It seems every book I read lately shifts back and forth in time and place. This one is no different.
The main storyline is about Sharon, a wife and mother of twin girls who is also a successful romance novelist. Her comfortable life is shattered when first her husband leaves her for a graduate student and then she is diagnosed with breast cancer.
While she is recovering from chemotherapy, she is offered a job writing a serial fiction piece for a local newspaper. She decides to write about the young mistress of Charles Dickens. So most of the story alternates between present day Toronto where Sharon struggles with her failing marriage and her serious illness and Victorian England where we learn about Dickens from the perspective of his much younger lover. However, there are also other interludes - a few chapters which look at the perspective of Dickens' wife, two longer pieces that are adaptations of the Persian The Thousand and One Nights, and some which I found particularly interesting and ultimately surprising from the perspective of Shay, a Canadian graduate student living in London and studying Dickens' wife. The epilogue is also from the perspective of the graduate student with whom Sharon's husband has his affair.
I found it really interesting how I had to keep changing mindsets to follow the different storylines. At first I shied away from the book because I didn't like the sound of the historical sections, but I ended up finding them quite compelling. However, the present day chapters were the most touching to me.
In all I quite enjoyed this book.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
This was a really interesting depiction of two families whose lives become intertwined one fateful day. Fix, a Los Angeles police officer, and his wife, Beverly, throw a christening party for their second daughter, Franny. Bert Cousins, a deputy district attorney, married father of four with one on the way, shows up as an uninvited guest. When he first lays eyes on Beverly, he wants her immediately. They get together, move to Virginia with Beverly and Fix's two daughters and change the lives of both families forever.
In particular, Bert's four children spend part of the summer in Virginia with Beverly's daughters and the six children are essentially left unsupervised. Ultimately tragedy strikes one of the children which affects their lives, and the lives of their four parents, forever.
This book also travels back and forth in time - we see Franny as an adult looking after Fix as he suffers cancer in old age. We see the relationship she and her sister have had over time with Bert's four children and his ex-wife. Franny had told the story of her family to a novelist with whom she was involved and eventually the story makes its way to the big screen and we see how Fix reacts to seeing it with his daughter on his 83rd birthday. There are also chapters dealing with what happened to all of the children in the intervening years.
It's hard to summarize much more without giving away key parts of the story - but if you like books about complex family relationships, that are part humorous and part sad, you will enjoy this book.
In particular, Bert's four children spend part of the summer in Virginia with Beverly's daughters and the six children are essentially left unsupervised. Ultimately tragedy strikes one of the children which affects their lives, and the lives of their four parents, forever.
This book also travels back and forth in time - we see Franny as an adult looking after Fix as he suffers cancer in old age. We see the relationship she and her sister have had over time with Bert's four children and his ex-wife. Franny had told the story of her family to a novelist with whom she was involved and eventually the story makes its way to the big screen and we see how Fix reacts to seeing it with his daughter on his 83rd birthday. There are also chapters dealing with what happened to all of the children in the intervening years.
It's hard to summarize much more without giving away key parts of the story - but if you like books about complex family relationships, that are part humorous and part sad, you will enjoy this book.
The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa
This was a different take on the Holocaust story - some of it quite familiar and usual; other parts more imaginative.
The book follows the lives of two girls whose paths cross once one is already elderly. The first is Hannah Rosenthal. She is a Jewish girl living in a privileged family in Berlin, until 1939. When the Nazis take over, and place more and more restrictions on Jews, her family uses all available resources to get visas to leave. Eventually Hannah, her father, her pregnant mother and her best friend Leo and his father get visas to Cuba and passage on the infamous SS St. Louis. Hannah and her mother get the "right kind of visa" and are allowed to disembark in Havana. Her father, Leo and his father are turned back to Europe, with predictable results.
The second girl we meet is Anna. She lives with only her mother as her father was killed on 9/11, before knowing Anna had even been conceived. She lives with the shadow of his death and her mother's depression - talking every night to the only photo of her father that she keeps by her bed. Anna's mother is roused from despair when the pair get a letter from Hannah. It turns out she is the aunt who raised Anna's father in Havana. The pair travel to Havana and there learn more about the lives of Hannah, her brother (Anna's grandfather) and Anna's father. We also learn how Hannah's father came to have the midtown Manhattan apartment which Anna and her mother now reside in.
