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.

Gold

Title: Gold 

Author: Chris Cleave

Publisher: Simon and Schuster (2012)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Sport, Fiction

Length: 324 pages

Synopsis:  Zoe and Kate have been rivals and competitors, bitter enemies and the best of friends throughout their entire careers.  They're Olympic level cyclists who've spent their lives training with the goal of gold always on the horizon.  But now, with her daughter Sophie fighting cancer and her final shot at an Olympic medal coming up, Kate has to make a decision about where her priorities really lie.  Zoe is forced to acknowledge that the effort she's poured into her training since childhood will no longer matter after the next Olympic games.  Facing pivotal points in their lives, will they find themselves once again fierce rivals or the friend that each so desperately needs?

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: This book was one of those stay-up-until-two-in-the-morning  It's not really a book about sport.  Yes, cycling happens, but it's not what this book is about.  It's heart and soul and breath and body can be found in the little cast of characters that plays out their stories in these pages.  The people of Gold are vividly constructed, and their stories interwoven and poignant in their own ways.  There are no saints and sinners in this book, just people coping with what their lives have handed them in the best ways they know how.  I loved hearing Sophie's story from her own point of view, and watching the pasts and presents of each character unfurl from multiple perspectives.  There are twists and turns and unexpected revelations that would have kept me reading even with less fully realized characters, but Cleave's craft was evident in every aspect of this novel's construction.  From my previous experience with Cleave's work (The Other Hand, published in the U.S. as Little Bee), I had high expectations, and they were completely fulfilled.

The Fault in Our Stars

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

Publisher: Penguin Books (2012)

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

Length: 316 pages

Synopsis:  Hazel Lancaster has a unique outlook on life.  As a teenage terminal cancer patient, she can see what's left of her time laid out before her, filled with guilt, pain, and pity.  She's seen it all before, having sat through support group meetings for other "cancer kids," watching new arrivals and listening to the ever lengthening list of those who've already passed away.  She's seen it in her parents' eyes, the pain and worry of having to devote their time to a daughter whose fate has already been written.  Hazel thought she'd seen it all... until she met Augustus Waters.  Capable of turning her world upside down with his broad proclamations and simple acts of caring, Augustus has given something Hazel thought she'd needn't bother with: someone to live for.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion:  This was a truly remarkable book.  I knew of Green through the video blog "The Vlog Brothers" (Nerdfighters!  Woo!) and through a good friend who is a fan of his writing as well.  I was excited to finally get the chance to read this book, thought I knew nothing at all about it until page one.  That's all it took.  Green was woven a story that speaks to both cynicism and sentiment, capturing the voice of today's young people exquisitely.  Article after article proclaims that the current generation of young adults is entitled, lazy, and immature.  No wonder we're acrimonious and jaded!  But in the midst of all that harshness, we're still looking for tenderness, connection, even nostalgia in a world of digital distance.  This book lets its characters be both.  It lets them push people away and draw them close.  It lets them text and email and still be real, living, breathing, flesh-and-blood people.  They can be angry and change their minds.  They make mistakes and have poor judgement.  They are so very real, and yet... Green has written them a story.  It's not real life, it's a beautiful, poignant story.  Like the play from which the book's title is taken, Green sets these characters out before the audience and lets the drama unfold.  Half the beauty comes from the characters, and half from the language.  Seldom have I read a best-seller so easily quotable.  In fact, "as [I] read I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."  I loved this book.  Unabashedly enjoyed it, read through the night to finish it, and yes, cried.  Perhaps it won't speak to every reader, but I certainly think it's worth the time to find out.

The Other Hand

Title: The Other Hand

Author: Chris Cleave

Publisher: Penguin Group (2008)

Genre(s): Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Length: 374 pages

Synopsis:  Though in general I write a neat little synopsis in my own words for each book I read, I will bow to the request on the back of the book and present the back cover word for word:

           

“We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book.  It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.

Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it so we will just say this:

This is the story of two women.

Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice.

Two years later, they meet again

-- the story starts there…

Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell your friends about it.  When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either.  The magic is in how it unfolds.”

