A Few More Titles

 The Vixen by Francine Prose

This book was sort of strange, but intriguing. It was set in the early 1950s when the protagonist, Simon Putnam, was given a job at a major publishing firm following his graduation from Harvard (with an essentially useless degree in folklore and mythology). Simon's flamboyant uncle helped him get the job.

At first he is only responsible for rejecting all the unsolicited manuscripts that were sent for review. But eventually the head of the firm, who is also his uncle's friend, gave him a top secret job - to edit the manuscript for a "bodice ripper" based on the lives of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Simon's problem is that his mother knew Ethel in childhood and was very shaken by what she saw as her wrongful conviction and execution. And Simon can't tell anyone that for fear of being denounced as a Communist so he has to play along with the terrible manuscript that paints Ethel as the mastermind of her fate as well as a sex goddess.

While editing the manuscript Simon insists on meeting the very reclusive author and falls for her - they enter into a strange sexual relationship where they only have sex on her demand in very public places. As Simon gets to know her, he becomes increasingly suspicious about whether she actually wrote the book. So much of the narrative surrounds Simon delving into that issue.

There are also side stories about Simon's parents, his relationship with an employee who was fired to make room for him, his crush on one of the other women in the office and, of course, McCarthyism and the continuing efforts of the US government to denounce Communists and justify the execution of the Rosenbergs.

Again - weird but interesting.

The Summer of Broken Rules by K.L. Walther

This is another book that I read mostly because it was set on Martha's Vineyard. It was essentially a light, easy to read young adult romance with lots of Martha's Vineyard content so I enjoyed it.

Meredith travels to Martha's Vineyard with her extended family to celebrate her cousin's wedding. It is the first time the family has gone back to their regular summer cottage since she lost her older sister in a car accident.

In past summers the extended family has always played a game of assassin, and Meredith's sister was always the winner. So Meredith vows to win in her honour. But, since this is a romance, she gets distracted by her alliance with one of the groomsmen.

This is no great literature but it was a fun read - there was plenty of humour as the family and friends fight to win their game. And the typical narrative romance arc of meeting, falling for each other, falling out and getting back together.

The Strangers by Katherena Vermette

I loved this sequel to The Break as much as I enjoyed the first book. Again it takes place in Winnipeg and deals with the women in a Metis family. In particular, the story deals with Elsie and her two daughters, Phoenix and Cedar. The chapters are told from each of their perspectives - and they are all very strong and interesting characters.

Elsie has struggled with addiction for years and thus lost custody of her daughters and she tries so hard to clean herself up so she can see them. Phoenix is incarcerated in a youth detention centre, where she gives birth to a child who is immediately taken away from her. And Cedar bounced around between foster homes where she had mixed experiences before she goes to live with the father she's not seen since she was a baby and his new wife and her daughter. Cedar desperately misses her mother and sister even though she barely remembers them.

The women are also united in their grief over the death of the youngest sister, Sparrow. In addition to these women we also learn more about Elsie's mother, Margaret, who went to law school but had to give everything up when she got pregnant with Elsie and was abandoned by her white, middle class law school boyfriend.

While there is not a lot of action, the story is carried by the fantastic character development and the strength of these different, but all admirable women. Despite their less than perfect circumstances, including the racism they continually endure, I was left with hope for them at the end of the novel.

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I loved the unconventional style of this book. It was written as if it was a tell all biography of Daisy Jones and the other six members of her band. Each entry is an "interview" with one of the band members or others in their lives. It is written in such a convincing way that once I googled it just to confirm it really was fiction. And at the end the identity of the interviewer definitely caught me by surprise.

Daisy Jones is a teenager caught up in the sex, drugs and rock and roll of the Los Angeles music scene. When she is 20 she hits the big time and a producer realizes she could gain even more fame if she joins with the band "The Six" which is also on an upward trajectory. While they clicked on stage, Daisy and the bands lead, Billy, did not get along at all behind the scenes.

