Monthly Archives: July 2014

Grey Howl

By Clea Simon

(Severn House, $27.95, 208 pages)

Who is this author?

Clea Simon got her start as a reporter and nonfiction writer before she found her true métier: writing cozy mysteries that feature amateur detectives aided by their feline companions (including a kitty who has already crossed that darn Rainbow Bridge.)  A Harvard grad and Boston lover, she lives there with her husband and her cat, Musetta. She writes frequently for the Boston Globe and also contributes to as American Prospect, Ms., San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon.com., among others. Her essays also appear in anthologies, such as “Cat Women: Female Writers on Their Feline Friends.” She is the author of three series of mysteries, all enlivened by cats and the occasional dog. They feature animal psychic Pru Marlowe, freelance writer Theda Krakow and Harvard grad student Dulcie Schwartz, whose mystery titles all include the word “grey” and involve ghosts as well as cats.

What is this book about?

Anyone who has ever done time working at a college knows that academic rivalries and jealousies can be intense, occasionally leading to the killing of reputations and, at least  in many mysteries, to actual killings. So readers won’t be surprised when a literature conference in Cambridge, MA, (where else?) is plagued by a sabotaged presentation and the disappearance – make that suicide – no, make that murder — of a visiting scholar. But (just as with the Spanish Inquisition), nobody expects the ghost of a cat to show up. That would be Dulcie Schwartz’s sainted Mr. Grey, who helps her expand her conference role from grad student working as the university liaison to the conference to sleuth who solves the case.

Why you’ll like it:

Simon refers to her books as “fun feline mysteries,” which is exactly what they are, and she has chosen a genre that has wide appeal to lovers of a good, puzzling story and the wise cats who help solve the mystery. Here she mixes in academic life, always a fat target because of the pomposity of the players, and the results are satisfying. This book is the lucky seventh of the Dulcie/Grey series, and those who sample it will likely want to read the previous six books (and two other series) as well.

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says: “Academic politics and the world of literary scholarship provide the background for Simon’s charming seventh Dulcie Schwartz mystery. Harvard grad student Dulcie, who’s been researching The Ravages of Umbria—a gothic romance—and the role of women in 18th-century society, is looking forward to a prestigious academic conference in Cambridge, Mass., at which she’s to present her first paper. On the eve of the conference, Marco Tesla, a visiting scholar, is found dead with a broken neck, having fallen from a balcony. Detective Rogovoy and Dulcie, with the help of three cats she communes with for assistance (one of whom, Mr. Grey, is deceased), determine that Tesla was murdered and try to uncover who, among the scholars vying for the position of department chair, is the culprit. Extracts from The Ravages of Umbria add to the fun “

Says Kirkus Reviews: “More adventures in the dangerous groves of academe. Doctoral candidate Dulcie Schwartz is thrilled that she is getting the chance to read a paper she wrote on aspects of a gothic novel by a so-far-unidentified woman author who’s the subject of her thesis. The literature conference is being held for the first time at a prestigious university in Cambridge, Mass. Dulcie has been pressed into service as a liaison and fixer of problems by her nervous department head, Martin Thorpe, who’s fighting to keep his job. Dulcie would prefer Renée Showalter, a Canadian professor who’s made available to her some highly interesting documents that will help in her research—at least, until she meets charismatic Paul Barnes, another candidate for Thorpe’s job who hints that he’d like to work with Dulcie. When a paper that Stella Roebuck had planned to read vanishes from her computer, professor Roebuck, blaming her former lover Barnes, demands that Dulcie’s boyfriend, Chris, a computer expert, find it. Then Marco Telsa, Roebuck’s newest lover, falls off a balcony at an evening party, and the police suspect murder. Dulcie, who often seeks advice from the ghost of her deceased cat Mr. Grey and her new cat, Esmé, is worried about Thorpe, who appeared to be drunk at the party, and Chris, who’s acting strangely. Although she’s survived several murder investigations, her immersion in all things gothic gives her a distinctive slant on sleuthing that puts her in peril. Though Dulcie’s rather scatterbrained approach to sleuthing may put readers off, her seventh provides a plethora of suspects that keeps them guessing.”

Kingsriverlife.com says:  “As the visiting conference attendees arrive, Dulcie finds herself in the middle of battling egos, romantic engagements and rival studies. When one of the professor dies in what is initially declared as a suicide, Dulcie has little doubt that it was in fact murder, especially considering the clues and information she receives from her trusted companions.

“Mr. Grey, the ghost of her most beloved feline companion, continues to whisk in and out of her life providing advice and comfort, and his talent for telepathic communication has been passed on to the very living La Principessa Esmeralda, also known as Esme, Dulcie’s new tuxedo cat companion who more than lives up to her lofty name.

“In this seventh mystery featuring English and American Literatures and Language graduate student, Dulcie Schwartz, her computer science boyfriend Chris, and her feline companions, Simon continues what feels like a long episodic narrative that explores both Dulcie’s investigation into the life of a gothic novel writer as well as her introduction into a whole new world of ghostly and corporal communicative cats.

“Animal lovers will find the felines–one who acts wisely and the other who remains true to her catty temperament–completely endearing, while mystery lovers will appreciate the battles of the academia and the internal political squabbling. This is an entrancing mix that seems reminiscent of Amanda Cross’s academic mysteries and Lillian Jackson Braun’s helpful investigating cats. Cat and mystery lovers rejoice!”

When is it available?

You can hear this one howling “come get me” from the shelves of the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Mark Twain 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!


Hyde

By Daniel Levine

(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 416 pages)

Who is this author?

Daniel Levine grew up in New Jersey, but now lives in Colorado. He received his BA from Brown University and his MFA from the University of Florida and has taught at various colleges. “Hyde” is his debut novel.

What is this book about?

One sign of a classic is that it can be manipulated, turned inside out, told backwards or played with in many ways without losing its power and appeal. In “Hyde,” Daniel Levine takes the iconic Robert Louis Stevenson tale of split personality and tells it from the point of view of the monstrous Mr. Hyde, and darned if we don’t sympathize with this avatar of evil. Maybe Hyde is not the murderer we think we know him to be. Maybe Dr. Jekyll should never have begun his experiment. Maybe there is another character of whom we should be suspicious.  In any case, it is intriguing to contemplate a new twist to this old story.

Why you’ll like it:

Coming up with a new version of an old tale is only half the battle for an author. Carrying out your idea in a believable and compelling fashion is the other, and it’s far more important. By all accounts, Levine has done both things with aplomb, reminding readers of what the original “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” was all about (hint: it was far deeper than just being a horror story) and offering a fresh perspective that illuminates the old story in new ways. This could be just the  chiller for those hot summer reading days.

What others are saying:

Booklist says: “Imagine that Edward Hyde, the alter ego of Dr. Jekyll, wasn’t the animalistic creature Robert Louis Stevenson created. Imagine, instead, that he was just a man and a misunderstood one at that. That’s Levine’s approach to this revisionist take on Stevenson’s classic tale, which is reprinted here, after Levine’s own story has come to a close. Levine’s version, narrated by Hyde, begins just before Stevenson’s ends: Hyde is concealed in Jekyll’s laboratory, Jekyll’s letter to his lawyer awaits discovery, Hyde waits to die. Hyde takes us back through the preceding months, covering the same ground as Stevenson but from a new perspective: Hyde as a newborn man, struggling to understand the world he’s been thrust into, driven by desperation to commit the acts recounted by Stevenson. We realize, in the process, how little Stevenson really explored Edward Hyde, how Hyde was a function of the narrative, an idea but not a fleshed-out man. Giving him flesh and humanity, Levine makes him a kind of tragic hero and gives the original version an added dramatic and emotional dimension. A fascinating companion piece to a classic story.”

