Review of Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

I liked Gillespie and I, I just didn’t love it as much as I expected to.  It takes place in turn of the century Scotland and revolves around an artist, Ned Gillespie, and his family.  The story is told by Harriet Baxter, a single, well-off woman who meets the Gillespies and becomes their close friend.  She tells the story as an elderly woman in 1933, recounting the events of 1888, when she visits Glasgow to see the World’s Fair exhibition, and decides to stay for a while as her life becomes enmeshed in the complicated lives of the Gillespies.

This is a story with a lot of twists and turns, and I don’t want to tell you too much.  Gillespie is a talented artist but his family is struggling financially, and his wife Annie is overwhelmed by the needs of their two children, Rose and Sibyl.  Harriet has time on her hands, no family to speak of except an emotionally-distant stepfather, and income to spare, so she immediately looks for ways to further Gillespie’s career and help Annie with the family.

Harriet isn’t an easy character to warm to.  She throws her money around and seems to have no sense of boundaries.  Even though this is 1888, she doesn’t stop to consider whether spending time alone with a married man is appropriate.  She has the best of intentions and cares about her friends, and if she’s a little arrogant at times, it’s forgivable (mostly).

If you like stories told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, you’ll enjoy this book.  Harris brings subtlety and complexity to the character of Harriet.  You know you’re not getting the entire picture, and that keeps you reading.

As historical fiction, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get more turn-of-the-century art and life in Scotland.  I love that period and I especially love Scotland and the work of artists like Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  But his work, and the Art Nouveau movement, all come after 1988, which isn’t the fault of this book.  But I still wanted to learn more about the artists of that time.

I also didn’t get much feel for Scotland or Glasgow at the time, maybe because the book is told from the point of view of an English woman, whose only impression of the Scots is that they hate the English.  In general, I didn’t feel I was immersed in a specific time and place, which is why I read historical fiction.

I also found this book a little slow moving, especially in the beginning.  It tells a good story, but ultimately I didn’t love it.  This is a book most readers have raved about, so use your own judgment.

Review of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life is one of those books that’s hard to review.  It’s a challenging read and it’s got glowing critical reviews.  I’m a big fan of Kate Atkinson, so I expected to like it, and I did.  Be warned though, it’s quite a departure from her other books.  This is a book that combines historical fiction with alternate reality and a good dose of philosophy.  It’s been called science fiction although it definitely blurs a lot of genre lines.

As its title suggests, this is a book about Ursula, a girl born in 1910 England to Sylvie and Hugh Todd.  She’s a middle child of five, a serious, introspective child favored by her father but not so much by her mother.  They live at Fox Corner, a fairly idyllic life in a bustling, well-to-do household. Her story would be an average one of anyone who lives through this turbulent time period, except that for some reason, when she dies, she gets to start again.  Not in a new life but the same one – only she gets to do things a little differently each time and that leads her life down many different directions.  She’s an abused wife in one life, and a bomb warden in another.  She dies at birth in one life, and lives into her fifties in another.

To give you a sense of Atkinson’s writing, here’s Ursula’s perspective as a baby:

Bare branches, buds, leaves – the world as she knew it came and went before Ursula’s eyes.  She observed the turn of the seasons for the first time.  She was born with winter already in her bones, but then came the sharp promise of spring, the fattening of the buds, the indolent heat of summer, the mold and mushroom of autumn.  From within the limited frame of the pram hood she saw it all.  To say nothing of the somewhat random embellishments the seasons brought with them – sun, clouds, birds, a stray cricket ball arcing silently overhead, a rainbow once or twice rain more often than she would have liked.

What makes this book so thoughtful and entertaining is that 1) we get to see how many paths one person’s life might take, given slightly different actions in each one; and 2) we get to experience the years of 1910 through WWII through a lot of different perspectives.  Instead of giving us multiple characters experiencing different parts of the war, Atkinson gives us the same character, just with different knowledge and experience.

The challenge is making sense of what this all means.  Is Ursula special or are we all living parallel lives?  This book plays on déjà vu and those uneasy feelings you get that you can’t pin a cause to.  I certainly get those.  You ever get the feeling you shouldn’t get on the road one day, or a gnawing at your stomach but you can’t say why? Or a feeling you know someone when you’ve never met?  In Ursula’s world, all of those feelings have meaning in another life.  The difference is that Ursula occasionally feels strongly enough about those feelings to act on them, and those actions send her life spiraling in a new direction.

