The Family: Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century
by David Laskin
(Viking Adult, $32, 400 pages)
Who is this author?
David Laskin, an accomplished journalist and author who lives in Seattle, has an impressive educational background (Harvard, Oxford) and a wide range of interests (history, weather, travel, gardens, nature). He has written about storms, the intense relationships of New York intellectuals and literary friendships, among many topics, and he frequently writes for The New York Times Travel Section, the Washington Post, the Seattle Times and Seattle Metropolitan. In his latest book, he takes on a subject near and dear to him: the history of his own family.
What is this book about?
Laskin does a powerful micro/macro thing in this book. It is about three generations of his Russian-Jewish family and how their paths diverged: to America and great business success, as one great-aunt founded the Maidenform Bra; to Jerusalem to pursue deep, but not always satisfying Torah study and Zionist ideals and, sadly, to Europe and the horrors of the Holocaust. But it is also about the wider Jewish diaspora, the immigrant experience, the politics of the 20th century and war, subjects of interest not just to Jewish readers but to all who lived through those turbulent times.
Why you’ll like it:
Laskin has two crucial talents nicely displayed in this book: he is a thorough reporter and also a gifted storyteller. If you like family sagas (such as the books of Leon Uris) and stories that portray the sweep of history through the eyes and lives of individuals, this one’s for you.
What others are saying:
An Amazon Best Book of the Month review by Sara Nelson for October 2013 says: “Every writer, established or aspiring, has at one time or another looked around and decided, “My life would make a great book.” Some of them are sadly mistaken. But journalist David Laskin’s life–or rather that of his forbears, three generations of a Russian Jewish family originally named HaKoen–has made a fantastic book. Despite its name, The Family is not about the Mafia, or the Mansons, but really about one particular, ordinary/extraordinary twentieth century shtetl clan. But you don’t have to be Jewish to be fascinated by the six children of a Torah scribe on the western fringe of the Russian empire; they, like people everywhere, were buffeted by political and social and economic upheavals of their times. One branch of the family ended up in America as the prosperous founders of Maidenform lingerie; another repatriated to Israel; the third suffered the Holocaust. While I tended to favor the stories about the American branch (how can you not love a 4’ 11” Russian revolutionary, who, with her husband Wolf, invented the brassiere in 1924 and got filthy rich in ladies underwear in the depression?), the other HaKoens-turned-Cohens provided plenty of educational entertainment as well. You think you know about the Russian revolution? Try seeing it through Laskin’s ancestors’ eyes. Likewise, WWII and Zionism. This is a great, big-hearted book about how time and place modifies family, whatever or wherever its roots.”
Says Booklist: “This interesting and often moving family saga spans a century and a half, and three continents and touches most of the critical historical trends and events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Laskin’s great-great-grandfather was a Torah scribe who raised six children in a nineteenth-century shtetl on the fringe of the Russian Empire. Eventually, those siblings and their descendants split along three different paths and destinies, and the recounting of their individual experiences also tells us much about Jewish history. One stream led to the U.S., where family members found great material prosperity. A second stream included those captivated by the ideal of Jewish redemption, and they pursued the Zionist ideal in Palestine, taking an active role in the creation of Israel. The remaining group stayed in Europe and was devastated by the Holocaust. Laskin (The Children’s Blizzard, 2004) is a gifted writer who effectively blends family and world history in a deeply felt story filled with the joy and sadness that has characterized Jewish life in this period.”
“David Laskin’s The Family is a vivid, utterly compelling exploration of the forces that have shaped modern history. We often view these forces— capitalism, fascism, mass migration, assimilation, and the like—only from a distance, as vast, impersonal abstractions. But in Laskin’s magnificent book we see them in the intimate details of actual lives, deftly followed through a tangle of triumph, accommodation, and often unbearable suffering. An extraordinary achievement,” says Stephen Greenblatt, New York Times bestselling author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.
Publishers Weekly says: “Frequent newspaper contributor Laskin’s relatives provide ample material for a gripping epic narrative, beginning in 1875 and spanning over a century. This readable and absorbing book looks at the experiences of Jews—in this case all members of Laskin’s family—finding a fresh start in the United States, of those working to form a new country in Palestine, and of those trapped in Nazi-controlled Europe. His American ancestors’ experiences were highlighted by his great-aunt, Itel, who founded the Maidenform Bra Company in 1922. And that quintessential American success story of a hard-working immigrant who makes good contrasts well with the account of her cousin Chaim’s life in Palestine around the same time—he found disillusionment there, rather than a land of milk and honey. The sections dealing with the grim toll that the Holocaust took on the family don’t provide new insights into the Nazis’ inhumanity; the horrors of the time gain more impact when conveyed through the stories of individual lives. Laskin (The Children’s Blizzard) makes the most of the rich array of stories his research unearthed.”
“Through family letters and travel to ancestral homes, Laskin fleshes out the stories he was told (and not told) over the years. For example, his family never mentioned relatives killed in the Holocaust. Laskin’s goal, as a storyteller, is to give his family’s stories back to them. His compelling narrative brings these individuals to life as we witness their triumphs and tragedies in vivid detail and at times in their own voices. VERDICT Recommended for readers of 20th-century history, the Jewish experience, and family sagas,” says Library Journal.
Kirkus Reviews says: “A Jewish writer explores his heritage in a speculative family history that mirrors the triumphs and tragedies of the 20th century . . . the author knows how to zero in on a good story. Starting with a rumor that Joseph Stalin’s enforcer Lazar Kaganovich might be a distant relation, Laskin dives deeply into the lives and times of his relatives, dating back to the late 19th century in Volozhin, Russia. It’s after the family’s move to Belarus that the narrative gets really interesting. One branch, largely led by Maidenform Bra founder Ida Rosenthal, landed in New York and Americanized everything about themselves, abandoning names, homes and traditions. “Others step off the boat, fill their lungs with the raw unfamiliar air, and get to work. They never look back because they never have a moment to spare or an urge to regret,” writes the author. Another couple, Chaim and Sonia, became hard-core Zionist pioneers in the wilds of Palestine. Another entire branch was lost to the Holocaust, a richly imagined tragedy but one that Laskin has largely plucked from history books. Were this fiction, it would read much like the novels of Leon Uris and other spinners of historical sagas, as Laskin ties his relatives to events ranging from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Black Friday to the establishment of Israel. The telling of the tales and the recollection of history eventually breaks the author’s assumptions that his family was all about business. “Now I see how wrong I was,” Laskin writes. “History made and broke my family in the 20th century.” An ambitious, experimental look at exodus, acclimatization and culture with a cast as diverse as any family photo album.”
