The Ghost Bride (Audiobook)

Title: The Ghost Bride

Author: Yangsze Choo

 

Read by: Yangsze Choo

Publisher: Harper Audio (2013)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Historical Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 8 minutes

Synopsis: "Would you like to be a ghost bride?"  Li Lan is shocked by her father's suggestion.  After all, though marrying off the dead is not entirely unheard of in colonial Malaya, it is rare for the bride to be a living woman who would be condemned to a life of widowhood.  Though Li Lan has no interest in becoming such a bride, she is curious about the circumstances that led to the suggestion.  Her intended, it would seem, was the heir to the Lim family, a young man she had never even met.  Now, however, all of his family is showing a keen interest in her, from the new heir Tian Bai to his dead cousin, who's begun appearing in Li Lan's dreams and is anything but charming.

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion:  I did enjoy this audiobook performance, since it is somewhat rare to find a book read by its author.  Li Lan isn't exactly the most interesting protagonist, but through her explorations, we are treated to an extensive, lushly described, and sometimes fantastical view of her world, both in life and death.  The historical notes Choo includes at the conclusion of the story are nearly as interesting as the book itself.  There's a lot going on in this story, ranging from romance to a sort of supernatural version of Law & Order.  With the historical context in place, that combination makes a lot more sense, but during my first listening, I found it somewhat difficult to work out where the story was going, and why on earth that seemed like a logical option.  Though there were things about this book that puzzled me, I did enjoy the performance overall, and the concept behind it in particular.

The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Title: The Kitchen House (Audiobook)

Author: Kathleen Grissom

Read by: Orlagh Cassidy, Bahni Turpin

Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks (2010)

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 12 hours and 11 minutes

Synopsis: Lavinia was only seven when her family left Ireland aboard a small ship bound for America, a voyage that left her parents dead and Lavinia too sick and weak to protest when she is taken into indentured servitude in payment for her family's passage.  She is taken to the vast plantation house of Captain Pyke and left in the care of Belle, a kitchen slave and Pyke's own illegitimate daughter.  Belle and the other domestic slaves accept Lavinia as a member of their own family, and Lavinia grows to love them, standing with them even as the fortunes of the family in the plantation house begin to fail.

My Rating: 4 Stars

 
My Opinion: This is a beautifully researched, well written, and delightfully performed book.  The characters are brought to life by performers who make them distinctive without drawing them as them caricatures.  In her youth, the story follows Lavinia closely and gives  the reader a delightfully innocent view of plantation politics, but the narrative grows grimmer as Lavinia grows up and leaves behind the trivialities of childhood.  The detail in this historical imagining is fantastic.  From fashion and food to architecture and politics, Grissom has clearly done her homework.  My only complaint is that there really seems to be too much story for a single book.  Lavinia's life is divided into multiple parts as she grows older and her circumstances change, which of course is perfectly reasonable.  However, there is not a consistent driving arc of plot throughout the book, which makes sense since the lives of normal people seldom follow satisfyingly dramatic plot lines.  Though the forward momentum provided by tensions between characters is generally enough to keep the story moving, sometimes this falters and leaves the story somewhat stagnant.  Nonetheless, it's a good performance of a good text, making for an engaging overall experience.

Dragonfly In Amber

Title: Dragonfly in Amber

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Publisher: Delta Trade Paperback (2007)

