A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

This is the last book Binchy wrote before she died last summer, which makes it rather sad. At least it was just as strong as her other books, and just as wonderful. And yes, all her books are super similar so I guess you could say she found the kind of story she likes to tell and stuck with it through her life.

The premise here is that a woman, Chicky Starr, returns to her home village on the west coast of Ireland. To the doubt and surprise of all Chicky is going to turn a big old stone house (Stone House) into an inn where people will come for a week’s stay and enjoy good food, company, long walks on the shore, and feel restored by the beauty of the place. The first part of the book is the build up to getting the house ready and telling the individual stories of Chicky, her friend Nuala, and Nuala’s troubled son Rigger.  Then, once the house opens, you hear the story of each of the first guests.  You read about how each of them ends up with this week at Stone House, and their own troubles and woes, and then how the house seems to work its magic on them.   It’s all very straightforward with a laying down of the events as each story is told, yet it doesn’t just feel like an outline.  And there was something rather satisfying about having each story told one at a time.

I really liked this a lot, though I would have loved an epilogue (though it’s all laid out so that you know what will happen.)  As always, Binchy makes Ireland seem like the most old fashioned place in the world.  Near the beginning of the book the year had not been stated and I thought it was the early 1950s.  Imagine my shock when someone said “after all this is the nineteen nineties!”  What?! A lot of the friction and drama comes from family secrets, unwed mothers, living in sin, a woman living on her own, etc.  Also, one of the characters is a librarian and I have two friends in Ireland who are also librarians, and I’m fairly certain that library services are not as antiquated as she lays them out to be.

Note–yes indeed, this book shares the exact same title with a book by Marcia Willett, who has a similar cozy old-fashioned feeling and a shared readership. Why would they do that?

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

This book was getting a ton of advance praise and press and while I didn’t even bother with her last book I was pretty interested in this one.  I ended up receiving it to review (lucky me!) and I enjoyed it very much. In fact, gave it 5 stars on Goodreads and it got a star in the column as well.  Here’s the review I did for it:

http://blogs.slj.com/adult4teen/2013/05/13/weekly-reviews-buzz-books/

p.s. Summer camp friendship is pretty similar to boarding school, so it had that going for it to start with

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray

Last week I was looking up authors that I used to really enjoy reading and wondering whatever happened to them (Billie Letts, where are you??).  I saw that Jeanne Ray had a newer book I hadn’t read and promptly checked it out. She hit it big with her book Julie and Romeo not only because it was good and popular, but also because she was a first time author at age 60!

This was a delight with a great premise.  A woman, the wonderfully named Clover Hobart, wakes up one day to discover she is invisible. How did this happen? And even worse, why doesn’t her husband or son notice??! When she runs over to her best friend’s houses the friend immediately can see that it’s just clothing floating in the air.  This is such a depressing and horrid turn of events that Clover doesn’t know what to do.  When she sees a notice in the paper advertising “Calling Invisible Women” with a meeting scheduled at a local hotel, she goes.  And finds out that there are lots of other invisible women! They discover that they had all taken a combination of prescription medication and that is what has caused them to disappear.  Most of them feel pretty dejected, especially when people don’t even notice their invisibility. I liked it that their invisibility wasn’t just a metaphor for women of a certain age, taken for granted by their families and workplaces. Yes, that was certainly part of it, but they were actually truly invisible. Clover and the other women bond and get fired up to use their invisibility to their advantage (I loved the chapter where Clover and her friend ride the school bus and spend the day at the high school making people behave), and to also confront the pharmaceutical company that has caused this.

I really liked this.  I liked how, although Clover’s husband and son take her for granted, they are shown to be not terrible oafs, but people caught up in their own problems, too.  This is funny and clever and thoughtful.

Tapestry of Fortunes by Elizabeth Berg

I think Elizabeth Berg is a wonderful writer, and she always manages to tug at my heartstrings (some of her books are downright weepy) and make me cry a little at the sadness of life, and then at the resilience of human nature and the hopefulness and humor of life.  So I can’t believe I have to say this about her newest book, which I was super excited to get-it wasn’t that great. I didn’t cry. Didn’t feel that connected to the characters.  It felt very much like an outline of one of her books, rather than the actual book.

