Fiction | A Villain's Side to History

Consider this the year of checking titles off my circa-2002 Gilmore Girls reading list. First, I conquered Proust, and now I can check off Gore Vidal, as well. Something about this year has inspired me to read more in-depth—partly, I think, because I enjoyed reading David Copperfield so much last Thanksgiving. It's one of those instances of reading the right book at the right time, being in the right mindset and such. (Plus, I've probably gotten much more out of them now than I would have in high school, anyway.) As such, these chunksters have brought me some perfectly lovely and gratifying reading experiences lately—ironically, a welcome respite from the almost-mindlessness of breezing through middle grade titles for work.

When I decided to pick up a Gore Vidal novel, I had two options from my own bookcases—Empire and Hollywood. Upon further research, however, I discovered these were just two titles in his "Narratives of Empire" series, a saga of American history spanning post-Revolution to mid-twentieth century. Obviously it wouldn't do to start in the middle, where either of these titles begins, so I decided to jump back to the first in the series, chronologically. [They can be read in either chronological or publication order.]

That brought me to the premier novel of Vidal's series, Burr, a narrative that challenges the myth of many of America's founding fathers, taking place in the early 1800s.

The premise of Burr centers around one such man with historical renown of nearly-mythological proportion, the villainous Aaron Burr—traitor, murderer of Alexander Hamilton, anti-hero of early American history. The story is narrated by the fictional Charles Schuyler, a young law clerk in Burr's law firm who has no political interest, nor connections, but dreams of becoming a writer and is hired to collect Burr's memoirs as his foray into journalism. While the present-day narrative spans just a few years in the early 1830s, time frequently jumps to Burr's past, 30-50 years prior, as the titular character recounts monumental episodes and pivotal moments in his life and that of his country.

Per the author's afterword, this story told is "history and not invention." In detailing so many conversations and interactions between these figures of American lore, Vidal says, "...the characters are in the right places, on the right dates, doing what they actually did. Obviously I have made up conversation, but whenever possible I have used actual phrases of the speaker." I find this enlightening, because to Vidal, in writing this book, there is not much difference between this, a "historical novel," and history itself. And that matters because Burr shares the conflict of character, the dark side of personalities and relationships, the nuance of politics—pieces of history that have been lost or overshadowed by their myth and legend, the story that has become unquestioned truth over the course of the past 250 years.

So in Burr we are given a front row seat to such historical events as the infamous 1804 duel with Hamilton and his trial for treason, ordered by Thomas Jefferson, involving the conquering (or liberation, depending on whose side you're on) of Mexico, as well as insight into relationships with such figures as Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren.

My knowledge of such figures and events doesn't span far outside what an AP US History textbook may tell me. I've never delved into biographies that share the more personal side to these people; I don't know their backgrounds, their motivations, their conflicts. And because of this, Burr read to me like a television drama in which each person has their own reasons for being and doing—again, an angle and consideration that has disappeared from the story told in textbooks. Whether entirely accurate or not, Vidal presents a much more realistic, human side to a mythic story—one in which (by using Burr's perspective for storytelling) Washington is regarded as an inept military leader; Jefferson is hypocritical and conniving, bribing his way into political power; and Hamilton is an opportunist, using others to gain power and scheming a back-stabbing case against Burr as a last plot of vengeful competition. These are figures presented with their flaws in tact, not erased by a revisionist history that remembers them only as America's greatest heroes.

Another realization I had while reading Burr is how much detail to a story is lost over the years, how history is simplified over time and there are so many pieces that, once so important, may be forgotten entirely. The political climate of Burr's years as Jefferson's Vice-President (beginning 1801) were still rife with lingering Revolutionary conflict. The Federalist Party clashed with the Democratic-Republicans, who believed Federalists too nationalistic and too sympathetic to ties with Britain. And news (though not surprising) to me, these party lines were mostly drawn between New England and the lower states, between the old guard of British-born politicians and populist figures of the new America. Did you know there was an early suggestion the newly-born US be split into two countries, with a dividing line of...the Hudson River?? Or that states maintain a Constitutional right to secede from the union as they wish? Though most likely these were huge conflicts at their time, they are details that have been lost to historical summation.

In a sense, it makes me feel better about politics today. It's not necessarily that things have gotten so utterly complex, such a multi-faceted mess, just now; there have always been fighting factions and too many sides and issues to keep straight, much less figure out how to solve. It's just that we remember history by its headlines and trends—a linear plot that we can easily follow how A led to B and to C. When you're looking back on the big picture of change, it's the cause and effect that seems to matter, not all the details of how we got there. Vidal may present a more cynical history than some care to read, but it's fascinating and enjoyable to experience such a side of the story.

Reading Roundup: History Lesson

Ingrid Betancourt's The Blue Line is a story that oozes history—that deep-set kind, full of action, consequence, and complexity kind. It'a unavoidable, you realize, when you take a look at the author's biography; Betancourt is a Colombian politician and activist, kidnapped and held hostage for six years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). It is clear that she has drawn on her own experiences for The Blue Line, to tell the story of a passionate young woman named Julia, embroiled in the political chaos of a 1970s Argentina.

As an impressionable teenager, finding and defining her sexual and social identities, Julia falls for a revolutionary, Theo, who pulls her down a path of political idealism that becomes increasingly dangerous as the country's military dictatorship gains power. Julia and Theo's lives lose stability as trust becomes an uncertainty and safety is not guaranteed.

Amidst the growing chaos in Julia's life, she continues to live with a strange gift inherited from her grandmother—visions of the future, seen through the eyes of others. Accustomed to these apparitions, Julia has spent much of her young life fearing what she will see, beholden to the responsibility of intervening to prevent whatever horrific event she witnesses.

If this book were just all one part or the other, all politics or magical realism, it wouldn't have the appeal that it does; it would be too bogged down by its genre, producing a one-track story, narrow in its scope of storytelling. Instead, Betancourt has crafted an awesomely outlandish premise that creatively adds a different kind of excitement to the story of a dark moment in history. Though inextricably linked to its time and place, The Blue Line goes beyond historical narrative to illustrate an individual experience beyond the pages of history books.

I didn't actually realize that Lily Koppel's The Astronaut Wives Club was nonfiction until I started reading it. Using a vintage photo as cover art falls in line with the branding of a certain style of women's fiction—à la Rebecca Wells, Lorna Landvik, Laurie Graham. So needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered this was in fact nonfiction about actual astronauts' wives during the the sixties.

Koppel has pulled together stories of the women who experienced the space race alongside their husbands in their journeys to the moon. It was a very much male-centric environment; the men were the heroes, risking their lives in a quest for glory, as their wives supported them at home. LIFE magazine was paying the families for exclusive photos and stories, chronicling the space race from the homefront, but the pressure to appear as your quintessential American family put more pressure on the women than the men. It was the 1960s after all, an era when women remained in the domestic background and outspoken feminism was frowned upon.

