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 I read this lovely little book for Heather’s read-a-long at Age 30+ … A Lifetime in Books.
Cranford is a story that is hard to describe. The little town of Cranford is populated mainly by older women, mostly single or widowed. There are a few men about, but they are largely of a lower class, whereas many of the women consider themselves of gentle birth and do their best to act accordingly, especially Mrs. Jamieson, the town’s matriarch. The book revolves around Mary Smith, a frequent visitor to Cranford who often stays with the Jenkyns sisters, two unmarried older women who enjoy some status as children of the late rector. Most of the chapters, however, center in on Miss Matty, the younger of the sisters, whose gentle heart endears her to the entire town.
This was not at all what I’d expected from it, and not in a bad way at all. My previous experiences with Gaskell consisted of North and South and Mary Barton, which are both very concerned with the rise of industrialism in the north. Cranford is much more a picture of genteel life as it might have been during Gaskell’s lifetime, in a small town where women rule all. Each of the women is made distinct by her own actions as they socialize, like Mrs. Jamieson who is a complete snob, the elder Miss Jenkyns whose sternness overrides any other aspects of her personality, and Miss Matty, a sweet woman who is too easily led by everyone around her.
There is no real plot here. The chapters can almost be seen as a series of little stories regarding the inhabitants of Cranford, tied together by Miss Matty’s presence. There is a general movement towards what happens at the end but it isn’t compelling reading; this is a book to live in, to get to know the characters, to begin to care about what happens to them. It’s short, but it accomplishes these goals with ease and opens a window into life as it was. I was reminded mainly of a more sedate Jane Austen, less concerned with irony and overall plot but still depicting a genuine picture of an upper class society and its ills. She does still use humor to depict the ridiculousness of their situations; my favorite is when one of characters is complimented on her lace and launches into a story of how it had a little trip through her cat’s digestive system! I liked the book and I was completely charmed by it, but this isn’t a book for the impatient among us.
Cranford reminded me of how much I adore nineteenth century literature. There is something so inherently appealing in Gaskell’s style, in the modest but earnest ways of her characters, and in the quiet community life that they all share. I can’t say this is a world I’d ever want to live in, but I definitely loved visiting.
(Cover note: I have an old hardcover edition in a set of classics without ISBNs, so I chose a more recent cover for this post)
 David Martin is an aspiring writer of suspenseful stories in early twentieth century Barcelona. When opportunities to write professionally present themselves, he quickly seizes them, the desire to be published overriding everything, including his common sense. With his earnings, Martin moves into a tower house, abandoned for decades, but with the sentimental value of a place he’s passed every day on his way to success. But when Martin receives an unusual offer and begins to learn more about his strange abode, he realizes that he is playing a far deeper game than he’d ever imagined.
My favorite aspect of Zafon’s writing is the atmosphere he evokes with his works. This was amazingly well done in The Shadow of the Wind, which I read before I began blogging, and I had high hopes here as well. Zafon did not let me down. Almost immediately, he draws us into a world of half-truths in the depths of Barcelona. Impending tragedy always seems to hang over Martin, right from the beginning, and it’s as though the book is clogged with dark, rainy nights and suspenseful midnight meetings. It’s hard to describe, but it’s easy to live in this world. Even Martin’s apartment is compelling and virtually a living part of the mystery.
When not writing, Martin is also obsessed with his love, Cristina, even though it takes years before she recognizes him. This love story goes in a very peculiar direction but adds to the eerie feel of the work. Throughout, we’re uncertain as to whether Martin’s experiences are real or imaginary, particularly as the story gets crazy. By the halfway point, I was surprised by how tense the story was getting; I found myself reading a thriller! The literary touch and the atmosphere, plus the added uncertainty about Martin’s mental state, are really what make this book something special. Towards the end of the book, the plot starts to unravel to some extent, but I was still curious about it.
The Shadow of the Wind was a book for readers. The Angel’s Game is less so; I think it’s much closer to a book for writers, but since I’m not really one, it didn’t draw me in quite the same way. So I can’t say I really liked it more but I definitely enjoyed reading it. I wanted to know what happened next. The ending didn’t answer all of my questions, but that rarely happens. I would recommend this, especially if you enjoyed The Shadow of the Wind.
 Kate Robinson’s life is in tatters. Her long-term boyfriend has dumped her, her fashion career is failing thanks to an incompetent advisor, and her mother has died. Determined to renew herself, Kate departs on a long trip to Ireland, where she and her mother had planned to go before the cancer took away all plans. Inadvertently, she stumbles upon Glenmara and a group of five women who have carried on the hereditary tradition of making lace while their own lives are uncertain and unhappy. Together, Kate and the lace makers of Glenmara strive to not only rediscover their own lives, but to give their fading town a fresh start on the world stage.
