The Rathbones - Janice Clark

A literary adventure set in New England, Janice Clark's gothic debut chronicles one hundred years of a once prosperous seafaring dynasty.

Moses, the revered patriarch of the Rathbone family, possessed an otherworldly instinct for spotting the whale. But years of bad decisions by the heirs to his fortune have whittled his formerly robust family down to just one surviving member: a young girl, left to live in the broken-down ancestral mansion that at one time had glowed golden with the spoils of the hunt.

Mercy, fifteen years old, is the diminutive scion of the Rathbone clan. Her father, the last in the dynasty of New England whalers, has been lost at sea for seven years-ever since the last sperm whale was seen off the coast of Naiwayonk, Connecticut. Mercy's memories of her father and of the time before he left grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive Uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and navigation through his collection of moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night on the widow's walk, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the house and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family.

Inspired by The Odyssey and infused with beautifully detailed descriptions of the realities of coastal and ship life reminiscent of Moby Dick, Janice Clark's magnificent debut is a spellbinding literary adventure.

Last week was a sea shanty kind of week, with Melville's birthday a key factor and so I read the new The Rathbones. A stunning debut with a whole mythos behind it, I was very impressed.

The Rathbones follows Mercy Rathbone, the last of the Rathbone clan that was once the greatest whaling family in all of New England. She lives in the remains of what was once a great mansion with her mother who awaits a lost father at sea and her cousin who lives in the attic and teaches her of whales and science and life. After a strange encounter with a man on the widow's walk one night, Mercy and her cousin leave the house and begin an Odyssey-esque journey around the area where Mercy slowly begins to learn the true history of her family. 

Although it did take a chapter or two to settle into as the tone is very unique, I greatly enjoyed The Rathbones. It feels like reading a great myth, a mixture of The Odyssey, Moby Dick and various Old Testament narratives. As you start to unravel how the Rathbone clan went from a lone whaler with seemingly supernatural powers to a crumbling dynasty, you both fall more in love with Mercy while being enraptured by the tale. It's not a page turner in the typical sense but it did make me want to keep reading to uncover more secrets.

Another thing that I thought was clever in the narrative was that every time Mercy learned of a new generation, a small family tree would be updated before moving on to the next part of the journey. This both helped the reader follow along and also gave a connection to Mercy who was the one sketching the tree. 

All of the characters were unique and interesting, my personal favorite being cousin Mordecai, the basically albino brilliant relative in the attic. Despite spanning generations, each character is unique, except for the few who are supposed to seem interchangeable. 

If any of this appeals to you, I would definitely say to check out The Rathbones. It comes out today from Doubleday. Check it out!

Sisterland - Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld, New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Prep, returns with a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief.

From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them.

Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.

Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld is one of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today.

As I quite liked Prep when I read it a little over a year ago, when I read the back of the new Sittenfeld novel, I was eager to read it. I love novels that deal with the paranormal and the ambiguities with the social acceptance of it. The idea of these two sisters fighting on opposite sides and dealing with their lives in their own ways sounded really interesting and with the skill that I knew Sittenfeld had, I was happy to try the book out.

The book weaves in and out of the "present" narrative (which is actually three or so years in the past) and the story of Vi and Kate as they grow in a world where they have powers other people don't. They get teased in school, they know things they shouldn't and they deal with an absent mother and a distant father. Kate just wants to be normal, the horrible teasing she goes through in middle school scarring her from embracing her gift while Violet, not great at making friends, finds a guardian spirit (whom she calls Guardian) that she trusts in and fully embraces her gift. 

Kate's family, from her relationship with her father and her sister to her family dynamic with her husband and two children, are very well drawn and feel real. I especially love the way her two year old daughter Rosie's dialogue is written. It's cute and young and innocent without sounding too much like an adult writing a child's voice. 

I was absolutely absorbed in this novel from the first and I eagerly read it before bed and at breaks during work. However, about fifty pages before the end, there was a sudden plot twist that kind of ruined the book for me. I'm a very open-minded reader (as you can tell by looking at all the genres I cover in this blog) but there is one thing that I just absolutely hate reading about and avoid in all my media. And then bam! There it is! In the middle of the book I was really enjoying.

Did this ruin the book for me forever? No, I suppose not. But it did sour the ending of it for me and knock it down a peg. I would have given this a solid four stars had it not been for that plot twist but now I give it more of a three. I loved it. I really did. I just didn't like where it took me.

The Returned - Jason Mott

Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were.

Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the grace of time ... Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep—flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight years old.

All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.

With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth, award-winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and morality, love and responsibility. A spellbinding and stunning debut, The Returned is an unforgettable story that marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary fiction.

The Returned was really being pushed at BEA this year and as I thought the concept sounded interesting, especially after having watched the French La Revenants earlier this year, I happily picked it up. I was also told that it had already been picked up as a television pilot. 

I can easily see where this would make a good television show. For one, the French have kind of already done that. Secondly, this story is huge with tons of possibilities for ways to go. When you write a novel that has such a massive scale like this, there are so many stories you can tell. In fact, that was my favorite part of the novel: the short interludes between chapters that would tell you a little bit about another person in the world who had come back. Scenes like the painter who had become famous posthumously, the Nazis that had come back but where just young boys, the parents that couldn't accept their child. I think that was my favorite part of The Returned and a tv show based around that would do well.

The main narrative of the novel, centered around the Hargrave family was both heartbreaking and kind of a lull. The idea behind it, that a son who died as a child comes back when his parents are elderly, is beautiful and painful. The actual execution of it, however, came across kind of, well, not boring but not as deep or meaningful as it could be. I found myself constantly wondering about other characters and what was going on with them. The brief flashes we got of other townspeople dealing with their grief (the pastor who's childhood love came back, the family who came back after being the sole murder of the town) were great and I wish we could have had more with them (especially the family) and a bit less of the Hargraves.

What I found hardest about the novel, though, was the ending. What happened with the returned, as they're called, makes sense and I'm alright with that. It's the other actions of the climax that, when the tension has died down, don't sit right with me. I feel like the ending didn't bring any sense of closure to the Hargraves and actually did them more harm than good, something that seems the antithesis of what the novel wanted to show.

Mott's writing is sparse and lovely, creating mood and atmosphere effortlessly. I would happily read something else by him. This novel is exceptionally well imagined; I simply wish it were better plotted. I love the world he has created, the thoughts he's evoked, the moral quandaries that he's provoked. I just wish he'd spent more time exploring this new and mysterious world.

The Returned comes out in September 2013 from Harlequin MIRA.

My Notorious Life - Kate Manning

his sweeping, evocative, and absolutely unforgettable novel about the charismatic and passionate Axie Muldoon who changed the lives of countless women was inspired by a real midwife who became one of the most controversial figures in Victorian New York City.Set in gritty New York City in the last half of the nineteenth century, My Notorious Life is a vibrant portrait of Axie Muldoon, a plucky orphan who becomes one of the most successful—and controversial—midwives of her time. Told in a magnetic voice, pulsing and vivid, Axie recounts how she is separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor and midwife, and how she later parlays the sale of a few bottles of “lunar tonic for female complaints” into a thriving midwifery practice with her husband and fellow orphan friend, Charles G. Jones. But Axie is on a collision course with one of the most zealous, censorious characters of her era: Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and it will take all of Axie’s power to outwit him and save both herself and her family from ruin. 

A love story, a family saga, and a brilliant rendering of a historical time, this is also a moving and nuanced commentary on an important topic: women’s control of their bodies. But ultimately, it is the story of one woman making her indomitable way in a difficult world; with her fierce and vibrant spirit, Axie Muldoon is an indelible heroine for the ages.

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To be honest, I picked up this book on the character's name alone. I'm Molly Muldoon and it's not often I see my last name in print. As I like to say, Muldoon is stereotypical Irish but not common. I was pretty pumped for a heroine with my last name and settled down to read it.

It's a little hard to get into at first as it's written in a vernacular that tries to place you immediately into Axie's head. It's annoying for the first few pages but you slowly grow accustomed to it and over time, as Axie grows and learns more, the grammar and turns of phrases become more regular. After the first twenty or so pages, I was quite keen on it. It creates character through the experience of reading and I liked that.

Axie is a strong lead and you can't help but feel for her. Put in a tough situation pretty much from birth, she picks herself up by her bootstraps and becomes a wealthy woman, mostly on her own with only a bit of help from her husband. She's vivacious and strong and insecure and tough rolled up into one intense package and I loved her from page one.

All of the characters are unique and lively. From Axie's missing little sister Duchess to her friend and future husband Charlie, to the women that nurture her and teach her the medical ways to the German girl next door that becomes a best friend, all the characters are immediate and real, adding to the narrative and pulling Axie one way or another. 

The story deals a lot with the morality of abortion, not so much through arguments but through actions and characters. Comstock, Axie's rival, as she calls him, becomes a symbol of male patriarchy and misunderstanding of woman and it couldn't have felt more timely. A lot of things Axie finds herself up against are the same sort of things male politicians have been saying in the past year on the same debate. Despite the over hundred year difference, the arguments feel just as fresh and frustrating as if they came off the front page.

Oh! Did I mention this is based on a true story? Axie is fictional version of a real woman and Comsock is almost painfully real which just adds to my argument.

I tore through this book and found the twists and turns not always unexpected but definitely full of impact. Axie's struggles to provide for herself, protect her new family, find her old family and make a life for herself ring true to the reader, despite the Victorian setting. I would recommend this book to any woman who loves strong female heroines and is fed up with the current 'war on women.' It's a timely book with a good message and a kickass female lead.

My Notorious Life comes out in September 2013 from Scribner.

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

Life in 1830s Iceland is stark and difficult, but there is a sense of beauty and peace among those hardy enough to make a life there. This peace is disrupted by two brutal murders, news of which travels from settlement to settlement, the frenzy building as a young woman, Agnes, is accused, tried and convicted. She is sentenced to death. 

The governor decides Agnes must wait out her execution on an isolated farm. Her arrival there disrupts the quiet between the farmer, his wife and their two daughters, all of whom are horrified at the prospect of having this woman share their home, their life. Agnes herself is stoic, doing her work as best she can and only slowly letting down her guard to Toti, the young priest she has mysteriously chosen as her spiritual guide. As Toti struggles to guide Agnes towards redemption, the farmer's wife, Margaret, begins to sense that there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

A suspenseful and riveting novel rich with vivid lyricism and page-turning suspense, Burial Rites evokes a harsh and dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the heartbreaking question: how can one woman endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others? Based on a real-life story, this is an astonishing debut that heralds the arrival of a great new talent.

Burial Rites is a debut and based on it, I think I need to read everything Hannah Kent plans on writing. It is a stunning debut that had me staying up late and reading when I should have been doing other things. 

Set in Iceland of the early 1800s, Kent takes us through the year or so leading up to Iceland's last execution. Agnes Magnusdottir has had a rough life and is in a horrible state when she is dropped off at the Kornsa farm to await her execution. She's angry at the world for abandoning her and trying to ready herself for a fate that she doesn't feel she deserves.

As she grows accustomed to life on the farm, she warms up a bit and becomes closer than anticipated with the family there. Through talking to the Reverend she has picked to be her spiritual advisor, Toti and eventually opening up to the family, the reader (and the others in the novel) get to hear the true story of Agnes Magnusdottir and not just what all the local gossips have to say about her.

This novel is meticulously researched and it shows with all of the details and impressive setting description that pulls the reader right into nineteenth century Iceland, even if they can't pronounce all the names correctly. There are chapter starters that are actually translated from real letters and documents of the period that add all the more to the story, showing just how much of this novel is created from the true story it documents.

Kent's sparse sense of prose adds to the bleakness of the landscape and of Agnes's mind, briefly colored with the rare happy memory. Each of the characters is vividly painted, from the daughter who wants absolutely nothing to do with Agnes to the Reverend who wants to be there for her even when he's too ill to ride. Despite Agnes clearly being the focus (she's the only character that gets to narrate her own story), all of the other characters are well defined and watching them slowly begin to realize Agnes's true nature adds warmth and tragedy to the narrative.

As the novel drags on to its inevitable conclusion, the reader watches in horror as things continue and reads hastily as she begins to find out the true details of what happened the night of the murders. I read the last hundred pages or so in an hour, so determined to find out what happened and to spend my last moments with Agnes.

This book reads as a love letter to Iceland and a remembrance of a remarkable woman who was perhaps too smart for her time and place. I respect Hannah Kent and look forward to what she decides to tackle in the future. I'm sure it will be magnificent. 

Burial Rites comes out September 10th from Little, Brown and Company.

Sleeping in Eden - Nicole Baart

She knew what he wrote . . . 

One little word that made her feel both cheated and beloved. 

One word that changed everything. 

MINE. 

On a chilly morning in the Northwest Iowa town of Blackhawk, Dr. Lucas Hudson is filling in for the vacationing coroner on a seemingly open-and-shut suicide case. His own life is crumbling around him, but when he unearths the body of a woman buried in the barn floor beneath the hanging corpse, he realizes this terrible discovery could change everything. . . . 

Years before Lucas ever set foot in Blackhawk, Meg Painter met Dylan Reid. It was the summer before high school and the two quickly became inseparable. Although Meg's older neighbor, Jess, was the safe choice, she couldn't let go of Dylan no matter how hard she tried. 

Caught in a web of jealousy and deceit that spiraled out of control, Meg's choices in the past ultimately collide with Lucas's discovery in the present, weaving together a taut story of unspoken secrets and the raw, complex passions of innocence lost.

I recently received Sleeping in Eden as a gift from a friend as thanks for helping her with her move. When I read the back, I thought it sounded super interesting and decided to start it after I finished Black Swan Green.

The device used in the novel, that of interweaving two disparate stories that eventually come together, is something I always enjoy. Not only do you get two plot lines to enjoy but you also get the pleasure of trying to figure out for yourself where the characters are going to intersect. When I first started the book, I thought I knew for sure what Meg and Lucas's connection was but within the first fifty pages, a wrench was thrown in the works and I didn't know anymore which made me so happy because I love being wrong when reading.

Both Meg and Lucas's stories were really intriguing despite how different they were. Lucas, although slightly boring as a character, had a great character to play off of in ::spoiler::. His dealings with a new person all the sudden in his house and his already complicated life is what made his story interesting. When I thought it was just going to be him watching his marriage crumble, I was a bit depressed. When some spice was thrown in, I was curious.

Meg, meanwhile, is a great lead. We watch her grow up, from a young girl to a young woman and she has such a delightful personality and is super relatable to anyone who wasn't a girly girl growing up that I found myself always going into her chapters with a smile. I didn't always approve of her choices but I loved her inner monologue and the way she came to her decisions. She was believable and that's what made her a great character.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book, however, was the moment when you realize what the novel is building up to. I always compliment a narrative, be it movie, book, or whatever, that knows that its audience is going to figure out the ending before you get there and uses that to build dramatic tension. About forty pages before the end or so, you realize what's going to happen. With that settles in a moment of dread and as you read the plot go on to its inevitable conclusion, it hits you that much harder. I found myself teary eyed as I finished the book, despite the fact that I had known for a hundred pages what the end was going to be. That's the mark of a good storyteller.

Sleeping in Eden is a sad story but it's a good one, marked with interesting characters and a well developed plot. If you don't mind a few tears, you should check it out.

Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date.

I love David Mitchell. It's just a fact. Every book of his I read reminds me of that with every word. I picked up Black Swan Green a few nights ago and within a paragraph I thought to myself, 'Why do I read anything by anyone else?' So if you can't tell already, this review is going to be oh so ridiculously positive.

David Mitchell is better known for Cloud Atlas, a remarkable novel fractured into pieces and told from many different points of view. The other novel I've read by him, Ghostwritten, was similar in that it was many different stories put together to form one idea. I fell in love with both of them pretty much immediately which is why it took me a bit to actually read Black Swan Green as it was so different from his two previous novels.

Black Swan Green tells the story of Jason Taylor, a thirteen year old boy growing up in small town England in the early eighties. Each chapter covers a day or two in each month, illustrating different facets in Jason's life and showing a slowly creeping narrative of families, friendships and growth. I was captivated.

Jason is our narrator and an inspired voice it is. Jason is just discovering many things but he has a poetic mind, always fronting but incredibly naive, instantly recognizable to anyone who's ever been thirteen. His voice is easy to fall into and definitely unique, calling to mind childhood and curiosity. His relationships with his friends (and enemies), his parents and just people he meets in the town drive this novel and you find yourself always rooting for him, despite some of the stupid things he does. Deep down, though, he's a great kid that just wants to do the right thing and completely lovable.

Something Mitchell does quite regularly is involve characters from his other novels into new stories. Although I experienced this in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, I was not expecting it in Black Swan Green. However, in one of the chapters, Jason gets some tutelage from an elderly woman who some might remember as a young girl in Cloud Atlas. I was thrilled when I put two and two together and it added a whole new dimension to that chapter. Whereas normal readers of the book would have completely enjoyed it regardless, readers who had read his earlier work would have gotten an extra layer of meaning from some of the conversations and that is why I call Mitchell a genius.

Each chapter could be a short story on its own but together they form a lovely mosaic of a young life. Personally, I think everyone should read at least one Mitchell in their lifetime (which hopefully will convince them to read more) and if you're not big on fractured narratives or science fiction, than this one is probably for you. Instantly relatable, painfully real, Black Swan Green is absolutely stupendous. Take a trip down to your local bookstore and treat yourself.

The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon

It is the year 2059. Several major world cities are under the control of a security force called Scion. Paige Mahoney works in the criminal underworld of Scion London, part of a secret cell known as the Seven Seals. The work she does is unusual: scouting for information by breaking into others’ minds. Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare kind of clairvoyant, and in this world, the voyants commit treason simply by breathing.

