bookpagedev

by Joni Rendon

In her sensuous and poetic new novel, Queen of Dreams, critically acclaimed author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores the psychic connections and hidden truths dreams can reveal about our inner and outer worlds. The same beguiling blend of magical realism and vivid imagery that attracted readers to her previous novels such as The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart infuses this absorbing modern-day tale of family, identity and personal transformation with a mystical, otherworldly quality. Rakhi, a newly divorced young mother, artist and co-proprietor of a floundering tea shop in Berkeley, struggles to find her place in life amid a sea of upheaval and a profound sense of disconnection from her Indian heritage. Troubled by the emotional distance of her parents and their enigmatic early life in India prior to immigrating to California, Rakhi remains anchored in the mysteries of the past, unable to gain a footing in the present. She tries unsuccessfully to bridge the gap with her mother, a dreamteller born with the ability to experience and interpret dreams. It is only through a tragic turn of events that Rakhi is able to unlock the secrets of the past and open herself up to the possibilities of the future. Deftly weaving the magical with the realistic, and the modern with the ancient, the novel leads us on a bewitching voyage of discovery. From the pages of the journals, the truth emerges about the great sacrifice Rakhi’s mother was forced to make in order to retain her rare gift. With these revelations come changes in both Rakhi and her father as they work together to repair their troubled relationship and to reinvent the struggling tea shop. Insightfully conveying the nuances of cultural, emotional and familial discord, Queen of Dreams illuminates the resonance of the past on the present and the role of forgiveness in self-discovery. Divakaruni is a spellbinding storyteller whose lush language and inventive imagination transport us on an enlightening journey of transition, transformation and rebirth. Joni Rendon writes from Hoboken, New Jersey.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Hollywood blues

Review by bookpagedev

by Ian Schwartz

Elizabeth Frank deftly explores a singularly ignoble era of American history with her towering debut novel, Cheat and Charmer. Frank, whose 1986 biography of poet Louise Bogan won a Pulitzer Prize, now brings to life 1950s Hollywood its superficial morality and its seamy underbelly. It is 1951, and the government’s witch-hunt to destroy communism is in full swing. Dinah Lasker, wife of a popular screenwriter and one-time member of the communist party, is ordered to testify against her sister, a former starlet who also was a communist.

Dinah, a housewife with two children, knows she is merely a pawn to the politicians. They’re hunting bigger game, and have made it quite clear that if Dinah doesn’t give the names they want, her husband will be blacklisted and never work in the film business again. Whatever her choice, Dinah must betray someone she loves. Like a pebble tossed in the ocean, her decision touches off a chain of events that profoundly affect her life and the lives of those around her.

From glitzy Hollywood to sultry Broadway to the glamorous and superficial existences of the literary haute monde of post-World War II Europe, Frank captures the era’s incongruous mix of naivetÅ½ and decadence. Yet it’s in the quiet moments that the book truly soars. Dinah and her husband Jake, who is little more than an overgrown boy with talent, are introspective people, and it is when they are inside of themselves or performing mundane tasks that they truly become human. That is also when Frank’s colossal talent shines through. Twenty-five years in the making, Frank’s richly packed tale can be deemed no less than a magnificent achievement on par with any Hollywood novel ever written. With a master’s brush, she paints a mural of human folly that is breathtaking in its scope, yet marvelous in its simplicity. Ian Schwartz writes from New York City.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

If the shoe fits . . .

Review by bookpagedev

by Angela Leeper

Of course you know the story of Cinderella, but you’ve never heard it told like first-time novelist Barbara Ensor’s chatty, witty version. She bases this Cinderella on Frenchman Charles Perrault’s 1697 tale, but enlivens it with a modern setting and lingo. For instance, while the ugly stepsisters ( the truth is, they were nice enough to look at ) whine about moving into a new home ( what a dump ) and their weirdo new sibling, Cinderella finds that . . . to be honest, and don’t repeat this to anyone, they seem a little stuck up. Throughout this fractured fairy tale, Ensor interjects heartfelt letters written by Cinderella to her deceased mother. In them, Cinderella reveals her grief, meekness and instant attraction to a prince she meets at a ball one evening. The author also continues Cinderella’s saga beyond its traditional ending. Sure, Cinderella and the prince have a whirlwind romance, but it is only after marriage that they realize that they possess many differences and that love can grow between them. With this love comes self-confidence, the key to changing the world and living happily ever after.

Ensor not only pens this Cinderella tale, but skillfully illustrates it with cut-paper silhouettes. Like the story itself, they blend 18th-century images with more modern, abstract figures. For anyone interested in Cinderella stories, Ensor concludes with brief descriptions of similar tales from China, Denmark, Zimbabwe and other cultures.

Grown-ups will appreciate the humor in Ensor’s yarn. The root of many chuckles is the prince, who, with a rock star-like ego, requests no yellow sprinkles on his desserts and can’t help but admire himself in his armor. No saccharine Disney character, this mature Cinderella is to be enjoyed and even admired as a young woman who takes control of her destiny, but still believes in a little magic.

Of course you know the story of Cinderella, but you've never heard it told like first-time novelist Barbara Ensor's chatty, witty version. She bases this Cinderella on Frenchman Charles Perrault's 1697 tale, but enlivens it with a modern setting and lingo. For instance, while…

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Those Mediterranean nights

Review by bookpagedev

by Arlene McKanic

What is it with Anglo-Saxon writers and the Mediterranean? For many of them, from E.M. Forster to Elizabeth Bowen, from Elizabeth von Arnim to Henry James (an honorary Brit) and now Irish author Maeve Binchy, the Mediterranean can’t be a normal spot where one goes “on holiday,” and simply comes back with a tan. Something cataclysmic and life-changing must happen because the folks in Greece or Italy are so much closer to nature, and thus to their emotions. Their job is to teach those pale and buttoned-up folks how to loosen up. Fortunately, many of these tales and authors redeem themselves by being quite good, and Binchy’s Nights of Rain and Stars is no exception.

The story concerns four tourists who meet in a Greek village, drawn to a taverna by the sight of a pleasure boat burning in the bay. All four are going through crises partially caused by their inability to, as Forster says, “connect.” Elsa, a German TV reporter, is running away from the love of her life, whose neglect of his daughter reminds her too much of her own father’s abandonment. Fiona, an Irish nurse, is running away from reality with her utter lout of a boyfriend. Thomas, who’s from laid-back California, is running away from his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, and the fear of losing his young son. David is escaping his demanding and dismissive father. Vonni, an Irish expat who came to the village with her Greek lover only to be dumped by him, and Andreas, the owner of the taverna, are the catalysts who pull the others back into life and love. Binchy’s writing is simple and straightforward, surprisingly so, and this is a straightforward, if not simple, tale. Readers used to a certain floridity about modern novels might take up the book with some suspicion. But by the end, you realize that its plainness is exactly what’s needed. Nights of Rain and Stars is an unexpectedly absorbing and striking work from one of Ireland’s best writers. Arlene McKanic writes from Jamaica, New York.

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

Monsterminators to the rescue

Review by bookpagedev

by James Webb

What kid wouldn’t be scared, living in a spooky old house on Rockinghorse Lane, far away from the nearest neighbor? Add to that the fact that it’s a stormy night, your father is out of the house on an errand, and it’s the one-year anniversary of your mother’s tragic death. That’s the situation in which Minerva and Max McFearless find themselves in Ahmet Zappa’s new book, The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless. They accidentally find a secret passage (all spooky houses have secret passages, you know) and discover to their astonishment that the monsters they thought were imaginary are in fact real. The passage leads to a hidden chamber full of horrible trophies, potions and a book that bites.

When their father returns, he reluctantly explains that they aren’t named McFearless for nothing; he’s a monsterminator a monster hunter from a long line going back to their great-great-great-grandfather Maximillius McFearless. We flash forward two years, and during that period Minerva and Max learn all that they can (behind their father’s back) about the monsterminating trade. They’ll need that knowledge, for one fateful night a Bewilder Box is left on their doorstep, and it starts a chain of events that will put them all in mortal danger.

