Tuesday, October 15, 2013

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Laura Petrosian's Armenian heritage has not been of much interest to her until a friend tells her of an old picture she believes is Laura's grandmother. This takes her to a museum exhibit the picture was used to advertise, and then to a diary and collection of letters written in 1915. 

Elizabeth Endicott is a young graduate of Mount Holyoke College, living in 1915.  She has journeyed to Aleppo, Syria with her father on behalf of the Friends of Armenia to deliver food and medicine to the Armenian refugees fleeing a genocide by the Turks. Things are much worse in Aleppo than she ever imagined.


Laura tells the story of her Grandmother Elizabeth, the Armenian engineer Armen, who has lost his wife and daughter, and others who have come to help, or for other reasons, find themselves in the middle of this dark moment in history.


This is historical fiction, family history and a love story. It is a story of hopelessness, bravery and survival. Mostly it is the tale of Elizabeth Endicott becoming a woman, strong, beautiful and brave.


I enjoyed this book very much. I learned a lot. I appreciated the writer's slightly different style. Chris Bohjalian has written several best sellers and I will definitely be reading more from him.


Thursday, October 10, 2013

Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes

     Reading this  book was like watching a Hitchcock movie. There is a slow buildup, all the time you are feeling something is not right, the fear grows and then the horror hits you.  But wait! Another slow build up and the terror returns.

     Catherine has a fun life.  She is kind of a 'party girl' and sometimes presses her luck as she bar hops and parties with her friends. But it is all in fun and she doesn't expect to meet the man of her dreams one night. He is handsome, attentive, and the envy of her friends. Lee soon has all of them under his spell. Until Catherine begins to notice a change. He has become jealous, possessive, controlling. He keeps her more and more alone and isolated - and afraid. Finally, she escapes.

     But life with Lee has taken its toll.  Four years later, even though he is behind bars, Cathy compulsively checks her door and window locks - over and over again.She trusts no one and believes she will never be happy or normal again. Just when she begins a friendship with the new neighbor upstairs, she receives a phone call warning her that Lee is about to be released. She begins to see people from the past, objects moved in her apartment . . . Can she trust anyone? Is she finely going totally crazy? Or has Lee come for her?

     I had to put this book down and do something else for a few minutes a couple of times, just to relieve the tension! I'm sure the hands clutching my kindle had white knuckles. This book was everything a suspense novel should be.

    A few days ago I downloaded another book by Elizabeth Haynes. I'm hoping for the more of the same.

     

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

     Will had the money, so he did everything. He traveled, climbed mountains, lived on the edge. Then there was the accident . .  .  Louisa had the ordinary life of a lower middle class English girl. She had a sister in college, a nephew, Mum and Dad and a boyfriend. She thought little beyond those things. Her family really needed the extra income, so she took the job at 'the castle' caring for Will.

     This was not easy. Will is rude, sarcastic and really would rather be dead than paralyzed from the neck down. Louisa won't give up. At first because she needs the money so badly for her family and then because she truly begins to care about Will. He changes her life. She gives him a reason to wake each morning and Louisa is determined to make certain will has a reason to live.

     My knowledge of the hardship everyday life holds for the handicapped was increased ten fold. The toll it takes on the family is also incredible.

     I find it hard to actually describe this book without giving away the plot and it's detail that made this book one I could not put down. It touched me. It took twists I was not expecting and did not take a few turns I did expect.

     This was an original, heart warming and  informative book. It also broke my heart.
   
     I loved it.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Salazar by Seth Lynch

    As I read Salazar I kept thinking "Raymond Chandler would like this book."

     The detective story takes place between the two world wars. Paris in the 1930's is the backdrop for English ex-soldier and new private detective Salazar. And Lynch's writing makes this Paris very real to the reader.

     Salazar has come a long way. He suffers from PTSD, an unknown condition at this time, is avoiding his past and even his future. He lives in a seedy apartment above his office and has agreed to find Gustave Marty for Marie Poncelet. She's not very likable and he's not very good at detecting.  It's one of his first cases and what little life he has is often distracting in self destructive ways.

     Besides, Gustave Marty does not want to be found. It seems he has gone to great lengths to remain lost.

     The arrival of an old friend, Megan Fitzwilliam, puts some romance and a reason to live into the story. And just when life begins to look good, the danger becomes very real. The ending twist is unexpected.

      Salazar's wit made me smile often. Great dry humor and amusing characters.

     An excellent piece of noir with a moody, flawed - but endearing - detective, played on the screen inside my head by a young Humphrey Bogart.

     Well .  .  . ?

   

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Twenty Five Boxes of Books . . .

     About a month ago, my husband retired, we sold the house and moved across two states to Montana. The kids had all migrated away too, in previous years, and I was missing the grandkids. The move did not come soon enough for me but two old people alone packing and carrying get VERY tired.

     I got myself a couple bundles of two foot by one foot boxes, with handles, to pack my books. As I packed, I weeded out a few novels never read and not likely to be.  I added some deep history of a time period I had never had an interest in to the donation stack.  I returned a couple to a neighbor, having forgotten I had them.  Then started packing.

     Couldn't help myself.  They went into the boxes alphabetically, by subject.  Each box was labeled 'BOOKS' and a note was made below that of any favorite or important book that was in that box, such as The Eight, P&P, Jane Eyre or Michener, or The Thirteenth Tale and The Mirror or Rebecca .  .  .  I might want them before all are unpacked. I might.