Another question the book raises is, are Ursula’s lives building in a way where she’s improving each time?  Or is she saving herself from drowning only to become a lonely alcoholic in another life.  Atkinson seems to be suggesting we can exert some control over our lives (but only some).  She brings in notions of karma, fate, and consciousness.  Philosophy isn’t my strong point, and I have to admit I’m not sure if this is the kitchen sink approach to the subject or if there is one clear meaning Atkinson is trying to convey.

But that’s one of the things that makes this book a worthwhile read.  It’s not an easy read though.  Ursula’s life stops and starts abruptly, and keeping track of the many different characters and timelines is an effort.  Sometimes the book is written chronologically, and sometimes it seems to hop around to different times.

Ursula herself is a fairly stoic character, and at times, like in Nazi Germany, I really wanted to see more emotion from her.  She seems to understand what the Nazis are doing yet has no reaction to it.   Other times, her quiet strength is admirable and when she’s at her lowest points, it can be devastating.

As usual, I’m trying so hard not to say too much, I’m not sure I’m making sense.  This is powerful historical fiction, that plunks you down in the middle of World War I and World War II in a very unique way.  Her description of London during the bombings is particularly vivid.  It’s always fascinating to see these years through the eyes of women, because women’s lives changed in so many ways during this time.  And Kate Atkinson is such a skilled writer, she really takes you there.

I can’t help but compare Atkinson to Kate Morton, having recently read The Secret Keeper.  Both are skilled writers, but where Morton writes everything in high melodrama, Atkinson writes with a depth and subtlety that I much prefer.  You could make any of Morton’s books into a great movie, and her books are certainly enjoyable.  I’d hate to see anyone try to make Life After Life into a movie.

If you like Atkinson, World War II historical fiction, or philosophy, there’s something for you in this book.  Don’t pick up this book expecting a Jackson Brodie-like mystery novel, or straight-up historical fiction.  This is a book you’ll work at, and think about, and appreciate for its complexity.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review of How Angels Die by David-Michael Harding

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author in exchange for a review.  Historical fiction, French Resistance, female spies.  What’s not to like?

In a word, WOW.  This was a Made-Me-Miss-My-Metro-Stop kind of book.  Literally – and I can’t remember the last time that happened.

Honestly, I went into this book with a little skepticism.  I read the first chapter and thought the relationship between the sisters felt a little forced.  One’s a sexy seductress, one’s a tough-as-nails soldier. They seem to have had the same argument for years – is it better to kill people in the name of war or is it better to sleep with them for their secrets?

It’s the story of two sisters in France during the Nazi occupation.  The McCleash family hates the Nazis, they just hate in different ways – Dad rants into his pipes, Mom quietly sews Nazi uniforms, and the two daughters, Claire and Monique, work for the French Resistance.  Monique steals the secrets of Nazi officers by dancing and drinking — and other things when necessary.  Her family hates what she’s doing, but it does have results.  Claire, on the other hand, is a gun-wielding soldier in the Resistance Army who can’t get enough of killing Nazis.  Monique’s weakness is that she longs for love and passion based on honesty.  Claire’s weakness is that she hates so much it threatens to consume her.

The surprise is that Harding brings some subtlety into this story of extremes.  Whose activities are worth more to the Resistance?  Who has the most to lose?  Claire puts her life at risk every day but so does Monique — only Claire earns respect from her father and conspirators while Monique is labeled a whore (the implication being that she really enjoys what she’s doing).  Where are the moral lines, and who is most likely to lose herself in the part that she’s playing?

The appearance of the sisters triggered a soft hum of recognition.  As various members of the movement passed within arm’s reach they stopped to hug Claire or grip her arm in silent acknowledgement.  Of the many who passed, few said a word outside of a soft hello and fewer still acknowledged Monique beyond a negligible nod.

Be warned: this book opens up with a vicious rape.  Harding pulls no punches, which is fine; I don’t want the war sugar-coated.   It’s page-turning historical fiction — brutal but also sad and even beautiful.  Is it over-dramatic at times?  Yes.  This book would be a perfect movie.  And yes, it’s blatantly emotional and even sappy.  But I forgive Harding for that.

If the book goes over the top a few too many times (the idea of Monique as whore/saint gets a little overplayed) it’s got a story that will keep you riveted.  I won’t say more.  Harding introduces a cast of fascinating, at times disturbing characters that you don’t know whether to love or hate, but you won’t forget them.   It starts out a little slow, but at some point in this book I felt like I walked right into Monique and Claire’s lives, it felt that real to me.

That’s when I missed my Metro Stop.  When you look up from a book and don’t know where you are, you know it’s good.

