Book Reviews
Reader Review: "Like Mother, Like Mother"
by Maureen C.: This is the story of three generations of very strong women. This is a complicated story, the characters are well developed each with their own story to tell. Is a thought-provoking novel that will get you thinking about motherhood. Would you follow the path? Perfect book for book clubs.
Lila Is abandoned by her mother who is put into an institution when Lila is a young child. She is left in the care of her abusive father and grandmother. Later, she is told by her father that her mother has died. Lila never saw her mother after she was institutionalized. Lila becomes a journalist. She marries her college sweetheart, and has three children. She wants a career, and is not around much for her children. Grace, her youngest child resents this very much and wishes she would spend more time at home. Grace writes a book about her mother and investigates about what happened to her grandmother Zelda.
This is a beautifully written book about family dynamics. It is at times humorous and emotional. Highly recommended.
Thank you NetGalley, Random House for this invitation to read this arc copy of this book. I truly enjoyed it.
Reader Review: "A Fever in the Heartland"
by Anthony Conty (Parkville, MD): "A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them" helps one with only a working knowledge of the KKK figure out how they were so popular in the 1920s. You will find most political rhetoric familiar, but knowing that the group wielded such power may shock you.
Reading about the Klan's rhetoric, you can't help but recognize the familiar pattern of scapegoating. The Klan's strategy was simple: you were either with them or against them. The establishment of a common enemy was crucial to their mission. It's a tactic that still resonates in today's political landscape, serving as a cautionary tale.
The Klan, despite its proclaimed values, exhibited a striking hypocrisy, engaging in the very vices it condemned. The influential figures in the group held sway over society, echoing Will Rogers' observation: "It is the most religion preached and the least practiced." You should be tuned into different news channels if this doesn't resonate.
The action starts at about the halfway point, in which we read about a devastating rape, kidnapping, and assault. Reading about rape never gets more accessible or less shocking. The legal proceedings that fellow show that men in power have been getting away with atrocities for generations. Like a good crime drama, you expect a cheerful ending but cannot see how it is possible when you recognize the breadth of control Grand Dragons indeed possesses.
The legal proceedings remind you of how hard it is to convict men in power. When the word of others holds so much weight, people stand up about the legal burden of proof. The trial reminded me that hearing about reasonable doubt is the biggest necessary evil in our society. Any police procedural teaches that painful lesson in hour-long stints.
Reader Review: "The History of Love"
by Cathryn Conroy (Gaithersburg, Maryland): This is a strange book. It gets big points for originality, but it's also confusing and confounding. About halfway through, I was so bewildered, I did something I rarely do: I got online to figure out what the heck it was I was reading.
Written by Nicole Krauss, this is a book within a book and stories within stories—hence the perplexity. There are two distinct story lines/plots (as well as several other minor ones) that take a very long time to connect, so the chapter changes between them are utterly jarring, a kind of literary whiplash.
The two main stories: • Leo Gursky's story spans 70 years beginning when he is a 10-year-old Jewish boy in Slonim, Poland and ending when he is in his 80s, living alone in an apartment in New York City. As a child, he fell in love with his playmate, Alma Mereminski. When she is 20 and Nazi Germany begins to threaten Poland, Alma's father whisks her to the United States for her safety. Unbeknownst to Leo, Alma is pregnant. He swears he will never love another. He, too, makes his way to the United States after his entire village—except for him—is slaughtered by Hitler's troops. Leo is a writer, and he pens a novel called "The History of Love" in which every female character is named Alma after Leo's one true love. He entrusts the only copy to his best friend, Zvi Litvinoff, who flees to Chile. Zvi presumes Leo is dead and publishes the novel—under his own name. Only 2,000 copies were printed in Spanish, and it quickly becomes lost in boxes in booksellers' basements.
• Alma Singer is a precocious 12-year-old girl living in an apartment with New York City with her widowed mother, Charlotte, and her brother, nicknamed Bird. Bird is convinced he is a "lamed vovnik," one of a group of 36 hidden saints in Jewish folklore who are responsible for the fate of the world. Charlotte has spent the past five years grieving for her dead husband, and the children acutely feel her pain and loss, as well as their own. The couple's favorite novel was "The History of Love," which is why they named their daughter Alma. Alma's quest is to help her mother find a new love, and when a mysterious man named Jacob Marcus offers to pay Charlotte $100,000 to translate "A History of Love" from Spanish into English, Alma is inspired. In addition to playing matchmaker, Alma is determined to find the original Alma after whom she is named. Eventually, Alma figures out the true identity of Jacob Marcus, and the two stories slowly—very, very slowly—begin to merge.
