en-US Thu, 10 Apr 2025 09:37:56 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 228363290 An elegiac novel of men lost in a coal mining disaster and the boy who survives to tell the story

On New Year’s Day, 1929, Ondro Prach, the thirteen-year-old son of Slovak immigrants in Pennsylvania coal country, begins a new job as mule boy. He knows the danger—his father died in the mines—but he is proud of his position handling the animal that hauls cartloads of coal from shafts deep within the earth to the surface. After Ondro earns the trust of the miners and the mule in his charge, the room the men are working collapses and their fate is sealed.

From that moment onward, Ondro carries the hard memory of that day, a burden that leads to addiction and imprisonment, costing him his family. But, years later, when the miners� loved ones come searching for answers, he finds the strength to share what the men spoke of and prayed for in the pitch black.

Told in incantatory prose set to the rhythm of human breath, this sublime novel turns the memento mori into a meditation not only on death but on what it takes to tunnel through darkness and live.]]> 192 Andrew Krivak 195427646X Ann 0 to-read 5.00
author: Andrew Krivak
name: Ann
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3697905 Taking the reader on a surreal yet vivid journey, Tree of Smoke (the name given to a 'psy op' that might or might not be hypothetical and might or might not be officially sanctioned) is Denis Johnson's most gripping, visionary and ambitions work to date.

Selected as top five fiction 2007 by the New York Times Book Review.]]> 614 Denis Johnson 0330449214 Ann 0 to-read 3.41 2004
author: Denis Johnson
name: Ann
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215361877 An “urgent [and] ingenious� (The New York Times Book Review) novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean—from the New York Times bestselling author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

“The spirit of Joseph Conrad hovers over the text, but here the heart of darkness lies at the bottom of the ocean.”—Salman Rushdie

“Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.�

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.

Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?

Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.]]> 256 Colum McCann 0593241738 Ann 5 It took McCann to educate me about the myriad of undersea fiber optic cables that carry the majority of the world’s communication data � all through pulses of light. The narrator, Anthony Fennel is an Irish playwright and journalist, who is at a low point in his life and career. He takes an assignment which will involve writing an article about his experiences on a ship that fixes broken undersea cables. Anthony travels to South Africa, where he meets John Conway, the head of the crew of repair specialists. Anthony spends time with Conway in South Africa (where the ship is docked, waiting for a cable break), where he sees Conway’s superlative ability to deep free dive and also meets Conway’s significant other, Zanele, an actress. While Anthony is a writer at the end of his rope with many broken relationships (and a love of alcohol), he is a straightforward person. Conway is terse, confusing and mysterious. The background is set, a cable breaks, the ship sails, Zanele leaves for London and the repairs of the technology and personalities become intertwined. The story moves quickly and intricately to a perfect conclusion. A note - at 250 pages, this is more of a wonderful novella than a saga like Aperigon (just to set proper expectations).
It is hard for me to name a writer who captures both physical scenes and complicated human emotions better than McCann. Fennel and Conway play off each other, and both men are viewed in light of brokenness and repair. Since the author is McCann, the novel is full of interesting facts and places: South Africa, free diving, deepsea repair and acting to name a few. As expected, some current topics are covered, such as pollution of the ocean, our complete dependence on technology and obsession with famous people. Alcohol addiction is also a subtle theme, as it is one of the broken things Anthony hopes to fix. I loved the line “One drink is too much and a million is not enough�.
Long after finishing this novel, I will be pondering brokenness and repair of our individual human lives � what we want to fix, what we actually try to fix, what we chose not to fix, and what we cannot fix even when we try.
]]> 3.80 2025
author: Colum McCann
name: Ann
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: africa, technology, male-perspectives
review:
Colum McCann has once again written a beautiful, moving narrative about repair � or the impossibility thereof � from broken technology to broken human relationships.
It took McCann to educate me about the myriad of undersea fiber optic cables that carry the majority of the world’s communication data � all through pulses of light. The narrator, Anthony Fennel is an Irish playwright and journalist, who is at a low point in his life and career. He takes an assignment which will involve writing an article about his experiences on a ship that fixes broken undersea cables. Anthony travels to South Africa, where he meets John Conway, the head of the crew of repair specialists. Anthony spends time with Conway in South Africa (where the ship is docked, waiting for a cable break), where he sees Conway’s superlative ability to deep free dive and also meets Conway’s significant other, Zanele, an actress. While Anthony is a writer at the end of his rope with many broken relationships (and a love of alcohol), he is a straightforward person. Conway is terse, confusing and mysterious. The background is set, a cable breaks, the ship sails, Zanele leaves for London and the repairs of the technology and personalities become intertwined. The story moves quickly and intricately to a perfect conclusion. A note - at 250 pages, this is more of a wonderful novella than a saga like Aperigon (just to set proper expectations).
It is hard for me to name a writer who captures both physical scenes and complicated human emotions better than McCann. Fennel and Conway play off each other, and both men are viewed in light of brokenness and repair. Since the author is McCann, the novel is full of interesting facts and places: South Africa, free diving, deepsea repair and acting to name a few. As expected, some current topics are covered, such as pollution of the ocean, our complete dependence on technology and obsession with famous people. Alcohol addiction is also a subtle theme, as it is one of the broken things Anthony hopes to fix. I loved the line “One drink is too much and a million is not enough�.
Long after finishing this novel, I will be pondering brokenness and repair of our individual human lives � what we want to fix, what we actually try to fix, what we chose not to fix, and what we cannot fix even when we try.

]]> 211642069 For fans ofĚýThe GoldfinchĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, an ambitious and absorbing debut that follows three generations of women from New York to rural Ireland and back again.

New York City, late September 2001. The walls of the city are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. When a letter arrives from an aunt she didn’t know existed in Ireland with the offer of a new life, the name jogs a an old videocassette game Cora used to play as a child where two sisters must save the students of a mysterious boarding school.

County Donegal, 1974. An eclectic group of artists known as the Screamers arrives in Burtonport and moves into the old schoolhouse down the road from where Roisin lives with her older sister Moira. Alternately kind and cruel, brilliant artist Moira is a mystery to Roisin, as is Moira’s relationship with the boy next door, Michael. When the Screamers look to hire an artist in residence, Roisin enlists Michael’s help to get Moira the job, setting in motion a chain of events that will put an ocean between the sisters and threaten to tear them apart forever.

Burtonport, 2018. Lyca Brady lives in a sprawling old house with her mother, Cora, and great aunt, Ro. Abortion has just been legalized in Ireland, and Lyca is struggling to find herself outside her mother’s activism. An unexpected message from a childhood friend sends Lyca searching her house’s mysterious attic, with its strange collection of old medical equipment, piles of paperwork, and dusty boxes of ancient video games. There, she unearths secrets hidden for decades—secrets perhaps better left unknown.

Catherine Airey’s haunting debut spins a mesmerizing story of family and fate, survival and revelation, examining the irresistible gravity of the past—how it endures through generations, pervasively present even when buried or forgotten.


]]> 480 Catherine Airey 0063380137 Ann 3 3.84 2025
author: Catherine Airey
name: Ann
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: family-saga, family-relationships, ireland, mental-health, usa-1900s-late
review:
This is the story of two Irish sisters (Maire and Roisin), one man (Michael), Maire’s daughter (Cora) and Cora’s daughter, set in New York and in a house in Ireland with a dark history. The novel starts with the destruction of the World Trade Centers and Cora’s loss of her father. With no family left in New York, Cora moves to Ireland to live with her aunt Roisin. The story then moves back in time to Ireland and the coming of age of Maire, Roisin and Michael on an Irish dairy farm. It is clear that Maire has significant artistic talent, and it is also clear that she suffers from mental illness. Maire wins an art scholarship to NYU, and becomes utterly lost as an student in New York. Several terrible things happen to her, and her mental illness accelerates. The novel then moves back and forth between New York (Maire’s life and descent) and Ireland (Rosaline, Cora and Cora’s daughter). There are several prominent themes. One is the relationship between the sisters, Maire and Roisin, which is fraught with sibling rivalry and deep misunderstandings. The other main theme revolves around pregnancy (accidental or the result of a brutal attack), abortion, adoption and motherhood. There were also lovely descriptions of the spooky Irish house, which even gave rise to an early computer game called Scream Sisters (the game was a lovely, subtle plot item). I thought the scenes of Maire’s struggles as a young, immigrant woman in New York were very well done, and her deep issues with mental illness were deeply portrayed and heartbreaking. The settings in the Irish house were intriguing. However, overall there were just too many pregnancies and too much of the plot arising from them for me.
]]> 214151747 From #1 bestselling author Genevieve Graham comes a gripping novel set in Toronto and Vietnam during the turbulent sixties about two women caught up in powerful social movements and the tragedy that will bring them together—perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Women .

Toronto, 1967. Two young women with different backgrounds, attitudes, and aptitudes are living in an exciting but confusing time, the most extreme counter-culture movement the modern world has ever seen. They have little in common except for the place they both call an apartment building on Isabella Street.

Marion Hart, a psychiatrist working in Toronto’s foremost mental institution, is fighting deinstitutionalization—the closing of major institutions in favour of community-based centres—because she believes it could one day cause major homelessness. When Alex Neumann, a vet with a debilitating wound, is admitted to the mental institution, Marion will learn through him that there is so much more to life than what she is living.

Sassy Rankin, a budding folk singer and carefree hippy from a privileged family, joins protests over the Vietnam War and is devastated that her brother chose to join the US Marines. At the same time, she must deal with the truth that her comfortable life is financed by her father, a real estate magnate bent on gentrifying the city, making it unaffordable for many of her friends.

The strength of their unlikely friendship means that when one grapples with a catastrophic event, the other must do all she can to make it right.

Inspired by the unfettered optimism and crushing disillusionment of the sixties, On Isabella Street is an extraordinary novel about the enduring bonds of friendship and family and the devastating cost of war.]]> 432 Genevieve Graham 1982197013 Ann 0 to-read 4.72
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Ann
average rating: 4.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214537790 FromĚýPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingĚýauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Ann 4 The setting in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl is extremely powerful. The novel starts on Black Sunday and major, devastating dust storms continue throughout the story. The descriptions of the power of nature are breathtaking. Even more importantly, the reader experiences the drought and dust through the eyes and hearts of the citizens of Uz as their farms blow away, their crops are lost and they are unable to pay their debts. Set into dusty Oz are the four characters described above as well as a truly evil sheriff. Forces of good and evil are pitted against each other. The pace of the novel is quick.
One of the overwhelming themes is the nature of memory. What is memory? If you can’t remember something bad, did it not happen? How can memories be altered? What if someone alters a memory in its retelling to make the acceptance of it better for the receiver? Has our government altered memories? These issues are raised beautifully and powerfully when people make “deposits� with the Antidote, when Asphodel helps the Antidote with her “withdrawals� and when Cleo’s camera’s prints reflect the scene she photographed (in the story’s present) in past times past as well as future times.
Trauma is another issue which runs deeply through the novel. Asphodel has lost her mother, who she misses constantly while trying to be an adult. As a teenager, the Antidote spent a year of utter horror in a home for unwed mothers. Those scenes (which are based upon real events) will linger with me for a long time.
The novel also deals with the brutal displacement of Native Americans so that European settlers could take their land. This is a story which has been told many times, but Russell did it in a unique and highly impactful way. She used the story of Harp’s father (Tomasz), a Polish Catholic who had been displaced and reduced in every way by Germany. Based on unsubstantiated promises, Tomasz and his wife left their family in Poland and suffered terribly to come to Nebraska to find that not only was the land not as they had been led to believe � but that by taking this government offered land, they had displaced Native Americans just has they themselves had been displaced in Poland. Very well done!
This novel achieves a lot of its beauty and impact through magical realism. In order to enjoy it, you must be willing to suspend your belief in only reality and go with the flow of the story. If you do, you will be richly rewarded.
]]> 4.03 2025
author: Karen Russell
name: Ann
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: magical-realism, usa-1900-s-early
review:
This wonderful and very unique novel, with its many themes and wonderful characters, amazed me on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin with my review. The setting is Uz, Nebraska during the Dust Bowl. There are four main characters. Asphodel Oletsky is a teenage girl who has come to live on her uncle’s farm in Oz after the death of her mother. Asphodel’s happiness comes from basketball � at which she is quite skilled. The Anitdote (or Antonina) is a Prairie Witch, who receives “deposits� of people’s memories. These memories are almost always things that people wish to forget, and after a person makes a “deposit� with the Antidote, they are completely free of their bad memories (and quite happy as a result). Customers can also make “withdrawals� and get their memories back. Harp Oletsky is Asphodel’s uncle and a farmer in Oz during the Dust Bowl. Cleo is a photographer for the Resettlement Administration (a New Deal program), who has been sent to Uz to photographically bring the life of Nebraskans to the rest of the nation.
The setting in Nebraska during the Dust Bowl is extremely powerful. The novel starts on Black Sunday and major, devastating dust storms continue throughout the story. The descriptions of the power of nature are breathtaking. Even more importantly, the reader experiences the drought and dust through the eyes and hearts of the citizens of Uz as their farms blow away, their crops are lost and they are unable to pay their debts. Set into dusty Oz are the four characters described above as well as a truly evil sheriff. Forces of good and evil are pitted against each other. The pace of the novel is quick.
One of the overwhelming themes is the nature of memory. What is memory? If you can’t remember something bad, did it not happen? How can memories be altered? What if someone alters a memory in its retelling to make the acceptance of it better for the receiver? Has our government altered memories? These issues are raised beautifully and powerfully when people make “deposits� with the Antidote, when Asphodel helps the Antidote with her “withdrawals� and when Cleo’s camera’s prints reflect the scene she photographed (in the story’s present) in past times past as well as future times.
Trauma is another issue which runs deeply through the novel. Asphodel has lost her mother, who she misses constantly while trying to be an adult. As a teenager, the Antidote spent a year of utter horror in a home for unwed mothers. Those scenes (which are based upon real events) will linger with me for a long time.
The novel also deals with the brutal displacement of Native Americans so that European settlers could take their land. This is a story which has been told many times, but Russell did it in a unique and highly impactful way. She used the story of Harp’s father (Tomasz), a Polish Catholic who had been displaced and reduced in every way by Germany. Based on unsubstantiated promises, Tomasz and his wife left their family in Poland and suffered terribly to come to Nebraska to find that not only was the land not as they had been led to believe � but that by taking this government offered land, they had displaced Native Americans just has they themselves had been displaced in Poland. Very well done!
This novel achieves a lot of its beauty and impact through magical realism. In order to enjoy it, you must be willing to suspend your belief in only reality and go with the flow of the story. If you do, you will be richly rewarded.

]]> 228177777 When a daughter and her famous mother return to Winthrop Island to confront their complicated past, they discover a secret trove of paintings that connect them to a mysterious woman who vanished on a luxury steamship two centuries earlier.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers comes an epic tale of family legacy, love, and truths that echo down generations.

Audrey Fisher has struggled all her life to emerge from the shadow of her famous mother by forging a career as a world-class chef. Meredith Fisher’s glamorous screen persona disguises the trauma of the tragic accident that haunts her dreams. Neither woman wants to return to the New England island they left behind and its complicated emotional ties, but Meredith has one last chance to sober up and salvage her big comeback, and where else but discreet, moneyed Winthrop Island can a famous actress spend the summer without the intrusion of other people? Until Audrey discovers an old wooden chest among the belongings of her estranged bartender father, Mike Kennedy, and the astonishing contents draw the women deep into Winthrop’s past and its many secrets…attracting the interest of their handsome neighbor, Sedge Peabody. How did a trove of paintings from one of America’s greatest artists wind up in the cellar of the Mohegan Inn? And who is the mysterious woman portrayed on every canvas?

On a stormy November night in 1846, Providence Dare flees Boston and boards the luxury steamship Atlantic one step ahead of the law�.or so she believes. But when a catastrophic accident leaves the ship at the mercy of a mighty gale, Providence finds herself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the one man who knows her real identity—the detective investigating the suspicious death of her employer, the painter Henry Irving. As the Atlantic fights for her life and the rocky shore of Winthrop Island edges closer, a desperate Providence searches for her chance to escape…before the sea swallows her without a trace.

In Under the Stars, the destinies of three women converge across centuries, as a harrowing true disaster at the dawn of the steamship era evokes a complex legacy of family secrets in modern-day New England. Williams has written a timeless epic of mothers and daughters, of love lost and found, and of the truths that echo down generations.]]> 368 Beatriz Williams 0593724259 Ann 0 to-read 0.0 2025
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Ann
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 39328584
It's 2008 and Liam Greenwood is a carpenter, fallen from a ladder and sprawled on his broken back, calling out from the concrete floor of an empty mansion.

It's 1974 and Willow Greenwood is out of jail, free after being locked up for one of her endless series of environmental protests: attempts at atonement for the sins of her father's once vast and violent timber empire.

It's 1934 and Everett Greenwood is alone, as usual, in his maple syrup camp squat when he hears the cries of an abandoned infant and gets tangled up in the web of a crime that will cling to his family for decades.

And throughout, there are trees: thrumming a steady, silent pulse beneath Christie's effortless sentences and working as a guiding metaphor for withering, weathering, and survival.

A shining, intricate clockwork of a novel, Greenwood is a rain-soaked and sun-dappled story of the bonds and breaking points of money and love, wood and blood—and the hopeful, impossible task of growing toward the light.]]> 528 Michael Christie 1984822004 Ann 4 4.35 2019
author: Michael Christie
name: Ann
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: canada, family-saga, family-relationships, beautiful-nature
review:
Thanks to my GR friends, I have had the pleasure of reading a wonderful saga of a novel, with great characters, complicated family relationships, beautiful descriptions of nature and social themes. This novel is set in four periods of time: 1938 after all mature vegetation has ceased to exist, except on a tiny island off the west coast of Canada, where Jacinda (Jake) Greenwood is a tour guide; 2008 when Liam Greenwood, a carpenter suffers an accident; 1974 when Willow Greenwood is an environmental activist (particularly against the timber industry) living in her Westphalia van; 1934, when Everett Greenwood, a veteran, and loner living in the forest, tries to do the right thing and must travel from eastern to western Canada, while his brother, Harris, amasses a fortune in the lumber business; and 1908, when we first meet Harris and Everett as orphaned boys. The heart of the novel revolves around trees. Each main character taps trees, makes trees into shelters, harvests trees, agitates for trees, does unique woodwork, or works in the world’s only remaining forest. Beautifully, the novel starts in 2038, wends its way in reverse chronological order back to 1908, and, then, just like the “other side� of the rings of a tree, makes its way chronologically back through the time periods. But this is not just a novel about the destruction of trees by mankind � it is much more than that � which I why I enjoyed it so much. Each of the main characters is complex and fully human - riddled with weaknesses, desires and often poor choices � yet each character has innate goodness that also shines through (except for one notable lesser character). There are more themes than I can name, including poverty, excessive wealth, loneliness, PTSD, the effect of the Depression and the dust bowl, itinerant life, lost books and climate change. Each is explored through the characters and the storyline, rather than being pounded into the reader, which is much more enjoyable and effective in my opinion. However, in addition to trees, the core of the story lies in the concept of family. In this novel the Greenwood “Family� is created in 1908, by the two orphaned boys. The novel evolves from them, but the Greenwood Family is not necessarily a traditional family created through blood and marriage. The family experiences love, abandonment, deceit, secrecy, acceptance and rejection, and the reader is left to ponder exactly what constitutes a family and what one generation leaves (or does not leave) to the next. This novel fully captured my attention and my heart, and my only complaint is that (for me) the part of the storyline set in the future did not work very well (as is often the case).
]]> 221251828 “Wise and heartbreaking� (Ann Napolitano), this captivating epic weaves the intimate lives of two Midwestern families across generations, from World War II to the late twentieth century.

In the small Ohio town of Bonhomie, a stolen moment of passion, sparked in the exuberant aftermath of the Allied victory in Europe, binds Cal Jenkins, a man wounded not in war but by his inability to serve in it, to Margaret Salt, a woman trying to obscure her past. Cal’s wife, Becky, has a spiritual she is a seer who can conjure the dead, helping families connect with those whom they’ve lost. Margaret’s husband, Felix, is serving on a Navy cargo ship; she will soon learn that he may have perished in a predawn attack in the Philippine Sea.Ěý

As the country reconstructs in the postwar boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie, but nothing stays buried forever in a small town. Twenty-five years later, as another war convulses America, the consequences of that long-ago encounter set in motion a series of events that will upend the next generation of both families as they head toward a new century.