The story travels back and forth in time and place - from Berlin to New York, from 1939 to 2011, from on board the very luxurious St. Louis, to Cuba both before and after the communist revolution.
The book was interesting - you couldn't help but admire Hannah's immense spirit in the face of a life time of tragedies. As I said at the beginning some of the Holocaust parts were rather predictable, but the connections to Cuba and 9/11 were imaginative and kept me focused.
The book follows the lives of two girls whose paths cross once one is already elderly. The first is Hannah Rosenthal. She is a Jewish girl living in a privileged family in Berlin, until 1939. When the Nazis take over, and place more and more restrictions on Jews, her family uses all available resources to get visas to leave. Eventually Hannah, her father, her pregnant mother and her best friend Leo and his father get visas to Cuba and passage on the infamous SS St. Louis. Hannah and her mother get the "right kind of visa" and are allowed to disembark in Havana. Her father, Leo and his father are turned back to Europe, with predictable results.
The second girl we meet is Anna. She lives with only her mother as her father was killed on 9/11, before knowing Anna had even been conceived. She lives with the shadow of his death and her mother's depression - talking every night to the only photo of her father that she keeps by her bed. Anna's mother is roused from despair when the pair get a letter from Hannah. It turns out she is the aunt who raised Anna's father in Havana. The pair travel to Havana and there learn more about the lives of Hannah, her brother (Anna's grandfather) and Anna's father. We also learn how Hannah's father came to have the midtown Manhattan apartment which Anna and her mother now reside in.
The story travels back and forth in time and place - from Berlin to New York, from 1939 to 2011, from on board the very luxurious St. Louis, to Cuba both before and after the communist revolution.
The book was interesting - you couldn't help but admire Hannah's immense spirit in the face of a life time of tragedies. As I said at the beginning some of the Holocaust parts were rather predictable, but the connections to Cuba and 9/11 were imaginative and kept me focused.
Monday, January 23, 2017
The Elephants in my Backyard by Rajiv Surendra
This wasn't a fantastic memoir but it definitely had it's interesting moments. Surendra's claim to fame was as the rapping athlete, Kevin G, in the Mean Girls movie with Lindsay Lohan, Rachel MacAdam and Tina Fey. He was a first year University of Toronto student at the time. While on the set, a cameraman suggested he read Life of Pi, saying "you are Pi". The superficial resemblances were immediately obvious - Surendra was also South Asian and, while he did not live at the zoo, he grew up right next to Toronto's zoo and could hear all of the animal noises that Pi describes in the book.
Surendra started reading the book the next day, beginning his six year quest to become Pi so he could get the starring role in the movie adaptation. He was tired of being offered roles only as terrorists or call centre employees, the stock roles for South Asian young men at the time. First he visited the Toronto zoo to get closer to the tigers. His quest then led him to begin a lengthy e-mail correspondence with the book's author, Yann Martel. Several of the e-mails are replicated between chapters of the book. He also took a break from school and travelled to Pondicherry, India where he spent several weeks at the real school that the fictional Pi attended. There he befriends several teenage boys who accompany him to the sites described in the book as well as model their accents for him. He overcomes a tremendous fear of the water to learn how to swim. He reads every biography he can find of people who survived shipwrecks and even befriends one survivor from Maine. Finally he visits the casting director in New York and even gives up the chance of a regular TV role in order to push his dream. Unfortunately he is ultimately unsuccessful (this is not a spoiler since it is easy enough to Google the actual cast of Life of Pi).
To me some of the more interesting parts of the book were those outside his quest - his troubled relationship with his alcoholic and abusive father; his summer jobs at Pioneer Village and the friendships he makes there; and how he adapts his life, becoming a rather unconventional artist, after he loses the role. My personal favourite scene was when he visited his dermatologist - since she is also my dermatologist and his description of her and her office is perfect.
I don't highly recommend the book but it is an easy read and interesting enough if you are looking for something...