It started out with great promise-Cecilia is a motivational speaker whose very best friend died a few months ago. That, combined with the memory of her friend telling her to take a break from work and get out there and do stuff, is the catalyst she needs to stop work and sell her house.  She spontaneously moves in to a house that has 3 women living in it.  The next thing you know they are all off on a road trip for their own personal closure type adventures. Renie to meet the daughter she gave up for adoption, Cecilia to connect with the love of her youth, another to meet up with her ex-husband, and I don’t even remember the last.  It all felt so sketched out and not fully realized. I didn’t feel invested in the characters’ stories at all or believe in any kind of relationship between the four women.. Also, I literally could not tell how old Cece was supposed to be. You might think that doesn’t make a difference, but it does. Was she elderly? Her own mother was still living so she couldn’t have been that old. But was she of another generation than the women she was living with? Was she in her 40s or 70s? It was strange to not know, and also then I wasn’t sure how much of an urgency she felt to get out there and do things.

I hate to say that I wouldn’t recommend an Elizabeth Berg book, but she has so many better books you could spend your time reading. This fell really short for me.

The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

I’m a big fan of Marian Keyes and was very excited when I found out this was coming out. And very happy to get my name on the holds list early! It was a real pleasure to read something of hers again that revisits the Walsh family. Since I wrote about her books for my St. Patrick’s Day post I’ve been itching to go back and read her earlier books and this definitely made me want to. There are 5 Walsh sisters and this is the final sister’s story-Helen.
Helen doesn’t really like people, she’s brusque, and she doesn’t fit in with folks. She’s a private investigator who’s fallen on hard times-business has dried up and she has lost her house, electricity, etc-and she’s forced to move back in with her parents.  This is all especially difficult because, as she tells us in bits and pieces, she’s had a bout of depression that landed her in a hospital once before, and it seems like it might be happening to her again. Out of the blue an ex-boyfriend comes to her with a very important, top-secret, case: she must find a missing member of a once powerfully famous boy band before the reunion concert scheduled in less than a week’s time.

I really enjoyed this so much. Keyes is always funny and has a great way of blending funny, sassy, strange characters with genuinely heartfelt, realistic, touching emotions. It was a treat to see Mammy Walsh again and little peeks at the other sisters.  And it was fun to have this one be a mystery and try to figure out where Wayne could have gotten to.  The only thing that wasn’t super was the part about her no-longer-friend, Bronagh.  She is alluded to occasionally, always in the past tense, so you know something big has happened to her.  From previous books I assumed it was going to be a huge, very emotional revelation, and it ended up being very anticlimactic and not a big deal to me. But really, that was just a small part of it.  I loved this and it was so much fun to have a Marian Keyes to read again.

A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal

I read this book for review purposes. You can find my review here. Scroll down the post to find what I had to say about it.  This is a new review gig for me and I won’t be writing about the books I read for review here, but since I do like to have an account of all that I read I will post a link to those reviews as they occur.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

I already know this is going on my Top 10 Books of the Year. It was amazing! Wonderful! Terrific! Captivated me! Seriously, I really loved this. And you know what? Before I even get to the story that so entranced me, let me just say that the writing was really beautiful and top-notch.  I had read a couple of her other books, which I really liked, but don’t remember noticing so much what a good writer she is. In this novel it was evident from the overall construction, the phrases, and the liberal sprinkling of quotations from literature.

The story is about a baby girl named Ursula and explores all the different paths her life could take. Born with the umbilical cord around her neck, what would happen if the doctor didn’t arrive in time? The baby dies. The story starts again and this time he’s there to snip the cord away.  So we follow that baby Ursula in her childhood. A seaside excursion as a little girl ends in drowning and the story starts again. This time she’s rescued and we read a little further into her girlhood.  It’s somewhat troubling that you know you are growing to care for this character and she will keep dying (in fascinating and varied ways), but it’s so interesting to see how different forks in the road of her life change the outcomes. In this way, in fits and starts, we follow Ursula’s life.  What is so especially neat is that in 500 or so pages the same parts of Ursula’s life are retold many times over, but each time slightly differently so that it’s not boring or repetitive. The things that are repeated-motifs and how she greets Death-are beautiful parts that reinforce the circle of Ursula’s life.

