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 Newly married Viktor and Liesel Landauer want to build a house for themselves, but not just any house. Viktor is the head of a huge car company in their newly created Czechoslovakia of the 1920’s, and they want a completely modern, free building, sparing them from the confines of heavy castles and palaces. In that house, the centerpiece is the Glass Room, a space filled with windows, light, and purity. Those windows, however, cannot restore light to the souls of the people who live and eventually work within the house, setting their darkness of spirit in sharp contrast with the beauty of the room itself.
Everything fits perfectly together in this book. The language is beautiful, the plot is interesting and ends perfectly, and the characters are multi-faceted and interesting. It highlights an obviously important period in history but from the slightly different viewpoint of the various ethnic groups in Czechoslovakia, living in a country constructed by a treaty and consistently struck with severe issues. There’s a lot of fiction (and, obviously, non-fiction) about World War II and its aftermath out there and I think this book took another angle to distinguish itself, and it worked.
It was interesting that eventually, while their house is occupied by others, Viktor and Liesel lead the strange life of exiles from Nazi Germany and the countries they’ve taken over. I can’t recall if I ever read a book about where the rich went when they fled, but it was interesting, especially when they tried to move again to a more permanent home and had to deal with other countries’ stupid prejudice. As we know in the beginning, they make it through. It isn’t all sunshine and roses for the characters, though, as those left behind endure the incredibly difficult experiences forced upon them by Nazi occupation and imprisonment in concentration camps.
I also really liked that the house itself was almost a character in the book. It’s used for different purposes throughout, but everyone has their own relationship with it. It makes them feel certain ways, reminds them of their lives – in certain ways, the house’s open spaces tempt them to do what they might not do otherwise. It’s an interesting dynamic.
I can definitely see why The Glass Room was nominated for the Booker Prize. It exposes the darkness and the light within people, while exploring an interesting and slightly different aspect of a war that impacted so much of our culture. Very worth reading.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from a publicist for review.
 Legendary food critic Pierre Arthens is dying, but he doesn’t want his family or friends at his deathbed. No, he wants to isolate the food that he needs to taste one more time before he goes. And so he searches his memories of his life, trying to find that moment which is eluding his grasp. Meanwhile, his friends and family reflect on him, his attitude towards them, and their feelings, and it becomes clear that this book isn’t really about food, after all.
One thing is certain; this book will make you very, very hungry. Unfortunately I don’t have it with me as I’m writing this review, but its descriptions of the food that Pierre has eaten are lush and amazing, and he eats everything from huge rustic meals to the most refined fare at restaurants. I was wondering if food critics really examined their food in such detail, but then I figured they must. I enjoy Barbery’s writing, assuming my translation is fluid, and so reading this book was very pleasant for me.
I didn’t think it was as good as The Elegance of the Hedgehog, though. There were no insights that I felt applied to my own life outside the book, if that makes sense, aside from maybe showing love towards people that I love, which I think most normal people do anyway. Pierre’s character just never rose above his neglect of family and friends in search of food, and it becomes clear that he’s deprived himself of all the love that he could have had, and deprived his children and wife of a proper husband and father. He’s extremely self-absorbed and the only thing he really loves is food. His realizations all came a little too late for me to appreciate them, and I found I enjoyed the other characters’ chapters more than his, even if I did enjoy reading about his culinary delights. I could really feel for the other characters and it was fun to see a few from Hedgehog turn up to talk about Pierre, since he’s the one that dies early on in that book.
The Gourmet is so short, however, that it’s probably worth a read even if you don’t like Pierre. I’d definitely recommend it for food lovers in particular, and for anyone who has already enjoyed Barbery’s work.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Two boys, Julian Cain and Tom Wellwood, are wandering around a half-completed museum in London when they come across a third boy, Philip Warren, drawing the museum’s sculptures. He has fled from his family and his life in the horrible pottery factories, and the Wellwood family takes him in and finds him a place with Benedict Fludd, a strange and temperamental sculptor. At first glance, all of these families appear happy, particularly the large Wellwood family with successful children’s book author Olive Wellwood and her banker husband Humphry at its head. As the years go by, however, and the children grow up and learn the realities of the world, they understand that their childhood was an illusion as paper thin as Olive’s fairy tales.