When is it available?
You can meet “The Family” now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Cloudland
By Joseph Olshan
(Minotaur, $24.99, 304 pages)
Who is this author?
Joseph Olshan, who divides his time between Vermont and Cambridge, Mass., has written 10 novels and has garnered awards for his work. His first novel, “Clara’s Heart” won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers’ Competition and was adapted for a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg as the Jamaican housekeeper who befriends the lonely young boy in her charge.
He’s also been a contributor to the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine,, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, Harper’s Bazaar, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly and wrote book reviews for the Wall Street Journal during the 1990s. Olshan also has been a professor of Creative Writing at New York University. His other novels include “Nightswimmer” and “Vanitas.”
With “Cloudland,” he moves from writing literary fiction to crime fiction, but brings his descriptive talents with him.
What is this book about?
Set in Vermont’s rural upper Connecticut River valley region, generally a safe place for its well-off and working-class residents alike, “Cloudland” tells what happens when a serial killer disrupts the peace and quiet, murdering young women by strangling or stabbing them and leaving not a trace of his identity.
It’s a book based on true events. Olshan became the friend of a woman who found one of the six victims and was haunted by its horror.
In the book, he tells the story through Catherine, a divorced former journalist and teacher whose life is a mess: she lost her teaching job for having an affair with a student, her daughter won’t talk to her, she lives with her dogs and pot-bellied pig. Now a household hints columnist and teacher of writing for jailed prisoners, she sets out for a walk and sees a woman sitting under an apple tree. Except the woman is not enjoying the afternoon sunshine: she’s dead.
Catherine can’t resist getting caught up in the investigation, which also involves a neighbor who is a forensic psychologist. And she realizes that details of the case reflect the classic Wilkie Collins novel, “The Moonstone.” Worse, she thinks the killer may be someone she knows – and that she might be his next victim. Meanwhile, her younger forbidden lover has shown up, giving Catherine another puzzle to resolve.
Why you’ll like it:
Olshan spins an intriguing tale here, mixing the hunt for a killer, the complexities of a troubled woman’s life and echoes of the Collins book that many consider to be the first mystery novel. This multi-level plot will keep you hooked.
What others are saying:
Kirkus Reviews says: “In this refreshingly cliché-free serial-killer tale, Olshan tries his hand with a female narrator/heroine, whom he handles just as deftly as his sensitive male heroes (“The Conversion,” 2008, etc.). Although all these chilly, hurting souls are well worth your time, the real keeper is Catherine, still grieving the death of the husband she’d divorced and the loss of the younger lover she’d pushed away. ….Even as you wonder who the killer will turn out to be, you’ll worry mainly about how she’s going to come through all this.”
“Unlike the more common, adrenaline-fueled serial-killer thrillers, this is literary, character-driven fiction with remarkable empathy not only for those whom murder leaves behind but also for the perpetrator. Another fine performance from a critically acclaimed author,” says Booklist.
“Rarely do you find a story with characters so fully developed that you feel as if they might live next door. Conjuring a distinctly 19th-century atmosphere, Olshan excels at crafting a Dickensian literary piece, but the amount of detail may put off some readers expecting more action. Wilkie Collins fans, on the other hand, will be delighted by the role of the author of “The Moonstone” in this plot,” says Library Journal.
“Joseph Olshan’s latest novel, “Cloudland,” captures a neglected part of the Northeast with verve and accuracy. The rural places of Vermont — away from the ski condos and golf courses which lure the high-end city folks from Boston and New York — where head in the heavens college professors and dirt-stained farmers mingle on lands that seem barely settled is the setting for a story about savage murder, about misshapen love and about the emotional debts that are carried inside us all. While ostensibly a tale about serial killings in this isolated part of the nation, it probes deeper into the darker and more complex realms of the heart. It is a thriller in the widest sense of the word — where not only does the reader wonder what happens next, they wonder why it will happen. Written in consistently elegant prose, with memorable psychological acuity, “Cloudland” is both exciting and compelling and will keep readers turning pages energetically,” says bestselling author John Katzenbach.
When is it available?
You can borrow it now from the Downtown Hartford Public Library or the Blue Hills Branch.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Last Banquet
By Jonathan Grimwood
(Europe Editions, $26.95, 320 pages)
Who is this author?
Jonathan Grimwood could give the “most interesting man in the world” guy from the Dos Equis commercials a run for his beer money.
Grimwood was born on the island of Malta and grew up in the Far East, Britain and Scandinavia. He has written for The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Independent in England, and using the name Jon Courtenay, he has won two British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel. He lives in England.
What is this book about?
Let them eat pickled wolf’s heart.
This is the tale of Jean-Marie d’Aumout, a man who has never met a food he would not sample, no matter how bizarre. Dung beetles, three-snake bouillabaisse, breast milk: Jean-Marie has eclectic tastes and the book has the recipes to prove it. The action takes place during the days of the Enlightenment, the decadent palace life in Versailles and the French Revolution, as Jean-Marie , an orphan at age 5, makes his sensuous way through a world in turmoil. Along the way he makes a friend of Ben Franklin, writes to the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire and generally has a high old time of it. Here is a man who is obsessed with flavors and is on a quest to taste all that he can while he can.
Why you’ll like it:
Is it possible to savor food by reading about it? Grimwood does his best to achieve that magical feat, and comes about as close as you could hope for. He has created a sensual man who lives to try new flavors and portrays him, the foods he craves and the world he lives in with just the right vivid style. This is a historical novel in which the events are complemented by a lively exploration of foods, romance, sex and politics. Vive la France!