Sweeping yet intimate, rich with piercing observation and the warmth that comes from profound understanding of the human spirit, Buckeye captures the universal longing for love, and for goodness.]]> 464 Patrick Ryan 0593595033 Ann 0 to-read 4.57
author: Patrick Ryan
name: Ann
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15818133 The best novel of the year." � Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

A #1ĚýNew York Times bestseller, this â€�absolute masterpieceâ€� (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.]]> 337 Jess Walter 0061928178 Ann 4 3.72 2012
author: Jess Walter
name: Ann
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: movies, really-entertaining-read, music-movie-people, romantic-relationship, italy, musicians, aging
review:
With settings from the Italian coast to Hollywood, timelines from post WWII to the present, romance to revenge, aspirations to wasted lives, this novel had a little bit of everything, and I found it a most entertaining read. The characters include a young man who is running a small, dilapidated hotel on an isolated piece of the Italian coast after WWII and an actress with a small role in the filming of Cleopatra who shows up at his hotel. In current time, the characters include a young woman trying to find herself in the production side of the movie business and her boss, an arrogant Hollywood producer. The other characters include a down and out musician and an aspiring writer � and even Richard Burton. Each character is painted with full emotional detail and conflicts, and each scene is realistically painted. This novel had high entertainment value for me.
]]> 135164 128 AndreĂŻ Makine 0743475607 Ann 4 I am doing an extremely inadequate job of describing the outstanding writing and the emotions this novella brought forth within me. It was a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend it.
]]> 3.97 2001
author: AndreĂŻ Makine
name: Ann
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: russia, soviet, ww-ii-europe, musicians
review:
This beautiful novella resonated deeply with me. It tells the story of Alexei Berg, a young classical pianist, whose parents (also artists) are arrested in 1941. Berg escapes what he deems to be his own certain arrest by fleeing east into the beginning of WWII. He assumes the identity of a dead soldier and witnesses the incredible brutality of the Eastern Front. He returns to Moscow and falls in love with a general’s daughter (which, of course, doesn’t end well). He lives through lies and truth, brutality and love, and always is haunted by loss. However, music is his heart and soul and, although it, too, betrays him, it also brings him to peace.
I am doing an extremely inadequate job of describing the outstanding writing and the emotions this novella brought forth within me. It was a wonderful experience, and I highly recommend it.

]]> 74955676 Oksana Lutsyshyna Ann 0 did-not-finish 3.82 2019
author: Oksana Lutsyshyna
name: Ann
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 61197704
When Lauren and Ryan's marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.

Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren's ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?

This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It's about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you've got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game-and searching for a new road to happily ever after.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1398516724 Ann 0 3.89 2014
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Ann
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: family-domestic-drama, marriage
review:

]]> 18177545 144 Harriet Scott Chessman 0989302318 Ann 4 4.13 2013
author: Harriet Scott Chessman
name: Ann
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: religious, vietnam, usa-1900s-mid
review:
This was one of the most lovely novellas I have read in a long time. The characters are a Vietnam vet, Benny, who is having difficulty returning to daily American life after witnessing unspeakable horrors in Vietnam. His pain is depicted very clearly and deeply. The other main character is a young nun, Sr Clare, who is about to take her final vows. Her confusion as she tries to determine whether the religious life she has chosen is really what she want is also very well portrayed. The characters are tied together by Isabel, who is Benny’s brother’s girlfriend and lifelong friend of Clare. This is a quiet novel of choices and contemplation, and its theme of the peace provided by nature struck a chord deep within me.
]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Ann 0 set-in-future, did-not-finish 3.69 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Ann
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: set-in-future, did-not-finish
review:
I love this author, but I am giving up on dystopian novels. Just too depressing. The electronic state is all knowing and all powerful - human rights are absent. A young mother is detained without charges for "observation" in a prison like environment. I just couldn't keep going with this one right now.
]]> 52656911
The bride � The plus one � The best man � The wedding planner � The bridesmaid � The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?]]> 319 Lucy Foley Ann 4 mystery, ireland 3.82 2020
author: Lucy Foley
name: Ann
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: mystery, ireland
review:
I don’t consider myself a big fan of the mystery/thriller genre, but this novel absolutely intrigued me. The setting is a fancy wedding on a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland. We know from close to the beginning that someone has died, but the many and unexpected relationships among the characters plays out beautifully during the course of the novel. The characters are extremely well portrayed and the setting is perfectly spooky. I listened to this novel, and I highly recommend experiencing it that way. There are multiple important characters, and the voices make them more real. What a thrilling ride it was!
]]> 213243915 The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> 450 Jojo Moyes 1984879324 Ann 4 3.88 2025
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Ann
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: domestic-drama, family-relationships
review:
I needed something a little lighter and oriented to the domestic/familial side of life � and this novel was a perfect choice. This family consists of Lila, whose husband has recently left her for a younger woman (who is now pregnant with his child), and her two daughters, Celie, who is experiencing all the angst of a typical teenage girl, and Violet, who is in elementary school. Add to the family, Bill, Lila’s stepdad, who has moved in to help Lila upon the recent unexpected death of Francesca � Bill’s wife and Lila’s mother. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Lila’s father, Gene, appears on the scene after leaving Lila and her mother when Lila was five years old. The novel includes scenes from many aspects of family life: Lila as a mother, Lila as a divorcee, Lila trying to pursue her career as an author, and Lila wanting a romantic relationship and making mostly poor choices in that regard. Of course Bill and Gene (who were married to the same woman have frequent conflicts). Meanwhile, Celie tries to work out life as a teenage girl, while Violet just tries to figure out what is going on in her unusual family. All this and much more is portrayed through well drawn characters and nice writing. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.
]]> 214537772 In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

ĚýĚýĚýĚýVirginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýAnd then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy â€� but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýA vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.]]> 336 Chris Bohjalian 0385547641 Ann 0 to-read 4.13 2025
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Ann
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208431230 In the final months of World War II, a clandestine group known as The Choir smuggles thousands of escapees out of Nazi-occupied Rome via a secret route known as the Rome Escape Line. When an unidentified airman falls from the sky, The Choir is plunged into lethal danger and the survival of the Escape Line itself is threatened.

The Choir is riven with internal tensions and infighting. The organization is in danger of falling apart, which would leave thousands of escaped allied soldiers, POWs, Jews, and objectors stranded in a Rome that is ruled with vicious efficiency by the Nazis. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, the architect of the Escape Line and acknowledged leader of The Choir, broods inside the Vatican, seemingly paralyzed by what he sees as the intolerable risks of keeping the Escape Line in operation.

One man has been given the task of definitively destroying the entire operation and the price of his failure is high—SS Commander Paul Hauptmann’s wife and children are under Gestapo supervision in Berlin. Hauptmann is ordered to stay on in the city he both loathes and loves and to dismantle the Escape Line, or watch his family perish. Into this deliriously thrilling melee steps the Contessa Giovanna Landini, a reckless, audacious, and magnetic member of the Italian Resistance who has the nerve to challenge Hauptmann’s authority.

A beautifully written and expertly crafted historical suspense novel that is bursting with action, atmosphere, and unforgettable characters, The Ghosts of Rome is the thrilling follow-up to Joseph O’Connor’s best-selling My Father’s House.]]> 362 Joseph O'Connor 1529933765 Ann 3 italy, ww-ii-europe 4.05 2025
author: Joseph O'Connor
name: Ann
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: italy, ww-ii-europe
review:
3.5 This is the second novel in O’Connor’s Rome Escape Line Trilogy, and I enjoyed it as much as the first in the series, In My Father’s House. The work of The Choir continues. [[Background: The Choir is a group based in the Vatican (mostly secular individuals but led by a priest), that works tirelessly to help Allied soldiers and Jewish people escape from occupied Rome during WWII. It isn’t absolutely necessary, but I would read the first in the series before reading this one.]] The incredible daily risk the Choir members take to help the ”Books� (their name for escapees they are trying to protect) are portrayed very vividly, and the novel is full of tension. The main characters in the prior novel, such as Fr O’Flannery are still there, but new or minor characters, particularly, Contessa Landini, assume very prominent roles. The primary setting in the Vatican remained very interesting. However, this novel took the reader below the streets into the tunnels and crypts of ancient Rome, which I found quite interesting, but which also heightened the sense of imminent danger. There were also wonderful descriptions of the “palace� in which the Contessa had lived. O’Connor does a very enjoyable job with the characters, who hail from many different places and walks of life. The novel moves very quickly, but, as before, the reader is left with a deep respect to people who gave their all in the effort to save human beings from the horror of the Nazis.
]]> 45701218 From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant novel about the fault in memories and the lies that can bond a family together—or tear it apart.

With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.

As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.

Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.]]> 352 Kelly Rimmer 1525804650 Ann 0 3.99 2020
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Ann
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]> 368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 Ann 4 1500-s, france, colonialism This novel drew me in completely. The juxtaposition of Marguerite’s wealthy but controlled life and her life on the Canadian rock island was overwhelming. Roberval was one of the most mercurial characters I have read in a long time. His moods vacillated wildly, but his evil heart was ever present. As Marguerite recognizes, by exiling them to the island, he gave her and her lover their freedom as well as their ultimate prison. Faith is a strong theme in the novel. As a young woman, faith came easily, but when Marguerite is challenged by life on the island, so is her faith. The descriptions of the natural world on the island are outstanding. Amidst all the pain and stress of finding food, Marguerite eventually recognizes the beauty of the rocks, the sea, the sky and the (one) flower. Most powerful, however, was the transition of Marguerite from a wealthy (but controlled) young woman to a woman fighting for every bite of food and struggling to keep those she loves alive in the harshest of environments. This novel will remain with me for a very long time.
]]> 4.01 2025
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Ann
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: 1500-s, france, colonialism
review:
This beautiful, heartbreaking and redeeming novel told the story of Marguerite, a French noblewoman, orphaned shortly after birth. She is raised by her nurse, Damienne, but her life is controlled by her guardian Roberval. Marguerite grows up in a life of 1500’s luxury, she learns to read and write and to play music. Faith is a very large and active part of her life. Her childhood ends abruptly when Roberval removes her from her ancestral home and then demands that she and Damienne accompany him to Canada, then known as New France. On board the ship Marguerite falls in love with Roberval’s assistant. Roberval discovers their love and abandons Marguerite, her love and Damienne to a rock island. Life on the island becomes an almost insurmountable challenge � and I’m not going to say more for fear of giving away details.
This novel drew me in completely. The juxtaposition of Marguerite’s wealthy but controlled life and her life on the Canadian rock island was overwhelming. Roberval was one of the most mercurial characters I have read in a long time. His moods vacillated wildly, but his evil heart was ever present. As Marguerite recognizes, by exiling them to the island, he gave her and her lover their freedom as well as their ultimate prison. Faith is a strong theme in the novel. As a young woman, faith came easily, but when Marguerite is challenged by life on the island, so is her faith. The descriptions of the natural world on the island are outstanding. Amidst all the pain and stress of finding food, Marguerite eventually recognizes the beauty of the rocks, the sea, the sky and the (one) flower. Most powerful, however, was the transition of Marguerite from a wealthy (but controlled) young woman to a woman fighting for every bite of food and struggling to keep those she loves alive in the harshest of environments. This novel will remain with me for a very long time.

]]> 218155515 A powerful, captivating novel of historical fiction from the acclaimed author of The Titanic Sisters, based on the little-known story of the thousands of young women sent from Irish workhouses to Australia after the Famine.

1848: The girls, 4,000 in all, come from every part of Ireland—from the shores of Galway to the Glens of Ulster and Belfast’s teeming streets—to board ships bound for Australia. All were chosen from Ireland’s crowded workhouses. Most are orphans. The Earl Grey Scheme was presented as an opportunity for young women to gain employment as domestic servants in the Colony. But there is another, unstated purpose—the girls are to “civilize� the many men sent there as convicts, so that settlements can be built.
Ěý
Kate Gilvarry has spent six months in a Newry workhouse, subsisting on a diet of watery porridge. She knows there’s no future for her either within its walls or outside, in a ravaged, starving land. But once Kate’s ship completes the harrowing voyage, she and her companions find their reception in Sydney dismayingly unwelcoming, as anti-Irish sentiment grows. Homesick, and disillusioned by love following a shipboard crush, Kate strives to fit in, first as the servant of a demanding English woman, then as a farmer’s bride in the Outback.
Ěý
When heat and drought force her husband to leave for long periods to work on a sheep ranch, Kate is left alone to fend off wild animals, drifters, and her aching loneliness. She longs to return to Ireland. But first, this beautiful, unforgiving country will teach her about resilience and survival, and the limitless possibilities that come with courage and love.
Ěý
Evocative and compelling, The Famine Orphans is a testament to the young women whose pioneering spirit left an enduring legacy in a land so far from home.
Ěý]]> 368 Patricia Falvey 1496748131 Ann 0 to-read 4.47
author: Patricia Falvey
name: Ann
average rating: 4.47
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36617542 The internationally bestselling author of Paris and New York takes on an exhilarating new world with his trademark epic style in China: The Novel

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of readers with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom..

The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China's emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes.

China: The Novel brings to life the rich terrain of this vast and constantly evolving country. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, Rutherfurd chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people.

Extraordinarily researched and majestically told, Edward Rutherfurd paints a thrilling portrait of one of the most singular and remarkable countries in the world.]]> 764 Edward Rutherfurd 0385538936 Ann 0 did-not-finish 4.05 2021
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Ann
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 214151333 A breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal� life for a career in stand-up comedy.

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn’t help that she’s always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy’s latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on an antidepressant. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

As she struggles to find her way in this new reality, navigating the complex effects bipolar has on her identity, her relationships, and her life dreams, Maddy will have to figure out how to manage being both too much and not enough.

With her signature “deep empathy and insight� (Booklist), Harvard-trained neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author Lisa Genova has crafted another profoundly moving novel that makes complicated mental health issues accessible and human. More or Less Maddy is destined to become another classic like Still Alice.]]> 368 Lisa Genova 1668026163 Ann 4 mental-health
]]> 4.23 2025
author: Lisa Genova
name: Ann
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: mental-health
review:
Lisa Genova is a master at bringing debilitating and often mystified and misunderstood diseases into real world, graspable settings. In this novel she tackles bipolar disorder in the character of Maddy, a 20 year old college student, as she develops bipolar disorder, is diagnosed and deals with her life changing diagnosis. Maddy’s depression is clearly, emotionally and practically portrayed � but depression is something many of us have experienced and most of us somewhat comprehend. It was Genova’s portrayal of Maddy’s manic episodes that awed and overwhelmed me. In a manic stage Maddy felt and did things that would never have crossed her mind or been possible otherwise. The reader watches Maddy’s immense suffering as she tries to deal with her disease through unwanted hospitalizations, drugs with terrible side effects and her inability to live on her own � all the while wanting to live the “normal� life of a 20 year old woman. The reactions of Maddy’s family � particularly her mother � to her illness-related actions and inactions were extremely well portrayed. As the parent of a 20 year old, how do you handle your worry, desire to care for your child and your understanding that your ill child is an adult with needs and goals of her own? I was much moved by Maddy’s story and the understanding that it gave me.


]]> 4554304
But when blight destroys the potatoes three times in four years, a callous government and uncaring landlords turn a natural disaster into The Great Starvation that will kill one million. Honora and Michael vow their children will live. The family joins two million other Irish refugees--victims saving themselves--in the emigration from Ireland.

Danger and hardship await them in America. Honora, her unconventional sister Máire, and their seven sons help transform Chicago from a frontier town to the "City of the Century." The boys go on to fight in the Civil War and enlist in the cause of Ireland's freedom.

Spanning six generations and filled with joy, sadness, and heroism, GALWAYBAY sheds brilliant light on the ancestors of today's forty-four million Irish Americans--and is a universal story you will never forget.]]> 551 Mary Pat Kelly 0446579009 Ann 4 Members of the family emigrate to the United States, and the last half of the novel becomes the story of Irish immigrants in Chicago (after surviving the horrors of the trans-Atlantic passage). We see the struggle of immigrants and then watch as the young male members of the family enlist as Union soldiers in the Civil War to serve their new country (although thoughts of Ireland are never far behind). Most of the Civil War portion of the novel is viewed from the perspective of Honora, as the mother and aunt of the young soldiers. I felt that viewpoint was particularly well done. It was also clear that the author had done extensive research, which added to the detail of the novel. This was a nicely done saga. I enjoyed reading it, although at times it required a little patience.
]]> 4.14 2009
author: Mary Pat Kelly
name: Ann
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: 1800-s, family-saga, immigrants, ireland, usa-1800-s
review:
This novel of Ireland and Irish immigrants into the US was an enjoyable and interesting read. The first half of the novel is set in Ireland and follows a woman (Honora), her family and its community through the Great Starvation (Great Famine of 1846 to 1849). The author uses many Irish language phrases, and the hard daily life and strong culture and customs of the inhabitants of the Galway Bay area are drawn in full and tangible detail. A number of Irish myths and stores are related during the first part of the novel, which add to the ambience of the novel. The landlord/tenant system and the cold heartedness of the landlords was also well portrayed.
Members of the family emigrate to the United States, and the last half of the novel becomes the story of Irish immigrants in Chicago (after surviving the horrors of the trans-Atlantic passage). We see the struggle of immigrants and then watch as the young male members of the family enlist as Union soldiers in the Civil War to serve their new country (although thoughts of Ireland are never far behind). Most of the Civil War portion of the novel is viewed from the perspective of Honora, as the mother and aunt of the young soldiers. I felt that viewpoint was particularly well done. It was also clear that the author had done extensive research, which added to the detail of the novel. This was a nicely done saga. I enjoyed reading it, although at times it required a little patience.

]]> 728518 454 Joyce Carol Oates 0525942238 Ann 0 read-many-years-ago 3.68 1996
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Ann
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2000/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: read-many-years-ago
review:

]]> 112976321
Eugene “Geno� Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it.

Who is Geno? A lonely old man clinging to his delusions and rehearsing his fantasies, or a legitimate anomaly, a thousand-year-old man who continues to search for the love he lost so long ago?

As Angel comes to learn the truth about Geno, so, too, does the reader, and as his miraculous story comes to a head, so does the biggest truth of that love—timeless, often elusive—is sometimes right in front of us.]]> 332 Jonathan Evison 0593184157 Ann 4 mental-health 3.74 2023
author: Jonathan Evison
name: Ann
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: mental-health
review:
3.5 rounded up What is the effect of horrific childhood trauma? Can delusions resulting from such trauma be so deep and complete that they challenge truth? These are the questions Jonathan Evison raises in the character of an old man (Geno) in a nursing home, who recounts stories of his life to his aide. The man suffered terrible childhood trauma and has had serious issues with mental illness throughout his life. His stories (which he deeply believes) include assertions that he lived as a boy in Moorish Spain, as a young Incan princess, as a guide to Lewis and Clark and as a cat owned by an English poet. These stories seem outlandish and are clearly impossible � but his persistence in his firm belief that he has lived a number of lives over the past 1,000 years is powerful. In addition, he tells lies (some later acknowledged as such) and creates characters when recounting stories relating to his “current� life, and many of those stories and characters are determined to have related in fact to his mental health institutions and treatment. He believes that he has been in love with the same woman throughout his many lifetimes and sees a woman he believes to be his long lost love. Wow! I have never read about a mentally ill, delusional character who was nearly as well portrayed and compelling as Jonathan Evison’s Geno. This novel was quite different, but highly intriguing.
]]> 211025449
Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together—at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.

But when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.