And the ending? It's quite creative…but just as confusing as the rest of the novel. This is an incredibly sad story. Ultimately, it is about significant, irreparable loss—loss of loved ones, loss of dreams, loss of country, loss of what is rightfully one's own.
While this complex literary novel often left me perplexed, once I figured out the rhythm of the writing, characters, and plotlines, I enjoyed it. As the reader, you'll have to work a bit, but it's worth it if you appreciate imaginative and artistic literature that strives to be different than mainstream fiction.
Reader Review: "The Barn"
by Elizabeth campbell: Wright Thompson's The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi unravels the history of trauma through the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 by using a metaphorical barn as a symbol for secrets and tragedies buried in Mississippi's Delta. He weaves a complex tapestry: meticulous historical research paired with personal narrative, and he delves into a far larger sphere of impact by Till's murder, focusing on the extreme racial injustices and culture of silence that allowed such crimes to continue perpetually.
Critics are raving about this book, focusing on its powerful, haunting exploration of the complex social and racial landscape in Mississippi, giving voice to the hidden histories there. Thompson details not only the tragedy but also how local and national efforts to confront these histories have evolved, making this book a tough read but simultaneously thought provoking. While readers may get mired in regional details-meaning for those not familiar with the area that is being described the details might be just a bit too minute-they also provide irreplaceable historical and cultural context to the stories of Till and his legacy. Most readers interested in American history, civil rights, or especially the Emmett Till legacy would find The Barn informative and incredibly moving.
Reader Review: "The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern"
by PhyllisE (United States): Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a digital advance reader copy. All comments and opinions are my own.
The title was charming. The premise was intriguing. And the novel was an appealing page-turner, although a bit predictable. But sometimes that's the kind of book I feel like reading, with a heartwarming happily ever after.
"The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern" tells the story of a woman of a certain age getting a second chance at love with her first boyfriend of sixty years ago. The narrative is told in two timelines and two locations, alternating between 1920's New York and 1987 Florida. In addition to Augusta's coming-of-age story, author Lynda Cohen Loigman inserts a story of Augusta's Aunt Esther, a woman who learns to both survive and thrive despite the limitations of society.
Growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in New York, Augusta had always wanted to become a pharmacist like her father. While he encouraged her, they both knew it would be difficult as in the 1920s women were not expected to have a career. When Augusta's mother dies, Aunt Esther comes to live with them - to keep house, cook, and clean.
And that's when the novel becomes something more. Esther helps people, mostly women, with her mixtures and elixirs, potions and powders, and often her homemade chicken soup. This is where the novel veers into magical realism, and also provides a message about women's strength and ability to overcome the time period's restrictions.
"If a person is denied a formal education," Esther told Augusta, "She must be inventive in her quest for knowledge She must study the folktales and the old stories. She must learn however she can. She must use every tool at her disposable."
This is a second chance story of misunderstandings and magic, medicine and miracles, fate and forgiveness. It is about Augusta, who "wanted to be a woman who yes, had suffered losses, but whose heart had not yet been broken beyond repair. A woman who was curious and hopeful and who still believed in the glimmers of magic that made their way quietly into the world."
Reader Review: "Weyward"
by Cathryn Conroy (Gaithersburg, Maryland): Oh, this book is good. Really, really, really good. As in, once I got into it—about three chapters in—I could barely put it down. It just consumed me with its creative and electrifying twisty-turny plot.
Infused with a touch of magical realism, this is a suspenseful novel about three resilient women struggling against the cruelty of some very bad men. The mysterious story is shrouded in long-kept secrets, betrayal, and violence, as well as the power of nature.
Written by Emilia Hart, this is the story of three women from the Weyward family, who live different times: • It's 1619 in Crows Beck, a small village in Cumbria in northwest England. Altha Weyward, whose first name means "healer," has been accused of being a witch, specifically causing the death of a dairy farmer when his otherwise placid cows stampeded over him on a cold winter's day. She has been transported to the dungeon in Lancaster where she will be tried for the crime.
• It's 1942, and Violet Ayres, the sheltered and despised daughter of a viscount, is rarely allowed to leave the grounds of Orton Hall, the viscount's historic estate. She has learned to never ask questions about her mother, who died under mysterious circumstances when Violet was only two years old. One day, Violet finds a strange marking scratched into the woodwork of her bedroom: Weyward. What does that mean? After 16-year-old Violet is raped by a visiting cousin, she is sent away to a mysterious cottage in Crows Beck.