I will say I wish there had been a Jewish character or two in the story.  Harding makes it clear that the Jews are all gone by this time, and maybe that’s historically accurate.  I like to think the French Resistance had a lot of Jewish fighters in it, but maybe that’s only the case earlier in the Occupation.

I can’t tell you whether the book is historically accurate, but I can tell you I couldn’t put it down.

So if French Resistance and sister spies sounds good to you, I highly recommend this book.

Review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

My Classics Club list is a list of 50 books and authors I’ve always felt I should read, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is exactly that.  My sense is that past generations of girls had to read this book in school but not anymore.  And if I’m being honest, if a teacher had made me read this book because I was a girl, like Jane Eyre, it would have earned my eternal resentment.

And yet, this was an amazing novel that really immersed me in a different time and place.  And it’s cool to know that generations of women (at least the last few) have been reading this book.

The book was published in the 40s but takes place mostly from about 1912 to 1917.  It shows the U.S. on the cusp of World War I, but also on the cusp of electricity, women’s suffrage, Prohibition, and other changes.  It’s a big story but also a very small story.  It’s the story of Frances Nolan, a girl growing up in poverty with her mother, father, and brother in Brooklyn.  It’s about children sent to sell junk for pennies and haggle with the baker for an extra loaf of stale bread. It’s about picking out penny candy and watching the neighborhood girls dress up to go out on Saturday night.

Francie is eleven when the book begins.  She’s smart, reads a book every day from the library, but struggles in a school with abusive teachers.  Her mother, Katie, works endlessly scrubbing floors and cleaning houses to keep the family alive.  Her father, Johnny, is charismatic, a talented singer, and really understands Frances – unfortunately he’s also an alcoholic who barely works and drinks away all his tip money.  One of the things Frances struggles with is the mother she doesn’t like, who is clearly the better role model but doesn’t have time for affection.  Katie also shows a clear preference for Frances’ brother Neeley, while Johnny adores his daughter.

The title refers to a tree growing outside Francie’s house that grows despite people trying to cut it down.  It grows where it isn’t wanted, on the rough sidewalks of Brooklyn where nothing else grows.  It’s a symbol of strength and perseverance.  Smith’s lack of subtlety here can be forgiven due to the complexity of the rest of the book.  Also the tree is seen through the eyes of young Francie, and I can remember doing the exact same thing when I was her age (romanticizing stars, birds, trees, etc.).

You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined.  You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone’s yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district.  The tree knew.  It came there first.  Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished.  That was the kind of tree it was.  It liked poor people.

That was the kind of tree in Francie’s yard.  It’s umbrellas curled over, around and under her third-floor fire escape.  An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree.  That was what Francie imagined every Saturday afternoon in summer.

Francie’s grandparents are Austrian and Irish, and her story is that of many children growing up in the U.S. at this time. I felt like I could see my grandparents growing up in this world, except that my family was Jewish and being Jewish in America in the 1910s may have been a very different experience.  Also, my grandparents were much more recent immigrants to the U.S. than the Nolans.

And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans… She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks.  She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie.  She was made up of all these good and these bad things.  She was made up of more, too.  She was the books she read in the library.  She was the flower in the brown bowl.  Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard.  She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly.  She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping.  She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.  She was all of these things and something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living day to day.  It was something that had been born into her and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families.

We see the small aspects of Francie’s daily life as well as the big issues of war, religious and class intolerance, poverty, and illness.  But there’s happiness amidst all the suffering.  Francie is genuinely loved by her family despite their troubles.  She and her brother have a close relationship and she takes great pleasure in her daily trip to the library.

Smith writes about female sexuality in a way that’s pretty blunt and I wonder if it shocked at the time it was written, or even decades later.  She writes about women who enjoy sex but doesn’t ignore the consequences.  Francie grows up in a world where most girls don’t know much about sex, but her mother works too hard to hide the realities of life from her daughter.

I also liked how women are portrayed in this book not as saints or as villains, but as unique individuals.  Of course that’s the mark of good writing, but it can be hard to find literature with such strong female characters.  The women in this book struggle to keep their families together, but they are all different and all have faults.  Francie’s mother struggles to relate to her daughter; her beloved Aunt Sissy is at times irresponsible and struggles to stay in relationships.  Evy is a more distant aunt but still there for her family.  Francie’s grandmother Mary may be the closest to a saint-like character in the book who serves as a guide to her three daughters.

I don’t think this book should be viewed as a book for girls or women, even though I know it is.  I suppose the male characters aren’t nearly as strong as the women.  But the themes of this book are universal.  I’m curious if any men out there have read it and what they thought.

