The Cue Card

Hi. I hope everyone is well. We’re supposed to have our first snowstorm this week, which is not too unusual considering it’s almost Halloween time, but am I ready for it? Nooo.

Last week we had a sunny day when I took this photo, yay. I had to get out for one more warm day. It felt nice and I liked using my Trek road bike for one more ride, which is what I trained on for our Italy bike trip. It’s my lucky chariot, lol.

Not much else new, but I see that the movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which I posted about last week, hasn’t received completely favorable reviews. Kirkus Reviews sort of panned it for being more focused on the bad guys and not enough on the Osage people, and Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post says the book’s suspense has been taken out of the movie. Uh-oh. I still plan to see it sometime — either at home or at the theater — but I will temper my expectations.

Perhaps the movie Nyad about long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster will be more enjoyable. It entails Nyad’s training and 2013 swim from Cuba to Florida. Has anyone seen it yet? It’s out in select theaters now and streams on Netflix beginning Nov. 3. Those two actresses should be a dynamo combination.

Speaking of movies, we watched the movie Golda this past week about the former prime minister of Israel Golda Meir (played by Helen Mirren) and the stakes she faced in 1973 when Egypt and Syria invaded Israel. It’s a pretty intense little war drama, and for the most part, we liked it. It shows the precarious position of Israel at the time, and Helen Mirren of course is excellent.

Though she sure has to smoke a lot of cigarettes in the role. Apparently Golda Meir was a chain-smoker who knocked off 70 cigarettes a day, which it seems the film’s director took to heart. It’s one big cigarette-fest that made us a bit sick. Still it seemed pretty true to life. Liev Schreiber plays U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his scenes talking with Mirren as Meir are apparently indicative of their close diplomatic relationship. It goes without saying: the timing of the film is pretty apropos with the awful recent events going on all over again. Isn’t it dreadful news. Is there an ounce of hope anywhere?

We also watched the documentary about spy author John le Carre’ called The Pigeon Tunnel, which just came out on AppleTV+ and is based on his memoir. It was filmed before le Carre passed away in 2020 and shows the famous British author giving his last interview, which is quite candid and revealing.

Whoa, he had a terrible family life. His mother left when he was like 5 and his father was a swindler/criminal, who had the author later in life bail him out a couple times. The film also delves into le Carre’s career during the Cold War and his time as a spy. It touches on the traitor Kim Philby and on the author’s books. So if you like those or are just curious, it’s quite interesting and worth seeing.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of the books that I finished lately.

The Observer by Marina Endicott / Knopf Canada / 255 pages / 2023

This is a bit of a quiet novel about a couple — Julia Carey and Hardy Willis — who move in the 1990s to a tiny town in northeastern Alberta, Canada. He’s a new recruit with Royal Canadian Mounted Police and she’s hired as an editor for the local newspaper The Observer.

Written in the first person from Julia’s perspective, the story starts off a bit slow as they’re meeting people in the town and learning their ways and trying make ends meet to pay bills. Julia feels like an outsider who’s not used to a rural community, though eventually they start making friends especially with the other RCMP members there and their spouses.

Hardy, as a new member, is given much brunt work and is on nights, seeing to wrecks on the highway, death notices, and other grim tasks. Julia tries to help him cope, but he doesn’t tell her much of what he encounters on the job. The story moves about like little episodes about town, from one thing to the next … with Julia handling sporadic work at the The Observer and becoming friends with a recent widow named Stephanie whose RCMP husband committed suicide. She wants to ask her more about it but holds off for a while.

As the novel goes along, I became more drawn into Hardy and Julia’s lives … as they have a baby and things become harder for Hardy on the job. You come to realize the stress and hardships these police members face as they endure threats, crimes, and victims in bleak circumstances, which take a mental health toll on them. It leads to a scare and down time in Hardy and Julia’s lives that they must face together. You’ll want to stay tuned to see what happens.