Surendra started reading the book the next day, beginning his six year quest to become Pi so he could get the starring role in the movie adaptation. He was tired of being offered roles only as terrorists or call centre employees, the stock roles for South Asian young men at the time. First he visited the Toronto zoo to get closer to the tigers. His quest then led him to begin a lengthy e-mail correspondence with the book's author, Yann Martel. Several of the e-mails are replicated between chapters of the book. He also took a break from school and travelled to Pondicherry, India where he spent several weeks at the real school that the fictional Pi attended. There he befriends several teenage boys who accompany him to the sites described in the book as well as model their accents for him. He overcomes a tremendous fear of the water to learn how to swim. He reads every biography he can find of people who survived shipwrecks and even befriends one survivor from Maine. Finally he visits the casting director in New York and even gives up the chance of a regular TV role in order to push his dream. Unfortunately he is ultimately unsuccessful (this is not a spoiler since it is easy enough to Google the actual cast of Life of Pi).
To me some of the more interesting parts of the book were those outside his quest - his troubled relationship with his alcoholic and abusive father; his summer jobs at Pioneer Village and the friendships he makes there; and how he adapts his life, becoming a rather unconventional artist, after he loses the role. My personal favourite scene was when he visited his dermatologist - since she is also my dermatologist and his description of her and her office is perfect.
I don't highly recommend the book but it is an easy read and interesting enough if you are looking for something...
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Kay's Lucky Coin Variety by Ann Y.K Choi
What a fantastic book this was - I read it in an afternoon! The story is told from the perspective of teenaged Mary whose family immigrated to Toronto from South Korea when she was a child. Her parents work tirelessly operating a downtown corner store in order to provide Mary and her brother Josh with better lives.
The author beautifully illustrates the struggle immigrant children, and particularly girls, face when trying to reconcile the hopes, dreams and values of their parents, with their own which are shaped by the Canadian society around them.
Mary very much wants to be a writer, but her parents want her to study something more practical - law or education. They also want her to marry a nice Korean boy and go to great lengths to arrange a match for her. Instead she has a terrible crush on her white, older English teacher. When she graduates from high school she is faced with choosing between these two men as well as deciding what to pursue in university.
In addition to Mary's family there are a host of other interesting supporting characters - Korean friends and family, Mary's diverse group of high school friends, the old Irish woman who lives near the store, and the taxi driver, homeless man and prostitutes who frequent the store...
Unfortunately it takes a tragic event (which I won't give away) for Mary to begin to sort out who she is and how she wants her future to unfold.
I especially enjoyed the book because of all the familiar Toronto places but I think anyone who is interested in a coming of age story, coupled with that of the immigrant experience, would enjoy this book. It's very well written and easy to read.
The author beautifully illustrates the struggle immigrant children, and particularly girls, face when trying to reconcile the hopes, dreams and values of their parents, with their own which are shaped by the Canadian society around them.
Mary very much wants to be a writer, but her parents want her to study something more practical - law or education. They also want her to marry a nice Korean boy and go to great lengths to arrange a match for her. Instead she has a terrible crush on her white, older English teacher. When she graduates from high school she is faced with choosing between these two men as well as deciding what to pursue in university.
In addition to Mary's family there are a host of other interesting supporting characters - Korean friends and family, Mary's diverse group of high school friends, the old Irish woman who lives near the store, and the taxi driver, homeless man and prostitutes who frequent the store...
Unfortunately it takes a tragic event (which I won't give away) for Mary to begin to sort out who she is and how she wants her future to unfold.
I especially enjoyed the book because of all the familiar Toronto places but I think anyone who is interested in a coming of age story, coupled with that of the immigrant experience, would enjoy this book. It's very well written and easy to read.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Winter Vacation Reading List
News from the Red Desert by Kevin Patterson
This was a really interesting twist on the typical "war in Afghanistan" novel. Most of the action takes place on the Kandahar military base. The war is seen from the perspective of several US and Canadian soldiers, a female journalist embedded with the army (and also a former lover of one of the generals), several Pakistani nationals who run a coffee shop on the base and even a Thai woman who works as a "masseuse" on the base. Initially we see the soldiers in 2001 when they believe they have finished off the Taliban and won one of the fastest wars in history. But most of the action takes place in 2007 when it becomes clear the war is far from over.
There are definitely many gruesome scenes as one would expect in a war story, but because the story jumps so rapidly between characters, I didn't feel myself getting attached to anyone in particular. It was interesting to imagine how the war would look not only to Westerners, but to Pakistanis who are torn as they make their living off the foreign soldiers but feel kinship with the Afghans.