But when Paige is captured and arrested, she encounters a power more sinister even than Scion. The voyant prison is a separate city—Oxford, erased from the map two centuries ago and now controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. These creatures, the Rephaim, value the voyants highly—as soldiers in their army.

Paige is assigned to a Rephaite keeper, Warden, who will be in charge of her care and training. He is her master. Her natural enemy. But if she wants to regain her freedom, Paige will have to learn something of his mind and his own mysterious motives.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine—a young woman learning to harness her powers in a world where everything has been taken from her. It also introduces an extraordinary young writer, with huge ambition and a teeming imagination. Samantha Shannon has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.

Are you ready for the next big series? Because this is going to be it. The first in a new seven book series by a young British author discovered in a creative writing class at Oxford, The Bone Season is very much the new, hot thing. Not to mention the movie rights have already been picked up.

I had no idea what The Bone Season was when I picked up an ARC at BEA but the cover intrigued me and I had kept hearing more and more about how big it was going to be. Intrigued, I started it pretty quickly and found myself drawn in, spending hours on the couch because I simply couldn't put it down.

The best thing about The Bone Season is the sheer power of imagination it took to write it. Even more so than in most of the other dystopian books that have come out in the past five years or so, Shannon has created a completely immersive world, the kind that shows instead of tells and gives you feelings more than words. She also has created an entire new vernacular, based mostly upon Victorian slang, to the point where, for a good while, you're not entirely sure what any of the characters are talking about. There's a glossary in the back for some of it but mostly you pick it up as you read. It's a bit hard to push through at first but once you begin picking it up, it stays with you.

Shannon has created an entire world of psychics which is also beyond brilliant. Although it takes a bit to figure out who's who, it's actually quite interesting to see what each different kind of voyant can do and how that affects them and the world. The idea of auras, of dream walking, of soothsaying is something that everyone is familiar with at a very basic level but this new hierarchy, complete with a rewritten history of Victorian England and onward, shows not only a interesting new world but the talent that Shannon possesses. Not only am I excited for more in this series but I'm excited for more by Shannon in general.

Paige, our heroine, is pretty refreshing mainly because she's tough as nails. One of my favorite things about her is that, even as she warms up to people, she stays true to herself. For example, even when she starts to think that Warden, her "master," might be not all that bad, she still tries to escape whenever an opportunity arises. Because, hey, of course you would. There's none of that hemming and hawing that other heroines go through. Paige puts herself first and that's what she needs to do.

Other characters are also great. Warden is perhaps a bit dry but I do admire how much he puts up with. Paige's gang back home are some very interesting side characters, from her fairly creepy boss to her friend from childhood, each of them memorable in a way that some books with multiple characters can't pull off. 

I just have to mention again how amazing Shannon's new history is. I'm always impressed by people who write alternate histories and this one works particularly well. The major changes from our world start in Victorian England, giving the present (which is our future) an odd Victorian feel to it. I also loved the references to past Irish riots (which are called the Molly Riots causing me to giggle every time) which feel completely in line with the timeline she's established.  

This book is the first in a series and I will admit that I'm not entirely sure how it's going to stretch through seven novels. It seems like a three or four book story at most. But I like Shannon and if she can pull something out in her second novel that shows me how this is going to continue forward, I'm all for it. I have a feeling she's going to do it. Watch out for this book because pretty soon, it's going to be everywhere.

The Bone Season comes out August 20th from Bloomsbury.

It's Not Love, It's Just Paris - Patricia Engel

Patricia Engel’s collection of stories, Vida—a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award—established its author as one of our country’s best young writers. Her first novel is a vibrant and wistful narrative about an American girl abroad in Paris, who navigates the intoxicating and treacherous complexities of independence, friendship, and romance.

Lita del Cielo, the daughter of two Colombian orphans who arrived in America with nothing and made a fortune with their Latin food empire, has been granted one year to pursue her studies in Paris before returning to work in the family business. She moves into a gently crumbling Left Bank mansion known as "The House of Stars,” where a spirited but bedridden Countess Séraphine rents out rooms to young women visiting Paris to work, study, and, unofficially, to find love.

Cautious and guarded, Lita keeps a cool distance from the other girls, who seem at once boldly adult and impulsively naïve, who both intimidate and fascinate her. Then Lita meets Cato, and the contours of her world shift. Charming, enigmatic, and weak with illness, Cato is the son of a notorious right-wing politician. As Cato and Lita retreat to their own world, they soon find it difficult to keep the outside world from closing in on theirs. Ultimately Lita must decide whether to stay in France with Cato or return home to fulfill her immigrant family’s dreams for her future.

It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris is a spellbinding love story, a portrait of a Paris caught between old world grandeur and the international greenblood elite, and an exploration of one woman’s journey to distinguish honesty from artifice and lay claim to her own life.

I picked up It's Not Love, It's Just Paris at BEA after the Literary Fiction talk, a talk where I ended up picking up every book mentioned. I probably wouldn't have grabbed it on cover and title alone but the publicist gave it a good blurb and the author had some great work under her belt so I felt I'd give it a try.

You can tell right off the bat that Engel has a great voice. She speaks very clearly and it has a sparseness that conversely draws you in. Little details and quotes are inserted in just the right places to draw a pleasant picture without drowning you in unnecessary words.

The plot itself is a tad cliche: girl goes to Paris to find herself. I did find Lita quite unique, however, if only for her backstory. She constantly reflects on the family she left back home and how she loves them so intensely but also feels the burden of that love. At the beginning she is very standoffish which I understand because I would be that way but is also not great for a narrator because it takes a good while for anything to happen. She eventually gets going, though.

The secondary characters aren't very standout. They all are super interesting but there are too many of them so none of them get any time to be fleshed out. A few less girls in the house could have led to deeper characters (and foils!) but to each his own.

Cato, the love interest, is a bit bland for a longer time than perhaps necessary but there is definitely a lot there. Once again, I would have liked to hear more about him and his past but Engel only gives us so much. C'est la vie, I suppose.