The Bewilder Box holds a treasure that the monsters would do anything to get. While they don’t get their prize, they do kidnap the children’s father. Now Minerva and Max must summon all their courage to rescue him, with the help of a talking, one-eyed dog who calls himself Mr. Devilstone. Along the way they’ll learn about an odd assortment of monsters like Grumplemisers and Krunkadillions, Glorches and Howleewoofs, and the crazy ways to keep them at bay.

Ahmet Zappa has done his father proud the late musician Frank Zappa (who makes a cameo appearance in the book) was renowned for his quirky sense of the absurd, and Ahmet continues that tradition. It’s a crazy combination of Harry Potter and Dr. Seuss, with some unique attributes of its own.

What kid wouldn't be scared, living in a spooky old house on Rockinghorse Lane, far away from the nearest neighbor? Add to that the fact that it's a stormy night, your father is out of the house on an errand, and it's the one-year anniversary…

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

A soldier of fortune

Review by bookpagedev

by Kenneth Champeon

Called the “forgotten war” by at least one of its chroniclers, the Korean War had consequences that are rather more difficult to forget: a hostile and impoverished North Korea run by a pudgy dictator, and one of the largest concentrations of American soldiers abroad. But in his new novel War Trash, award-winning author Ha Jin has chosen to focus on an even less-remembered aspect of that war: Chinese POWs faced with the choice between repatriation and resettlement in “Free China,” aka Taiwan.

Ha Jin presents War Trash as the memoir of Yu Yuan, a Chinese officer. As an English-speaking intellectual and graduate of the Nationalists’ famed Huangpu Military Academy, Yuan fears reprisals from the Communists. But China is Yuan’s home, and home also to his fiancÅ½e and long-suffering mother. Ha Jin makes the point that well after China’s war with itself concluded in 1949, the war continued to divide families and friends.

Much of the novel takes place in POW camps administered by Americans as dubious of the war’s aims as were their Chinese adversaries, who believed that their invasion of Korea was intended to preserve China’s territorial integrity. At times War Trash reads like “Ha Jin’s Heroes” for its depiction of the various schemes the POWs employ to harass their American captors, sometimes with comic effect. And while the Americans were not unknown to torture their inmates (giving lie to the surprisingly prevalent notion that Abu Ghraib was unprecedented), Ha Jin concedes that “the Chinese and Koreans were much more expert” in “the art of inflicting pain.” In previous works like Waiting, which won the National Book Award, Ha Jin tended to view history as an ocean upon which individuals bob like abject buoys; in War Trash, a mood of resignation likewise prevails, reflected in simple, nonjudgmental and unsentimental prose. War Trash may not be his best novel, but it confirms Ha Jin’s dedication to telling the stories obscured by statisticians or the evening news. Kenneth Champeon is a regular contributor to ThingsAsian.com.

Called the "forgotten war" by at least one of its chroniclers, the Korean War had consequences that are rather more difficult to forget: a hostile and impoverished North Korea run by a pudgy dictator, and one of the largest concentrations of American soldiers abroad. But…

Children's & YA

Children's & YA

An unusual boy’s magical quest

Review by bookpagedev

by Angela Leeper

An unusual boy’s magical quest Move over, Pinocchio, and make room for Barkbelly, a wooden boy who comes to life in a charming debut novel by Cat Weatherill, a storyteller from Wales. One starry night a beautiful egg made of solid wood falls from a flying machine and lands in the fields of Pumbleditch. Gable Gantry, who discovers the egg during the village harvest, takes the treasure home to show his wife. The childless couple admires the egg, but it is soon forgotten until one bitterly cold night when they throw it on the fire, which causes the heat to release a wooden baby. In a month’s time, the wooden boy, dubbed Barkbelly, rivals any 10-year-old in appearance, but exceeds any grown man in strength.

When friendly play with a group of boys leads to a tragic accident, Barkbelly must flee the village and the only family he knows. Making new friends, saving a life and earning a place as a performer in a circus bring unimagined adventures, but they cannot erase the boy’s guilt and loneliness. Although his wooden composition keeps him from feeling physical pain, he experiences the same emotions as any human. When he learns that an entire island exists with people just like him, he finds a source of hope.