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “With his parents dead, young Jean-Marie d’Aumont is found eating beetles on a dung heap and sent to a school for the “sons of destitute nobles” in Enlightenment-era France. He likes school fine, but he didn’t mind the beetles either (brown are sour, black tasty), and as far as he’s concerned, the most notable part of his rescue is the piece of Roquefort cheese he’s given. Along with the beetles, the Roquefort sets d’Aumont on the way to a career as gastronome, sensualist, and taster, a man who can determine what a woman’s eaten recently by rolling a drop of her breast milk on his tongue. The book, ostensibly a memoir written as the French Revolution picks up speed, at the end of a long life, is leisurely but never dull. Watching d’Aumont rise in the world—he makes friends with sons of nondestitute nobles, marries for love, assembles the largest menagerie outside of Versailles, serves as the royal envoy to rebellious and proto-democratic Corsica, and learns how to make a really top-notch condom—is full of pleasures (and recipes, for those wondering how to prepare, say, wolf’s heart). Grimwood, a journalist and, under another name the author of a good deal of genre fiction, has the gift of making a character’s sensual pleasures as alive to the reader as to they are to him.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Jean-Marie d’Aumout is a liberal, democratic Frenchman obsessed with flavor whose life, narrated in an elegant debut, lays bare the extreme contrasts of pre-Revolutionary France. First encountered at age 5, eating beetles from a dung heap, his parents dead in their run-down chateau, the boy who will become the Marquis d’Aumout never grows out of his fascination with how things taste. Rescued by the Duc d’Orléans, who gives him his first, divine taste of Roquefort cheese, d’Aumout is sent to school and then military academy, where the friends he makes will shape his life. Charlot, heir to the wildly wealthy Saulx estate, will introduce him to one of his sisters, Virginie, whose life d’Aumout will save twice. Grimwood’s sensuous, intelligent, occasionally drifting account of the marquis’s progress is constantly informed by French politics, notably the immense gulf between the nobility and the peasants whom d’Aumout at least treats with fairness. Scenes at Versailles underline the decadence which will lead to social collapse. Through it all, d’Aumout is driven by a hunger to taste everything–rat, wolf, cat, etc.–and an erotic appetite that is explicitly filled. Ben Franklin puts in a late appearance before the revolution begins, and d’Aumout prepares for a final, extraordinary meal. Studded with bizarre recipes, this vividly entertaining account of a life lived during groundbreaking times is a curious, piquant pleasure.”
“Like Patrick Süskind’s murderous Grenouille in Perfume, [Jean-Marie d'Aumout's] supersensitivity to taste, it is intimated, is to be theme, motive, ornament and philosophical disquisition in a life that spans the turbulent century leading up to the French revolution…There is much to enjoy in this book: it is racily picaresque, energetic and clever. History is deftly and diligently interposed with the details of a life, while Jean-Marie’s character is carefully elaborated so as to illustrate the various aspects of a vivid era: pre-revolutionary France, with its philosophers and gourmets and interestingly depraved nobility,” says The Guardian.
When is it available?
You can get a taste of “The Last Banquet” at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Still Life with Bread Crumbs
By Anna Quindlen
(Random House, $26, 272 pages)
Who is this author?
Anna Quindlen reached a journalism pinnacle when she became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist, only the third woman to achieve that position, and then won a Pulitzer Prize for her columns there. She published two collections, “Living Out Loud” and “Thinking Out Loud,” and left the Times in 1995 for Newsweek, where her columns were later published in the collection “Loud and Clear.” She also had great success with her inspirational advice book, “A Short Guide to a Happy Life,” which has sold more than a million copies. But Quindlen says her heart always belonged to fiction-writing, and she has had many best-sellers, including “Object Lessons,” “One True Thing” and “Black and Blue.”
Here is what she said in a Barnes & Noble.com chat: “I really only went into the newspaper business to support my fiction habit, but then discovered, first of all, that I loved reporting for its own sake and, second, that journalism would be invaluable experience for writing novels.”
What is this book about?
Rebecca Winter is 60 and an admired – though increasingly less financially successful – photographer. Circumstances, such as a cad of a husband who drops her for a younger woman, persuade her to leave city life to rent a country cabin so that she can sublet her apartment for the income and also re-boot her artistic career What she finds there includes a pesty raccoon, a dog who adopts her, a woman who runs a funky café and a divorced roofer/handyman who, as you are already guessing, can repair more than roofs. (Plus, he is 30 years younger: this is how you know it’s fiction.) “Still Life” is a romantic comedy that is humorous but never sappy, and it is certain to please Quindlen’s many fans.
Why you’ll like it:
As she proved over and over again in her columns, nonfiction and previous novels, Quindlen really “gets” what motivates or obstructs women, and she explores their lives with wit and deep empathy. Rebecca is older than Quindlen’s previous heroines, but not so old that she cannot start over after life tosses big obstacles in her path. Without being overly sentimental, Quindlen tells her story in a compelling way. No doubt this will be her next best-seller.
What others are saying:
The New York Times Book Review says: “There comes a moment in every novelist’s career when she sloughs off the weight of the past—the conventions and obsessions, the stylistic fallbacks and linguistic tics, the influence of early masters—and ventures into new territory, breaking free into a marriage of tone and style, of plot and characterization, that’s utterly her own. Anna Quindlen’s marvelous romantic comedy of manners is just such a book. In Still Life With Bread Crumbs, Quindlen achieves something distinctive, a feminist novel for a post-feminist age…which proves all the more moving because of its light, sophisticated humor. Quindlen’s least overtly political novel, it packs perhaps the most serious punch.”
Says Publishers Weekly: “Quindlen’s seventh novel, following Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, is a detailed exploration of creativity and the need for connection. Rebecca Winter is a 60-year-old photographer, once revered as a feminist icon, whose work isn’t selling as briskly as it used to. She needs a fresh start after her marriage falls apart because her husband trades her in for a younger model (as he does every 10 years). She rents a cabin in the country while subletting her beloved New York City apartment, needing both the money and the space in which to find her creative spark again. Jim Bates, a local roofer who helps her with the challenges of moving into the cottage, becomes a new friend, as does a dog that seems to prefer living with her rather than with its neglectful owner. Rebecca also finds new objects to photograph in the series of homemade wooden crosses she discovers during hikes in the surrounding woods, without realizing their connection to a tragedy in Jim’s life. Quindlen has always excelled at capturing telling details in a story, and she does so again in this quiet, powerful novel, showing the charged emotions that teem beneath the surface of daily life.”