I loved this book. I don’t think everyone will love it; it’s a long, dense book, more a portrait of family and art than anything with a plot. Although, to be honest, I didn’t think the descriptions of pots were as boring as everyone says, and there weren’t as many as I’d expected, either. I loved the intricate detail and the thought that went into this book. I felt it was such a gorgeous picture of late Victorian England, and Edwardian England, and even, heartbreakingly, World War I era England. It was a full picture of a society both different from our own and becoming our own. Honestly, I could live in this book’s atmosphere, even if I wouldn’t particularly want to live in a time where options for women were so limited.
I adored the children in each of their various ways and was fascinated by their coming-of-ages. There are so many different strands with each of them in the novel and their fates are all bound up together. I was riveted by Dorothy’s determination to become a doctor, for example, and I completely admired her ambition and devotion to science. I cheered on her success. I longed for the happiness of Elsie and Philip, two children seriously disadvantaged by their upbringing. I was torn by Tom’s story, and didn’t understand why his mother didn’t understand. In short, each of the characters has their own plot arcs, and some are heartbreaking, while some are joyful.
Closing the book with the effects of World War I makes the entire rest of the book feel idyllic. I felt as though I was feeling what the British must have felt as they sent their sons off to die, each with their own life story as these character possess, and I found the entire last section absolutely heartbreaking. Here is a book that depicts the horrors of war, how each life is cut off abruptly with no preparation and no ending. It’s easy to see how this changed England and this book brought it home to me.
I’m not sure I loved The Children’s Book as much as I loved Possession, but the more I think about it, the more I think that might be possible. It has made this review hard to write because I can’t pin down exactly why. But I’ve tried, and if you have the patience for this, I believe it will reward you immensely.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the Amazon Vine program for review.
 This gigantic book opens with the wedding of Savita Mehra and Pran Kapoor, uniting their families (and a whole lot of related families) for the rest of the book, though they have barely seen one another before. Part of the book revolves around Lata Mehra’s search for a suitable boy (hence the title), which her mother mainly controls, although Lata appears to be innately drawn towards the unsuitable boys. Another character, Maan, begins the novel as quite a superficial young man, not really interested in his business or his father’s role in government, mostly drawn to women, but he grows to become surprisingly lovable. And there are political forces at work throughout India, which is very newly independent and partitioned from Pakistan; struggles between Hindus and Muslims, between governmental parties, between the city and the countryside. Not only is the book immense, but so are the themes it covers.
This book probably took me the longest of any book I’m going to read this year, but I did it on purpose. It’s almost 1500 pages long (so it might be the actual longest book as well) and I attempted to spread it out over two weeks, although once I got towards the end I just read on to see what happened. I really, really enjoyed it. It’s properly satisfying and immersive as just such a chunkster should be. I did have my favorite parts, mostly to do with Lata and Maan (which is totally why they’re in my summary) and I also really liked the relationship between Pran and Savita, which goes from them barely knowing one another to a very sweet love. The book takes place over about a year’s time in India in the 50’s, so a ton of political action is happening. India is trying to define itself without the British, without part of its territory, and the process is messy.
I will admit that I found most of the political sections boring. I wasn’t really interested in the bills they were passing or all the arguments that went on. I felt like I could get what was happening from the parts that took place in the countryside, which I enjoyed more anyway, and which certainly had more of a human touch to them as we could see what various laws and decisions were taking effect. The actual politics don’t take up much of the book, but I definitely began skimming those parts toward the end to get back to the characters I cared about. I also was occasionally confused by how the characters classified themselves. I didn’t know the difference between people from various regions or castes and there was no way I could tell a Muslim from a Hindu by their names. I knew there was a caste system, but I guess I didn’t realize that it still existed so much fifty years ago, and I wonder how prevalent it is now. I was also really surprised at how much the color of skin was an issue. I was startled each time Mrs Rupa Mehra worried she was going to have a black grandchild and sought out a fair-skinned husband for Lata as a result.
It was wonderful to live in this book for a little while, and I already find that I miss many of the characters and I want to know what happened next. I was somewhat dissatisfied with one aspect of the ending, but that’s not enough to make me dislike the rest of the book. I’m very glad I read it and it had me thinking about India’s independence, a topic I was never really all that interested in before, maybe just because I never had reason to be. But at its core, this is still a novel about people and that’s why I really loved it. The characters are fully fleshed out and experience the full gamut of emotions; almost everything you could imagine happens in this book. I felt like I could have easily lived among them and become friends with them in real life, and Vikram Seth let me for the space of these pages. I’m very glad I have An Equal Music in my TBR piles at home, and I can imagine myself picking it up very soon.