Says BookPage: “…Taking the parameters of Stevenson’s story, but deepening and extending the details, Levine allows us to view Hyde not merely as the venal incarnation of Jekyll’s soul, but as a fully fledged character in his own right…Levine answers many questions that Stevenson left unexplored….a visually dark and viscerally brooding tale that avails itself of a cinematic style of storytelling that, of course, Stevenson could never have imagined….an entertaining and intriguing work, as much a meditation on and extrapolation of Stevenson’s original intentions as a freestanding work of popular fiction. With compelling intensity, Levine makes a noteworthy literary debut.”

Library Journal says: “It’s Mr. Hyde’s turn as unreliable narrator in this literary reimagining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Accused of murder and sexual trafficking of minors, Hyde has hidden himself in Jekyll’s closet. As he awaits discovery he unfurls a tale that sheds doubt on Jekyll’s innocence—but does it absolve Hyde? Levine’s palette includes every shade of gray as he explores moral ambiguity and mental anguish in this psychological gothic. VERDICT Levine’s debut novel is deviously plotted but relies a great deal on readers having a close familiarity with the parent text, while the anachronistically graphic descriptions of sex and violence may be off-putting for some. On the other hand, readers who enjoy the grittier crime fiction of Dennis Lehane, James Ellroy, and John Connolly might give it a try.”

In The New York Times Book Review, Walter Kirn says: “Hyde is the first-time novelist Daniel Levine’s ingenious revision of this canonical work, an elevated exercise in fan fiction that complicates and reorients the story by telling it from the perspective of the monster, exposing the tender heart inside the brute and emphasizing the pathos of his predicament…The novel is a pleasure…a worthy companion to its predecessor. It’s rich in gloomy, moody atmosphere (Levine’s London has a brutal steampunk quality), and its narrator’s plight is genuinely poignant.”

In its starred review, Publishers Weekly says: “. . . this ambitious first novel provides an alternate perspective on Jekyll’s chemical experiments on the split personality. Edward Hyde first emerges independent of Jekyll on the streets of London in 1884—not as the malevolent brute that Stevenson conjured, but as a member of the lower classes who is fiercely protective of his and Hyde’s friends and interests. But over the course of two years, Hyde develops a reputation for evil that confounds him—and that he suspects is being engineered by Jekyll, whose consciousness lurks inside his own, steering him into certain assignations and possibly committing atrocities while in his form. Levine slowly unfolds the backstory of Jekyll’s schemes for Hyde, relating to his earlier failed “treatment” of a patient with a multiple-personality disorder, and traumatic events from Jekyll’s own childhood that come to light in the novel’s tragic denouement. Levine’s evocation of Victorian England is marvelously authentic, and his skill at grounding his narrative in arresting descriptive images is masterful (of the haggard, emotionally troubled Jekyll, he writes, “He looked as if he’d survived an Arctic winter locked within a ship frozen fast in the wastes”). If this exceptional variation on a classic has any drawback, it’s that it particularizes to a single character a malaise that Stevenson originally presented belonging universally to the human condition.”

“Levine’s account is a masterpiece of hallucination; his narrator is feverish, righteous, intense. The author knows what to invent and what to leave to the master. And about that confession: Hyde doesn’t open it, and neither does Levine. He leaves it to Stevenson, to whom he is faithful with his prose. The shockers may be born of this century, but this chilling new version is a remarkably good fit with the original horror classic,” says The Miami Herald.

When is it available?

This book is not hiding in the shadows. You can get it at the Downtown Hartford Public Library or its Albany or Dwight 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!

Hotelles: A Novel

by Emma Mars

(Harper Perennial, $15.99, 592 pages)

Who is this author?

That’s a very good question. “Emma Mars” is the pen name of a writer who lives in France, and that is about all we know. Except for this, which the author wrote on http://authorsoundrelations.blogspot.com/2014/04/emma-mars-hotelles.html

“The first thing to know about me is, definitely, that I am… French! Maybe this is a dull detail for you, but I think that who I am as a writer (I’ve written something like 12 novels, under several names) comes from that specific origin. Even when I create a story that does not take place in France (I have, a few times), I guess that the way I feel and describe my characters is French to the core. For instance, I’m obsessed with smell and perfumes, which is a typical French (bad) habit.

“Another great source of inspiration for me is to close my eyes and imagine a place I’d like to be. When I wrote the very first lines of Hotelles, I saw a beautiful hotel room, designed as a replica of a famous bedroom in a Napoleonic Castle, and just tried to guess what could happen to a young girl lying in such a gorgeous and mysterious place. Why is she here? Is she alone? What could make her presence here odd?

“Then I only had to write her story as I’d like it to be told to me – full of thrill, emotion, and sensuality. Also, before each writing session, I did some breathing exercises; my eyes closed, and tried to slip into Annabelle’s mind and body. To feel the same things as her, even what her belly or her sex could feel in such circumstances. To really BE her, before writing like her.”

OK, then.

What is this book about?

Forget the red cover — this book could have been clad in 50 shades of grey. What’s it about? A mysterious lover. Secret notes. Sex. And more sex. In Paris, in the Hotel des Charmes, whose rooms are named for legendary French seductresses. There Annabelle, a young woman who works as an “escort,” and is about to marry a rich and powerful man who doesn’t know about her occupation (or does he?), is taking on one last client, who turns out to be her fiance’s brother, a man who has a fetish for fetishes. Uh-oh.  Annabelle has much to discover about passion and desire and how they relate to true freedom. Readers of her story will learn a lot, too.

Why you’ll like it:

It’s sensuous summertime. What better time for a book that takes a cool look at a hot story? Far, far better written than the inexplicably popular “Fifty Shades,” this is an exploration of eroticism with a heavy French accent and with a good bit of mystery thrown in. Read this one with a tall, cooling drink handy: there’s a heat wave between those red covers. And it’s the first book in a trilogy!

What others are saying:

Publishers Weekly says in a starred review: “Pseudonymous French author Mars offers an intricate erotic tale that grabs the reader on its first page and never lets go. Annabelle is an aspiring journalist whose mother needs expensive medical care—so Annabelle becomes Elle, a paid escort for one of Paris’s most exclusive agencies. When she meets high-flying businessman David Barlet and he proposes marriage, Elle thinks her problems are over, but they’re just beginning. David’s brother, Louie, is one of Elle’s past clients, and he’s not above blackmailing her. Meanwhile, someone is sending Elle anonymous erotic notes. And her husband-to-be may not be as oblivious to his brother’s machinations as Elle thinks. As the mysteries unwind, Elle proves that she’s more than able to take care of herself. Clever details add an extra dimension for readers familiar with French language and culture, but Elle’s story is accessible to any reader. Rather than producing a Fifty Shades of Grey clone, Mars has created a sensuous, fascinating, and erotic achievement all her own.”