Apparently the novel is based on the author’s own life of her several years in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, (near where years later four RCMP members were killed tragically by a gunman on a rural property in 2005). By novel’s end, I found it pretty affecting and a bit of a haunting look back on one’s life … when some deeply impressionable events happened. It’s a quiet, small-town tale but still manages some poignant ripples. It’s my first novel by Canadian author Marina Endicott novel and won’t be my last.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for allowing me the ARC to read and review.

Island Home: A Landscape Memoir by Tim Winton/ Milkweed /256 p / 2017

I’ve loved much of Australian author Tim Winton’s fiction, but this book was really more essay-like than what I was expecting as a memoir. Much of it includes the western coast of Australia — places Winton grew up, which I know he loves and essays on saving the environment and his environmental work, which I admire and I’m all for.

But I found the book episodic and the chapters brief and not all that well explained to an outsider whether in mentioning species or places. Parts of it flew past or beyond me, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Still I admire Winton’s love of nature, environmental awareness, and his work in the campaign to save the Ningaloo Reef and other wild places. But in terms of reading, I’ll stick with his fiction in the future.

That’s all for now — what about you have you read these authors, or seen these movies and if so, what did you think? Enjoy the week.

Hi all. I just wanted to touch base that I’ll be taking a bit of blogging break while we’re away on our bike trip in Italy. We leave soon and I have my e-reader stacked full of fall reading for the plane, including one novel for PW to read and two advanced copies I haven’t gotten to yet, which include Canadian authors Sarah Bernstein’s novel Study for Obedience (out Oct. 10) and Marina Endicott’s novel The Observer (out Sept. 12). I’m a bit surprised to see that Study for Obedience just made the shortlist for the Booker Prize announced a few days ago. I’ve heard it’s quite strange, but I’ll give it a shot. Also Paul Harding’s novel This Other Eden made the Booker shortlist and I was listening to the audio recently, but I think I’ll switch to the ebook as I might like it better in print.

I wanted to take Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book Roman Stories (out Oct. 10) with me, but I didn’t get an early copy … so I’ll wait. When I return home I’ll try to put together a Preview of October release picks as there’s some good upcoming novels to make way for. Meanwhile I bought tickets to the upcoming book festival Wordfest (Oct. 11-15) and plan to see journalist Susan Casey talk about her new book The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean (out Aug. 1) and Mary Trump on her book The Reckoning. Not sure why she’s here, but I’m sure Canadians are very wary of her uncle running for reelection. There’s also a slew of other authors coming including: Ashley Audrain, Patrick DeWitt, Michael Crummey, Emma Donoghue, and Anne Berest, whose novel The Postcard I read earlier in the summer. I’m not sure how many I will see as I live far from the city these days.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

The Furrows: An Elegy by Namwali Serpell / Hogarth / 288 pages /2022

As it opens, a biracial woman named Cassandra Williams recounts her brother’s death in a tragedy at a Delaware beach when she was 12 and he was 7. Thereafter the story relates how the grief affected the later lives of her and her parents. Her white mother, who’s long denied that he died, goes on to form a nonprofit for missing children; while her black father leaves to remarry; and Cassie, who’s seen many therapists over the years, has had trouble processing the reality of the tragedy and her memory of it. At the time, she blacked out and his body was never found.

The short-ish novel starts pretty straightforward, but the second half gets sort of kooky: when things turn up casting some doubt whether the boy actually died or has just been missing. Cassie, or C as she’s called, becomes involved with a man who thinks he went to school with him. Uh-oh. That’s not all that’s odd, but I will leave the rest to you.

This is my first time reading this author who is Zambian. Her 2019 debut The Old Drift received a lot of recognition as did this one, but I wasn’t that enamored with the story. It was just a bit odd and trying to be elusive, though its exploration of grief and how it can blur reality and memory is an interesting theme. I gave it 3.5 stars.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis /Norton /320 p /2021

As good as this nonfiction book might be for a person in public health, it was not really what I expected and not really the book for me. I think by picking it up, I was trying to get a grip on the recent pandemic and what went wrong to control it and why some leaders seemed so dangerously irresponsible. But the book doesn’t get to the recent pandemic until quite late in the book — and a lot of the book seemed to be data analysis of various other pandemics, crunching the math, disease modeling, and genomic sequencing. I didn’t really feel the human element of the victims in the hospitals as it wasn’t that kind of book.