A Suitable Boy is a huge, fantastic read with, to me, both a foreign and a very familiar focus. It was well worth the time I spent reading it and it’s a great start to my ongoing attempt to read outside of my comfort zone.
 Renee Michel is, at first glance, a nondescript middle-aged concierge of an apartment building in Paris. But she cultivates that image, and underneath her purposely plain exterior is a quick, intelligent brain. She uses her job as a way to hide her vibrant interest in philosophy, books, movies, and beauty. Upstairs lives a 12-year-old girl named Paloma who has determined to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot handle being so disdained and undervalued. Both of their lives are set on a collision course when one of the upstairs neighbors falls ill and everything in the apartment building begins to change.
It’s hard to review a book in which I really disliked the first 100 pages and loved the following 200. At first it just seemed consumed with philosophy. Nothing was happening, Renee was constantly musing about things I don’t understand or particularly care about, and Paloma was completely doom and gloom about her life and her family. Honestly, I don’t like philosophy and never have. It just seems like a lot of musing about nothing particularly interesting. And then the neighbor died, and someone else moved in who changed everything. And somehow the characters’ musings became about life, and love, and missed opportunities, and caring what you do in the world. They became more relevant and more interesting.
It’s hard to go on without spoiling why this book became great. It’s when the characters collide that it happens, and they recognize in themselves people that are just like them. It’s a shout-out against the class system and defies Renee’s idea that because she began life as a poor woman, that rich people will always harm her and take advantage of her. It does its little bit to show that people are all just people and we never know what’s going on in someone else’s head. I’m not sure the ending didn’t really take away that message, that association with rich people will harm poor people, but it really moved me. It made me wonder if Barbery was reflecting on the way things are in France at the moment. I’ve never been there, so I don’t know how strong the class system still is, but reviews online (and this book) seem to suggest that it is still very present.
Anyway, I would really recommend The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I’d just suggest to stick to it a little longer than you might a normal book. It’s fairly short, but it is quite a touching journey.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Aqa Jaan’s family has lived in the house of the mosque for centuries. Two of his cousins also live in the house; one is the mosque’s imam and the other is the muezzin. At first glimpse, their lives are going about as they have been for hundreds of years; television exists, but the house’s inhabitants studiously avoid it, and the women still cover themselves even though others in Tehran no longer bother. The family’s daughters are waiting for respectable men to approach their families to offer marriage, and the imam’s son is studying diligently to take his father’s place when he dies. Yet all is not the same, as a revolution is forming in 1970s Iran, and that revolution stands to change the family’s ways forever.
I found this book totally fascinating. I know so little of Iran, let alone what it’s like to live there, and I really felt like this book put me right in the midst of a revolution. Enough of their culture was established so that I felt terror and confusion just as the house’s residents did, and I was amazed at what some of the family was capable of doing for political purposes. It was all in the name of Islam, which makes it worse for me. I could see today’s political situation in the making, and it made me so sad that Iran couldn’t have continued on its former path of slow liberation without becoming extremists and closing up completely. The book does reveal how things can spiral out of control, without the people necessarily giving consent or realizing what they are doing. A few extremists can change the entire country given just a little encouragement, and that’s exactly what happens here.
My favorite character in the book was definitely Aqa Jaan. It’s predicted early in the novel that he’ll be the last one left of the family, and indeed this seems to be the case as his family either become extremists or become targets in the revolution, or simply disappear of their own volition. His emotions are often heartbreaking and I wished things could be different for him as his family began to fall apart. This is such a stunning novel of a country falling apart; it’s almost as though Aqa Jaan’s family is a microcosm of that, split between all the different factions, while he just wants life to remain as it has been for hundreds of years.
There is a lot of anti-Americanism here, but given the political circumstances, it’s understandable and didn’t put me off the book despite the fact that I am American. I also was left wondering how much of the book is true. The author, who fled Iran in 1988, was an illegal journalist and leftist there, and I expect much of the revolution was witnessed by him first-hand. He’s using a pen name here to honor executed friends (though his own name is available on wikipedia) and he dedicates the book to his own Aqa Jaan, so my curiosity is definitely piqued.
Honestly, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It inspires me to read more non-fiction to learn more about the conflict and to read more multi-cultural fiction. This book helped me understand what’s happening in the world today and still engaged all of my emotions and thoughts. You should not miss The House of the Mosque.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 One snowy night, a small girl named Norah appears outside Margaret Quinn’s door. Margaret’s daughter Erica ran away ten years ago to join a cult with her boyfriend, and in the meantime Margaret has lost her husband to illness and now lives alone. Unwilling to lose the girl that God seems to have given to her in response to her prayers, Margaret decides to pass Norah off as her granddaughter. A mysterious and magical child, Norah tells people that she is an angel, and that her mission is about to begin.