As a feminist women in 2016, it's quite infuriating to read about such a lifestyle and environment. Women in that era seem homogeneously lumped together as one, perpetuating this image of the perfect wife with little individuality allowed to shine through. Meanwhile, the husbands get the notoriety and recognition, not to mention the extramarital company of the "Cape Cookies" to quell their loneliness during the weeks spent at NASA's Florida base, away from their Houston homes and wives. It seems that every piece of pop culture that takes place during this era (ie: Mad Men) is filled with cheating, drinking men and submissive women, and, having not lived during the era myself, I'm beginning to believe more and more that theme is actually a realistic representation!

While Koppel tries to tell the story that existed behind the photoshoots staged for the American public, I thought that, ultimately, the story didn't delve deep enough. I don't feel as though I learned much about the women as actual people with thoughts and feelings, which should've been the purpose of this book. They still sort of seem like that homogeneous group, and whether it's because it's hard to shake the image or they actually were the subservient, voiceless wives of the era, I didn't gain any newfound respect for them.

Fiction | Field Notes on Ritual, Culture, Love

The same wonderful lady that, eons ago, recommended Gloria to my wee 19-year-old self recently recommended to me Lily King's Euphoria, which makes this my Reader Harder Challenge pick for the "recommended to you" category.

This story unfolded much differently than I expected.

It centers around three young anthropologists in the 1930s studying river tribes in New Guinea. Nell Stone is a well-known American woman, controversial thanks to her published reports on the sex lives of tribal children and youth. Her husband is Fen, a capricious Australian with uncertain and unstable motivations for his work. After abandoning their study on a particular aggressive tribe, Nell and Fen cross paths with Andrew Bankson, an English anthropologist who has established himself in the area for the past several years. Despite his stability with study, Bankson has been suffering from hauntings of his past—his father's death, a brother's death, another's suicide—and is tempted to end his own life until he meets Nell and Fen.

An agreeable new post of study brings Nell and Fen closer to Bankson along the riverbank. They take up residence amongst the Tam, a female-dominated society with plenty of art and culture to discover. Nell is quick to assimilate into the community, constantly establishing connections and conversations, observing and note-taking on all she learns. Fen, on the other hand, just seems to want to be a member of the Tam, and Nell is frequently frustrated by his lack of record-keeping and purposeful interactions.

Nell and Fen provide the action of the narrative; their perspectives lend a sense of wanderlust to the story as we experience the daily life of an anthropologist in this particular place and time. Bankson, though, provides the emotion and introspection. While he is certainly an observer of experiences, his voice goes below the surface and reflects on meaning and interaction.

The narrative voice jumps frequently chapter to chapter, shifting perspective as mentioned above. What we're left with has me feeling rather puzzled, or maybe disconnected. I found Nell and Fen to be fairly static characters, and though we read much of the story through their immediate experience, I feel quite distant from their emotional one. Bankson is the emotional core of this story, and we sort of only known Nell and Fen, on a personal level, through his recounting of their shared time.

Throughout my reading, I felt there was a wall that the reader could not pass. Partly, it's the use of textual clues, hinting to a future that is already certain, defined; partly, it's the distance we're kept from Nell and Fen, unable to feel the impact of experience. To me, it prevented a full emotional investment in the story. That's not to say, though, it lacks meaning. There is great reflection on motive and perception among individuals and communities. This book is a simple read on the surface but has clearly been carefully crafted. The writing is excellent, and there is certainly poignancy here that gives great dimension to personal histories and cultural varieties.

And sidenote: most synopses of this book describe a "passionate love triangle" or "romantic firestorm" which I think is terribly misleading, because I don't think that's the author's main focus—or point—at all.

Fiction | A Poet in Crinolines

"'I must admit, dear Gloria, that you did fool me for a while. But the truth of the matter is that you have never been one of those girls—no matter how well you have learned to disguise yourself as one of them.'"

If you've asked me to name my favorite book anytime in the past decade, my answer has been easy: Keith Maillard's Gloria. No one has ever heard of it, and no one has ever heard of its author. I adored this book the first time I read it, as a college sophomore, back in 2005. I loved it so much I read it again just a year and a half later during the summer before my senior year. Despite claiming it as my favorite book for the past decade, though, I honestly had no real recollection of its details beyond that the writing is, in fact, incredibly detailed—purposeful—and that Gloria is a wonder to uncover. Amid a recent reading funk (the one that keeps hitting around Thanksgiving when I can't decide what to read next—JUV or ADULT), I decided to pick it up again, as a "proper adult," to see if my perspective on Gloria's coming-of-age had changed.

In Maillard's story, Gloria Cotter is suffering that summer of ennui and uncertainty after college graduation. The year is 1957—and that's a tidbit that should immediately indicate Gloria is not your average young woman. [A woman college graduate? Unmarried? In 1957?] We quickly learn that Gloria is anything but ordinary, though that's exactly how she works ardently to appear to everyone around her.

Gloria is a product of high society, her father being the most senior vice-president of a major steel corporation in West Virginia. She's had the boarding school upbringing, the big fancy house, the country club membership, and the style and demeanor that instantly back up her economic status. On the inside, though, Gloria has always felt like an imposter. She's deeply poetic and highly intelligent. She's constantly reflecting on herself, her thoughts, and her actions, determining if she's acting as a "normal girl" would.

"Then she was aware, suddenly, of herself in this particular room, and aware with such an intensity it made her feel as though she must spend the greater part of her waking life sleepwalking: the way the light fell right now—the muted, green-tinted colors it created—and the calling of a bird, the sound of soft footsteps in the house, a hint of a breeze through the screened window tickling the hair on her arms; and the weight of her body flowing down through her hips into her legs and feet, the immediacy of the sensation of the thick nap of the rug felt through the slippiness of her nylons— The fear of death struck her. Oh, she thought, how could this elaborate, intricate, wonderful web of interconnections ever be extinguished?"

Above all, Gloria has an awareness—of herself, and people, and the world around her—that is complex and uncommon; she observes and understands the intricacies of identities and relationships. Her ability to read situations often comes as a surprise itself, leaving her overwhelmed by this knowledge or understanding that most cannot see or reach. She is an enigma—a young woman that has carefully crafted a personae to an audience—but she's an enigma to herself as well. She's uncertain of her own place and how expectations clash with her own interests and way of thought; she rejects the expectation of early marriage but lacks confidence in a life outside the norm.

I do still love this. But I definitely read it as much darker this time. There's a raw, sexual undercurrent that runs through Gloria's world and asserts itself as power struggles and personal crises. Gloria is a young woman in an era that is on the cusp of change for women, and Maillard writes to those conflicts, both on society in general but specifically her upper-class country club upbringing.