Two people who are mostly talked about throughout the book are: Veterans Affairs official Carter Mecher and California deputy chief health officer Charity Dean — who both did a lot to wade through government bureaucracy and complacency to sound the alarm about the disease threat and spread and to come up with plans of containment and to get leaders to implement them. I admired their fortitude and years of commitment in fighting communicable diseases. I’m sure they’re public health heroes and saved numerous lives, but a biography of their careers was not really what I expected this book would be. Still I was interested when it talked about the various ways the previous Administration or the CDC blew it in protecting the public; how they downplayed the disease and threat in various ways.

But generally the book was more a numbers and modeling kind of book in understanding pandemics and what to do; and less the human side of pandemics inside hospitals, or a political one. So you just need to beware of that going into it, which unfortunately I wasn’t. I found it at times a laborious listen on audio, though admirably its information tells a true tale of these two people in particular who made a difference fighting disease and its spread in public health against major odds and bureaucracy. I think wonks might like it more.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think? Ciao for now.

Hi. Are you ready for fall? I’m still half in summer mode, but the colors seem to be changing up here. Our Italy trip is next week and we are getting excited and organized.

Meanwhile a few literary book awards are on the horizon. I sort of follow them for recommendations and to see what they consider the best of the year. Sometimes I agree with the choices and other times not so much. Note these upcoming announcement dates:

1) National Books Awards / Finalists on Oct. 3 / Winner on Nov. 15 / (My prediction: This Other Eden by Paul Harding)
2) Booker Prize / Short List on Sept. 21 / and Winner on Nov. 26 / (My prediction: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray)
3) Canada’s Giller Prize / Shortlist on Oct. 11 / Winner on Nov. 13 / (My prediction: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton)

Recently the National Book Awards announced its longlist, which is below. So far, I have read two of the novels that I marked with asterisks. I wasn’t a big fan of Chain-Gang All-Stars (though I suspect it might win) and was just so-so about The End of Drum-Time, but I’m curious to read This Other Eden and perhaps Night Watch.

• Justin Torres, Blackouts
• LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars*
• Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk
• Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy
• Tania James, Loot
• Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch
• Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls
• Paul Harding, This Other Eden
• Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time*

Have you read any of these and do have any predictions? And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett / Harper / 320 pages / 2023

4 stars. This novel warmed to me in the second half; I especially became more invested near the end. The story has two alternating components: the present day where Lara, 57, lives with her husband Joe on a farm in Northern Michigan and her daughters Emily, Maisie, and Nell are home due to the Covid pandemic and available to pick cherries; and the past where a young Lara has an acting role in the play Our Town at the venue near Tom Lake where she forms friendships and becomes involved with the actor Peter Duke. It’s about Lara’s personal life that summer and her career stint as an actress and thereafter.

At the novel’s beginning, things to me felt quite sentimental and idyllic in setting and tone; and everyone in the family gets along wonderfully during Covid (no talk of deaths or the nation in free fall), and the cherries are ready for picking. Lara’s telling her daughters about this past time in her life, which they all are curious about since Peter Duke had become a big star. Early on, I guess I felt a bit ho-hum at times with the novel starting out. Then much later the story became more interesting to me — about the trajectory of Lara’s life … and what happened that fateful summer between a group of theater friends, among them Peter Duke and his tennis pro brother Sebastian, who keeps an eye on him. And why Lara decided later not to stick with acting and how she came to return to Northern Michigan to live after a stint of working in New York. The plot becomes more webbed so to speak. And I liked how the story felt very nostalgic about one’s past youth and the defining turns that mark one’s life … for which Lara was very grateful about — how it turned out. She made the right choices for her when it counted.