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction

Length: 743 pages

Synopsis:  Claire knows the future.  Or rather, she knows the past.  Her knowledge, however, is nothing like that of her late husband, historian Frank Randall.  More than twenty years ago, she vanished from the face of the earth for three years when she fell through the cracks of time itself and found herself in eighteenth century Scotland.  Trapped in the past, she finds the love of her life in the form of Jamie Fraser, a young Scottish lord.  When the exiled king James and his son Charles begin plotting to free Scotland from English rule, suddenly Claire's knowledge of history becomes the power to see the future, a future that ends in the bloody battle of Culloden.  As she recounts her tale to her daughter Brianna, Claire must reconcile herself to the events of the past, as well as those of the present.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:  This second book in the Outlander series picks up a good two hundred years from where the first volume, Outlander, left off.  The preordained arc of actual history melds almost seamlessly with the far more personal story of Claire and her family.  Knowing the story ahead of time, however, leaves Gabaldon rather little wiggle room.  Her fictions seem to push against the constraints of fact, wishing for more space to grow but unable to find it.  Even more constraining is the nature of this story's telling; Claire is looking back at her past as she relives it for her daughter, so in addition to the preordained nature of history, there's a certain lack of spontaneity in knowing where the story is leading these characters on a personal level.  If there was a great deal of character development, this predictable plot wouldn't be as distracting, but Claire and Jamie's romance is well defined and there seem to be few other trials for them as people.  Neither are there many well developed secondary characters to offer an alternative source of interest.  The book reads like a good television series in its second or third season; the initial device that drives the plot has come to its natural conclusion, but somehow the full story hasn't played itself out yet.  There's more to come, but I'm not sure whether Gabaldon was able to keep the contrived feeling that nagged at this book from controlling the sequels.  I suppose I'll just have to read them and find out.

Books for Boys

Supposedly, boys are pickier readers than girls are... I'm not sure where that assumption came from, nor do I have any statistics to back it up.  I do, however, have quite a few friends and family members who are English and Language Arts teachers, and they report a certain luke-warm attitude toward reading among their male students.  I, of course, believe that everyone is a reader, and if someone claims not to be, he (or she!) just hasn't found the right book yet.  That being said, here are a few suggestions that might appeal to the gentlemen:


Historical Fiction:
       The King Raven Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead
       Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
       The Song of Albion Trilogy by Stephen Lawhead
    
Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror:
       Abarat by Clive Barker
       Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
       American Gods by Neil Gaiman
       The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
       The Myth Hunters by Christopher Golden
       The Magicians by Lev Grossman
       A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
       The Road by Cormac McCarthy
       The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix
       The Matt Cruse Trilogy by Kenneth Oppel
       The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
       Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson
       Dragon and Thief by Timothy Zahn
       Fire Bringer by David Clement-Davies
       Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
       Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
       The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
       Unwind by Neal Schusterman
       The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
       Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
       Feed by M. T. Anderson
       The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
       From a Buick 8 by Stephen King


Mysteries/Thrillers:
       The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
       Thr3e by Ted Dekker
       The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson
       The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
       Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
       Acceleration by Graham McNamee
       The Knife and the Butterfly by Ashley Hope Perez
      

Nonfiction/Memoir/Biography:
       Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
       The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
       The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston
       A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
       Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
       Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northerners by Gary Paulsen

Company of Liars

Title: Company of Liars

 

Author: Karen Maitland

Publisher: Delacourt Press (2008)

 

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction

Length: 453 pages

Synopsis:  Plague has come to medieval England.  Some are hopeful that it will burn itself out.  Some cling to rites and rituals, hoping they will keep the disease at bay, and some just hope to outrun it.  This story's narrator is one of the latter, a camelot, or seller of religious relics (of dubious provenance).  His flight is not a solitary one, however.  On his way, he meets Rodrigo and his apprentice Jofre, musicians who've lost their place in a nobleman's house.  They're not the last to join this band of misfits.  Before long they're joined by Zophiel, a traveling magician, Pleasance, an herb woman, Osmund the painter and his pregnant wife Adela, and Cygnus, a storyteller.  The strangest member of their company, however, is a young girl called Narigorm, a girl with hair as white as snow and a complexion like skimmed milk.  She's a fortune teller, reading the future in runes that never lie.  Everyone in this company has a secret, some dangerous, some horrible.  For them, one who can see the truth in the fall of the runes could be even more destructive than the deadly plague.

 

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  I took a chance on this book.  Knowing nothing of it, I spotted it on the top shelf at the library.  Eying the seven other books I already carried, I decided I might as well add it to the stack.  It was well worth it.  The book weaves a wonderful tale, walking a fine line between history and fantasy.  The characters are unique and diverse, the hints at their secrets subtle and tantalizing.  There's an air of magic about it, not quite enough to call the book a fantasy, but enough to make it a world apart.  It's like a ghost story or a fairy tale, not quite believable in the telling, but perfectly believable to the characters it contains.  Maitland's created a grim world: a soggy, sour, stinking England rotting from the plague and corruption.  The fear is contagious as well, fear of dangers both known and unknown.  Fate has a role to play in this book as well as magic.  The terrible inexorability of what will befall this strange company is as frightening as the plague rolling across the country.  It's a complex, subtle story that's quite difficult to discuss without giving anything away.  It's unexpected, dark, funny, bitter and poignant.  In short, read it.  You'll be glad you did.