I think the key word when it comes to this book is simply “not enough”. The Lace Makers of Glenmara is meant to be inspiring and heart-warming with a simple story about the friendships between women, with one in particular as a focal point. As always, Ireland itself is enchanting, and Glenmara and its generally aging residents are a product of a society long gone. There is a mystical touch on Kate’s journey to Glenmara with William the Traveller. Kate’s need for a new outlook on life is completely understandable. Yet so much of this book rang false for me. It seemed incredibly unlikely that Bernie would offer to let a stranger live with her when they had only met five minutes ago, against the advice of her best friend. The romance was incredibly quick and not at all fleshed out. Kate and Sullivan basically fall into bed together and are immediately serious after that with no real development of the initial relationship, so his panic shortly afterwards just seems strange. This is especially so given that we’re told he sleeps around quite frequently and is never serious about anyone. Kate seems different just because she reminds him of someone else, but that’s an incredibly shaky base for a relationship. Lace making itself is undoubtedly fascinating, but again, few details are really given in the book. The events within could also have been incredibly moving, and the book tries hard to accomplish that, but we haven’t spent enough time with the characters to feel grief on their behalf.
At its core, the story is still a good one. I love how the lace could renew a community by giving it new strength and new visitors. Its effect on the women’s lives is itself slightly magical, which adds to the overall mystical feel of the book. It isn’t that I disliked the book, it is just that I put it down wishing for more story, more detail, more characters, more everything. The Lace Makers of Glenmara is well conceived but poorly executed.
 I mentioned on twitter while I was finishing my dissertation that I really missed reading classics while doing my MA, especially while on the dissertation. This was the first year of my reading life in which I wasn’t required by school to read actual literature. We read bits and pieces of medieval literature, but I don’t actually like most of that, although I do find it interesting. I actually miss my English major; not really the bit that required me to write papers, but the six to ten books of thought-provoking literature assigned for every class and the space in which to discuss them. As expected, I am back to it, now that I have nothing better to do. I’m working my way through Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, a surprisingly easy and pleasant read, I checked The Warden by Anthony Trollope out from the library, and I’m thinking about reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence since this is Banned Books Week. I signed up for the challenge a while ago, but the library didn’t have either of the two on my mental list (Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange) so I suppose I will have to resort to the one I own!
This has also been review book catch-up week. I have been neglecting a whole lot of review copies, mostly because they seemed like they were going to be slow and/or heavy and I didn’t think my mind would be up to it. As a result, I’m reading them all now, so expect to see a deluge of requested reviews popping up over the next couple of weeks. I’m attempting to try to finish and review all the ones I have before my parents get here on the 15th with my next batch! Right now I’m reading The Fire, which I got from LibraryThing last summer. I know, a VERY long time ago, but since I really disliked The Eight, I haven’t felt like reading it. Now that I know it’s basically a bunch of confusing puzzles, it’s flowing better because I don’t try to figure anything out and let the characters do it for me. I’m also reading a novella every day from the anthology On The Prowl. I won Hunting Ground a week or two ago and while it hasn’t come yet, I want to be up to date with Anna and Charles from Patricia Briggs’ Alpha and Omega series before it does, so I’ve read the story here and will be reading Cry Wolf sometime this week. So far the rest of the anthology is hit and miss, but since I bought it, I’m going to read all of it.
I’m afraid I don’t have anything more interesting to report! I meant to go see the Staffordshire Hoard today, but when we got to Birmingham the line was so long we weren’t sure we’d get in before the museum closed. Keith marvelled that so many people were interested in seeing Anglo-Saxon gold; I was thrilled even if it meant I couldn’t go yet. We’re going to get out earlier next weekend. So, expect a recounting of the treasure, with pictures if I’m allowed to take them, sometime in the next couple of weeks. I also went to one of my new libraries and am going to the other one tomorrow, so a Library Loot post will be coming soon!
What are you reading today?
 Courtney Stone is a certified Jane Austen addict. She owns all the books and sinks into them every time she needs comfort, entertainment, or love. When she wakes up in Regency England one morning, with the Austen-like name of Jane Mansfield, she is at first in shock, especially when she is threatened with a mental institution and bled to the point of weakness. Courtney/Jane recovers and begins to settle into Regency life with the addition of the extremely handsome and polite Mr. Edgeworth and his sister. She thinks she recognizes Mr. Edgeworth for what he is, a womanizer just like her ex-fiance who broke her heart by cheating on her. To get back home, Courtney realizes that she needs to unravel the secrets of Jane’s past, including her relationship with Edgeworth, and confront her own insecurities and problems with the men in her life.
I think I expected a little more out of this than I got. The beginning was a little disappointing. First of all, Courtney spends far too long in bed denying that she is actually Jane and fretting about how to get back into her old life, much less fit into this one. When she gets up she is perfectly capable of speaking English with a perfect English accent as well as sewing, dancing, and knowing which fork to use while eating. While this makes her transition easier, it made it harder for me to accept her complaining. Given that the premise of the book was her new life in the England of Jane Austen, Courtney spent far too much time being shocked. She can’t just settle in but I was impatient for the story to get going.
Luckily, I liked the book much better once Courtney got out of bed and assumed Jane’s life. Once that happened, I finally got pulled into the story. The mysteries surrounding the past of Jane and Edgeworth were interesting and I wanted to see why they’d fallen out. I liked Jane’s friend Miss Edgeworth and I enjoyed the development of her character over the course of the book. I also thought that the way Courtney’s memories were interspersed with her Regency life were well done; she reflected on her past at appropriate points and I was curious as to the resolution.
This was a fun, relaxing read. Courtney’s problems are never too threatening, and while we feel sorry for her, we’re pretty sure she’s getting her Happily Ever After. I enjoyed the romance between Courtney and Edgeworth and I wanted to know what had happened in the past so they could settle down for the future. Despite that, I thought the ending was, honestly, a bit of a cop-out, and let me down after what otherwise was a very entertaining story. I enjoyed the book enough, though, to be interested in checking out Ms. Rigler’s next book, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, which takes Jane Mansfield into Courtney Stone’s life. I have a feeling that with both stories resolved, my qualms about the first book will fade away, and I will have the ending that I really, really want.
Recommended for a light, fun read, especially for lovers of Jane Austen or historical fiction.
Available from IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.
 From the inside cover of The Wilderness:
It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his early sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s.
This unusual novel, narrated by a man who is steadily losing his grip on reality, is a remarkable journey through the human mind and memory. I’ve never known anyone with Alzheimer’s, as it thankfully doesn’t run in my family (or they die too young), but if I had to guess what it would be like, this novel is it. Jake’s reality comes and goes; he finds his mind a total blank at times but usually he is just confused. He can’t remember if his daughter is alive or dead, why he is visiting this man in jail (his son), or who the woman sleeping next to him is, except in brief moments of clarity. He remembers his younger life the best and often has flashbacks to himself as a newlywed, in love with his wife, a successful architect, a new father. He can’t decide what is real and what he has imagined, or why some memories have significance and others don’t. In short, he is confused.
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I wanted to love it more than I did, but I think it was too scary for me. I felt sorry for Jake and I just felt that the inevitability of his fate outweighed the beauty of the life that he had lived. It is powerful and it is moving and I suspect it has changed the way I will think about elderly people forever, but it’s also scary and depressing. This is the undeniable truth about what will happen to many of us if we live to be Jake’s age. He has lived a successful, mostly happy life, which he can piece together and remember gladly, but now he is losing that ability before he has even died. He boils the coffeepot dry, he can’t remember if he is supposed to eat eggshells, he forgets that he’s completed some part of therapy five minutes after it’s happened, and he doesn’t even know if his daughter is alive because he’s just remembered her older, and laughing, but at the same time he remembers her dead.
I do think that this is one of those important books that can open our minds to the suffering of others, one of those books that we should all read and think about. It reveals the wilderness that our brains can become as they lose so much in old age. I’m not going to lie though because it is heartbreaking and it is tough to read. It’s a worthy, worthy book, but it will make you cry.
 Edie Swann, formerly known as Eden Swanford, is determined to wreak revenge on the men that she thinks are responsible for her father’s death. She returns to the town of her childhood and starts to send out black angels to scare them and make them remember what they’d done. When the men start dying, Edie becomes a suspect, even in her own mind; she fears she has set in motion a much larger plan than she’d ever bargained for. Meanwhile Sheriff Holt Drennen knows Edie is up to something but can’t stop his attraction and simple liking for her. Even though she is the obvious culprit, he believes in her innocence, and he’s willing to fight.
If this is representative of the romantic suspense genre, I definitely want to read more. The mystery in this book was so engaging. The different threads wove between the two main characters, the men who were implicated in the murder of Edie’s father, and even through Holt’s adorable daughter. There were layers and layers to this story and as they were slowly peeled away, the craving for more knowledge just kept on growing. I’m always bad at guessing the murderer, so I can’t guarantee that this isn’t a predictable read for someone else, but to me the plot felt surprisingly tight, exciting, and suspenseful. That isn’t even discussing the romance, which sizzles right off the page. Edie and Holt are not only a very enticing couple but a believable pair. The book doesn’t end in marriage but in a commitment to try out their relationship, which I really appreciated after they’d been through so much.
Edie as a character really got me into the book. She’s a strong woman, but there are forces beyond her control going on here. It’s so easy to feel for her when she’s lost almost everyone in her life, and it’s perfectly understandable that Holt has to build up her trust in him. She’s actually horrified by the fact that the men start dying, even though she thinks they killed her father. Even if she intends to make them a little anxious, she never intended to do any physical harm, just encourage the truth to come out. Her character really starts to come out when she finds her own life in danger. There were also some great family dynamics in this little novel, mostly centered on Holt’s relationship with his parents and his daughter, which made it feel more realistic and well-rounded.
I really enjoyed One Deadly Sin. It appeals to the part of me that loves this kind of exciting suspense. With both a great plot and fantastic characters to care about, there is no way to go wrong with this one.
 Adam Swann is a soldier, but he’s sick of fighting. Left for dead on a battlefield in India, Adam opens his eyes to spot a ruby necklace, the means for funding his dreams. When he recovers from his illness, he heads to England and decides to start a shipping company after taking the advice of a railroad man and exploring England on his horse. On his way home, he spots a young girl, half-undressed and washing in a puddle. This is Henrietta Rawlinson, daughter of a cotton giant, fleeing from an arranged marriage that makes her feel ill. Adam takes her with him, marries her, and launches Swann-on-Wheels, their brainchild. As the company grows and expands, so do the couple’s fortunes, and this novel is their epic story.
I want to start off by saying that this book took me a week to read but I loved every minute of it. I read a few smaller books in between, but I just adored spending so much time in Victorian England. I felt like I lived in Adam and Henrietta’s world and could understand their issues and problems but also cheer for them to push forward, move past whatever problems they were having, and succeed at everything. This is the kind of book that becomes a favorite, at least for me, because I love huge complex stories like this.
Since this novel was originally written in 1970, I assumed it would feel dated, but it really doesn’t. Even its treatment of women is open-minded; Edith remarks that women could rule companies very easily, were they given a chance, and then Henrietta actually does take the reins of leadership and proves herself an astonishingly capable woman both at home and at work. This may be a bit anachronistic for the mid-19th century, but having smart female characters to care about makes this an immeasurably better novel than it would have been otherwise. I felt a little uneasy with the fact that Henrietta’s character changes because Adam pushes it to do so, but as the novel progressed it became clear that he’d just given her an opportunity rather than actually pushing her at all; that was just how he thought of it.
I loved, loved, loved that this was set in Victorian England and didn’t just focus on London, but the entire country, and more so that specific issues are highlighted and addressed. For example, the use of children as chimney sweeps was a huge dilemma, and it’s brought right home here. The novel also includes workers’ strikes and the changing attitude towards employment going on around this time. The Swanns do have a comparatively cushy life, but we see how hard Adam works and his financial difficulties, so it is vastly different in feel than a book focusing on the aristocracy, for example. We even have mention of the Civil War in the USA and how it affected production in England; there is a sense of history here as historical events happen with Adam and Henrietta and their managers on what feels like the forefront of a new England. It’s a heady feeling; it’s a heady book.
If I had to say one negative thing about the book, though, it would mainly be that the setting up of Adam’s company does bog down at times. The beginning of the book took me much longer because it was more about the logisitics of his company than about the people in the book. I enjoyed the detail about setting up a company and being introduced to all the secondary characters, but I would have been happier with less. By contrast, I loved the sections about the main characters that followed, and once the business got off the ground the book sped much more quickly. I had at first set myself a goal of reading 50 pages each day, but by page 200 I knew I couldn’t go that slowly.
God Is an Englishman was a delightful, absorbing, utterly fascinating read. I could happily have kept on reading more. This is the start of a series, so while this book ended in a nice solid fashion, I know I’m going to seek out the rest of the series as soon as I can.
 Hiroko Tanaka, a young woman living in Nagasaki in World War II, has fallen in love with a German. They know their lives are constantly in danger, but somehow their love has blossomed regardless. On the same day that Konrad proposes, the Americans drop a bomb on Nagasaki. Hiroko’s life changes irrevocably, right down to her skin, on which the birds from her mother’s kimono have been etched in scars. A few years later, Hiroko finds herself at the home of Konrad’s sister in India, where new love awaits. Sweeping onwards through to Pakistan and later the United States, this multi-generational work encompasses the depths of the horror of war and the endurance of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horror and tragedy.
I’m not sure it’s possible to like this book, although I know I’ve said I do already. It is almost relentless in the danger and the pain it causes for its main characters, particularly Hiroko. In the beginning, it feels too long and it moves very slowly. While I appreciate the messages the book is trying to convey, it takes a great deal of concentration to get through and it might have benefited from a more concise plot. The writing is gorgeous, but doesn’t help matters, although it does feel as though we could live in the settings of the book. Each location feels different, as they should given where they are in the world. Hiroko moves from Nagasaki to India to Pakistan to New York City, all of which are beautifully drawn with Shamsie’s words.
It’s the message that this book has left me with, however, which is certainly both anti-war and almost anti-nation. By taking a large time period, Shamsie can show that as human beings, we haven’t learned from our mistakes, and that war is truly horrible in a way that people who haven’t lived through it don’t properly understand. She also shows us what a lack of education about can do through Hiroko’s son, Raza. Hiroko tries to shield him from the atrocities of the atomic bomb by speaking little about her own experience, but that only means he doesn’t understand what he’s getting into when violence does encroach upon his life and only learns later the meaning and devastation of violence and loss. The mistakes are repeated later with another character, still ignorant of what war truly means. With these characters, it seems to me that the author is trying to express that people are people, by giving voices and faces to those who do cross country boundaries and who may otherwise be considered suspicious. Nationalism only impairs our ability to relate to others as we stereotype them into something Different. It’s unquestionable, in the end, that this book has given me a lot to think about.
As such, I don’t know if I’d call Burnt Shadows an enjoyable book, but it is very deep. I felt that I was left with a lot on my mind and I had learned something about Pakistan in particular in the process (which I did enjoy, I like learning). So I’m undecided as to whether or not I can recommend it, and instead will leave you with just this review to decide for yourselves.
 In the future, Mexico has gone to war against the United States, necessitating the creation of buffer zones. Santa Olivia lies within this buffer zone, the inhabitants stripped of all rights, privileges, and luxuries, no longer citizens of the United States. Carmen Garron is one of those citizens, looking for love against the odds, and temporarily finding it twice. Her second love has been genetically engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, sight, but has a complete lack of fear. He is also infertile, or at least they think so until Carmen conceives a child, named Loup Garron for her fugitive father. As Loup grows to maturity in a church, she takes on the guise of Santa Olivia, providing justice to the town in a way no one else imagined, and taking huge risks to stand up for the rights she knows they deserve.
If this novel had not had Jacqueline Carey emblazoned on the cover, I would never have realized it was her. Her writing is still gorgeous, but in a totally different way from her Kushiel series. It’s rougher, to match this serious urban fantasy, but still retains a beauty and grace that is unmistakably Carey once it’s more carefully examined. When she uses a bird in Carmen’s heart to describe her youthful hope and love in an elegant, but not melodramatic way, I fell in love:
In between the fourth and fifth rounds, Carmen Garron slipped through the crowd, made her way to the outside of the soldier’s corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her.
“Hi there.” He slid one muscled, sweaty arm through the ropes, touched her hand with his gloved fist.
The bird in her heart warbled.
I could read Jacqueline Carey’s books all year and never get bored.
This is a completely different type of urban fantasy than most of what is found on the bookstore shelf. It is a gritty, hard reality, a world in which there is no hope. There are no vampires or witches, just genetically engineered humans who are ostacized from society. Somehow, Loup Garron shines in this world, an enigmatic main character that is different enough to make her special and human enough to make her real. Loup provides not only hope to the people of Santa Olivia, but to readers; she’s the embodiment of determination and spirit. The werewolf, without turning into a wolf, concept is cleverly done even if rarely mentioned. Loup’s strength sets her apart but her desire to be at least mostly normal brings her into a group of orphans who provide the backbone for her inspiring journey. She doesn’t quite fit in, but that just makes us love her all the more. Meanwhile, the town of Santa Olivia is a terrifying potential reality. It’s unlikely but just real enough to strike fear in our hearts and cause us to hope for Loup’s success.
To be honest, I don’t love this book as much as I love any of the Kushiel’s Legacy series. In some sense, though, that is like comparing apples to oranges, since they are so different in feel, setting, scope, and character development. Santa Olivia is a great read all on its own and that is how it should be judged. As such, I think Carey made a wise move in trying out a different kind of fantasy. A sequel has been proposed, but this book, while somewhat open-ended, ends satisfactorily and left me hopeful for the future.
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