Angels of Destruction is not a book that is immediately appealing. The first third or so focuses on Norah, who is very difficult to tack down and label. The following third goes back in time to witness Erica’s viewpoint when she left her parents, and the end constitutes an interweaving of these two narratives, seemingly brought about by Norah’s actions. This is a book that could epitomize winter; whenever I think of it I imagine that cold snowy night when Norah entered Margaret’s life, and the grief that pervades the book easily adds to its slightly melancholy feel.
While I enjoyed the way the book was plotted and I liked its final message of hope, I have to conclude that this isn’t really a book for me. It’s woven through with this concept of angels and faith, but it’s hard to tell whether or not Norah actually is one, or if she’s just a crazy little girl. I’d like to think that it was a message of faith, but I wish the author had been a little more concrete with what she was, rather than having her just up and vanish. I feel like it could have been more powerful that way, if the knowledge was there rather than just the wondering. As it was, however, I was left wanting.
Overall, I’d have to say that Angels of Destruction was mostly fine. I enjoyed reading it, particularly the section about Erica, I wanted to find out what happened at the end, and I was occasionally touched by its beautiful prose and family connections. I was left with questions, though, and I never felt that I really was loving it or was compelled to go back to it. It’s hard to describe why I feel so lukewarm about this book, but unfortunately the fact remains.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 This companion novel to Oryx and Crake takes the reader into the pleeblands, exploring the effect that Crake’s super virus had on the ordinary people. Toby and Ren both spent a time as God’s Gardeners, a religion devoted to worshipping God through plants and science, but later leave the group through events out of their control. Toby, an older woman, is working at a spa when the catastrophe happens, and manages to stay alive through eating the edible treatments. Ren is a young woman working as a trapeze dancer in a sex club, thankfully locked into a controlled room and saved from the virus. As these women attempt to survive, they wonder if their friends have survived, and reflect on the paths their lives took before they ended up here.
Whereas it was difficult to relate to any of the characters in Oryx and Crake, it’s amazingly easy here, and I feel comfortable saying that Ren and Toby put a human face on this dystopian world. They are the marginalized members of society, but they are still real women forced to confront women’s issues. Toby is driven to the Gardeners after her boss basically rapes her and then decides that she is his, probably intending to kill her. When Ren joins the Gardeners, she is just a young girl at the mercy of her mother’s mercurial temperament, and later suffers from unrequited love with a man who really does not deserve her. In a totally alien, if well-described, world, Ren and Toby are easy to relate to and bring the suffering home in a way that Oryx and Crake fails to do. Ren was actually my favorite, if only because we watch her grow up. Even though she eventually ends up in one of the elite high schools, she’s still dealing with issues every teenager understands:
I saw the temptation. I saw it clearly. I would come up with more bizarre details about my cultish life, and then I would pretend that I thought all these things were as warped as the HelthWyzer kids did. That would be popular. But also I saw myself the way the Adams and Eves would see me: with sadness, with disappointment. Adam One, and Toby, and Rebecca. And Pilar, even though she was dead. And even Zeb.
How easy it is, treachery. You just slide into it. But I knew that already, because of Bernice.
– p. 195
This is truly a wonderful novel. I felt the dystopian world was a bit less clear here, perhaps more ridiculous without the inside view, but because I’d read Oryx and Crake, I didn’t have many questions. Rather, the novels worked in tandem, and I really think it helped to read one right after the other. I don’t think it’s necessary, but it provides a complete and intriguing picture. Some of the same characters appear, and actually had bigger parts than I’d expected, plus some bigger issues are clarified. If I had to choose, though, I’d choose this one. I’m all about great characters, and Ren and Toby win the day for me. I must admit, however, that I generally skipped over the God’s Gardener homilies and songs, but I didn’t find it deterred from the plot.
I loved The Year of the Flood* and I highly recommend it.
*I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the publisher for review.
 Humanity has been devastated by a virus and Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy, is perhaps the only human to have survived, for all he knows. With him are his friend Crake’s perfect creations, people genetically modified to become more perfect than ordinary human beings. They have better ways of sustaining themselves, go into heat like animals to avoid difficult romantic situations, and can even purr to heal injuries. Snowman, however, is having a much more difficult time surviving, and juxtaposes his struggle to find more food with his personal history, his love affair with Oryx, and how he found himself to be alone.
