Katie Hicks’ novel, The Aviary Gate, was a change of pace for me.  I adore Historical Fiction but tend to read predominately Victorian era novels.  I enjoyed the exotic 16th century Turkish setting of Hick’s novel.  She uses a the convention of juxtaposing a contemporary graduate student (Elizabeth Stavely) doing research against that of an imagined historical ’subject.’  In this caes, the subject under investigation is a young English woman, Celia Lamprey, presumed drowned at sea but actually alive and well and living as a slave in the Ottoman royal harem.  Her finance, a well to do English merchant/sea captain/scholar named Paul Pindar discovers her alive in the harem and seeks her rescue.  The story is actually told predominately from Celia’s point of view and is rich in courtly/harem detail.  I enjoyed this peek into an a world that was previously unknown to me.  I did not love the ‘modern day’ sections that place Celia’s story within a ‘to be discovered’ mode.  I found the contemporary graduate student rather vapid and was little interested in her failed romance.  I found her distracting and thought Celia’s story was strong enough to stand on its own.

One other issue with this book is that the characters and language in the novel are numerous and a foreign enough to become confusing.  Hicks has a short cast of characters and a glossary in the front of the book and I did find I had to continuously return to it.  There are enough names/ concepts that are new that it was a necessary evil.  I don’t like having to flip back and forth, but I got confused enough to have to paper clip the section for referral.  Don’t let this keep you from reading it, if the topic is of interest.  It’s definitely well written and an enjoyable read.

Despite my criticisms, I actually enjoyed this peek into harem life replete with scheming concubines, palace eunuchs, and astrology, and will happily pass this title on to other readers.
**Special thanks to Library Thing for giving me the chance to review this book!

Sometimes my book club friends just amaze me.  Amy is today’s case in point.  She chose a book that was a bit hard to find locally (not a problem on the internet) that has turned out to be a fabulous find.  She chose Leila Hadley’s 1957 book, Give Me the World.  It’s a travelogue extraordinare and chronicles Hadley’s post divorce trek across Asia and the Middle East with her 6 year old son.  Hadley’s writing is so rich and evocative that you can truly taste, touch, see, and smell the places and people she describes.

But here’s the best part– I asked Amy why she chose a 1950’s travelogue and was surprised when she brought up comparisons to Elizabeth Gordon’s, Eat, Pray, Love.  I would never have thought about that and yet as soon as she mentioned it the parallels were obvious.  Both books document restless post-divorce women seeking something to help them recover their balance and sense of purpose.  Some differences are obvious (Hadley is travelling with a child and it’s the 1950’s) but it made for a fascinating conversation.

Here are some of the things we talked about:

Why does Leila say she’s going to travel ‘to the Orient?’

Why does Elizabeth Gilbert think travel is the solution to her situation?

Are they in search of the same things?

What does it seem to be like to be a divorcee in the late ’50s vs. the turn of the 21st century?

What impact does Hadley’s son Kippy have on her trip?

What is Hadley’s view of men?  Gilberts?

What is Hadley’s view of other cultures?  Gilberts?

What is Hadley’s view of religion?  Gilberts?

Is Hadley a reliable narrator of her own story?  Is Gilbert?  What impact does that have on how you read the book?  If you’ve read about either woman before or after reading their books did that change your mind about their respective stories?

What do you think they’d say to each other if they were speaking?

Why is Hadley’s book considered a ‘classic’ travelogue?’

I just finished reading Alan Bradley’s book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and it was one of the best books I’ve readin 2009. No question.

‘Sweetness’ is set in 1950 and introduces the reader to Flavia de Luce, a British 11 year old Chemistry prodigy, who stumbles onto a mystery when she finds a nearly dead stranger in her family’s cucumber patch. The dying man utters the Latin ‘Vale!’ and dies at Flavia’s feet. Instead of being frightened, Flavia sets out to determine the dead man’s identity and the reason for his trespass on her family’s extensive estate. Her father is eventually arrested for the murder, but Flavia is certain there must be a more logical (and happy) solution to the murder. She uses her vast chemical knowledge and insatiable curiosity in surprising ways to secure a predictably happy ending (the solution isn’t obvious, but the journey to the happy resolution will keep you on the edge of your seat).

I’m not sure how to do justice to the remarkable character that Alan Bradley has created. Flavia is 11 going on 65 at some points in the story (much to the chagrin of the police detective) and at others every bit the scheming and ‘put upon’ little sister to two older teenage sisters. She’s impressively brave and clever–Miss Marple-ish at times requiring refinement and a cool head in her interactions with adults, and Hermione Granger-esque when faced with overwhelming physical challenges. I loved the fact that Flavia did something unexpected on almost every page. She kept revealing new facets of her personality as the story unfolded.

Luckily for me (and other fortunate readers), Bradley has apparently finished a second Flavia mystery and may well be at work on book number three. I believe I heard this is to be a four book series. I hope it lasts much, much longer as I can’t wait to see what else Bradley does with Flavia’s character.

My birthday is this weekend and my husband just surprised me with the greatest birthday present ever (at least for me!)–A KINDLE!!!