Says Kirkus Reviews: “Struggling to finish her journalism degree and help her cancer-stricken mother, a young escort finds herself swept up in an erotic education that threatens her impending fairy-tale wedding. Elle hopes her job working for an exclusive escort agency won’t last long. Obligated only to accompany wealthy men in need of arm candy to their social functions, she sometimes takes advantage of the after-hours, off-the-books amorous perks. Yet the encounters leave her dissatisfied. After a silver notebook mysteriously appears in her bag one day, Elle begins receiving erotic notes from an anonymous admirer. One evening, she meets the brilliant, charismatic media mogul David Barlet. A whirlwind romance ensues, and within weeks they’re engaged. Elle ought to be thrilled, but it all seems too fast; David hasn’t kissed her yet, and she’s still harboring a few secrets. Certain that David would drop her if he knew about her escort work, Elle is determined to quit but agrees to take one final job—which turns out to be with David’s charismatic brother, Louie. Her silver notebook starts filling with not only erotic notes, but also demands, presumably from Louie. He sets Elle a series of erotic challenges, each accompanied by a signature fetish and held in an aptly chosen room at the Hôtel des Charmes. Echoing The Story of O, most of the games arouse Elle’s desires to submit and to dominate. Yet others have an odd ring to them, such as her encounter with a man clad entirely in black latex wielding a whip, like a superhero deeply concerned about germ transmission. As the games continue, Elle starts to wonder about the death of David’s first wife, Louie’s motives and her own desires. Rife with sexual tension and mystery, this first tale in a trilogy will have readers eager for the translation of Mars’ next installment.”

When is it available?

It’s burning up the shelves at the Dwight and Mark Twain branches of the 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!

Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community

by Saul Austerlitz

(Chicago Review Press, $19.95, 416 pages)

Who is this author?

Saul Austerlitz, who lives in Brooklyn, is an author and pop culture critic who has been widely published in print and online in such venues as the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, Slate, the Village Voice, The National, the San Francisco Chronicle, Spin, Rolling Stone and others. Booklist named his 2010 book, “Another Fine Mess: A History of the American Film Comedy,” as one of the year’s 10 best arts books. He wrote about the intersection of TV and music in “Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes,” which is being adapted as a documentary film.

What is this book about?

Who among us has not enjoyed laughing along with a favorite situation comedy on TV? The sitcom, for short, whether set in a workplace or grounded in family life or among friends, is a bedrock form of TV entertainment, and this book shows how it has grown and developed, with attention to such hit shows as I Love Lucy, The Phil Silvers Show; The Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore shows; M*A*S*H; Taxi;  Cheers, Roseanne; Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show, 30 Rock and more. Canned laughter, quirky characters, familiar sets, broad humor or sharp satire: sitcoms have all that and more, and Americans love them. Challenged by the popularity of so-called “reality” shows, which are in fact often scripted, sitcoms are entertainment but also a reflection on current trends and enduring truths, and in this book, Austerlitz provides a thorough and thoughtful look at their history.

Why you’ll like it:

This book will take you down TV’s memory lane, one hilarious episode of one of 24 hilarious shows at a time, but it is more than a light exercise in nostalgia. Sitcoms are by definition funny, and sometimes even wise, and they have provided a great window on how Americans feel about themselves and their times, not to mention relatable characters and catchphrases that enter the language. And they helped expose – and change – such hitherto verboten subjects as racial prejudice and gay life. Austerlitz is a smart and funny guide to these smart and funny shows that are so firmly entwined in our culture and our hearts.

What others are saying:

Says Library Journal in a starred review: “. . . “Watch enough television, and sitcoms begin to talk to one another.” This serves as the book’s thesis, and the author is at his best when he’s facilitating the conversation. Father Knows Best recalls The Honeymooners, Moe’s Tavern is Springfield’s answer to Cheers, and Curb Your Enthusiasm couldn’t exist without Seinfeld. Extending beyond the facile comparisons, Austerlitz’s chapter on Sex in the City opens with a look at The Golden Girls and leads into Entourage, while his section on Taxi reads like an introduction to TV sidekicks, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show to Community. Austerlitz adheres to his history of sitcoms in 24 episodes, but isn’t shackled by it, easily covering an entire run of a sitcom while drawing comparisons to a dozen other shows within a single chapter. VERDICT A compulsively readable and often laugh-out-loud funny study of the American sitcom. While it lacks the detailed episode and cast listings scholars might desire, it’s perfect for armchair readers—and is a must if that armchair resembles Archie Bunker’s.

Kirkus Reviews says: “Sitcoms reveal America’s changing reality, writes the author in this enthusiastic overview of an enduring genre. Movie and TV critic Austerlitz brings his keen analysis of American culture to sitcoms, long the staple of prime time. Each chapter focuses on a single episode of a popular show, which launches the author’s investigation into the evolution of comedy; the talents of stars, producers and writers; and the changing expectations of viewers. As the author sees it, sitcoms emerged in the 1950s as “field guides to the new postwar consensus, an effort to simultaneously reflect the lives of their audiences and subtly steer their behavior.” The shows celebrated family life and domesticity, even when their subjects were sparring, childless couples, such as Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. Most early sitcoms featured middle-class white families with stay-at-home mothers, children who invariably got into and out of mischief in half an hour, and fathers who did not always know best. Those sitcoms, writes the author, “promised comfort and familiarity, the certainty of an eternal present free of all but the most fleeting concerns.” In evaluating the genre, Austerlitz sets the bar high: I Love Lucy was brilliant, while Leave it to Beaver was repetitive and only occasionally funny. Some of his discoveries may surprise readers: The long-running, award-winning The Dick Van Dyke Show and Cheers were almost cancelled after their first seasons; Carl Reiner envisioned Johnny Carson for Van Dyke’s role; the creator of the racist Archie Bunker was “a card-carrying liberal humanist.” Roseanne, writes the author, disrupted the idea of sitcom as middle-class comfort zone; Friends offered viewers “a replacement family” in the form of a group of confidants; Seinfeld began a trend in which sitcoms spoofed television itself, “undercutting its medium, ridiculing its traditions and its unspoken assumptions.” Astute and bursting with information–an entertaining treat for sitcom fans and a valuable contribution to TV history.”

“[...] Austerlitz ingeniously and persuasively uses the genre of situation comedy as an American Rosetta stone, showing it to be capable of decoding itself (thanks to its endless self-references) and of making intelligible an entire social archaeology, [...]  Bottomless in its depth of research but as light in touch as the best of its subjects, Sitcom belongs in any home that has a sofa and a TV set,” says The Nation.

James Napoli, writing in Paste magazine, says “. . .All great comedy represents, for certain, finely honed craft. And when we combine expertly crafted jokes with perfectly realized characters, we get the iconic shows that Austerlitz profiles here. His descriptions of hilarious moments and plotlines from such groundbreaking work as The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, The Cosby Show, Seinfeld and 30 Rock effortlessly carry you along on a wave of grins-while-reading and goodwill for the programs, even if you weren’t around when they originally broadcast.

“. . . In the end, though, let’s not argue about whether the TV sitcom is an art form. Let’s just say some shows aspire to be, and might, on a subjective basis, get there at times. Once we establish this, we can review the sitcom’s place in the landscape of our lives with nostalgia, affection and a good portion of insightful (and not unfounded) sociological analysis.

“Austerlitz delivers exactly this in his pleasantly satisfying, quite informative book. We do not need to ask any more of it.”

When is it available?

“Sitcom” awaits you 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!

Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

(Soho, $26, 336 pages)

Who is this author?