Patchett has various lines throughout Lara’s life that are quite poignant. And it seems a particularly personal story to Patchett (though I haven’t heard her interviewed for this). I’m guessing that she likes the play Our Town, which is pretty sentimental, and once maybe dabbled in acting or thought of it. She incorporates dogs, sewing, and even tennis (yay), not to mention plenty of farming and family. It’s quintessential Patchett — with things that are often favorites and what she does best. I liked this one better than her novel Dutch House, in which I never much liked the mothers in it.

As for Tom Lake, I listened to the audio version narrated by Meryl Streep, who gives a great performance. It was a bit interesting since the plot hinges a lot around acting … and here Meryl reads it and you wonder … how things were familiar or different to her. I’m guessing she had some head nods with the experience.

The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane / Farrar Straus / 352 pages / 2022

4.3+ stars. Whoa I don’t even know where I first heard about this novel, but I put it on my summer reading list back in early June and just spent the past two weeks with the audio version … while painting the back deck. Make no mistake: this is no flash-in-the pan, quick summer read, this is a slow-burn mystery, being historical and literary fiction down to its core. It’s slow and long but pretty amazing all the same. This author lifted me off the ground and put me in the Flinders Range amid a community of people in Southern Australia who are in crisis mode soon after it starts.

That’s when six-year-old Australian boy, Denny Wallace, goes missing during a dust storm in 1883. He gets turned around and lost in the outback. His family is beset with worry and grief: Where is Denny?! He is the only boy in a large family, with Mary and Mathew as his parents and five sisters to boot, namely the young Cissy Wallace, who is probably my favorite character in the book. She’s quick fire and will say whatever’s on her mind, while riding into action.

Which is saying a lot because there’s a large cast from the community of Fairly who are featured in the novel, some of whom go out on search parties to find Denny. There’s newlyweds Minna Baumann and her husband Robert; and the Swedes Karl and Bess Rapp, itinerant artists; and Mathew’s Aboriginal hired hand, Billy Rough; and the hapless vicar Mr. Daniels, and the arrogant police Sergeant Foster, who wants to write a book; and a slew of others who escape me at the moment. The novel goes into their relations with one another, their back stories, and the search for Denny — who plays a part too, in trying to survive, but he takes off his hurtful boots, and leaves them behind, which can’t be good.

Amid the storyline is a bit of the undercurrents and clash between the settlers and Aboriginals, who are the best trackers and do much of the work. Fiona McFarlane is a terrific writer and a new author to me. I must go back and find her 2013 debut The Night Guest to read, which I’ve heard is very different from this one but also really good.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?

Hi. How is everybody doing? Gosh we are almost into September now. It’s hard to believe, how time flies. I plan to do my September Preview post next time so stay tuned for that. Meanwhile I had a good time visiting my parents in Southern Cal and got home okay after the tropical storm there. Now I’ve been back home about a week.

This past weekend we had an interesting visitor stop by — a Great Horned Owl sitting in a tree near our tool shed. He stayed all day and now sadly he is gone. We hope he returns. He is known to be a formidable predator and we think he’ll find plenty of mice and gophers in our back fields. It was fun to watch him swivel his head around 180 degrees while keeping an eye on us spying on him. I love to see owls, which are often so elusive to find, so this was a big treat for us. Do you think owls are mostly good or bad omens in literature? 

And now I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of what I finished lately.

Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens / Dial Press / 304 pages / 2023

4+ stars. I didn’t know what to expect going in to this novel, but it is a Western set on the American frontier about a young woman’s coming of age in a Dodge City brothel, her changes and the relations she makes there, and the revenge she seeks on a few who come to betray her. 

Bridget with her long red hair is recruited to be a sex worker at the popular Buffalo Queen bar and brothel by two madams. Soon enough she’s making her way turning tricks with the male clientele and becomes good friends with Constance the bookish sporting girl with the room next door. But later a marriage proposal by an important customer and an attraction to an alluring female gunslinger send Bridget’s heart aflutter and she soon discovers what real intimacy is all about. 