In this bighearted and profound portrait of a marriage, Jonathan Evison explores seventy years of big moments in subtle ways, elegantly braiding the Winters� turbulent history with their present-day battles, showing us how the oddly paired college kids became parents, fell apart and back together, andgrew into the Abe and Ruth of today. Endlessly heartwarming and moving, The Heart of Winter is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments.]]> 368 Jonathan Evison 059347354X Ann 4 The other main theme of the novel dealt with Ruth’s diagnosis and treatment. Again, the way in which one spouse wants to care for the other vs that spouse’s ability to care for his/her partner has been dealt with before, but Evison took these issues to a beautiful and wonderfully emotional level. He also masterfully dealt with the way in which adult children interact with, and give advice to, their aging parents. If you have adult children, you will recognize that Evison “got it�.
And last, but certainly not least, is the theme of fighting cancer. Evison wrote this novel as a tribute to his mother’s battle against this incredibly challenging disease. Bravo and thank you, Jonathan Evison.
]]> 4.11 2025
author: Jonathan Evison
name: Ann
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: family-relationships, marriage, illness, romantic-relationship
review:
What a lovely � and sometimes heartbreaking � description of a marriage this novel is! I have been a Jonathan Evison fan since West of Here, but this story of two people navigating life together really touched my heart. The reader first meets the main characters, Abe and Ruth at Abe’s 80th birthday (in 2023). The novel then moves back and forth between Abe and Ruth’s life as “old people� to their college years, marriage, raising children, professional lives and interests. Abe and Ruth were an unlikely couple, with very different personalities and priorities, yet through the novel we see how they loved, focused on different aspects of life and drifted apart, came back together emotionally and ultimately supported each other in old age and illness. Some of these issues have been well worked over (such as the husband who works long hours while the mother raises young children), but in Evison’s hands these issues take on their own unique twists and turns. I always wanted to see just how Ruth and Abe would handle the choices and curve balls that life threw their way.
The other main theme of the novel dealt with Ruth’s diagnosis and treatment. Again, the way in which one spouse wants to care for the other vs that spouse’s ability to care for his/her partner has been dealt with before, but Evison took these issues to a beautiful and wonderfully emotional level. He also masterfully dealt with the way in which adult children interact with, and give advice to, their aging parents. If you have adult children, you will recognize that Evison “got it�.
And last, but certainly not least, is the theme of fighting cancer. Evison wrote this novel as a tribute to his mother’s battle against this incredibly challenging disease. Bravo and thank you, Jonathan Evison.

]]> 77103 The Glass Palace tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni callsĚý“a master storyteller.”]]> 486 Amitav Ghosh 0375758771 Ann 5 3.99 2000
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Ann
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: burma, india, malaysia, ww-ii-asia, family-saga
review:
This novel of Burma, Malaysia and India is everything I think a great novel should be. From the beautiful and detailed settings, to the history, to the characters and to the plot, all the aspects of this story were expertly created. The novel begins with the British invasion of Burma and the exile of the ruling family (to a remote location on the west coast of India), which are witnessed by a poor young man, Rajkumar. With the help of his Malaysian mentor, Sayre John, Rajkumar goes on to amass a fortune in the teak trade in Burma, but he never forgets one of the exiled queen’s young servants. He pursues her to India, and a family line is begun. Sayre John’s son (and his American wife) become the owners of a rubber plantation in Malaysia. Dolly’s friend Uma also plays an important role. The novel follows these families from the late 1800’s, through WWII and into the 1980’s. The plot is complex and the characters are many. But what will linger with me for a very long time are the many cultural and political topics covered. Burma at the turn of the century comes to life. I even learned how elephants worked in the teak trade! The cultural details of Burma, Malaysia and India are too numerous to mention, but they are all fully drawn. The reader sees the life of the Burmese king and queen in exile in India in wonderful, but heartbreaking, detail. Ghosh delves deeply into the Indian Army through the character of a young Indian officer. The underlying political conflicts - between Indian vs British rule, tradition and thoughts � are deeply explored. The Malaysian rubber trade is also dealt with from the perspective of the owners as well as the perspective of a young worker. The suffering and dislocation caused by WWII are, of course, important to the ambience of the novel as well as the storyline. I loved that the novel ended with a great circle of reconnection. I will remember this one for a long time!
]]> 205436018 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 256 Han Kang 0593595459 Ann 0 korea, political-persecution 3.88 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Ann
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: korea, political-persecution
review:

]]> 214151348
A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.

And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.]]> 112 Anita Desai 1668082438 Ann 0 mexico, novella 3.21 2024
author: Anita Desai
name: Ann
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: mexico, novella
review:
This novella told the story of an Indian woman who has travelled to Mexico to study Spanish. There she meets an old woman who claims to have known her mother in Mexico. The woman discloses an entire aspect of the narrator’s mother’s life that was previously unknown to the narrator. The descriptions of San Miguel de Allende and Colima were lovely, but the story left far too much unresolved for my tastes.
]]> 15803141
The Flamethrowers is an intensely engaging exploration of the mystique of the feminine, the fake, the terrorist. At its center is Kushner’s brilliantly realized protagonist, a young woman on the verge. Thrilling and fearless, this is a major American novel from a writer of spectacular talent and imagination.]]> 383 Rachel Kushner 1439142009 Ann 0 3.51 2013
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ann
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: 1960-s, art, usa-1900s-mid, italy
review:
I liked Telex From Cuba and really enjoyed Kushner’s newest, Creation Lake, so I thought I would read one of her first novels, The Flamethrowers, written in 2013. Although the writing was good (although not nearly as good as Creation Lake), I just was not drawn into the novel or the characters. I will still eagerly await Ms. Kushner’s next novel.
]]> 11686
Goodbye, my brother --
The common day --
The enormous radio --
O city of broken dreams --
The Hartleys --
The Sutton Place story --
The summer farmer --
Torch song --
The pot of gold --
Clancy in the Tower of Babel --
Christmas is a sad season for the poor --
The season of divorce --
The chaste Clarissa --
The cure --
The superintendent --
The children --
The sorrows of gin --
O youth and beauty! --
The day the pig fell into the well --
The five-forty-eight --
Just one more time --
The housebreaker of Shady Hill --
The bus to St. James's --
The worm in the apple --
The trouble of Marcie Flint --
The bella lingua --
The Wrysons --
The country husband --
The duchess --
The scarlet moving van --
Just tell me who it was --
Brimmer --
The golden age --
The lowboy --
The music teacher --
A woman without a country --
The death of Justina --
Clementina --
Boy in Rome --
A miscellany of characters that will not appear --
The chimera --
The seaside houses --
The angel of the bridge --
The brigadier and the golf widow --
A vision of the world --
Reunion --
An educated American woman --
Metamorphoses --
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin --
Montraldo --
The ocean --
Marito in cittĂ  --
The geometry of love --
The swimmer --
The world of apples --
Another story --
Percy --
The fourth alarm --
Artemis, the honest well digger --
Three stories --
The jewels of the Cabots.]]> 693 John Cheever 0375724427 Ann 0 read-many-years-ago 4.27 1978
author: John Cheever
name: Ann
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: read-many-years-ago
review:

]]> 203371234 Sometimes you must shine a light on the dark places to see what was always there�.

Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.

Although Winter quickly settles in Australia and comes to love her life and the people in it, she notices strange happenings in the shadows of her new home. When a news story prompts her to look back as her past, she begins to wonder whether things were as idyllic as she had thought at the time.

As she uncovers secret after secret, she realises a much darker narrative may have been � and perhaps still is � playing out ...]]> 346 Louise Wolhuter 1761153099 Ann 3 4.12 2024
author: Louise Wolhuter
name: Ann
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: australia-tasmania, mystery, mental-health, art
review:
Upon her mother’s death, a girl (Winter) is sent from England to live with her grandparents in southwest Australia. There she determines that many things in her life � from her own life history to multiple deaths in Australia � are strange, unknown, unexplained and convoluted. Although this was in many respects a murder mystery (a genre of which I am not a big fan and not an appropriate reviewer), there was much more to this novel. The descriptions of the setting on the Australian beach were beautiful and tangible. The details of that setting, from the house to the ocean, were fully portrayed and compelling. The characters were nicely drawn as well. They were good and bad, and the reader never knew which part of a character’s personality was the person’s “true self�. Art was a theme as well, because several of the important characters were artists. The art they created cast an interesting spell over the novel. The effect of Winter’s difficult childhood (which included the loss of her mother and years of being uncared for) on her lifelong mental health was significant throughout the story. Although I did not figure out who the murderer was (until the novel disclosed it), I did find the multiple murder side of the novel to be disappointing and, for me, rather pointless other than for the purpose of keeping the reader guessing. However, I enjoyed the interesting characters and the very well done settings.
]]> 211025496 An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen 0593713001 Ann 4 The life stories are vivid and detailed. The scenes in Shanghai were fully portrayed, from life in traditional building neighborhoods, to food, to education, to clothing, and many other aspects of pre-communist daily life. Parental and sibling relationships are factors as well. Politics is never far away in these scenes, and the clash between the Nationalists and the Communists is ever present and has a large effect on the storyline.
The novel then follows Suchi and her sister to Hong Kong, where they are sent by their parents for safety. As a result of the revolution, they never return to Shanghai, and are unable to communicate with, or receive help from, their parents. At this point Suchi is a young adult, who is forced to make a living for herself and her sick sister in Hong Kong. Her needs, goals and compromises are deeply portrayed.
While still in Shanghai, Howard made a life affecting choice (and not just his life was affected!) � which I will not disclose! The scenes of Howard in post-war Tiawan were very interesting and educational. When Howard and Suchi reconnect in California, their relationship is not easy. In addition, they come to each other with full families, including grandchildren, which I felt was a beautiful acknowledgement to the continuation of life after terrible losses.
But I have just scratched the surface of this novel with my description of the plot. There is so much more. A large underlying theme was the love between Suchi and Howard, who fell in love during their teenage years in Shanghai. Most loving relationships have issues, and theirs is no exception, with family expectations, Howard’s focus on music, and, heavily, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. Can love survive great pain and misunderstanding? Can love survive the horrors of war and displacement? Music is also a theme � Howard is a gifted violinist, and his dedication to music as well as the effect of his music on others is prevalent in the story.
Probably the most powerful underlying themes were displacement caused by war and life as an immigrant. Both these topics have been covered well and frequently in other novels; however, I felt that the author put her own, unique twist to these issues. The suffering of Suchi and her sister as exiles in Hong Kong, and the choices she made as a result were heartfully written. Great - but beautifully subtle - attention was given to being an immigrant into the United States. From language barriers to keeping old customs, I felt that this aspect of the novel was extremely well done. But flowing beneath the ”daily life of an immigrant� issues was the deeper underlying question: Should we remember our tragic past or just move on and try to blot it out?
]]> 4.31 2025
author: Karissa Chen
name: Ann
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: china, exiles, immigrants, romantic-relationship
review:
4+ stars - This lovely novel follows a woman and a man, from their childhood and teen age years in Shanghai (starting pre-civil war and pre-communism), to their lives in Hong Kong and Taiwan and, ultimately to the United States. There are so many wonderful aspects to this novel. First, is the extremely well done storyline. The reader meets Suchi and Howard as older adults who reconnect by chance in California after decades of separation. The chapters then follow either Suchi’s or Howard’s prior life � but while Suchi’s chapters are told in chronological order, Howard’s move backwards in time. What an artful narrative twist that was!
The life stories are vivid and detailed. The scenes in Shanghai were fully portrayed, from life in traditional building neighborhoods, to food, to education, to clothing, and many other aspects of pre-communist daily life. Parental and sibling relationships are factors as well. Politics is never far away in these scenes, and the clash between the Nationalists and the Communists is ever present and has a large effect on the storyline.
The novel then follows Suchi and her sister to Hong Kong, where they are sent by their parents for safety. As a result of the revolution, they never return to Shanghai, and are unable to communicate with, or receive help from, their parents. At this point Suchi is a young adult, who is forced to make a living for herself and her sick sister in Hong Kong. Her needs, goals and compromises are deeply portrayed.
While still in Shanghai, Howard made a life affecting choice (and not just his life was affected!) � which I will not disclose! The scenes of Howard in post-war Tiawan were very interesting and educational. When Howard and Suchi reconnect in California, their relationship is not easy. In addition, they come to each other with full families, including grandchildren, which I felt was a beautiful acknowledgement to the continuation of life after terrible losses.
But I have just scratched the surface of this novel with my description of the plot. There is so much more. A large underlying theme was the love between Suchi and Howard, who fell in love during their teenage years in Shanghai. Most loving relationships have issues, and theirs is no exception, with family expectations, Howard’s focus on music, and, heavily, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. Can love survive great pain and misunderstanding? Can love survive the horrors of war and displacement? Music is also a theme � Howard is a gifted violinist, and his dedication to music as well as the effect of his music on others is prevalent in the story.
Probably the most powerful underlying themes were displacement caused by war and life as an immigrant. Both these topics have been covered well and frequently in other novels; however, I felt that the author put her own, unique twist to these issues. The suffering of Suchi and her sister as exiles in Hong Kong, and the choices she made as a result were heartfully written. Great - but beautifully subtle - attention was given to being an immigrant into the United States. From language barriers to keeping old customs, I felt that this aspect of the novel was extremely well done. But flowing beneath the ”daily life of an immigrant� issues was the deeper underlying question: Should we remember our tragic past or just move on and try to blot it out?

]]> 215198466 In his most exhilarating novel yet, Britain’s greatest storyteller transports you from the vibrant streets of sixties London to the sun-soaked cobbles of Cadiz and the frosty squares of Warsaw, as an accidental spy is drawn into the shadows of espionage and obsession.

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes �her spy�, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story.]]> 272 William Boyd 0802164870 Ann 4 cold-war, england, spy 3.88 2024
author: William Boyd
name: Ann
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: cold-war, england, spy
review:
Because it is categorized as a “spy� novel, I felt this might be outside my usual reading range � but it was a very well done story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. With the main character, Gabriel Dax, Boyd has created an unwilling spy in a troubled 30 year old man who is otherwise a travel writer. However, I felt that this was much more than just a cold war spy novel. Gabriel is a fully drawn human, and the reader experiences his lingering issues from childhood trauma, his amorous relationships, his life as a travel writer, his relationship with his brother as well as his life as a sometimes spy. The other characters were wonderful, and the plot kept me guessing. The writing was nice. This was a well done, “fun ride� of a novel.
]]> 40400269
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful � but desperately lonely � older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall. . . .

Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.]]> 362 John Boyne 1984823019 Ann 0 did-not-finish-not-for-me 4.18 2018
author: John Boyne
name: Ann
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: did-not-finish-not-for-me
review:
I have loved John Boyne's other novels, and his writing is outstanding. However, I just could not get into these characters.
]]> 61159578 222 Devin Murphy 1625570619 Ann 0 short-stories, usa-current 4.64
author: Devin Murphy
name: Ann
average rating: 4.64
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: short-stories, usa-current
review:

]]> 159555849 Letting in Air and Light will inspire you to look more closely at your own history and wonder what else you might have missed.]]> 152 Teresa Tumminello Brader 1960215035 Ann 0 memoir, art, louisiana 4.51
author: Teresa Tumminello Brader
name: Ann
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: memoir, art, louisiana
review:

]]> 18386
How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?

This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.
A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.]]> 86 Leo Tolstoy Ann 0 read-years-ago 4.12 1886
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Ann
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1886
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: read-years-ago
review:

]]> 199531966
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.]]> 400 Clare Chambers 0063258226 Ann 4 The writing was beautiful. The author did an excellent job of portraying Helen’s love for Gil as well as her frustration with the affair and her knowledge of its ultimate fruitlessness and end. I also thought the scenes of William’s prior life were extremely well portrayed. The characters and their challenges really came to life for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in their lives.
]]> 3.99 2024
author: Clare Chambers
name: Ann
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: romantic-relationship, england, mental-health
review:
This was a lovely, quiet novel, whose plot and characters revolve around a mental hospital. The main character is Helen, an art therapist employed at the mental hospital. At the beginning of the novel, a patient (William), who is mute and unkempt is admitted. Helen becomes William’s art therapist and takes great interest in his case. In addition, Helen and Gil, one of the hospital psychiatrists, are having an affair. Gil is married with children, while Helen is single. The novel follows their affair through Helen’s experiences and reactions. William’s treatment and improvement are wound through that storyline. The novel also traces William’s previous life, where he lived in forced seclusion in a large house with his eccentric aunts. Only at the end of the novel is the cause of William’s seclusion (and the root of his mental health issues) made clear. His improvement while at the hospital was
The writing was beautiful. The author did an excellent job of portraying Helen’s love for Gil as well as her frustration with the affair and her knowledge of its ultimate fruitlessness and end. I also thought the scenes of William’s prior life were extremely well portrayed. The characters and their challenges really came to life for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in their lives.

]]> 116054 Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....

Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely.

Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile.

Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.

Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.

It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan.

It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth.]]> 720 Rosamunde Pilcher 0340752483 Ann 4 4.16 2000
author: Rosamunde Pilcher
name: Ann
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: england, scotland, relationships-family
review:
For my Christmas read this year, I sought the warmth and comfort of a Rosamunde Pilcher novel, and it was a great choice (even though I did not finish it before Christmas). This novel finds five people, including a teenager, a man and woman in their 30’s and a man and woman in their 60’s, together in a home in Scotland at Christmas. Each person has found their way to the house by a set of unexpected circumstances and each person is dealing with their own deep emotional pain. The story is told from their five POV’s. As is usual with the author, there is no fast action � just a large number of small events in life that evolve into more. The novel is lovely, and I enjoyed and cared about each of the characters.
]]> 23316521 The Green Road tells the story of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigan family, and her four children.

Ardeevin, County Clare, Ireland. 1980. When her oldest brother Dan announces he will enter the priesthood, young Hanna watches her mother howl in agony and retreat to her room. In the years that follow, the Madigan children leave one by one: Dan for the frenzy of New York under the shadow of AIDS; Constance for a hospital in Limerick, where petty antics follow simple tragedy; Emmet for the backlands of Mali, where he learns the fragility of love and order; and Hanna for modern-day Dublin and the trials of her own motherhood. When Christmas Day reunites the children under one roof, each confronts the terrible weight of family ties and the journey that brought them home. The Green Road is a major work of fiction about the battles we wage for family, faith, and love.]]> 310 Anne Enright 0393248216 Ann 4 family-relationships, ireland This is a beautiful novel of family, mother-child relationships and sibling relationships. It is also a novel about finding one’s self-identity, within and outside of one’s family. All is told through Anne Enright’s beautiful writing.
]]> 3.50 2015
author: Anne Enright
name: Ann
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: family-relationships, ireland
review:
This novel is centered around an Irish family consisting of the widowed mother (Rosaleen) and her four children, Dan, Constance, Emmet and Hanna. Each of the five characters is beautifully and emotionally portrayed through Anne Enright’s poetic writing. Although we first meet the siblings as children at home, the novel follows each of them into adulthood. Dan moves to New York, where he realizes he is gay. His self-discovery is portrayed as much by the friends who circle around him as by his own evolution. This occurs during the AIDS crisis, an issue which is dealt with masterfully by the author. Constance is the only sibling who remains in Ireland. She becomes a middle-class mother of two and, since she is the one who stayed home, assumes responsibility for her mother, the aging Rosaleen. Emmet becomes an aid worker in Africa. He recognizes his inability to effectuate real changes as an aid worker and fails in romantic relationships as well. The scenes in Africa are very clearly drawn. Hanna moves to Dublin to become an actress, and when that does not work out, turns to alcohol. She has a child whom she loves dearly, and the reader watches her feelings as a mother compete with her need to escape through alcohol. And then there is Rosaleen, the difficult, emotional mother, who constantly makes life complicated for her children, yet loves them immensely.
This is a beautiful novel of family, mother-child relationships and sibling relationships. It is also a novel about finding one’s self-identity, within and outside of one’s family. All is told through Anne Enright’s beautiful writing.

]]> 209801563
On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.

She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to resurface: her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.

One of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.

Painting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, City of Night Birds unveils the making of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope. Mysterious and alluring, passionate and virtuosic, Juhea Kim’s second novel is an affecting meditation on love, forgiveness, and the making of an artist in a turbulent world.]]> 320 Juhea Kim 0063394758 Ann 4 ballet, russia This novel takes a deep, detailed dive into the world of dance. I learned so much, including details of how a dance company actually works and the various aspects of famous roles, including how dancers interpret those roles. A major underlying theme was the incredible commitment, both mental and physical, that successful dancers make. The novel did not shy away from the deep friendships created by sharing the arduous training and work as well as the keen � and often destructive � competition. If you want a novel with well done characters that portrays the world of dance in all its aspects, this one is for you.
]]> 3.56 2024
author: Juhea Kim
name: Ann
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: ballet, russia
review:
I have always been intrigued by the world of ballet, particularly Russian ballet, and this novel satisfied my intrigue wonderfully. The main character is Natasha, who trains at the Marinsky (in St. Petersburg), becomes a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi (Moscow) and then moves to Paris to dance as a prima ballerina with the Paris Opera. We first meet Natasha when she has returned to St. Petersburg after an injury and is training to dance again. From there the story moves back and forth in time. We see Natasha as a child, a teenager, a young woman and a woman in the prime of her dance career � but throughout these life phases, dance is the driving, overwhelming and completely subsuming aspect of Natasha’s life. Of course, there are also men � almost all of them successful dancers, because, after all, who else is she going to meet? The personalities of these men (from arrogant, manipulative to loving) are also formed as a result of their chosen profession of dance.
This novel takes a deep, detailed dive into the world of dance. I learned so much, including details of how a dance company actually works and the various aspects of famous roles, including how dancers interpret those roles. A major underlying theme was the incredible commitment, both mental and physical, that successful dancers make. The novel did not shy away from the deep friendships created by sharing the arduous training and work as well as the keen � and often destructive � competition. If you want a novel with well done characters that portrays the world of dance in all its aspects, this one is for you.