Okey Ndibe is a Nigerian émigré who lives with his family in West Hartford. He was an award-winning member of The Courant’s editorial board and editor of African Commentary, a magazine founded by the acclaimed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. Ndibe teaches African and African Diaspora literatures at Brown University and holds MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has taught at Connecticut College, Bard College, Trinity College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). His previous novel is “Arrows of Rain.”

What is this book about?

Ikechukwu Uzondu, “Ike for short,”  has a degree in economics but can find only demeaning work as a New York cabbie, hampered from achieving more by his impenetrable Nigerian accent, love of gambling and volatile personality. Bankrupted by his passionate and predatory former wife, Ike devises a get-rich-quick scheme. He’ll go home to Nigeria, steal his village’s revered war god statue and return to the Big Apple, where he can sell the icon to a gallery called Foreign Gods, Inc., run by an unpleasant gent who specializes in esoteric religious items. Like so many best-laid plans, this one goes very, very awry. Ike discovers that his mother and sister have been gulled by a shady evangelist; his old friend seems to be living off crookedly obtained money and his former love is a miserable mother suffering extreme poverty. As an amateur thief, Ike is prey to shaky nerves and other debilitating handicaps. Worst of all, Ngene, the stolen war god, is seeking revenge. All doesn’t end well, but this cabbie takes us for a helluva ride.

Why you’ll like it:

The characters are compelling — Ike’s ex-wife alone is worth the price of admission. The language is evocative and illuminating – as I said in my review in The Courant: “Ndibe makes lavish use of Nigerian idioms, and while their meaning can be ascertained through their context, an author’s note or glossary would have been very welcome. Still, the delightful phrase “blows grammar” — tries to impress listeners by using big, complicated words where simpler ones would do —- is one of many wonderfully colorful expressions that enliven the tale.”

The plot is lively, though less so in the book’s middle. And the karma dished out by that kidnapped god statue will leave you shivering. We’ve all seen those phony financial deal emails supposedly sent by Nigerian princes. Well, here is a novel whose Nigerian hero sadly manages to scam himself. The book is both laugh-out-loud hilarious and deeply sad. It’s a story you will not soon forget.

What others are saying:

Booklist says: “Ike, a Nigerian immigrant, hasn’t been able to make it in America. Driving a taxi, divorced, and broke, he continues to look for an angle and thinks he may have found it in an article about an art gallery that buys icons of foreign deities. He returns to his village in Nigeria in search of art but finds his family caught up on both sides of a religious war between Christianity and native beliefs revolving around the god Ngene. This is a heist story unlike any other, and at the center of it is a web of family obligations, cultural history, and greed. The self-destructive Ike, palpably conflicted and ready to place the blame for his lot anywhere but on himself, is a compelling character who attempts to come home again. Novelist Ndibe unfurls his rich narrative ­gradually, allowing room for plenty of character interaction while painting a revealing portrait of contemporary Nigeria. With piercing psychological insight and biting commentary on the challenges faced by immigrants, the novel is as full-blooded and fierce as the war deity who drives the story.”

In The New York Times. Janet Maslin writes: “razor-sharp…astute and gripping…Mr. Ndibe invests his story with enough dark comedy to make [the Nigerian war idol] Ngene an odoriferous presence in his own right, and certainly not the kind of polite exotic rarity that art collectors are used to. At one point, the novel compares him to the demonic Baal, and Ngene shows many signs of wishing to live up to that reputation. In Mr. Ndibe’s agile hands, he’s both a source of satire and an embodiment of pure terror.”

Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “In Nigerian-born Ndibe’s (Arrows of Rain) new novel, Ikechukwu “Ike” Uzondu is a hapless N.Y.C. taxi driver stymied at every turn—his rent is past due, his Amherst education means less to potential employers than his accent, his green-card marriage has more than its share of baggage, and his fares always mispronounce his name (that’s “Ee-kay”). Desperate to keep his head above water in a country that only accepts him as a caricature, Ike decides to travel back to his village in Nigeria, steal his village’s ancestral war idol, and sell it to an unscrupulous dealer in tribal antiques. Many novels would merely use this premise as an excuse for madcap postcolonial allegory, but the theft turns out to be the setup for the novel’s centerpiece: Ike’s return to the village of Utonki, where he finds his family torn between a maniacal Christian pastor and the traditional worshippers of Ngene, the god Ike has resolved to pillage. Neither fable nor melodrama, nor what’s crudely niched as “world literature,” the novel traces the story of a painstakingly-crafted protagonist and his community caught up in the inescapable allure of success defined in Western terms.”

In its starred review, Kirkus says: “A Nigerian living in America has a moneymaking scheme–to return to his native village, steal the statue of a war god and sell it to a tony New York dealer who deals in such deities. Ikechukwu Uzondu (or Ike for short) has high expectations. Although he’s a cum laude graduate of Amherst with a degree in economics, he’s working as a New York cabbie because his accent won’t get him in the door at a Wall Street firm. Recently divorced and hounded by creditors . . . Ike borrows some money from a friend to purchase a ticket back to his home village of Utonki and carefully lays the groundwork for stealing a statue of Ngene, the village war god still worshiped by Ike’s uncle Osuakwu. . . . Ndibe writes of culture clash in a moving way that makes Ike’s march toward disaster inexorable and ineffably sad.”

Library Journal says:  “Ikechukwu Uzondu, a Nigerian cabbie working in Manhattan, is addicted to gambling and alcohol, with a hefty dose of self-pity thrown in. Though he holds a degree in economics from Amherst College, we’re asked to believe that it’s only his accent that keeps him from landing acceptable employment. Ike ignores bills and avoids the plaintive emails from his sister back in the village of Utonki. Since his ill-considered marriage imploded, Ike has been unable to send funds home, leaving him feeling guilty and angry. But he has a scheme. He’ll steal the statue of Ngene, a warrior god that has protected his people in Utonki for hundreds of years, and sell it to the officious Mark Gruels, curator of Foreign Gods, Inc., a gallery that caters to wealthy collectors who will pay small fortunes to display their liberal tastes. Not until Ike’s week back in Nigeria, where he tussles with corrupt customs officers, battles a hypocritical missionary for his mother’s soul, and visits a school friend whose gauche mansion was built with dirty money, does the author’s biting humor surface, but it’s more bitter than sweet. VERDICT Ndibe (Arrows of Rain) offers a jaundiced view of the immigrant experience in Ike, who won’t assimilate to his adopted country but can’t return home either. Ike’s overwhelming sense of loss and alienation results in a bleak portrait of a broken man. A difficult read indeed.”

My review in The Courant says: “How much is a god worth, metaphysically, morally or, in the case of Ngene, a Nigerian village war god embodied in a wooden idol, materially?

“That is the question haunting Ikechukwu Uzondo, a Nigerian cab driver in New York City who is the protagonist of Okey Ndibe’s second novel, “Foreign Gods, Inc.” (Soho Press, $25). It’s a frequently bitter yet often humorous account of a frustrated immigrant whose American dream becomes a nightmare.

“Ike, as he is known – that’s “Ee-kay,” not Ike as in Eisenhower, as he often has to point out — has earned a degree in economics from Amherst College that he believed would lead to respect and riches. But his hopes go unfulfilled because, he believes, his impenetrable Nigerian accent puts off American job interviewers. What he does not take into account is his prickly personality and the gambling and drinking that sap his opportunities.

Then there is his inability to stand up to his former wife, the sex-mad, foul-mouthed Bernita, a force of ill nature for whom words such as harridan and harpy were coined. Bernita, aka Queen B, drives Ike deep into debt and humiliates him with infidelity. . . .