This page-turning debut has some compelling turns and twists and wonderful touches of life within the Buffalo Queen for a girl like Bridget, who grew up in poverty and whose parents died early on. It’s not an easy life and violence and theft are always a bit close at hand. The independent and spirited Bridget learns some lessons the hard way and you root for her to be strong and turn the tide. In the end the story goes out with guns a blazing on a dangerous mission as Bridget, Constance and one of the brothel madams head into an impending snowstorm after an unforeseen attack at the Buffalo Queen. You’ll want to see what happens. Kudos to author Claudia Cravens on this lively and bold debut. She’s a writer to watch.

Thanks to the publisher the Dial Press and NetGalley for a complimentary copy to read and review. 

The Outlander by Gil Adamson / House of Anansi / 408 pages / 2007 

5 stars. I finally got around to reading this 2007 Canadian classic that had long been on my shelves. Duh, why did I wait so long? And the reason I picked it up now was for my book club, which is discussing it in September. Thank goodness I was pushed to get to it as I think it’s a real gem. 

It’s a slow burn read set in 1903 about a woman who has been “widowed by her own hand” and is now fleeing across the western wilderness to escape her twin brothers-in-law who are tracking her to bring her to justice and revenge their loss. Little by little you come to understand why Mary Boulton, age 19, did what she did: the grief over the loss of a child, an unhappy marriage, and a staggering depression. She was half mad (for good reason) and now is on the run in the mountains. 

Along the way she has various adventures trying to survive: meeting a wilderness hermit known as the Ridgerunner (William Moreland) who wins her trust and love; being shown the way forward by an Indian named Henry; and moving on to the mining hamlet of Frank, Alberta, where she befriends the winsome Reverend Bonnycastle, and experiences a catastrophic natural disaster. All the while the twins are still trying to find and get her. Run Mary, run.

Some readers might find the novel a bit too slow burn for them, but I seemed to love the story’s details… which adds much richness in its historical setting and the natural world that Mary is escaping through. It’s also revealing in its depiction of Mary’s character and what’s going through her suffering head … and those she meets along her escape route. Adamson writes so well and leverages the gradual suspense to a rousing and agreeable conclusion. I can’t wait to read her follow-up 2020 novel The Ridgerunner sometime this fall. I hear it’s another winner.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these novels and if so, what did you think? 

Hi all. I’ve been away this past week visiting my parents at their senior community in Southern California. And just my luck, we’re in the path of  Tropical Storm Hilary, yikes. I guess a tropical storm hasn’t happened here in like 84 years. So we’ll hunker down and stay put for awhile and see how bad it gets. I’m a little unsure if the route to Palm Springs, which is prone to flash-flooding will be passable later. I’m supposed to fly out of there on Tuesday back to Canada, so I’ll have to play it by ear.  Will I need a raft in the desert? 

Meanwhile it’s been good to see my parents and we’ve been busy with activities, such as daily golf putting contests with my Dad, medical appointments, and going to the beach for a day. I’ve also enjoyed some bike rides. So I am behind on books and visiting blogs, but I hope to see what you all are reading soon. I know some others who are traveling right now too. 

Next week my reviews will likely feature Claudia Cravens’s debut novel Lucky Red, which I’m almost done with. It’s a Western set on the American frontier about a young woman’s coming of age in a Dodge City brothel and the revenge she seeks on a few who come to betray her. It’s been pretty good and the pages have flown by. I’ll pair that with a review of Canadian author Gil Adamson’s novel The Outlander from 2007, which I’m reading for my book club in September. It’s not the Diana Gabaldon Outlander series but instead a novel about a young mysterious woman in 1903 who’s alone in the Western mountains fleeing two twin brothers who are tracking her for reasons you learn in due time. Little by little you come to know and root for this woman’s escape but various dangers lurk. I’m liking this one as well. 

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished before I left. 

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane / Harper / 320 pages / 2023 

4.5 stars bumped up. Mary Pat Fennessy, 42, is a heck of a protagonist in Dennis Lehane’s latest. She’s one tough Southie (Boston) broad and if you mess with her family, then you are foolishly mistaken. She grew up in a fight-prone family and could take a licken and hold her own too. Her sister once hit her with a brick as a kid and she was able to return a punch before the ambulance came. 

But when Mary Pat’s daughter Jules doesn’t come home one night, she is beside herself with worry. Then it turns out Jules might have been involved in an incident with a group of youths down on the subway tracks where a black man is found dead … which happens during the summer months of the controversial busing desegregation plan of 1974. Uh-oh. Jules is all Mary Pat has left in her life after two divorces and her son’s overdose. So Jules is her heart and now Mary Pat is trying to find her and get to the bottom of things. There’s a cop, too, named Bobby who has a bead on the crime. 

This one is gritty and full of harsh language, but man does it deliver. Despite her narrow-minded background, Mary Pat is one you end up rooting for throughout the story. There’s some humor in this dark, suspenseful tale that cracked me up along the way. I have read two other Lehane novels (Shutter Island and Since We Fell) and seen the movies to several of his other novels (Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) … but Small Mercies might be near the top of his pile for me. The dialogue is superb and Lehane is a master at creating these people and their circumstances. And so is actress Robin Miles who reads the audiobook for the novel. She knocks it out of the park with her accents and delivery. I don’t think either of us will forget Mary Pat Fennessy anytime soon. Is she still living there?

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these and what did you think?  Happy end of August to you. 

Whoa it’s almost August. Where did July go? We had some rain yesterday — real rain! — which will help with the dry conditions. And here are two of the three hay bales we produced from our back field recently. It was fun to watch the baler. We are city folk previously so we are a bit newbies to the process. If it hadn’t had been so dry this season, we would have had a bit more. Even the big farmers around the area didn’t get nearly as many bales as usual this year. 

Not much else to report. Though our older dog Stella, age 11, had surgery this past week to remove a lump under her chin and a troubled molar in her mouth, but she is on the mend now. She just has to wear an undignified cone on her head for two weeks and eat soft food until it heals. Gads, two weeks is a long time to be bumping into walls around the house. I can’t wait to take it off. 

You might have noticed I don’t have my August Preview posted yet. That’s because I’m reviewing a fall novel for PW due on Tuesday. I hope to get the Preview out by next weekend. And my husband is away so we haven’t seen the Oppenheimer movie yet, or Barbie for that matter. Have you seen either? Meanwhile I’m watching the British crime drama series Happy Valley, which is set and filmed in West Yorkshire, England. Or as we call it Unhappy Valley because the small town in it is riddled with awful crimes. But actress Sarah Lancashire as the police sergeant and the rest of the cast are so good I can’t turn away. Season 3 will be the end, but I’m not close yet.

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of two novels from my summer reading list that I enjoyed as audiobooks. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang / Morrow / 336 pages / 2023

This novel is about two ambitious writers who meet at Yale and one — Athena Liu who’s Chinese American — goes on to become a young star author while the other a white girl named June Hayward has a debut that goes nowhere. So when a freak accident happens, June ends up stealing Athena’s next manuscript and publishing it as her own and it becomes a big hit. But what ensues after with her readers, social media followers, editors, and publishing house gets crazy. 

My Thoughts: 4.5 stars. The first person narration of June is pretty diabolical and funny in parts too. Here and there the biting satire cracked me up. And June, who steals Athena’s manuscript, is over-the-top as one jealous, envious chick out for herself at nearly every turn, but she’s clever too. The story is not exactly subtle, but the dialogue and pace are pretty snappy and entertaining. It’s fun as summer pop lit … a revenge story about two writer “friends” who meet at Yale … that weaves topics of cultural appropriation, racism, and the pitfalls of the publishing industry. 

It’s fun too that it mostly takes place in D.C. where I previously lived, and it all comes down to a showdown at the Exorcist steps in Georgetown. What more do you want? It’s an amusing ride. My only slight criticism is that having June’s sole uptight narration throughout is enough to suffocate and tire one out completely. Still I went on, trying to reckon with this duplicitous get-ahead person and her various shades and reasonings. Indeed no one comes off looking too great: June, Athena, editors, the publishing house, and social media trolls. There’s enough bad to go around, which makes it a fun romp through the swamps of writing and the publishing world. It might just be the novel of the summer. Hmm.

Go as a River by Shelley Read / Spiegel & Grau / 320 pages / 2023

4.3 stars. I pretty much loved this old-fashioned-style tale set in rural Colorado of a young girl’s coming of age that tells of her life from the 1940s thru to 1971, and I found it compelling. 

It tells of Victoria’s family — her Dad, brother, and uncle — who are pretty rotten to her after her mother dies in a car accident when she is 12 and she is left doing their meals and chores for years. Then a native boy — Wilson Moon — comes along who she takes a shine to and they have a heartfelt fling that ends with tragic and problematic consequences. Victoria is left with a hard choice to make that haunts her for decades. 

I liked how this novel involves the small town of Iola, which was flooded in the 1960s to make room for a reservoir; and the peach tree orchard that her family owns and Victoria tries to save. There’s feminist overtones in the novel about the sacrifices women make and the difficult reproductive and child-raising choices many face … as well as the racial bigotry towards Native Americans. 

I found the story was affecting and well-told, even if a couple parts might have been a bit of a stretch to believe, such as when Victoria runs off to the mountains and survives for a season by herself … for reasons I will leave for the reader. And perhaps its sentiments put it firmly in the women’s lit camp. Still I followed the tale of Victoria’s life closely and felt the pull of it. Many have faced what she did and can relate to her struggles. It’s poignant and a thoughtful look in the end at one’s life.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and if so what did you think? Have a great weekend everybody.  

Hello. I hope everyone is doing well. I have been busy so have been away from the blog for awhile. I was reffing the junior provincial tennis tournament all of last week for 12 to 18 year olds and there were so many matches, day and night. I’m lucky to be still standing, but it seemed to go well. And now it’s over and I can go back to life on the farm, full of gardening, house chores, dogs, reading, and summertime fun. Yay. 

We have been in the new place now almost six months. It’s hard to believe but true. There’s still some things left to unpack. And I finally set up a new bookcase in my soon-to-be office. I have put fiction on one side and nonfiction on the other. And I just ordered a desk and chair from Pottery Barn to go with it. So I’ll see how that looks once it comes. Slowly but surely we’ve added some furnishings to what we already had. It’s a work in progress, LoL. 

And now I’ll leave you with reviews of what I finished lately. 

The Postcard by Anne Berest / Europa / 464 pages / 2023

3.7 stars rounded up. The story of various generations of the Rabinovitch family is heart-wrenching and moving about how present-day Anne in Paris is trying to piece together who sent her a postcard with names of her grandparents and an aunt and uncle on it —who perished during WWII. So part of the tale is a mystery of Anne investigating how she and her mother came upon this postcard decades later, and then other parts are of her relatives lives in the past during the war, and also how her mother came to survive those days. Along the way Anne comes to find and learn about her Jewish heritage and identity. 

It’s an ambitious tale with various threads and at times I found it was trying to do too much and was a bit stretched. I also found the execution of the tale a bit uneven. Some parts breeze over the years in fast succession and I wanted to get a bit more into her relatives’ lives or closer. Still there are details and facts about Occupied France and a sketch of what happened to them that kept it compelling. It’s a tragic story and one where you wish her grandfather had gotten them out long before. 

I appreciated that this was a personal story based on the author’s family and she seems to pour much of herself and heart and soul into it. In the end, the mystery over the postcard takes Anne on a journey finding out pertinent things about her family’s lives and her heritage. While good, I think others might have liked the novel a bit more than I did as it is very popular right now.

Chain-Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah / Pantheon/384 p /2023

3.5 stars. This novel wasn’t really for me, but I made it through the audio with avid persistence. Still the novel gets its points across effectively about how bad the U.S. prison system is in general — particularly toward African Americans — and how crazy our love is for violent action sports. 

Still I liked the two main characters of the book and their love story: Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx,” which I was impressed with coming from a male author. I think they were the best part of the story along with Hendrix, the singer, character. All three are criminals in a prison system where you can opt to fight gladiator-style to try to gain your freedom, which is televised by an action sports franchise. After so many matches, if you survive, you can gain your freedom. I guess it’s a bit like the Hunger Games for criminals. 

I found parts of the novel well done and written, getting its points across: as prison is often no place for reform and justice is so frequently abused. But other parts I found a bit repetitive and the two main characters weren’t given enough material to do enough. I definitely wished for their escape so they could move around more. The chapters jump to and fro among many characters and I found some a bit hard to track or care for. The story felt long and the lead-up to the fight at the end of the book seemed to take a good while. I wanted to see what would happen, which is quite tragic, but I almost didn’t make it. Others are liking this book more.

On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood by Irmgard A. Hunt/ Morrow / 288 pages / 2005

4 stars. This is an affecting memoir about growing up in the mountain village of Berchtesgaden, Germany, where the Nazi elite made their retreat and built Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. The author Irmgard was born in 1934 and her parents were supporters of the Nazis and as a young child she was indoctrinated as everything there was under Nazi rule. She even was dawdled by her parents on Hitler’s knee. Then early in WWII her father dies in France when she is 6 and her world is shattered. She takes part in the Hitler youth, and later just wants the war to end. After the Americans come to town, she learns a new way of life.

This is a pretty fascinating tale about a family behind enemy lines and a warning about how this happened to them. It’s a look at their daily life in the mountains at a dark time in history. It’s a bit of a chilling tale and the author was a young pretty powerless girl growing up under Nazi rule and indoctrination. She describes how life changed as the war went on and what happened at various points along the way. As it wound down, they were without much food and necessities. Later she details when the Americans entered her village in 1945 when she was 11 and what happened post-war.

This book was written in 2005 and I couldn’t help but be on full alert to see whether these many decades later the author seemed to be whitewashing the Nazi experience in any way about what she knew and when the people there knew it. She says they didn’t know about the Jewish people’s plight or all the victims of the Nazis until after the war. She heard rumors at some point of secret trains but didn’t know more. She isn’t easy on the Nazis, her family, or the other villagers in the book for their support of the regime and it seems she doesn’t make excuses. In the end it becomes a warning in ways about following such a dictator and regime and to never letting it happen again. 

I saw that the author Irmgard Hunt recently passed away in May at age 88. Here is her obit. She had a long career in the U.S., where she became a citizen after the war. Her book is one of the only memoirs I’ve read from the enemy side in WWII, which made it a rather eye-opening account. 

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin / Dial Press / 224 pages / 1956

4 stars. Baldwin’s second novel is expertly read for the audiobook by Dan Butler, who seems to have the perfect voice and diction as David, the main character and protagonist. 

Though at first I wasn’t taken with the story of David, an American who goes to Paris in the 1950s and struggles with who he is and his sexuality, drinking, and shortness of money. He has a relationship with a woman named Hella, though while she’s on a temporary trip to Spain, he meets a beautiful male bartender named Giovanni who he’s drawn to despite of himself. Soon he is spending nights in Giovanni’s Room, his lover. But when Hella eventually returns, David has to decide whether to tell Hella about Giovanni or whom he wants to be with. Later Giovanni gets involved in a murder case that is in all the Paris papers. 

It’s a tragic story about a gay-closeted man that gripped me towards the end because of the charged matter and power of Baldwin’s writing. His writing marks him as a natural, so good he can transport you geographically and in feeling in a short amount of lines. I will continue to read his large canon of works. So far in addition to this, I’ve only read his novel If Beale Street Could Talk, which was also good. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?