Gloria is an intellect, and large sections of the text delve into academic discourse on authors and poets. The narrative itself is told in a rather confusing order, as this unsettled summer has Gloria reflecting on past experiences and how they brought her to the present as she questions her uncertain future. Pages and pages are dedicated to a lengthy episode from the past, causing us to often lose track of our place in time and forget that this story we're hearing is, in fact, an anecdote, and that the present-time Gloria we have met is a product of all these occurrences. I say confusing, yes, because it should be, in theory. But it's actually brilliant and rather not confusing when you are enmeshed in the story; these are all pieces to Gloria's puzzle, and you so desperately want to know where her story leads.

At 630+ pages, this re-read was a heavier commitment than I expected. It's not a quick read, by any means. It is, however, a satisfying deeply multi-layered story of a girl who would seem, to a stranger, entirely ordinary but is, as you discover, anything but.

Fiction | Drowning in Eternity

Having a penchant for both sweeping sagas and New York City history, I have kept my husband's copy of Pete Hamill's Forever on my actual, physical to-read shelf through multiple moves across states and storage units. It's always been one of those "I'll get to it eventually" books, so when I had to read a book written by a male author ("a book by a person whose gender is different than yours") for the Read Harder Challenge, this was finally the opportunity.

To sum it up briefly, Forever is the story of an Irishman named Cormac O'Connor who gains immortality to avenge the death of his parents by ending the family line of his father's murderer. But Forever goes into a bit more detail than that and spreads the story out over about 600 pages.

The first 100 or so of them take place in Ireland, setting the stage for Cormac's eventual move to America. Our protagonist is a young man growing up under English rule but secretly learning historic Gaelic religion and myth under his father's tutelage. The pivotal year is 1741 when Cormac's father is thoughtlessly murdered by thugs of the Earl of Warren—a man with no regard for the lives and troubles of others. Cormac had already lost his mother, and this same man was kind of to blame; it was the wheels of the Earl's carriage that ran her over in the streets. So basically, Cormac has a serious vendetta against the Earl of Warren, and, lucky for Cormac, a man from those secret Gaelic rituals bestows upon him the gift of immortality—and with it the opportunity to get revenge.

This quest for revenge brings Cormac to New York City as he follows the Earl to this settlement that is barely a town. —Oh, and that's a criterion of his immortality; he lives forever as long as he doesn't leave the island of Manhattan.— During this quest, we see New York grow from a tiny settlement to a turbulent city torn by war (twice), and a booming metropolis run by questionable characters like Boss Tweed.

I've been excited to read this book for so long because I expected a story that was deeply intertwined with NYC history. In Edward Rutherfurd's New York: The Novel, the city is certainly the main character; we see its evolution through the characters, but they're really secondary to the setting. In Forever, we started with a strong character heavily driven by plot and conflict; then he becomes enmeshed with this other huge character, the city; and once that happens, it loses focus. The timeline jumps around with such huge gaps that it's too inconsistent to be a story about New York; yet it also mostly abandons the main character's initial conflict and motivations, so it loses that thread as well.

The most annoying part of this book is the final section that occurs around 9/11. I've read this tidbit several times, and my husband heard the same from the author himself during a college class visit: The story basically goes that Hamill completed his manuscript, and then 9/11 happened, inspiring him to go back and edit to include this event that would clearly be a defining, monumental piece of the city's history. Valid point, but that's exactly how it feels in reading this book—like a section tagged on at the end that never meshes with the rest of the story and its concept.

Ultimately, I think Forever suffers from a lack of focus; it's trying to do too many things at once, to tell too many stories, when the author needed to just pick a direction and stick with it. I finished this book with the belief that Cormac's story was incomplete and the portrait of the evolving city Hamill was trying to paint, using this theme of immortality, was disappointingly inadequate.

Fiction | Highly Unlikely & Utterly Unbelievable

When I heard early in the spring that Judy Blume was releasing a new adult book this year, I immediately decided it would be my "book published this year" for the Read Harder Challenge. And I'm not even a die-hard Judy Blume fan. Sure, I read lots of her stuff as a kid and enjoyed it, but I like her even more for her nonstop devotion to the library and literacy cause. Truth be told, I forgot she wrote an adult book once, because I never read it.

It was fated, then, that a friend works for Knopf, and one day this summer I found In the Unlikely Event sitting on my doorstop. I got to enjoy this puppy while soaking up sun on my pizza-shaped pool float and in between cat naps. (This school-schedule summer vacation really is the best.)

The premise of In the Unlikely Event is awesome, in a bit of a sadistic kind of way. Though the narrative alternates its focus between several characters, our main point of contact in this story is Miri Ammerman, a teenager in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the early 1950s. This particular winter, when Miri is fifteen and first finding herself in love, a series of plane crashes, in very short succession, rocks her town and everyone in it. This setting is based on Blume's own experiences as a teenager in shoes very similar to Miri's—at least in terms of time and place. These three plane crashes are actual events from the winter of 1951 that nearly closed Newark Airport for good. Sixty years later, it's still an unbelievable sequence of events.

That's about all the summary I need to share about this book, because that's really what the story hinges on. It's about particular people, yes, but these aren't people that are universal, able to exist in any time or place. This novel is their story in relation to these monumental, unfathomable events happening around them. At some points it feels like life is completely different for them than from before crash number one or number two; at other points, it feels like these crashes are events they witness from a distance and barely internalize, as if it happened in another place to other people. In this regard, it's difficult to really pinpoint what exactly the message is here that Blume is trying to share. Not that it needs a message, per se—perhaps it's just a portrait of an experience; but can we go so far as to call it Miri's coming-of-age, or is it just a snapshot of her life, along with so many others?

What the author was good at here was immersing the reader in the setting with details and ambiance. You can sense Blume's personal connection with the time and place, because she writes with a sense of nostalgia. The story itself opens and closes 30+ years later than the plane crashes, when characters are reuniting to commemorate the events of that terrible winter; and perhaps this contributes to the nostalgic tone—the story, within itself, is somewhat being told as a recollection. I very much enjoyed that we did get to see this peek into the future, to see how these characters turned out. It lent a "full-circle" theme to this story that ultimately just reminds us that life goes on. And while I don't believe this book is a monumental achievement, it's easy and enjoyable enough—with a unique premise that will probably inspire much Google searching—to entertain for an afternoon or two.


Disclaimer: Readers with a fear of flying should perhaps avoid this one.

Fiction | Lost in Love, Lost in Time

Last spring, I was giving a historical fiction-loving friend the hard sell for Rosamunde Pilcher books when she recommended I try Diana Gabaldon's infamous Outlander series. Somewhere in the discussion we discerned that while Pilcher books look romance-y and are not, Outlander looks more historical but is very romance-y. If that makes any kind of sense.

