The Silver Star is the new novel by Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle. I wasn’t sure how Walls’ novel would compare to her memoirs, and although it doesn’t pack the emotional punch of her earlier books, it doesn’t disappoint. It is the story of 12 year old Bean, her 15 year old sister Liz and their flaky musician Mom, in 1970’s California. When their Mom takes off and leaves the girls, they make their way alone across country…
Fools is a collection of short stories by Joan Silber. I’m not generally a fan of short stories, as they always leave me wanting more and I find it is the rare writer who is accomplished at writing in this format. Silber is one of them. This is a great collection of seemingly simple stories about ordinary people going about their lives. There is the daughter of missionaries who grows up to be an anarchist, and in later stories we…
The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina Lopez Barrio is a saga about the Laguna family. A family of women cursed to have only girl children and to be unlucky in love. When Santiago is born, it seems the curse has been lifted, but not entirely. Lopez Barrio is a good storyteller, and although it is reminiscent of Isabelle Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, she is not really in their league. Although it was well written, it was hard to…
The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway is a time travel novel starting in present day New England and travelling back to 19th century London. There is a mysterious society called The Guild that is able to move back and forth through time. I love time travel novels, and this one did not disappoint; full of romance, mystery and adventure. I loved it all the way until the end when it left me hanging with many unanswered questions. Hoping…
Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy is a sweet novel about a little girl named Frankie, whose mother dies the day she is born. She is raised by a community of well meaning people in a small Dublin neighborhood. Her Father learns about her only weeks before she is born, and tries hard to give up drinking, find a better job and do the best he can to raise Frankie. He has help from a wonderful array of characters who try…
The Miniaturist is the highly popular new novel by Jesse Burton. Set in Amsterdam in 1686, the story is based on the actual miniature cabinet house made for Petronella Oortman, on view today in The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This is the one historical truth in the novel that Burton imagines her story around. It is a fascinating portrait of 17th century Amsterdam at the height of the Dutch East India Company. There are many secrets being kept in the house Petronella…
Hurricane Sisters is a novel by Dorthea Benton Frank set in Charleston, South Carolina. It focuses on the lives of three generations of women. Told from several points of view, sometimes the novel worked and sometimes it didn’t. It was a little preachy about domestic violence and abuse against women. There are some very sobering facts here about how many women die each day due to domestic violence and how South Carolina leads the country in the number of homicides….
In the Memorial Room by Janet Frame (author of An Angel at My Table) is a newly published novel ten years after Frame’s death and forty years after it was written. Harry Gill has been awarded the Watercress-Armstrong Fellowship, and he arrives in the small French village of Menton, only to find the Memorial Room where he is supposed to write, cold, dank and with no facilities. Frame is a wonderful writer, and this is quite a funny little novel…
The Valley of Amazement is the new novel by Amy Tan. This book is set in Shanghai at the turn of the century and follows the lives of an American mother who runs a high class courtesan house and her half-Chinese daughter, who has never met her father. Tan is a great writer of historical fiction, and often explores mother-daughter relationships, as she does here. However, I felt like this thick book needed to be edited down from 600 pages…
The Shores of Paradise by Shirley Streshinsky is historical fiction set in Hawaii, telling of the final decades of the 1800’s, marking the end of the Hawaiian monarchy and continuing into the early 1900’s. The book tells the story of True Lindstrom and Martha Moon, two orphan girls who becomes close friends with Princess Victoria Kaiulani. This is a wonderfully written epic novel following the lives of these girls, as they grow up and they move in different directions, yet…