This is a pretty long book, written at a slow-moving pace, but I didn’t mind that.  I found it hard to put down.  Francie is such a great heroine — smart, ambitious, tough, caring — I couldn’t wait to see how she turned out.

Review of At Drake’s Command by David Wesley Hill

Author David Wesley Hill sent me his novel, At Drake’s Command, with a request for review.  I love historical fiction, but I’ve never read the works of C.S. Forester (the Horatio Hornblower series) and Patrick O’Brian (Jack Aubrey) because I’ve been told the books are too nautically-detailed for me to enjoy them.  Still, I enjoyed the movie portrayals of both Hornblower and Aubrey so this seemed worth a read.  I appreciated this book immediately because it’s written from the point of view of a cook, not a sailor, so the nautical terminology and the history felt really accessible to me.  I would compare this book to the works of Naomi Novik (minus the dragons of course).

The main character is Peregrine James, a 20-year-old cook who gets into trouble over a girl, endures a whipping for a crime he didn’t commit, and ends up signing on to work for Francis Drake as an assistant to the ship’s cook.

Out of the corner of my eye I observed her captain striding along the quay side with the swaggering bow-legged step of a man more accustomed to having a heaving deck under the soles of his boots than the solid stone upon which he was walking.  He had a slight limp in one leg, where a piece of lead shot still lodged, a souvenir of battle.  I recognized him by the gold of his hair and by his fiery beard and by the boom of his laughter as he bantered with a companion.  This was no great achievement, however, since everyone in Plymouth, from the lowest scullion to the highest aristocrat, knew him or knew of him.  His name was Drake, Francis Drake.

Perry knows nothing about exploration or sailing, but soon learns that on a ship, everyone’s expected to help with everything.  His first lesson is to climb up the rigging on the ship’s mast, and what seems like a daunting task at first quickly becomes second nature to this smart and adaptable character.

Because he’s compulsively honest, Perry runs into lots of conflicts aboard the ship, which is rife with corruption.  He’s at times a little too brash and too quick-witted to be believable, but it makes for a fun story.

The writing is detail-rich, especially the attention paid to geography.  Hill’s goal in writing this book is to trace the actual route of Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe in 1577.  He does a nice job combining history with entertainment, and also educating the reader at the same time.

Hill notes in the book’s Historical Preface:

The wealth of information about the voyage has allowed me to follow the adventure almost on a daily basis as the fragile wood ships proceeded across the brine.  Google Earth has allowed me to look down upon the places they anchored and to see the large black rock where the crew caught fish five hundred years ago.  Although this is a novel, I have attempted to present an accurate portrayal of the voyage, embellishing history rather than manufacturing it.  Wherever possible, I have used the actual words of my characters, allowing them to speak for themselves across the divide of time.

If you know a ton about nautical history, Hill’s writing style may be distracting.  He tends to explain nautical terms as he writes about them, which I found very helpful.  But then I know little about sailing in the 1500s.  Here’s a good example.

Since morning a sailor had been taking soundings from the bow in order to determine the depth of the ocean, which was a measurement used by navigators to help identify their location and to provide warning of shallow water, an unpredictable danger when approaching an unfamiliar shore.  Every so often he threw overboard a line with a lead weight and allowed it to pay out.  Marks on the line ticked off the length of a fathom, which is the distance between a man’s hands when they are stretched to either side, about two yards.

Perry may seem a little too heroic at times for a young man who has never sailed or fought.  Still, Hill deftly uses Perry’s knowledge of cookery to aid him in times of struggle – he’s more successful fighting enemies using ground chili pepper rather than a sword.  Hill pays a lot of attention to weaponry, which my husband would appreciate.  He also explores a lot of different cultures that the crew encounter on their voyage.

This book is the first of a series, and the end of this book will definitely leave you wanting to read the next one.  Unfortunately it’s being written as we speak, although I’ve been told by the author that the research has been completed so it shouldn’t be long.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an objective review.  The author had no input in the content of this review.

Review of Lost in the Light by Mary Castillo

Mary Castillo emailed me with a request to review her book, and after reading the first chapter I accepted.  Castillo writes in a unique voice and I was immediately pulled into the life of her main character, Dori Orihuela.

Castillo writes with a distinct sense of place.  I’ve spent a lot of time in Southern California, and this book made me feel like I was there, even though I’ve never been to National City, which is near San Diego.