]]> 52873094
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And NoemĂ­, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 304 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Ann 3 latin-america 3.76 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Ann
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/07/03
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: latin-america
review:

]]> 196040811

TORN BETWEEN WHAT THEY CANNOT HAVE AND WHAT THEY CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT.

It is 1929. The world is about to change.

Finn Evans is a successful Boston banker harboring a secret that threatens to unravel his carefully constructed idyllic life. Isabelle Lazar, a young Ukrainian farmer, endures unspeakable hardships in her homeland as she fights to save her family from the Soviet Union's iron grip. Barely escaping the Terror-Famine, she washes up alone on America's distant shores.

Fate throws Finn and Isabelle together just as the stock market crash causes a devastating collapse of his world. Amid the Great Depression and the trials of their new lives, an undeniable connection grows between them that they both must hide.

As their intertwined destinies hang in the balance, they discover that even those who have lost everything still have something left to lose. Light at Lavelle is the breathtaking epic love story from the worldwide bestselling author of Tully and The Bronze Horseman . Paullina Simons weaves an unforgettable tapestry of love, hope, and fate, showing us that sometimes the greatest battles are fought within our own hearts.]]> 708 Paullina Simons 1761269747 Ann 5 This novel is a saga � so many events and issues are covered. We see in detail the violence against the kulaks, but we also see daily rural life in Ukraine and Ukrainian family structures of the time. The effects of the Great Depression and life in Boston during the Depression are shown in detail. But there is so much more: an urban family starting a farming operation in New Hampshire from nothing (including no utilities) and then managing it to success (thanks to Isabelle); getting visas for Ukrainian refugees and bringing them to the United States; mental illness (Vanessa); Prohibition and rum-running; and wonderful details of daily life and daily human interactions. Isabelle is a typical Simons heroine � strong in all ways and beautiful. I enjoyed her very much, but I was also drawn to each of the other characters as they worked (or didn’t work) their way through the life obstacles that were in their path.
If there is a category for Historical Romance, this would fit in it. I found it highly entertaining and I enjoyed every page. The ending was incredible! I listened to the audio and found it to be the perfect way to “read� this novel.
]]> 4.36
author: Paullina Simons
name: Ann
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: family-relationships, family-saga, soviet-bloc, usa-1900s-mid
review:
Who but Paullina Simons could perfectly mix the Soviet destruction of the Ukrainian kulaks, the Great Depression and a deep, but very complicated romantic relationship? (Yes, I loved The Bronze Horseman and its two sequels, which I read years ago.) The year is 1929, and the Soviet Union has decided to destroy the kulaks (landowning farmers) by any means necessary, including violence, intimidation, deportation and starvation. Isabelle Lazar is part of a Ukrainian kulak family, and she and her family become the recipients of Soviet terror. Isabelle ultimately escapes and winds up in Boston where she becomes a servant in the family of Finn Evans. Finn is a highly successful banker, but the wealthy life to which he is accustomed is completely destroyed by the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. As the members of the extended Evans family (Finn, his wife, Vanessa, their two daughters, Vanessa’s sister and her son, Finn’s parents and Vanessa’s parents � and Isabelle) make changes to adjust to their difficult economic situation, Finn and Isabelle draw closer and closer to each other. Each of the characters in Finn’s extended family is well and fully drawn, as are a number of the members of Isabelle’s Ukrainian family. I will leave the details of the relationship between Finn and Isabelle to the reader � i.e. no spoilers.
This novel is a saga � so many events and issues are covered. We see in detail the violence against the kulaks, but we also see daily rural life in Ukraine and Ukrainian family structures of the time. The effects of the Great Depression and life in Boston during the Depression are shown in detail. But there is so much more: an urban family starting a farming operation in New Hampshire from nothing (including no utilities) and then managing it to success (thanks to Isabelle); getting visas for Ukrainian refugees and bringing them to the United States; mental illness (Vanessa); Prohibition and rum-running; and wonderful details of daily life and daily human interactions. Isabelle is a typical Simons heroine � strong in all ways and beautiful. I enjoyed her very much, but I was also drawn to each of the other characters as they worked (or didn’t work) their way through the life obstacles that were in their path.
If there is a category for Historical Romance, this would fit in it. I found it highly entertaining and I enjoyed every page. The ending was incredible! I listened to the audio and found it to be the perfect way to “read� this novel.

]]> 208584952 From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,� says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign� wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?

With her “wry, wise, and simply spectacular� style (People) and “hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron� (O, The Oprah Magazine), Weike Wang offers a portrait of family that is equally witty, incisive, and tender.]]> 224 Weike Wang 0593545540 Ann 3 Keru and Nate meet at Yale, and the reader meets them as a young married couple. They have rented a vacation home where they will entertain first, Keru’s parents and then Nate’s parents. Keru’s parents are (in my opinion) stereotype Chinese parents. They raised their daughter to succeed � which she did. But the novel delves deeper and portrays the personality of Keru’s mother, who often complains and for whom nothing is perfect. On the other hand, Nate’s parents are Appalachian Americans, who were shocked when Nate went to college. Nate’s mother is also well portrayed, and although she generally is outwardly quite genial, her deep beliefs and prejudices often show through.
The most fully portrayed characters are Keru and Nate, who bring the weight of their extremely different backgrounds into their marriage. The heart of the novel is their interaction � in daily life, in their professional lives, in their nuclear family (which consists only of their dog) and in their relationships with their parents. I enjoyed the storyline; however, there were a few places where I thought the writing needed a little more editing.
]]> 3.31 2024
author: Weike Wang
name: Ann
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: domestic-drama, family-relationships
review:
This was a nicely done portrait of a couple and their parents. The couple consists of Keru, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and her husband, Nate, the son of parents who have lived for generations in Appalachia. Of course, Keru and Nate hail from extremely different backgrounds and this difference and the way in which they deal with it is what drives the novel.
Keru and Nate meet at Yale, and the reader meets them as a young married couple. They have rented a vacation home where they will entertain first, Keru’s parents and then Nate’s parents. Keru’s parents are (in my opinion) stereotype Chinese parents. They raised their daughter to succeed � which she did. But the novel delves deeper and portrays the personality of Keru’s mother, who often complains and for whom nothing is perfect. On the other hand, Nate’s parents are Appalachian Americans, who were shocked when Nate went to college. Nate’s mother is also well portrayed, and although she generally is outwardly quite genial, her deep beliefs and prejudices often show through.
The most fully portrayed characters are Keru and Nate, who bring the weight of their extremely different backgrounds into their marriage. The heart of the novel is their interaction � in daily life, in their professional lives, in their nuclear family (which consists only of their dog) and in their relationships with their parents. I enjoyed the storyline; however, there were a few places where I thought the writing needed a little more editing.

]]> 217182494 A family drama set in Shanghai, where a fractured American family faces its complicated past

Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: Their twenty-two-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit-and-run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks� marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,� they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is as it seems.]]> 288 Jennifer Haigh 0316577138 Ann 4 The novel goes back in time to disclose the messy family history, including the effect of Lindsay’s actions on the entire family. The parents and their domestic life, attitudes, issues and decisions are very well drawn by the author. But most importantly, the reader sees deeply into Lindsay’s life and choices. She was fully portrayed as a character, and as I reader, I felt I knew her and wanted to give her advice. The other important character is Lindsay’s sister, Grace, who was adopted from China. Issues regarding Chinese Americans are nicely shown � but the author doesn’t pound on them. Other wonderful characters included Johnny, the hairdresser and friend of Lindsay, who hid his gay life as a hairdresser entirely when he visited his parents and created a whole new “good Chinese son� persona for them.
Intertwined throughout the novel were the city of Shanghai itself, daily life in Shanghai, and lots of current Chinese culture. I thought the author did an excellent job of weaving this setting into the storyline. The novel moves quickly, and I remained interested to find out what happened next. I have not read Jennifer Haigh in several years, but I fully enjoyed this novel and now I plan to read more of her prior work.
]]> 3.96
author: Jennifer Haigh
name: Ann
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: china, domestic-drama, family-relationships
review:
In her new novel, Rabbit Moon, Jennifer Haigh expertly captured family relationships as well as the angst and complications of the life of a young woman. The setting in Shanghai made the writing and story come even more alive. The main character is Lindsay, a young woman who is adrift in life, having dropped out of college and moved to China (with her boyfriend) to teach English. She finds herself alone in Shanghai and makes a life altering decision regarding her employment. She suffers a terrible accident (that’s all I’m going to say to avoid spoilers!). The reader first meets her divorced parents at the time they receive word that their daughter has been seriously injured in Shanghai.
The novel goes back in time to disclose the messy family history, including the effect of Lindsay’s actions on the entire family. The parents and their domestic life, attitudes, issues and decisions are very well drawn by the author. But most importantly, the reader sees deeply into Lindsay’s life and choices. She was fully portrayed as a character, and as I reader, I felt I knew her and wanted to give her advice. The other important character is Lindsay’s sister, Grace, who was adopted from China. Issues regarding Chinese Americans are nicely shown � but the author doesn’t pound on them. Other wonderful characters included Johnny, the hairdresser and friend of Lindsay, who hid his gay life as a hairdresser entirely when he visited his parents and created a whole new “good Chinese son� persona for them.
Intertwined throughout the novel were the city of Shanghai itself, daily life in Shanghai, and lots of current Chinese culture. I thought the author did an excellent job of weaving this setting into the storyline. The novel moves quickly, and I remained interested to find out what happened next. I have not read Jennifer Haigh in several years, but I fully enjoyed this novel and now I plan to read more of her prior work.

]]> 203163907 In the tradition of Isabel Allende’s career-launching debut, The House of the Spirits, a multigenerational, Latin American saga of love and revolution in which a young man abandons his family for the cause—and receives a late-life chance at “a tour de forceâ€� from “the new masterâ€� (Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene). In 1964, Stanislavo, a zealous young man devoted to his ideals, turns his back on his privilege to join the leftist movement in the jungles of Venezuela. There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their romance is upended by a decision with consequences that will echo down through the generations. Ěý Forty years later, the country’s political landscape has drastically changed, as have the trajectories that Stanislavo and Emiliana followed in the intervening decades. When a young boy is accidentally shot on the eve of the attempted coup against President Chávez, Stanislavo’s chance encounter with the boy’s mother forces a reckoning with past missteps and the ways his actions have reverberated into the present. Ěý With its epic scope, gripping narrative, and unflinching intimacy, Freedom Is a FeastĚýannounces a major new talent. Alejandro Puyana has delivered an extraordinarily wise and moving debut about sticking to one’s beliefs at the expense of pain and chaos, about the way others can suffer for our misdeeds even when we have the best of intentions, and about the possibility for redemption when love persists across time.]]> 448 Alejandro Puyana 0316571784 Ann 0 In a different timeline, we meet Maria, a young mother, and her son Eloy, who are inhabitants of the worst barrio in Caracas. Maria cleans the home of a wealthy family, and Eloy is a happy child until he is wounded by gunfire during a march against Hugo Chavez (the then “presidentâ€� of Venezuela). Maria and Stanis meet at the hospital where Eloy is taken, and the story moves forward from there. The deep entanglement of Maria’s and Stanisâ€� stories evolves very nicely during the rest of the novel.
However, underlying the personal story is the overwhelming effect of political instability in Venezuela. Violent changes in government and protests are part of daily life. The reader sees tortious imprisonment against the guerillas as well as (years later) the Venezuelan prison system in which a few select prisoners impose their will and laws over all the other prisoners.
This novel moved quickly among its various timelines and well-drawn, unique characters. I also learned some Venezuelan history. This is a debut novel, and I will look forward to more from Mr. Puyano.
]]> 4.26 2024
author: Alejandro Puyana
name: Ann
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: venezuela, character-saga, latin-america
review:
Set among the political upheavals in Venezuela from the 1960’s to the 2020’s, this novel follows the life and experiences � personal and political � of a man named Stanislavis or “Stanis�. Although the novel moves about in time, we first know Stanislavis as a young man from an educated family, who decides to become a part of “the Movement� and goes to the jungle to engage in guerilla warfare against the then-in-power regime. In addition to becoming friends with his fellow fighters, Stanis meets and falls in love with Emiliana, a nurse who helps the guerillas. Stanis makes a small mistake, and he and his fighter friends are captured by government forces. After his escape, Stanis remains even more committed to the Movement and makes a choice that affects his life as well as the lives of his children and grandchildren.
In a different timeline, we meet Maria, a young mother, and her son Eloy, who are inhabitants of the worst barrio in Caracas. Maria cleans the home of a wealthy family, and Eloy is a happy child until he is wounded by gunfire during a march against Hugo Chavez (the then “president� of Venezuela). Maria and Stanis meet at the hospital where Eloy is taken, and the story moves forward from there. The deep entanglement of Maria’s and Stanis� stories evolves very nicely during the rest of the novel.
However, underlying the personal story is the overwhelming effect of political instability in Venezuela. Violent changes in government and protests are part of daily life. The reader sees tortious imprisonment against the guerillas as well as (years later) the Venezuelan prison system in which a few select prisoners impose their will and laws over all the other prisoners.
This novel moved quickly among its various timelines and well-drawn, unique characters. I also learned some Venezuelan history. This is a debut novel, and I will look forward to more from Mr. Puyano.

]]> 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Ann 0 to-read 4.05 2025
author: Amity Gaige
name: Ann
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18490557 In this gripping, emotionally charged novel, a tragedy in Texas changes the course of three lives

On an oppressively hot Monday in August of 1966, a student and former marine named Charles Whitman hauled a footlocker of guns to the top of the University of Texas tower and began firing on pedestrians below. Before it was over, sixteen people had been killed and thirty-two wounded. It was the first mass shooting of civilians on a campus in American history.

Monday, Monday follows three students caught up in the massacre: Shelly, who leaves her math class and walks directly into the path of the bullets, and two cousins, Wyatt and Jack, who heroically rush from their classrooms to help the victims. On this searing day, a relationship begins that will eventually entangle these three young people in a forbidden love affair, an illicit pregnancy, and a vow of secrecy that will span forty years. Reunited decades after the tragedy, they will be forced to confront the event that changed their lives and that has silently and persistently ruled the lives of their children.With electrifying storytelling and the powerful sense of destiny found in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, and with the epic sweep of Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, Elizabeth Crook's Monday, Monday explores the ways in which we sustain ourselves and one another when the unthinkable happens. At its core, it is the story of a woman determined to make peace with herself, with the people she loves, and with a history that will not let her go. A humane treatment of a national tragedy, it marks a generous and thrilling new direction for a gifted American writer.]]> 352 Elizabeth Crook 0374228825 Ann 4 texas, relationships-family I attended the University of Texas (Law School), so the scenes in Austin were very close to my heart. But Ms. Crook has done more than that � she has beautifully illustrated central and west Texas. From places in Austin I remember well (the Drag, the Tower, the restaurants, the bars), to Alpine, to Aquarena Springs and many others � she just “got it�! Thank you, Elizabeth Crook, for making us not forget a terrible event and for making us think of it in a more individual, human way, even after all these years.
]]> 3.66 2014
author: Elizabeth Crook
name: Ann
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: texas, relationships-family
review:
Elizabeth Crook has wonderfully portrayed the manner in which scars from a traumatic event � both visible and invisible scars � affect the lives of those involved for generations. With great sadness, I well remember the day that Charles Whitman shot, injured and murdered randomly from the Tower at the University of Texas. This novel follows the life of Shelly, who was seriously injured but survived the attack, with only scars and physical imperfections; Wyatt, who saved Shelly’s life; and Jack, Wyatt’s Vietnam vet cousin who was also injured in the shootings. As a result of trauma, physical wounds and generally feeling lost, Shelly changes her plans to join the Peace Corps, remains in Austin and reconnects with Wyatt. Wyatt is married, and their relationship is, of course, very conflicted. The novel follows, Shelly, Jack and Wyatt as they navigate through a circle of life in which they and their children remain very intertwined � although many secrets are kept from the children. I thought the author did an excellent job of showing the often undiscussed effects of a traumatic event and the way in which the connection of those who experienced it can endure for many years.
I attended the University of Texas (Law School), so the scenes in Austin were very close to my heart. But Ms. Crook has done more than that � she has beautifully illustrated central and west Texas. From places in Austin I remember well (the Drag, the Tower, the restaurants, the bars), to Alpine, to Aquarena Springs and many others � she just “got it�! Thank you, Elizabeth Crook, for making us not forget a terrible event and for making us think of it in a more individual, human way, even after all these years.

]]> 209462725
As Lila navigates romantic entanglements and her family’s deep mistrust, a legacy of violence in the family can no longer be ignored. In the aftermath of her cousin Biddy's wedding, an uncle is dead, and her grandmother unwillingly reveals her own secrets. With a lawsuit against Lila gathering steam and a police investigation triggered, Lila must finally reckon with her inherited custom of sweeping everything under the rug to preserve appearances.

With an unforgettable house at its heart, a violent past erupting into the present, a problematic romance, and a compelling and conflicted heroine, this novel is an utterly addictive read.]]> 439 Nayantara Roy 1643755870 Ann 4 4.27 2024
author: Nayantara Roy
name: Ann
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: family-relationships, romantic-relationship, india
review:
Lila (a young woman who moved to the US from India at age 16) is a book editor in New York who has just received a big promotion, when she learns that she has unexpectedly inherited her family’s very large home in India. She returns to Kolkata (where most of the story is set) to deal with her inheritance and her extended family, almost all of whom live in the house. To make matters more complicated, her old Indian boyfriend comes back on the scene and her best author/sometimes lover travels to India to be with her. Her relationships and confusion with and between these two men are nicely done, but it is her relationship with her various family members that takes the prize. From grandmother, to mother, to aunts, to cousins, to great nieces and nephews, there are secrets, feuds, general acting it out behavior and love. This large family is Indian, and Indian culture deeply affects the relationships and secrets, but in many ways it could be any big family anywhere - - which is what makes it so well done. That said, the scenes in India are vivid � full of wonderful descriptions of food, housing, customs and culture. I felt quite immersed in the setting. I wouldn’t call this true literature, but it was a very good story, very well told � and it is hard to believe that it is a debut. I will look forward to more from this author.
]]> 199798868 New York Times bestselling author comes a spectacularly moving and intense novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love, the story of Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of Brooklyn, Tóibín’s most popular work, twenty years later.

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony’s parents, a huge extended family that lives and works, eats and plays together. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis, now in her forties with two teenage children, has no one to rely on in this still-new country. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at his job and Eilis is in her home office doing her accounting, an Irishman comes to the door asking for her by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony’s child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis’s doorstep. It is what Eilis does—and what she refuses to do—in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín’s novel so riveting.