• It's 2019 in London, and Kate Ayres is tremulous with fear, as her live-in boyfriend, Simon, a wealthy businessman comes home from work. Simon controls Kate's every move, tracking her on her phone among other things. And when he gets angry, which is often, he hurts her—scalding her, punching her, bruising her. He has closed her off from her family and friends. Kate is all alone in this living hell, until one day—newly pregnant and desperate to keep her unborn child safe—she gets up the courage she needs and flees to remote Crows Beck where her late great-aunt Violet has left Kate Weyward Cottage in her will.
All three women have a gift they share: They are able to commune with nature—from spiders to crows.
Each story alternates every third chapter, and while this may seem like it could be disconcerting or confusing, it's not. Instead, it is powerful, ingenious, and captivating. Of course, the three stories eventually connect, but meanwhile the cliffhanger endings of each chapter kept me riveted and avidly reading.
Bonus: Be sure to read the first two paragraphs of the author's acknowledgements at the end of the book—especially if you're a teacher.
Reader Review: "The Message"
by Moses: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates was my first real encounter with his work, having first heard about it through the controversy surrounding this very book. It left a lasting impression. His writing is both incisive and deeply articulate, offering an examination of the complex moral boundaries between right and wrong. This work is a page-turner, yet its depth demands both attention and respect, intertwining empathy and hope throughout its narrative. Coates not only speaks to the hope of reparations for the descendants of slavery but extends this hope to all victims of injustice, making his message universally resonant.
I personally listened to the audiobook, narrated by Coates himself, and it added another layer of depth to the experience. Hearing his voice, filled with emotion and empathy, made his words even more powerful, allowing me to feel the weight of his reflections which may be gleaned while reading in between the words of his book if you pay attention.
One of the most moving aspects of this collection is his essay on Palestine. It stands out as a profoundly touching piece, where Coates recounts his personal journey, both physical and emotional, that allowed him to listen to the voices of those who have suffered under oppression. His ability to draw connections between different struggles for justice reveals the expansive nature of his empathy.
Coates' mastery of language is unparalleled. His choice of words draws you into his experiences, enabling readers to live through his moments, his thoughts, and his emotions. His writing is not only beautiful but also carries a profound love for humanity that shines through each page.
For those seeking an honest, empathetic perspective on the fight for justice, Coates' work is essential reading. It is a testament to the power of words and the transformative potential of literature in fostering understanding and compassion.
Reader Review: "Happiness Falls"
by Cloggie Downunder (Australia): "…a man doesn't come home from the park. The boy he was with, his youngest son, runs home by himself, scraped up, blood under his nails, traumatized."
Happiness Falls is the second novel by Korean-American author, Angie Kim. When Mia Parkson's father goes missing, a combination of factors sees her ignoring signs that should have set alarm bells ringing, and results in a delay of at least four hours before a search for him starts.
Complicating everything is the fact that the one person who might know what happened to him, her fourteen-year-old brother, Eugene, has been diagnosed both with autism and Angelman syndrome: his motor dysfunction means he doesn't speak. Further complicating matters is the fact that this all takes place in June 2020, with its attendant COVID tests, quarantines and hospitalisations.
As the search gets underway, a persistent police detective questions the family: Mia, her twin brother, John, and their mother, Dr Hannah Park, for any out of character detail that might offer a clue. They explore numerous possibilities trying to work out where Adam Parson might have gone and why: the idea of his leaving Eugene to fend for himself is rejected out of hand.
But a voicemail on Adam's cell phone, and out-of-state use of his ATM card, has them wondering just how well they knew him. And cell phone footage from bystanders has the police looking at Eugene, making the family determined to protect him from the stress of an interrogation they feel he hasn't the ability to withstand.
Over the next hours, a series of urgent, awful emergencies keep getting interrupted and displaced by more urgent, more awful emergencies, and as John and Hannah try to keep the family functioning, and to prevent Eugene from the distress of detention, Mia searches her father's computer, making some disturbing discoveries…
The research data on happiness that Mia finds in Adam's computer has her wondering if their family were mere guinea pigs for his study of the subject. And eventually, the family comes to understand that perhaps they don't know Eugene as well as they have always believed.
Kim explores a number of fascinating topics in this riveting mystery: the concept of happiness and the many theories around it; attitudes to oral fluency, verbal skills and their relation to intelligence; and the danger of assumptions and misconceptions. She deftly illustrates the trap that probably few will avoid: "Just because you can't speak doesn't mean you can't think or understand." An informative, moving and utterly enthralling read. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber.