That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay is a novel about two unlikely friends; one a famous American author and the other a shy English woman, who loves to garden. They find a common interest in their love of food and cooking. Their relationship takes place only through correspondence, yet it quickly becomes the most important relationship in both of their lives. At first I wasn’t drawn in to the characters, it seemed just another story of privileged people whining…
Vienna Nocturne by Vivien Shotwell is historical fiction based on Mozart’s life in late 18th century Vienna, and the life of opera singer Anna Storace. Shotwell imagines Mozart and Anna in love, even though they are married to other people. In this story Anna is his muse. It’s a wonderful picture of life in the opera at the time, in London, Italy and especially Vienna. Shotwell, an opera singer herself, has done much research and fills the book with vivid…
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan is a novel that has a fascinating concept, but didn’t really work as a good story. Egan explores the idea of image, that we are what we see. It is the story of a model in NYC who gets in a horrible car crash and her face, though still beautiful, is unrecognizable even to those who used to know her well. A plain looking teenage girl embarks on her own dangerous journey to be…
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout is a novel about family; two brothers and a sister raised in Maine, the brothers both become lawyers and move to New York, they drift apart and come back together through a family crises. Strout is a master at creating characters that feel so real it’s almost as if we already know them. She delves into the inner life of each character and brings their emotions to the page in the way few writers…
Books by Alexandra Fuller always take my breath away and leave me speechless for a while after I finish reading them. This remains true with her latest, Leaving Before the Rains Come. If you haven’t read Alexandra Fuller you are in for a rare treat and a wild ride. Start at the beginning with Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, about her childhood in Africa in the midst of the Rhodesian wars, and just keep reading all her books…
Prince Lestat by Anne Rice is the latest in The Vampire Chronicles, the first new addition to this series in over two decades. I loved the original books, but was underwhelmed by this latest installment. Rice continues to enchant with her wonderful details of place, decor, clothing, etc, but the story was bogged down by the sheer scope of all the vampires included in this novel. It felt like a 500 page encyclopedia, a whose who of the vampire world….
The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright is a wonderful novel about starting over after fifty. A woman whose very rich, older husband dies and leaves her wealthy and alone in his big house, comes out of mourning to find herself a little lost. By chance she wanders into a Ballroom Dancing studio in her town and thus begins her journey into a whole new world. This novel could only have been written by a Ballroom Dancer, as Wright brings the…
2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino is a day in the life of almost ten year old Madeleine Altimari. Madeleine doesn’t have any friends in her fifth grade class at school, she’s just been expelled, her mother has recently died, her father is lost in grief, and all she really wants to to is sing. Bertino weaves together beautifully the stories of Jazz Club owner Lorca, in debt and about to lose his club, Madeleine’s teacher Sarina,…
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde is the second book in his Thursday Next series. If you enjoyed his first book, you will surely enjoy this one, as it is more of the same. Next’s husband has been eradicated, and to get him back she has to find her way into the poems of Edgar Allen Poe. Before she can do that, she must enter Great Expectations, to apprentice with Miss Havisham and learn how to book jump….
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, is a beautifully crafted post-apocalyptic novel unlike others in the same genre. After a flu wipes out 99 percent of Earth’s population, those left are finding a way to live. The novel moves back and forth through time, from an actor who dies on the night the pandemic starts, to the paramedic in training who tries to revive him, to a child actor who survives, and 20 years later is living with a…