May 7, 2012
Book Review: The Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Nothing is hotter than Scandinavian thrillers right now, and Denmark is throwing its hat in the ring with The Keeper of Lost Causes by award-winning author Jussi Adler-Olsen. Adler-Olsen does what most recent Scandinavian imports do best—serves up a compelling, dark story with enough cruel twists to leave the reader thinking, “What is in that coffee over there?”
The Keeper of Lost Causes follows Copenhagen detective Carl Morck a few months after he has been shot on the job. When Carl returns to the force and refuses to play nicely with his fellow detectives, he is unexpectedly promoted to head up the new cold cases division, Department Q. Given only a stack of case files and Assad, a jack-of-all-trades assistant, Carl begins to investigate the disappearance of Merete Lyngaard, a rising politician.
The narrative alternates between Carl’s investigation and the real circumstances of Merete’s disappearance. The investigation bumbles along at times, with a few lucky breaks and a lot of help from unassuming Assad. But the chapters that follow Merete are tight, twisted, and intensely pressure-packed, leaving the reader wanting more but afraid to admit it (and more than a little worried that Adler-Olsen might gladly give it to them).
Adler-Olsen excels at weaving in the secondary characters and plots. While Carl comes across as a first-rate jerk and second-rate detective at times, Assad, with his secretive past and sundry talents, puts the clues together and makes a mean curry. The Keeper of Lost Causes spins an interesting investigation tale, but Adler-Olsen’s true talent is creating horrific crime scenarios. The Keeper of Lost Causes is the first* in the new Department Q series from Adler-Olsen, and he would do readers a favor by revealing more about Assad in future books, as well as keeping the terrifically twisted narratives coming.
* According to Amazon, The Absent One, the second Department Q case, is scheduled to be released August 21, 2012.
(Review copy source: Dutton via NetGalley)
November 14, 2011
Book Review: Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman
Fairy tales provide the backdrop for Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman. But these fairy tales bleed from the dark, gothic vein of the Brothers Grimm, not that of technicolor Disney. They are filled with difficult choices and moral repercussions reflective of the tumultuous life of their author and indicative of the mysteries and struggles facing the characters of Arcadia Falls.
Centered around the mysterious death of a student at Arcadia School, a secluded upstate New York boarding school, Arcadia Falls follows two threads—the life of Meg Rosenthal, a recent widow and new teacher at the academy, and the lives of the academy’s two founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhardt, through a diary that Meg finds in her cottage. Meg accepts a teaching position at the school because she needs a source of income, but the position also allows her to return to her passion of fairy tales. Her college thesis focused on fairy tales, particularly The Changeling Girl, written by Lily Eberhardt, and coming to Arcadia School allows Meg to delve into the mysteries of Lily and Vera firsthand and walk in their footsteps.
Goodman uses this book to examine the many roles of women—mother, daughter, lover, teacher. The most interesting angle Goodman examines is the notion of woman as artist. The characters of Arcadia Falls, primarily women, serve as subjects to test the theory of whether or not women can be both successful artists and mothers, or if one profession ultimately suffers because of the other. Although both sides are argued throughout, the story provides a definitive final verdict.
While Arcadia Falls wraps up quite quickly and a bit too neatly, the journey through the upstate New York woods is well worth the time. A good gothic read for the autumn season.
(Review copy source: Ballantine Books via LibraryThing)
July 12, 2011
Book Review: Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
Alice LaPlante’s new novel Turn of Mind opens with retired orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jennifer White unsure of where she is. Sixty-four years old and suffering from Alzheimer’s, Dr. White studies her surroundings and uses social cues to figure out she’s in a police station. As she is being read her rights, she realizes something bad has happened. Although she doesn’t understand things at this point, she soon finds out her best friend, Amanda, has been murdered. Because four of Amanda’s fingers have also been surgically removed, Dr. Jennifer White is the main suspect.
The history of Jennifer and Amanda’s friendship unfolds through Jennifer’s faltering memories. As she remembers the many times she was able to confide in Amanda, Jennifer is genuinely saddened by Amanda’s death and upset that her failing cognitive abilities prevented her from helping her friend. At other times, recalling the numerous instances when Amanda schemed to reveal Jennifer’s devastating personal secrets, claiming such revelations would help Jennifer live a better life, she is secretly relieved that Amanda can do no more damage. Their friendship was a shining example of “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.”