Dori is a San Diego police officer who has just been suspended after an attempted arrest where she was shot and then returned fire and killed the shooter – a young woman with two children right in the room.  Dori is viewed largely as a hero by her fellow officers, as the woman opened fire first and might have killed the other officers and even her own children.  However, she is haunted by what happened.

Dori is recuperating in a house she bought just before the arrest, a fixer-upper Edwardian mansion about 120 years old.  On her first day back from the hospital, she walks up to the door and sees a strange man in the house.  She and the police search the house but find no one.  Dori’s already on the verge of a breakdown so the fact that she’s seeing strange, disappearing men in her creaky old house doesn’t alarm the police too much.

She wasn’t one of those women went crying to their girlfriends with her broken heart.  She sure as hell wasn’t one of those cops who lost it on the job or even in the ladies room.  She was the tough Orihuela her grampy had molded her to be; that her fellow officers respected and admired for keeping a cool head, returning fire and allowing two kids, her partner and a social worker to walk out of that apartment unscathed.

She grasped at the broken pieces of who she had been.  But they slipped through her fingers.  She wasn’t supposed to be this sniveling, crying, weak woman.  She’d done her duty.

But she’d taken a life.  Good or bad, it didn’t matter right now.  She had a mother’s blood on her hands and it was unraveling who she had been to the point where she now saw “make-believe” men running through her house.

It takes Dori a little while to accept that there’s a ghost in her house.  Then she “sees” the horrible death of Vicente Sorolla, a bootlegger from the 30’s, in her front parlor.

What follows is Vicente’s story, but one thing I really liked about this book is that it’s very much Dori’s story as well, and even about the strange friendship between them (no, this is not a paranormal romance).  So many past-present stories just use the present as a storytelling device, but Castillo has created a really multi-dimensional, sympathetic character in Dori.  If anything, I think Vicente’s character could have been strengthened.  But I liked this book because it’s a rare past-present story where the present story is always relevant.

In fact, Vicente’s story spurs Dori to get out of her own head and meet new people and learn new things.  Dori is struggling on every level, trying to be a decent daughter and grand-daughter, a friend, and possibly something more with the sexy handyman — yes, the sexy handyman is a bit of a cliché but at least here it’s a guy she actually dumped in high school.  She’s also trying to put her head back together after the shooting and get back to the job she loves.  And she’s trying to help her ghost friend find out what happened to the woman he left behind.

What I really liked about Dori: she messes up a lot.  She’s sort of a compulsive liar (you might be too if you lived with a ghost), her emotions are a mess, and she has no idea what she’s doing most of the time.  But you still admire her strength and character.  I also liked the way Castillo isn’t just telling a story, she’s really created a past and present for this character that goes beyond the ghost story.  For example we learn a lot about Dori’s rebellious youth, her troubled relationship with her mother, and her love for her grandfather who died when she was young.

As you can tell from the name, the Orihuelas are Latina, and Dori’s family and culture permeate the book, which I really appreciated.  If I were to count, I probably read mostly white authors and it’s always good to realize there are other points of view, other ways of thinking about things.

Without giving away anything, I really appreciated the way Castillo wraps up the story without relying on ridiculous coincidences like so many books do (for example, Dori does not find out that her beloved grandfather is the long-lost adopted son of Vicente).  At one point Dori’s grandmother thinks she might have known Vicente’s sister, but it turns out she’s mistaken.  That’s the kind of detail (and plot messiness) that I appreciate.

A couple of weaknesses are worth noting although they didn’t keep me from enjoying the book.  The first is that the level of historical detail is  pretty light.  This is a story about Vicente, his family, and the woman he loves.  There’s a lot of local detail about National City and Southern California, but I didn’t come away from this book having a good sense of the history of bootlegging, or even the mechanics of it.  We do learn that the end of Prohibition is right around the corner in 1932  — but if you want a detailed history, see the Burns documentary on Prohibition.  What we do see, though, is how easy it must have been for a poor kid like Vicente to get caught up in the world of organized crime in the 30′s.

Another weakness is that Vicente isn’t too likeable most of the time.  He may love Anna but he treats her pretty badly after she’s forced to marry a man to support her family financially.  He’s full of bravado and pride, and gets caught up in power and money.  He’s sympathetic, just not always likeable.

Also, Castillo keeps the logistics of Vicente’s ghost-hood fuzzy, and that could drive some readers a little crazy.  Neither Dori nor Vicente have any idea why Vicente’s stuck in the house, when he can talk to Dori and when he can’t.  Has he talked to other residents of the house in the past 80 years?  There’s no explanation of why he appears to Dori only after her shooting.  Sometimes Vicente’s presence includes smells of cologne and alcohol, and sometimes cold air.  And what’s that Shadow thing in the parlor?  Vicente’s comings and goings are confusing, especially later in the book:

Truth was he didn’t know where he went.  He had no control when he woke up and fell asleep.  All he knew was that he’d been consumed with pain and humiliation when he was in the front parlor and he sure as hell didn’t want that again.