Regardless, a chunkster time travel historical fiction romance-or-not saga seemed promising. And after, no joke, a year-long wait on the library's eBook hold list, I finally read it earlier this summer.

Outlander is old news at this point, thanks to both its recent TV adaptation and the fact that it's actually over two decades old. In the story, it's 1945 in England, and the war has just ended. Claire was a combat nurse during the way and has just been reunited with her husband Frank, a history professor. They are taking a sort of second honeymoon up in the Highlands—a spot to relax and research family history—when Claire unwittingly strolls through a circle of ancient standing stones and wakes up in the 18th century.

Thrown into the past for reasons she can't understand, Claire is met (naturally) with suspicion in an environment already plagued with conflict and deceit; the Highlands are on the cusp of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, when "Bonnie Prince Charles" tried to regain the British throne after the Stuarts' exile during the Glorious Revolution. (Whew, that took a lot of Googling to refresh my memories from AP European History.) Claire immediately encounters the story's "bad guys"—which unfortunately happen to be her present-day husband's ancestors—and is soon saved by the "good guys," a clan of proud Scottish warriors. In particular, there's the young and handsome Jamie Fraser, who is of course going to be an inconvenient love interest. (What about Frank??)

So this is the setup for a nearly-900 page saga of both historical and romantic conflict. My thoughts are going to be as brief as my summary because this book is so well-known, I don't feel it warrants an in-depth synopsis nor complicated opinions. I felt that a lot of the drama just kept repeating...many many times. There's an issue, there's some action, it gets resolved; wash, rinse, repeat.

And what my friend about its romance status is true—hellooooo steamy/explicit love scenes! I also can't really say it's the good kind, because it's pretty far in the direction of "powerless woman, conquering man" at times.

While I enjoyed the details of history, and especially the time travel component, I didn't love it. While it was an action-filled easy read, I haven't been super motivated to continue on in the series.

And also, I may or may not have Googled summaries of the sequels to save myself 8000 more pages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fiction | The Passion of Love & War

When I read Robert Olmstead's The Coldest Night, it was the first adult book I'd picked up in at least a month. It was Thanksgiving Break, and I was looking to binge on books for my full five days of vacation. [See, I told you I was behind in the posting.] Mostly what I was hoping to do was to cross some titles off my never-ending "to read" list, and I essentially just picked whatever was available as an immediate eBook download from the library.

What I didn't expect was to be as engrossed in this story as I was. The Coldest Night follows a young blue-collar working boy named Henry as he falls deep into a love affair with a rich girl whose family are determined to keep the two apart. Seventeen-year-old Henry grows up very fast as he and Mercy throw caution to the wind and let passion guide their lives together.

On the one hand, this novel gives us the star-crossed lovers romance. But then it becomes almost an entirely different book as Henry is taken to the cold, violent battlefields of Korea at the war's most deadly moment. Here, Henry experiences passion of another kind as he witnesses men at their rawest, fighting for survival. It's a jarring transition, being ripped from the passion of young lovers wrapped in the lush warmth of a New Orleans summer to the vast and cold fervor of a battlefield halfway around the world. If you were reading this book in several sittings, it might feel particularly disconnected as you lost sight of Henry's overarching story. 

Despite two parts to the story that so sharply contrast each other in tone and setting, something about this just works. 

I read nearly all of it in a day, because it is written with an enthralling urgency that leaves the reader hungry to finish. [And I would recommend you also read it in as few sittings as possible!] The writing is succinct but draws attention to the heaviness of both situations, so it's never bogged down by flowery verbosity. I think Olmstead has crafted a novel that is less about the actual plot or characters in the story, but more about the sensations and images conjured by these experiences. I think it's one of those books you have to read deeply to enjoy, or at least with a mindset that is open to an atypical reading experience. Ultimately, it's a story of passion and the deepest evidences of humanity in two powerful, contrasting situations. It shows dark and sad moments but also the beauty in those moments that demonstrate how life always has the ability to rebound and blossom. 

Book Tour: The Story of Land and Sea

Katy Simpson Smith's debut novel, The Story of Land and Sea, features a fascinating time period that I was excited to experience. It spans the last two decades of the 18th century when the Revolutionary War is sputtering out and uncertain newly-coined "Americans" are trying to figure out where they belong. This story is set on the coast of North Carolina in a small town that sees war action simply because of its location on the water.

It's a quiet novel with succinct, often poetic, phrases and interactions that leave much unsaid. There are three main narratives going on here. The first, a 10-year-old girl Tabitha drawn to the sea from the stories of her father's, John's, voyages with the mother she never met; the second, that mother's, Helen's, coming-of-age with a slave companion and protective father, Asa; the third, John and Asa's reconciliations of life and loss in a changing world.

"If this is punishment, if God is looking down on her and witnessing her turned heart, then he will surely let her sink; the ocean is the space below the hand he pulls away, into which her body will drop."

The parts to this book aren't told sequentially but intend to provide perspective to, essentially, the same story. It's a present-past-future time frame that demonstrates the multitude of ways events and situations affect the people involved.

Looking at The Story of Land and Sea as a whole, I end up feeling rather confused as to the whole point of it all—the connections of the pieces and what Smith is trying to say. On a small level, it's about identity and finding your place, compared to the world around you and the people in your life. It oozes with religious influence and how it shapes responses and opinions. We can read about duty and family and sacrifice and freedom and expectation. It's about the relationships between spouses and between parent and child.

"This is what parents do: shape the emotions that will color memory."

With all these overlapping themes, it's hard to walk away with a clear takeaway. It's the reason I haven't shared much of the plot or the details of the characters and their situations—these things seem secondary. There's an overarching sadness to this story about things that can bring such joy. Mostly, to me, it seems to be about the holes, the places of emptiness—in your heart, in your soul, in your life—created by the people that usually fill them. While this wasn't a story that hinged entirely on its historical setting (the point that drew me to it in the first place!), it does demonstrate the universality of emotions and relationships, the experiences that draw mankind together from century to century.

This post is a stop on the TLC Book Tour of The Story of Land and Sea! You can visit the tour page to learn more about the book, its author, and find a list of the other tour stops. If you're intrigued, be sure to check out all the other blogger opinions, continuing through the end of this month!

Reading Roundup: Historical Southern Fiction

Robert Hicks' The Widow of the South hits close to home, geographically speaking. Set in 1864 near the end of the Civil War, this novel takes one small part of that four year conflict and tells a detailed story of one town, one family, and how they were affected by the most bitter conflict in US history.

The Battle of Franklin was one of the most disastrous conflicts for the Confederacy, resulting in thousands of casualties from just one day of fighting. Carnton Plantation (a real place near Nashville that happens to be a beautiful modern-day wedding venue!) was right in the middle of the battle and taken over by troops as a field hospital to tend to the injured and dying. In Hicks' story, Carrie McGavock (also a real person) is forced to face the horrors of the war as they literally arrive on her doorstep. As she works with the soldiers and sees the effects of the war firsthand, she finds the strength and passion to stand up for the individual lives that war so caustically simplifies as mere numbers.

