Carla Jean Whitley

FictionPopular Fiction

A split decision, a twist of fate

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Each day is filled with hundreds of tiny choices: Will you take this route to work, or that one? Stop for coffee, or continue directly to the office? Speak to the stranger in front of you in line, or keep to yourself? Most of these decisions seem insignificant. But you never know when a moment will change the course of your life. 

In The Versions of Us, a #1 bestseller in the U.K., debut novelist Laura Barnett explores the paths that branch from a central moment in Eva Edelstein’s and Jim Taylor’s lives. The pair meet in 1950s Cambridge, when a dog runs in front of Eva’s bicycle. Jim steps in to help, and their next moves will determine the rest of their lives. 

At the time of their meeting, Eva is an aspiring writer involved with an actor, David, who is considered the prize among the university’s theater crowd. Jim is the son of a renowned, deceased painter, and a talented artist himself, but he’s set on pursuing a career as an attorney. 

Barnett follows Eva and Jim over decades and through three versions of what could be. In the first, they fall in love; in the second, they say hello and continue on; in the third, Eva feels a connection to Jim but opts to stay with David. On each of these paths, their lives will again intersect. 

Barnett masterfully pulls the reader through these alternating tales. Each option is compelling and believable. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here: Regardless of the paths we choose, the people who are meant to be in our lives will find their way there.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Each day is filled with hundreds of tiny choices: Will you take this route to work, or that one? Stop for coffee, or continue directly to the office? Speak to the stranger in front of you in line, or keep to yourself? Most of these decisions seem insignificant. But you never know when a moment will change the course of your life.
FictionFamily Saga

Down in the valley

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Mary Margaret Miller’s family has called Miller’s Valley home for hundreds of years. Everyone knows little Mimi, as she’s called, by name. She’s grown up in the shadow of older brothers Eddie and Tommy. She’s risen early to help her father with farm chores. She has observed her mother’s knowing ways; Miriam, a nurse, always seems to know what’s happening before anyone else.

So when a government official arrives to tell residents that the land they call home is destined to become a reservoir, Mimi isn’t pleased. She knows the valley has its problems: After a heavy rain, residents are often forced to dry out their homes and throw out items damaged by the rising water. But the Pennsylvania valley is home.

In Miller’s Valley, bestselling novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen offers a textured portrayal of small-town life. Mimi’s desire to understand her family and the place she calls home begins in the 1960s and evolves over the decades. She’s young when talk of flooding the valley begins, but she’s also bright. With a teacher’s encouragement, Mimi takes on a science research project. As she delves into the area’s history, Mimi begins to understand the reality the valley faces. But her family remains a mystery in many ways. 

Every Quindlen novel seems to reveal the author’s deft storytelling skill in new ways. Miller’s Valley is a gentle story that unfolds slowly and invites the reader to savor each page. It is a tale to get lost in.

 

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mary Margaret Miller’s family has called Miller’s Valley home for hundreds of years. Everyone knows little Mimi, as she’s called, by name. She’s grown up in the shadow of older brothers Eddie and Tommy. She’s risen early to help her father with farm chores. She has observed her mother’s knowing ways; Miriam, a nurse, always seems to know what’s happening before anyone else.
FictionPopular FictionDebut Fiction

Don’t harp on it

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Sometimes a guy just can’t catch a break. At least, that’s the way it seems for Matthew Grzbc, a basically good guy trying to succeed in love and work. A recently divorced dad, Matt has never led the most stable existence. He’s been a harpist since middle school, and is determined to make a career in that least likely of ways.

In fact, Matt is forced to prioritize money, family and art simultaneously, as a series of challenges converge. There’s his still-messy relationship with his ex-wife, Melina, which remains complex more than a year after their split. He’s got a girlfriend, Cynthia, whose beauty and brains can’t quite help Matt overcome his, um, bedroom issues. His 6-year-old daughter, Audrey, seems on the verge of nervous breakdown. Matt is torn between playing harp at a hospice for a small sum and preparing for an audition that has the potential to be his big break.

As life churns around him, Matt is left to sort out who he is and what matters most. It’s a challenge many can relate to. In Contrary Motion, author Andy Mozina has created a likeable, believable main character, the sort of guy alongside whom you could easily spend hours dissecting life over a couple of beers. It’s the first novel for Mozina, a professor of English at Michigan’s Kalamazoo College, and it’s sure to leave readers asking for more. Mozina’s storytelling is easy and humorous, taking the stuff of everyday life and presenting it in a way that both entertains and draws out emotion. 