Those things aside, this was a fun and satisfying read, with a good mix of history, culture, drama and friendship.  If you like a good ghost story, you’ll appreciate this one.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for a review.  The author had no input into the content of this review.   

Review of The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

I’m mixed about The Secret Keeper.  On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  On the other hand, books of this genre just feel a little “overdone” to me.  And by genre I guess I mean historical-melodrama-mystery type novel.  Kate Morton is certainly a good writer, and she gave us a twisty-turny story that takes us from the 30s to modern day.  I liked the juxtaposition of three generations in a family, where one teenage daughter vows never to turn into her mother, and 20-some years later her daughter makes the same vow.  I can appreciate that.

The Secret Keeper tells the story of Laurel and her mother Dorothy. Laurel grows up in a near-perfect family, with a comfy farmhouse, loads of siblings and two loving parents.  At the age of sixteen, while hiding from her family, she watches her mother commit a violent act that no one else ever knows about.  It’s not until many years later, as Dorothy is close to death, that she tries to uncover what happened that day.

Dorothy’s story begins as a teenager in 1938 – she’s rebellious, over-dramatic, and embarrassed by her family.  She longs to get away and experience excitement and drama.  Her parents want her to work as a secretary in her father’s bicycle factory, but that future sounds like a slow death to Dorothy.  Instead she meets a guy, runs to London and tries to live the life she dreams of.

The framing of the story is interesting.  We start out in 1961, when Laurel is sixteen.  Then we go back to 1941, where Dorothy has an urgent discussion with her friend Vivien about a plan that’s gone all wrong, while the bombs are dropping on London.  Then we jump to 2011, then back to 1961, and then all the way back to 1938.

The whole time I read the book, I kept thinking of the conversation in 1941, and trying to figure out how Dorothy, Vivien, and Jimmy could have possibly gotten to that place in time.  Am I confusing you?  This book was definitely mysterious.  Every time you think you know what’s going on, Morton throws a curve ball.

One of the problems with the book, however, is that Dorothy is written as almost a caricature, and a terribly unlikeable one at that.  I liked Laurel’s character although I found her selfish.  Dorothy is just horrible, which makes it hard to really buy into the story.

I did like the idea of uncovering your parents’ secret past, and the idea that we only know our parents as parents, not as what they were before we were born.

Morton’s not terribly subtle, but it is an entertaining book with interesting characters.   Jimmy unfolds gradually, going from just a romantic figure to someone real and complex by the end.  One of the characters is an author and the only thing we know about his character is through descriptions of his books.  Gerry, Laurel’s younger brother, is brilliant but awkward. I wanted to know him better.

I think the problem with this book is everything is just too extreme.  The characters aren’t just beautiful, they’re gorgeous.  Life is either a wild party, a horrific tragedy, or a bucolic childhood in the country.  It’s all a little too bright and shiny. This book would make a great movie or miniseries – lots of glamour and conflict with World War II as a backdrop.  It’s just not a read that will stay with me for long.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from NetGalley.

Review of The Report by Jessica Francis Kane

The Report was a really cool book, and one you should read because it tells a fascinating historical story and is well-written at the same time.  This is the kind of book I love because it truly brings history to life.

The Report is about an incident in Bethnal Green, a London neighborhood, in 1943.  It’s the largest loss of civilian life in the U.K. during World War II.  But it wasn’t caused by a bomb or a battle.

During World War II, the London Tube stations were used as air raid shelters.  The Bethnal Green station was still under construction but mostly completed in 1943.  On March 3, residents were alerted that bombing was expected that night because of a British attack on Berlin.  More people than usual went to the shelter that night.  The stairwell leading down into the shelter was dark, the stairs were uneven and slippery.  The crowd was nervous.

Someone in the crowd fell at the bottom of the stairs, and the crush resulted in 173 people dying of suffocation, 62 of them children.

The British government tried to hush the incident, but people pressed for an official inquiry.  Was it a structural defect in the shelter?  Lack of police presence?  Crowd panic?

This book tells the story, in a semi-fictional way, of that inquiry.  The story centers around a real-life person and event: Sir Laurence Dunne, a magistrate at the time, interviewed about 80 witnesses, explored the shelter site, and reviewed relevant documents like an earlier request by shelter officials to improve the stairwell.