I really enjoyed how the chapters were short and broken into even shorter subsections so we constantly saw situations from more than one angle. There was also no clear statement on whether the war made sense - really from anyone's perspective.
I recommend this book to anyone who would like to get a different, if fictional, view of the Afghan war.
The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close
This book was a fairly humours account of political life in Washington. Matt is a young lawyer who has always dreamed of running for office. He joins to Obama political campaign and, after inauguration is offered a job in the counsel's office so he and his wife move to DC from New York. Beth, who is a writer and not involved in politics at all, struggles with the lifestyle. Everyone is obsessed with their position in the government - even making cocktail party discussion revolve around their respective security clearances. She is miserable until they meet Jimmy and Ashleigh, a young couple from Texas. Jimmy is also a behind the scenes politician and when he starts to advance more quickly than Matt we see the tension this brings to all involved.
I wouldn't say this is a deep or even terribly fascinating book but it was compelling enough to keep me interested on vacation.
Julia's Daughters by Colleen Faulkner
The premise of this book was really dark and difficult - Julia's oldest daughter, Haley, runs a stop sign and her sister Caitlin who is in the car dies. The book deals with how Julia, her husband and her youngest daughter try to accept the situation as an accident without laying too much blame on Haley. And, of course it deals with Haley's guilt and consequential rebellious behaviour - particularly as she hides several truths about that night from everyone around her. In a bold move Julia decides to drive Haley across the country hoping she will have to open up if they are in the car for days on end. The drive itself and the resulting insights all of the family members take away from it are a very interesting read.
That being said, it was a bit too hard for me to read about a family dealing with this type of nightmare scenario. Not relaxing holiday reading.
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
All I can say about this book is persevere. I really struggled with the first half which was written from the perspective of Lotto. Lotto and Mathilde marry when they are 22. We follow the ups and downs of their marriage as he is disinherited for marrying her and constantly worries that she will leave him. We also see his struggle to survive as an actor and then playwright. Frankly I did not find him terribly sympathetic and I found parts of the book downright weird (like when they include an opera Lotto wrote).
But they I got to the second half which is told from Mathilde's perspective. Here we see all kinds of secrets that were kept by many parties involved - and everything looks completely different. I don't want to give anything away so I won't get into the details. But I really was glad I persevered when I almost put the book down before I got halfway there.
This was a really interesting twist on the typical "war in Afghanistan" novel. Most of the action takes place on the Kandahar military base. The war is seen from the perspective of several US and Canadian soldiers, a female journalist embedded with the army (and also a former lover of one of the generals), several Pakistani nationals who run a coffee shop on the base and even a Thai woman who works as a "masseuse" on the base. Initially we see the soldiers in 2001 when they believe they have finished off the Taliban and won one of the fastest wars in history. But most of the action takes place in 2007 when it becomes clear the war is far from over.
There are definitely many gruesome scenes as one would expect in a war story, but because the story jumps so rapidly between characters, I didn't feel myself getting attached to anyone in particular. It was interesting to imagine how the war would look not only to Westerners, but to Pakistanis who are torn as they make their living off the foreign soldiers but feel kinship with the Afghans.
I really enjoyed how the chapters were short and broken into even shorter subsections so we constantly saw situations from more than one angle. There was also no clear statement on whether the war made sense - really from anyone's perspective.
I recommend this book to anyone who would like to get a different, if fictional, view of the Afghan war.
The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close
This book was a fairly humours account of political life in Washington. Matt is a young lawyer who has always dreamed of running for office. He joins to Obama political campaign and, after inauguration is offered a job in the counsel's office so he and his wife move to DC from New York. Beth, who is a writer and not involved in politics at all, struggles with the lifestyle. Everyone is obsessed with their position in the government - even making cocktail party discussion revolve around their respective security clearances. She is miserable until they meet Jimmy and Ashleigh, a young couple from Texas. Jimmy is also a behind the scenes politician and when he starts to advance more quickly than Matt we see the tension this brings to all involved.
I wouldn't say this is a deep or even terribly fascinating book but it was compelling enough to keep me interested on vacation.