“As Ike’s quest begins, Ndibe introduces readers to piquant characters and village life in a country with one foot in the rampant bribery of corrupt capitalism and the other planted in the primitive past. He also explores the conflict between Christianity and native religions. Christianity gets the worst of it, represented by a long-ago white Anglican evangelist who seized souls for Christ by haranguing and bullying the villagers, and present-day Pastor Uka, a charlatan who bilks the gullible with the guile and greed of the worst TV preachers. The followers of Ngene, though their worship involves remarkably bawdy prayers, seem far more genuine in their piety. . . . The vivid, if cartoonish, characters are the best, yet in a way least satisfying part of the book, because they intrigue the reader momentarily and then fade into the background. Bernita her bad self is worth an entire novel. The story also is slowed down by repetitious scenes and near-obsessive imagery of sweating, engendered by climate and fear, which appears in trickles, rivulets and torrents throughout the story. . . .

“Ike carries out his plan, with results that shock him but not the reader, who roots for this earnest, if flawed, man but in the end can only feel pity. There’s more than a touch of Poe, or perhaps “The Twilight Zone,” in the surreal conclusion of this story.

Ngene, it turns out, is far more powerful and vengeful than Ike ever imagined. And he would have done well to study not just economics, but Euripedes, the ancient Greek dramatist who pointed out that “whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

 

When is it available?

This caustic yet touching book is 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!


Steal the North: A Novel

by Heather Brittain Bergstrom

(Viking Adult, $27.95, 336 pages)

Who is this author?

Heather Brittain Bergstrom hails from the Pacific Northwest – eastern Washington state, to be exact. Her family belonged to a fundamentalist Baptist church and she attended an unaccredited private school housed in a basement. Her background includes stints as a truckstop waitress and a teacher – talk about variety! Her writing career has brought her many awards for her short stories, including those from the Atlantic Monthly and Chicago Tribune, and one of her stories was named notable in the 2010 edition of “Best American Short Stories.”  “Steal the North” is her debut novel.

What is this book about?

This is a story of family, faith and fundamentalism. Teenage Emmy is sent by her single mother, Kate, from their home in Sacramento to live for a time with her aunt, Bethany, in Washington state. Kate had fled her rigidly religious family years ago when she became pregnant with Emmy and was vilified and shunned. But now her sister Bethany, who has been unable to have a child, reaches out to Kate, believing that if Emmy comes home and takes part in a faith healing ceremony, Beth will finally be able to bear a child. Emmy makes the trip, finds that she loves the town and also meets a Native American boy, Reuben. Their romance stirs up age-old cultural and family tensions, but the power of young love is strong.

Why you’ll like it:

This is a story of regular people caught up in unusual circumstances, and it raises issues of what happens when a family’s uncompromising faith runs smack into the need to love a member who has broken its rules. It’s also a story of sisters warily trying to rekindle a relationship and of young lovers whose desires and loyalties conflict with what is expected of them. All this adds up to a multi-layered love story with overtones of social issues, along with powerfully drawn characters, that engage the reader.

What others are saying:                                

Booklist’s starred review says: Bergstrom’s magnetic debut resonates on several levels, but first and foremost it is a poignant story of the love between two mismatched teens. Emmy’s mother, Kate, was abandoned by her high-school boyfriend before her daughter was born. Kate and her sister, Bethany, were raised in eastern Washington as members of a fundamentalist church. When Kate was condemned from the pulpit for being a “whore,” her father disowned her. Two years later, she boarded a bus with Emmy in tow, ending up in Sacramento and revealing her whereabouts to no one. Fifteen years later, Bethany finds Kate and asks her to send Emmy to Washington to help with her latest pregnancy, which follows several miscarriages. After the initial culture shock, Emmy grows to love not only her birthplace but also Reuben, the Native American boy who lives next door. Bergstrom skillfully builds suspense around what will happen when Emmy is due to return to Sacramento for her senior year, with Kate steering her toward U.C. Berkeley as Reuben is aiming for Washington State. The reader becomes involved in this thoroughly engaging first novel’s denouement because of how perceptively Bergstrom has drawn her central characters.”

Publishers Weekly says: “Award-winning short story author Bergstrom makes a strong debut with her first novel. Emmy Nolan, a shy teenager brought up by a tough single mother in Sacramento, Calif., doesn’t even know she has living relatives until her aunt tracks her mother down and begs for Emmy to attend a faith-healing ceremony—the aunt’s last chance, she believes, to carry a child to term after countless miscarriages. Emmy is shocked to discover that her mother was raised in a fundamentalist church and shunned by family and community after giving birth to Emmy while she was in high school. Once she arrives at her aunt’s home in eastern Washington State, Emmy feels like a fraud (her aunt thinks she’s both a Christian and a virgin; Emmy is neither), but grows to love her aunt and uncle, as well as Reuben, the Native American teenager next door. The book is far more than a story of love or belief, and its layers are peeled away as the narrative progresses. Chapters are written from the perspectives of several different characters (at times it feels like there are too many different points of view), often in second person, and the choice of present tense works. Emmy’s self-involvement makes it difficult, at times, to remain completely in her corner. Reuben is by far the most charismatic character in the book. But Bergstrom takes the reader so deeply into the characters that it’s easy to forgive the few things that don’t work, because much of the book works so well.”

Says Kirkus Reviews: “Young love springs up in a place where older hearts were bruised, in Bergstrom’s debut saga. Raised motherless under the influence of a fundamentalist Baptist church in eastern Washington state, sisters Kate and Bethany Nolan grew up close, and when Kate needed help after a teenage love affair left her pregnant and alone, condemned from the pulpit and prostituting herself at a local truck stop, Bethany helped her and her baby, Emmy, leave for a new life in California. Now, 16 years later, Kate asks Emmy to return to Bethany, who is childless after many miscarriages, to take part in a healing ceremony to bless her latest pregnancy. Shy, relocated to relatives she never knew existed, Emmy finds herself in a rural community where she feels a sense of belonging and is befriended by Reuben, a Native American boy. Narrated, sometimes distractingly, from multiple perspectives, the novel considers several relationships—Bethany’s solid marriage, tested by her religious beliefs and yearning for children; Kate’s struggle to accept a permanent relationship; Emmy’s discovery of mutuality with Reuben. Bergstrom’s emphasis on sentiment and issues lends a downbeat note to the storytelling, which is intensified when tragedy strikes and only partly dissipates by the drawn-out but happy conclusion. A carefully crafted family drama that dwells more on the difficult journey than the glad arrival.”

When is it available?

It’s waiting for you 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!


Sedition: A Novel

by Katharine Grant

(Holt, $26, 320 pages)

Who is this author?

How many authors – make that how many people – can claim that an ancestor was the last person in the United Kingdom to be hung, drawn and quartered? That dubious distinction belongs to Katharine Grant. In 1746, her five times great uncle, Francis Towneley, supported Bonnie Prince Charlie and kept his Catholic faith, which was considered sedition during the Reformation.

Presumably, Grant’s books for kids are on happier topics than her family history. As K.M. Grant, she has written nine books for children, including the award-winning DeGranville Trilogy. Grant, who grew up in England and now lives with her family in Scotland, where she is a regular contributor to Scottish newspapers, has now published her first book for adult readers.

What is this book about?