“A photographer retreats to a rustic cottage, where she confronts aging and flagging career prospects. Rebecca Winter is known for her Kitchen Counter series, black-and-white photographs capturing domestic minutia, taken as her marriage to a philandering Englishman is foundering on the shoals of mistaken assumptions. But, as her laconic and un-nurturing agent, TG, never fails to remind her, what has she done lately? Her photo royalties are in precipitous decline. Divorced, living in a high-priced Manhattan apartment, Rebecca, 60, finds herself unmoored. Her filmmaker son, Ben, still requires checks from Mom. Her mother, Bebe, is in the Jewish Home for the Aged and Infirm, where she spends her days playing piano pieces on any available surface, except an actual piano. Since the collapse of the family business, Rebecca has supported both her parents and now pays Bebe’s nursing home bills. She figures that it will be cheaper to sublet her apartment and rent a ramshackle woodland cabin upstate than to continue to ape the NYC lifestyle of her formerly successful self. She meets the usual eccentrics who people so many fictional small towns, although in Quindlen’s hands, these archetypes are convincingly corporeal. Sarah runs the English-themed Tea for Two cafe, not exactly to the taste of most locals. Until Rebecca came to town, Sarah’s only regular was Tad, ex–boy soprano, now working clown. Sarah’s ne’er-do-well husband, Kevin, sells Rebecca subpar firewood and is admonished by Jim, an upstanding local hero. After helping Rebecca remove a marauding raccoon, Jim helps her find work photographing wild birds. Like Rebecca, Jim is divorced and has onerous family responsibilities, in his case, his bipolar sister who requires constant surveillance. As Rebecca interacts with these townsfolk–and embarks on a new photo series–she begins to understand how provisional her former life–and self–really was. Occasionally profound, always engaging, but marred by a formulaic resolution in which rewards and punishments are meted out according to who ranks highest on the niceness scale,” says Kirkus Reviews.
Library Journal says: “Formerly a world-famous photographer, Rebecca Winter is past her prime and out of her element. Her photographs are yesterday’s news, her family has fallen apart, and her bank balance is inching toward negative numbers. When she can no longer afford her luxurious Manhattan apartment, Rebecca sublets and moves to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere, on a road that has no name. Away from the noise and clatter of the city, she finds peace in a quiet country life, inspiration in the form of mysterious shrines she discovers hidden deep in the woods, and unexpected love with a husky roofer 30 years her junior. VERDICT Pulitzer Prize winner Quindlen has made a home at the top of the best sellers lists with novels that capture the grace and frailty of everyday life (Object Lessons; Blessings), and her latest work is sure to take her there again. With spare, elegant prose, she crafts a poignant glimpse into the inner life of an aging woman who discovers that reality contains much more color than her own celebrated black-and-white images.”
When is it available?
Quindlen’s latest novel can be borrowed from the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Dwight and Ropkins branches.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Swan Gondola: A Novel
by Timothy Schaffert
(Riverhead, $27.95, 464 pages)
Who is this author?
Timothy Schaffert is a thoroughly Nebraska guy. Schaffert spent his boyhood on a farm there and now lives in Omaha. His four previous novels include “The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God” and “Devils in the Sugar Shop,” garnered such honors as Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selections, Indie Next Picks, and New York Times Editor’s Choices. Besides writing, he teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
What is this book about?
First of all, were you as surprised as I was to learn that Omaha hosted the 1898 World’s Fair? It certainly did, and that is the milieu of this inventive novel. Set in the elaborate Gilded Age era, with all its Victorian flourishes, the book’s protagonist is the wonderfully named Ferret Skerrit, a ventriloquist and a con man. Clever though he is, he nevertheless falls for the charms of Cecily, who totes around a mysterious carpetbag and plays the role of Marie Antoinette in a traveling show at the fair, a role that requires her to lose her head….not romantically, but hourly, via a fake guillotine. She’s not interested in ferreting out (sorry!) Skerrit’s good side, until nightly star-lit rides in a swan gondola takes place. But their stars are crossed, and many other occurrences, such as a cameo appearance by President William McKinley, an ill-fated hot-air balloon crash and an even-more ill-fated marriage vie for the reader’s attention. Wizard of Oz imagery and lush description, a la “The Night Circus,” highlight the story.
Why you’ll like it:
Romances set in earlier times nearly always have charm, and this book is no exception. Ferret and Cecily have miles to go, and the reader has the fun of watching this improbable and complex love story play out. The gondola rides, hot air balloon and other Victorian frippery add period atmosphere and some fun to this lighter-than-air story.
What others are saying:
“Timothy Schaffert has chosen the 1898 World’s Fair in Omaha as the backdrop for his new novel, The Swan Gondola, a highly atmospheric entertainment, full of plot twists, historical flavor and paranormal romance. . . . Beneath the intrigue, mystery and historical window dressings of The Swan Gondola beats the heart of a complicated love story. . . . As a prose stylist, Schaffert leans toward the extravagant without crossing the line into purple. The jaunty Victorian temperament of the prose rings true to the era, as do its thoroughness and attention to detail. . . . This tendency toward expansive description . . . serves to create a palpable atmosphere, imbuing the novel with the glossy cinematic quality of a big-budget Hollywood period piece. . . . Readers who enjoyed Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants or Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus are likely to be captivated by The Swan Gondola,” says The Washington Post.
“A ventriloquist in a hot air balloon lifts off from Omaha, Neb., crashes in a strange land, and presides over an emerald cathedral. Yes, it’s The Wizard of Oz. But it’s also the loose construct of Timothy Schaffert’s new novel, The Swan Gondola, which pays tribute to the L. Frank Baum’s classic, yet veers off on its own path of magic and deception. It’s an entertaining and thoroughly researched book, particularly suitable for Americana buffs who want a taste of life in a western frontier town struggling to become a modern city at the turn of the century,” says the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Booklist’s starred review says: “Offering an expertly conjured atmosphere complete with soothsayers, cure-all tonics, technological gadgetry, and daring high-wire acts, Schaffert’s whimsical epic of illusion and reality at the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair promises and delivers grand entertainment. . . . Audiences will be lured in by the offbeat personalities and carried along by the unexpected plot developments, but the real showstopper is the exuberant Gilded Age setting, imagined in elaborate detail. With so many wondrous attractions, this finely spun world feels almost dreamlike, yet Schaffert also takes a sharp look at what’s most important in life.”