The focus is really on the psychological aftermath of the event.  The residents of the town are desperate to blame someone or something, but the same crowd psychology that was so dangerous in the tunnel is equally dangerous afterwards.  People feel guilty because they (unintentionally?) contributed to the pushing, or because they failed to save the life of a child.  A lot of people direct their anger towards recent refugees, the Jews.  A number of witnesses claim they heard bombs falling and that’s why they pushed – only there aren’t any records of bomb testing that night.

The incident happens fast.  A single person falls and the crowd falls on top of her.  The sad thing is, had the crowd spilled onto the landing most people would have lived.  Instead, everyone got tangled up and were asphyxiated.  There were police at the bottom trying to pull people out but everyone was interlocked.

The families of the fallen want answers and they want retribution – and only the Inquiry keeps them in check.  And Dunne becomes increasingly aware that whatever he reports will have repercussions.

So this is a war story but not a war story.  It’s fiction but not fiction.

The story is told in a past-present format.  It’s 30 years later, the anniversary of the tragedy, and a documentary is about to be aired.  Unlike a lot of books that switch back and forth, this one is written with a pretty light touch that doesn’t distract from the real focus of the story.

This is one of those books that sets out to inform – but it’s so well written that you will be drawn into the story.  It’s the complete package.  You will feel for these characters, you’ll have a sense of what it was like to walk down those stairs that night.

This book got to me, not only because I love fiction set in World War II, but because I already have a bit of crowd-phobia.  I know what it’s like to walk into packed Metro stations, to stand armpit to elbow in the trains, to know that a foot in the wrong place on a busy game-day could send someone falling onto the tracks.  And that’s just my Metro ride.

I don’t like crowds. I hate the feeling of being surrounded, of not being able to walk freely.  Attending big events with lots of people is just not my thing and I avoid them when I can.  This book is a vivid reminder that crowds ARE dangerous.  Kane describes in vivid detail (although it all happened shockingly fast) the tangle of limbs, the wall of crushed bodies, the panic of people who couldn’t go forward and couldn’t go back.

You can find another good review of this book, and a You Tube video interviewing survivors, at this site.  But I recommend reading this book first.

Review: Redemption on the River by Loren DeShon

Redemption on the River is a first novel by author Loren DeShon.  It’s got some weaknesses but overall I enjoyed it.  It takes place along the Mississippi River from Missouri to New Orleans in 1848.

This is one of those historical novels that really tries to expose you to details you might not have known about – the story describes life on a steamboat, gambling, and the Underground Railroad, and includes a number of not-so-well-known historical figures on the 1800’s South.  DeShon does a nice job of creating atmosphere and setting, as well as a compelling story.

Silas Jacobson lives on a family farm in Missouri when he accidentally causes the death of his father.  He signs over his rights to the farm to his younger brother and sister and heads out without any kind of plan.  Silas’ life changes when he meets a woman whose family is helping slaves escape on the Underground Railroad.

Silas isn’t the most relatable character for most readers – he makes a lot of poor decisions, he’s not book smart, and he loves to punch people.  He’s kind of a guy’s guy.  He has no trouble having sex with prostitutes or drinking away whatever money is in his pocket, and he also has no trouble floating up and down the river doing odd jobs while his brother and sister manage the family farm.

But I do like a main character who isn’t perfect and Silas learns a lot during the course of this book.   He starts out knowing that his father didn’t support slavery but really has no idea what it means to enslave other human beings until he sees it for himself.   And even then he has to learn how to stand up for what’s right and have a real impact, rather than taking impulsive risks.

DeShon imparts a ton of historical detail while also telling a fast-moving, entertaining story.   I liked how the book gave me a good idea of how the Underground Railroad actually worked, as opposed to just knowing what it is.

I occasionally found myself wishing that the story was told from Hannah’s point of view because as a character she’s so much more interesting, and this book is really her story.  Unfortunately, seen through the eyes of Silas she’s somewhat one-dimensional.

The dialogue in the book was not as well-written as the description.  I often found the conversations between the characters a little stilted.  There was something distracting about it that kept me from fully enjoying the book.  For example, Silas’ conversations with Hannah mostly consist of her yelling at him about slavery issues.  His conversations with his siblings seemed forced.  When dialogue is well-written, you don’t notice it, and in this book I did.  I can’t explain why exactly.