Obviously, I am giddy with excitement and will probably spend the whole day reading.   Kids are in school and I’m off to explore– I’ve wanted one forever but never dreamed I’d get one– too many other things come first.  I love my husband for such a surprising and thoughtful gift. 

The girls rubs the back of her hand roughly across her nose to stop the stream of tears and mucus.  “You don’t understand.”  And now there is a furious pleadingt in the voice.  “I should not be here.  I am put in against my will.”

Zuana sees her, kneeling in a whirlpool of velvet before the altar, head bowed while the priest guides her through the litany of assent.

“What about the vows you spoke in chapel?” she says gently.  “Words.  I said words, that’s all.  They came from my mouth, not my heart.” [p.11, ARC]

Sarah Dunant’s novel Sacred Hearts is set in a sixteenth century Italian convent.  Dowaries to secure ‘good’ marriages for young women have become so inflated that most families cannot afford to marry off more than one daughter.  As a result, convents have become a convenient place to send those  daughters ‘left behind.’    Santa Caterina’s convent is the beneficiary of many of these young women and the fortunes of their rich and influential families.  In return for taking them in, the convent recieves a sum of money for support and puts the young women to work within its walls.  Santa Caterina has become known for its gifted women’s choir.

Sacred Hearts tells the story of an angry novice, Serafina, who has been placed at the convent far from her home against her will.  The dispensary mistress, Suora Zuana, a veteran of life at Santa Caterina, is charged with calming the rebellious young woman and assimilating her into life at the convent.  Their relationship is complex — Serafina’s rebellious nature challenges not only Zuana, but the other sisters who appear to have made peace with their cloistered lives and their roles in society.  Serafina is certain that her hometown lover will appear to rescue her from her prison and Zuana must decide whether she will assist in this rebellion or stand by the societal and religious pressures that require unmarried women to live within the convent walls.

Dunant’s writing is, as ever, an enjoyable and easy read.  Readers who enjoyed her previous novels (The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan) will enjoy this addition to her work.

The Man Booker Prize longlist has been announced and it’s a day I really look forward to.  Now to get reading (or at least seriously considering reading) some of these finalists.  Their list always highlights something I’ve missed.  Hooray for the Man Booker Prize!

This year’s longlist:

• The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
• Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
• How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
• Me Cheeta by James Lever
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
• Not Untrue & Not Unkind by Ed O’Loughlin
• Heliopolis by James Scudamore
• Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
• Love and Summer by William Trevor
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

The shortlist will be unveiled September 8, and the winner named October 6 at a dinner at London’s Guildhall.

As I wrote weeks ago, I’m an admitted devotee when it comes to reading about the Donner Party and their ill-fated sojourn across the west. I have found this topic strangely compelling since I first learned about it as a child and I am often attracted to books and media discussions about it. Such was the case with Brown’s book– as soon as I saw it was up for review I jumped at the chance to read it. The strange part was it took me quite a while to get to reading it.  I knew it would take me places I was not yet ready to go and I wanted to make sure I was in a space that would allow for undisturbed reflection about the novel and Donners.  Hard to do with young children home and running about.  I finally carved out some time and dove in–I was not disappointed!

Brown tells the story of the Donner party through the eyes of Sarah Graves (Fosdick), a 21 year old newlywed who traveled from IL along with her husband and her own extended family to California. Brown does a fabulous job of recreating the circumstances surrounding their departure. We see the whys and hows of the trek planned out as well as the stunningly bad decision to depart too late in the season to prevent tragedy. We are with them as they meet up with the infamous Donners on their journey to California and as they find themselves trapped in the mountains for the winter with little hope of rescue. Readers feel the anxiety of these people as they anguish over the best course of action: stay and await the spring with ever decreasing food stores or make an attempt to seek help.

What separates this book from others I have read is that Brown does an excellent job of giving us more than just ‘the gory details’ of the Donner party’s descent into madness and cannibalism. We see Sarah before, during, and after Donner and there is as much of interest in the book ‘after’ her rescue as there was in the decision to hike out of camp.

Another excellent aspect of this book is Brown’s use of contemporary wilderness/survival stories within Sarah’s story. We not only see historical information from the period, but Brown uses 20th and 21st century stories of survival (or death) to parallel Sarah’s circumstances. The dramatic juxtaposition of these old/new stories heightens Sarah’s courage and extraordinary will to live instead of just re-rehearsing historical facts.

Brown invites readers to learn about Sarah Graves with him as he travels across the country recreating her journey. This is a personal quest for him as well. He wants to recapture what she might have felt leaving her home and setting out for a ‘better’ life in California. He seeks to know not only what happened to these ill-fated travelers, but how they survived and to what end. This is NOT a book that focuses on the cannibalistic aspect of the Donner saga– it’s much more. It’s about recapturing the humanity of the travelers and asking what propels us to move forward into the future when life seems indifferent to us. ( )

If there was ever a book that should be made into a film by Tim Burton, it is Eric Setiawan’s novel, Of Bees and Mist.  That may not mean much to many readers, and I hope it’s not off-putting.  I love Burton’s quirky films and I loved Setiawan’s book so I think they would be an extraordinary combination.

