny-lawson/
This novel can be described with the following list of very interesting adjectives: quirky, ironic, karmic, squirrelly, political, joyful, maddening, hilarious, emotional, awkward, and even Pynchonesque at times.
Is your interest piqued? It should be!
I had a good time reading The Portable Veblen. It's bursting with themes that exercised the English major muscles in my brain! There are so many dysfunctional relationships, a hilarious and thought-provoking commentary on marketing and big business and corruption, and an exploration of mental health, all told by a confused but quirky and hilarious narrator named Veblen, who has a love for the environment and a penchant for talking to her squirrel friend.
Let me try to put this story into a nutshell for you (pun intended). Veblen is a 30-ish woman with a love for typing, squirrels, fixing up her cottage, and translating Norwegian. The story begins with a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, Paul. Her thoughts and reaction to the proposal tips you off to the fact that this will not be an ordinary book about an ordinary love story. Especially when there's a squirrel involved.
Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/03/review-the-portable-veblen-by-elizabeth-mckenzie/
Bel Canto is a story about love, mostly. Love, music, language, terrorism, friendship – the book definitely doesn't fail to deliver on those themes.
Set in South America, the story (based on a true story) begins when a large roomful of mostly affluent bureaucrats and CEO's are taken hostage by terrorists during a beautiful soprano opera performance by the book's female lead, Roxanne Coss. From there, the story stays in that same setting. The hostages end up being held captive for over 4 months! During that time, relationships are formed between hostages and terrorists, friendships grow, romances flourish.
It's going to be very difficult to review this book without giving away the ending, but I'm going to try valiantly!
I have to admit, I was a little disappointed by this book. I had read and heard a lot of good things about it, so my expectations were high. There were definitely good parts! I enjoyed many passages about love and language and music. Patchett really has a flourish for colorful language on those subjects! For instance, here's a passage about music I particularly enjoyed:
“How strange his fingers felt after two weeks of not playing, as if the skin he wore now was entirely new. He could hear the softest click of his fingernails, two weeks too long, as he touched the keys. The felt-covered hammers tapped the strings gently at first, and the music, even for those who had never heard the piece before, was like a memory. From all over the house, terrorist and hostage alike turned and listened and felt a great easing in their chests....Had the accompanist played so well? It would have been impossible to remember, his talent was to be invisible, to life the soprano up, but now the people in the living room of the vice-presidential mansion listened to Kato with hunger and nothing in their lives had ever fed them so well.”
Isn't that beautiful? It's passages like that one that saved this book for me. Because of how well-written it is and how beautiful the language is, I have to give it 3 stars.
Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/02/review-bel-canto-by-ann-patchett/
Magic. Pure magic.
This book...I'm almost at a loss for words! If you haven't yet read All the Light We Cannot See, it's imperative that you put it on your TBR list this instant.
Anthony Doerr's brilliant and captivating style of writing and story-telling blew me away. I was enthralled with the story and the characters from the moment I started reading, and couldn't put this book down!
The story is a World War II story, but it's so much more than that. It's so deeply human...cares, loves, curiosities, passions, yearnings, growing up. All of this is weaved into the parallel stories of two main characters, Marie-Laure and Werner. One French, one German, both swept up in opposite sides of the war in life-altering ways. Both children, both forced to grow up before they should have. The stories start in parallel, and then you get these expertly crafted wisps of the stories being somehow connected, and you watch as they slowly inch their way toward intersecting.
The way Doerr uses light throughout the book captivated me. It's the visible light that Marie-Laure can only see inside her brain due to her blindness, the creative spark of light inside the minds of children, the way a character near the end turns on all her lights to look as if she's expecting someone, rather then being lonely – all of this and so many more uses of light were just brilliant. If I was still in college and writing a paper on this book, I would have gone all sorts of crazy with post-its and underlining, and it would have been awesome.
Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/02/review-all-the-light-we-cannot-see-by-anthony-doerr/
By about page 200, I really wanted to abandon this book. It took a full 200 pages to identify that the main character, Frances, is lesbian, and that she and her “paying guest”, Lilian, were about to have an affair under Lilian's husband's nose. There are a couple important details to the arc of the story in there, but it's way too much character development for me. 200 pages of awkward tea parties, a telling brush of a hand, a blossoming friendship...I was so bored.
There are three parts of the story: pre-affair, affair, game-changer. Each part could have been about half the length, and this book would have been much more enjoyable for me. There were parts that just didn't matter that much overall, and didn't really need to be there.
Read the rest of this review at http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/01/the-paying-guests-by-sarah-waters/.
This was an interesting read. I definitely enjoyed the adventure aspect of traveling the world – such a crazy and exhilarating tour Wade took! I also loved learning the differences between how each culture trains and how they eat. There are even recipes from each country.
Although I did enjoy reading Run the World, I did get a little bored at times, because there are certain aspects of the running world I didn't know or care so much about. There's a lot of name dropping in this book, as Wade meets some of the most famous and successful runners in the world. I did recognize some of the names (like Usain Bolt, for instance), but she would go on tangents about how amazing certain runners were and what their times were for certain races, and these parts were a little snooze-ish for me.
If you like running and/or running culture, you'll enjoy this read. I found myself skimming through some of the parts I found boring, and enjoying the parts that were interesting to me. I would definitely like to try the ugali recipe!
Full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/07/book-tour-review-run-world-becky-wade/
First of all, as a capital L Literature snob, Atwood's writing style was wonderful. The way she strings words and phrases together floated my boat, most definitely! It was both elegant and smart, but not difficult to read at all.
I want to share this review on the back of my copy of the novel:
“A stunning novel full of sly wit, compassion and insight, boasting writing that is lyrical, assured, evocative of time and place, and seductive in its power to engage us.”
– Houston Chronicle
Heck yes! I agree with you, whoever you are at the Houston Chronicle. Especially on the “sly wit” part – there's such a soft spot in my heart for some well-written wit, and this novel had no shortage of it. I caught myself smiling and chuckling at many points in the book, as there were several characters capable of fantastic wit.
That said, the story moved a little slowly for me throughout most of the book, and then suddenly resolved so quickly in the last 100 pages or so. I have to admit I was even slightly bored in the middle, when not much was happening. It was the writing style, wit and mystery that kept me from getting too overly bored.
Mystery isn't usually the kind of thing I like to read, but this was so well done. Atwood really keeps you guessing – at the very moment when you think you've solved it, something is said or happens that makes you wonder. Could Grace be crazy? Is she a murderer? Is she just really cunning? Atwood's mastery of this aspect of the story was totally spot-on.
Atwood plays around a lot with a couple major themes: the roles of women and men in society and psychology. Each female character is somehow weaker and sluttier than the next! It was definitely a hit-you-over-the-head kind of theme. But in this novel, it worked, because it seems like females win in the end, despite the odds. The male characters also ended up being rather hilariously ill-equipped. The psychology theme was super funny to me – I won't go too far into it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the celebrated psychologist exits the story in the way that he does. Read it, and you'll know what I'm talking about.
Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/01/alias-grace-by-margaret-atwood/
This book is dripping with glitz, glamour, sex, seduction and opulence. Under all that, though, is family, modern love, and war. The plot follows Marlene Dietrich (a real actress born in 1901) as she goes from awkward pre-teen (with a crush on a female teacher) to world-famous actress.
Marlene was super entertaining. I found myself getting really wrapped up in what was going to happen next in her life. The book is separated into acts and chapters. Each act is a number of years in Marlene's life, and the book encompasses much of her life. Born and raised in Germany, World War II plays a significant role in the lives of Marlene and her family members and friends.