Set in London as the 18th century ends, this is a tale of four newly rich and social-climbing fathers who have five unmarried daughters among them. How best to marry them off to titled but not wealthy young Englishmen who would be delighted to elevate their status and spend their dowries? Why, give the girls piano lessons and have them play a concert to show off their skills. But what if their plan is upended by Belladroit, the girls’ randy French music teacher and the daughter of the Italian man who makes their pianos, not to mention the rebelliousness of one of the unmarried young women? These “what if” questions makes for a lively story, and the passionate nature of music itself is also celebrated here.

Why you’ll like it:

When reviews toss around words like “wicked” and “romp,” you can be pretty sure you are in for a good time. This is a historical novel that blends a little Pride and Prejudice with a little 50 Shades of Grey, a tasty concoction to be sure. Grant writes naughty stuff with sophistication and elan, which elevates this novel above the countless bodice-rippers with which some may confuse it.  There is plenty of well-told fun here, along with interesting historical detail and the age-old struggle of women striving to run their own lives.

What others are saying:

Says Booklist: Late eighteenth-century London is the well-detailed setting for this fun, lascivious gambol through the lives of women and men with decidedly carnal appetites in children’s author Grant’s first, quite intriguing novel for adults. It is 1794, and four nouveau riche men realize they must marry off their daughters, and soon. They seize upon what seems an excellent plan. Hire a French piano master to teach the girls how to play the newly popular instrument, the pianoforte, and, therefore, be able to attract the right spouses with their decorous musical talent. Unfortunately for the fathers, the piano teacher is an irredeemable goat who instead sets out to seduce the young ladies and thus render them unmarriageable. As the shenanigans ensue, it remains to be seen whether the piano teacher, the fathers, or the sexually awakening daughters have the upper hand and even what the actual end-prize might be for each person involved. Although the dark theme of incest winds through the story, overall the plot and characters are handled with grace and precision. ….”

“Sedition could easily have dissolved into semi-kinky melodrama, a chronicle of Belladroit’s conquests. Thanks to author Katharine Grant’s sly writing, it never does… A thumping debut filled with sex, manipulation and a dash of romance. Wickedly dark and provocative, Sedition is a bold reminder that the thirst for power and status remains unquenched over the ages,” says Bookpage, which made this novel a  Top 10 pick for April.

“[Grant’s] girls are wonderfully drawn. Spiteful, cliquey, and a curious tumble of innocence and hormones, they drive the plot in ferocious and unexpected directions . . . . She manages to be carnal without being graphic, detailed without being anatomical… Sedition is not just about sex, although it is good on female passion. It is about the power of music and cultural clashes: old blood against new money; new musical genius against conservative sensibilities. Grant captures a dizzying sense that this is a world being remade simultaneously by bankers and Bach…. The plot grows, like the music, to a staggering climax, and Grant happily subverts the cliches of the heaving bosoms and seductive Frenchmen. She writes as Alathea plays the piano – with wit, verve and not a little mischief,” says The Times (London).

Publshers Weekly says, in a starred review: “The first novel for adults from British YA author Grant is a witty, dark, and sophisticated tale set in 1790s London. Four men, wealthy but not well-bred, meet in a coffeehouse to discuss finding upper-class husbands for their five daughters. A concert on the still-new pianoforte, they decide, will display the girls perfectly to London’s elite. Piano-maker Vittorio Cantabile soon delivers the expensive instrument, along with a French music teacher. The aptly named Monsieur Belladroit begins a program of instruction and seduction, but is surprised when one of his charges, Alathea Sawneyford, makes the first move. Alathea, whose sexual boldness has unhappy roots, finds an unexpectedly deep connection with Annie, Cantabile’s hare-lipped daughter, like her, already an accomplished musician. Music provides the story’s intrigues as well as its moments of joy, but even art’s power to transcend human limits can’t produce a happy ending. Grant eschews period clichés in favor of sharp, unsentimental storytelling that evokes the era with zest and authenticity. Her London, like her characters, is both flawed and fascinating. The novel’s epigrammatic voice—“London was never so lovely as when you were about to leave it”—is another of its delights, detached in tone but delivering what are often dark ironies with memorable brevity and cleverness.”

 

When is it available?

It’s now playing at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain 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 Accident

by Chris Pavone

(Crown, $26, 400 pages)

Who is this author?

Chris Pavone really hit the publishing jackpot with his debut novel, “The Expats,” a breakneck-paced thriller set among American expatriates in Europe. It quickly became a New York Times, USA Today and international bestseller, in 20 languages on five continents, and won the 2013 Edgar Award for Best First Novel. A publishing industry veteran, with years of experience, Pavone was a cookbook editor at Clarkson Potter: perhaps not the expected background for a thriller writer, but you could say he knows how to cook up a great plot. (Sorry, could not resist!). A New York native, Pavone graduated from Cornell University and lives with his wife and twin sons in Greenwich Village and the North Fork of Long Island.

What is this book about?

It’s not unusual for a literary agent to stay up all night reading a terrific manuscript, but the one that keeps Isabel Reed awake clearly is something special – and very dangerous. It reveals shocking information about a Rupert Murdoch-like media giant that will end his powerful influence, and it is written by someone who knows the truth about the man and will be marked for death if his involvement is revealed. And, he is not the only one facing death because of this explosive book. Secrets, lies and evil machinations abound in this thriller that imagines the power one book can have.

Why you’ll like it:

The action is set in the U.S. and Europe in the course of one jam-packed day. Innocent people die. A mystery involving powerful people is revealed, at considerable cost. Kinda sounds like a Dan Brown book, right? The difference is that Chris Pavone can write well, so his fast-moving plot is not hampered by cardboard characters and wooden dialogue. Summertime is a great time for reading a chilling thriller. This one, I predict, will be seen on many beaches this year.

What others are saying:

First, a warning: even though I frequently post the well-written mini-reviews from the Kirkus Reviews service, I suggest that you NOT read the one they have done for “The Accident,” as it is loaded with spoilers. After all, the fun of reading a thriller or mystery is trying to figure out the plot yourself. Stay away!

Booklist says, in a starred review:  New York literary agent Isabel Reed plows through an anonymous manuscript in one night and immediately knows two things: The manuscript, a biography of a media mogul, will be a blockbuster, and people will die if word of its existence leaks. She’s also fairly sure she knows who the author is, but he’s dead. Word does leak, in New York and Hollywood, and ambitious young women in publishing quickly die violently. Isabel and her chosen editor, Jeffrey Fielder, are on the run from resourceful, relentless killers. Pavone’s plot twists tirelessly, shifting focus among a large cast of well-drawn characters and using flashbacks and changes of locale (Copenhagen, Zurich, Manhattan, Hollywood, the Hamptons) to build suspense. The Accident is a somewhat more conventional thriller than Pavone’s fine debut (The Expats, 2012), but he excels at developing characters’ backstories. Isabel and Jeffrey, for example, are successful but frightened that changes in their business and the onset of middle age might make them has-beens, and they’re both recalling the mutual attraction they once had but didn’t act on. Like Isabel, many readers will read this one through the night.”

“[Pavone is] a reliable new must-read in the world of thrillers. . . . You will want to finish The Accident at a nice, rapid clip to see how [the] pieces come together. . . . Unputdownable,” says The New York Times.