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: My very first thought about this book was that it must be either something really special, or the product of an extraordinarily conceited author and editing staff.  Without any back-cover synopsis, and with a letter from the editor to the reader on the first page of the book cryptically extolling its virtues, I wondered if they were really that desperate for readers, or if maybe, just maybe, this actually is that book.  By this, I mean a once-in-a-lifetime, eye-opening sort of read that is every bit worthy of such praise.  I’m still not sure if this is that book… but it’s as close as any I’ve ever read.  It is remarkable.  The voices of this book’s two protagonists are ringingly clear and beautiful in their sincerity and imperfection.  They take up residence in your thoughts even when you set the book aside, as living and breathing as the people you pass on the street or sit beside in the theatre.  It’s clear how these women’s different worlds have shaped their words and their thoughts and their actions, like trees bent by the prevailing wind.  Horrible and funny and cruel and sweet and painfully relevant, Cleave has managed to tell a story of the sort we seldom hear, but often feel.  I won’t say much more, because really, no matter what your reading preference, you’ll find something in this story that speaks to you, and Cleave and his characters can tell you about it far better than I could.

Wintergirls

Title: Wintergirls

 

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Publisher: Penguin Group (2009)

 

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

Length: 278 pages

Synopsis:  Lia is frozen, caught on a path she can't escape and can't control.  Her family seems to have fallen apart: her parents are divorced and preoccupied with their own lives and her stepmother is too busy shuttling her own daughter from violin lessons to soccer practice to see what is happening.  Lia finds a brittle strength in watching the numbers of her bathroom scale tick downward.  One hundred and ten pounds.  One hundred.  Ninety.  Her bones stretch out from pale skin, but the number is never low enough.  One night, her one-time best friend, Cassie, is found dead in a local motel after calling Lia more than thirty times.  Lia never picked up, but Cassie isn't willing to let it rest.  Now Lia sees her everywhere, stretching out icy wintergirl fingers so thin the light shines through.  Cassie stands at the end of the path Lia is walking.  How far will she go?

 

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: Having previously read Anderson's Speak, my initial reaction to another book about the plight of a teen girl in a desperate situation was "Really?  Again?"  Could she really tell another story in that vein with the same kind of impact?  Could she do it without being trite?  Then I opened the book and never questioned her again.  This book is a horrifying window into the world of disordered eating.  It's not about beauty.  It's about strength and control.  I've worked with kids with eating disorders.  I've seen some of the ways they try to trick the scales.  I've seen their matchstick arms and hollow ribs and straw-like hair.  I understand the need for control, the power that comes with self-denial, the triumph over pain.  Anderson captured it all.  Lia and Cassie were dancers, yes, but they weren't driven to be thin by their need for the spotlight.  Cassie was interested in theatre, but she didn't purge to get the lead in a play.  For these girls, it's not about getting attention.  It's not about being beautiful.  It's about being strong.  It's about having power in a world that has conspired to rob them of it.  The public health professional in me cringes when Lia logs onto a support blog for anorexics-- not a blog to support recovery, but about how to hide one's symptoms, how to cut calories and burn more.  These exist.  They're not hard to find and they're hard to remove, and every time someone logs on, it gets harder to change the mindset about disordered eating.  Life for Lia gets harder and harder and worse and worse.  As the book draws to a close, she hits rock bottom.  In a way, I'm glad to see this.  For people struggling with problems like these-- addiction, disordered eating, domestic violence-- it's not easy to make a change.  This book isn't about Lia's recovery.  It's about making the decision that she wants to.

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.

Hidden

Title: Hidden

Author: Helen Frost

Publisher: Frances Foster Books (2011)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction, Verse Novel

Length: 142 pages

Synopsis:  At eight years old, Wren Abbott was accidentally kidnapped in a car-theft gone wrong.  For two days she hides, unbeknownst to her kidnapper, in a cold garage, listening to the voices of the family on the other side of the garage door, including a daughter her own age, Darra.  When Wren escapes, she and Darra both believe they can set the whole thing behind them...until six years later they come face to face in Cabin Eight at Camp Oakwood.

