Euphoria by Lily King is historic fiction based on the life of Margaret Mead during the 1930’s while she was working as an anthropologist in New Guinea. This is a well written novel about Mead and her husband and a fellow anthropologist, who is in love with her, and their differing approaches to learning about the native tribes they are studying while revealing even more about themselves. It is a fascinating portrayal of human behavior and relationships, of the tribes…
For All the Tea in China, How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose is a fascinating real life adventure of botanist Robert Fortune sent in the mid 1800’s by the British East India Company into the mountains of China, disguised as a Chinese businessman to steal tea plants, seeds, and the secrets of processing tea held for 2000 years by the Chinese. This is an incredible adventure story full of mystery and intrigue, espionage,…
The Nest by Cynithia D’Aprix Sweeny, is a novel about four grown siblings in a very dysfunctional New York family each counting on a nest egg from their deceased father. All four have their reasons for wanting the money, yet one brother gets himself in trouble and almost all the money goes to bailing him out. What ensues is a complex story of how each of the siblings tries to deal with the problem alone and through coming together as…
The Secrets She Keeps by Deb Caletti is a novel based on the divorce ranches that existed in Nevada in the 50’s. Women would come and stay for six weeks to get residency, then legally get a divorce. The atmosphere was often like a big party, with cocktails and dancing and city women falling for cowboys, there were Hollywood stars who came and of course a lot of heartbreak. Caletti moves back and forth from present day to the Summer…
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler is a novel about a small town girl in her early 20’s who comes to NYC and lands a job as a backwaiter at New York’s most popular restaurant, which is hard to believe to start with. The novel spans the course of her first year in New York where she has an awakening through sex, drugs, and food. I didn’t love this book as much as the critics did, but I thought it was a…
Cleopatra’s Shadows is the debut novel by Emily Holleman. It is historical fiction based on the lives of Cleopatra’s lesser known sisters, younger sister Arsinoe and older half-sister Berenice who became the first Queen to rule Egypt alone in a thousand years. Interesting from an historic perspective about Ptolemaic Alexandria, yet Holleman never drew me in enough to care deeply about any of the characters in the book, and there was not enough written about the larger picture outside the…
Sweet Salt Air by Barbara Delinsky is set on an imaginary island off the coast of Maine.Two childhood friends who spent Summers there growing up reunite after not seeing each other for ten years. They come together to work together on a cookbook based on island food, rich with local recipes including somewhat magical herbs that are an island secret. Secrets are uncovered and both women’s lives changed forever by what they discover during this Summer. Delinsky is a great…
Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz and Kat Helgeson is a book I read solely because of the title. Written entirely in blog posts, texts, emails, messaging, and journal entries, its a modern take on friendship in the digital age. Two fangirls, Gena and Finn, short for Stephanie, meet online while writing about their favorite show, whose characters are more real to them than people they actually know. What starts out as a funny book, becomes surprisingly heavy as these girls get…
After Alice by, Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked, tells the story of Ada, a friend of Alice’s who’s briefly mentioned in the original work. Ada goes in search of Alice and finds herself tumbling down into Wonderland and into her own adventure. Alice’s sister Lydia, meanwhile is above ground and not too worried that Alice has disappeared while in her care. Its a wonderful and inventive new take on a familiar story with some added characters and new twists and…
The High Mountains of Portugal is the new novel by Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi. It is told in three parts. Starting at the turn of the 20th century a young man grieving for his wife and son sets forth in one of Europe’s first cars on a quest into the mountains of Portugal. Forty years later, a Portuguese pathologist, and devotee of Agatha Christie mysteries, finds himself drawn into his own mystery. Another fifty years on we…