Month: February 2016

The Winter People – Jennifer McMahon

ChristieLeave a comment

A few years back I read Jennifer McMahon’s debut novel Promise Not To Tell, and I enjoyed it a great deal. A couple years after that I read McMahon’s novel Dismantled, a book I did not like one bit. Now I’ve just finished reading The Winter People, and I have to say it falls sort of in between.winterThe Winter People is a story which bounces between present day and 1908. In the past, Sara Harrison Shea lives on the farm where she grew up with her husband, Martin, and her little girl, Gertie. West Hall, Vermont is well-known for its mysteries and ghost stories, many of which center around Sara and her family farm, a house filled with secret places and, well, secrets.

In her diary, Sara writes “The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old.”

I had heard about sleepers; there was even a game we played in the schoolyard in which one child  would be laid out dead in a circle of violets and forget-me-nots. Then someone would lean down and whisper magic words in the dead girl’s ear, and she would rise and chase all the other children. The first one she caught would be the next to die.

Turns out, though, there is dark magic and Sara’s Auntie, an Indian woman who cared for Sara’s dying mother before she started sleeping with Sara’s widowed father promises to “write it all down, everything I know about sleepers.” In case it’s not obvious, sleepers are people brought back from the dead, but they only exist for seven days, you, know, unless they shed blood during that time – then they live forever.

In the present, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her little sister, Fawn. One morning Ruthie gets up to discover her mother is missing. Cold tea on the table, truck in the barn – vanished into thin air.

Then there’s Katherine. She’s still grieving the loss of her son, Austin, when her husband, Gary, is killed in a car accident. Thing is, he told her he was going to be one place and he was actually in West Hall. Last seen: Lou Lou’s Cafe with Alice.

These disparate threads do come together by novel’s end, but I lost interest about half-way through. The Winter People is clearly meant to be a ghost story, but once crazy Candace shows up, intent on getting the missing pages of Sara’s diary so she can sell the secret of raising the dead so she can fight for custody of her son -yeah, right about then I was…c’mon. Oh, plus there’s a gun. Two guns actually. And other crazy shenanigans. And then, a lot of exposition to tie up those pesky loose ends.

When McMahon stuck to the ghost stuff…there were some creepy moments, but The Winter People is nowhere near as good as Promise Not To Tell.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock – Matthew Quick

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forgive meToday is Leonard Peacock’s 18th birthday. It’s also the day he has elected to kill himself – but first he has to kill his former best friend, Asher Beal.  Before he can do that, though, he has some gifts to deliver, gifts he’s wrapped in pink paper and packed in his knapsack along with his grandfather’s P-38 WWII handgun.

I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more than I was  – that I couldn’t stick around – and that what’s going to happen today isn’t their fault.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is a smart, funny, heartbreaking novel by Matthew Quick, perhaps better known for Silver Linings Playbook. I was immediately enchanted by Leonard’s charming, wry and honest narrative – he is immediately believable and sympathetic.

Leonard isn’t your run-of-the-mill teenager. He’s a thinker. He’s also in real emotional distress. It’s no wonder. His father, a former rock star currently on the run from the IRS, and his mother, a fashion designer who lives in NYC with her French boyfriend, are clearly terrible parents.

As Leonard makes his way through his day and we meet the four people he deems worthy of parting gifts, it’s easy to see how lonely and isolated he is.

First there’s Walt, the old man who lives next door. “I met Walt during a blizzard” Leonard tells us in one of the novel’s frequent (and often caustic) footnotes. Leonard’s mother, Linda, had asked him to go “shovel the driveway, even though it was still snowing, because she had to go out to meet another fake designer or some bulimic model.” Walt is an old movie aficionado and soon enough he and Leonard are quoting Bogart and Bacall back and forth at each other.

Then there’s Baback, a kid Leonard has known since grade nine. When Leonard discovers that Baback is an extremely talented violinist, he bribes Baback to let him sit and listen because listening to Baback play is “by far the best part of my day.”

Then there’s Lauren, the home-schooled Christian who hands out pamphlets at the train station. (Sometimes Leonard rides the train into the city, following random adults to see whether there is, in fact, any potential for happiness once you’re out of high school.) That’s where he first sees Lauren and he dreams of kissing her, although they can’t seem to overcome the obstacle in their way: Jesus.

Finally, there’s Herr Silverman, Leonard’s favourite teacher. Herr Silverman encourages his students to think for themselves, a quality Leonard feels is lacking in other faculty members. Also,

There have been days when Herr Silverman was the only person to look me in the eye.

The only person all day long.

It’s a simple thing, but simple things matter.

I’m a teacher; that hit me in the gut.

Leonard goes through his day, hinting at something horrible that happened between him and Asher, the something that necessitates his rash decision to end both their lives. With each gift, he half hopes someone will notice that something is wrong and, thankfully, someone does.

For anyone who has ever felt ‘other’, for anyone who ever considered ending their own life, for anyone who has ever felt neglected, unseen, or desperate, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is the book for you.

Highly recommended.