So much of the book follows the trajectory of the band, Daisy's dependence on pills, Billy's dependence on alcohol and then his wife and family and the other band members who are along for the ride (with differing degrees of interest in the life and patience for being in Billy's shadow).

The book purports to tell us what the public didn't know about what was going on behind the scenes of this popular band. I just loved both the story and the clever style.

What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad

I loved this book, though I may have missed some of the subtleties. I recently heard the author speak and he said he intended to write a modern-day Peter Pan - I completely missed that. Either I'm not familiar enough with Peter Pan or I just don't read subtexts all that well.

But, on whatever level I understood the book, it worked for me. It tells the story of a 9 year old boy, Amir. When we first meet him he has just washed up on the shores of the Greek island of Kos. He is the only survivor in a smuggler's boat full of refugees. When on the run from the scene, Amir is lucky to encounter a local teenaged girl, Vanna, who makes it her mission to save Amir.

In alternating chapters we learn Amir's backstory - his family were refugees from Syria living in Egypt when he followed his stepfather onto a smuggler's boat, unaware that he would be leaving behind his mother and step brother, possibly forever. The chapters which describe Amir's time on the boat, and the characters making the journey with him, are incredibly vivid and well written. You could feel the tension. The scenes between Amir and his step-father - as his step-father realizes the grave danger he's put them in - are particularly poignant.

The other chapters chronicle Vanna's efforts to keep Amir out of the hands of a dogged police officer who is trying to track him down and pen him in with all the other illegal immigrants on the island. She has been told that if she can get him to a remote area of the island someone will come with a boat to take him to the mainland. And she does everything she can to make it happen. The communication between the two children, who do not speak the same language, is fascinating.

I definitely recommend this one - even if you aren't a Peter Pan person!

Yours Cheerfully by A.J. Pearce

I wish I had gone back to my own review of the first book in this series, Dear Mrs. Bird as I didn't remember I actually didn't like it. And I didn't really like this one any better. I find the writing style quite simplistic, but the biggest problem is the main character, Emmy Lake. I just don't like her - I find her naive to the point of stupid, self-absorbed and just plain annoying. It's a wonder her boyfriend, Charles, and her boss (and Charles' brother) put up with her at all.

This book picks up where the last one left off. Mrs. Bird has left the women's magazine that Emmy works for and Emmy continues to help respond to letters asking for advice, under the direction of a more sympathetic woman this time. In addition, to her work on the column Emmy has been asked to help further the government's agenda of encouraging women to join the wartime work force.

Emmy meets a woman, Anne, on a train who is about to start working in a munitions factory so she arranged to interview the women working there so she can promote the lifestyle. But through her interviews of Anne and her friends, Emmy learns that everything as not as rosy as the government would have women believe. So she sets out to try to change things for the women - of course at risk to not only her job, but theirs as well. And almost missing her wedding in the rush to solve the world's problems.

I don't really recommend this book and I hope I remember my own recommendations if there is a third instalment in this series.

Unreconciled: Family, Truth and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente

On the surface this is a memoir, but it's really far more than that. Jesse Wente, whose mother and grandmother are Indigenous, but whose father and grandfather are not, was raised in Toronto. He only visited his family's lands in Serpent River on vacations.  He remembers with perfect clarity the first time he realized he was an Indian - and how he was viewed not as Anishinaabe or Ojibwe, but as a cartoon Indian as seen on TV of the day (and probably still not - hello Atlanta Braves fans...).

Wente works through his history and that of his family, including his grandmother's experiences in residential schools, to try to develop an understanding of his urban Indigenous identity. I found the details of his upbringing fascinating - his experiences in very white, upper class private schools, his early love of movies which he shared with his mother and eventually turned into a career, his attendance at U of T (on an Indigenous scholarship that he struggled to feel deserving of), his early work at CBC radio and his time at TIFF. It was particularly jarring to hear how even when he was quite established at TIFF he realized he had become just a "token" and had to leave the job because of his discomfort with that role.