Ultimately, I suppose it's the very end of the book that got to me, the bit after Lita's time in Paris, the last few pages where you realize that this was all reminiscing years after the fact. Seeing where Lita's life had gone is not surprising but it's also strangely moving in how realistic it is against the fantasy that was her life in Paris. The phone call she receives, as well, I felt was incredibly touching and even though I didn't think I was super connected to the novel, my heart broke a tiny bit. It felt real.

Engel is a gorgeous writer and I would love to read more from her. If you want to find out who you are or just love Paris, this is the book for you.

It's Not Love, It's Just Paris comes out August 2013 from Grove Press.

The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes

In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens onto other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, surveys and starts hunting him back.

Working with an ex-homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery. 

The Shining Girls is a masterful twist on the classic serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing woman in pursuit of a deadly criminal.

I got an arc of The Shining Girls on Wednesday at BEA and immediately knew that it was the next book I was going to read. It was sold to us as "time traveling serial killer" or "Silence of the Lambs  as written by Margaret Atwood." There was no question: this book would be amazing.

Did it live up to my expectations? Well, yeah, pretty much. I couldn't put it down for the next two days. I was drawn in by the characters and the narrative style. Each chapter skips around in point of view and time, letting you piece together what is going on in a way that is not obvious but not confusing, either. 

Our heroine, Kirby Mazrachi, is just the right mix up of spunky and messed up, making mistakes but ultimately taking control of her life. With the time traveling aspect, as well, we get to see Kirby as a child and as an adult, showing how not only the attack but the aftermath and just her mother in general shapes the person that she becomes. This book has been compared to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I find Kirby waaaaaaay more likable than Lisbeth. 

I also enjoy what we get to see of Harper, our serial killer. Although we mostly see him as he goes about his "work," there are brief glances back that give us hints as to why he is the way he is. There's also the life he lives in 1931, his home era and the way he fights against the house and ultimately succumbs to it. Is he an awful man? Yes, definitely. But he's not a one-dimensional character and that makes him interesting.

The different titular 'shining girls' are also a super interesting part of the narrative. Each is immensely different: different races, time periods, ages, creeds. It's only their potential to be amazing that makes them stand out. While each encounter was invariably sad, I did enjoy getting to know, however briefly, these characters. I especially liked Alice. I could have easily read a book on her alone. That says something about Beukes's ability to create characters: even the ones with two chapters stand out.

The chapters are short which makes this book a rather quick read, helped along by the fact that it's hard to put down. The book races towards the inevitable showdown, answering its own questions along the way. The post-script was a very nice touch, I thought. I'm now interested in reading more from Beukes as I've heard her other books are quite good as well. I'll search those out and you pick this up, okay? 

The Shining Girls comes out June 4th (tomorrow!) from Mulholland Books.

Montaro Caine - Sidney Poitier

An inspirational first novel that blends elements of mystery, science fiction, and metaphysics by the beloved, legendary, and bestselling actor Sidney Poitier.

When a coin is found in a baby's hand, the doctor who finds it sends it up to a lab at MIT, where Montaro Caine, a student, does a work-up on it and discovers it to be made of materials not known on Earth. Caine never learns the owner's identity, but two decades later, as Caine, now CEO of Fitzer Corp in New York City, is facing the possibility of a hostile corporate takeover and experiencing family troubles, a man and woman appear in his office bearing the coin. The find sets off a battle of intrigue and suspense, as scientists, collectors, and financiers all vie to get their hands on it. But the coin, and a second coin that appears, is of more value than mere monetary worth. In this ambitious, page-turning novel, the beloved actor Sidney Poitier takes us from New York to Europe to the Caribbean in an exploration of race, faith, and, beyond all else, the meaning of our lives on earth.

Sidney Poitier wrote a book. That is not the reason I picked this up, though. I had read the snippet on the back of the book and thought it sounded interesting before I even realized who had written it. With that as an added incentive, I picked the book up right away.

There is a lot going on in this book and the first forty or so pages introduce everything in small snippets which seemed very promising. I was waiting for the small snippets to slowly work into each other to create the larger plot but alas, that wasn't to be. Once everything has been introduced, almost 75% of it is put on the back burner as we're stuck following Montaro Caine, our very boring protagonist.

There are tons of characters that are mentioned so briefly that when they reappear, you have no idea who they are. There are plots that seem needless to the plot (why have the side story with his daughter and that Nick guy?) and things that seem important that ultimately are not. There are two characters that you would think would be integral that are hidden away for almost the entire book. There is very little action and a lot of talking. All in all, this book is horribly boring.

I kept pushing through because I thought, at the end, at least there would be a good payoff because I did, ultimately, want to know what the meaning of the coins were. However, even the ending was a let down, becoming preachy and too happy, to the point where it felt like a Disney movie, every character getting a redemption moment.

This book had promise but completely failed to live up to it. It was boring and pointless. Sidney Poitier is a great actor but I don't think I would pick up another book of his.

He's Gone - Deb Caletti

What do you think happened to your husband, Mrs. Keller?”

The Sunday morning starts like any other, aside from the slight hangover. Dani Keller wakes up on her Seattle houseboat, a headache building behind her eyes from the wine she drank at a party the night before. But on this particular Sunday morning, she’s surprised to see that her husband, Ian, is not home. As the hours pass, Dani fills her day with small things. But still, Ian does not return. Irritation shifts to worry, worry slides almost imperceptibly into panic. And then, like a relentless blackness, the terrible realization hits Dani: He’s gone.

As the police work methodically through all the logical explanations—he’s hurt, he’s run off, he’s been killed—Dani searches frantically for a clue as to whether Ian is in fact dead or alive. And, slowly, she unpacks their relationship, holding each moment up to the light: from its intense, adulterous beginning, to the grandeur of their new love, to the difficulties of forever. She examines all the sins she can—and cannot—remember. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, turning over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth—about herself, her husband, and their lives together.

To be quite honest, I really didn't like this book but I feel like that's my fault and not the novel's. For one thing, it says right there "adulterous beginning" and I know that I cannot read books about adultery. It's something I just cannot deal with. 