So Barkbelly’s magical odyssey continues. His path remains arduous, as he discovers the horrific treatment of his people and the disappointing truth about his wooden family. It holds wonders, too, as Barkbelly hears of his remarkable ancestors and the unusual way his race lives and grows. Despite meeting his wooden clan, he cannot forget his obligations to the village that first raised him and his love for the Gantrys, his real family.

Combining traditional storytelling with her own inventions, Weatherill crafts an exquisite tale that explores truth, redemption, courage and belonging. Complementing the narrative are Peter Brown’s striking black-and-white illustrations, which help set the mood for the wooden boy’s travels.

Barkbelly is a novel that begs not only to be read, but to be read aloud. Children, enthralled by its magic, will be reading it for years to come.

An unusual boy's magical quest Move over, Pinocchio, and make room for Barkbelly, a wooden boy who comes to life in a charming debut novel by Cat Weatherill, a storyteller from Wales. One starry night a beautiful egg made of solid wood falls from a…

Memoir

Memoir

After Afghanistan, a year in Iraq

Review by bookpagedev

by Howard Shirley

Following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, British diplomat Rory Stewart was asked to serve as the deputy governor of two southern Iraqi provinces. Stewart was already familiar with the Muslim way of life, having spent nearly two years walking across the Middle East, from Turkey to Nepal, including a hazardous solo trek across a desolate Afghanistan, recorded in his previous book The Places in Between. By comparison, his yearlong assignment in Iraq seemed simple: help the local people transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The Prince of the Marshes is Stewart’s account of that year, trying to mold a place of modern order out of a culture caught in medieval chaos. The book is not a record of accomplishments, nor a criticism of excesses. It is simply one man’s story of a struggle to have a lasting effect in a land where a single day of violence could turn months of success into ashes. In the midst of this, Stewart was forced to find allies among political parties led by militant clerics, agents of the Iranian secret police and a local warlord (the man for whom the book is named). Unfortunately, any of these allies might treat him as a best friend in the morning, and lob mortar rounds on his roof that night. Whether Stewart’s actions as governor were always the wisest might be subject to debate. But then, Stewart’s book shows clearly how any choice he made became a matter of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. His riveting account of a desperate three-day stand against a militia attack on his office in Nasiriyah is a harrowing reminder of just how fragile and dangerous each decision could be.

Stewart shares his experiences without gloss or self-praise. His writing is careful and spartan, and all the better for it. Rather than glorify, politicize or rant, Stewart simply describes what he experienced and the local leaders he encountered the good, the bad, and the in-between. Regardless of how you feel about the war and the efforts to recast a fractured nation, The Prince of the Marshes offers insight into a turbulent land whose troubles have yet to end. Howard Shirley is a writer in Franklin, Tennessee.

History

History

Women of the new world

Review by bookpagedev

by Roger Bishop

When Margaret Hardenbroeck Philipse died in 1691, at the age of 53, she was the richest woman in what was then the English province of New York. Although she was helped early on by an inheritance from the death of her first husband, the achievement was almost exclusively hers. She had a rare combination of extraordinary business acumen including attention to detail, a single-minded ambition and vision with regard to how to achieve continued growth and diversity in her businesses. Jean Zimmerman tells Margaret’s story and that of three of her descendants in the lively and informative The Women of the House: How a Colonial She-Merchant Built a Mansion, a Fortune, and a Dynasty.

Zimmerman says Margaret’s independent spirit was central to her successes, but acknowledges that luck also played a crucial role. Growing up during the Dutch Golden Age, Margaret was a product of an egalitarian Dutch tradition, which made such success not only legally possible but also socially acceptable. She had landed in a new country in the process of inventing itself, a place where Old World rules did not always apply. Although higher education was not available to girls and women, Holland was the sole nation in seventeenth-century Europe to offer girls primary education as a matter of course, Zimmerman writes. Further, the Dutch Reformed Church urged equality for women and the Dutch legal system was fairer to women than any other in Europe. When New Netherland came under English rule in 1664, however, the rules began to change; with each passing year, there were fewer women engaged in commerce and their entitlements were restricted. Even then, Margaret, tough and shrewd, was able to exercise much control over business matters.