The later chapters are more political than memoir as he talks about his current activist work as well as what he hopes to ideally eventually achieve. However, they are no less interesting.

Another work about the Indigenous experience that should be required reading for all Canadians.

The Singing Forest by J.A. McCormack

I must confess I didn't always understand what was going on in this book - and I'm not sure if it's because I was often tired when I read it so I might have missed or forgotten some things, or if it was just confusing.

The novel really tells two intertwining stories. The first is that of Stefan Drozd who is the subject of Canadian extradition proceedings for the role he played in war crimes as part of Stalin's secret police in Belarus. The second is that of the young lawyer, Leah, who is representing the Canadian government in the extradition proceedings.

In alternating narratives we learn of Drozd's miserable childhood in rural Belarus (he was both abused and neglected), his escape to Minsk where he does odd jobs until he ultimately ends up as an errand boy for the secret police, and then his escape to Canada where he starts a new life based on lies about his past. Drozd is no doubt a miserable character - he is anti-semitic, cruel, beats his wife and is convinced he is owed the life he has build in Canada.

Leah is convinced of his guilt, but struggles to find the evidence she needs to support his deportation. She even travels to Belarus to interview witnesses, but she is uncomfortable about payments an investigator made to the star witnesses for their testimony. We also learn about her difficult childhood. Her father abandoned her when she was a toddler, her mother was killed in a car accident when she was 6 and she is taken in by her very ill, maternal aunt on the weekdays and three of her father's brothers on the weekends. The aunt is Jewish and tries to teach her some of her heritage, but she is left with more questions than answers when her aunt dies. The uncles are not Jewish and have no idea about child rearing either, but somehow they muddle through and she is very attached to them at this point.

The narrative takes us through the conclusion of the extradition proceedings, but somehow there still isn't a lot of resolution.

There were parts of this book I quite liked, and the story showed great promise, but in the end I didn't love it.

Fall Reading List

Once again I've saved up a long list of books so I will only give fairly summary reviews.

The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward

This was an interesting study in family dynamics - and how everything can go horribly wrong.

Charlotte Perkins is a 70 year old widow who has also just lost her best friend. She is estranged from her children and at loose ends. When she sees an essay contest, she decides to write about a torrid summer romance from many years ago. The grand prize is an all expense paid cruise and she hopes to take her 3 adult children to bring the family closer together.

Her children are also all struggling in one way or another. Her eldest daughter Lee lives in LA and has never quite made it as an actress. She has also just broken up with her more famous boyfriend (whose left her for a younger, more successful, co-star) and is financially unstable. Even before she hears about the contest she leaves LA to go live with her mother, without telling her mother about the break up.

Charlotte's middle child is Cord - he's a venture capitalist in Manhattan, and the only one of the children that's truly financially and professionally successful. But his mother is concerned because he can't seem to find a wife - of course, that's because he's never told her he's gay.

Finally, Regan, the youngest is a harried mother of two - the romance of her marriage (to her sister's high school boyfriend) is gone.

Of course, the story wouldn't go anywhere if Charlotte didn't win the essay contest - so the family embarks on the cruise from Athens, through Rome and Florence and on to Barcelona. While on board the family members are faced to interact with each other - and learn about long held family secrets. Old and new romances also make an appearance which complicates everyone's life even further.

I was caught by surprise by the ending - which I liked. All in all it was an entertaining book.

A Boring Wife Settles the Score by Marie-Renée Lavoie

This is a sequel to Autopsy of a Boring Wife and is equally charming and humorous. In the original book we met Diane just after her husband left her for a much younger woman who was pregnant with his child. She also loses her job in that book. Some time has passed and Diane is learning to live on her own, sharing a house with her best friend and her friend's children. She is also deciding what she wants to do for a living and decides to dabble in a new romance.

There's not a lot of action in the book, but Diane's musings as she fumbles through a new job, new love, interactions with her adult children and encounters with her ex-husband are witty and intelligent. The book is short and to the point and very fun to read.