The other thing, though, is that I really like good "disappearance" novels, where characters have to really learn more about themselves and their families to find out about the person who has disappeared. I suppose that's true of this novel but not in the normal way. In this book, Dani, the protagonist, spends most of the novel going through her relationship and looking at it a different way around. However, I don't feel like it gave her any understand but more just told the reader what had happened. This would have been fine if it took up the first fifty pages or so but it almost the entirety of the book. I wanted to know more about the disappearance, not about their intense rendezvous while still married to other people.

I did like the basic framework of the novel. I liked Dani waking up and slowly discovering she doesn't know where her husband is. I like the way she formed new bonds with her mother and daughter. I liked how the story finally ended, when we did discover what had happened to Ian. I wish the novel had been more of that and less inner exploration but I think some people will enjoy that more than I did.

This book was in no way bad; it just wasn't my cup of tea. I'm sure others will really enjoy it but I was looking for something else.

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots - Jessica Soffer

This is a story about accepting the people we love—the people we have to love and the people we choose to love, the families we’re given and the families we make. It’s the story of two women adrift in New York, a widow and an almost-orphan, each searching for someone she’s lost. It’s the story of how, even in moments of grief and darkness, there are joys waiting nearby.

Lorca spends her life poring over cookbooks, making croissants and chocolat chaud, seeking out rare ingredients, all to earn the love of her distracted chef of a mother, who is now packing her off to boarding school. In one last effort to prove herself indispensable, Lorca resolves to track down the recipe for her mother’s ideal meal, an obscure Middle Eastern dish called masgouf.

Victoria, grappling with her husband’s death, has been dreaming of the daughter they gave up forty years ago. An Iraqi Jewish immigrant who used to run a restaurant, she starts teaching cooking lessons; Lorca signs up.

Together, they make cardamom pistachio cookies, baklava, kubba with squash. They also begin to suspect they are connected by more than their love of food. Soon, though, they must reckon with the past, the future, and the truth—whatever it might be. Bukra fil mish mish, the Arabic saying goes. Tomorrow, apricots may bloom.

I know what you're thinking. This is a book about feelings and growing and worst of all, food. This book is seemingly not at all up my alley. But when I got offered to review it, I thought that I needed to give it a good shot and as it was written by an interesting new debut author, Jessica Soffer, and from a new and interesting perspective, I decided to give it a shot and I'm very happy I did.

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots follows two very different heroines. Lorca, our teenage girl, spends all her time trying to win her mother's seemingly impossible love while struggling in school and with her own self image. She has a crush on the cute boy who works on the bookstore down the street and imagines going on adventures with him. She's a very intense character, at once strange and new but relatable. 

One of the strongest details about Lorca is that she's a self harmer. There are intense, painstakingly written passages about her thought process, about what it means to her. It actually gets difficult to read at times. This was unexpected to me and I found it a welcome part of her character, giving more complications to Lorca and making her a more rounded character. It gave her another issue to attempt to overcome, tied into her feelings with her mother and added quite a bit to the plot.

Our other heroine is Victoria, an aging Iraqi woman who emigrated with her husband years and years before and has just recently lost him. Now, alone for the first time in decades, she has to deal with what her life has become and who she is without him. The panic, the sudden emptiness and the realization that she had alienated so much in her life that now she feels truly alone overcome her. This is a fear that resonates with everyone and is completely gripping, transforming the character and adding to the story.

Watching these two broken women find each other is both heartwarming and slightly worrying, since you spend most of the book hoping everything works out for them. I was honestly surprised by how the book finally ended. I was not expecting some of the final twists and turns of the plot and was   shocked with some things and delighted with others. I would not have thought this book unpredictable but there you have it.

This is a book about dealing with present and working for the future. It isn't particularly happy but it has small moments of joy and copious amounts of hope. A great debut from Ms. Soffer and definitely one to pick up.

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy!

The Asylum - John Harwood

Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in London: “Your patient must be an imposter.”

Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her uncle’s house? And what has become of her two most precious possessions, a dragonfly pin left to her by her mother and a writing case containing her journal, the only record of those missing weeks? Georgina’s perilous quest to free herself takes us from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on which her survival depends.

Another delicious read from the author praised by Ruth Rendell as having “a gift for creating suspense, apparently effortlessly, as if it belongs in the nature of fiction.”

The phrase "you can't put this book down!!" is completely overused, in my opinion. It is just used to draw up enthusiasm for a book and rarely is actually true. In my case, however, I remember getting about a hundred pages from the end, realizing it was four in the morning, and carrying on anyway. I was completely hooked.

The Asylum is a tried and true gothic novel, with creepy old houses, the threat of madness, some homoerotic tension and seemingly impossible obstacles. I ate it up. It reminded me a bit of Collin's The Woman in White which is a great compliment to Harwood. He creates a great sense of unease with Miss Ferrars narrative, to the point where the reader doesn't know if she should trust the narrator or not. 

A change of literary styles happens about midway through the book, when it changes over from a narrative to epistolary at just the right moment. I remember turning the page to see the heading and going "ooooooo!" in excitement. I honestly haven't gotten this excited about a book in a long time.

The plot, even when you think you know where it's going, twists and turns so that even if you see one plot twist coming, you aren't expecting a certain detail that changes it all. Everything is well plotted and makes sense once details are revealed. I might have even gasped at one point. 

I honestly could not put The Asylum down and if you're at all interested in gothic novels, you will eat this one up, too.

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." 

They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. 

Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

As you may remember, I'm on a bit of a Margaret Atwood kick. I'm determined to read way more of her books as she's absolutely brilliant and it was a shame I never read her before earlier this year. I've read two now and Blind Assassin was next on my list.

I was blown away by The Blind Assassin. Atwood manages to interweave three very different narrative styles: newspaper clippings, a novel within the novel and the unedited and private memoirs of an elderly woman to create one captivating story that never quite reveals where it's going until the ultimate last page.