Saga

Title: Saga: A Novel of Medieval Iceland

Author:Jeff Janoda

Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers (2005)

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical Fiction

Length: 353 pages

Synopsis: Life is hard in medieval Iceland.  The earth is rocky and difficult to farm.  The winters are long and dark and bitter.  The people are hard too, as they must be to survive in such a place; men, and women too, use their influence to their own greatest advantage..  Saga presents the tale of one valley and the chieftains that rise and fall from power there.  Inheritance and murder, legal maneuvering and cold-blooded revenge, ghosts, gods, and the ever-present, whispering elves combine to tell a story that is both immediately accessible, and yet just a bit out of reach, a saga of another time and another place, remembered in the telling.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: The word "subtle" is not exactly the first to my mind when someone mentions vikings, and yet this tale has shown a great capacity for it.  At its most crude and basic, we have here a fight over farmland, and yet Janoda was deepened the tale to include so much more.  It's as much a novel of political intrigue, familial ties, and courtroom drama as it is a violent viking vendetta (if I may be superfluously alliterative).  "Never kill more men than you can afford to pay for," a character says at one point, and it's quite true throughout the story.  Relatively little blood is shed, but the conniving machinations of the various chieftains in this story are quite gruesome enough.  There are faint elements of the supernatural: malicious little elves flit at the corners of vision, and several deaths have a rather otherworldly bent, but this is not a fantasy.  Here we don't have horned-helmet wearing, dragon-ship sailing Norse raiders.  These are Icelandic farmers, solid, dependable, and utterly ruthless.  Intriguing though the premise is, the story itself is somewhat slow and methodical, grinding relentlessly forward like an Icelandic glacier.  It's never quite slow enough to be dull, but at the same time, one can't help but feel as if the story hasn't quite gotten started yet, even well into the book.  It's as though we're waiting for that one moment when the tale stops being back-story and becomes the narrative we feel we're expecting, but it's not a moment that ever really comes.  By the time I finished, I realized I never did get the story I was expecting, but the one I got was certainly worth the read.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Author: Patrick Süskind (Translated from German by John E. Woods)

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (1986)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction, Literary Fiction

Length: 255 pages

Synopsis:  Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is a “gifted abomination,” a man whose olfactory abilities are so extraordinary he can recreate the most exquisite perfumes after smelling them only once.  He could easily be the most renowned perfumer in all of France, but Grenouille has other aspirations.  He plans to create a scent so intoxicating that the world will fall before his feet.  No ordinary ingredients will do, of course.  For this “master scent,” Grenouille will need to bottle the essence of humanity.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: 

This is one of the most delightfully disturbing books I have read in quite some time.  In structure, it reminds me quite a bit of classic literature: Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure in particular.  I don’t mean to suggest that the text is at all dense or inaccessible.  Quite the contrary, in fact, though I can’t help but wonder how much of that is due to the translation from the text’s original German.  The story keeps the reader at arm’s length from its grotesque central character, allowing the omniscient third person narrator to explore the tangential stories of lives brushing up against Grenouille’s.  None of these lead to any great development of character; indeed, Grenouille’s motives appear hazy even to himself.  Though the characters and plot are quite simplistic, the text itself is anything but.  The book is rife with metaphor, allusion, and opportunities to explore certain truths of the human condition.  Is Grenouille perhaps a human incarnation of Satan, working his will with scent instead of a similarly nebulous evil?  Is he merely a device to reveal the fallibility of humanity, its reliance on instincts considered base and primal?  Without cluttering plot or characterization, the reader is free to explore all these trains of thought while racing through the book itself (it took me only an afternoon or so to finish, despite its length).  Readers unwilling to devote their time to this extra-literary exploration will likely find the book somewhat disappointing, as it lacks many of the “modern” literary conventions and defies categorization by genre.  For anyone looking for a new book-group read or literary paper topic, however, I think Perfume would be an excellent place to start.