The other amazing thing about this book is the historical fiction aspect of it. The story opens with WWI, but when Ursula is an adult she tries to get through WWII.  I always love a good book that vividly portrays the endurance of the British people during the bombings in London and the horrors of it.  This one certainly equals Connie Willis’s depictions in Blackout and All Clear. However, it also adds a few possibilities that have Ursula in Germany during WWII and showing what it could be like on that side.

This was an incredible story, huge and completely captivating me for the 2 1/2 days it took me to read it.  One thing that’s a bit, hmm, I’m not sure the word, but you because you are following Ursula, every time she dies you don’t know what happens after she is gone, and in a couple of particular time lines you really do wonder. But, Ursula wouldn’t know herself, and so we don’t either.  With the final story in particular I did wonder about that and I feel like I maybe missed a little something at the end, so I’m really looking forward to discussing this with my friends who’ve read it.

I cannot recommend this enough. While I know it definitely played to my interests (WWII in England, British stories, and the philosophical ponderings of how even small choices in our life change our lives directions in ways we can never know), I think this would be enjoyed by people who didn’t have those particular interests, too.

A St. Patrick’s Day Reading List

My Irish soda bread is in the oven and my corned beef and cabbage is in the crock pot, so I thought I’d take a moment to recommend some of my favorite Irish authors/books.

First up, Maeve Binchy.  Although Ms. Binchy may be responsible for me having a rather outdated (it must be) view of what life in Ireland is like, I simply love her books. She has a long writing career and many of her books feature characters who’ve shown up in other stories. Romances, secrets, drama, and heartwarming tales are her mainstays. She’s often a rather cozy writer. Some of my favorites are:  Nights of Rain and Stars–in which the characters are in a small Greek village and bound together by sharing a tragic day together.  Her depictions of the setting are wonderful, as is the way she tells the individuals’ stories and their collective story. Heart and Soul is a great one and features one of the characters you’ve met in Nights of Rain and Stars, which is nice. It’s about a woman trying to establish a heart clinic in Dublin and at odds with other hospital administrators.  Whitethorn Woods sets up a framework for a story that has each chapter telling a character’s story. Again, overall story and interconnected stories. I’ve read many, many of her novels and the ones that I’ve reviewed can be found here. Not all of her characters are sweet and happy-there is real bitterness, anger, and poor choices in many of them, but they are a necessary balance in the stories.  She’s a really love writer!

Marian Keyes is also an old favorite for me.  I haven’t read anything in a while but there was a period where her novels came out more frequently and I was beyond excited for each of them.  Please don’t dismiss her as fluffy chick lit (especially as newer book covers might make them appear that way.) All of her writing is funny and sassy but the books I want to recommend are now marketed as the Walsh Family books: Watermelon, Angels, Anybody Out There?, and Rachel’s Holiday. The Mystery of Mercy Close is the newest, due out next month. They are not really a series, it’s just that in a family with 5 sisters each one gets a book. I was possibly on the third book before I recognized the siblings, so they are not dependent on each other-it’s just a nice tie in.  Anyway, Keyes writes about real difficulties and hard times with a wonderful touch of humor and love. Sushi for Beginners, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, and The Brightest Star in the Sky are not included in that group about the Walsh family, but they are equally wonderful and hilarious.  One of her books that most impressed me was Rachel’s Holiday. Rachel ends up rehab even though she doesn’t really believe she has an addiction problem.  The reader moves as slowly as Rachel herself in realizing that she really does need to be there. And The Brightest Star in the Sky is really touching and lovely. It’s been 10 years since I read Watermelon, and just writing this makes me want to go back and reread them all.

Finally, the Molly Murphy mysteries by Rhys Bowen are wonderful works of historical fiction and good mysteries to boot. Start with the first one, Murphy’s Law, to understand the Irish immigrant experience.  Molly Murphy escapes a murder charge in Ireland and travels to America in steerage with two young children.  Their arrival on Ellis Island is somewhat harrowing and presumably a very accurate description of Irish immigration.  I’ve read three of the books so far and you can see their full reviews here.