Ties that Tether by Jane Igharo

While on one level this is a romantic comedy, on another it explores the dilemma faced by many immigrant children when they are trying to adapt to their new home.

Azere immigrated to Canada with her mother and younger sister following the death of her father when she was 12 years old. While her father was on his deathbed her made her vow to marry an Edo Nigerian man. And in the 13 intervening years her mother has set her up with countless such men - with no success. After one particularly disastrous blind date she meets, and has what she thinks is a one night stand, with Rafael, a Spanish American man.

Much to her surprise Rafael becomes a co-worker, friend and eventually serious romantic partner. And Azere must decide whether to follow her heart or keep her vow to her deceased father and very disapproving mother.

The story is well written and I thought dealt with Azere's dilemma in a nuanced and realistic manner while still maintaining the light-hearted tone of the book.

Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

This book was so prescient it is eerie. The book begins with a publisher's note that it was all written prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. In fact, the publication date was advanced when it became clear how timely it was.

In this book a pandemic that starts in China makes its way to North America - leaving illness and death in its wake. Sound familiar? It gets even more eerie as it talks about lock downs, social distancing, overrun hospitals, contact tracing and all sorts of other issues which are now second nature to us, but we just fiction at the time the book was written. There are some differences from COVID - for example, kids are hit harder than adults and there is no vaccine in sight. But still - talk about fiction becoming reality.

The book is written from the perspective of a multitude of characters. Some of the chapters are in the present, others are in the past. And over time we learn how the various characters relate to one another - either through there pasts or through present-day encounters, or both. What is particularly interesting is that one of the characters, Owen, is the author of a plague novel that seems to foretell the pandemic in the book (again, sound familiar?).

When I picked up the book I was worried it would be too depressing to spend all that time on a book set in a COVID-like environment. But, I was so taken in by the characters and trying to piece together their relationships that I did not get hung up on the pandemic aspect. I was just fascinated by how the author seemed to predict the future and was very impressed with her ability to craft a complex story and bring all the pieces together in a believable and interesting way.

Painting the Light by Sally Gunning

Though this historical fiction is set further in the past than I typically like, I was drawn to it because it is set on Martha's Vineyard.

Ida Russell is young girl living in privilege in Boston in 1893. But her privilege can't buy her the respect she wants as an art student at a prestigious school - because she is a girl and art is still seen as man's work. However, she struggles along and does impress some instructors. But her life is turned around when her father and brothers are lost at sea and her mother takes her life when she cannot cope with her grief.

In her vulnerable state she is taken in by the charming Ezra Pease, a sheep farmer on Martha's Vineyard. She marries him and abandons her art to become a farmer's wife. And a very unhappy one. After a big storm Ezra is presumed dead and Ida must figure out how to put her life back together. And she is faced with one surprise after another about the man she married - and his only living relatives who have never much liked her. She learns how to ride a bike (wearing pants which is even more scandalous) and falls in love with a married man. She also makes decisions about the farm which had always been Ezra's domain.

The author does a great job of developing Ida's character, bringing back the spunk of her youth so she can move on from her life as an unhappy farmer's wife.

Fight Night by Miriam Toews

I've always enjoyed Toews' work, but I think this was one of my favourites. The grandmother, Elvira, was an amazing character.

The novel centres on the lives of three generations of women living together: Elvira, who is physically frail but completely "with it" and full of personality; Elvira's daughter, Mooshie, who is a pregnant actress who struggles with mental health issues; and Mooshie's daughter, nine year old Swiv.

The book is written from Swiv's perspective. When she is suspended from school for fighting, her grandmother takes on the job of home schooling her. Her assignment is to write a letter to her absent father about her life. So the book is actually that letter. At the same time Swiv instructs her grandmother to write a letter to her unborn sibling, who they refer to as Gord. So we also get to read Elvira's letter to Gord.