Sometimes a guy just can’t catch a break. At least, that’s the way it seems for Matthew Grzbc, a basically good guy trying to succeed in love and work. A recently divorced dad, Matt has never led the most stable existence. He’s been a harpist since middle school, and is determined to make a career in that least likely of ways.
FictionHistorical Fiction

On board the doomed voyage of the Hindenburg

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

A day in anyone’s life can seem ordinary. But when those moments are taken together, and especially when they intersect with the lives of others, a bigger story emerges.That’s evident from the early pages of Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon, a novel in which the author poses a theory for what could have brought down the famed German airship Hindenburg. 

Even a reader without a firm grasp on history knows the ship is doomed. But what happened on board to create the fiery blast that destroyed the ship and dozens of lives in only 34 seconds? After all, as was recorded in the disaster’s investigation and newspapers, it was an uneventful flight.

Through the perspectives of passengers and crew members, Lawhon deftly draws readers into the lives of the cabin boy, the navigator and the stewardess. The latter two are romantically entangled, hiding their involvement from the rest of the crew even as the lovesick navigator and the widowed stewardess work out what’s ahead for their relationship. Then there are the passengers, including a mysterious American and a curious journalist. As each shares his or her insight into the others around them, an explanation for the ship’s ultimate demise begins to come into focus.

As with her debut novel, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress, Lawhon uses real-life people and their stories, drawing from what is known about the ship’s passengers and crew to construct believable characters. Flight of Dreams melds historical fiction, a touch of romance and mystery to create a tale that becomes more difficult to put down as the disaster draws near.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A day in anyone’s life can seem ordinary. But when those moments are taken together, and especially when they intersect with the lives of others, a bigger story emerges.That’s evident from the early pages of Flight of Dreams by Ariel Lawhon, a novel in which the author poses a theory for what could have brought down the famed German airship Hindenburg.
FictionDebut Fiction

Lessons from Charlie the chimp

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Charlotte’s family is starting over, and she isn’t sure what to make of it. Charlotte and her sister, Callie, have long been considered the weird ones in their Boston neighborhood. They speak in sign language as often as anything, a skill acquired from their mother, Laurel. But now that skill is setting them apart in another way: The Toneybee Institute for Ape Research has hired Laurel to teach sign language to a chimpanzee, Charlie—and the rest of the family is expected to treat him as one of their own. 

The family reacts in different ways, though. Laurel and Charlie easily bond. Callie aims to do the same, but the chimp doesn’t return her affections. He quickly becomes a point of division in Laurel and her husband Charles’ marriage. Charlotte, meanwhile, struggles to understand why her mother is so quick to embrace Charlie.

As Charlotte studies the institute’s past, her feelings grow increasingly conflicted. Seventy years prior to the Freeman family’s arrival, researchers at the Toneybee conducted studies comparing African-American people with apes. Charlotte is determined to reveal the link to her family and unveil the story they may now unwittingly be participating in.

In her debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge addresses race with a knowing, deft hand. And there’s far more at work here, as Charlotte and Callie face their teenage years and wrestle with the line between what their parents want and what they desire for themselves. The result is a story about identity, both self-determined and dictated by outsides sources, and a family’s aim to settle into who they are.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Charlotte’s family is starting over, and she isn’t sure what to make of it. Charlotte and her sister, Callie, have long been considered the weird ones in their Boston neighborhood. They speak in sign language as often as anything, a skill acquired from their mother, Laurel. But now that skill is setting them apart in another way: The Toneybee Institute for Ape Research has hired Laurel to teach sign language to a chimpanzee, Charlie—and the rest of the family is expected to treat him as one of their own.
FictionDebut Fiction

Finding home in a community of booklovers

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

There is power in words. A book requires its reader to fill in the blanks, to imagine a world into being. Sometimes, that world is grander than reality.

That’s always appealed to Swedish bookstore clerk Sara Lindqvist. Books are better company than most people, and they’ve taken her to the most amazing places.

The words of Sara’s pen pal, elderly Amy Harris, also appeal to Sara’s imagination. The two struck up a friendship over an exchange of letters and books, and Amy invited Sara to visit her in Broken Wheel, Iowa, to explore the town and fit in plenty of reading. Sara is in. 