From Barnes & Noble: “When Isabel Reed receives an anonymous expose of a multibillionaire media mogul, she realizes that it is a literary agent’s dream and nightmare. On one hand, if published, it would be a guaranteed mega-bestseller; but it might also get her sued or even killed. It turns out that those darkest fears are not unfounded. One of her associates is executed and she herself becomes the target of a very persistent rogue CIA assassin. Book industry veteran and author Chris Pavone (The Expats) presents an intense, unfolding thriller about a publishing process not in any handbook.”

A starred Publishers Weekly review says: “The contents of The Accident, a manuscript submission by an anonymous author, shock New York literary agent Isabel Reed, the heroine of Pavone’s high-wire thriller. . .  Isabel worries that the revelations of this nonfiction work about Charlie Wolfe, a global media baron (think Rupert Murdoch crossed with Charles Foster Kane), pose a real danger. Her fears prove well founded as ruthless, powerful forces do whatever it takes to prevent the book’s publication. The cold-blooded murder of someone close to Isabel is but the first of many. The cast of distinctive characters includes Hayden Gray, a Berlin-based “cultural attaché” (i.e., spy), who orchestrates the effort to reclaim the manuscript; Camilla Glyndon-Browning, a subsidiary-rights director who tries to shop it to Hollywood; and, of course, the anonymous author himself. Despite the far-fetched conceit, Pavone makes the story credible, and the suspense is palpable.”

When is it available?

If you’re not afraid to read it, this book is 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!

 

Frog Music

By Emma Donaghue

(Little, Brown and Company, $27, 416 pages)

Who is this author?

Born in Dublin, schooled at Cambridge, where she studied 18th century literature, and now a resident of Ontario, Emma Donoghue’s imaginative and haunting novel, “Room,” was an international bestseller in 2010, She also is the author of other bestsellers, such as “Slammerkin,” “The Sealed Letter,” “Landing,” “Life Mask,” “Hood” and “Stirfry.” and she has written several story collections: “The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits,” “Kissing the Witch,” and “Touchy Subjects.”  She also has written literary history, biography, stage and radio plays and fairy tales, She and her partner have two young children.

Donahue told an interviewer: “The youngest of eight children, I would never have been conceived if a papal bull hadn’t guilt-tripped my poor mother into flushing her pills down the toilet.”

What is this book about?

Set in 1876 in San Francisco, the story blends several frightening things: a killer heat wave, a killer epidemic of smallpox, and a killer who fatally shoots a young woman through the window of a saloon. And she is no ordinary victim: Jenny Bonnet was a cross-dressing bicyclist who made money by trapping frogs for restaurants to serve.

Jenny leaves behind a friend, Blanche Beunon, who is a burlesque show dancer. Blanche is out to avenge her friend’s murder before the killer gets her too, and spends three days on the hunt, while finding out about Jenny’s secret life in a booming society where few are playing by the rules. This is a historical thriller made even more powerful by its author’s literary skills.

Why you’ll like it:

Donahue is a master storyteller. In “Room,” she gave us the tale of a young woman imprisoned for years in a garden shed by a lunatic rapist who fathers her child, and it is from the innocent yet oddly knowing perspective of that child, 5-year-old Jack, that the story is spun. “Frog Music” is based on a true, never-solved murder that happened almost 150 years ago, but Donaghue makes the bawdy, brawling world of early San Francisco vivid and her imagined solution to the murder utterly believable. The characters are unusual, to say the least, the women are strong and the mystery is fascinating.  It’s a pleasure to read such an imaginative and well-written book.

What others are saying:

Booklist’s starred review says: “Donoghue flawlessly combines literary eloquence and vigorous plotting in her first full-fledged mystery, a work as original and multifaceted as its young murder victim. During the scorching summer of 1876, Jenny Bonnet, an enigmatic cross-dressing bicyclist who traps frogs for San Francisco’s restaurants, meets her death in a railroad saloon on the city’s outskirts. Exotic dancer Blanche Beunon, a French immigrant living in Chinatown, thinks she knows who shot her friend and why, but has no leverage to prove it and doesn’t know if she herself was the intended target. A compulsive pleasure-seeker estranged from her “fancy man,” Blanche searches desperately for her missing son while pursuing justice for Jenny, but finds her two goals sit in conflict. In language spiced with musical interludes and raunchy French slang, Donoghue brings to teeming life the nasty, naughty side of this ethnically diverse metropolis, with its brothels, gaming halls, smallpox-infested boardinghouses, and rampant child abuse. Most of her seedy, damaged characters really lived, and she not only posits a clever solution to a historical crime that was never adequately solved but also crafts around Blanche and Jenny an engrossing and suspenseful tale about moral growth, unlikely friendship, and breaking free from the past.”

Says Kirkus Reviews: “In the sweltering fall of 1876, a San Francisco prostitute tracks a killer and searches for her stolen baby. Donoghue returns here to the historical fiction genre in which she first made her international mark, but she’s blended in the suspense craft she acquired writing her contemporary mega-seller Room. Who fired the shotgun blasts that blew away Jenny Bonnet while her friend Blanche bent down to take off her boots? Blanche believes it was her lover Arthur or his sidekick, Ernest, who have been living on her earnings as a high-priced erotic dancer/whore. They weren’t happy when Jenny goaded Blanche into retrieving her 1-year-old son, P’tit, from the ghastly holding pen for unwanted children where Arthur dumped him while Blanche was ill. And Jenny is killed while Blanche is hiding out in the countryside with her after an ugly scene with Arthur and Ernest that led Blanche to flee their apartment without P’tit. The men blame Jenny for Blanche’s newfound, unwelcome independence, but there are plenty of other people in San Francisco who dislike the defiant, cross-dressing frog-catcher, who presents herself as an untamed free spirit. There’s far more to Jenny’s story, we learn, as Donoghue cuts between Blanche’s hunt for her son in mid-September and the events of August, when her collision with bicycle-riding Jenny led to their unlikely friendship. By the time the murderer is revealed, we understand why Jenny knows so much about abandoned children, and we’ve seen how Blanche has been changed by her hesitant commitment to motherhood. (Some of the book’s funniest, most touching moments depict her early struggles to care for “this terrible visitor,” her baby.) Donoghue’s vivid rendering of Gilded Age San Francisco is notable for her atmospheric use of popular songs and slang in Blanche’s native French, but the book’s emotional punch comes from its portrait of a woman growing into self-respect as she takes responsibility for the infant life she’s created. More fine work from one of popular fiction’s most talented practitioners.”

From Barnes & Noble: “In a recent author Q and A, Emma Donoghue wrote, “One journalist kindly alerted me to the fact that there was a hoax in my Wikipedia entry, a claim that I was writing about ‘the murder of a cross-dressing frog-catcher!’—and was abashed when I told him it was true.” Fortunately, Jenny Bonnet, the pants-wearing victim in this evocative historical novel, is not painted here as an outlandish buffoon; in fact, she is modeled on an irrepressible, very real person who was savagely killed in San Francisco in 1876. Replete with vivid characters, lyrical asides and other atmospheric touches, Frog Music sounds just the right notes.”