Says Publishers Weekly: The latest from Schaffert (The Coffins of Little Hope) is a love story set during the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair. “Ferret” Skerritt is a ventriloquist who becomes smitten with Cecily, a beauty who comes to town with the fair’s Chamber of Horrors (she plays Marie Antoinette and is beheaded hourly). Deciphering Cecily’s many secrets, including the contents of her mysteriously heavy carpet bag, is just the first challenge Ferret faces in courting her: soon William Wakefield, the fair’s wealthy patron, sees Cecily and decides he wants her for himself. Schaffert’s picture of the fair is enchanting, from the buildings that shimmer with “shattered glass that had been dusted over the whitewash” to the midway attractions, including a theatre where Cecily and Ferret briefly hang from wires and dance in midair. As the two lovers become embroiled with Wakefield, however, the novel loses some of its magic. Additionally, the frequent Wizard of Oz allusions build to nothing. But there are many romantic and historical delights here, and, despite its imperfections, it’s easy to imagine this charming novel attaining Water for Elephants–like popularity with readers.”
Library Journal says: “Schaffert’s fifth novel (after The Coffins of Little Hope) opens with a bang. In autumn 1898, the elderly Egan sisters are enjoying an evening cup of tea in their Nebraska prairie farmhouse when they are jolted out of their chairs by a hot-air balloon crashing on their roof. They rescue Ferret Skerritt from the basket and mend his broken leg. While he recuperates, he tells a fantastic story of his life at the Omaha World’s Fair (he is a ventriloquist) and why he stole the balloon. Ferret describes a world of colorful eccentrics, astonishing scientific wonders, and even a visit from President McKinley as he relates his pursuit of the beautiful but elusive Cecily. Cecily is an actress in the Chamber of Horrors, where she gets beheaded four times a day, and he courts her with romantic midnight rides in the swan gondola on the boat lagoon, offering her little except his devotion. Before Ferret can propose, Cecily marries a wealthy businessman to give her daughter Doxie a better life. Undeterred, Ferret plans Cecily’s rescue, dreaming of a dignified, respectable life with his beloved. VERDICT With allusions to the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, Schaffert has magically transformed a stretch of field near Omaha into a white, shimmering vision of rotundas, columns, and pillars. His magical tale is steeped in late 19th-century history. The stately pace might be too slow for some readers, but fans of historical fiction will not be disappointed.”
When is it available?
You don’t have to go to Nebraska to pick up this book. It’s at the Downtown Hartford Public Library now.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
The Museum of Extraordinary Things: A Novel
by Alice Hoffman
(Scribner, $27.99, 384 pages)
Who is this author?
Best-selling author Alice Hoffman is a popular and prolific writer, who uses her own version of magical realism in her stories of love and loss. Her 28 works, published in more than 20 translations and more than 100 foreign editions, include 18 novels, two story collections and eight books for children or young adult readers. Her novel, “Here on Earth,” was an Oprah Book Club choice and “Practical Magic” became a film with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. She lives in Boston and New York and often spends time on Cape Cod. A breast cancer survivor, she founded the Hoffman (Women’s Cancer) Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass.
What is this book about?
Set in the early 1900s in New York City, this is a tale of a young woman struggling to escape the schemes of her amoral father and a young man who rejects his stultifying Orthodox Jewish upbringing. It takes the length of the book for Coralie and Eddie to come together, and it’s the journey that captures the reader.
Coralie’s evil father runs The Museum of Extraordinary Things, a Coney Island boardwalk freak show that exploits its human exhibits. She has webbed fingers and is a talented swimmer: of course, her sinister dad tries to fashion her into a mermaid in the show. Eddie was apprenticed to a tailor but pursues photography as a way out of his close-minded community and shoots pictures of the chaos following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911. Coralie meets him taking pictures of trees in the moonlight, and a long-suppressed romance begins in this story that explores both real and phony magic.
Why you’ll like it:
Hoffman’s fans, and they are legion, will flock to this novel. While reviewers say it is not her best, that will not matter to those who love her wounded protagonists and stories told with vivid lyrical style, which this one has in abundance. Hoffman blends historical realities with magical imagination here, and when it works, it makes for a powerful reading experience.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Like the museum of its title, Hoffman’s latest novel is a collection of curiosities, each fascinating in its own right, but haphazardly connected as a whole. New York City in 1911 is caught between its future and its past: the last woods are threatened by sidewalks; sweatshops and child labor abuses give rise to a cruel division between rich and poor. Coralie Sardie’s father runs Coney Island’s Museum of Extraordinary Things, a sideshow exhibit of pickled and preserved wonders, as well as living freaks; Coralie’s own webbed hands lead her father to train her as a swimmer, billing her as “the Human Mermaid.” But Professor Sardie’s museum is threatened by the city’s changing tastes, and he becomes increasingly sinister in his control of Coralie and his plans for the museum’s future. In a parallel, hopscotching storyline, Eddie Cohen, a Russian Orthodox Jewish immigrant, abandons his father and his community and becomes a photographer, finding his purpose in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the search for one of its victims. Though both stories have Hoffman’s trademark magical realism and hold great potential, their connection is tenuous—literally and thematically—and their complexities leave them incompletely explored.”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “A young woman grows up in her father’s eponymous Coney Island museum at the turn of the 20th century in Hoffman’s novel. Watched over by her beloved but acid-scarred family housekeeper, motherless Coralie lives a seemingly idyllic early childhood with her intellectual father above the “museum” he runs but doesn’t let her visit. Then, on Coralie’s 10th birthday, in 1903, her father not only escorts her through the exhibit for the first time, but he also puts her on display as “The Human Mermaid.” Born with webbed fingers, Coralie, an expert swimmer, spends her days in a tank wearing her mermaid suit. At first, she loves the work, in what her father staunchly denies is a freak show, and becomes close to other members of the exhibition, particularly the “Wolfman,” with whom Coralie’s housekeeper falls in love. But as business flags, her father arranges special showings, during which adolescent Coralie must swim naked for invited male audiences. By 1911, her father, a Fagin-like villain who hopes to milk rumored sightings of a sea monster, sends Coralie into New York’s waters at odd hours disguised as the monster. On one of her nightly swims, Coralie comes ashore, discovers a young man with a camera at a campfire and is instantly smitten. Eddie Cohen, the son of an Orthodox Jew, has left behind his ethnic and spiritual roots to become a photographer. Motherless like Coralie, Eddie has also been employed in phony magic, in his case, finding missing persons for a fake seer. Their love affair and Coralie’s rebellion against her father play out in a changing New York City as seen through Eddie’s photographic lens.”
Library Journal says: “. . .Coralie Sardie works for her father, the “professor” and impresario of the Museum of Extraordinary Things, a freak show in Coney Island. She performs as a mermaid in a tank but really lives for her long swims in the cold Hudson River. While Coralie’s element is water, Eddie Cohen is tormented by fire. He fled a fiery pogrom in his native Russia and now wants to break away from his miserable life on the Lower East Side and become a photographer. Eddie’s hatred of rich factory owners increases when he takes photos of the ghastly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village. Meanwhile, Professor Sardie grows even more sinister as the crowds desert his “museum” for the new and lavish amusement palaces of Luna Park and Dreamland. Then Coralie and Eddie get caught up in the chaos as Dreamland burns to the ground. VERDICT With a sprinkling of magical realism, Hoffman blends social realism, historical fiction, romance, and mystery in a fast-paced and dramatic novel filled with colorful characters and vivid scenes of life in New York more than a century ago.”
“Alice Hoffman specializes in fairy tales for impressionable grown-ups and cautionary tales for precocious adolescents. Not infrequently, the two overlap. Her latest fiction for the former demographic, a melancholic love story that spotlights corruption and exploitative labor practices in 1911 New York City . . . In conflating made-up characters with real-life incident and figures, Hoffman is trafficking more in the tabloid territory of Caleb Carr’s “The Alienist” than the impressionistic dabbling of E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime.” Like Carr, Hoffman’s book earns its legitimacy through an eye-opening plethora of period detailing, coupled with the author’s overarching outrage at urban workplace abuses. If “The Museum of Extraordinary Things” descends into high corn in its final stretch, you can’t help but admire the author’s fervor for telling stories and the democratic manner in which she disseminates the love of reading: Fiends and heroines alike lose themselves in great literature. A special place in her protagonist Coralie’s heart is reserved for Edgar Allen Poe, whose ghost hovers over the novel’s fiery climax with detectable satisfaction,” says the Boston Globe.”
When is it available?
You can find Hoffman’s latest at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Albany, Goodwin and Park branches.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War
by Jerome Charyn
(Liveright, $26.95, 480 pages)
Who is this author?
Unless you have read one of his nearly 50 books, or are a fan of French ping-pong (more about that later), you may not know of Jerome Charyn. Your loss, but understandable, because this very talented and extremely prolific author does not seem to get much media buzz. Charyn published his first novel, “Once Upon a Droshky,” in 1964. He has 30 novels, including “Johnny One-Eye” and “The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson,” three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction to his credit and two of his memoirs got the coveted New York Times Book of the Year designation. He lives in New York and Paris, where he was named a Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture and was a Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris through 2009. And in France, he was a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players there. The novelist Don DeLillo called” Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins,” Charyn’s book on table tennis, “The Sun Also Rises” of ping-pong.”
What is this book about?
In “I Am Abraham,” a fictional memoir, Charyn takes on the daunting task of speaking in the voice of our revered 16th president, and by all accounts, does it smashingly well. If you have ever wished you could hear Lincoln speak about the devastating Civil War, this is as close as you could wish to come. The book, written in the first person, chronicles Lincoln’s personal history from Illinois to that fateful night at a Washington theater, blending humor and tragedy. Charyn uses real characters and invents others: all equally fascinating. Using the rhythms and idioms of 19th century speech, Charyn does not so much mimic Lincoln’s speaking style as inhabit it, drawing on letters and speeches the president wrote. This is historical fiction at its finest.
Why you’ll like it:
Innovative and bold by its very nature, this book is also brave: it is no easy feat to put yourself in the mind and heart of one of history’s most famous and controversial men and make it sound authentic. Charyn has the chops to bring off this literary impersonation, and in so doing, he gives us tremendous insight into the president who saved the Union, albeit at great cost (and with conflicts that persist to this day). Lincoln’s political brilliance, moral wisdom, sense of humor and feeling about his personal tragedies are all here, thanks to Charyn’s inventive abilities.
What others are saying:
Says Publishers Weekly in a starred review: “Charyn certainly manages to bring the legendary 16th president down to earth; most readers will find it hard to view the Great Emancipator the same way after reading this fictional memoir’s description of him masturbating as a young man. But the novel also succeeds in making the legendary figure more accessible, using Lincoln’s lifelong battle with depression as an avenue through which to explore his life and perspective. The opening section presents the president’s memories of his last night, ending as Booth’s bullet shatters his skull, and then flashing back to 1831 as the young Lincoln begins life in New Salem, Ill. The rest of the book traces his well-known life arc, from prairie lawyer to U.S. president. This is a warts-and-all portrayal, not only of the lead, but of central supporting figures, most especially his tempestuous and difficult wife, Mary. Charyn has managed to craft a fictional autobiography that rings emotionally true.”
“If all historians—or any historian—could write with the magnetic charm and authoritative verve of Jerome Charyn, American readers would be fighting over the privilege of learning about their past. They can learn much from this book—an audacious, first-person novel that makes Lincoln the most irresistible figure of a compelling story singed with equal doses of comedy, tragedy, and moral grandeur. Here is something beyond history and approaching art,” says Harold Holzer, chairman of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation.
Library Journal says: “It should be no surprise that a historical novel by Charyn captures the attention. A deeply lyrical writer, he has proven himself adept at reworking America’s historical legends . . . Reworking is the key to Charyn’s approach. His concern is not so much what has been written down about Abraham Lincoln’s actions as the inner life and tensions of his famous protagonist: his depression, his deep feelings of unworthiness, but also his compassion for the downtrodden. This re-creation of Lincoln’s life is as much domestic history as public, with Lincoln contraposed to his fiery but deeply troubled wife and his three very different sons. Charyn’s Lincoln is a real man, not a stick-figure saint. He lusts for Mary Todd in language that is earthy, at times even bawdy. But Lincoln was also, and always, a man who strove to listen to the better angels of his nature, and this, too, comes out in Charyn’s book. VERDICT This is another fine novel by a very good author who has a proven track record of attracting readers of all persuasions. What’s not to like?”