Zimmerman writes that New Netherland had a number of power couples that grew their fortunes as partners, but no colonial duo matched Margaret Hardenbroeck and Frederick Philipse (her second husband) for mutual involvement in a large-scale commercial enterprise. The family had extensive real estate holdings, but shipping was their area of expertise; they dealt in furs, linens and other textiles, tobacco and slaves ( neither Margaret nor virtually any of her American contemporaries saw trafficking in slaves as wrong, Zimmerman tells us).

Almost half of the book tells Margaret’s story, but Zimmerman also paints vivid portraits of three other women in the family, giving us a mini-history of the wealthy circles in which they moved and how they were affected by events. Catherine, who married Frederick after Margaret’s death, was a first-generation American whose main role was to be a wife. Beyond that, her legacy was to oversee the construction of an impressive stone church. Joanna, who married Margaret’s grandson, concentrated on matters of taste and style and promoting her husband’s career. Her world was shaken when her husband presided over conspiracy trials stemming from a suspected slave revolt. Joanna’s daughter, Mary, was courted by a young George Washington and then married a Loyalist.

Anyone interested in the Colonial period will enjoy The Women of the House. Jean Zimmerman’s extraordinary research and energetic writing helps readers better understand and appreciate the roles played by women during that era. Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Facing the past to embrace the future

Review by bookpagedev

by Maude McDaniel

Past tense is as important as present tense in Anita Shreve’s delicate story of growing emotional and physical maturity, glimpsed and gained through two painful years of memories and hope.

As Light on Snow opens, 12-year-old Nicky Dillon (telling the story 22 years later) doesn’t realize the unreality of the life she and her father are living after the traumatic loss of her mother and baby sister in a car wreck. After the accident, the grieving survivors moved to another state and began a shadowy existence, separating themselves from all the people and habits that marked their former life. All that changes when, shortly before Christmas, Nicky and her father discover a newborn baby girl left in the snowy woods to die. The police seem to take a quizzical view of their discovery (could the secretive Robert Dillon be the baby’s father?), which opens up the Dillons’ world to vulnerability and change. When a hurting stranger shows up at their door a few days later, Nicky finds herself yearning for connections that promise a return to normal family life once again.

Anita Shreve has written 10 other well-received novels, each one in a deceptively simple style that teases human insights out of straightforward prose. She has a knack for the fortunate metaphor (Robert’s grief is “a hard nut within his chest”; Nicky’s grandmother is ” a good person to hug because her body fills up all the empty spaces”).

Two years of unresolved sadness and anger at fate become part of a useful past, as Shreve details the unwilling, importunate surrender of anguish by Nicky and her father. In return they receive an uncertain but hopeful grasp on the possibilities of Christmases yet-to-come. At long last, the future tense becomes possible once again. Maude McDaniel writes from Maryland

Past tense is as important as present tense in Anita Shreve's delicate story of growing emotional and physical maturity, glimpsed and gained through two painful years of memories and hope.

As Light on Snow opens, 12-year-old Nicky Dillon (telling the story 22 years…

Nature

Nature

Climate-controlled history

Review by bookpagedev

by MiChelle Jones

The fact that weather can affect everything from creaky joints to the appearance of celestial bodies is old news. But what about the effect of weather on culture, politics, language? Author Laura Lee explores the connection between Mother Nature and turning points of the human experience in Blame It on the Rain: How the Weather Has Changed History. Lee skips around from the Spanish Armada to the 1948 U.S. presidential race to the building of Noah’s Ark, sharing fascinating tidbits in the humorous style she’s brought to earlier careers as a DJ and comedian, as well as to her 11 previous books.

Lee discusses how high summer temperatures contributed to the 1967 Detroit riots, and how fluctuations during the Little Ice Age (around 1350 to 1850 A.D.) led not only to witch hunts in Europe, but may have also nurtured the singular wood that Stradivarius used in creating his string masterpieces. She revisits the connection between the most popular of Edvard Munch’s Scream paintings and the 1883 eruption on Krakatoa, and reflects on the strategic importance of climate.

Blame It on the Rain is a full of short dare one say breezy chapters in which Lee sets the scene as in a blockbuster summer disaster movie, then condenses long threads of history into little summaries that wrap up as neatly and quirkily as a Fractured Fairy Tale. Lee’s tone can be a bit too smart-alecky at times, but her take on history is always refreshing and thought-provoking.