Long Island is about longings unfulfilled, even unrecognized. The silences in Eilis� life are thunderous and dangerous, and there’s no one more deft than Tóibín at giving them language. This is a gorgeous story of a woman alone in a marriage and the deepest bonds she rekindles on her return to the place and people she left behind, to ways of living and loving she thought she’d lost.]]> 294 Colm Tóibín 1476785112 Ann 4 That is the basic storyline, but what made this novel appeal to me was Toibin’s incredible insight into, and ability to write about, family and relationships. All the pulls and tugs in Tony’s huge Italian family (who live together in the compound) are wonderfully drawn. Misunderstandings abound, little slights become huge and real or perceived favoritism is abundant - - just as is the case in any “normal� family! In Ireland, all the stresses, confusion and excitement of a love outside of marriage (or other relationship in the case of Jim) are very well portrayed. For both Eilis and Jim, confusion and stress overpower action and open discussion - - and Toibin shows it well. Another theme in Ireland is Eilis� relationship with her extremely difficult mother, who, of course, she loves. Difficult family members……need I say more? I enjoyed this novel and will continue to look forward to reading Toibin.
]]> 3.68 2024
author: Colm TĂłibĂ­n
name: Ann
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: family-relationships, ireland, usa-1900s-late
review:
This is the “set 20 years later� sequel to Brooklyn, and while many readers preferred Brooklyn, I was more touched by this one. Eilis, the main character from Brooklyn, is now living on Long Island in a family compound with her husband (Tony) and teenaged children, when a man informs her that Tony is to be the father of a child with the man’s wife and that the man is going to bring the baby to Tony’s family at birth. As expected, Eilis feels that this child should not be raised by her and/or Tony’s family, and, ultimately, goes back to Ireland to visit her mother. There she rekindles an old flame with Jim.
That is the basic storyline, but what made this novel appeal to me was Toibin’s incredible insight into, and ability to write about, family and relationships. All the pulls and tugs in Tony’s huge Italian family (who live together in the compound) are wonderfully drawn. Misunderstandings abound, little slights become huge and real or perceived favoritism is abundant - - just as is the case in any “normal� family! In Ireland, all the stresses, confusion and excitement of a love outside of marriage (or other relationship in the case of Jim) are very well portrayed. For both Eilis and Jim, confusion and stress overpower action and open discussion - - and Toibin shows it well. Another theme in Ireland is Eilis� relationship with her extremely difficult mother, who, of course, she loves. Difficult family members……need I say more? I enjoyed this novel and will continue to look forward to reading Toibin.

]]> 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Ann 0 DNF 3.92 2023
author: Paul Murray
name: Ann
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:
DNF
]]> 32725023 A sixteen-year-old girl captures the dangerous attention of an older man in this New York Times–bestselling novel by the author of Black Narcissus. Ěý Soon after the end of the terrible Great War, Mrs. Grey brings her five young children to the French countryside for the summer in hopes of instilling in them a sense of history and humility. But when she is struck down by a sudden illness and hospitalized, the siblings are left to fend for themselves at the lovely, bullet-scarred hotel Les Oeillets, under the suspicious, watchful eyes of its owner, Mademoiselle Zizi. Ěý The young ones find a willing guide, companion, and protector in charming Englishman Eliot, a longtime resident at Les Oeillets and Mlle. Zizi’s apparent paramour. But as these warm days of freedom, discovery, and adolescent adventure unfold, Eliot’s interest becomes more and more focused on the eldest of the Grey children, sixteen-year-old daughter Joss. The older man’s obsession with the innocent, alluring, heartbreakingly beautiful woman-child soon threatens to overstep all bounds of propriety. And as Eliot’s fascination increases, so does the jealousy of his disrespected lover, adding fuel to a dangerously smoldering fire that could erupt into unexpected violence at any moment. Ěý Told from the point of view of Cecil, Joss’s sharp-eyed younger sister, The Greengage Summer is a beautiful, poignant, darkly tinged coming-of-age story rich in the sights, smells, and sounds of France’s breathtaking Champagne country. It remains one of the crowning literary achievements of Rumer Godden, acclaimed author of beloved classics Black Narcissus, The River, and In This House of Brede.This ebook features an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from the Rumer Godden Literary Estate. Ěý]]> 194 Rumer Godden Ann 4 4.24 1958
author: Rumer Godden
name: Ann
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: family-relationships, narrated-by-child, france
review:
What happens when your mother takes you [the narrator] and your four siblings to France to learn humility by touring battlefields � but then is hospitalized leaving you and your siblings on your own in a French hotel? The short answer is many things � such as men (including the love object of the female owner of the hotel) starting to look at your beautiful older sister; your younger brother discovering some mysterious happenings; strange behavior on the part of the Englishman who has been “assigned� to take care of you; constant dissatisfaction with you and your siblings from the hotel management; and not understanding a great deal of what is being said because you are very English and your French is not fluent. Rummer Godden’s writing is lovely, and the story is very well told. I loved the “one place� setting in the French hotel. But what I enjoyed most was the extremely skillful way in which the author created the character of each of the children. The reader sees each child with his or her own, full personality and behavior that is extremely accurate for their age. The oldest girl, at 16, deals with becoming a woman and the attention of men. The narrator, at 13, observes everything and feels the weight of all the events on her shoulders. The next youngest daughter becomes a conspirator with the narrator, while the youngest daughter spends a lot of time in the hotel kitchen sampling treats. The boy (8) was one of the best drawn characters � he beats to his own drum and misses nothing. This novel was a short, beautiful view of siblings in a challenging situation.
]]> 62873378 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 0525657320 Ann 3 true-crime, non-fiction 3.92 2023
author: Michael Finkel
name: Ann
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: true-crime, non-fiction
review:
This is the “it seems absolutely impossible� story of Stéphane Breitweiser, who, with the help of his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, stole over a billion dollars worth of art from museums in northern Europe. These thefts were committed during the day, with security present in the museums. From this reader’s perspective, it just seems like he couldn’t or shouldn’t have kept getting away with his obsession for stealing art to “save it" - - but he did for over 10 years. The book details a number of the thefts themselves, but also goes deeply into Breitweiser’s mental and psychological states. The thoughts of the detectives who questioned him are also brought into the narrative. I did enjoy the book, and it would provide wonderful ground for discussions of the mindset of this unique thief. However, I saw it as an entertaining ride and it did not reach me in the way a well written novel does.
]]> 4954833 Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm TĂłibĂ­n's sixth novel, Brooklyn, is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself.

Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America--to live and work in a Brooklyn neighborhood "just like Ireland"--she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, a blond Italian from a big family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. He takes Eilis to Coney Island and Ebbets Field, and home to dinner in the two-room apartment he shares with his brothers and parents. He talks of having children who are Dodgers fans. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love with Tony, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future.]]> 262 Colm TĂłibĂ­n 1439138311 Ann 4 3.71 2009
author: Colm TĂłibĂ­n
name: Ann
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: ireland, usa-1900s-mid, immigrants
review:
This novel portrays the immigrant experience as well as � and probably better than � any similar novel I have read. The main character, Eilis cannot find work in Ireland, so, at the urging of a priest, immigrates into the US. All alone, she finds lodging at a boarding house and a job in a department store on Fulton Street. She furthers her education with night classes and attends Irish dances, where she meets Tony, an Italian from a large family. Over time, she comes to love Tony, but bad news from home sends her back on a visit to Ireland. Many people had reviewed this novel, so I will only say that touches all the poignant aspects of being a young woman and an immigrant. We see Eilis� loneliness and we see her make new friends. We see her learn to love and to grow into the physical side of a relationship. We see her work hard and yet want more from life than being a “shop girl�. We watch as she gets to know Tony’s huge family, while she has no family members in the US. Of course, Tobin’s writing is lovely and descriptive. I plan to read Long Island (the sequel) very soon.
]]> 21412330 With lush, imaginative prose and unforgettable characters, "The Heart Has Its Reasons "is a journey of the soul that takes readers from Spain to California, between the thorny past and all-too-real present. It is a story about the thrill of creating one's life anew.]]> 373 María Dueñas 1451668333 Ann 3 spain, academia 3.37 2012
author: María Dueñas
name: Ann
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: spain, academia
review:
3.5 Once again Maria Duenas has delivered an interesting story with strong ties to Spain. The main character is Blanca, a successful professor in Spain whose personal life is adrift as a result of her husband’s having left her for another woman. To achieve a change, she accepts a research position at a California university, where her task is to organize and document the papers left behind by a deceased professor who taught at the university. There, Blanca gets to know Daniel (also a professor), who was mentored by the deceased professor and who spent time in Spain doing his own research � and more. The novel moves back and forth between California and Spain, and, as always, the author’s descriptions of Spain and the Spanish culture are excellent. The academic setting in California was unusual and interesting. There are also a number of underlying secrets, which evolve and are resolved as the novel progresses. In addition, several men seem interested in Blanca, but their intentions may not be purely romantic. For me, Maria Dunas� novels are nice to read and always have a lovely vision into Spain.
]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Ann 4 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Ann
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: family-relationships, ireland, romantic-relationship
review:
This highly introspective novel of two bothers navigating life and love after the death of their father enthralled me. The novel is told between the alternating POV’s of Peter, a 32 year old human rights lawyer, and his younger brother, Ivan, a 22 year old chess star. As is often the case with brothers, Peter and Ivan are very different. Peter is fairly established in his career, somewhat arrogant and, although he is involved with the young, lovely (but slightly vacuous) Natalie, still deeply in love with his college girlfriend, Sylvia (who suffered a terrible accident). Ivan does not have full time work and studies and plays chess. He becomes involved with Margaret, who is 10 years older than he is. The novel evolves as Peter and Ivan deal with their respective romances, including issues of love vs sex and older man/younger woman vs younger man/older woman. At the same time they are both dealing very differently with both the loss of their father as well as their ongoing relationships with their mother. Of course, as different human beings, Peter and Ivan have misunderstandings over many issues. Sally Rooney did and wonderful job of portraying the two main characters� inner, emotional struggles as well as the ups and downs of daily life. She also showed how quickly a “wrong� or unstated comment can have a large and lingering effect in a familial or romantic relationship. I felt that the author absolutely “got� both familial and romantic relationships on many levels. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I listened to the audio which I also thought was excellent.
]]> 34068494 Dogs at the Perimeter tells the story of Janie, who as a child experiences the terrible violence carried out by the Khmer Rouge and loses everything she holds dear. Three decades later, Janie has relocated to Montreal, although the scars of her past remain visible. After abandoning her husband and son and taking refuge in the home of her friend, the scientist Hiroji Matsui, Janie and Hiroji find solace in their shared grief and pain—until Hiroji’s disappearance opens old wounds and Janie finds that she must struggle to find grace in a world overshadowed by the sorrows of her past.

Beautifully realized, deeply affecting, Dogs at the Perimeter evokes the injustice of tyranny through the eyes of a young girl and draws a remarkable map of the mind’s battle with memory, loss, and the horrors of war. It confirms Madeleine Thien as one of the most gifted and powerful novelists writing today.]]> 259 Madeleine Thien 039335430X Ann 4 cambodia-khmer-rouge 3.68 2011
author: Madeleine Thien
name: Ann
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: cambodia-khmer-rouge
review:
I was awed by the beauty of the writing and the intensity of the storytelling in this novel of Cambodia during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. The reader first meets Janie (her Western name) as an adult living in Canada. It is clear that the events of Janie’s childhood in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge continue to torment her. We are introduced to other characters whose lives have been deeply affected by the same events. The story moves seamlessly back and forth from Cambodia to Canada. Each character is beautifully and fully drawn, and the reader knows them as youths and as adults. The writing is magnificent and quite poetic. There are flashbacks that are so well woven into the story that the reader is slightly confused and, therefore, must really think about the tragedy portrayed in the scene. The main characters had different names at different points in their lives, which I found to be a unique means by which the author made the broken lives of her characters even more real. I was deeply moved by this novel, and I will remember it for a long time.
]]> 217587106 'Why did people, who lived so briefly in this universe, contain so much time?'

Lina and her father have arrived at an enclave called the Sea, a staging-post between migrations, with only a few possessions, among them three volumes from The Great Voyagers encyclopedia series.

In this mysterious and shape-shifting building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, excommunicated for his radical thought; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China, whose brilliance goes unrecognised by the state. Their stories fuse with those of philosophers from previous Baruch Spinoza, Hannah Arendt and the Chinese poet Du Fu. And as Lina's ailing father becomes less well, he recounts how he and Lina came to reside in the Sea, and what his betrayals cost their family and others.

Exploring the role of fate in history, the migratory nature of humanity and the place of faith in our world, The Book of Records addresses fundamental questions about creativity, and good and evil. A deeply philosophical work of huge originality and heft, it shows a master storyteller writing at the height of her powers.]]> Madeleine Thien 1803510722 Ann 0 to-read 4.33 2025
author: Madeleine Thien
name: Ann
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203164400 In this elegant gothic horror tale set in post-revolutionary Russia, two formerly aristocratic sisters race to uncover their family’s long-buried secrets in a house haunted by a past dangerous—and deadly—to remember.

It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow, a stately mansion falling into disrepair and decay. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters understand it is the way of things and know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought.

Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration, meant to ease the post-revolutionary famine in Russia. For the sisters, the ARA provides much-needed food and employment, as well as a chance for sensible Irina to help those less fortunate and artistic Lili to express herself for a good cause. It might just lead them to love, too.

But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human? And are Irina and Lili and their family next? Only unearthing the frightening secrets of Moscow House will reveal all. But this means the sisters must dig deep into a past no one in Russia except the dead are allowed to remember.]]> 384 Olesya Salnikova Gilmore 0593547004 Ann 2 3.38 2024
author: Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
name: Ann
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: gothic, russia-post-revolution
review:
A novel about a haunted mansion in Moscow just post revolution sounded great for a Halloween read. The Moscow setting and the brutality of the Bolsheviks toward “former people� (former nobility) were decently portrayed. The reader also experiences the extreme changes of life experienced by the two main characters � preciously young noble women � now former people. However, there were way too many ghosts with far too much significance in the story for me. It could have been so much better � it just wasn’t the Halloween read I was looking for.
]]> 199280824 The Instant #1 BESTSELLER, reminiscent of The Thorn Birds, The Light Between Oceans, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Poignant, heartbreaking, and unforgettable. Inspired by a TRUE STORY . . .

Nominated for a PULITZER PRIZE . . . Soon to be a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE.

“An intense and emotional read!� � Rhys Bowen, New York Times bestselling author of In Farleigh Field and The Tuscan Child

"SHAMED BE THE WOMAN WHO ALLOWETH SUCH A SIN!"

Set against the sprawling backdrop of 1930s Australia, Anna May Shahan is a wild child raised on a lush farm by the sea, always barefoot and playing in her neighbor’s secret garden. Her Aboriginal nanny teaches her the ways of the land, and she grows up to be a quirky, eccentric, and sweet woman. But she is not without her demons, as she struggles with bizarre behaviors and a haunting, dark side.

Soon after marriage, Anna inherits Sugar Alexandria, her family’s sheep station, and she and her Irish husband James lead a simple, hardworking life. That is until Anna’s beautiful widowed cousin Lottie returns from London after being absent for over a decade. Lottie confesses to Anna her heart’s greatest desire to have a child, and Anna, in fear of losing her beloved cousin again, seeks to grant her wish by means of her own husband. What happens next brings devastating consequences for them all.

A literary achievement and the most emotionally gripping book of the year, The Consequence of Anna is a complex historical family saga, intertwined with the haunting mystery of Anna’s mental illness and the secrets, lies, and revelations revealed through the hidden passions of Lottie and James. Layered with lush romance, obsessive love, the strong bond of female friendship, and the frightening effects of altruistic intentions gone wrong, this provocative and powerful allegory cuts through rules and boundaries and proves the old adage that no good deed goes unpunished!]]> 568 Kate Birkin Ann 0 did-not-finish 3.81 2023
author: Kate Birkin
name: Ann
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: did-not-finish
review:
I selected this because it was the story of a mentally ill Australian woman and the choices she made related to her family. It was just way too slow (and long), and from the beginning it was very clear that it was going to end badly.
]]> 217245557 In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.]]> 304 Isabel Allende 059397509X Ann 0 to-read 4.06 2025
author: Isabel Allende
name: Ann
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1658265 377 Patrick Gale 0007254660 Ann 4 3.87 2007
author: Patrick Gale
name: Ann
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: family-relationships, mental-health, art, british
review:
This novel beautifully (and tragically) captured the life of a woman artist who suffered throughout her life from bipolar disease. The novel moves back and forth through time, and we see Rachel as a young woman, a mother, a wife, a known artist, and (near the end of the novel) as a child. The reader also watches as Rachel’s children try to unravel hidden aspects of her life after her death. Woven through all the phases of Rachel’s life is the thread of her mental illness and its effect on her life and the lives of her family. Each of Rachel’s family members is well and fully portrayed: Rachel’s husband is a passive, “hold it all together� person; each of her sons has his own personality; and her daughter inherits both Rachel’s artistic ability and her mental health issues. I felt deeply for each character in this novel. The writing is beautiful, and the pace, although not fast, moved forward (and backward) in a wonderful manner that kept me involved. This was my first Patrick Gale novel, and I am looking forward to the next one.
]]> 201626978
A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most is an epic story in one single day, masterly breaching the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.]]> 144 Jessica Anthony 0316576379 Ann 4 3.31 2024
author: Jessica Anthony
name: Ann
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 209142012 This title was previously published as Hidden Beauty by Lucinda Edmonds, and has been rewritten and reimagined by her son, Harry Whittaker, for Lucinda Riley fans the world over. ]]> 576 Lucinda Riley 1035047977 Ann 3 4.11 2024
author: Lucinda Riley
name: Ann
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: england, religious-persecution, romantic-relationship, family-relationships
review:
This novel was written by Lucinda Riley early in her career and updated by her son following her death. As always with Lucinda Riley (author of the Seven Sister series), this novel was entertaining, fast paced and fun to read. The main character, Leah, grows up in a humble status (daughter of a housekeeper) in Yorkshire, is “discovered� and becomes a world famous fashion model. (I am quite unfamiliar with the high fashion world, so it was fun to read about it.) The more serious theme follows the family in the “big house� where Leah’s mother works. The matriarch of this family emigrated from Poland after WWII, and the novel includes scenes in concentration camps and horrible escaped Nazis. It is all a little bit predictable (and not true literature), but definitely a nicely done, entertaining ride.
]]> 201102273 An epic novel of star-crossed lovers set in a doomsday cult on the Texas prairie that asks: what would you sacrifice for the person you love?

Waco, Texas 1993. People from all walks of life have arrived to follow the Lamb’s gospel—signing over savings and pensions, selling their homes and shedding marriages. They’ve come here to worship at the feet of a former landscaper turned prophet who is preparing for the End Times with a staggering cache of weapons. Jaye’s mother is one of his newest and most devout followers, though Jaye herself has suspicions about the Lamb’s methods—and his motives.

Roy is the youngest son of the local sheriff; a 14 year old boy with a heart of gold and a nose for trouble who falls for Jaye without knowing of her mother’s attachment to the man who is currently making his father’s life hell. The two teenagers are drawn to each other immediately and completely, but their love may have dire consequences for their families. The Lamb has plans for them all—especially Jaye—and as his preaching and scheming move them closer and closer to unthinkable violence, Roy risks everything to save Jaye.

Based on the true events that unfolded thirty years ago during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound, Bret Anthony Johnston’s We Burn Daylight is an unforgettable love story, a heart-pounding literary page turner, and a profound exploration of faith, family, and what it means to truly be saved.]]> 352 Bret Anthony Johnston 0399590129 Ann 4 texas The story is told from many POV’s. Although Roy and Jaye are the main characters, the story is narrated by law enforcement (both local and federal � with the conflict between the two portrayed clearly), survivors (from prison in some cases), friends, and many other lesser, but beautifully intertwined characters. I was deeply impressed by the quality of the author’s ability to take me back so fully into this sad event. I listened to the audio, and I found the different voices to be very impactful.
]]> 3.81 2024
author: Bret Anthony Johnston
name: Ann
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: texas
review:
This incredibly well-done fictionalization of the Branch Davidian cult and the standoff in Waco between the cult and federal forces brought back this little piece of Texas history in a very powerful way. “The Lamb�/Perry Cullen (David Koresch) is an extremely charismatic religious figure. However, the two main characters are a young man (Roy), the son of the local sheriff, and a young woman, Jaye, whose mother becomes enthralled with The Lamb and joins the cult, bringing her daughter, Jaye, along with her. These two young people play off each other perfectly � son of local law enforcement and daughter of the cult � and of course develop a strong personal relationship. The reader experiences teenage boy life in Waco at the time as well as daily life inside the compound. When force is used by the federal forces, the reader feels the recipients� pain. However, this novel is not a definitive justification for either side, and, as in “real life�, the question of “who did/had what when� remain unanswered.
The story is told from many POV’s. Although Roy and Jaye are the main characters, the story is narrated by law enforcement (both local and federal � with the conflict between the two portrayed clearly), survivors (from prison in some cases), friends, and many other lesser, but beautifully intertwined characters. I was deeply impressed by the quality of the author’s ability to take me back so fully into this sad event. I listened to the audio, and I found the different voices to be very impactful.