For me, the best part of the book was Elvira's spirit - she was always trying to do things others felt were a danger to her health - including dragging Swiv on a trip to California to visit two of her nephews. The scenes in California were funny, but also sad at times. Although this book is "just" a story about a family, it is so well written I couldn't wait to see how everything turned out for the characters that I couldn't help falling in love with.

The Spectacular by Zoe Whittall

Interestingly, this is another book about three generations of women - though in most other respects it's quite different than Fight Night. 

The main character in this one is also the granddaughter, Missy, but she's older. In 1997, when Missy is 22, her band hits it big and books a North American tour. Missy tries to get a doctor to tie her tubes so she can enjoy herself on the road, but no doctor is willing to let such a young woman make this life altering decision.

So, Missy nonetheless embarks on the tour with her all male band - and meets a man in every port. She parties hard with her band mates, but one unlucky day she forgets about some cocaine in her possession and is not allowed to cross the border from Canada to the US. So the band has to go on without her.

Meanwhile, Missy's mother, Carola, who abandoned her family when Missy was very young is living on the yoga retreat she ran to at the time. She is dealing with the fallout of a sex scandal at the retreat when she sees Missy's picture in a magazine and wants to reach out to her.

Finally, Missy's grandmother Ruth, who is 83, wants to return to the Turkish seaside that she fled from. When Missy is turned away at the border she goes to live with Ruth who tries to bring about a reconciliation with Carola.

I don't want to give it away by getting into the details but the book covers several years in the lives of the three women - how they live their separate lives, and how they periodically get together. We also gain insight into the various relationships each of the women embark on and, at its heart, what it means to be a mother.

I liked this book, but I wouldn't say I loved it the way I did Fight Night.

The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes

This was an interesting story about the role of women and marriage immediately before the sexual revolution. Jennifer Starling wakes up from an accident without any memory of her life. Despite the memory loss, it becomes obvious to her that she really doesn't like her husband. She then finds a love letter signed only "B" which tells her she clearly had a lover, but she has no recollection of it. She then embarks upon trying to figure out who that lover is.

In 2003, Ellie, a journalist, finds the same letter in the archives of the newspaper that employs her. She also sets out to find out what happened in an effort to salvage her career which is floundering. It also gives her some insight into her lacklustre relationship with a married man.

Eventually, both women manage to weave together what happened and Ellie, in particular, strives to find a happy ending for both Jennifer and herself.

The Forest of Vanishing Stars by Kristin Harmel

I will confess I almost gave up on this one at the start, but I stuck with it. It wasn't the best book of all time, but I wasn't sorry I finished it.

In the early chapters, a two year old girl in Berlin is abducted by an old woman named Jerusza and taken to live in the forests in Poland. Jerusza changes the girls name to Yona and teaches her how to survive in the forest - even providing lessons on how to kill. She also keeps Yona away from towns and other people, warning her of how dangerous they can be.

Jerusza dies at the beginning of World War II and Yona is left to fend for herself. While in the forest she meets many Jews fleeing the Nazis and uses her forest survival skills to help them. Most of the book deals with her relationship with the people she helps (remember she has many survival skills, but few people skills) and their struggle to evade capture and survive the harsh conditions of living in the forest.

Other than Yona, most of the characters are not terribly well developed, but are nonetheless interesting. This book was reasonably entertaining but there are better Holocaust books out there.

Holding Still for As Long as Possible by Zoey Whittall

This book is more a character study than a novel. It delves into the lives of three marginalized 20 somethings living in Toronto. There is Josh, a transgendered paramedic; Amy, his ex-girlfriend who grew up more privileged than the other characters and is an amateur filmmaker; and Billy, a child pop star who now suffers from severe anxiety attacks.

The book explores their relationships with each other and with others, as well as giving us insight into their daily struggles just to keep going. Again, not much happens but the people are fairly interesting - and it's a short read. The interspersing of EMS terminology (and the glossary of EMS terms at the end) added a twist that I found interesting.