Unfortunately, she arrives just after Amy’s funeral. Suddenly, Sara is slapped with a reminder that truth isn’t always as interesting as fiction. 

Sara finds comfort in Amy’s books and becomes determined to draw the townspeople into the world of words. She uses Amy’s collection to launch Oak Tree Bookstore, which becomes a Main Street hub, drawing visitors from beyond Broken Wheel. With every book she sells (or lends), Sara comes closer to finding purpose and a home in a place she didn’t expect to belong.

In The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Swedish author Katarina Bivald beautifully illustrates the relationship between a reader and her books. Sara once used books as a barrier, but she comes to learn how exchanging stories can connect people—and finds that sometimes, life can surpass even your favorite book.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There is power in words. A book requires its reader to fill in the blanks, to imagine a world into being. Sometimes, that world is grander than reality. That’s always appealed to Swedish bookstore clerk Sara Lindqvist. Books are better company than most people, and they’ve taken her to the most amazing places.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Artful history with a dash of mystery

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

The Works Progress Administration of the 1930s and ’40s was a savior for American artists. Those meager checks alleviated financial concerns enough that the artists could pay rent and spend their off-hours drinking, cavorting and exploring their artistic passions.

For Alizée Benoit, that driving passion is abstract painting. And the opinionated Alizée—French by birth, all-American by spirit—isn’t one to keep her head down at work. As her interest in abstraction grows, Alizée persuades Eleanor Roosevelt to allow WPA artists room to break from realism. 

In the present day, Alizée’s great-niece, Dani Abrams, works in an auction house. One day, several squares of an abstract painting arrive, tucked into envelopes that were taped to the back of paintings that may be works by Alizée’s friends. Dani is certain these squares are part of her mysterious aunt’s oeuvre, and she dives into research, in direct defiance of her boss’ wishes. The only member of a Jewish family to escape Europe, Alizée disappeared in 1940, and Dani can’t help but wonder if something nefarious occurred.

In The Muralist, novelist B.A. Shapiro deftly layers American art history, the facts of World War II and the fictitious stories of Alizée and Dani. As was the case with her previous book, the bestseller The Art Forger, Shapiro’s understanding of art is clear. Also like that 2012 tale, The Muralist is a compelling mystery. But even though The Art Forger  was a smashing success, readers should be prepared for something different here: The Muralist elevates Shapiro to an even higher plane and is sure to be a crowning touch in an already celebrated career.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Works Progress Administration of the 1930s and ’40s was a savior for American artists. Those meager checks alleviated financial concerns enough that the artists could pay rent and spend their off-hours drinking, cavorting and exploring their artistic passions.
FictionLiterary Fiction

A life in two

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

National Book Award winner Lily Tuck has lived a life that often informs her stories. She was born in Paris, has lived in Thailand, Uruguay and Peru, and now resides in New York City and Maine, providing plenty of fodder for her characters and their adventures. 

That’s perhaps more evident in her latest book, The Double Life of Liliane, than ever before. The semi-autobiographical novel follows the introverted, observant Liliane through some of her most formative years. Following her parents’ divorce, the child lives a life divided between her German-born, movie-maker father, Rudy, who lives in Italy, and her artistic mother, Irene, who has places in Paris and New York.

The Double Life overflows with fraught relationships, with Liliane in many ways pulled between her parents. Irene saw Rudy merely as a means of escape. Rudy, on the other hand, loved Irene and continues to question Liliane about her mother’s welfare long after the divorce.

The novel’s structure is atypical, composed of scenes that provide glimpses into the lives of Liliane, Irene, Rudy and their family rather than a straight narrative. Using photos and documents as well as text, Tuck braids together family history that spans multiple continents and generations. Tales of World Wars, immigration and new marriages are intertwined with smaller moments in a girl’s life, such as schoolwork and friends.

Through its sprawling recollections and period photos and documents from Tuck’s personal collection, she creates an intimate portrait of a life that, much like her own, has spanned continents.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

National Book Award winner Lily Tuck has lived a life that often informs her stories. She was born in Paris, has lived in Thailand, Uruguay and Peru, and now resides in New York City and Maine, providing plenty of fodder for her characters and their adventures. That’s perhaps more evident in her latest book, The Double Life of Liliane, than ever before.
FictionPopular Fiction

Setting sail

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Board the Alaska-bound Zuiderdam, a luxury cruise ship, alongside Harriet Chance. The 78-year-old widow has set sail using a pair of tickets purchased by her late husband, Bernard. Although he never mentioned the trip, Harriet is touched by his thoughtfulness and determined to take advantage of his last romantic gesture. Despite her children’s worry that Harriet is infirm, she sets sail alone, accompanied only by a letter from her best friend, Mildred.