]]> 197144545 A forbidden affair erupts dramatically amid a decadent Hawaiian wedding in this hilarious, sophisticated, and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex—and the lies we tell about them all.
Ěý
Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel, has a problem: his family fortune, the legendary Gresham Trust, has been depleted by decades of profligate spending. While magazine covers and Instagram stories display impeccably designed manors and shiny new yachts, the secret reality holds nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to seduce a woman with money, thereby securing the family's precarious financial future.

Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey-blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong?

When the Gresham family descends on the Big Island of Hawaii to host a veritable who's who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs for the wedding of the decade, Rufus must merely flex his famous abs to bewitch the heiress of his choice. But instead a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials, and the Gresham family's plans—and their reputation—go up in flames.

Can the once-great earldom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist? Spanning the black sand beaches of Hawaii, the red city of Marrakech, the Los Angeles bachelor pad of a billionaire playboy, and the inner sanctum of England’s oldest family estate, Lies and Weddings reveals an enthralling family saga that is as scandalous and satirical as it is full of heart.]]> 437 Kevin Kwan 0385546297 Ann 3 not-lit-but-great-read 3.69 2024
author: Kevin Kwan
name: Ann
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: not-lit-but-great-read
review:
I needed something that was fun and light, but well enough done to hold my attention. Kevin Kwan came through. What an entertaining crew of characters (mostly Eurasian as in his other novels) - ranging from irresponsible, outlandish, serious, heartless, mean, kind and loving � but almost all of them ridiculously wealthy. This novel featured life in fast lane to insolvent English nobility. Of course there were many, many secrets (well kept until the end) and lots of romance (both ill advised and wonderful). It was a much needed light and entertaining ride.
]]> 214152160 A sweeping family saga following one woman’s struggle to protect her culture and her family amidst the backdrop of a military occupation.

In the foothills of the Himalayas, the picturesque mountain village of Poshkarbal is home to lush cherry and apple orchards and a thriving community. Yet Aisha and her mother Noorjahan live on the outskirts. A social pariah ever since her husband left, Noorjahan remains the only trusted healer and midwife and teaches Aisha about her special herbs and remedies. Isolated but content, Aisha is shocked when Noorjahan decides it’s time for her to attend the village school. From there, Aisha reconnects with her cousins from her father’s side of the family and excels in academics under the watchful eye of her teacher.

When Aisha is promised to the teacher’s son, Alim, in marriage, she is forced to abandon her dreams of college and become a wife. Their marriage is happy and fulfilling, but Aisha is also the keeper of her mother’s secrets, including the hidden poppy field that may have been the cause of her parent’s separation. As life in Poskarbal becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, Aisha and Alim eventually have children of their own, but the growing military presence forces Aisha to make impossible choices in order to save her family and preserve the independence Noorjahan fought so hard for. What follows is a family chronicle brimming with life, love, and humor, about sacrifice and honor, and fighting for your home and culture in the face of occupation.

Call Her Freedom is a lyrical, beautifully written novel about one woman’s love for her family. It is a sprawling investigation into colonialism’s relationship with loss and innocence spanning from 1969 to 2022. It is brimming with the violence of militarism, family secrets, and generational trauma announcing Tara Dorabji as a thrilling new voice in fiction.]]> 320 Tara Dorabji 1668051656 Ann 4 family-relationships, india Aisha is a very strong and well developed character, who sacrifices on many levels for her family. The author’s portrayal of village life in the Himalayas (including harvesting poppies) is quite tangible. The brutality disrespect for human life of the occupying forces is extremely clear. The writing is good � particularly for a debut novel. I look forward to Tara Dorabji’s next work.
]]> 3.88 2025
author: Tara Dorabji
name: Ann
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: family-relationships, india
review:
This novel beautifully and brutally tells the story of a woman and her family in what is almost surely Kashmir (although the country has a different name) from 1960 through current times. As the novel begins, Aisha is a child and the daughter of Noorjahan, a healer and midwife, who is an outcast because her husband left her. It is clear to Aisha that her mother harbors many gifts as well as many secrets. They live on the side of a mountain outside a small village, and life is quite difficult. Aisha is a good student, but when she is promised in marriage, she understands that a university education is no longer available to her. She marries and raises her children, one of whom becomes a guerrilla fighter, while the other pursues a foreign education. So, in many ways this is a novel of family: parent-child relationships; difficult mothers-in-law; navigating marriage; loss of parents; and distant daughters. But this novel is more, because the entire domestic structure of the characters must reflect the fact that the country is not only occupied by a brutal foreign power (India), but a foreign power whose religion is different (Hindu) (the characters are all Muslim). Woven deeply into the storyline are the horrendous brutality and arrogance of the occupying soldiers, as well as the multiple ways in which living under occupying forces affects everyday life and decisions.
Aisha is a very strong and well developed character, who sacrifices on many levels for her family. The author’s portrayal of village life in the Himalayas (including harvesting poppies) is quite tangible. The brutality disrespect for human life of the occupying forces is extremely clear. The writing is good � particularly for a debut novel. I look forward to Tara Dorabji’s next work.

]]> 30523611 An aging con man sets his sights on a twice-burned, sixtyish woman in this suspenseful novel from the author of the bestselling Cazalet Chronicles. Ěý Harry Kent is the caretaker of a houseboat on the English canal where he lives, subsisting on a nightly dinner of tinned steak and kidney pudding. Although love has been the single most important influence in his life and he believes he knows what the other sex wants, he is separated from his wife and has left behind a string of other failed relationships. Ěý Playwright Daisy Langrish has just bought a weekend cottage in the country. She has an estranged adult daughter, Katya, from her first marriage, and a grandchild. Her second marriage, to a handsome actor seven years younger, recently ended in a painful divorce. When Harry shows up looking for work, Daisy, needy and vulnerable, hires him first as a gardener and then, while she’s away in America, as caretaker. But when she returns to England, she begins to fall for her charming employee. Slowly and with masterly skill, Harry seduces Daisy, drawing her in to his spiraling web of lies and deception. Ěý Told in the alternating voices of Harry and Daisy, Falling builds tension as it winds its way toward a thrilling climax. Both a story of romantic yearning and a cautionary tale inspired by the author’s own experiences, this intimate and dispassionate exploration of the many facets of love is among Elizabeth Jane Howard’s finest literary accomplishments. Ěý]]> 436 Elizabeth Jane Howard 1504036735 Ann 4 relationships-family, england The story is told from both Henry’s and Daisy’s POV. The author did an extremely good job of portraying a man who used false love and kindness over time to obtain his goal â€� marriage to a woman with money â€� as well as the reactions to his advances of a previously hurt woman. As always, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s writing is excellent and entertaining. Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of Henries in the world (even if they do not plot quite as completely as this Henry did), and this novel was a great description of that kind of person.
]]> 4.04 1999
author: Elizabeth Jane Howard
name: Ann
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: relationships-family, england
review:
This was a very well-told story with a very interesting and unique premise: a man (Henry), is down on his luck, and decides to rectify his abysmal life and financial problems by ingratiating himself with and slowly seducing a well-to-do woman (with the plan of marrying her). Henry has no moral compass. He grew up in poverty, learned the trade of a gardener (as which is very competent), and then generally used people and spun lies to advance through life. Daisy, a successful playwright, has purchased an English country cottage. She is lonely � neither of her marriages was successful and she is not close to her daughter. Henry sees her and decides to make her his ”mark�. He talks her into a gardening job at the cottage, then maneuvers himself into a caretaker job (after illegally entering the cottage and reading Daisy’s personal papers), and then manages to care for her when she is injured, when he can advance to proclaiming love for her. Daisy is bewildered at first, but then starts to fall deeply for his “love�. The ending is perfect.
The story is told from both Henry’s and Daisy’s POV. The author did an extremely good job of portraying a man who used false love and kindness over time to obtain his goal � marriage to a woman with money � as well as the reactions to his advances of a previously hurt woman. As always, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s writing is excellent and entertaining. Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of Henries in the world (even if they do not plot quite as completely as this Henry did), and this novel was a great description of that kind of person.

]]> 183541507 “It is a privilege to read Crystal Hana Kim’s fiction, which both edifies and enlightens.� —Min Jin Lee

A hauntingly poetic family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center—a stunning work of great emotional power from the critically acclaimed author of If You Leave Me.

In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife—a knife Eunju hasn’t seen in more than thirty years, and that connects her to a place she’d desperately hoped to leave behind forever.

In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions—and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come.

Inspired by real events, told through alternating timelines and two intimate perspectives, The Stone Home is a deeply affecting story of a mother and daughter’s love and a pair of brothers whose bond is put to an unfathomably difficult test. Capturing a shameful period of history with breathtaking restraint and tenderness, Crystal Hana Kim weaves a lyrical exploration of the legacy of violence and the complicated psychology of power, while showcasing the extraordinary acts of devotion and friendship that can arise in the darkness.


]]> 341 Crystal Hana Kim 0063310996 Ann 3 korea Other reviewers have described the writing as poetic, but I had a very difficult time getting beyond the non-stop brutality (to young people) to appreciate the writing. The South Korean detention centers, of which there were many, are never discussed today, so I applaud Ms. Kim for bringing this phase of South Korean history to light. However, I was so disturbed and distracted by the torment enacted upon basically innocent young people that I could not enjoy the novel.
]]> 3.63 2024
author: Crystal Hana Kim
name: Ann
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves: korea
review:
This novel recounts the lives of a mother and daughter who were arrested in South Korea (in the 1980’s) and sent to a brutal detention center. The daughter is the primary narrator, and she vividly describes the hardships the women suffered in the detention center - from hunger to abject debasement. But there were young men in the Stone Home as well, particularly two brothers, who responded differently to the horrendous treatment they received, including brutal beatings and solitary confinement. The reader watches as the daughter is forced to curb her rebelliousness, while one brother’s mental anguish (as a result of the physical torture he and his brother received) becomes overwhelming.
Other reviewers have described the writing as poetic, but I had a very difficult time getting beyond the non-stop brutality (to young people) to appreciate the writing. The South Korean detention centers, of which there were many, are never discussed today, so I applaud Ms. Kim for bringing this phase of South Korean history to light. However, I was so disturbed and distracted by the torment enacted upon basically innocent young people that I could not enjoy the novel.

]]> 216805563 From one of the greatest writers of our time comes a profound and moving novel of an unforgettable life.

In the early morning dark, Emer McConnell rises for a day of teaching music in the schools of rural Saskatchewan. While she travels the snowy roads in the gathering light, she begins another journey, one of recollection and introspection, and one that, through the course of Jane Urquhart’s brilliant new novel, will leave the reader forever changed.

Moving as effortlessly through time as the drift of memory itself, In Winter I Get Up at Night brings Emer and her singular story to life. At the age of 11, she is terribly injured in an enormous prairie storm—the “great wind� that shifts her trajectory forever. . As she recovers, separated from her family in a children’s ward, Emer gets to know her fellow patients, a memorable group including a child performer who stars in a travelling theatre company, the daughter of a Dukhobor community, and the son of a leftist Jewish farm collective. The children are tended to by three nursing sisters and two doctors, whom the ever-imaginative Emer comes to call Doctor Angel and Doctor Carpenter.

Emer’s tale grows outwards from that ward, reaching through time and space in a dreamlike fashion, recounting the stories of her mother’s entanglement with a powerful yet mysterious teacher; her brother’s dawning spirituality, which eventually leads him to the priesthood; the remarkable lives of the nuns who care for her; and the passionate yet distant love affair of Emer and an enigmatic man she calls Harp—a brilliant scientist whose great discovery has forever altered millions of lives around the world.

In luminous prose, and with exhilarating nuance and depth, Jane Urquhart charts an unforgettable life, while also exploring some of the grandest themes of the twentieth century—colonial expansion, scientific progress, and the sinister forces that seek to divide societies along racial and cultural lines. In Winter I Get Up at Night is a major work of imagination and self-exploration from one of the greatest writers of our time.]]> 297 Jane Urquhart 0771051999 Ann 4 3.84 2024
author: Jane Urquhart
name: Ann
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/26
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: canada, illness, romantic-relationship, older-woman-life-and-retrospective
review:
I am so glad that I did not miss this beautiful, moving novel by Jane Urquhart, whose work I had not previously read. The setting is Saskatchewan (the Northern Great Plains), beginning in the 1920’s. The narrator is Emer, now an older woman, who recounts her life, through lovely, thoughtful language. Emer is seriously injured as a child, and one part of the story line revolves around life in a child’s ward in a hospital. The reader comes to know well the other children, the doctors and the nursing nuns. However, it is through the experiences of a sick child, some of which are grounded in a child’s imagination, that the power of the story and the writing are fully expressed. The other significant part of the story relates to Emer’s relationship with Harp, who is more frequently referred to as “the man I loved�. Although never married, the relationship between the two endured for many years, and Emer’s thoughts on love in its many facets (and in light of their seeing each other only sporadically) were extremely well written. The novel covers big subjects � childhood illness (and the lifelong effects thereof), romantic love and family issues � but it is a “quiet� novel. If you want a lot of action, this is not for you; but if you want lovely writing and a character whose reminiscing will stay with you, I think you would enjoy this one.
]]> 200241802
1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his ghosts whose messages he cannot understand .

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation.

Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýperhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with "We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”]]> 240 Anne Michaels 0771005458 Ann 0 to-read 3.50 2023
author: Anne Michaels
name: Ann
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36101014 This Burns My Heart comes gorgeous, emotionally wise tale about a daughter who unearths the hidden life of her enigmatic mother.

Mara Alencar’s mother Ana is the moon, the sun, the stars. Ana, a struggling voice-over actress, is an admirably brave and recklessly impulsive woman who does everything in her power to care for her little girl. With no other family or friends her own age, Ana eclipses Mara’s entire world. They take turns caring for each other—in ways big and small.

Their arrangement begins to unravel when Ana becomes involved with a civilian rebel group attempting to undermine the city's torturous Police Chief, who rules over 1980s Rio de Janeiro with terrifying brutality. Ana makes decisions that indelibly change their shared life. When Mara is forced to escape, she emigrates to California where she finds employment as a caregiver to a young woman dying of stomach cancer. It’s here that she begins to grapple with her turbulent past and starts to uncover vital truths—about her mother, herself, and what it means to truly take care of someone.

Told with vivid imagery and subtle poignancy, The Caregiver is a moving and profound story that asks us to investigate who we are—as children and parents, immigrants and citizens, and ultimately, humans looking for vital connectivity.]]> 289 Samuel Park 1501178784 Ann 3 latin-america, usa-1900s-late 3.74 2018
author: Samuel Park
name: Ann
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2018/10/09
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: latin-america, usa-1900s-late
review:

]]> 26139748 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER •ĚýIn this mesmerizing novel, Ethan Canin, theĚýauthor of America America and The Palace Thief, explores the nature of genius, rivalry, ambition, and love among multiple generations of a gifted family.Milo Andret is born with an unusual mind. A lonely child growing up in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, he gives little thought to his own talent. But with his acceptance at U.C. Berkeley he realizes the extent, and the risks, of his singular gifts. California in the seventies is a seduction, opening Milo’s eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman he meets there—and the rival he meets alongside her—will haunt him for the rest of his life. For Milo’s brilliance is entwined with a dark need that soon grows to threaten his work, his family, even his existence. Spanning seven decades as it moves from California to Princeton to the Midwest to New York, A Doubter’s Almanac tells the story of a family as it explores the way ambition lives alongside destructiveness, obsession alongside torment, love alongside grief. It is a story of how the flame of genius both lights and scorches every generation it touches. Graced by stunning prose and brilliant storytelling, A Doubter’s Almanac is a surprising, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel, a major work by a writer who has been hailed as “the most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation.â€� Praise for A Doubter’s Almanac â€�551 pages of bliss . . . devastating and wonderful . . . dazzling . . . You come away from the book wanting to reevaluate your choices and your relationships. It’s a rare book that can do that, and it’s a rare joy to discover such a book.â€�â€Ě§˛ő±çłÜľ±°ů±đ“[Canin] is at the top of his form, fluent, immersive, confident. You might not know where he’s taking you, but the characters are so vivid, Hans’s voice rendered so precisely, that it’s impossible not to trust in the story. . . . The delicate networks of emotion and connection that make up a family are illuminated, as if by magic, via his prose.â€�â€ÖŔ±ô˛ąłŮ±đ“Alternately explosive and deeply interior.â€�—New York (“Eight Books You Need to Readâ€�) “A blazingly intelligent novel.â€�—Los Angeles Times “[A] beautifully written novel.â€�—The New York Times Book Review (Editorsâ€� Choice)]]> 550 Ethan Canin 081299678X Ann 5 3.89 2016
author: Ethan Canin
name: Ann
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2016/04/07
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: usa-1900s-late, relationships-family
review:

]]> 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Ann 4 france, spy, commune However, the undercover agent aspect of Creation Lake is only one part of the novel. Threaded throughout the story line is correspondence from an “old time� activist who has exited the active world and turned to delving into the existence and development of Neanderthals and early humans. This aspect of the novel was unique in its substance and extremely well written. Rachel Kushner’s ability to give early humans great relevance in a story about an undercover agent in current times was outstanding.
I also applaud the complexity of the character of Sadie. She is smart, practical and extremely witty � but that doesn’t keep her from being very human or making mistakes. Throughout most of the novel, Sadie’s moral compass is focused only on getting her job done. In addition, her observances bring a great deal of humor to the novel. I did not think there could be such a thing as a truly literary spy novel � but Rachel Kushner has written it!
]]> 3.35 2024
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ann
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: france, spy, commune
review:
Rachel Kushner has taken an overworked genre � the spy novel � and created a literary, thought provoking work. The main character, “Sadie� is an undercover agent. She worked for the US government, but after a mishap, her “employers� are now private people with their own agendas. Sadie has been sent to rural France to infiltrate a communal group of agricultural activists. The reader watches as Sadie enters the group (first by having a “relationship� with the best friend of the group leader) and then cunningly (and ruthlessly) expands her position. Sadie is well trained, but, as in all good novels about an undercover agent, the risk of detection is always looming. Many of the activists are developed characters. We see the ups and downs (mostly downs) of communal life as well as the effect of the members� different economic backgrounds on their approaches to achieving their goals.
However, the undercover agent aspect of Creation Lake is only one part of the novel. Threaded throughout the story line is correspondence from an “old time� activist who has exited the active world and turned to delving into the existence and development of Neanderthals and early humans. This aspect of the novel was unique in its substance and extremely well written. Rachel Kushner’s ability to give early humans great relevance in a story about an undercover agent in current times was outstanding.
I also applaud the complexity of the character of Sadie. She is smart, practical and extremely witty � but that doesn’t keep her from being very human or making mistakes. Throughout most of the novel, Sadie’s moral compass is focused only on getting her job done. In addition, her observances bring a great deal of humor to the novel. I did not think there could be such a thing as a truly literary spy novel � but Rachel Kushner has written it!

