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Trying to catch up again before the start of October!
 Bombay Time, Thrity Umrigar
In this moving novel, a group of families in Bombay come together for the wedding of one of their children. While there, they are all thrown into reminiscing about their past together and just how they got this far in the future.
I wish I’d reviewed this one earlier so I could look more deeply into it, but unfortunately it got a little lost in the shuffle as I tried to get reviews for actual review books out. I loved it, however, most particularly the depth of the relationships between the people and their all too human foibles. I found it gave me striking insight into some aspects of Indian communities and India itself, how it was growing and changing and the people either grew or didn’t grow with it. The relationships – both romantic and platonic – between all of these people are gorgeously drawn, and what I really appreciated was the fact that they weren’t over. This is a snapshot of lives, not an ending to them. Beautiful book and has me determined to read more by Thrity Umrigar.
 Splendour, Anna Godbersen
I actually haven’t reviewed any of the last three of this series, so this will stand as my summation of all of them. As a result I won’t bother with a summary here; let’s just say that the ladies of New York City are out and about yet again, as things are shifting and their lives are going slightly crazy as always. I have enjoyed this series; I still stand by my original assessment that it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure read as these girls’ lives are so scandalous and probably not quite accurate to history. Unfortunately I wasn’t quite satisfied by the ending, but I am glad I managed to read to the end, and would recommend the whole series to anyone who is interested in a very romantic YA series based around the lives of a few girls in early twentieth century New York City.
 Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne
I’d never read the actual Winnie the Pooh before, so when I found it was free for my Kindle, I decided to give it a read. I was thoroughly charmed, let me tell you; these stories are so enchanting and so quick to read. Even with the black and white screen, the illustrations are just gorgeous and bring the words to life. This is really the perfect book for children and if/when I have some of my own, I fully intend to get them this book for their very own. It was only missing Tigger; when does he show up??
 The School of Essential Ingredients, Erica Bauermeister
As a girl, Lillian uses food to express herself and to bring her mother back to her. As an adult, she runs a restaurant, and on Mondays holds a cooking class to bring other people together with food. The motley mix of students this time each have their own problems and varying degrees of happiness, and Lillian doesn’t offer them a solution. Instead she offers them a peaceful haven to rediscover themselves and to find connections with others that they’d feared lost forever.
This is one of those books I suspect I’d like more if I actually enjoyed fiction about people who have lives just like mine. Unfortunately I didn’t think it dug quite deeply enough; each person got a single chapter, which was just enough to get a taste of their lives and not much else. They were, for obvious reasons, all heavily tied in with food. Eventually they do start to link together, but without the community feel and thoughtfulness of a book like Bombay Time. This one just left me empty, although it did make me hungry as well with its luscious descriptions of food. I’d hesitate to recommend this but I know others have enjoyed it more than me, so it might just be my dislike of women’s fiction popping back up again.
I am an Amazon Associate. None of these books were sent to me for review.
 A man and his son wander through an ash-filled America. The apocalypse has happened and the entire world is cold, gray, and lifeless. There are no animals. There are few people, and those that exist are likely planning to kill you and steal everything you own. It isn’t an atmosphere to raise a child in, but the man has no choice. He must keep himself and his son alive, must keep them moving, even though he isn’t sure what’s out there to live for.
What a dark, creepy read this was. There isn’t a single happy moment in this book. Virtually the whole of the narrative consists of the man and his son, neither of whom have a destination in mind, trying to find food, get warm, and avoid any of the other people, or creatures, wandering the road with them. It seems as though the world burst into flames, but the actual cause of the apocalypse is never made clear. At one point the boy and man run into another survivor, but he clearly states that they have no common cause because they did not survive together. This really made me wonder exactly what happens – but McCarthy never tells us.
He also never tells us anything about the evil that stalk the land, simply that they’re there. These creatures – I assumed they were vampires or something like that – eat people. Adding to the pervasive feel of danger is the endless fall of ash and the constant corpses they come across everywhere. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been for the boy; we’re never told how old he is, but he wasn’t alive before the apocalypse happened. He has never experienced the world as his father has.
Miraculously, though, he still has a sense of good, a desire to help people, which is simultaneously childish and incredibly wise. Out of the literal ashes of the world, a good spirit has risen, and even though the rest of the book is dark I would never say that all hope was lost, even when I worried that they were close to death. Even more hopeful is the fact that the father and the boy clearly still love each other and strive to live even when it looks like all is lost. The power of the human spirit is incredible and is in large part a reason we can still care for and worry about these characters in a world that is otherwise unrecognizable and terrifying.