LaPlante uses Dr. Jennifer White as an unsettling narrator. Jennifer’s first-person narration gives readers a unique insight into what it could be like to suffer from Alzheimer’s—finding people in your house you don’t recognize, coming back to the present in a place you don’t remember being just minutes before, losing your dignity in a facility staffed by people who view you not as a person, but another chart to be maintained. Readers share in Jennifer’s increasing confusion and memory loss, highlighted by exhilarating memories of successful, delicate surgeries and marred by increasingly erratic and violent episodes when Jennifer doesn’t know where she is or whom she is with.
Turn of Mind forces readers to be on their toes during this heart-wrenching, poignant descent deeper into Alzheimer’s. Afterall, how reliable can a narrator be when her recall is impaired? As Alzheimer’s grip on Jennifer’s mind becomes tighter, her lips become looser. She speaks her mind to people instead of trying to play along with social games she no longer understands. The progressive dementia eats away at Jennifer’s ability to maintain the lies surrounding Amanda’s murder. As readers go on this stunning, emotional journey with Dr. Jennifer White, they find that once Alzheimer’s strips everything away, only the truth remains.
(Review copy source: Atlantic Monthly Press via NetGalley)
May 23, 2011
Book Review: S’Mother by Adam Chester
When Adam Chester left his mother in Florida to attend the University of Southern California, he intended to leave all traces of his mother behind. He would finally be free of the woman who’d bring his forgotten sweater to him while he was still changing in the boys’ locker room. But Joan Chester would not be left behind. Not while her son needed her protection. And so she began to send him letters. Lots of letters. And Adam kept every one. Now he gets to exact his embarrassment revenge in the appropriately titled S’Mother: The Story of a Man, His Mom, and the Thousands of Altogether Insane Letters She’s Mailed Him, a collection of the best Joan Chester letters he received.
Joan Chester did not send run-of-the-mill “How’s college? Miss you lots!” letters. These missives were filled with such sage advice as “[I]f you buy U.S. Savings Bonds, you have to keep them in a safe deposit box at the bank so no one can steal them” and “Have a good time next weekend and take your stomach medication with you in case you eat onions again.” Valuable life lessons. But this correspondence was not all fun and games for Joan. She repeatedly reminds Adam—as she’s “getting on in years”—where her will and insurance policies are located if he should ever need to find them.
The letters continue throughout Adam’s adult life—after graduation, after he meets his wife, after he’s hired as an Elton John stand-in. The short collection highlighted in S’Mother jumps from letter to letter with only the shortest setup or reaction from Adam. While the letters (some complete with reproductions) are highly entertaining, this quick read could have easily fit in more backstory without slowing down the pace.
Chester freely admits that this book was meant to help readers feel better about their moms, but he has a genuine gift in all this material. For all of her mundane and inane information, Joan has provided her son with a tangible stash of motherly love. In this age of trite texts and tweets, a whole generation is growing up not knowing the joy of opening the mail box to find not only bills and solicitations, but also handwritten letters. That you can keep. Without the fear of losing them if your computer crashes or your phone ends up in the pool. Chester wrote and compiled this book for the entertainment of others, and perhaps to poke a little fun at his mom, but I’d also bet he realizes just how lucky he is.
Joan Chester may not win any Mother of the Year awards, but she can’t be accused of not caring about her son. She practically wrote a book for him. Adam cashed in on this valuable material in S’Mother and so does the reader.
(Review copy source: Abrams via NetGalley)
July 26, 2010
Book Review: Pieces of Happily Ever After by Irene Zutell
Pieces of Happily Ever After, Irene Zutell’s latest novel, isn’t a fairy tale. It’s about real life, where you can be banished to the far-off land of Suburbia to occasionally play the role of wicked (step)mother to your own daughter, while the evil (and beautiful) Queen of Hollywood steals your husband instead of simply sending you a poisoned apple.
Alice Hirsh is the newest star of this anti–fairy tale. Alice’s husband, Alex, shatters their simple but lovely life together when he’s swept off his feet by Hollywood’s latest “It” girl. Once Alice realizes that it is now just her and Gabby, her daughter who is obsessed with all things princesses and happy endings, she finds herself in relationships she never would have dreamed of before her husband left her in Suburbia for another woman.
Zutell creates a compelling supporting cast of characters who feel like they could be found in any woman’s circle of acquaintances, friends, and relatives. An uptight neighborhood chairwoman obsesses over the neighborhood’s annual Christmas lighting display. A former adult film star tries to literally erase her past. The domineering head of an adult care home evicts Alice’s mother, who recently started cursing like a sailor. Round it out with an ogre of a paparazzo, a charming ex-boyfriend who reconnects with Alice via email, and a group of mothers who look like they have it all together on the surface and Pieces of Happily Ever After easily balances out Alice’s heavy loss with these eccentric characters who help Alice take care of herself as she struggles to take care of everyone else.