Deadly

Title: Deadly

Author: Julie Chibbaro

Publisher: Antheneum Books for Young Readers (2011)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction

Length: 287 pages

Synopsis:  Prudence Galewski didn't expect much more from life than a job as a typist or shopgirl.  That's what awaits her and all her classmates at Mrs. Browning's School for Girls, and, in 1906, that was typical.  Despite her expectations, Prudence is dreams of doing more with her life.  She watched her brother die of gangrene and her father ship off to war, never to return.  She longs to make a difference, to "get a job fighting death."  When she gets the chance to work as a secretary, typist, and assistant at the Department of Sanitation, she realizes her opportunity has come at last.  Together, she and her employer work to determine the cause of a recent outbreak of typhoid fever.  The closer they come to an answer, however, the more puzzling the case becomes.  All the cases seem to be related to a cook named Mary Mallon, but how can they convince a perfectly healthy woman that her very presence is deadly?

My Rating: 3 Stars

My Opinion: 

Though I may be flying in the face of general consensus, I was not really a fan of this book.  It earned the National Jewish Book Award in 2011 and the cover review blurb is from The New York Times.  Nonetheless, I was underwhelmed.  I am a fan of historical fiction, particularly this era.  I am currently pursuing my own Master's degree in epidemiology, so of course the subject matter was interesting.  It just... didn't click.  There are so many different facets to this novel-- Prudence's brother's death and her father's disappearance, her relationship with her mother and with a friend who moved away to Virginia, her schoolwork, her job with the Department of Sanitation.  And yet, none of them seem deeply interwoven.  Perhaps this is due to the view of Prudence's life through the pages of her diaries.  She describes events as she sees them and not as they relate to one another.  Accurate though this may be, it does not make for a deeply engaging read.  The historical aspects of this book are obviously well researched and well presented, but again, the scope is limited to Prudence's perceptions.  For readers unfamiliar with this period in history, there is little societal context presented beyond the disparate fragments of war, sanitation reform, and societal expectations for women.  As a public health professional myself, I was also a bit bemused by Chibbaro's choice of rebellious career for her protagonist.  Prudence's mother is a midwife and the field of nursing has always been dominated by women.  These would have been clear and respectable alternatives for Prudence if, as is evident so early on, she despises the idea of being a shopgirl.  Today, as a student of public health following in the modern equivalent of Prudence's footsteps, it is rather amusing for me to sit in classes that are 80% female, reading studies by women scientists and textbooks by women authors.  It's a field of science where women are not only permitted, but often predominate.  I do hope that this book inspires young women to pursue careers in their field of interest, whatever that may be, but if I were to recommend a book for that purpose, it wouldn't be this one.

The Fever Tree

Title: The Fever Tree

Author: Jennifer McVeigh

Publisher: Viking (March 2012)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction

Length: 346 pages

Synopsis:  Frances Irvine grew up in the sheltered, wealthy world her father worked so hard to create for her.  Though as the daughter of a merchant she was never truly accepted into the world of high society, it was the only life she knew until her father’s sudden death left her facing a difficult choice: a life dependent on the goodwill of her family, or a voyage to South Africa to begin a life of her own.  Finally given the freedom to make her own choices, Frances plunges blythely forward.  By the time she realizes the repercussions of her actions, it may be too late to reverse them.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:

This book is really a rather interesting take on the story of a young Victorian woman.  Many historical fictions surrounding women at this time in history tend to focus on “strong women”: independent individuals bucking the restrictive order of their time.  Frances, however, is well aware of the work her father did to ensure that she would never need to be strong and independent, and also, unfortunately, that he never counted on leaving his painted blossom alone.  Initially, Frances is an appealing character- devoted daughter sacrificing as she must upon her father’s death- but she quickly loses that appeal.  Her choices grow steadily more objectionable as they become increasingly selfish.  It’s understandable; she feels she has no one left worth sacrificing for, but as a reader, it’s a bit unpleasant to have to deal with this self-centered, childish young woman.  She has redeeming moments, but so much of the time, the reader just wants to reach through the page and smack her.  It takes some time for her to hit rock bottom, but the momentum of the novel seems to have petered out by the time the reader gets to see what we’ve all been hoping we will: Frances’s redemption.  This is not to suggest, however, that Frances is unbelievable as a character.  In fact, it is her complete reality that makes extended time in her company somewhat uncomfortable.  Despite our somewhat unlikeable guide, this truly is a wonderful book, and definitely worth the read, even if only for its gritty exploration of Victorian South Africa.