Julia's Daughters by Colleen Faulkner
The premise of this book was really dark and difficult - Julia's oldest daughter, Haley, runs a stop sign and her sister Caitlin who is in the car dies. The book deals with how Julia, her husband and her youngest daughter try to accept the situation as an accident without laying too much blame on Haley. And, of course it deals with Haley's guilt and consequential rebellious behaviour - particularly as she hides several truths about that night from everyone around her. In a bold move Julia decides to drive Haley across the country hoping she will have to open up if they are in the car for days on end. The drive itself and the resulting insights all of the family members take away from it are a very interesting read.
That being said, it was a bit too hard for me to read about a family dealing with this type of nightmare scenario. Not relaxing holiday reading.
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
All I can say about this book is persevere. I really struggled with the first half which was written from the perspective of Lotto. Lotto and Mathilde marry when they are 22. We follow the ups and downs of their marriage as he is disinherited for marrying her and constantly worries that she will leave him. We also see his struggle to survive as an actor and then playwright. Frankly I did not find him terribly sympathetic and I found parts of the book downright weird (like when they include an opera Lotto wrote).
But they I got to the second half which is told from Mathilde's perspective. Here we see all kinds of secrets that were kept by many parties involved - and everything looks completely different. I don't want to give anything away so I won't get into the details. But I really was glad I persevered when I almost put the book down before I got halfway there.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
The Nix by Nathan Hill
This was a long and complicated book, but very engaging. The main character was Samuel, a thirty something English professor at a lesser known junior college outside Chicago. Samuel is also a once promising author who published one story, got a book deal and never wrote the book. Mostly he plays video games, never having recovered from his mother abandoning him when he was 11 and losing the girl he loved from that same age.
The book moves back and forth in time - the anchor is 2011 as Samuel explores his past. We then move into his childhood where we see the months leading up to his mother's departure. At the time he is obsessed with twins, Bishop and Bethany (the girl he loves his whole life). There are several chapters that explore their lives. Bishop was abused as a child (which Samuel regrets only figuring out years later) then eventually ends up in the army. Bethany is a child prodigy on the violin and becomes a famous musician - her relationship with Samuel is off and on.
The book then spends many chapters on the 1968 when Samuel's mother Faye is in college and unwittingly gets caught up in the student protests at the time of the Democratic convention. Samuel finally discovers the story of why her mother never told him that she even went to college or what transpired there. We meet her radical friends Alice and Sebastian and see why a police officer with the unlikely name of Charlie Brown held a life long grudge against her.
Eventually we even travel to Norway to see the secrets Samuel's grandfather had buried there and which haunted him and by extension Faye. In fact the Nix is a Norwegian spirit that Faye learns of as a child and actually seems to provoke panic attacks.
There are also interesting side chapters about Pwange, a video game addict who plays the online games with Samuel. They show the severe effects on his health which are probably a metaphor for something but really just end up being interesting diversions.
At the end Samuel discovers things about his mother as well as his past that certainly caught me by surprise, yet were believable.
All in all, I really enjoyed the book - but give yourself time to read it.
The book moves back and forth in time - the anchor is 2011 as Samuel explores his past. We then move into his childhood where we see the months leading up to his mother's departure. At the time he is obsessed with twins, Bishop and Bethany (the girl he loves his whole life). There are several chapters that explore their lives. Bishop was abused as a child (which Samuel regrets only figuring out years later) then eventually ends up in the army. Bethany is a child prodigy on the violin and becomes a famous musician - her relationship with Samuel is off and on.
The book then spends many chapters on the 1968 when Samuel's mother Faye is in college and unwittingly gets caught up in the student protests at the time of the Democratic convention. Samuel finally discovers the story of why her mother never told him that she even went to college or what transpired there. We meet her radical friends Alice and Sebastian and see why a police officer with the unlikely name of Charlie Brown held a life long grudge against her.
Eventually we even travel to Norway to see the secrets Samuel's grandfather had buried there and which haunted him and by extension Faye. In fact the Nix is a Norwegian spirit that Faye learns of as a child and actually seems to provoke panic attacks.
There are also interesting side chapters about Pwange, a video game addict who plays the online games with Samuel. They show the severe effects on his health which are probably a metaphor for something but really just end up being interesting diversions.
At the end Samuel discovers things about his mother as well as his past that certainly caught me by surprise, yet were believable.
All in all, I really enjoyed the book - but give yourself time to read it.
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