My Rating: 5 Stars

My Opinion: 

I was most pleasantly surprised by this little book.  Instead of reading like a sparsely written prose novel, this book is like a novel with all the extras pared away.  Only the essence of the story are left.  The girls' voices are distinct and, though they don't know it, surprisingly similar.  They are reluctant to talk about their experience with one another and fear that their secret differences will somehow set them apart.  Instead, the past brings these girls together.  The book is a quick read, but clever in its construction.  The verse form is not distracting; instead, it makes their stories somehow more personal and immediate.  For anyone willing to take a step outside the world of prose, this makes the journey both easy and enjoyable.  After a first read through, Frost's notes on the form of the book open even further insights to both the story and the level of care with which it was crafted.

Based Upon Availability

Title: Based Upon Availability

Author:  Alix Strauss

Publisher: Harper (2010)

Genre(s): Realistic Fiction

Length: 340 pages

Synopsis:  Like the hub of a wheel, the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan anchors the intersecting stories of eight women.  From tragic to just plain odd, these stories are like the rooms of the hotel itself; though they exist alongside one another, they remain remarkably isolated.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion:
 
In this book, the Four Seasons acts almost as another character, anchoring these stories to one another for the reader, though not the characters themselves.  For the most part, they aren't aware of one another's existence.  It's almost like a series of monologues: invasive, exposing monologues of these women's thoughts.  The balance of the book's stories is weighted heavily toward Morgan, the hotel manager; her story takes up the majority of the pages.  It is through her that we get a glimpse of the outside perception of some of the other characters.  However, this is not an uplifting book.  Though they seem normal enough through Morgan's eyes, when the narrative shifts to tell these women's inner stories, they are revealed as sad, lonely, troubled, even mentally ill.  It's a startling realization; these capable, happy, friendly people that seem to be functioning just fine, go home and cry themselves to sleep.  In this respect, the book felt particularly real.  As empathetic as we are, we can never really know how the people around us are feeling and coping, particularly out of sight behind closed doors.  However, I was a bit disappointed to find that all of these characters were struggling with similar problems and that there was no real resolution for many of them.  Yes, it's true that there are sad, lonely people in the world, people who have learned to hide their pain in public but nonetheless ache.  But there was no happiness in this book, no real joy.  Perhaps that was not the point.  Perhaps this book chronicles only those for whom happiness is based upon availability.

Acceleration

Title: Acceleration

Author: Graham McNamee

Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books (2003)

Genre(s): Young Adult Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Crime Thriller, Suspense

Length: 210 pages

Synopsis:  Duncan’s summer day job, as gopher in the dungeon-like Toronto Transit Authority’s lost and found, is anything but glamorous.  Looking for a way to spend dull hours, however, Duncan stumbles across a little brown book filled with newspaper clippings and disturbing diary entries.  Sick and twisted descriptions of mutilated animals and arson fill the pages, and Duncan becomes convinced he’s found the diary of a serial killer.  Haunted by recurrent dreams of a drowning victim he was unable to save, Duncan feels that at last he’s been given the chance to redeem himself by catching the book’s creator, but the more he immerses himself in the terrifying diary, the more he becomes convinced that he alone can catch this killer.  As the puzzle unravels, however, the question becomes less of how Duncan will accomplish this, and more about what will happen if he does.

My Rating: 4 Stars

My Opinion: 

An excellent book for that hard to please audience: the teenage boy.  Like a summer blockbuster action flick, it’s got a little bit of everything: thrills, suspense, redemption, comic relief, and a pleasantly subtle romance.  Also like that blockbuster, however, Acceleration is just a little too cut-and-dried to reach great heights.  From Duncan’s motivation to the neatly packaged resolution, everything has an explanation.  With the exception of Duncan, all the characters feel somewhat flat and generic, though this doesn’t really detract from a plot driven largely on Duncan’s single-minded quest for redemption.  It plays to everyone’s secret (or not-so-secret) desire to be a hero, solve the crime, and save the day.  With a truly frightening villain lurking behind the scenes, the reader can’t help but hope that Duncan will succeed, and quickly!  Acceleration is a pleasant diversion and certainly worth your time, but probably not about to land on the classics shelf.