The Butterfly Cabinet

Title: The Butterfly Cabinet

Author: Bertie McGill

Publisher: Free Press (July 2011)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction

Length: 240 pages

Synopsis: Based on the true story of a child’s death, a family secret decades old is slowly revealed from the perspective of two very different women.  Half the story comes from the prison diary of Harriet Ormond, convicted of murdering her own daughter, and half from the child’s nanny, Maddie.  It is only in the intermingling of these two perspectives that a truth no one ever guessed at comes to light, seventy years too late.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:

Nothing is what it seems in this novel.  A child found dead, strangled on the restraints used for punishment.  A mother convicted, imprisoned, and broken.  A servant who cared deeply for the children she tended.  It’s a façade as smooth and seamless as the wings of the butterflies Harriet Ormond keeps in neatly pinned rows in the drawers of her butterfly cabinet.  Her “pieces of sky,” she calls them.  It is an apt collection for a woman most at home under the open sky and a window into her suffering during the year she is imprisoned for her daughter’s death.  Harriet is painted as a harsh woman, cruel and unfeeling, and in her diary, her own words are not self-pitying.  They are, however, revealing.  Another side of Harriet comes to light between the lines of her prison diary, a side at which even her family did not guess.  Her counterpart, the woman everyone knows as Nanny Maddie, has her own secrets.  She’s kept them nearly for seventy years, and haunted by things left unsaid, her story at last is told.  There are no villains in this novel, and though readers will find themselves trying to fit characters into that mold, no one is easy to hate or to love.  The book does take a bit to hit its stride; the back-and-forth through time and space takes some adjustment on the part of the reader, and there are quite a few minor characters to keep track of.  Once the voices of these two women are established, however, their stories grow only more heart-wrenching with every turn of the page. 

The Curewife

Title: The Curewife

Author: Claire-Marie Watson

Publisher: Polygon (September 2003)

Genre(s): Historical Fiction

Length: 224 pages

Synopsis:  Part witch, part wise-woman, Grissel Jaffray is the last in a long line of curewives stretching back through the history of Scotland.  The story is told through the fictional diary of this very real woman as she marries and moves from her native Aberdeen to Dundee, taking with her the knowledge of herbal healing and spells she learned from her foremothers.  Grissel is a keenly intelligent woman; her powers of observation serve her well as the world around her erupts in political turmoil and intrigue.  Her city is torn apart by war and famine, and Grissel manages to keep her family one step ahead.  Ultimately, though, the very knowledge that keeps her there may cost her dearly.  

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

This book is genius.  The voice is utterly authentic, tricky historical spellings, vernacular and all.  The haphazard spacing between diary entries moves the reader forward from event to event without any loss of pace or continuity and lends to the realistic feel of the whole book.  Grissel is a compelling character, neither wholly trustworthy nor entirely dishonorable, but very human.  She loves her family fiercely and without reserve, but is nonetheless manipulative, egotistical, and confident to a fault.  In the end, the only reason I give this book four out of five stars is because I wanted more from it.  Watson tempts her readers with hints of a vast story lurking behind Grissel’s words, but refuses to open the window wide enough to see.  Of course, without an in depth knowledge of Scottish history, I was often at a loss as to exactly what was happening in a historical context, but in truth it doesn’t matter.  The reader views these happenings as Grissel does, not as historically important, but as momentarily devastating.  In fact, no event in the book is “historical” at all.  To Grissel, this is her modern world, and that attitude allows readers to step in beside her and have a look around.  If only Grissel would allow a bit more room for us as we follow her through her world, this book would have easily rated five stars from me.