I found that the author’s description of the book on Amazon didn’t match my view of the book.  It’s described as:

Silas Jacobson pulled a trigger, killed his father, and ended up months later face down in Memphis mud, trying to forget the girl who betrayed him. He buries his father on the farm, his guilt in himself and leaves home seeking to forget past mistakes. He travels on Mississippi steamboats and meets his best friend in a brawl, his worst enemy in a cathouse, and a mentor and lover at a New Orleans faro table. Fighting, fornicating, and cheating at cards are a grand time, but there’s another woman, a girl on a mission of her own, who saves his life and offers the opportunity to redeem himself. Silas staggers out of the mud to go to her, but he finds that she’s deceived him from the start. He’ll risk his neck for her—he owes her that much—but love is no longer possible. His shot at redemption comes down to his conscience, the two women, a poker game, and the turn of a card. Redemption on the River is historical fiction set along the Mississippi River in 1848.

Rather than a book about a woman’s betrayal, I’d describe it more as a story about a young man coming to terms with the realities of slavery and what it means to be a principled human being.  I liked that Silas’ “redemption” was truly a gradual process; he falls, gets back up, falls again, but learns a little each time.

All in all, a book worth reading for its history and drama, and a nice first novel by DeShon.

Review of 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Note: The Book Stop is officially on vacation.  I wrote this ahead of time so I may not respond to your comments (but please comment).  Enjoy!

If you’re a Stephen King fan, especially a fan of his older books, you’ll appreciate this one, because he really gets back to the detailed way he used to write.  A lot of his newer books read like they’re ready to go straight to movie, and that’s understandable since so many of his books HAVE been made into movies.  But I like his old, really get-into-someone’s-head style of writing.

If you’re not a Stephen King fan, but you either love time travel fiction, or you remember the 60s and want to relive them, you’ll also appreciate this book.  I’d be really interested to hear what my parents or in-laws thought of this book, having lived through the time of Kennedy’s assassination.  I know it’s one of those life-scarring moments but haven’t experienced it personally.  On the other hand, I don’t think I’d want to read a book this detailed about 9/11, so maybe this book isn’t for those who were there.  I don’t know but I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.

I’m sure you’ve heard the plot of this book already, but it’s about Jake Epping, a guy who discovers a portal that goes back to 1958.  His friend urges him to go back in time to stop the assassination of JFK.  He also has one or two other things he’d like to put right.  Of course this means spending 4-5 years in the past.  Is it worth it?

King puts a lot of thought into the “rules” of time travel, which is important to the story.  What’s unusual here is the automatic re-set rule.  In this book, if the person gets back to modern-day in one piece and then goes back into the portal, there’s a total re-set.  Nothing changed in the first round stays.  So while Jake worries about the implications of going to the past, he’s comforted by the fact that he can always re-do it if it goes wrong.  He can even experiment a few times just to see what happens.

King really immerses you in the history and also the sense of time and place.  I love how much research he did, and it shows. If you’re expecting horror because it’s Stephen King, think again.  This is a lot more drama and history than horror, although King is always good at threading a sense of unease throughout his stories.

This is a book I’d recommend to most people, although I’m not sure it lived up to all the hype for me, for a few reasons.  The first is that at times it gets too slow and detailed, and there were places that could have used a lot of editing.  I learned a LOT about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, maybe too much (and you know how I like detail).   The history bogs down the story at times –unless you really, really want to know that much about Oswald’s relationship with his mother.

The second reason is that I had a hard time with the premise.  And by that I don’t mean time travel.  Anyone who reads a book about time travel has to be willing to suspend disbelief enough to accept that someone could step outside a diner and into a time portal that takes him to 1958.

No, the premise I struggled with was the “stop Oswald and save the world” idea.  Jake himself raises warning bells about changing the past, but convinces himself that preventing Kennedy’s assassination will be a net good for the world.  He thinks saving Kennedy will prevent Vietnam, but from the very beginning I couldn’t see that this was a rational leap of faith.  More than that, he spends over four years in the past, and while he says he’s going to respect the “butterfly effect” – meaning every little thing he changes can have huge implications for the future – he doesn’t.  Not by a long shot.

So I found myself really uncomfortable throughout the book about what Jake’s doing – I just didn’t get what he was thinking or how he could justify most of what he did.  It didn’t make sense, and that was a problem for me.  But, maybe those of you who lived through Kennedy’s assassination would do the same if you could.

One thing that was really cool about this book: early on, Jake finds himself in 1958 Derry, Maine.  And if you’re an It fan, you’ll know that Derry just isn’t a good place to be.  King brings back a few of his It characters and it made me really nostalgic.  In a weird way, since It is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.

So a little trip down memory lane in more ways than one.