I really haven't read a book like this one before, and I admit that I really liked the glitz and glamour. The story was enthralling and the characters were well done, but I did think that the book started to get really quite long around halfway through. Smooshing such an interesting life into 400 pages is no doubt a challenge, and I think Gortner did what he could to put all of the facts from Marlene's life into a tantalizing story. However, I just started to feel like there was far too much crammed into this story. It was a ridiculously ambitious attempt at capturing Marlene's entire life into one book, and it was really enjoyable, but the huge cast of characters and Marlene's entire life was too huge of an undertaking for one novel, in my opinion.
Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/12/review-marlene-c-w-gortner/
At first, I was really unsure about the author's writing style. She uses a unique style without quotation marks – dialogue is just right in the paragraph. Here's an example:
“She's gone and it's my fault! Simon slapped himself on the thigh. It made a wet smack. Captain, I am so sorry!
He had to shout over the noise of the rain. He gripped his hat brim and ran alongside the Captain.
Never mind! the Captain shouted back. Can't be helped!”
It definitely took some time to get used to. Even at the end, I still wasn't sure I liked it. The overall story, though, I fell in love with! It's beautiful at times, and this really odd relationship ends up just being really fun to watch. I loved seeing Johanna begin to trust the Captain inch by inch, and he cares about her more inch by inch...I became really invested in their relationship, and loved all of the details.
Jiles's writing is also really gorgeous. I found this passage especially moving:
“She put down the doll and shouted at the Indians with her hands around her mouth. What could she possibly think would happen? That they would come for her? She was shouting for her mother, for her father and her sisters and brothers for the life on the Plains, traveling wherever the buffalo took them, she was calling for her people who followed water, lived with every contingency, were brave in the face of enemies, who could go without food or water or money or shoes or hats and did not care that they had neither mattresses nor chairs nor oil lamps. They stood and stared across the water at her like creatures of the sidhe, wet and shining in every flash from overhead.”
Overall, I thought the story was really well done, and painted a vivid picture in my head of the landscape and the complexities and violence of the relationship between settlers and Indian tribes, but above all, this unlikely and heart-warming relationship that forms between this man of the old world and this girl wrenched from everything she knows. This is a recommended read from me!
Read the full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/10/review-news-world/
All in all, the book was interesting. I didn't know much at all about the Lindberghs, so I enjoyed reading about their lives. However, this novel was incredibly frustrating for me to read, being a strong-willed and independent woman in the year 2016. Full review on my blog: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/03/review-the-aviators-wife-by-melanie-benjamin/
When this book popped up as the next to be read in my book club, I had no idea what to expect.
See, I like jumping into book club books without reading about them first. I don't read the synopsis on the inside cover if there is one, and I don't look up any details online. Is that nuts? There's just something about not having to lift a finger to choose a book, then being totally surprised at what happens. My fun was spoiled slightly this time, though, when our fearless book club leader mentioned that she had started, and that there were...dun dun dunnnn...zombies.
Zombies?? Oh no. I leave all the apocalyptic, dystopian, zombie story reading to LQ contributor Whit. But, with a desire to be able to talk about the book at book club, I dove in, expecting to not enjoy it much.
However, against all odds, I began to enjoy the book, from page 1 until the end. In fact, I really liked it!
All of you out there who think you don't like zombie books, listen up. This story was such a whirlwind of an adventure. The writing was good, the story exciting, and the characters well-developed. It's such a different side to traditional zombie stories. M.R. Carey takes zombies (“hungries”) and gives them such an enthralling human element. Of course there's the crazy mad scientist, the buff protector man, a romance element, several strong female leads...this book has a little bit of everything.
Read the rest of this review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2016/02/the-girl-with-all-the-gifts-by-m-r-carey/
This is the kind of story I love to read, and this one was really well done. Needless to say, I'm really excited to read A Piece of the World! Stay tuned for that review. For Orphan Train, 4 stars.
Read my full review here: http://www.literaryquicksand.com/2017/01/review-orphan-train/