Says Publishers Weekly:  “Donoghue’s first literary crime novel is a departure from her bestselling Room, but it’s just as dark and just as gripping as the latter. Based on the circumstances surrounding the grizzly real-life murder of Jenny Bonnet, a law-flouting, pants-wearing frog catcher who lived in San Francisco in the mid-1870s, this investigation into who pulled the trigger is told in episodic flashbacks from the point of view of Blanche Beunon. Blanche is a raunchy, self-absorbed burlesque dancer and French émigré who befriended the alluring Bonnet and was with her on the night she was killed. Also woven into the plot is Blanche’s sordid relationship with Albert Deneve, an ex–tightrope walker, and his minion Ernest, who may have had a hand in the murder while swindling Blanche out of house, home, and one-year-old baby. Aside from the obvious whodunit factor, the book is filled with period song lyrics and other historic details, expertly researched and flushed out. The sweltering heat wave and smallpox epidemic that afflicted thousands in 1876, the Sinophobic takedown of Chinese businesses, and the proliferation of baby farms—glorified dumping grounds for unwanted babies—are all integrated into the story of Bonnet’s tragic end. Donoghue’s signature talent for setting tone and mood elevates the book from common cliffhanger to a true chef d’oeuvre.”

“Donoghue’s latest novel has many facets, all of them fascinating…. Like her hair-raising best-seller Room, it incorporates the elements of a thriller; in fact, there’s enough puzzle here to qualify as a full-blooded mystery. Best of all, there’s Donoghue’s intricate examination of women in impossible circumstances, bound to repugnant men for survival but never broken by them…. Colorful French slang and period songs…flow through the novel lyrically, making the era as vital as the plot. Donoghue is acrobatic with her storytelling and language and paints the stinking city vividly…. [A] vibrant and remarkable novel,” says the San Jose Mercury News.

When is it available?

The Downtown Hartford Public Library has this book 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!

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel [Hardcover]

by Anthony Doerr

(Scribner, $27, 544 pages)

Who is this author?

Anthony Doerr has won an impressive, almost alarming, number of awards for his books: NY Times Notables, American Library Association  and Washington Post Books of the Year, a Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, a Rome Prize, a Story Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Ohioana Book Award three times. His stories regularly are published in magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2007, the British literary magazine Granta named Doerr to its list of 21 Best Young American novelists.  The former writer-in-residence for Idaho, where he lives with his wife and twin boys, he also writes a column on science books for the Boston Globe and is a contributor to The Morning News.

What is this book about?

The story is set during World War II, but it is not primarily a book about war. Instead, it tells about two teenagers: a French girl who went blind at age 6 and now is hiding in the countryside with her father from the Nazis, and Werner, a German boy with a talent for repairing radios and other devices, who is conscripted into a particularly nasty Hitler Youth group whose actions trouble him greatly.  Another character, you might say, is a fabulous 133-carat blue diamond that bears a legendary curse: it is believed to grant its owner immortality but cause the death of all those he or she holds near and dear. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith at the Museum of Natural History in Paris before they escaped, and the museum has given the fabled diamond and three decoy replicas to trusted employees to try to keep the jewel out of Nazi hands.  Eventually, Marie-Laure and Werner meet in this tale of striving for goodness in the midst of war’s horrors.

Why you’ll like it:

As shown by all those major awards he has garnered, Doerr has a gorgeous writing style, a skill as important as the ability to create compelling characters or plots.  An excerpt from the book appears on the amazon.com website: I challenge you to read and not want more, much more. This is a novel not so much about war or deprivation, although Doerr is very adept at dealing with that material, as it is about human behavior, good and bad. It’s a thought-provoking  book whose literary prowess and fascinating story will stay with you for a long time.

What others are saying:

Says Booklist’s starred review:  “A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr’s magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed. It rests, historically, during the occupation of France during WWII, but brief chapters told in alternating voices give the overall—and long—­narrative a swift movement through time and events. We have two main characters, each one on opposite sides in the conflagration that is destroying Europe. Marie-Laure is a sightless girl who lived with her father in Paris before the occupation; he was a master locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. When German forces necessitate abandonment of the city, Marie-Laure’s father, taking with him the museum’s greatest treasure, removes himself and his daughter and eventually arrives at his uncle’s house in the coastal city of Saint-Malo. Young German soldier Werner is sent to Saint-Malo to track Resistance activity there, and eventually, and inevitably, Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s paths cross. It is through their individual and intertwined tales that Doerr masterfully and knowledgeably re-creates the deprived civilian conditions of war-torn France and the strictly controlled lives of the military occupiers.”

In the The New York Times, Janet Maslin writes: “Boy meets girl in Anthony Doerr’s hauntingly beautiful new book, but the circumstances are as elegantly circuitous as they can be…surprisingly fresh and enveloping…What’s unexpected about its impact is that the novel does not regard Europeans’ wartime experience in a new way. Instead, Mr. Doerr’s nuanced approach concentrates on the choices his characters make and on the souls that have been lost, both living and dead. “

Publishers Weekly says in its starred review: “In 1944, the U.S. Air Force bombed the Nazi-occupied French coastal town of St. Malo. Doerr starts his story just before the bombing, then goes back to 1934 to describe two childhoods: those of Werner and Marie-Laure. We meet Werner as a tow-headed German orphan whose math skills earn him a place in an elite Nazi training school—saving him from a life in the mines, but forcing him to continually choose between opportunity and morality. Marie-Laure is blind and grows up in Paris, where her father is a locksmith for the Museum of Natural History, until the fall of Paris forces them to St. Malo, the home of Marie-Laure’s eccentric great-uncle, who, along with his longtime housekeeper, joins the Resistance. Doerr throws in a possibly cursed [diamond] and the Nazi gemologist searching for it, and weaves in radio, German propaganda, coded partisan messages, scientific facts, and Jules Verne. Eventually, the bombs fall, and the characters’ paths converge, before diverging in the long aftermath that is the rest of the 20th century. If a book’s success can be measured by its ability to move readers and the number of memorable characters it has, Story Prize–winner Doerr’s novel triumphs on both counts. Along the way, he convinces readers that new stories can still be told about this well-trod period, and that war—despite its desperation, cruelty, and harrowing moral choices—cannot negate the pleasures of the world

The Portland Oregonian says: “Exquisite…All the Light We Cannot See, 10 years under construction, is the written equivalent of a Botticelli painting or a Michelangelo sculpture—as filled with light and beauty as the landscapes, museums, and cathedrals…in Rome…Meticulously researched and chock full of beautiful imagery…Nothing short of brilliant, All the Light We Cannot See gives off the kind of mesmerizing and legend-making light as that of the mysterious diamond that sits in the center of the story.”

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014, review says: “Does the world need yet another novel about WWII? It does when the novel is as inventive and beautiful as this one by Anthony Doerr. In fact, All the Light We Cannot See–while set mostly in Germany and France before and during the war–is not really a “war novel”. Yes, there is fear and fighting and disappearance and death, but the author’s focus is on the interior lives of his two characters. Marie Laure is a blind 14-year-old French girl who flees to the countryside when her father disappears from Nazi-occupied Paris. Werner is a gadget-obsessed German orphan whose skills admit him to a brutal branch of Hitler Youth. Never mind that their paths don’t cross until very late in the novel, this is not a book you read for plot (although there is a wonderful, mysterious subplot about a stolen gem). This is a book you read for the beauty of Doerr’s writing– “Abyss in her gut, desert in her throat, Marie-Laure takes one of the cans of food…”–and for the way he understands and cherishes the magical obsessions of childhood. Marie Laure and Werner are never quaint or twee. Instead they are powerful examples of the way average people in trying times must decide daily between morality and survival.”

In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews says: “Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect. . . . Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major. Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.”

When is it available?

This remarkable book is at the Downtown Hartford Public Library and its Mark Twain branch.

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