]]> 52402280
SHORTLISTED FOR THE VOSS LITERARY AWARD 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE VOSS LITERARY AWARD 2020

​Interwoven in the anguish and trauma of Palestine, is a cross-border romance of ineffable charm � served equally with the remorseless realism of war and the bare-skinned surrender of two young warriors who break the rules because: what rules? He, a Palestinian and she, an Israeli soldier � confront the tyrannies of power � political, religious, and personal. Their prisons of repression and arrogant delusion break open the aphorism: �To birds born caged, flying is a crime.� There is no judgement, purely the exposition: Do I question my inherited viewpoint, or do I reach for the ideal? In a surge of almost giddying prose that pulls us page-by-page, questioning our values in a fever of anticipation the sequel strings though the twenty two years that bring forth the dichotomy between love and the lifetime-punishment of war. What do we ultimately become when we are bereft of hope? In a grappling prequel, three young zealots risk their lives in a dubious exchange of Egyptian hashish for Israeli guns - with renegade soldiers to whom trigger-murder was little more than a whim. Are we really prepared to pay the price for what we believe in?
This trilogy of novels begins with the reckless urge of idealism, it traverses the personal narrative rarely heard and closes with a finale that any lover would applaud.]]> 360 Mohammed Massoud Morsi 1925893049 Ann 0 4.37
author: Mohammed Massoud Morsi
name: Ann
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: did-not-finish-not-for-me, middle-east
review:

]]> 80977 672 Rumer Godden 0829421289 Ann 4 religious, england 4.35 1969
author: Rumer Godden
name: Ann
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: religious, england
review:
This novel, set in a convent of enclosed Benedictine nuns touched me in a very special way (and I am not Catholic). The main character, Philippa, first appears as a highly successful, middle aged executive who has decided to leave the life she has known for so many years and enter the religious life of the House of Brede (the Benedictine convent). The nuns in the House of Brede are enclosed - once they enter the convent, they never leave the enclosed portion of the convent. The novel follows Philippa as she adapts � not always easily � to the religious life she has chosen. Many other nuns are important characters, and the reader appreciates that, although each nun is a woman who has made a choice to have a purely religious life, each nun is also a person � with her individual personality, quirks, likes and dislikes, skills and weaknesses, and cultural and economic background. The interaction among the nuns and their hierarchy are well portrayed. The novel shows in great detail the path a woman must follow to become a full nun, which I found very interesting. The reader sees how relationships with people who were important in a nun’s past life, including family and romantic interests, evolve in the nun’s new life. There are many, often detailed, references to Catholic services and the liturgy contained in them � as well as the role of the musical aspect of many of the services provided by the nuns. The nuns said that the purpose of the enclosure was not to keep them in � but to keep the outside world out � in order to create an environment where a spiritual life could be their sole focus. Although I have no desire to become a nun, I was much moved by the peace this novel gave me.
]]> 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Ann 5 There is one character I have not yet mentioned, and that is water. A drop of water travels through all the periods of history mentioned above. In particular, rivers � the Thames and the Tigris � are characters who act as a constant backdrop for the scenes and the characters. The creative use of water by Ms. Shafak was extremely impressive.
When I finished this novel, I felt I had read three books: an ancient history novel, a Dickensian novel and a novel about current religious genocide. However, the greatness of this novel is that all three were tied together in so many fascinating, intricate, tragic and beautiful ways. This is what a wonderful novel should be � I thoroughly enjoyed it.
]]> 4.39 2024
author: Elif Shafak
name: Ann
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: middle-east, religious-persecution, 1800-s, england, exiles
review:
This novel was an outstanding work of literary art as well as a vivid portrayal of several interesting and tragic historical periods. Elif Shafak weaves a tale that includes three time periods and (at least) three main characters. All the storylines relate in their own way to Mesopotamia. We briefly meet an ancient Assyrian king, who was both learned and brutal, and whose actions and interests reverberate throughout the novel. We next meet Arthur, who lives in the mid-1800’s in London. Arthur grows up in abject poverty, and Shafak’s descriptions of that world are some of the best and most tangible I have ever read. Arthur ultimately becomes a student of Mesopotamia and a decipherer of Mesopotamian tablets (cuneiform). Arthur deciphers a recounting of the Great Flood (before the Bible) as well as the first “book� (The Epic of Gilgamesh), and, of course, travels to Mesopotamia to study artifacts. The next character is Zaleekhah, child of Turkish refugees, who lives in London in current times. She was orphaned, raised by her wealthy uncle and has become a scientist studying water. Zaleekhah is a sad soul, and her sense of aloneness is well portrayed in a number of ways. After the breakup of her marriage, she develops a friendship with Nan, who is a lover of all things Mesopotamian, and her life begins to brighten. The last characters the reader meets are Narin (9 years old) and her grandmother. They live in Turkey (Mesopotamia) in current times and are Yazidis, a religious minority group which has been persecuted throughout history. Narin and her grandmother travel to ISIS controlled Iraq, where horrific brutality befalls them because of their religious beliefs.
There is one character I have not yet mentioned, and that is water. A drop of water travels through all the periods of history mentioned above. In particular, rivers � the Thames and the Tigris � are characters who act as a constant backdrop for the scenes and the characters. The creative use of water by Ms. Shafak was extremely impressive.
When I finished this novel, I felt I had read three books: an ancient history novel, a Dickensian novel and a novel about current religious genocide. However, the greatness of this novel is that all three were tied together in so many fascinating, intricate, tragic and beautiful ways. This is what a wonderful novel should be � I thoroughly enjoyed it.

]]> 181110082 Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer’s Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past.

As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to return home and unexpectedly falls in love. But in her family, nothing has changed. When her grandnephew Michael bursts into her life in what appears to be a drug-fueled frenzy, and her Lexus gets jacked, it’s hard to keep minding her own business. As old cruelties begin to resurface, Honey is no longer sure what she really wants—to forgive or to avenge.

This electrifying literary breakout from PEN USA Award-winning author Victor Lodato is a masterful and deeply moving portrait of love in all its forms, of moral ambiguity, and of inspiring change—a story of female rage that asks the question: What are the limits of compassion in a world of extraordinary violence?]]> 400 Victor Lodato 0063309610 Ann 5 Honey is one of the most interesting characters I have ever gotten to know. She is strong but weak, pensive but sassy, and, underneath her exterior, quite loving. There are other very well done characters, including Honey’s young next door neighbor, who makes poor choices in men; a young painter, with whom Honey shares her love of art; and Honey’s nephew, who has exiled his son because he is transsexual. But all the characters revolve around the personality of Honey, as she interacts with them. The novel also contains Honey’s retrospective about many events in her life, which, of course, gives light and depth to the narrative set in the present.
As always, Victor Lodato’s writing is incredibly beautiful. He can perfectly capture deep emotions as well as daily life events and their effect of the characters. I was probably most awed by his ability to take on an 80 year old woman as his main character and fully and wonderfully immerse the reader in her reactions to aging, her ups and downs, and her desire to live fully despite it all.
]]> 3.95 2024
author: Victor Lodato
name: Ann
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: family-relationships, female-friendship, older-woman-life-and-retrospective
review:
Victor Lodato has amazed me again with his deep perception of human nature and his ability to create wonderful, complex characters. The heroine of this novel is Honey, an 80 year old, full of life woman, and the novel deftly shifts from her many present day activities and issues to reflections of her past life. Honey’s family is part of the New Jersey mob, and their use of violence to solve issues appears in several scenes in the novel. However, as a young woman, Honey left her family to spend the majority of her life in New York and California, and she has recently returned to New Jersey as the novel opens.
Honey is one of the most interesting characters I have ever gotten to know. She is strong but weak, pensive but sassy, and, underneath her exterior, quite loving. There are other very well done characters, including Honey’s young next door neighbor, who makes poor choices in men; a young painter, with whom Honey shares her love of art; and Honey’s nephew, who has exiled his son because he is transsexual. But all the characters revolve around the personality of Honey, as she interacts with them. The novel also contains Honey’s retrospective about many events in her life, which, of course, gives light and depth to the narrative set in the present.
As always, Victor Lodato’s writing is incredibly beautiful. He can perfectly capture deep emotions as well as daily life events and their effect of the characters. I was probably most awed by his ability to take on an 80 year old woman as his main character and fully and wonderfully immerse the reader in her reactions to aging, her ups and downs, and her desire to live fully despite it all.

]]> 26114424
The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don’t just grow, they grow old, and the clan’s matriarch, Joy, is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would have wished. When Joy’s beloved husband dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother’s loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy’s college days. And they didn’t count on Joy herself, a mother suddenly as willful and rebellious as their own kids.

The New York Times–bestselling author Cathleen Schine has been called “full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to [ Jane] Austen’s own� (The New York Review of Books), and she is at her best in this intensely human, profound, and honest novel about the intrusion of old age into the relationships of one loving but complicated family. They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together.]]> 293 Cathleen Schine 0374280134 Ann 4 aging, family-relationships As Joy takes care of Aaron, we see all her emotions � including love, sadness, aging and frustration. After Aaron’s death, we watch as Joy negotiates a new, challenging world, which evolves to a new significant other. From Molly’s POV, the reader experiences her attempts to manage her mother, both before and after her father’s death. We see her love for her mother and her desire to care for her mother competing with her need to live her own life and, of course, related guilt. These are all potentially tragic, depressing concepts and scenes, but they are depicted with such wonderful reality and humor that they are perceptive rather than depressing. I can relate very much to Molly and Daniel, and I found the novel to be a somewhat humorous, perceptive and practical description of some of life’s toughest moments and issues.
]]> 3.50 2016
author: Cathleen Schine
name: Ann
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: aging, family-relationships
review:
This novel deals with some very difficult family relationship topics in an extremely approachable and non-depressing way. You will very much appreciate this novel if you are old enough to have experienced any of the following: taking care of a terminally ill spouse; as an adult child, watching one or your parents take care of the other seriously ill parent; starting a new life after the death of a spouse; or as an adult child watching one parent deal with the surviving parent after the death of the other parent. The family in this novel consists of Joy, the mother/wife; Aaron, the terminally ill husband/father; Molly, the adult daughter who has moved to California; and Daniel, the son who has remained in New York but is busy with his own life and family. The story is told mostly from the perspectives of Joy and Molly.
As Joy takes care of Aaron, we see all her emotions � including love, sadness, aging and frustration. After Aaron’s death, we watch as Joy negotiates a new, challenging world, which evolves to a new significant other. From Molly’s POV, the reader experiences her attempts to manage her mother, both before and after her father’s death. We see her love for her mother and her desire to care for her mother competing with her need to live her own life and, of course, related guilt. These are all potentially tragic, depressing concepts and scenes, but they are depicted with such wonderful reality and humor that they are perceptive rather than depressing. I can relate very much to Molly and Daniel, and I found the novel to be a somewhat humorous, perceptive and practical description of some of life’s toughest moments and issues.

]]> 195888874
A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters� harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story

Daughters are the Ang family’s curse.

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.

Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.

From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.

Told in assured, evocative prose, with impeccably drawn characters, Daughters of Shandong is a hopeful, powerful story about the resilience of women in war; the enduring love between mothers, daughters, and sisters; and the sacrifices made to lift up future generations.]]> 400 Eve J. Chung 0593640535 Ann 4 Interwoven throughout the story were many threads of Chinese culture. I understood that the culture held women to be valueless, but I did not know that a mother in law could order her daughter in law to kneel on the floor for hours or the power of age in the family structure. The novel also drew clear pictures of life � from homes to food (which it was available).
In the midst of the horror, the incredible inner strength constantly required by Hai, her mother and her older sister in order to survive were amazing to me. Each of them approached their difficulties differently, but each of them exhibited a depth of perseverance that I deeply admire and respect. The character of Hai is based upon the experiences of the author’s grandmother, which gives it an extra level of power and emotion.
This novel portrayed the story of displacement, followed by hunger, tragedy and suffering, which was wrought upon the landowners when Mao’s government gained control � and it moved me deeply. I think it is important to remember that this story could apply to refugees through the ages and around the world.
]]> 4.46 2024
author: Eve J. Chung
name: Ann
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: china, exiles, mother-daughter
review:
I have read a great deal about the Chinese Revolution, but this novel of that time period (after WWII through the early 1950’s) from the perspective of a girl was extraordinarily powerful. Hai is the eldest daughter in a wealthy, landowning family (in Shandong province), which is ruled by her father’s mother (a bitter, evil person) and her father. Hai’s mother is little more than a servant in the family, and Hai and her two sisters, as girls, have virtually no worth or respect. When the family learns that the Communists are overpowering the Nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek) and brutalizing landowners (as part of the communist land reforms), all of the family members except Hai, her mother and her sisters leave for safety (ultimately Taiwan) with all the family money and assets. This leaves Hai, her mother and her sisters to be forcibly evicted from their home and to live in destitute poverty in a barn. The communists evict them violently and then brutally interrogate Hai as the oldest child of the landowning family. By scheming, they are able to sneak through communist authorities and travel to Qingdao, where Hai’s uncle gives them shelter. But poverty, hunger and desperation follow and, after horrific experiences, they are able to travel to Hong Kong. There, life becomes even worse. The descriptions of the refugee camps in which they had to try to survive were disturbing and tragic. Finally, Hai’s uncle obtains entry permits for Taiwan for them, and they feel their dreams are answered. However, the evil grandmother and selfish father continue to make their lives miserable. Ultimately they learn to survive and succeed on their own.
Interwoven throughout the story were many threads of Chinese culture. I understood that the culture held women to be valueless, but I did not know that a mother in law could order her daughter in law to kneel on the floor for hours or the power of age in the family structure. The novel also drew clear pictures of life � from homes to food (which it was available).
In the midst of the horror, the incredible inner strength constantly required by Hai, her mother and her older sister in order to survive were amazing to me. Each of them approached their difficulties differently, but each of them exhibited a depth of perseverance that I deeply admire and respect. The character of Hai is based upon the experiences of the author’s grandmother, which gives it an extra level of power and emotion.
This novel portrayed the story of displacement, followed by hunger, tragedy and suffering, which was wrought upon the landowners when Mao’s government gained control � and it moved me deeply. I think it is important to remember that this story could apply to refugees through the ages and around the world.

]]> 126919284
But to everyone’s surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money—and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Instead, he rejects his inheritance, settling into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marrying Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years later, Camden is a McTavish in name only, but a summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever, its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas, and the more she learns about Cam’s estranged family—and the twisted secrets they keep—the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have.

But Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will—and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.]]> 294 Rachel Hawkins 1250280036 Ann 3 family-relationships, mystery 3.80 2024
author: Rachel Hawkins
name: Ann
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: family-relationships, mystery
review:
An entertaining read, with many twists and surprises, this novel of a wealthy family and their large home in North Carolina kept me turning pages. Three generations are involved, but the main characters are a man who has inherited the estate and his wife. He has been estranged from his family for years. As the story unfolds, the past actions of the characters as well as their actual relationships and identities are revealed. This family has suffered tragedies and has many, many secrets. Each of the scheming family members seems to have a deep spot of evil � but the main characters are very likable as well. This is not a literary novel, but it certainly was a fun ride!
]]> 36636727 In the vein of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a mesmerizing debut set against the backdrop of the devastating violence of 1990's Colombia about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both.

The Santiago family lives in a gated community in Bogotá, safe from the political upheaval terrorizing the country. Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to this protective bubble, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.

When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.

Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricable coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras sheds light on the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.]]> 304 Ingrid Rojas Contreras Ann 4 latin-america 3.93 2018
author: Ingrid Rojas Contreras
name: Ann
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: latin-america
review:
Set in Bogota during the “rein� of drug lord, Pablo Escobar (1990’s), this novel portrays the civil unrest in Columbia at that time through the eyes of two young women, one a girl and the other a teenager. Chula and her family (sister, mother, father) live in a gated community and her father works (outside of Bogota) for an American oil company. Her mother hires a live-in housekeeper, Petrona, who is trying to support her impoverished family. They live in a guerilla occupied area on the edge of the city, which becomes a secondary setting for the storyline. The novel explores the day to day lives to the two young women. For Chula, her mother and her sister, life includes kidnappings, car bombs, shootings, assassinations, no running water (as a result of a bomb), and school closures. Petrona faces the same issues, but with the additional burden of abject poverty. The reader comes to understand that there are multiple forces engaging in undeclared war in the city, including the guerillas, the military and the paramilitary. Chula attempts to try to understand the world she is living in, while Petrona falls in love with a member of the guerillas. The tension heightens when a kidnapping is attempted against Chula and her sister, and the tragedy increases when their father is kidnapped. The conflict between political ideology (and the pressure to comply with politically motivated requests) and the desire to protect loved ones is very well illustrated. The reader feels the tension, fear and apprehension faced by everyone, no matter their political alignment. The writing is nice, but it is the story told by the novel that is gripping. My only complaint is that Chula is young (8 when the novel opens), and I felt that some of her early observations were a little too mature for her age.
]]> 203608562 The prestigious annual story anthology, now in its fourth year with a guest editor format and with a new bestselling track record

Continuing a century-long tradition of cutting-edge literary excellence, this year's edition contains twenty prizewinning stories chosen from the thousands published in magazines over the previous year. Guest editor Amor Towles has brought his own refreshing perspective to the prize, selecting stories by an engaging mix of celebrated names and emerging voices. The winning stories are accompanied by an introduction by Towles, observations from the winning writers on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines that publish short fiction.]]> 432 Amor Towles 0593470613 Ann 0 to-read 4.15 2024
author: Amor Towles
name: Ann
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59575970 Set in Jaffa in 1947-51, this fable-like novel is a heartbreaking tale of young love during the beginning of the destruction of Palestine and displacement of its people.

At times darkly humorous and ironic but also profoundly moving, this novel based on a true story, follows the lives of a gifted 15-year-old mechanic, Subhi, and 13-year-old Shams, a peasant girl he hopes to marry one day. At first we see the prosperous life of this cosmopolitan city on the Mediterranean--with its old cinemas, lively cafes and brothels, open air markets, a bustling port and Jaffa's world famous orange groves--through the lives of the families of Subhi and Shams, but particularly through Subhi. As the story evolves, the indiscriminate bombing of Jaffa and the displacements of Palestinian families begin, and we get a fascinating though dark close-up of how those who remained survived. This novel is a cinematic, though devastating, account of one of the most dramatic and least known chapters of Palestinian history.

It is a portrait of a city and a people irrevocably changed.]]> 304 Suad Amiry 059331655X Ann 3 middle-east 3.96 2022
author: Suad Amiry
name: Ann
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: middle-east
review:

]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Ann 4 british-irish 4.04
author: Jane Gardam
name: Ann
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2012/11/11
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: british-irish
review:

]]> 58838846
Times are bad for girls in India. The long-awaited independence from British rule is heralding a new era of hope but also of anger and distrust. Political unrest is brewing, threatening to unravel the rich tapestry of Delhi—a city where different cultures, religions and traditions have co-existed for centuries. When Partition happens and the British Raj is fractured overnight, the family is violently torn apart, and its members are forced to find increasingly desperate ways to survive.]]> 368 Melody Razak 0063140063 Ann 4 This was not (in my opinion) a true literary novel, but the story was told powerfully and movingly - - so powerfully that I actually had a dream of being abducted. I think that means the author did her job very well!
]]> 3.98 2021
author: Melody Razak
name: Ann
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/03
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: family-relationships, india, partition
review:
I have read many wonderful, very literary novels related to India’s Partition. While at first this one seemed a little too YA for me, this novel of the violent, bloody tragedy that was Partition grew very much on me the more I read it. The main characters are members of an upper-caste Hindu family living in Delhi. The parents are both professionals � the mother is a professor of Urdu, which results in issues for her. Their older daughter really just wants to be married to the man she has only met for a moment, and their younger daughter is unfocused and malleable. There are other interesting characters in this household, including a typically extremely traditional and manipulative mother-in-law, a wealthy aunt who is good of heart but doesn’t always make the best choices, a Muslim ayah and a very religious Hindu cook. The violence, tragedy and disruption of everyday life begins before Partition and escalates thereafter. The different challenges faced by each character and their responses are quite well portrayed. Then the older daughter is abducted from a train, and the family is thrown into further depths of horror. (I should point out that although the characters in the novel are Hindu, the violence on all sides was made very clear.)
This was not (in my opinion) a true literary novel, but the story was told powerfully and movingly - - so powerfully that I actually had a dream of being abducted. I think that means the author did her job very well!

]]> 61423833 Available in English for the very first time, a powerful, poignant novel about three half sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country.