Says Kirkus Reviews: “Charyn . . . has Abraham Lincoln narrating his own story, beginning a few moments before the assassination and then telling the highlights of his life through a series of flashbacks. Lincoln is presented here literally warts and all, from his rough-and-tumble upbringing to his early career as a lawyer and Illinois state legislator to the burden of being president. His first serious relationship is with Ann Rutledge, with whom Lincoln is very much in love (though Charyn endows him with a 21st-century sexual consciousness that at times seems rather jarring). After Ann’s death, Lincoln develops a case of the “blue unholies,” a melancholy that haunts him for much of the rest of his life. He next takes up with the vivacious and demanding Mary Todd, who comes across as more of a burden than a helpmeet, especially when they get to the White House, where she is unadmiringly styled the “Lady President.” Mary is preoccupied with redecorating, flirting and, later, with deeply grieving the loss of her son, Willie. The portrait of Lincoln readers get is characterized by emotional and psychological complexity, for he’s a reluctant candidate, a caustic commander in chief and, at times (understandably), a diffident husband. He, too, is deeply saddened by the death of his son as well as by the deep social divisions he seems unable to bridge. Charyn skillfully weaves bits of speeches and a large cast of characters, most of them drawn from Lincoln’s life, into his intricate portrait of the 16th president.”
“Jerome Charyn [is] a fearless writer… Brave and brazen… The book is daringly imagined, written with exuberance, and with a remarkable command of historical detail. It gives us a human Lincoln besieged by vividly drawn enemies and allies… Placing Lincoln within the web of ordinary and sometimes petty human relations is no small achievement,” says the New York Review of Books
When is it available?
This book is available at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him
by David Henry and Joe Henry
(Algonquin Books, $25.95, 400 pages)
Who is this author?
You might not expect that the latest biographers of the amazing, frustrating, hilarious and tragic Richard Pryor would be a screenwriter and a songwriter, singer, guitarist and Grammy-winning music producer, but that is what David Henry and his brother Joe, respectively, are. “Furious Cool,” their debut as authors, began as a screenplay and took more than 10 years to complete, and now they are back to working on that screenplay based on Pryor’s life and career.
What is this book about?
If you have never seen Richard Pryor on screen, on TV or live, then it may be hard to imagine the power this hugely talented, demon-ridden genius of a performer had. The son of a prostitute and grandson of a madam, he was one tough cookie: violent toward women, married seven times, a serious junkie who nearly burned himself to death and a sufferer of multiple sclerosis who also was, in the opinion of Comedy Central and quite a few others, the No. 1 stand-up comedian, ever. Pryor was not only funny, he created – often ad-libbing – characters onstage that made audiences howl with laughter and sometimes cry. There was no one else quite like him, for good or bad, and the Henry brothers tell his story well.
Why you’ll like it:
This is a book about a tragic comic, and unlike many books about funny men, it doesn’t kill the humor by analyzing it. The Henrys give you the whole Pryor experience, complete with unrelenting profanity, from his violent, abuse-laden childhood to professional success (and some failures) to the hell of drug addiction and the pain of illness. The book is loaded with trenchant detail and riveting anecdotes. It’s a must read for any Pryor fan and may create plenty of new ones who will watch any Pryor DVDs or movies they can find.
What others are saying:
Amazon.com Review says in a Best Book of the Month, November 2013 review: “Richard Pryor was nobody’s hero. The man sired accidental children, lived most of his life as a junkie, and even set himself on fire, but he was also one of the twentieth century’s most notable American geniuses. With the release of Furious Cool, brothers David and Joe Henry have written the definitive tribute to Pryor’s momentous cultural legacy. But this is no straightforward biography: structured as a long series of roughly chronological vignettes, the resulting impressionistic portrait mirrors the flights of fancy that marked Pryor’s most memorable stand-up comedy performances. Like Lenny Bruce before him and Bill Hicks later, Pryor’s fearlessness as a performer not only yielded incomparable recorded performances but also changed audience expectations and widened the art form forever after. Sensitive to this transformative import, Henry and Henry nevertheless portray Pryor the man with all of his failings in the full glare of the spotlight. In the 25 years between his self-immolation and his eventual passing, Pryor’s creative output went from bad (The Toy, Brewster’s Millions) to sad (“Richard Pryor at the Helm of Comedy”), but nothing in his long, slow fall from an admittedly twisted grace diminishes his accomplishments, and Furious Cool resists the fan’s impetus toward hagiography in favor of an artistic performance of the written word that does lovely justice to a brilliant, tortured man. “
“Furious Cool is a fabulous history, alive with fascinating characters both reacting to and creating world-changing events; it is a study of the seismic cultural shifts of the second half of the twentieth century, when everything we knew about music, literature, television, theater, and yes, comedy, was turned upside down and sideways, blowing our minds and resetting all expectations; it is a documentary of epic proportions, based as it is upon mountains of research (all of it refined, sifted, and clarified); it is a love song and a dirge and silly ditty and a symphony of every emotion . . . Every person on the planet has to find his or her way to the truth of life’s unfairness, beauty, sadness, opportunities and limits. That I could get myself part way there riding on waves of laughter was a wonderful gift, and it was Pryor’s gift. Furious Cool reminds me of his present, and his presence, and for this, I give thanks to the Henry brothers,” says The Huffington Post.
“It would be enough if Furious Cool was a profile of Pryor’s uncanny talents, psychic turmoil, and ungovernable behavior, but it’s also a fascinating history of black comedy . . . Furious Cool captures Pryor’s frenetic routines and stage presence on the page . . . The inextricable legacy of Richard Pryor—his boldness, inventiveness, candor, and empathy—lives on,” says Los Angeles Magazine.
Says Biographile.com: “Say what you will about Richard Pryor’s failings as a father, husband, co-star, or business partner (offstage, he couldn’t balance a checkbook), he lived his life totally immersed in the moment. Had he cared one whit about his legacy or posterity, we would still be buying up box sets of lost nightclub performances and concert films, just as we do Miles Davis’ “Complete Sessions” and Bob Dylan’s “Bootleg” packages. It maddens us to imagine all the unrecorded, never repeated performances Richard delivered during the flowering of his genius, lost now but for a few firsthand recollections.
The New York Times Book Review says: “ Furious Cool…is not an intimate, determinedly probing account that sets out to unearth previously concealed biographical detail or attempts to reassess a life or provide continuity. It’s more an admiring primer, an impressionistic riff that trips selectively through the…triumphs and tragedies that marked Pryor’s career, offering piquant snippets and fleeting snapshots as it prospects for the source of his genius…Pryor…was much more than just a comic to David and Joe Henry. And it is their passionate belief in his transcendent status that energizes the book…The authors, who are white, acknowledge some initial wariness about diving headlong into an examination of the social impact of a larger-than-life African-American cultural hero. But finally it is their affirmation of the influence Pryor had outside the black community and beyond comedy that perhaps most commends this book. It is a testament to his stature not only as an African-American entertainment idol but also as an American icon.”