This is only my second Margaret Atwood novel, and after loving The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m really wondering why it took me so long to read another. I adore dystopias and Atwood has created another intriguing world here, if not quite as plausible. When Jimmy was a child, the Corporations ruled supreme, essentially acting as one big government. The world outside of the Corporations was unimportant, the people only used as test subjects and cash cows as medicines were infused with illnesses to keep the market booming. If any worker betrayed insider secrets, they were killed. This was the world of Jimmy’s childhood, and while he wasn’t brilliant enough for a high position, his best friend Glenn, later known as Crake, certainly was. It is Crake who sets out to change everything and puts in motion the events that destroy the world as everyone knows it.
While I couldn’t say I actually liked any of the characters, which was the book’s weakest point, it was hard for me to tear myself away from this book. I was fascinated by the development of the plot; we know early on that the world has changed drastically, but finding out just how and why was riveting. I didn’t like Jimmy/Snowman all that much, due to his escapades with women and his irritating obsession with Oryx, but I loved the curiosities of his world. His struggle to find more food allows us to relate to him even as we dislike him, but it also serves the purpose of guiding us through more of the world.
For me, the best part was the Crakers, the genetically altered beings that Crake created. What I liked about them was that even though they were modified to escape supposed human foibles, they still exhibited that humanity. This was mainly through their acceptance of a god-like story featuring, as expected, Oryx and Crake. Even though they’re reportedly hard-wired to miss out on all mistakes, they are still people and it’s almost as though we can see their mythology evolving. Snowman doesn’t know how else to explain it to them and they latch on remarkably easily. Fascinating stuff, and that really cemented the entire book for me.
Atwood is a remarkable author. Oryx and Crake* has convinced me that I really need to get reading more of her work. I certainly recommend this, especially to those who enjoy dystopias and science fiction.
*I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from the library.
 Frank and April Wheeler are desperately unhappy. Married for the sake of their children, living lives that they believe are meaningless, in a suburban town full of similar ordinary couples, they are both clamoring inwardly for a change. They believe they are superior to their neighbors and are determined to prove it. April comes up with the genius idea of uprooting and moving to France, where she can work and Frank can find the intellectual fulfillment that he’s always longed for. Unfortunately, this plan sets the couple on a path to their own personal tragedy.
This is a deft, amazing book. Frank and April despair at the ordinariness of their neighbors in the suburbs, lamenting the blandness and sameness of their lives, but the reader knows better. Yates treats us to an inside view of the Wheelers’ closest neighbors, and we learn that one of their friends mistakenly believes he is in love with April, while the other older couple has a son committed to a mental institution. When that son starts to espouse the same views that Frank and April have, we begin to realize that everyone is slightly off-kilter here. Everyone is unhappy and dissatisfied. Frank and April are deluded by their own aspirations into thinking that they’re better than their neighbors, when really they quite simply belong. They believe they’re extraordinary, but over the course of the novel, we realize that they are perfectly ordinary. They fit right in.
It is certainly those ordinary characters that succeed as the huge draw for this novel. Their humanity is overwhelmingly real. Frank, for example, is insufferably arrogant at times, and totally misguided about almost everyone he interacts with, but few people set him straight. Worse, he says one thing and thinks another. He claims to want to go to France and find himself, but it becomes clear very early on that he’s actually quite satisfied with his job. He’s bored but he doesn’t want to disturb the status quo; he believes he is special, but he isn’t going to put forth the effort to actually prove it. Perhaps he knows it isn’t true, even as he’s unwilling to admit it. April seeks to recapture something with her acting and briefly succeeds, only to become an embarrassing failure when she doesn’t actually prove to be as spectacular as she’d hoped. Their lives are empty and they are always seeking, but never finding.
Of course, the book is very well written, and in the one instance that I’d have loved to share passages, the book had to go back to the library. Regardless, I could easily place myself in these characters’ shoes and there wasn’t anything that threw me out of the story. The eeriest part about it is that Revolutionary Road makes us think about our own lives and those of our neighbors. Frank and April are still very relevant almost fifty years on as people consistently search for meaning in their lives. It often seems that we are all on a quest for fulfillment and in that respect, this book’s message is haunting, reminding us to seek happiness in what we have and not what is constantly out of reach.
*I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from the library.
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