Well, that letter and repeated visits from—hallucinations of?—her late husband. It seems both Mildred and Bernard have something to say.

In This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!, author Jonathan Evison (The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving and West of Here) alternates between a cheeky narration of Harriet’s past and present. The chapters reveal Harriet at different ages and are written with unfussy candor when examining the present and recent past. When Evison portrays Harriet’s younger days, however, he employs a more hopeful, boisterous tone that underscores the exclamation point of the novel’s title. It echoes the cinematic approach of Evison’s previous work, painting a vivid picture that’s easy for a reader to immerse him or herself in.

Through carefully constructed vignettes of Harriet’s life, Evison peels away layers. What’s left is a core understanding of who Harriet is, and the layering of those events and defenses that led to her becoming that person. A book of secrets, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! reveals how one or two choices can dramatically alter not only the course of your life, but the lives of many others.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Board the Alaska-bound Zuiderdam, a luxury cruise ship, alongside Harriet Chance. The 78-year-old widow has set sail using a pair of tickets purchased by her late husband, Bernard. Despite her children’s worry that Harriet is infirm, she sets sail alone, accompanied only by a letter from her best friend, Mildred.
FictionDebut Fiction

Spell it out

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

C-H-A-R-L-A-T-A-N.

When that word comes up at the 1960 National Spelling Bee, Vera Baxter feels that a name has been given to her out-of-place ways. Staying at a fancy Washington, D.C., hotel isn’t right for this girl who travels the East Coast, staying at cheap motels as her mom claws her way up the sales ladder. 

I-N-C-O-R-R-I-G-I-B-L-E.

As Stanley Owens steps to the microphone to spell his assigned word, Vera immediately pegs it as his perfect description.

As the 15-year-olds watch the pool of contestants around them dwindle, they recognize each other as prime competition. As they spell through the list of approved words, only Vera and Stanley are left standing. It’s a tie.

Words bring them together. And a love of words will tear them apart.

Stanley and Vera reunite at each year’s event, forming a bond over their shared victory and their mothers’ quirks and ambitious goals for their lives. They seem destined for success, sure to cross paths again at Harvard—until Stanley proposes a deal.

And that deal involves a proposal. The pair will marry, sell off the gifts and split the profits. Vera will be free to head to college according to plan. With a little starter money in his pocket, Stanley would chase another dream: a career creating crossword puzzles.

But there’s a hitch: Vera is secretly in love with Stanley and wishes the marriage weren’t a sham at all.

Two Across, the debut novel from Jeff Bartsch, follows the developing relationship of two young people from their school days far into adulthood. As Bartsch unravels Stanley’s charades and how they affect people around him, he weaves in enough crossword clues to keep any puzzle fans curious. That entertaining approach flows naturally from Bartsch’s background: He is an ad copywriter who also studied creative writing at the University of Wisconsin

Bartsch sometimes sacrifices cleverness for plot development—there are moments in which the story seems to race ahead after previously taking carefully calculated steps. But the end result of Two Across is an examination of a relationship’s points of intersection and the clues that lead us back to ourselves.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Stanley and Vera reunite at each year’s National Spelling Bee, forming a bond over their shared victory and their mothers’ quirks and ambitious goals for their lives. They seem destined for success, sure to cross paths again at Harvard—until Stanley proposes a deal.
FictionDebut Fiction

Echoes of a shared past

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Lois Lonsdale is an enigma to those around her. The British literature professor is a respected academic, but also something of a threat to others in the department. That’s partly due to the former spelling bee champion’s striking looks, but her publishing success and standoffish nature don’t help. 

Only her best friend in the department, Brad, knows Lois was kidnapped nearly two decades earlier. The kidnapper held Lois and another captive, Carly May Smith, in a cabin in upstate New York. Although the girls weren’t allowed out in daylight, their captor was otherwise more like a benevolent camp counselor. After two months, they returned, visibly unscathed, to their adolescent lives. 

Carly May, who left her Nebraska hometown and pageant titles behind to pursue acting under the name Chloe Savage, is the only one who understands their shared history. And she’s about to play the role of a lifetime—in the movie adaptation of a novel about two girls and the summer they were kidnapped. A novel by Lois Lonsdale.