When is it available?
You can find it now at the Downtown Hartford Public Library.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
Guests on Earth: A Novel
by Lee Smith
(Shannon Ravenel, $25.95, 352 pages)
Who is this author?
Lee Smith, who makes her home in North Carolina, is an experienced writer of popular contemporary fiction set in the South and has published 13 novels and four story collections. Her best sellers include “Fair and Tender Ladies” and “The Last Girls,” which won a Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Smith also has been honored with the 1999 Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the North Carolina Award for Literature.
What is this book about?
“Guests on Earth” takes its title from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once said: “The insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.”
An apt quote, because this novel imagines the last years of Fitzgerald’s beautiful but very fragile and troubled wife, the artist and dancer Zelda, who perished in a mysterious fire in 1948 at Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, N.C., locked in with eight other female patients in the facility’s top-floor ward, with only a charred ballet slipper found by which to identify her.
Here is what Smith says about the story: “In this novel I offer a solution for the unsolved mystery of that fire, along with a group of characters both imagined and real, and a series of events leading up to the tragedy. My narrator is a younger patient named Evalina Toussaint, daughter of a New Orleans exotic dancer. Evalina is a talented pianist who connects to Zelda on many levels as she plays accompaniment for the many concerts, theatricals, and dances constantly being held at Highland Hospital.
“As Evalina tells us at the beginning of this novel, “I bring a certain insight and new information to that horrific event which changed all our lives forever, those of us living there upon that mountain at that time. This is not my story, then, in the sense that Mr. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was not Nick Carraway’s story, either—yet Nick Carraway is the narrator, is he not? And is any story not always the narrator’s story, in the end?”
Evalina is just 13 in 1936 when she is admitted, an orphan and a piano prodigy who is content to be an accompanist, never a star. Treatment by Dr. Robert Carroll is enlightened for its time, with an emphasis on fresh air, good diet, exercise, gardening and the arts, along with now outmoded insulin shock and freeze wraps. But it is primitive by today’s standards and labels as insane any women who did not meet the prevailing male ideas of behavior. As Evalina’s personal story develops in and out of the asylum, we get glimpses of Zelda’s sad denouement and meet piquant characters representing various types of Southern women of that day.
Why you’ll like it:
Smith has a large following, who love her books for their understanding of how women live and think and prevail. Here she offers a deft blending of sad fact and imaginative fiction, and a possible solution to the never-solved puzzle of how the came about. Readers get a historical novel, an illuminating look at medical practices of not so long ago and stories of several fascinating women.
What others are saying:
Publishers Weekly says: “Zelda Fitzgerald is fictionalized and given a supporting role in Smith’s chronicle of a girl whose life is changed by a North Carolina mental institution. In 1936, after her mother’s suicide in New Orleans, 13-year-old Evalina Toussaint is sent to live at Highland Hospital. There, she’s mothered by Grace Potter Carroll, the director’s wife, who gives Evalina music lessons and a shot at a normal life. Evalina also meets F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, who swings from sweetness to cruelty, and often mistakes Evalina for her daughter Patricia. Mrs. Carroll and Evalina grow apart as the latter leaves Highland to attend school and eventually become engaged. When tragedy strikes and Evalina finds herself once again at the hospital, the Carrolls are no longer in charge, though Zelda remains among the changing crop of patients. At this point, the book becomes truly engaging, as Smith introduces characters like the charming Dixie Calhoun. Evalina also finds herself smitten with groundskeeper Pan Otto, who was found locked in a cage as a child, and doctor Freddy Sledge. Many tragedies pepper the narrative, including the fire that bookends the story, all of which are handled in a touching manner. Smith’s novel takes a while to blossom, but really takes off once it does.
Says Booklist: “Abandoned as a child upon her mother’s death in New Orleans in the 1930s, Evalina is sent to Highland Hospital . . . by her mother’s wealthy lover—a convenient way of dealing with an inconvenient problem. Evalina may be a lot of things—a budding musician, a romantic dreamer—but mentally ill she is not. Yet over time, the mental hospital becomes her home and its staff and fellow patients her family. Celebrated for its unorthodox treatment methods, Highland attracts the penniless and the notorious, and Evalina is influenced by a nearly feral young man and the hospital’s most famous patient, Zelda Fitzgerald. Equally creative, emotive, independent, and adventurous as Zelda, wife of the renowned author F. Scott, Evalina also contradicts society’s standard for female behavior, guaranteeing that no matter how often she escapes or improves, she will always return to Highland. Riding the recurring wave of Zelda-mania, perennially best-selling Smith presents an impeccably researched historical novel that reveals the early twentieth century’s antediluvian attitudes toward mental health and women’s independence.”
Says The Washington Post: “The story moves forward at Evalina’s quiet, almost stately pace. Life at Highland is pleasant, almost luxurious: The residents — men and women — hike, read, garden, stage theatricals. Most of the time they seem perfectly healthy, except for when they don’t. Occasionally, Evalina will digress, to tell another woman’s story, which is when the reader realizes that Smith’s purpose is far more ambitious than it looks. Once, Evalina ventures off campus to spend the night with a mountain girl who lives far up in a “holler.” Her family is poor beyond words, but they make heavenly music. Another patient is genuine Southern Belle; like Zelda, she simply can’t stand the life. And there’s Jinx, a charming, murderous white-trash girl.
By the time she’s done, Smith has covered the entire spectrum of Southern women. In her acknowledgments, she writes, “I . . . have my own personal knowledge of the landscape of this novel. My father was a patient here in the fifties. And I am especially grateful to Highland Hospital for the helpful years my son, Josh, spent there in the 1980s, in both inpatient and outpatient situations. Though I had always loved Zelda Fitzgerald, it was then that I became fascinated by her art and her life within that institution, and the mystery of her tragic death.”
“. . . This is a carefully researched, utterly charming novel. By the time you finish it, you fall in love with these fascinating lives, too.”
“Indeed, most of the high spirited, rebellious, outspoken women who populate Guests on Earth would not now be considered insane at all. Smith’s imaginative, layered story illuminates the complexity of their collective plight—to be put in towers until they had no choice but to behave—and rescues them one by one,” says The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
When is it available?
The Downtown Hartford Public Library has this book on its shelves.
Do you have something to say about this book, this author or books in general? Please post your comments here and I will respond. Let’s get a good books conversation going!
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