Of Bees and Mist is an extraordinary trip into another world.  I’m not sure of the definition of ‘magical realism’ within literary circles, but if this book doesn’t embody it, I don’t know what would.  The reader is transported into the main character, Meridia’s world — one that reminded me quite a bit of Harry Potter, minus the broomsticks and potions.  It’s a timeless world– it feels simultaneously modern and old.  Brides are ‘chosen’ by families and a dowry matters.   The setting is gorgeous and all I could think about was the village that Tim Burton’s art directors would create.  He’s the perfect person to transform this book into film and I hope somehow, somewhere, he discovers it and buys the rights to it.  I know he doesn’t usually deal with female protagonists, but Meridia should be an exception.

I don’t know what I expected from the publisher’s blurb, but it wasn’t what I got.  I adored the main character, Meridia, and she reminded me (in a strange way) of a female Harry Potter.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s no overt magic being done by Meridia, but she’s a young girl who grows up before our eyes with little help from her parents (they are broken by their own passions for each other).  Meridia fights to understand the nature of love that simultaneously saves and destroys her family.  She marries into a family that never fully appreicates her and she endures more than her share of persecution and misunderstanding in the name of keeping her husband and family together.

* Who is family to us?  How do we construct our families?  What part does biology play and what part something or someone else?

*What should we get from our parents?  What do we have a right to expect from that relationship as we get older.  What do we ‘owe’ our parents?  Siblings?

*What makes one a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in-law?

*What is the role of intuition in our lives?  Do you rely on it?  Fear it?

*What are the bees?  What are the mists?

*What kinds of love are present in the novel?

*What is the role of magic in this book?

*Who is Hannah?

Read this one, it’s a charmer!

Here’s a little secret:  I have a thing about reading narratives about the Donner Party.  Yep.  It’s creepy, but it’s also true and you can’t beat them for pure American creepy real life drama (with a mildly happy ending).

Given my penchant for this topic (I love History Channel /PBS documentaries on this subject, too), you can imagine my glee at receiving a copy of Daniel James Brown’s new book, The Indifferent Stars Above. The William Morrow imprint of Harper Collins sent me an uncorrected proof of this new book to review via Library Thing.  I am VERY grateful.   It’s all I can do not to dive into it immediately, but I’m in the middle of T.C. Boyle’s, The Women, and loving it so I must finish it before I throw myself in with the Donners.

Ethan Rarick’s 2008 book , Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West, has been on my TBR list for a while but I haven’t been able to find a copy to read– even my library doesn’t have it.  Back in the late 1990’s Doris Betts did a fabulous job combining paranormal aspects of the Donner story with modern day quest for identity in her novel, Heading West.  I should re-read Betts’ book.  She’s a fabulous writer and I’ve lost track of her.  But, that’s a digression.

Donner books, like books on Salem & witchcraft are best savored months (or years) apart.  Too much of a topic like that and I can’t enjoy each book distinctly.  I begin to compare the books in ways that don’t allow the writer’s a fair chance to show me what they know and to shed new light on the story.  I want to ask new questions and hear new perspectives when I read about this part of our nation’s history so I need to spread these fictionalized accounts out amongst other reading.  At least with this new entry into thge category I know I have something I can look forward to reading.

I was determined to finish  this book despite a slow start  so I forged ahead and completed it.  I don’t often do that– if I don’t ‘feel’ the book immediately I usually stop.  This time, however,   I was really afraid I was the problem and to some extent I think that remains true.  I just wasn’t as into the subject (Civil War espionage from the perspective of a Jewish soldier from NYC) as I could have been.  I resisted  Horn’s narrative in ways and didn’t allow myself to go with the flow of the book.

This is disappointing because I think All Other Nights is a genuinely good and compelling read, but perhaps just not for me.  I’ll be analyzing why that is for a long time.  It’s got the elements that should, and probably will, grab anyone else who picks this up– it’s an historical novel of the civil war but the protagonist is a Jewish Union soldier who must go undercover in the deep South to marry a Confederate female spy.  Surprisingly it was the female characters that I didn’t really ‘get’ in the book.  They were a strange combination of vapid Southern Belles and Jewish Scarlett O’Haras.  Very odd.   I don’t know enough about American Judaism in this period and region to know if they are really plausible.

What I did connect with, however, was the anti-Judiasm that was so prevelant in the South at that time as well as the ways in which prejudice reared its head within the military.  I had no ideas Jews were expelled from American towns during the Civil War.  That alone should have make this compelling reading for everyone.  At this point in our country’s history I think many readers  know about and respect the service of african american civil war combatants, but I know I had never considered the role Jews might have played in the Civil War.

Anti-Judiasm gets overlooked or trivialized today in ways that are inexcusable.  This book would definitely be a fascinating starting point to discuss religion, ethnicity, and war.  In the United States we pride ourselves on our heritage as a “melting pot” — but this book forces the reader to wrestle with questions of identity and allegience.  Which is more compelling– Religious identity?  Family connection?  Love?  Ethnicity?  Regional heritage?  Politics?  I appreciate Horn’s book for allowing me to consider these questions.