Think of a Numb3r – John Verdon

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numberJohn Verdon’s debut novel Think of a Numb3r introduces readers to retired NYC detective Dave Gurney, the man responsible for catching several well-known serial killers. Now he lives a quiet life in Walnut Crossing with his second wife, Madeleine. He spends his time “enhancing, clarifying, intensifying criminal mug shots” which he sells through gallery owner Sonya Reynolds, a woman he spends just a tad too much time thinking about.

Out of the blue he receives a message from an old college classmate, Mark Mellery. Mellery is ” the director of some sort of institute in Peony and he did a series of lectures that ran on PBS.” Mark needs Dave’s help. He’s received a cryptic note:

Do you believe in fate? I do, because I never thought I’d see you again – and then one day, there you were. It all came back: how you sound, how you move – most of all, how you think. If someone told you to think of a number, I know what number you’d think of. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. Think of any number up to a thousand – the first number that comes to your mind. Picture it. Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope.

The note is creepy; the fact that the envelope contains the very number that Mark thought of, creepier still. Mark claims that the number he thought of –  658 – “has no particular significance to me.” The note also asks Mark to send $289.87 to  a post office box in Connecticut.  Mark has sent the money, but the check has not been cashed. It’s a perplexing situation and Mark is looking for some guidance.

Think of a Numb3r is a well-written mystery but I found it just a tad slow. Even after the bodies start to pile up, I felt like the same evidence was being recounted  too often. A lot of names to remember- DAs and other detectives and such. As for Dave, he just seems pissed off all the time. Okay – yes, there’s been  tragedy in his life which may explain some of it away, but then the reconciliation with Madeleine at the end seems a little trite. We get to hear just a little too often how famous Dave is and , yeah, we get it – he’s caught some monsters.

As far as the mystery – it’s good enough. There are certainly some compelling elements – footsteps in the snow which vanish into thin air, clues left for the police which are clearly meant to demonstrate how smart the villain is. I just wish it had all unfolded a teensy bit quicker.

That’s amore

ChristieLeave a comment

Listen here.

Boy meets girl – it’s the oldest story in the book, right? And now, thankfully for modern readers, we can also add boy meets boy and girl meets girl.

A couple of years ago I talked about love and the sorts of stories that make my heart skip a beat, or more often than not, break…a feeling I have to admitting I like just a little more than is probably healthy. You can read about what I said here.

I am a romantic at heart. Sappy, even. I’m not sure I grew up believing that a handsome prince was going to ride in on his white stallion and save me, but I did believe in happily-ever-after, although I am currently on the fence about that now.

My most favourite kind of love story is the one where the couple overcomes tremendous obstacles to be together – sacrifices are made – or, even better, that they love each other deeply but just can’t be together. Angst, baby. Buffy and Angel. Hello.

So since Valentine’s Day has just passed, I thought I would talk about romantic books.

I cut my teeth on my mom’s bodice rippers – Rosemary Rogers type stuff. Sweet Savage Love. You know, wild men who can’t be tamed and the virginal women who tame them.

Clearly romance novels have changed over the years – like 40 of them – when I first starting reading them. Some argue that modern romance novels are actually empowering because they are mostly written by women for women, women are generally the hero – or should I say heroine – of the piece and then there’s the s-e-x. In the modern romance novel, women are often in charge of their own pleasure, something I doubt Rosemary Rogers would have acknowledged back in the day.

All that said – I still have a soft spot for romance between two people who have to overcome horrible odds…and if they can’t actually overcome them – even better. Clearly, I have a type and it’s all about the doomed love. I am the person who still blubbers like a baby watching Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet.

Ultimately, though, I think there should – at the very least- be the potential for a happy ending, even if it never actually happens.

So, if you are feeling the love – or you want to feel the love – or, you just want to curl up in a ball and cry…I have some recommendations for you.

The Lost Garden – Helen Humphreys lostgarden

The link to my musings about this book predate this blog, but what you’ll find if you follow the link is an entry I did for Book Drum.

Humphreys is a Canadian writer and The Lost Garden is the story of Gwen Davis a young horticulturist in 1941 London. She gets a job leading a team of Land Girls at a neglected estate in Devon. They’re going to be growing crops for the war effort. While there she meets Raley, a Canadian officer waiting to be posted to the front. She also befriends Jane, a young woman whose fiancé is MIA. From these two people – in these fraught circumstances, Jane comes to understand the meaning of love. I was so enchanted with this book that when I was in England in 2007, my kids and I spent the day at The Lost Gardens of Heligan, an estate which is very much like the one Gwen works on in the novel.

IMG_0834 IMG_0838

Can I just share a little bit from the beginning of the book?

We walk the streets of London. It is seven years ago. We didn’t meet, but we are together. This is real. This is a book, dusty from the top shelf of a library in Mayfair. The drowned sound of life under all that ink, restless waves breaking on this reading shore. Where I wait for you. I do. In a moment. In a word. Here on the street IMG_0846corner. Here on this page.

But it is shutting down, all around me, even now, this moment that I stopped. The story disappears as I speak it. Each word a small flame I have lit for you, above this darkened street.

The Lost Garden is a really lovely, and surprising love story.