This book was partly fascinating just because its setting is one that's very familiar. And contrary to what you may believe, local Civil War battles are not something we learned in school—so I knew very little about the historic events around which this novel takes place! It's also fascinating that much of this story, though fiction, is based on real people and places. Hicks clearly thoroughly researched the time and place and created a very detailed account of the affects of this war. That being said, this is a long book, and I thought it dragged in several places. When I say Hicks was detailed, I mean it. I finished with a better opinion of this book than I had during reading it, which is a rare sentiment, but I was left inspired to further investigate the real story on my own. Also, my mom and sister both loved this.

I last read Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns back in my 10th grade English class, and I remembered nothing more other than my mom also reading it and liking it. It was this memory that inspired me to pick it up again and read it as a grown-up.

Cold Sassy, Georgia, is the type of small town where everybody knows everything about everybody else just about as soon as it happens. It's summer 1906 and the talk of the town is how Will Blakeslee's grandfather has up and married the young Miss Simpson less than a month after his beloved wife has been buried. Our fourteen-year-old narrator Will finds himself in the middle of the scandal, observing the reactions of the town and his family, and trying to see the subjective side of what's happening around him.

For one, the time period of this story is really fun. It's the turn of the century when modern luxuries are a conversation piece. Electricity, indoor plumbing, telephones, automobiles—there's an excitement in the air about what's coming next. As a narrator, Will is fascinating to read, because he's old enough to understand that there's always more than one way to read a story. He's trying to view the world from an adult, unbiased perspective, and he gains an understanding that everyone has their own reasons for their actions. That's a valuable lesson to learn. I'm glad I read Cold Sassy Tree again; it's an enjoyable, humorous story with a lot of heart. Though, I can't imagine it appealing to too many 10th graders—not provocative enough!

It's Fall! Reading Roundup: Part 2

It's a miracle I haven't created another back log of books to write about in the time since my last post, but my reading pace seems to be way down this year from years past. I guess you could chalk it up to being a busy year, but I also haven't had any reading projects or read anything super amazing lately. I actually just wasted about a week's worth of reading time on a book I eventually had to abandon. [A story about a flock of sheep solving their shepherd's murder sounds so amazing, right? Well, Three Bags Full did not live up to my expectations.]

Anyway, to start Part 2 of my quick reading roundup, we have The Train of Small Mercies by David Rowell. The length is short, appealing to my distracted brain; the setting, historical; the perspective, varied. Rowell depicts the very ordinary lives of several different folks, from New York down to DC, as the Bobby Kennedy funeral train rolls through. The year, obviously, is 1968 as the country is embroiled in Vietnam and Civil Rights conflicts. But what Rowell tries to show is the relationship between these very big things and people's very small day-to-day lives. You see things happening on the news and read them in the paper, but then you turn the TV off and put down the paper and they become back matter, because you have bigger crises and conflicts in your own immediate life.

I liked this story, because it didn't try and link everything together to sum up with some big conclusion. It was a snapshot of individual lives and their interaction with the surrounding world. The characters weren't all connected in some sort of Love Actually type web; their situations were different but their experiences were all a product of their time. Simple and thoughtful.

Tish Cohen's The Truth About Delilah Blue, like Evenings at the Argentine Club, as been sitting on my shelf for about as long as I've had this blog. And in my quest to read what has thus far remained unread, I finally picked it up. It's actually unfortunate I let it sit there so long, because it was different than I expected...and I really liked it a lot. Lila is a young woman living in LA with her father, always believing her mother abandoned her at a young age. Lila's own life is sort of unsettled. Her interests lie in art, but her father won't pay for art school. So, she's taking to the osmosis theory of learning by working as a nude model and picking up what she can from the classes. Her father, who's been her protector and confidante as long as she can remember, is developing early onset Alzheimer's but remains mostly in denial about it. Lila's world really turns upside down when her mother comes back into her life, and everything she believed about her past is thrown into question.

That sounds like a very melodramatic plot, but it's not told in a melodramatic way. The reader is always privy to both sides of the story, and we're left, like Lila, trying to figure out what to feel and what to do about it all. The story is actually very moderately paced, lending to the tone of realistic, rather than contrived, drama. This is a good mix of a character-driven and plot-driven story that keeps your attention.

It's Fall! Reading Roundup: Part 1

It feels like I haven't done a reading roundup in a while because I've actually stayed on top of my review writing! I guess that is pretty representative of my summer—it was gloriously relaxed after what was a very hectic, stressful spring. WELL, it's back to a busy fall with work and class (last semester!) and too many other things on the docket that seem to keep me busy nearly every waking hour. (So maybe some of those "things" are actually just binge-watching Revenge, but it's still an important thing!) Anyway, it's time I play catch up before I get unmotivated from being too far behind...

Alice Mattison's When We Argued All Night is an epic story of friendship, following two Brooklyn boys Harold and Artie through several decades of their lives. Beginning in 1936, we meet two young men who are full of ideals, trying to find their place in world that feels chaotic. Through their personal lives (jobs and wives and children) and what's happening in the world around them (World War II, the Red Scare, and Flower Power), Harold and Artie remain each other's counterpart and confidante. Somehow.

Harold and Artie have the type of friendship that seems incredibly toxic because it's so competitive. They feud like crazy, but we have to somehow believe that their relationship behind the words the author put on the page is actually full of love and respect. I couldn't really feel it...because they were both just so selfish! I didn't find either of them very likable—their flaws were certainly apparent!—but I enjoyed the book because I liked the structure of the story. I love the multi-generational saga; I love reading about characters strongly shaped by their time. So while this book may supposed to have been about friendship, I liked the historical aspect better. Peter Lefcourt's An American Family has that same sweeping saga structure.

Evenings at the Argentine Club by Julia Amante is one of the very first books I got from a publisher as a result of this blog...which means it's been sitting on my shelf a long time! This was the perfect choice to follow When We Argued All Night because I knew it would be light, enjoyable, and really fit the mood I wanted. (Sometimes, you just have to save a book for years, waiting for the right moment to read it!) This story centers around Victoria, the eldest daughter of Argentine immigrants who have made their life in California owning a popular Argentine restaurant. Victoria has always been deeply connected to her family and culture, helping with the restaurant at the expense of her own dreams. She's never had much of a relationship; she wasn't ambitious with college; and she's never thought much about it until an old school and family friend, Eric, returns and reminds her about a life outside their close-knit Argentine community.

This actually reminded me quite a bit of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, just in terms of theme and characterization. But that's not to say this is just a re-telling of that story with a different culture. Victoria is her own character, and it's enjoyable to see her determination and success as she blossoms on her own. Definitely a quick and fun light read that's the perfect antidote to the heavier stuff.

Fiction | Whatever Happened to the Novaks?

Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh is not a book that eases you into the story. You are thrown into the middle of Novak family history and left to sort through who's who and what's happening to them. That doesn't mean it's confusing, though. This is a family saga that hops from one family member to another, sharing each person's experiences as the decades pass.

Bakerton is one of Pennsylvania's many coal mining towns that saw a boom of industrial growth with World War II. It's a town defined by the coal mines—the company owns the houses; they own the general store. Unless you're a member of a more elite class, the coal mines define your entire livelihood. And background doesn't matter. Bakerton is a melting pot of Irish-, Polish-, Italian-Americans.

The story begins with the death of the Novak family patriarch. His widow, Rose, is left raising five very different children—George, the eldest who left Bakerton early for the war and rarely looked back; Dorothy, who returns to Bakerton emotionally fragile after years working as a young woman in DC; Joyce, the strong, militant daughter that takes control of the Novak family after her own stint with the Air Force; Lucy, the youngest daughter, always doted upon and, as a result, struggling with her own sense of self; and Sandy, the youngest son, raised in a world entirely different than older brother Georgie, a free spirit that wheels and deals his way around the country.

Baker Towers follows each of these characters as they find their own places in the world for the next thirty years or so. While they each have their own personal conflicts, much of it is tied to their relationships with both family and town. Bakerton is as much a character in this novel as any member of the Novak family. It follows its own rollercoaster of ups and downs; it directly affects its residents and their lifestyles. It pushes these characters away but the ties are strong and cannot be broken so easily. This story is especially one of Bakerton as a town so strongly defined by industry; its very existence is dependent on its livelihood. So what happens what that is threatened?

This sweeping saga is subtle, as time creeps along, and these contrasting characters reflect their own time and upbringing. It's a story of town and family when you're not quite sure which one has a stronger grasp on the characters. If you like this one, I recommend picking up An American Family by Peter Lefcourt for a very similar trip through one family's history.

Fiction | All of London That's Fit to Print

Ever since I read Edward Rutherfurd's New York: The Novel a couple years ago, I've been slowly stockpiling Rutherfurd's other works, anticipating an opportunity with oodles of time to devote to his sweeping historical narratives. Over my Christmas break from grad school, I finally picked up London, which I opted for over Sarum simply because my copy of Sarum is a gigantic brick of a hardcover that I did not want to carry around.

Rutherfurd's structure and style is just the same as I'd experienced; he follows the lineage of several families through hundreds of years, each chapter acting as a portal into any specific moment in history. London spans from the early Roman days of Julius Caesar through the late twentieth century, and we see a city grow from humble beginnings to a bustling metropolis with an incredibly thick and colorful history.

I loved New York because I felt such a strong sense of place. Beyond the fact that I live in New York and thus was immediately familiar with any location in the story, at any given moment you could see how characters were simultaneously shaping their world and being defined by the world around them. It was a delicate balance of character and setting that worked so well.

London did not work for me in the same way. I felt the setting was far less important, and I didn't feel the same strong sense of place; it was often hard to remember we were in London. The story was more focused on the characters as independent of their setting, which was disappointing—I wanted to learn more about the evolution of London (a city of which I am very familiar having studied abroad there), and I felt that aspect was lacking. Though the novel does carry you through some of the  most important moments in the city's development, the city itself just seemed like background. London covers such a greater span of time than New York—2,000 years as opposed to a mere 400—which may have had something to do with it; transitions between chapters often jumped so far in time that you lost your sense of place. It felt much more a collection of separate stories than one continuous, flowing narrative. It also made it very difficult to follow the characters and their ancestries as time passed. In New York, I was constantly aware of family histories as we jumped chapter to chapter, but here I just completely lost track (though there is a helpful family tree printed at the beginning of the book). Overall, I felt disconnected from the city itself, as if these characters could have existed anywhere and behaved much the same way.

It's difficult to get into much more detail about this book, just because it contains so much. My favorite parts to read about a place's history are always about its earliest days—what life was like when such a huge city was just a tiny settlement and how the people living there survived day to day. It's exciting to imagine a well-known place as it once was, a setting that would be completely unrecognizable. London does provide this fictionalized history of its namesake, and it's a style that Rutherfurd is very good at writing. I won't hop into another one of his for a while (this one took me FOREVER to finish), but I won't write him off because of this one, either. Many Goodreads members seem to have the same thoughts I do, encouraging me to give Sarum and Russka both a try.

YA Reading, Round 5: Historical

Judy Blundell's What I Saw and How I Lied has been on my queue for about as long as I've been writing this blog, but I didn't realize until it was on my reading list for class that it's considered a YA book.

The story follows sixteen-year-old Evie who is about as naive as they come. Her stepfather Joe has returned home to New York after World War II, and the family's postwar normalcy resumes pretty quickly. Someone, though, has been trying to get in touch with Joe, and he decides to drive the family, on a whim, down to Palm Beach for vacation, even though summer has just ended. Everything changes for Evie in Palm Beach. As a teenager aching to grow up, she gets her first taste of adulthood with fancy clothes and a crush on a dashing young man named Peter who served in Joe's company during the war. But then a tragedy occurs that leaves Evie searching for the truth in all she's seen and learning that she hadn't really grown up as much as she thought.

This was a National Book Award winner which really surprised me. I thought it was okay...not great but not bad, and not incredibly memorable. The thing about this book for a YA audience, though, is that it has a ton of appeal factors. You could classify it as historical fiction, as coming-of-age, as a mystery, as a thriller. There is an incredible amount of ambiance filling the pages of this book—smoky dinner parties, a muggy noir-ish Floridian atmosphere, the deceiving glamour and simplicity of postwar America—all masking the more serious undertones running throughout. You have this main character who is yearning for womanhood, yearning to be taken more seriously, and as an adult reader, you know what's going to happen because you can see the reality that immaturity prevents Evie from seeing.

On paper, this has all the ingredients of a book I'd love, but I think Evie got in the way for me. I just never liked her attitude (which may not be a good sign if I plan on working with young adults someday!). It does, though, have plenty of appeal for a YA reader.

At the beginning of the semester, my professor's comment on Markus Zusak's The Book Thief was, "Eeeeveryone loves The Book Thief; who doesn't love The Book Thief?" Well, sorry prof. Maybe you hyped it up too much, but I (and many of my classmates) weren't as in love as you thought we'd be.

The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany at the beginning of WWII. At its opening, we observe the scene of a young girl at her brother's grave. She finds an object left in the snow, which turns out to be a book, The Gravedigger's Handbook, fallen out of a gravedigger's pocket. In the following years, as she's moved in with a foster family and started a new life, Leisel's book thievery continues. She's fallen in love with the written word. Meanwhile, the atmosphere surrounded her small German town is tense. The Nazis are on the rise; Jews are being chased out of town; work is harder to come by for Leisel's foster parents; and there's a Jew hiding out in their basement. As the world around Leisel falls apart, she has her books. And, of course, her eyes are opened to what's happening around her.

So, I am a sap for affecting sentimentality—plot lines that are sometimes sad, sometimes glad (e.g. I can't keep a dry eye during Parenthood). But there is just something in my emotional make-up that prevents me from getting affected by actual, serious depressing topics. It's like my brain doesn't fully process them and keeps them at a distance to prevent me from actually facing the issue. This book is sad; that's not even up for debate. But it never really upset me, and most people bawl during it. So something just must be wrong with me, and it affected my reaction to it. 

I think this is a difficult book to recommend to a teenager. Really, it's not a YA book. It can be, for the right reader, but for the majority, I think it has a low appeal. It has an intriguing format in that Death is the narrator, telling the story from an omniscient point of view. And the chapters are told as brief snippets, moments that Death witnesses, with Death's commentary scattered throughout. Overall, though, I think it's a tough book to get into. It's slow-paced and more "literary" in format. I think it's creative; I think it has merit; I think it is touching. But I just didn't feel it as much as I expected. And it will take the right reader to get something out of it.

Book Tour: An American Family

I just read a great book last week.

I've been off the review request/blog tour train for quite some time simply because I don't have the time, but when I was approached with Peter Lefcourt's An American Family, I hopped back on board because the premise sounded right up my alley.

The narrative is a sprawling one, following the core members of one family from Kennedy's assassination through 9/11. Nathan, the patriarch of the Perl family, immigrated to New York from Poland in his youth and has kept a long-standing job in the garment district like many other immigrants of Jewish descent. His five children—three from his first wife, two from his second—are growing up through the turmoil of the 60s and 70s. You can see how each of them are shaped by the world around them, each character defined by experiences at a particular age—from the older, ambitious Michael, struggling to make a fortune through old-fashioned business, to the youngest Roberta, a wild child hippie whose youth ran alongside the Woodstock movement.

We also meet the eldest son, Jackie—a lawyer with the wrong connections, often struggling with booze and a gambling problem; Elaine, the eldest daughter—one who followed the "right" path but now feels trapped in her life that has been created according to a traditional way of living; and Steven, the youngest son, who struggles with his sexuality and finding his place in a world that is changing and a family that isn't.

If just those character descriptions make this sound slightly depressing, let me assure it that it isn't. So this family has its share of issues; whose doesn't?

I love the sweeping historical novels as long as the characters help guide you, the reader, along that journey. In this story, the characters are congruous with the history as they try to assimilate, shape, bend, and even break the traditions and standards of the society surrounding them. Because they are each so carefully crafted and we know so much about them, it's exciting to see where the changing world takes each of them throughout the story's timespan.

On the surface, this is a really enjoyable story about really complex and really different characters that are tied together by family bond. On a deeper level, though, it's about how environment, society, and history all shape people differently, and everyone struggles to make sense of it all and create their own sense of place.

In this case, it's about finding a place as an American family, but the sentiment is really universal.


An American Family is available as a Kindle download on Amazon. Be sure to check out the rest of the blog tour here.

Reading Roundup: Hook, Line, and Sinker

I mentioned that my class commute really ups my reading numbers—I'm certainly reading faster than I can write. I breezed through all three of these last month, and I can only attribute ample free time as part of the reason; each of these captured my attention so strongly that I didn't want to put them down. They all have very different styles, but the stories were each equally as compelling.

The Go-Between by L.P Hartley was my book club's March selection. It's the story of a 12-year-old schoolboy, Leo, who spends summer vacation on a friend's grand English estate and gets caught up, unknowingly, as the messenger in an illicit love affair by the friend's beautiful older sister. The setting is very Downton-esque with strong class distinctions, but perhaps a little less grandeur, because I can't imagine our Lady Mary swimming in a lake. The story is essentially about Leo's coming-of-age and loss of innocence as he begins to consider the feelings of others and not just himself. The author tells this story in from a first-person retrospective, which allows more reflection and depth than if told in real-time. This reminded me a bit of Atonement but without so much melodrama. I think it was universally enjoyed in book club, but it was a fairly easy discussion.

Emily St. John Mandel's Last Night in Montreal has been sitting on my shelf for years, and I've intended to read it since I enjoyed her second novel, The Singer's Gun. Last Night in Montreal is her first book, and it's a thriller of sorts. The story focuses on Lilia but it begins with Eli. Lilia has just run out on Eli, abandoning their Brooklyn apartment and, essentially, disappearing. Eli's quest to find her leads to Montreal where he discovers a lot about Lilia's past—that she's been moving cities, changing identities her entire life. What's interesting about this story is that we experience it through Eli's perspective in real-time, and learn Lilia's past through flashbacks, but we never hear from Lilia in real-time. To us, the reader, she has also just disappeared. It's not all plot-driven though; Mandel creates a highly thematic story with complex characters. The Singer's Gun taught me that her endings aren't trite and predictable, so you'll be hooked to find out how the story ends.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is probably not one that needs much introduction; it made the book blog rounds and best seller lists a couple years ago and is pretty well known. In fact, it's been sitting on my shelf since I won it in a giveaway around that time, and I just now picked it up. I didn't realize that this story is told entirely through letters, so that was sort of a fun surprise. The premise of this book (real quick) is an author receives a letter from a stranger in Guernsey, which introduces her (and us) to the story of Guernsey during German occupation in World War II. The story moves quickly, and the conversational tone really lends itself to being an engrossing read. The relationships and friendships formed through the letters are heart-warming, while some of the stories from the war are heart-breaking. This is the kind of book I recommend to my mom because it has some depth but can still be categorized as a light read.

Fiction | The Dawning of the Ibis

For my book club last month, we read Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies. I haven't written about it until now partly because I'm lazy and busy, but also partly because I'm not sure exactly what to say about it—a trend I am finding to be true more and more with my book club's selections.

Sea of Poppies is sort of a difficult book to read. It's the story of a ship, the Ibis, and its crew, shedding light on a particular moment in history, when British colonialism still ruled India, and the 19th-century Opium Wars were just around the corner. The crew is a mish-mosh bunch from various walks of life, all part of a society in which caste and place hold significance and left to wonder how much that matters when you're all thrown on a ship together.

This is the first of a planned trilogy, and therefore feels more epic in stature than a standalone novel would. It can be very hard to follow from the beginning. Its structure reminded me a great deal of The Known World, also a book club pick, because many different characters are thrown at you from the beginning, and you feel like you're rushing around to keep track of them all. The novel begins feeling more like a collection of scenes that eventually come together as a cohesive story as the characters begin to interact and overlap.