With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father’s first child—haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together—seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances. And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their late mothers. A thoughtful, probing novel about the enduring traumas of war, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the inescapability of the past, The Rainbow is a searing, melancholy work from one of Japan’s greatest writers.]]> 224 Yasunari Kawabata 0593314921 Ann 0 3.44 1951
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Ann
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
shelves: did-not-finish-not-for-me, japan
review:
The story of sisters in Japan after WWII sounded interesting, but I could not get into the pace of the writing or the story. It was a little too slow and quiet (very beautifully Japanese in that sense) for me at this time.
]]> 181110045 A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?]]> 432 Kate Quinn 0063244748 Ann 3 4.26 2024
author: Kate Quinn
name: Ann
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: place-as-a-character, usa-1900s-mid, female-friendship
review:
The main characters in this novel are the women who live in a boardinghouse in Washington, DC, in the early 50’s. They include a young Irish woman who falls in love with a gangster; a very uptight woman who works for the committee on Unamerican Activities; a refugee from Hungary who is also an artist; a woman who falls in love with a Senator’s wife; a woman who played professional baseball until she was injured; and a woman (Grace) whose background is not discovered until the end of the novel. The penny-pinching, rule making owner of the house, her two unlucky children, the gangster, an FBI agent and the house itself make up the rest of the cast. Grace brings these very different women together and their own family is created. Kate Quinn brings in many cultural aspects of the time: jazz clubs, McCarthyism, the strict rules of the boardinghouse which prohibited men anywhere but the living room during certain hours, the power of the mob, and women’s professional baseball. There is also a “who done it� issue from the beginning of the novel � and I did not guess correctly! This novel was a fun, light read. However, for me, it did not come close to the level of Kate Quinn’s previous novels, Diamond Eye and the Huntress, which I thought were quite wonderful.
]]> 145625425 NATIONAL BESTELLER � An “exquisite� (The Boston Globe) exploration of love and loss, the struggles and limitations of family life—and how we all must learn to live together and apart—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours

“The only problem with Michael Cunningham’s prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals� work. He is the most elegant writer in America.”�The Washington Post

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS� CHOICE � A BEST BOOK OF THE NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Chicago Public Library, Lit Hub, Paste, Kirkus Reviews

April 5, 2019: In a cozy brownstone in Brooklyn, the veneer of domestic bliss is beginning to crack. Dan and Isabel, husband and wife, are slowly drifting apart—and both, it seems, are a little bit in love with Isabel’s younger brother, Robbie. Robbie, wayward soul of the family, who still lives in the attic loft; Robbie, who, trying to get over his most recent boyfriend, is living vicariously through a glamorous avatar online; Robbie, who now has to move out of the house—and whose departure threatens to break the family apart. And then there is Nathan, age ten, taking his first uncertain steps toward independence, while his sister, Violet, five, does her best not to notice the growing rift between her parents.

April 5, 2020: As the world goes into lockdown, the cozy brownstone is starting to feel more like a prison. Violet is terrified of leaving the windows open, obsessed with keeping her family safe. Isabel and Dan communicate mostly in veiled sleights and frustrated sighs. And dear Robbie is stranded in Iceland, alone in a mountain cabin with nothing but his thoughts—and his secret Instagram life—for company.

April 5, 2021: Emerging from the worst of the crisis, the family reckons with a new, very different reality—and with what they’ve learned, what they’ve lost, and how they might go on.

“[Cunningham] is one of love’s greatest witnesses.� —Los Angeles Times

“An absolutely stunning portrait of humanity . . . a masterpiece.� —Literary Hub ]]> 275 Michael Cunningham Ann 4 3.83 2023
author: Michael Cunningham
name: Ann
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: usa-current, family-relationships
review:
This beautifully written, quiet, novel dove deep into the lives and minds of the characters. It takes place on the fifth day of three consecutive Aprils - before, during and after the pandemic. However, this is not a typical pandemic novel. This novel is about human beings, their daily lives, loves, aspirations and family relationships. The characters include a 40 year old man (Dan), who wants to recreate his music career; his unhappy wife (Isabel), who finds satisfaction in neither her marriage nor her job; Isabel’s brother (Robbie � and my favorite character), who is somewhat adrift in life; and Dan and Isabel’s two children who the reader watches grow mentally and emotionally. There is also a fictional character, Wolfe, who has a whole life completely created by Robbie on the internet. Michael Cunningham’s ability to reach into the minds and hearts of each of his sad characters with his wonderful writing is amazing.
]]> 11250038
Beginning where Luis Alberto Urrea's bestselling The Hummingbird's Daughter left off, Queen of America finds young Teresita Urrea, beloved healer and "Saint of Cabora," with her father in 1892 Arizona. But, besieged by pilgrims in desperate need of her healing powers, and pursued by assassins, she has no choice but to flee the borderlands and embark on an extraordinary journey into the heart of turn-of-the-century America.

Teresita's passage will take her to New York, San Francisco, and St. Louis, where she will encounter European royalty, Cuban poets, beauty queens, anxious immigrants and grand tycoons -- and, among them, a man who will force Teresita to finally ask herself the ultimate is a saint allowed to fall in love?]]> 496 Luis Alberto Urrea 0316154865 Ann 4 Throughout it all, Urrea’s lovely, seductive and descriptive writing sets the tone of the story. Although there are fewer descriptions of nature and ranching (which I so loved in the first novel), the settings are excellent and the characters are wonderfully and fully continued and changed as they age (there are wonderful contemplations of aging and life choices). Although I did not love this novel as much as Hummingbird’s Daughter, I unquestioningly love Urrea’s writing style and descriptions. For me, his portrayal of the end of Teresita’s life was not only incredibly beautiful and moving � but will remain with me for a long time.
PS � There are a fair number of untranslated Spanish phrases in this novel (as in his others). This is great for me, but may not work for some readers.
]]> 3.95 2011
author: Luis Alberto Urrea
name: Ann
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/23
shelves: exiles, mexico, usa-1900-s-early
review:
I continue to love Urrea’s beautiful, special writing in this sequel to The Hummingbird’s Daughter. This novel continues the story of Teresita, an indigenous (Yaqui) Indian from northern Mexico, who had powers to heal and was, therefore, loved by the People and feared by the Mexican government. She became a saint in Mexico and was exiled to the United States, where she and her father landed in Arizona. This novel continues the story of the efforts of the Mexican government to irradicate her and the Yaqui people, but primarily moves on to describe her interesting life as a saint in the United States. We follow Teresita through Arizona (where the remainder of her family settles) to El Paso, San Francisco, St Louis and New York. We watch as she succumbs to the wiles of a really awful, deceitful man and then, later, as she has a relationship with a slightly better man who, nevertheless, uses her to further his own self interest. She falls into the power of a consortium, the members of which desire to make money from her powers, and also, for a period of time, becomes the “darling� of New York society.
Throughout it all, Urrea’s lovely, seductive and descriptive writing sets the tone of the story. Although there are fewer descriptions of nature and ranching (which I so loved in the first novel), the settings are excellent and the characters are wonderfully and fully continued and changed as they age (there are wonderful contemplations of aging and life choices). Although I did not love this novel as much as Hummingbird’s Daughter, I unquestioningly love Urrea’s writing style and descriptions. For me, his portrayal of the end of Teresita’s life was not only incredibly beautiful and moving � but will remain with me for a long time.
PS � There are a fair number of untranslated Spanish phrases in this novel (as in his others). This is great for me, but may not work for some readers.

]]> 199223201 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724224 Ann 4 Hannah is the main character in the 1950’s story. We meet her as the wife of her very stodgy British husband, living in Cairo. The Cairo scenes are wonderful and descriptive. We learn that Hannah was originally Hungarian (actually a countess), but lost all that she loved in WWII. We watch as Hannah becomes enamored of Lucien, ostensibly the assistant manager of a hotel in Cairo.
The scenes in this novel range from teenagers on beaches to the pyramids at Giza. The characters are entertaining and the two storylines move along quickly. I needed something light but well done and well written � and this novel met my desire very well!
]]> 4.08 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Ann
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: egypt, relationships-family, new-england, light-but-very-well-done
review:
What a fun, entertaining ride this novel was! There are two story lines. The one in present day New England, with flashbacks to 12 years earlier, and one in Egypt in the early 1950’s, with flashbacks to WWII in Hungary. The present-day story features Mallory, a woman raising her son, Sam, who needs a kidney transplant � and, therefore, must understand her own genealogical history. Mallory is a fierce mother with a large amount of emotional baggage. The other characters in the present-day story include a now world-famous musician/singer, who Mallory knew as a teenager, his hilarious influencer fiancé, and Mallory’s always-prepared-for-everything sister. The setting is primarily an island off the coast of New England (which was fictionally created by Williams in previous novels but reading those is not at all necessary for full enjoyment of this one), but the genealogical search (undertaken for Sam) takes Mallory and her sister to Ireland to one of the Magdalene Laundries. To add even more intrigue, there is also an inherited beautiful bracelet in the shape of a cobra.
Hannah is the main character in the 1950’s story. We meet her as the wife of her very stodgy British husband, living in Cairo. The Cairo scenes are wonderful and descriptive. We learn that Hannah was originally Hungarian (actually a countess), but lost all that she loved in WWII. We watch as Hannah becomes enamored of Lucien, ostensibly the assistant manager of a hotel in Cairo.
The scenes in this novel range from teenagers on beaches to the pyramids at Giza. The characters are entertaining and the two storylines move along quickly. I needed something light but well done and well written � and this novel met my desire very well!

]]> 201187765
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters� rich interior lives amid the social an]]> 448 Claire Messud 039363504X Ann 3 3.50
author: Claire Messud
name: Ann
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: france, multi-generaltional, family-relationships, africa
review:
This novel sounded so wonderful � the story of a displaced Algerian (French) family from WWII to the present day, written by Claire Messud (a woman who knows how to write) and based upon her family’s history. However, for me, it fell a little short of my expectations � and I know I am an outlier in this viewpoint. We follow the family from the invasion of France, at which time the mother and children (Francois and Denise) are returning “home� to Algeria, while the father remains at his posting in Greece. We watch as, after WWII, Francois studies in France and the United States and marries a Canadian. Meanwhile (after the Algerian revolution) his parents move to Buenos Aires. Francois� professional life takes his family to Australia and, ultimately, to the northeastern United States. Throughout his life, Francois searches for home and, unable to find home in either a location or his family (his Canadian wife had a close, complicated relationship with her mother), he journeys though life as a sad and displaced person. Denise’s life also reflects her constant displacement. She turns to alcohol as a refuge and has difficulty sustaining meaningful relationships. The underlying theme of the novel is the effect of constant and lifelong uprooting and displacement, which, of course, some family members handle better than others (Francois� parents have a lifelong loving relationship and seem happy anywhere in the world). By reading this book, I learned a lot about Algeria, France and life after WWII in places like Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, for me, the novel read like a non-fiction family history. There is a reason I read fiction: I like the imagination created in deeply drawn fictional characters, beautifully described setting and interesting plots. I like to wonder “What is going to happen next?�, and that just didn’t happen with this novel. That said, Claire Messud did an excellent and important job of portraying the plight of her displaced family.
]]> 28251002
To save her, Samuel will have to embark on his own journey, uncovering long-buried secrets about the woman he thought he knew, secrets that stretch across generations and have their origin all the way back in Norway, home of the mysterious Nix. As he does so, Samuel will confront not only Faye’s losses but also his own lost love, and will relearn everything he thought he knew about his mother, and himself.]]> 625 Nathan Hill 110194661X Ann 4 The novel follows Samuel and his mother through multiple aspects of American life over several decades. Nathan Hill describes in wonderful detail the world and addiction of video gaming, dealing with students as a professor, dating and small town life in the unliberated 60’s, the late 60’s political revolution, the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, and Norwegian mythology - - just to name a few. The characters are diverse and extremely well drawn. In addition to Samuel and his mother, Hill creates a child concert prodigy, an abused boy, a man who lives for his video game, and a student who cheats her way through college.
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the United States through Nathan Hill’s microscope. As in Wellness there are a number of detailed scenes and paragraphs related to a character’s thoughts � but the novel never bogged down. I enjoyed every moment of this most entertaining and very well written novel.
]]> 4.08 2016
author: Nathan Hill
name: Ann
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: usa-1900s-mid, usa-1900s-late, hippies, family-relationships
review:
This novel was Nathan Hill’s debut (written 7 years before Wellness), and I remain deeply awed by this author’s ability to capture Americans and periods of time in the United States. The main character in this novel is Samuel, who we meet as a reluctant professor with aspirations of being a novelist. However, although he received a large advance, Samuel has not written a page of his novel and, instead, spends his time in the world of a video game. Samuel is a troubled person, largely because his mother suddenly abandoned Samuel and his father when Samuel was 11. As the novel begins, Samuel’s mother has thrown rocks at a political candidate, and Samuel (who has not seen his mother in over 20 years) offers to appease his publisher by writing a book about his mother.
The novel follows Samuel and his mother through multiple aspects of American life over several decades. Nathan Hill describes in wonderful detail the world and addiction of video gaming, dealing with students as a professor, dating and small town life in the unliberated 60’s, the late 60’s political revolution, the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968, and Norwegian mythology - - just to name a few. The characters are diverse and extremely well drawn. In addition to Samuel and his mother, Hill creates a child concert prodigy, an abused boy, a man who lives for his video game, and a student who cheats her way through college.
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the United States through Nathan Hill’s microscope. As in Wellness there are a number of detailed scenes and paragraphs related to a character’s thoughts � but the novel never bogged down. I enjoyed every moment of this most entertaining and very well written novel.

]]> 5211
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.]]> 603 Rohinton Mistry 140003065X Ann 5 india-malaysia 4.38 1995
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Ann
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2002/08/19
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: india-malaysia
review:

]]> 10069559 A rich and luminous novel about three generations of women in one family: the love they share, the dreams they refuse to surrender, and the secrets they hold

Samantha is lost in the joys of new motherhood—the softness of her eight-month-old daughter's skin, the lovely weight of her child in her arms—but in trading her artistic dreams to care for her child, Sam worries she's lost something of herself. And she is still mourning another loss: her mother, Iris, died just one year ago.

When a box of Iris's belongings arrives on Sam's doorstep, she discovers links to pieces of her family history but is puzzled by much of the information the box contains. She learns that her grandmother Violet left New York City as an eleven-year-old girl, traveling by herself to the Midwest in search of a better life. But what was Violet's real reason for leaving? And how could she have made that trip alone at such a tender age?

In confronting secrets from her family's past, Sam comes to terms with deep secrets from her own. Moving back and forth in time between the stories of Sam, Violet, and Iris, Mothers and Daughters is the spellbinding tale of three remarkable women connected across a century by the complex wonder of motherhood.]]> 272 Rae Meadows 0805093834 Ann 3 usa-multi-gen 3.40
author: Rae Meadows
name: Ann
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2024/06/18
shelves: usa-multi-gen
review:
I read this because I have enjoyed this author before and am interested in the Orphan Trains (a topic which wasn’t taught in my high school!). In this novel we follow three young women: Violet, a child who has arrived in New York with her mother and faces a life of terrible hardship (and whose mother puts her on the orphan train); Iris, Violet’s daughter who is dying of breast cancer; and Samantha, Iris� daughter, who is adapting to motherhood and raising her first child. With these mothers/daughters, the author created three well drawn characters, and intricately wove their lives together. The novel covers a number of topics � from child neglect to death from cancer � and the author handles them very well.
]]> 196774466 "An ambitious historical epic that doubles as an intimate family saga. Jessica Shattuck captures and connects it all—the imperial ambitions of the postwar generation, the rebellion of their offspring in the Sixties, and the fallout we’re still sifting through today. . . . This is a wide-ranging novel to savor.� � TOM PERROTTA

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle comes a sweeping story of a nation on the rise, and one family’s deeply complicated relationship to the resource that built their fortune and fueled their greatest tragedy, perfect for fans of The Dutch House and Great Circle.

It’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, WWII veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. He takes the train into the city for work and returns to the peaceful streets of the suburbs and to his wife, Bet, former codebreaker now housewife, and their two children, Katherine and Harry. Nick comes from humble origins but thanks to his work for American Oil, he can provide every comfort for his family, including Last House, a secluded country escape. Deep in the Vermont mountains, the Taylors are free from the stresses of modern life. Bet doesn’t have to worry about the Russian H-bombs that haunt her dreams, and the children roam free in the woods. Last House is a place that could survive the end of the world.

It’s 1968, and America is on the brink of change. Protestors fill the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War to racism in the wake of MLK’s shooting—to the country's reliance on Big Oil. As Katherine makes her first forays into adult life, she’s caught up in the current of the time and struggles to reconcile her ideals with the stable and privileged childhood her Greatest Generation parents worked so hard to provide. But when the Movement shifts in a more radical direction, each member of the Taylor family will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the choices they’ve made for the causes they believed in.

Spanning multiple generations and nearly eighty years, Last House tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and even greater downfalls. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s history, this is an emotional tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance and what we owe each other—and captures to stunning effect the gravity of time, the double edge of progress, and the hubris of empire.]]> 321 Jessica Shattuck 0062979892 Ann 4 The author brings in many historical events. WWII is shown in retrospect through the extremely brief romance between Nick and Bet before his proposal and Bet’s codebreaking. The involvement of oil companies in the politics of the Middle East is a large topic. Nick travels frequently to Iran, where his company is involved in (among other things) returning the Shah to power. Big oil continues to be a theme as the story moves to Katherine and Harry during the 1960’s. The vehemence of the radicals� position as well as the ugly nitty gritty of radical life are well portrayed. Deeper themes are found in the novel as well. The eternal cycle of one generation (Nick’s and Bet’s) working hard in the system and wanting more for their children, and then the next generation (Katherine’s and Harry’s) rejecting the system and disparaging the things their parents worked hard to achieve. The role of a wife and mother in the 1950’s and afterwards is nicely portrayed in the character of Bet. There is also an awareness of the end of the world � or something devastating short of that. This theme is carried out by Last House � a second home in the mountains and a constant presence to which each of the characters escapes during various periods of their respective lives.
This novel covers a lot of time periods and events while also following the lives of four people. I found it quite interesting and entertaining, although I understand the criticisms to the effect that it was just too much to cover in 300 pages. Very importantly, Jessica Shattuck’s writing is lovely, and I will look forward to her next novel.
]]> 3.53 2024
author: Jessica Shattuck
name: Ann
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves: family-saga, 1960-s, usa-1900s-mid
review:
This novel traces the path of a family from the 1950’s through the 1970’s (with a glimpse into the future). The father, Nick, grew up under the thumb of his Mennonite minister father and is (in 1953) a young lawyer for a large American oil company. The mother, Bet, grew up in a higher social world, went to Vassar and was a codebreaker during WWII. Their children are Katherine and Harry. Katherine, is a rebellious child who becomes associated with a radical group during the 1960’s, while Harry is a gentle, nature loving person, who becomes very focused on the environment.
The author brings in many historical events. WWII is shown in retrospect through the extremely brief romance between Nick and Bet before his proposal and Bet’s codebreaking. The involvement of oil companies in the politics of the Middle East is a large topic. Nick travels frequently to Iran, where his company is involved in (among other things) returning the Shah to power. Big oil continues to be a theme as the story moves to Katherine and Harry during the 1960’s. The vehemence of the radicals� position as well as the ugly nitty gritty of radical life are well portrayed. Deeper themes are found in the novel as well. The eternal cycle of one generation (Nick’s and Bet’s) working hard in the system and wanting more for their children, and then the next generation (Katherine’s and Harry’s) rejecting the system and disparaging the things their parents worked hard to achieve. The role of a wife and mother in the 1950’s and afterwards is nicely portrayed in the character of Bet. There is also an awareness of the end of the world � or something devastating short of that. This theme is carried out by Last House � a second home in the mountains and a constant presence to which each of the characters escapes during various periods of their respective lives.
This novel covers a lot of time periods and events while also following the lives of four people. I found it quite interesting and entertaining, although I understand the criticisms to the effect that it was just too much to cover in 300 pages. Very importantly, Jessica Shattuck’s writing is lovely, and I will look forward to her next novel.

]]> 199605023 A family saga that begins at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution and spans 100 years to trace the intricate lives of four generations of Chinese and Chinese American womenĚý

In 1917, at the dawn of the Chinese Revolution, Yunhong grows up in the southern China countryside and falls in love with the son of a wealthy landlord—but on the night of her wedding, her brother destroys the marriage before it has lasted even a day. Yunhong’s daughter Yuexin will never know her father. She passes that sorrow on to her daughters Hongxing and Yonghong, who come of age in the years following Mao’s death, battling the push and pull of political forces as they forge their own paths. Each generation guards its secrets, leaving Emily, living in contemporary America, to piece together what actually happened between her mother and her sister, and to understand the weight of their shared history.]]> 288 Wendy Chen 1643755153 Ann 3 china, multi-generaltional 3.65 2024
author: Wendy Chen
name: Ann
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/09
shelves: china, multi-generaltional
review:
This novel relates the story of a Chinese family from 1917 to 2018, so it covered multiple periods of Chinese history and culture. It contained so many elements I love � a family saga and Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately, for me, the novel was unfulfilling. There were many characters, some of whom I felt were only outwardly developed for purposes of the plot. In addition, the underlying historical events were not explained for a reader who didn’t know about various events in Chinese history (the overthrow of the warlords, the rise of communism, the Cultural Revolution, worship of Mao, the Red Guard, etc.). Luckily, I did know about these events, but some background would have made the novel flow better in my opinion. I did find that I enjoyed the story more as it progressed � I just didn’t like it as much as I had hoped to.
]]>