     Despite my efforts, I had twenty five boxes of books. Twenty five boxes of books to take from southern Colorado to Montana. Jerry, my long suffering husband, hauled them without complaint and only a couple sideways looks as he lifted the heavier boxes. (The Beatle Anthology weighs a lot, as does a very complete founding fathers bio collection.) But he loves me. He has taken my books from Wyoming to Arizona, then to Montana, to Colorado and now, back to Montana.

     Twenty five boxes of books. (368 books on the Kindle and a couple dozen on the Kindle Fire help, but are not quite the same.)

     Can't wait to unpack them .  .  .

     Can't wait to just look at them on the shelves .  .  .

     Then I will be home again.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Six Years by Harlan Coben

    I think, for me, Harlan Coben's greatest skill is making me care about his protagonist. Jake Fisher, a professor teaching at a small but prestigious college, is someone I like.  He does his job well, follows the rules and lives a quiet life with only one major flaw in it. He can not forget the love of his life, Natalie Avery, who left him suddenly to marry another man, asking him to please leave them alone. Sure, they had not known each other for very long, but their relationship had seemed perfect. He did not understand and has never gotten over it.

    Six years later he sees the obituary for Todd, Natalie's husband, and attends the funeral.  The grieving widow is not Natalie. Jake is puzzled, tries to find Natalie, hoping to understand and reconnect. But no one remembers her. The art retreat where they met is no longer there and no one remembers it ever existed either. But Jake will not give up.  Even when he is threatened, kidnapped, shot at, beaten and arrested.

    The plot was twisted, exciting, and hooked me. (Okay, as always, Coben's plot is a little far fetched at times, but you don't mind. Really.) Jake's best friend, Sebastian, is interesting.The miner characters are also likable, unless they are bad guys, and then they are very sleazy and ruthless.

    A fun read with a satisfying ending.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fey

    I don't do a review on every book I read. Some are done well enough to finish but have no lasting hold on me. Kim Fey's debut novel was one of the good ones.  The book takes place in 1925. Fey's writing style was somewhat reminiscent of the writing of that time also. Not sure why, but something in her writing had that feel.

    The story begins with Irene Blum being passed over for the position of the new curater at the Seattle Brooke Museum. She has spent her life in that museum.  First as a child being brought to the museum by her father and then with the wealthy collector Henry Simms as her champion, she had worked along side Professor Howard, the long time curator.  Doing much of his work and research, but always giving him the credit, the Professor had assured her that the curator position would be hers at his retirement. It did not happen.

     Years before, in her fathers belongings, Simms had found an old diary. This diary written by a long ago missionary, has clues and a map of an area in Cambodia that could lead Irene to to the discovery of ancient scrolls. Scrolls that could lead her to recognition and success in her field.  With Simms' encouragement and  money, Irene might redeem her carrier.  But Simms insists Irene recruit the help of Simone Merlin, wife of a communist reformer now living in Shanghai. Simone was raised in Cambodia.

    Half of this book is a little slow with a long lead-up to the expedition and adventure part of the story.  Many characters introduced and the atmosphere and climate - political as well as tropical- carefully described. But once the main characters are established and they set out to find the scrolls, this book really held me. I did not always like Irene, but I always admired her.

    This was unlike any of the books I have read recently and I thoroughly enjoyed all of it.  Even the slow beginning. I look forward to more fiction from Kim Fey.

     

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman

    So, my daughter-in-law gave this book to me for Christmas. I could not wait to get home and read it after enjoying so much the first Lippman book I had read. I had to drive from Tulsa to Colorado Springs and then recover from a rotten case of strep before I could get to it. I was not disappointed.

    Seven years before, two eleven year old girls are found responsible for a babies death and sentenced to child prison. They have now turned 18 and are being released.  The two girls are Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller. Unlikely friends, Alice was the only child of a Hippie single mother. Ronnie, the only girl in a low-income dysfunctional family. 

    What actually happened that summer seven years before, is squeezed from the characters. Squeezed is the only word that fits the slow, almost agonising way Lippman brings the facts out of the characters in her novels. A little from the babies mother who is the daughter of a black judge. A few facts from Alice's mother. Some information from Alice's public defender. And as we get to know the girls, they give us clues too.

    My theory as to who killed the baby and why, changed three times as I read this book.  Who I thought the people involved were, changed by the ending too.  Each person had so many hidden feelings and knowledge, it seemed impossible to come to a conclusion until just before I was told by Lippman.

    Although I think this book was excellent, I hated the ending, mostly because I was not prepared for it, though in hind site, I should have been.

    Again, one of Laura Lippman's stories haunts me and I can not stop thinking about it. This writer is unique in her ability to keep the reader hanging on, even after you have closed and shelved the book.

    I hear this is soon to be a movie with Dakota Fanning. Can't wait.

Brave Enemies by Robert Morgan

    This is the story of sixteen year old Josie Summers. She lives with her mother and step-father in upcountry Carolina in 1780.  The War of Independence still goes on and the British steal what little they have on their way through. Her mother is ill. Life is hard.

    After killing the stepfather who raped her, Josie dresses in his clothes to disguise herself as a man and runs away. Lost, hungry and afraid, she comes across a young Methodist minister, John Trethman and begins assisting him with his traveling ministry.

    As you would expect, John finds her out and, yes they fall in love, but it is not to be an easy thing. He is riddled with guilt for living with her when he thought she was a boy, she is now pregnant with her step-fathers child, and the British kidnap John. Alone again.

    Later, when Josie finds herself enlisted in the North Carolina Militia, the detail of the soldiers life during the Revolutionary War is wonderfully told and terrible to realise.  Robert Morgan is expert at putting the reader right there, feeling it all.

    I did get my happy ending, but after much grief, pain and the Battle of Cowpens.

    Excellent historical fiction.