Ghosh says that inspiration for this story first came because he wanted to tell about the lives of Indian indentured workers which were inextricably linked to British colonialism. Sea of Poppies highlights the detrimental influence of this colonialism in India, and though this one is set immediately prior to the Opium Wars, opium still plays a huge role in the rise and fall of the characters. (And I believe that Ghosh's planned sequels will get deeper into the Opium Wars.)

One reason this novel is hard to get into is because of the writing. Style and language shifts from character to character, including one character who speaks in pidgin English. It's confusing for the reader, which I believe mirrors the confusion for the characters themselves as they are thrust in a setting and have trouble relating to each other. The longstanding divisions of race and class are broken down on the ship and a person's future is determined by fortune's wheel rather than their place in society. The usual rules of power and influence have been discarded. One of the characters, Captain Chillingworth, has a line that I found most descriptive of this story's themes:

"Men do what their power permits them to do."

I ended up liking Sea of Poppies, particularly after our discussion, but I have to be honest; it's generally not my kind of story at all, and I doubt I would've liked it had I read it alone and without my book club. Call me a wimp, but I just don't like to read about the darkness of man and how cruel people can be to each other (and this often seems to be the kind of story we read in book club). It's just my own tastes. Regardless of the overarching theme or redeeming qualities, it's hard for me to look past those things. Several people in my group thought this book amazing, but I just don't have a desire to keep reading the trilogy.

Fiction | The story of the Puzzle King

I've been waiting for just the right moment to read The Puzzle King for quite a while. You know how sometimes you want to read a book, but you just know you need to hold off for a little while? Maybe you just read something similar or maybe you're just not in the right mood...I want to urge you to follow my new rule for reading: DON'T FORCE IT! Because a book will probably be better if you wait!

I picked this up at just the right time—after some non-fiction and before my (possibly) depressing book club selection. The Puzzle King is just serious enough to make the story feel worthwhile without bogging my mind down with depressing thoughts. The story begins with a 9-year-old boy named Simon whose mother has put him on a ship alone to start a new life in America. Basically the only thing he has going for him is his artistic talent; he's a fabulous drawer and earns a reputation as such, even as a kid. A decade later, Simon meets Flora, a German immigrant who has been in the States for four years. As their relationship blossoms, the world gets complicated. As Simon and Flora's life prospers in America,  Jewish relatives in Germany are suffering under Hitler's rule. In case you can't tell, The Puzzle King has got a lot of dimensions to it...

First of all, the characters are fabulously developed. They each have their own defining belief system, sometimes conflicting with other characters and sometimes creating an internal conflict. These conflicts between characters are representative of much bigger conflict in the story. Carter creates a divide between one's history and one's present. As anti-Semitism is developing worldwide, characters in the US are torn between their European roots and their current situation in America—much of a "need we worry about what's happening there when we're here" mentality. Characters question what defines them as individuals—"am I defined by my country though it's turned its back on me?"

Carter knows how to tell a good story. And the exciting part is that it's based on her own family legend and lore! She has created her own puzzle in the narrative of The Puzzle King, interlocking family and identity with past and present. The sense of time and place is so distinct...and really troubling—the idea that you can work hard and create a successful life but knowing that others won't have that chance, that you're still hindered by where you came from.

My only complaint is that the story seemed to end rather abruptly. I had twenty pages left and couldn't even imagine how the author was going to wrap it up so quickly, and I was left wondering how things turned out for several of the characters. But, maybe that was intentional—the same uncertainty that many characters like these had to live with at the time. This is the exact kind of book I'd recommend to my mom (and I will! If you're reading, Mom, HI! Read this!). It's more substantial than light reading but light enough to be enjoyable and give you something to think about.

Note: I found this similar in tone to Colm Toibin's Brooklyn. So if you liked that, you'll probably like this.

Vacation Reading, Part III

The books I read in Florida really deserve their own posts, but work has been busy and I'm not going to drag these reading compilation posts out any longer than I must!

So, for the third and final chapter of my vacation reading: What I read in Florida

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, the first in a newish children's series by Jeanne Birdsall, is just the kind of book/series I feel I am ALWAYS LOOKING FOR! It's got that innocent, old-school kinda style of the books I grew up reading as a kid—that simple and timeless quality that I love in Lois Lowry and Beverly Cleary books. This story could've been set on 2010 or 1960, and it wouldn't make much of a difference. The Penderwicks are four sisters—Rosalind (age 12), Skye (11), Jane (10), and Batty (4)—who live with their widowed father and pet dog, Hound. In this intro to the series, the Penderwick crew is on summer vacation in the Berkshire Mountains where the sisters meet a young gardener, two rabbits, and a young boy with a horrid mother.

Birdsall creates her story with the day-to-day occurrences that so deeply affect those with an adolescent mentality. She does a good job of creating four distinct and unique characters with the Penderwick sisters who each experience and react to things in her own way. Each character has her own adventure, which is nice because you feel like you know each of them equally as well. There are, so far, three books in the Penderwick series, and I've already started number 2. These are the kinds of books that hooked me when I was kid because they were simple enough to be familiar and relatable but featured new adventures and settings that I did not live. And now I like them for the same reason, and because much of my mentality is still that of an 11-year-old; I'm always on a quest to find things that feel as simple, innocent, and fun as childhood.

Coming Home by Rosamunde Pilcher is a chunkster I read about on a blog and decided I must read, because it sounded like an epic coming-of-age story centered around WWII. The edition I received through Paperbackswap looks like a romance novel. For this reason, I have been saving it for a beach read, just because it looks the part.

The story opens in 1936 when Judith Dunbar is fourteen and beginning boarding school in England after her father's job transfers the family to Singapore. With a couple of aunts being the only relatives Judith has left in Cornwall, she befriends a classmate named Loveday Carey-Lewis and becomes a surrogate member of the Carey-Lewis clan. At the heart of Coming Home are the two frontiers on which Judith grows up and learns to navigate the world independently; she must grow and learn as any normal teenager, but she also must grow in response to the omnipresent war. Love, longing, sadness, independence—all that goes with your typical coming-of-age story is here.

Well, this book is long and I didn't finish it until after I got back to New York. And you know what this means? I was ridiculed many times for reading "something that looks like my grandma would like." So I want to thank you, St. Martin's Paperbacks, for designing such AWFUL book covers. Pilcher's books were republished recently with non-romance novel covers (shown), thank god, so maybe they won't be so judged by the cover. Regardless, I loved this as I figured I would. I was sucked in for 1000 pages of adolescent English wartime drama, and then I discovered there's a miniseries version available instantly on Netflix! I'm also planning on checking out Pilcher's other non-romance novels, and I don't care who makes fun of me on the L train.