As they circle back to one another decades after the events that initially bonded them, Lois and Carly May individually contemplate the repercussions of that summer. With their captor’s motives unclear and a lifetime surrounded by people who can’t possibly understand, each woman carries her own baggage and unanswered questions.

In Pretty Is, debut novelist Maggie Mitchell toggles between her main characters’ perspectives and the novel based on their real-life story. As she peels back layers of her protagonists’ lives and memories, Mitchell carries readers through a thrilling, literary psychological adventure that examines how pivotal moments can echo throughout our lives.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lois Lonsdale is an enigma to those around her. The British literature professor is a respected academic, but also something of a threat to others in the department. That’s partly due to the former spelling bee champion’s striking looks, but her publishing success and standoffish nature don’t help.
Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

A family’s race to identify their grief

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost.

That’s the case for Sarah Moorcroft, whose twin daughters were so perfectly identical that Sarah and her husband Angus relied on the girls’ word and personalities to determine who was who. Lydia and Kirstie were born on the coldest day of the year, earning them the nickname “the ice twins,” which was borne out by their blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin.

After Lydia dies in a fall, each family member’s sorrow reveals itself in different ways. Angus gets into a work argument that leaves him unemployed with a London-sized mortgage. Sarah struggles to get along with her husband and find work of her own. Most disturbingly, Kirstie begins claiming that she’s actually Lydia, and that Kirstie is the twin who died.

The family seeks a new start—and a less expensive lifestyle—on a Scottish island Angus inherited. Sarah is determined to put their lives back together as they live in and restore a squalid, barely inhabitable lighthouse, the island’s only structure. And if that means learning that the couple buried the wrong twin, well, Sarah is convinced they can move forward. 

In The Ice Twins, S.K. Tremayne depicts a family as isolated as the tiny isle they call home. Sarah, Angus and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) have separated themselves from one another and their normal lives. They’re left metaphorically circling one another warily, trying to deduce what’s going on inside. 

As the Moorcrofts aim to unravel what, exactly, happened when one twin died, readers are given glimpses into each character’s thoughts. The resulting tale, written by a best-selling author under a pseudonym, peels back one layer at a time in a fast-paced, thrilling race to understanding.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s difficult to imagine anything more traumatic than a child’s death. But when the deceased child is a twin, the living sibling can be a constant reminder of what’s lost.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Manuscript madness

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

It’s late in the 19th century, and literary works are often plundered by so-called “bookaneers.” These literary pirates swoop in, abscond with a manuscript and sell it to the highest bidder. The stories should be property of the reader, not the writer, the bookaneers argue. And they’ll stop at nothing to ensure it.

In The Last Bookaneer, bookseller Mr. Fergins recounts to railway waiter and enthusiastic reader Mr. Cotton the fascinating exploits of these bookish pirates. Fergins first encountered such a man, Wild Bill, when the bookaneer slipped a pirated manuscript into Fergins’ hands. The next day, a patron picked up the book and left Fergins with entirely too much money.

His curiosity piqued, Fergins eagerly follows the money trail of Bill’s subsequent requests. Before long, it leads Fergins to one of the greatest bookaneers of the age, Pen Davenport, who has his eye on his biggest mark yet: Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island. The ailing writer is sequestered in Samoa, and so the pair of pirates set sail in hopes of retrieving treasure. But Davenport’s nemesis is close at hand and time is running out: A new copyright treaty is set to go into effect on July 1, 1890, and manuscripts will no longer be fair game.

The Last Bookaneer is a rollicking romp in which the publishing industry is depicted as a business as scintillating as mining for gold. Equal parts adventure on the South Seas and literary fiction set in civilized and cerebral England, this story is chock full of sly remarks skewering the publishing industry. The questions of intellectual property faced in the 1890s are just as complex and engaging as those we encounter in today’s technological world. As in his previous work (The Dante Club, The Last Dickens), Matthew Pearl seamlessly braids fact and fiction into an imaginative yarn that will enthrall bibliophiles and adventure fans alike.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s late in the 19th century, and literary works are often plundered by so-called “bookaneers.” These literary pirates swoop in, abscond with a manuscript and sell it to the highest bidder. The stories should be property of the reader, not the writer, the bookaneers argue. And they’ll stop at nothing to ensure it.

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