The story follows the Chase sisters: born into money in a well-to-do family just before the Great Depression, the sisters grow up with each other. Iris, the older sister, is our narrator from the future, as she contemplates her life and the choices that have been made to bring her where she is today.

Laura, the younger, is posthumously famous for a book that had written before her death, a book that changed a lot of things (and that we get to read as the novel within the novel.)

The best part of Blind Assassin is how the plot weaves and sinks in on itself. Things that you think you know for sure within the first few pages become utterly disproven by the last few. Things are mentioned more than once, giving new connections to previous events and new ways of reading the text. Iris isn't always letting on about everything.

The book is beautifully written, the prose absolutely gorgeous. One of my favorite bits is while Iris is on her honeymoon in Paris and sees a bidet for the first time. After her husband explains what it is to her, she thinks, '…They do understand something the others don't, the French. They understand the anxiety of the body. At least they admit it exists.'  Later, when she is comforted by a French waiter she remarks on his understanding, 'The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. That is why they have bidets.' Just a little part that stuck with me and really shows the depth and the beauty of language of this book.

It won the Booker. It's ridiculously readable. If you have some time, pick it up. It's lovely and mysterious.

Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.

"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.

"I’m not kidding," he says.

"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."

"What about Romeo and Juliet?"

"Shallow, confused, then dead."

''I love you," Park says.

"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.

"I’m not kidding," he says.

"You should be."

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, ELEANOR AND PARK is the story of two star-crossed misfits – smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love – and just how hard it pulled you under.

I picked up Eleanor & Park at Powells earlier this month because you may remember how much I enjoyed Attachments last year and also, Rainbow Rowell is adorable on Twitter and her enthusiasm  about the book got me excited about it as well.

Eleanor & Park is great because it is very much about that super heady teenage love, love where it is important and it's everything and it is the most. It captured that feeling perfectly and it's one of those things that I think will revert every reader to about seventeen years old.

What's even better, though, is how great the characters are. Underneath this veneer of teenage love, there are two teenagers just trying to get through their lives, grow and mature in very different home lives and very different problems. They're not perfect: Eleanor gets upset overly easily and is heavier than she'd like to be. Park doesn't always get along with his dad and still sometimes gets embarrassed to be seen with Eleanor (who isn't cool) and then mentally beats himself up about it.

These kids are real in a way that a lot of YA fiction doesn't cover. They're also the kind of kids that I would have hung out with in high school (yes please, reading Watchmen together) so perhaps I'm a bit biased but Park's problems seemed real in a way I know most kids deal with and Eleanor's are indicative of another significant portion of kids. 

It all fits in perfectly well with Rowell's writing style, which is crisp and fresh, never meandering (except when it should) and full of references that pop. I really enjoy her style and look forward to reading more from here. She has a book called Fangirl coming out soon that looks right up my alley.

Eleanor & Park is absolutely lovely, full of teenage love and angst in just the right doses. You will breeze through it (I read it in less than 24 hours and had a tv marathon in-between) but it will stick with you. Read it and remember what it felt like to be sixteen and in love.

P.S. Also, the cover is adorable.

[Duel Review] Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles - Ron Currie Jr.

In this tour de force of imagination, Ron Currie asks why literal veracity means more to us than deeper truths, creating yet again a genre-bending novel that will at once dazzle, move, and provoke.

The protagonist of Ron Currie, Jr.’s new novel has a problem­—or rather, several of them. He’s a writer whose latest book was destroyed in a fire. He’s mourning the death of his father, and has been in love with the same woman since grade school, a woman whose beauty and allure is matched only by her talent for eluding him. Worst of all, he’s not even his own man, but rather an amalgam of fact and fiction from Ron Currie’s own life. When Currie the character exiles himself to a small Caribbean island to write a new book about the woman he loves, he eventually decides to fake his death, which turns out to be the best career move he’s ever made. But fame and fortune come with a price, and Currie learns that in a time of twenty-four-hour news cycles, reality TV, and celebrity Twitter feeds, the one thing the world will not forgive is having been told a deeply satisfying lie.

What kind of distinction could, or should, be drawn between Currie the author and Currie the character?  Or between the book you hold in your hands and the novel embedded in it? Whatever the answers, Currie, an inventive writer always eager to test the boundaries of storytelling in provocative ways, has essential things to impart along the way about heartbreak, reality, grief, deceit, human frailty, and blinding love.

Colin picked this month's book but it was totally fine with me. He'd gotten me to read another book by Currie called Everything Matters! about a year earlier and I had loved it so it was no trouble to get me to agree to read another book by Currie.

One of the things you first notice about Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is that it's written in a very unique style. Each page is a complete thought or anecdote. Sometimes that's one paragraph. Sometimes that's three pages. Because of this way of writing, it's both easy to start reading and a quicker read than normal. At first I worried that this style would make it hard for me to connect to the story, since there was less story and less narrative connection than you would normally have. Now that I've finished, though, I can't really imagine the story told through a more regular means. It works in snatches and adds some depth that you wouldn't be able to get with a linear narrative.

That's another thing: this story is completely nonlinear. Not that you can't figure out a timeline as you're reading but it does get a bit confusing in the beginning. Currie skips around from his life with Emma, his life on a tropical island, the last few months with his dad and his slightly-obsessive thoughts on what he calls 'The Singularity.' All the stories are compelling and his observations in some areas inform different thoughts. I really enjoyed this aspect.

About two thirds of the way into the book, the novel takes a turn towards where it was headed all the time. This is the only thing that I didn't really like. The last forty or so pages, in my opinion, are the best and the most interesting. I really wish that there were more to this. His time back in the states and dealing with what had happened while he was gone was my favorite part and I feel like he didn't give enough time to this. I see why it's short, since the audience within the narrative would arguably already know all this but I do wish I could have seen more.

I'm still not sure how I feel about Emma. I always have a bit of an issue with books about men with obsessive love. I just feel uncomfortable for the woman involved, normally and this wasn't any different. I think the book manages to be more than this but there was still a tad of that creepy obsessive love that never sits right with me. I think it was handled well in the end but for the first two thirds of the book? Tad creepy, Currie.