 

So there you have it. Get your green on with some Irish reading, whether it be contemporary, historical, cozy, or mystery.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This One Is Mine by Maria Semple

I loved Where’d You Go Bernadette? so much that I immediately got this one (her first book) from the library and promptly started it.  I didn’t like it quite as much as Bernadette, though, like Bernadette, I found it hard to put down.  I liked the snappy writing and this also changed pov’s quite a bit, so you see various pieces of a story and the bigger picture before the characters themselves do.  She definitely has a style that is identifiable, and one which I like.  I’d say the main reason I didn’t like this one quite as much is this: there are three main characters in this book and they are all kind of awful.  Just when you think you’re rooting for someone they go ahead and do something terrible.  You see flashes of a good side, but then it seems like their bad side takes over.  I like to be on board with at least one character (and, for all her flaws, I liked Bernadette and didn’t think she was a bad person at all) and there were times when I found myself thinking, “you’re all so awful who cares that you’re making terrible mistakes and messing up your lives!” But you know me, deep down (not so deep down) I was rooting for a happy ending.

The story is this-Violet and David are married and living a fancy life in LA. She used to write for television (just like the author) and he is a superstar famous music producer.  Hanging out with Mick Jagger or Ringo Starr or other up and coming bands is totally normal for them.  They have a darling baby Dot, who is primarily cared for by the nanny, whom they call LadyGo. Their perfect life is really not so great as we find out from each of them.  Their marriage has become bitter and resentful.  A seemingly entirely separate storyline revolves around David’s sister, Sally.  She is vain, shallow, scheming and I really found her a terrible person.  She sets her sights on a man she calculates will become famous and begins forcing a romance. It is evident to everyone (at least every reader) that the man is autistic or has Aspberger’s Syndrome.  Yet she remains clueless. I found it strange that no one else who knew him every mentioned it to her.  Anyway, Violet one day meets a man who completely bewitches her.  She is wildly attracted to Teddy and on fire for him.  He’s an old junkie, crass, vulgar, and for some reason he turns her on.  I spent a lot of time shouting in my head at Violet to just walk away from Teddy. But she did not listen to me. And thus everything falls to pieces for everyone. And then the pieces begin to fit together.

Even though I was mad at the characters often, I really like Semple’s writing and I was dying to find out what would happen to everyone, so I would recommend this too.

Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen (Her Royal Spyness #4)

I really enjoy this series and just happened to see this on the shelf at the library and was delighted to see it existed. My mom tells me that there is an even newer one that I missed, Christmas themed.  In this installment Lady Georgianna is invited (commanded) to represent the royal family at a royal wedding in Transylvania. She is excited about the travel, especially because the bride is having a Parisian dressmaker make her gown. Free food and clothes! Hooray! A few stumbling blocks, though. She needs a maid and ends up with the worst maid ever, Queenie, and is assigned a travel companion (who has her own traveling companion!) who is quite stern.

They finally arrive in Transylvania to find that the castle is extremely remote and terrifying.  Bowen manages to convincingly get all the usual characters to happen to be at the castle too, so we have the fun of meeting new people and having fun folks like Belinda and the dreamy Darcy around. The castle is so spooky that of course Georgie is worried about vampires, and even more so when strange things happen-like waking up in the middle of the night and finding a pale young man standing over her.  We all know a murder will happen (as this is a mystery series) and it does in the form of a nasty man dropping dead at a big formal dinner.  At first presumed to be a heart attack, it is quickly realized to have been cyanide. Because the wedding is a few days away and they want to avoid an international incident, they decide to hide the truth.  And since a convenient giant snow has trapped everyone in the castle, that makes this book a “bottle episode” (in tv parlance!)  So, no one can go anywhere and it stands to reason the killer is among them.  Georgie sets about amateur sleuthing.

I liked this, but not quite as much as the others. Perhaps because I had a hard time getting my head around the time period and location which seemed to clash ancient things and modern things together, plus Romania, Bulgaria, Transylvania-presumably there was actual history there, but it was slightly confusing. Nonetheless, Georgie was as delightful as ever, as were all the other characters. I didn’t care for the vampire worries-that just seemed silly.