Fiction

Fiction

Sisters across time

Review by bookpagedev

by Anne Morris

In the prologue to her new novel, Margaret Drabble admits her debt to a volume of Korean court memoirs two centuries old. Seduced by the true story she read there, Drabble decided to transform it into fiction, because, as she tells readers more than once, “borrowing is what novelists do.” The haunting voice in The Red Queen is that of a Crown Princess of Korea who survived all manner of palace intrigue to write her very odd memoirs. As the princess puts it, “I have been dead now for 200 years, but I have not been idle. I have been rethinking my story.” Armed with posthumously acquired psychological terms, Crown Princess Hyegyong describes her father-in-law as “what you would now call neurotic,” with “several obsessive-compulsive disorders,” and her husband Sado as probably “a paranoid schizophrenic.” As you might guess, hers was not an easy life. The reader experiences how claustrophobic court life became for this trapped, bright woman married at age nine to a child-husband who would go tragically mad.

In part two of the novel, we meet Babs Halliwell, a less-than-stellar scholar finishing a grant at Oxford. She’s about to attend a conference in Korea when she receives the princess’ book as an anonymous gift and reads it on the plane. Parallels to Halliwell’s own life a crazy husband, a dead first child, an attraction to the color red draw her to the tale. In Korea, she visits places where the princess once walked and feels her spirit. A subplot involving the adoption of a Chinese girl and the cameo appearance of a character named Margaret Drabble enliven the story. Drabble’s portrait of the middle-aged Halliwell, with sporadic worries about her size and her waning sexual attractions, is often hilarious. Her romantic liaison with a famous scholar at the conference leads to an unexpected climax. A delicate study of the female experience, The Red Queen is sure to delight.

Anne Morris lives in Austin, Texas.

Sports

Sports

Hitler goes for the gold

Review by bookpagedev

In the long and sometimes tortured history of the Olympic movement, no Olympiad has been co-opted more completely by the host country than the 1936 games. From the start, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime set out to use the Olympics to reassure the world that Germany was a civilized society that embraced sport as an essential element in developing strong citizens. They downplayed their mistreatment of unruly elements Jews, blacks, gypsies and others by subtly appealing to the innate prejudices of the aristocratic leaders of the international sports community and hiding outright abuses as the games approached. Hitler was so successful in feigning goodwill during the Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen that no nation protested when he boldly moved troops into the demilitarized Rhineland a few weeks later. In Berlin Games: How the Nazis Stole the Olympic Dream, British novelist Guy Walters has written a meticulously researched work of nonfiction. Readers will find familiar accounts of Jesse Owens, whose four gold medals were an affront to Hitler’s racist beliefs, and Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, two runners who were replaced by Owens and another black athlete in the relay finals, seemingly to spare Hitler the embarrassment of seeing Jews on the medal podium. But readers will also learn about lesser-known athletes including German wrestler Werner Seelenbinder, a communist who hoped to win his event so he could denounce Nazism on a live radio broadcast.

Berlin Games is a worthy addition to the literature of the Olympics. By shining the spotlight on the Nazis’ takeover of the games, Walters gives context to subsequent clashes of sports and politics that led to boycotts, bans (of South African athletes from 1964 through 1991), and the tragic murder of Israeli coaches and competitors by Palestinian terrorists in Munich in 1972. That year, International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage outraged many by insisting that the Games continue after only a one-day break, for the good of the Olympic movement. In Walters’ book, we see Brundage 36 years earlier, when, as president of the American Olympic Committee, he first put sport above humanitarianism as he fought attempts to boycott the Berlin Games. Sue Macy is the author of several nonfiction books for young readers, including Swifter, Higher, Stronger, a history of the Summer Olympics, and Freeze Frame, about the Winter Games.

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bookpagedev

Bridging past and present

Hollywood blues

If the shoe fits . . .

Those Mediterranean nights

Monsterminators to the rescue

A soldier of fortune

An unusual boy’s magical quest

After Afghanistan, a year in Iraq

Women of the new world

Facing the past to embrace the future

Climate-controlled history

Sisters across time

Hitler goes for the gold

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