Overall, though, the book was really good. I think I still prefer Everything Matters! on storyline alone but this was no bad book by a long shot. I look forward to reading more by Currie in the future.

This is a duel book review with Colin. I will post a link to Colin's post as soon as he puts it up. :)

The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood

Ever since her engagement, the strangest thing has been happening to Marian McAlpin: she can't eat. First meat. Then eggs, vegetables, cake, pumpkin seeds--everything! Worse yet, she has the crazy feeling that she's being eaten. Marian ought to feel consumed with passion, but she really just feels...consumed. A brilliant and powerful work rich in irony and metaphor, The Edible Woman is an unforgettable masterpiece by a true master of contemporary literary fiction.

I've decided to read more Atwood novels as I thought The Handmaid's Tale was a revelation. I completely unintentionally decided to read The Edible Woman next, not knowing that it was the first novel she had written. Surprise!

I really enjoyed The Edible Woman, even if it was a bit vague at times. I thought the heroine, Marian, was quiet relatable, even if there were a few moments where I didn't quite follow her thinking and she did inhabit a completely different era than me. She seemed like a normal woman in her early twenties and I could understand a lot of her decisions. That makes for a good main character for me.

I especially enjoyed the side plot of her roommate trying to seduce a man so that she could have a child. It's easy to forget how hard single women had it back in the sixties and the idea of having to seduce a man just so you could have a child, even if you wanted to raise it by yourself, seems ridiculous to modern audiences. The best part of the whole charade, however, is when the man she tricked finds out about it and starts yelling at her for using him for his body. This gender reversal makes a real impact and I thought was really well done.

Perhaps the most impressive part of The Edible Woman is that it was written in 1965 when Atwood was 24. She didn't get it published until 1969 and it ended up getting swept up in the feminism movement of the early seventies. To know that it was written so much before that and predated a lot of feminist ideas is really interesting, though. I like that Atwood wrote this without a ton of buzzwords in her head, that this came out of real experience of being a single girl in the mid-sixties. It makes it feel more real.

This book was very interesting, entertaining and just well written. If you're a fan of Margaret Atwood, I would recommend it.

John Saturnall's Feast - Lawrence Norfolk

I quite liked posting the back cover blurb for Best of All Possible Worlds and I think I'm going to make that a regular thing. Here is the blurb for John Saturnall's Feast.

A beautiful, rich and sensuous historical novel, John Saturnall’s Feasttells the story of a young orphan who becomes a kitchen boy at a manor house, and rises through the ranks to become the greatest Cook of his generation. It is a story of food, star-crossed lovers, ancient myths and one boy’s rise from outcast to hero.

Orphaned when his mother dies of starvation, having been cast out of her village as a witch, John is taken in at the kitchens at Buckland Manor, where he quickly rises from kitchen-boy to Cook, and is known for his uniquely keen palate and natural cooking ability. However, he quickly gets on the wrong side of Lady Lucretia, the aristocratic daughter of the Lord of the Manor. In order to inherit the estate, Lucretia must wed, but her fiancé is an arrogant buffoon. When Lucretia takes on a vow of hunger until her father calls off her engagement to her insipid husband-to-be, it falls to John to try to cook her delicious foods that might tempt her to break her fast.

Reminiscent of Wolf Hall and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, John Saturnall’s Feast is a brilliant work and a delight for all the senses.

I had heard really good things about John Saturnall's Feast. A friend who's opinion I trust had read it and really enjoyed it. It sounded quite interesting and I love things set in English history. I was quite excited to read it.

The bits about John growing up I found very interesting and I was super curious about the ridiculously religious folk he and his mother lived with in the small village. I think those first few chapters were perhaps some of the strongest of the piece.

When John gets to the kitchens, though, I lost a bit of interest. To be honest, I don't really like reading about food. I just get incredibly bored. I suppose I should have thought of that before I started this book that is clearly about food but I thought it would be so beautifully written or interesting that I'd get carried away. Not to say that it isn't a good book or well written but it wasn't enough to keep me from skimming chunks.

To be honest, there was a lot that I liked (the mythology, the relationship between John and Lucretia, the characters of the other servants) but I feel like it wasn't enough to make the story truly spectacular. A lot of the plot was expected. Everything that was unique was wonderful. The mythology of the feast and of the witch and her lover was very well done. However, it's still a love story between a lowborn man and a highborn lady. It plays out like you expect. 

I guess what I'm saying is that I really liked the details and the odd historical anecdote (the chapter where the kitchen is at war is particularly well done) but the overall plot development felt a tad bit trite. I wish John's story was half as original as the world he lived in.

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffery Eugenides

I'd previously read The Marriage Plot by Eugenides last year and was curious to read more by him. I'd heard a lot about The Virgin Suicides and decided to give it a try. It sounded intriguing and I was up for some drama.

The Virgin Suicides is told from a strange collective first person narrator, an aging group of boys that are remembering the Lisbon sisters that used to live in their old neighborhood. The five sisters, each interesting in her own way but remembered as a collective by the boys, all killed themselves one summer when they were in high school. No one ever really figured out why.

The standout character from The Virgin Suicides is obviously Lux, the one sister that becomes more of an individual in the eyes of the boys, separate from her sisters. She embodies what the boys think about the girls and is a shining example of an early manic pixie dream girl. She is the one that acts as a link between the boys that admire her and her sisters who seem to shun outsider attention. 

I'm still not sure how I feel about the narration, if you haven't noticed by the fact that I keep mentioning it. It feels really creepy to me, seeing how the girls are more of an idea to the boys than actual human beings. Also, due to the collective pronouns used, you're never sure who is actually talking, which adds to the creepy vibe.

I really enjoyed the plot, even with its strange self-destination type referencing. I honestly wanted to know how and why the girls killed themselves, since you're expecting it, it being the title of the novel and all. The lack of resolution only adds to the mystery, especially since you realize that of course the boys are never going to understand. They never truly understood the girls anyway. They were as close as outsiders ever got but they never understood and that is the true tragedy. Very interesting, very intriguing novel.