So, I asked my eighteen-year-old daughter why she reads romance. She was pretty quick to point out that most of the love stories she reads are unrealistic and that she realizes that. However, that doesn’t get in the way of her enjoyment. She counts books like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook or The Last Song among her favourites. Nicholas Sparks definitely offers readers a heaping helping of schmaltz.

If you’re looking for schmaltz, you can’t go wrong with Robert James Waller’s 1992 novel The Bridges of Madison BridgesOfMadisonCountyCounty. You could read this book in an afternoon, it’s short. I don’t mean to suggest that Waller is a wordsmith, but this book broke my heart when I first read it. Francesca is a war bride and she lives with her husband and her kids on a farm in Iowa and one afternoon – while her family is away at a state fair or something – she meets a photographer named Robert who is in the area to photograph covered bridges. The encounter changes her life and his, too. Sacrifices must be made. Their story is discovered by her adult children after her death and they are shocked to realize their mother was more than the woman who made their meals and washed their clothes. People might know the movie with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and it’s a decent version, but the book is pretty good if you have a couple hours and a box of Kleenex.

So clearly, I’ve just outed myself – if a book can make me cry the writing doesn’t even have to be stellar.

Now – how about a YA romance?

easyEasy – Tammara Webber

This is for mature teens…it kind of just crosses the line, but it’s about a second-year university student named Jacqueline who has just been dumped by her boyfriend. She meets Lucas and he’s – I suppose – the proverbial bad boy, but he’s not really. This book hit all my guilty pleasures and then some. There’s tension galore, there’s a likeable minor cast and the two main characters are smart and kind and when they finally reach their happily ever after, you’ll be swooning.

Yep – there’s something super satisfying about a love story. Check out these:

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

I cried so hard when I read this book, I couldn’t even see the pages.

The Banquet – Carolyn Slaughter

Henry meets Blossom at Marks & Spencer. He’s a conservative architect; she’s a young shop girl. There’s is an all-consuming love affair. Carolyn Slaughter is one of my all-time favourite writers.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Two boys, true love. So beautiful and life-affirming.

Me Before You – JoJo Moyes

Just in time for the movie. Plain Jane meets handsome paraplegic.

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

My first-ever romance. And you never forget your first, right?

What’s your favourite romance novel?

 

 

 

Everything I Never Told You -Celeste Ng

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everythingLydia is dead.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had such a visceral reaction to a book.  I read the bulk of Celeste Ng’s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, on my snow day (a gift for a teacher, even if it’s only because we get to catch up on  marking/yearbook/planning – and, yeah, reading). I don’t think I will ever  be able to adequately explain how I feel about this book or these characters.

Lydia is just sixteen when she is found at the bottom of the lake across the street from her home in small-town Ohio. It’s the 1970s, the decade in which I, too, was coming-of-age. On the morning she is discovered missing (and it is this “innocuous” fact that sets the story in motion) we see the Lee family dynamic.

As always, next to her cereal bowl, her mother has placed a sharpened pencil and Lydia’s physics homework, six problems flagged with small ticks.

Hannah, Lydia’s younger sister is “hunched[ed] moon-eyed over her cornflakes, sucking them to pieces one by one.” Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is sitting on the stairs trying to wake up. James, their father, has already left for his job as a professor at the local college.

Lydia is never late. She is never anything but compliant. She is a “yes” girl, the favoured daughter. It is only after her body is found that her story, and that of her family, begins to unravel. And yes, you will want to know what happened to Lydia, but trust me, it’s just one of the many things that will break your heart in this magnificent novel.

While every family has their own secrets and burdens, the Lee family is further set apart because Marilyn is white and James is Chinese. Their story is integral to Lydia’s story. Marilyn herself was a gifted student, earning a scholarship to Radcliff, and there – while she heads towards a degree in medicine – she meets James, a fourth year graduate student in history. She is ‘other’ because she is a woman studying in a field that is dominated by men; he is ‘other’ because he’s Chinese. All Marilyn knows is that “she wanted this man in her life. Something inside her said, He understands. What it’s like to be different.”

Marilyn’s career plans are pre-empted when she gets pregnant. She and James marry and move to Ohio.  Of course, their union wouldn’t be quite so problematic now (I’d like to think, but there are always some people….), but it’s the late 50s when they marry. Another world, another time. And life, fraught as it is, moves on. But why is it fraught? Because James grew up attending private school for free because his mother worked there as the cook and his father the janitor? Because he never fit in anywhere?  Because Marilyn didn’t want the life her mother had? Because of dreams deferred? And what happens when our parents’ lives are complicated and damaged by their own childhoods? Ah, we all know the answer to that question, right? It all trickles down.

Everything I Never Told You is an astounding, complex and heart-breaking look at the secrets we keep, not only from our families but from ourselves. Why we keep them, and the damage caused because of it, is just part of what happens in Ng’s book. The horrible longing we feel to crack ourselves open, the desire for true communication and intimacy, is another part. There wasn’t a single character in this novel I didn’t want to hug – I loved them all. That they were so fabulously human and fragile is a testament to Ng’s talent.

Highly (times a billion) recommended.