The Road was completely different than I expected, but almost more powerful in its own way. The air of mystery lent it terror, but the relationship between the boy and his father is really at the heart of this novel. Recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Tragedy strikes one summer day in Maine. What is meant to be a happy day for two families instead turns into a day of mourning and despair, with consequences set to echo across their entire lives. The Copaken family, despite living in New York City most of the year, consider themselves native Maine residents, while the Tetherlys, significantly poorer, do in fact live there all year. Due to two deaths, the families find themselves linked closer than ever as they all struggle to deal with their own grief and suffering.
A few people have expressed some distaste for the way this book’s prologue was written, but I found that I quite liked it. It’s written from the perspective of an outsider looking in with plenty of detail about the day. No one is named; it could be just any wedding, which is exactly what I liked about it. I thought it perfectly captured a typical wedding day, with the perfect photos and elaborate ceremony neatly masking the real conflicts between people and the difficulties of human relationships. Everyone feels something about a wedding and it’s not always pure joy.
Of course, the book drastically changes once the accident happens, and instead of joy, both families are left with incredible sorrow. The book is really about how individual people deal with it, how it can pull people together and push them apart, sometimes both at once. It’s poignant because the Tetherlys and the Copakens have always had something of a relationship, if only because Jane Tetherly cleans the Copakens’ house year-round. Later on, of course, the two women are meant to be united by the relationship between their children, but are left in a curious midway point. They have things in common, but they’re also complete opposites, incapable of truly understanding anything about one another except the shared pain of mothers who have lost their children much too early.
I liked how many of the characters strove to achieve things for the people that they’d lost, learning eventually that they should really be following their own lives rather than the blueprint they had planned. They have to think more deeply about their assumptions when faced with the fragility of human existence; their desperation to maintain that existence is heartbreaking.
Overall I found there was a lot to admire in Red Hook Road. The relationships are pitch perfect to the real experience of grieving families. Each character is carefully delineated and even when I didn’t like them or agree with them, I could understand how they worked. Since the book is set over the course of four summers, it’s easy to see the way that time changes perception and does manage to place scars over fresh wounds. I was glad that I could follow the families through their lives and closed the book satisfied with the way it wrapped up. Red Hook Road is a wonderful choice for those who enjoy literary fiction, realistic depictions of grief, and family relationships.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review.
 In order to win the hand of his sweetheart Anna, Dutch Jacob de Zoet must make his fortune, and that is how he finds himself bound for the Japanese port city Dejima. Immediately on arrival he frets about his family Bible, worrying it will be censored in a place where he isn’t permitted to practice his own religions, but as he begins to experience life at the port he realizes he has larger problems to contend with. Even when he attempts to expose injustice, he is himself punished for not colluding in various schemes to get rich quick, and he finds himself disturbingly attracted to a young midwife that couldn’t be further in character from his intended.
I am probably the only person in the entire English-speaking world that hasn’t fallen in love with this book. It’s my first read by David Mitchell and I wonder if my expectations were too high. There were things I enjoyed about it and things I didn’t; I could see its merit but I’m afraid I’m forced to conclude that this really just wasn’t perfect for me.
My main problem really was that I just didn’t get on particularly well with Mitchell’s writing style. It felt weighty and elaborate, in that it actively slowed my reading down in ways I didn’t appreciate. His writing has been praised up and down for its beauty, but I only felt like there were moments of brilliance amidst a whole lot of muck. I didn’t appreciate the clipped sentences, short paragraphs, broken dialect – all of it just genuinely frustrated me. But then he’d go off onto something else, and immediately I’d be startled out of my annoyance by a lovely passage. I especially appreciated the ones about language and thought, so much that I’ve even managed to put a bookmark in (very rare, I assure you):
The word ‘my’ brings pleasure. The word ‘my’ brings pain. These are true words for masters as well as slaves. When they are drunk, we become invisible to them. Their talk turns to owning, to profit, or loss, or buying, or selling, or stealing, or hiring, or renting, or swindling. For White men, to live is to own, or to try to own more, or to die trying to own more. Their appetites are astonishing! They own wardrobes, slaves, carriages, houses, warehouses and ships. They own ports, cities, plantations, valleys, mountains, chains of islands. They own this world, its jungles, its skies, and its seas. Yet they complain that Dejima is a prison. They complain they are not free.
When I read that, I wonder if I should have just spent more time trying to read it instead of getting annoyed that the book would not be read at my pace.
Anyway, I liked other parts of the book too, such as Jacob’s overall honesty and faith. I thought he was a wonderful character; I liked the other Dutch characters considerably less and as a result I wasn’t crazy about the sections set on the port. What I really did enjoy was Orito’s narrative in the middle, in actual Japan. This was the first and last part of the book that I was actually compelled by and genuinely enjoyed reading.
And then I got to the end, and suddenly had a strange nostalgic fondness for the whole journey. I thought the end was really well done and got across not only the epic nature of Jacob’s life but also the very fleeting nature of it. Who is going to care what we’ve done, what we’ve stood for, after we’re dead? Unless we are very famous – and even then only sometimes – no one is going to remember.
So I closed the book feeling a lot more gracious towards it than I did when I started, and that’s why this review is so conflicted. Because I genuinely did not like parts of it, felt they were a slog, wished I didn’t have to read the book. Then I loved other parts of it and wished the whole book could have made me feel that way. I can certainly see why The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has been nominated for the Booker prize, and I have decided I will try some of Mitchell’s other work to see if I like it better. This one was an effort, but I do think it was worth it, and I’m glad I read it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Eilis Lacey is quite content with her life in Ireland, living with her mother and sister. She doesn’t yet have a steady job, but she’s studying bookkeeping and hopes to get one when there are jobs available. She could go to England to get a job, like her three brothers, but she wants to stay at home. Unfortunately for that goal, her sister Rose meets with an Irish priest and decides that Eilis should try her luck in America. Eilis is secured a job as a shopgirl in Brooklyn, purchased sea passage and lodgings, and promised courses to continue bookkeeping. She finds that her life in Brooklyn is completely different from her life in Ireland, and she must grow and change to adapt in the city. When she’s called home suddenly, she then faces a choice; which life is the one she’ll stick with?
I loved this book. Loved it. I read it in a day and really hated all the times when I had to put it down. Others might call it slow, or quiet, but I just adored the development of Eilis’s character, the many discoveries she made, and how effectively I could put myself in her shoes. I loved the contemplative way in which the book was written; there’s hardly any action and all observations are third person but still from inside Eilis’s head. It made it so easy to really feel for her and wonder where her life was going and what she was going to do next.
I may also be a bit biased about this but I just adored the setting. I could easily imagine my own grandparents living a life similar to Eilis’s (although they were Italian, there are some Italians here), which brought a true personal touch to the entire book for me. I loved the descriptions of the subway, the streets, the houses, the churches, and especially Coney Island. Most of it probably looks the same now but it’s the attitude that matters here. Even Eilis’s job in the department store was absolutely fascinating for me, especially when the store decides it’s time to desegregate and starts to stock pantyhose suitable for all colors of women. Eilis, of course, is judged the only girl kind enough to serve the colored ladies, which gives us an up close and personal idea of what a real girl in her situation may have felt when she discovers that black women are the same as white women.
Finally, I absolutely adored the emotional conflicts that Eilis suffered and I felt that they were perfectly, beautifully true to life. I was amazed that Tóibín could get so inside a young girl’s head. I especially related perfectly to her feelings once she’d gone away from Brooklyn to visit Ireland – it does feel like a dream when you change countries like that, it’s almost too easy for it to become a distant memory in comparison to real life. I just couldn’t get enough of how real she felt to me, how her life is actually quite ordinary but somehow feels universal and significant. The world is changing, Eilis is changing, and the book depicts it all in such an understated way. I adore books that do that.
I loved Brooklyn and I really think it’s catapulted itself right to the top of my 2010 reads. I can’t recommend it highly enough and I will definitely be reading more by this author.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 In one of many falling-down apartment buildings in Siberia, a group of people are trying to live with a ghost who won’t leave them alone. Mircha died in the winter from a fall, and as such hasn’t been properly buried. So he feels free to haunt the inhabitants of the building; his wife and son, Azade and Vitek, Olga, a newspaper translator, her son Yuri, his socially conscious girlfriend, and Tanya, a dreamy former museum guide. When a group of judges suggest that the museum where Tanya works, a collection of replicas and fakes, be judged for an award and funding, Tanya is chosen for the task and must enlist the whole building to help her succeed. But with a reckless ghost and a group of untidy children regularly hanging around, she fears her goal is impossible.
I think my first reaction to this book is ambivalence. I am fascinated by Russia; I love Russian history, Russian literature, the Russian language (I studied it for years), and visiting the country is one of my goals in life. So I fully expected to love this book, and was disappointed that it didn’t quite live up to expectations.
For one thing, it just felt meandering all over. There’s some supernatural activity going on; there is rather obviously a ghost haunting an apartment building, for one thing, but there is also a hole that goes nowhere and sprouts peculiar objects and a couple other strange things. I like magic in books, obviously, but there didn’t seem a reason for it here. It didn’t add anything but confusion to me. The story itself isn’t really that coherent; there’s a goal, but the chapters switch between characters and the book loses momentum pretty quickly every time.
Secondly, I just felt the whole plot bordered on ridiculous. The museum is not really a museum. How could it have won any awards when it is basically just a bunch of fake stuff that Tanya has mostly made? Statues are made out of foam, paintings are imitations, and worst of all, the icons are made out of popsicle sticks, foil, and gum, personally by Tanya. I could understand that the author was trying to get across that Russia isn’t what Americans think it is, especially after they’ve visited, but for me she went a step too far and I just struggled to enjoy the book. Although I will admit I had to laugh when she showed the visitors their copy of the rather disgusting fetus exhibit, which I think was collected by Peter the Great originally. I’m pretty sure most people would have a similar reaction!
If I liked anything, I did like Tanya, a chubby Russian girl with big dreams, all of which she writes down in her little book. She wants to become a stewardess on Aeroflot, Russia’s best airline, but she needs to lose weight first and just can’t manage it. She’s also very in love with Yuri (although why, I couldn’t tell you) and longs for him to abandon his noisy, greedy girlfriend Zoya but isn’t quite sure how to get him for herself.
Unfortunately, the many strands of The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight just never really tied together for me, and I didn’t quite get the point. Sadly disappointing.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 I’m going to have to quote the back of this one; I’m not sure how I’d go about summarizing it myself!
‘”If you look hard enough into the history of anything, you will discover certain things that seem to be connected but are not.” So claims a character in Frederick Reiken’s wonderful, surprising new novel, which seems in fact to be determined to prove the opposite. How else to explain the threads that link a middle-aged woman on vacation in Florida with an elusive sixties-era fugitive, as well as a dozen or so other characters whose lives seem to be mysteriously intertwined? As the story travels from Florida to Salt Lake City to New Jersey to the Caribbean to the Dead sea, this wondrous, exquisitely crafted novel glides effortlessly across time and space, reaching forward and back and building toward unexpected moments of revelation.’
I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I started this book. I immediately liked the way it was written, but I wasn’t sure where the stories were going. That first jump between the different strands threw me a little and I didn’t really understand how anything was connected. But it was a book club read and an ARC, so I persevered, and I ended up rewarded.
I loved the way the stories melded themselves together and sometimes actually didn’t. That’s okay; it felt a bit more realistic because of it and it perfectly balanced some of the coincidences throughout. Each small story led to another small story, each interesting and surprisingly full fleshed character to another, and every facet of the book wove together beautifully. I honestly could never have the imagination and capacity for narrative scope that Reiken must have; I am already an intense admirer of him and I’ve only read this one book. I’m eager to read more, after this.
I really appreciated the way so many of the stories connected with the past and the book showed how history can resonate through people’s lives and how events can influence actions and thoughts decades after they happened. People are not floating about in a vacuum; our history and culture make us who we are in many ways. World War II was the perfect choice for this book, I think, because so much of that does still affect us in enormous ways. Reiken has a lot to draw on and he does so without an absolutely masterful skill.
I would wholeheartedly recommend this beautiful book. It takes a little while to get into Day for Night, but once you are I am firmly convinced you’ll be hooked – and thrilled you read it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Kevin Khatchadourian, famously known as “KK”, killed nine people in his high school gym, in the process earning a long jail sentence and infamy – for him and his mother Eva. In a series of letters to her husband, Eva lays out the fabric of their lives from the beginning of their love story to Kevin’s fateful day in the gymnasium. Confronting difficult questions, such as who is to blame for a child’s violence, Eva lays her heart out for her husband and the reader.
I have heard so very much about this book since its publication date. It’s easy to know what it’s about; it’s revealed on the first few pages. Even then, though, it’s absolutely devastating as it continues to its inexorable end. It’s only as the book goes on do we realize how much Eva’s life changes because of an act her son committed. He’s gone to jail, but she’s lost her company, her house, her social life. She’s gone from traveling the world to write guidebooks for her highly successful company to staying in mostly to avoid acts of revenge.
The most important question the novel asks is whether or not a child’s crime can be the parents’ fault. Much as she tried, Eva struggled to love Kevin. She felt that he was malevolent when he was a baby and almost everything he did encouraged her suspicions. But Eva is wrong a time or two, which causes us to question just how evil Kevin really was, and what really drove him to kill like that. I think the saddest part is that even early on we realize that Eva does love Kevin even if she resented him from the start. She had him mainly to keep the husband she loved so desperately happy, which is always a mistake, but I thought she recognized more of herself in him than she ever wanted to admit.
As for my own experience, I recognized almost too much of my own self in Eva (how horrible is that?). She often comments on how she’s really too selfish to be a mother, she still wants to have her own life and somewhat resents her children for becoming more important than she is. I think every mother must have selfish moments – otherwise she wouldn’t be human – but I have to say it made me worry. And, of course, the fact that your kid could turn out to be a murderer is scary, but it happens to millions of mothers.
Despite its often difficult subject matter, I had a hard time putting We Need To Talk About Kevin down. I found myself thinking about it when I wasn’t reading and talking about it to everyone who had an ear to listen. It truly was fascinating and I found it completely deserving of its Orange Prize.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review, but I already had a copy. Expect a giveaway soon!
 Gwenni Morgan is caught between childhood and adolescence. She reads voraciously despite her mother’s disapproval, flies in her sleep, and wants to be a real detective. When one of the men from her small Welsh town goes missing, Gwenni decides that she’s going to try and find him. Her investigation leads to unwelcome truths about Gwenni’s town, family, and life. Those discoveries catapult her into an adulthood she may not be ready for.
This is a totally stunning coming-of-age story. I was surprised by how very much I enjoyed it. I loved Gwenni as a narrator. She was completely charming in her naivete about her small town life. I could see why the cover described it as heartbreaking though – with every coming-of-age, some innocence is lost, and it genuinely hurts to see this girl suffer even though it strengthens her in the end. Though her discoveries and the past make some sense, it’s still painful to discover it – and witness the consequences – right along with her. I loved the way she became a big sister figure to another character, a real manifestation of her growing maturity. It’s whimsical but realistic at the exact same time.
The way that Mari Strachan portrayed post-World War II life in Wales was absolutely fascinating. These regions are still feeling the effects of the war, as are the people. Gwenni’s father carries a limp from his own service and there are a variety of other consequences that are discovered as time goes on. It’s over but not forgotten. The conflict between England and Wales was very interesting as well; one of Gwenni’s friends doesn’t speak Welsh and there is some tension over what language the characters choose and when. I’m fascinated by this idea of Welsh pride in the face of continuous English dominance over the years. It perfectly fits with the image of a small town resisting and at the same time embracing change – Gwenni’s mother longs for new appliances but is downright superstitious about her own child.
This book is written so well, too. For me it was perfectly evocative of a twelve-year-old’s thought process while still retaining beauty and grace with some really charming passages. One particularly memorable scene here that had me longing for toast with butter:
The toast is crunchy at the edges and hot, and the butter is yellow and salty and so cold I can see the marks my teeth make in it although it’s melting by the time I’m on the last two bits and drips down my chin. I wipe my chin with my handkerchief and put a slice of bread on the fork to toast for Nain.
– p 226-7.
Doesn’t that sound surprisingly appealing?
I’m amazed that this was Mari Strachan’s debut novel. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. I’ll definitely be recommending The Earth Hums in B Flat to anyone who is interested in the many topics it deals with, or even just after a plain great read.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Isserley spends almost all of her days driving. She drives up and down the A9 in Scotland, looking for hitchhikers. Not just any hitchhikers, though. She’s looking for muscled men, alone in the world and without any ties. Sometimes she’ll drive past them three times just to make sure that they’re right. But why?
This is a book that was not at all what I’d expected. Your idea of the book from reading just that synopsis is probably the same as mine was, especially when we become aware in the opening pages that Isserley is wearing a low-cut top and checks herself in the mirror before pulling over. It’s not what you think it is. I’m actually surprised by the depth of Michel Faber’s talent, that he can turn out novels so different in style and genre; all they have in common are his beautiful prose style and talent for fantastic storytelling. It’s interesting because you might like all of them, or perhaps you might just like one. So far I have enjoyed all of them.
I don’t want to give away much about this one because so much of it is built on suspense and unpredictability. I had no idea what was coming and I think the book was better for it; it wouldn’t have had the same effect if I knew what was happening. I was left guessing up until the very end. I will say, however, that it could easily be classed as science fiction but it’s another one that could be easily appreciated by anyone who is looking to think a little more deeply about the issues presented. I was astonished as each layer of the story peeled away and I was confronted with some uncomfortable truths even as I was stuck to the page wondering what was going to happen next.
The whole book is ultimately an allegory for something we think very little about. It’s disturbing and makes you rethink certain things. It’s also, however, a very good story. I find it hard to believe that this was Faber’s first novel because it feels like he’s already a master of the craft. His writing is already well polished and really drew me into the story.
Under the Skin was an intensely compelling, thoughtful mystery. I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about it for some time to come.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the publisher for review.
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