Pieces of Happily Ever After is about more than just the husband/wife relationship. It’s a charming read about the relationships women form—as mothers, daughters, friends, spouses—that help get them through both good times and bad. More importantly, it’s about the relationship women have with themselves. It’s about what they expect for and from themselves in relationships, what they’ll put up with and what’s worth leaving behind. Because when you finally determine what you are worth to yourself, you can appreciate the random moments in life—being your daughter’s knight in shining armor, spending one final moment with a loved one, learning to take a chance on yourself—that are the true pieces of happily ever after.
(Be sure to check out A Few Words With…Irene Zutell!)
(Review copy source: St. Martin’s Griffin via LibraryThing)
June 23, 2010
Book Review: One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni couldn’t have known how timely her book would be when it was released. One Amazing Thing, her new novel about survivors trapped together after an earthquake, is given a frighteningly real backdrop by the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.
Set in an unnamed American city, One Amazing Thing takes the reader through the ordeals faced by a disparate group of nine people trapped in the Indian visa and passport office after a major earthquake destroys the building around them. Uma, a graduate student planning to visit her parents in India, finds herself facing grim prospects with Lance and Vivienne, a married couple, Jiang and Lily, a grandmother and teenage granddaughter, Mangalam and Malathi, employees of the visa office, Tariq, a troubled young man, and Cameron, an ex-soldier. As tension builds, both because of the earthquake aftermath and personal prejudices, Uma suggests everyone share one amazing thing from their lives in order to take their minds off their situation.
Although the premise of the narrative is promising, this book is asked to support a lot of story. The bulk of the book is given to the character stories, and the story of survival is but the thinnest of threads trying to hold the distinct stories together. The stories offered by the characters are themselves expertly crafted and absorbing reads, but with nine characters to address, logistically there can’t be much time spent getting to know the individual characters. The characters get one chance to shine when they share their story, then they are cast to the periphery, having to balance with everyone else on that narrow survival thread. The relative absence of back story for the characters gives the book a sense of immediacy (how much can you really learn about a stranger when you are just trying to stay alive?), but offering “one amazing thing” with no frame of reference can leave the reader wondering why she should care about these people and their survival.
One Amazing Thing offers readers touching stories delivered in dire circumstances. Although this book can transport the reader and allow them to empathize with the survivors and victims of the recent real-world earthquakes, the book’s balance could be improved by either decreasing the number of characters or adding pages, allowing more time for meaningful character development.
(Review copy source: Hyperion/Voice via LibraryThing)
December 11, 2009
Book Review: The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill
The Risk of Darkness is the chilling third book in Susan Hill’s Detective Simon Serrailler crime series. Beginning with The Various Haunts of Men and continuing with The Pure in Heart, Hill’s series introduced readers to the charming English town of Lafferton and its citizens. The Risk of Darkness continues the story line of The Pure in Heart, with Detective Serrailler finally hunting down an elusive serial child abductor.
Continuing the successful execution of the first two books, Hill interweaves many different plotlines and masterfully commands them all in The Risk of Darkness. In addition to dealing with the frustratingly reticent child abductor, Detective Serrailler’s case load increases when a grieving widower seeks solace by holding hostage the young female priest trying to help him. Detective Serrailler must also once again balance his work life with his private life. In The Risk of Darkness, he faces the prospect of both his on-again, off-again girlfriend and his sister, who is a beloved local doctor and his main support system, leaving his life.
As with The Various Haunts of Men and The Pure in Heart, the well-written characters and the town of Lafferton itself help the story come alive. In The Risk of Darkness, Susan Hill has crafted another well-paced, multilayered psychological thriller that shouldn’t be missed by fans of the series.
(Review copy source: Overlook Press via LibraryThing)
December 10, 2009
Book Review: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Who are you? Is your identity static, defined only by your past experiences? Or is it dynamic, able to be created, altered, or eliminated as you move along in life? Await Your Reply, the new novel by National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon, raises questions about and suggests implications of modern identity while weaving together the story of three characters trying to figure out their own identities.
Await Your Reply follows three ordinary characters in less than ordinary circumstances. Ryan, a college sophomore, finds out he is adopted and disappears from his crumbling life to enter the world of identity theft. Lucy decides to leave her sleepy hometown, swept away by her charming high school teacher who promises her adventure and fortune, only to end up in a motel in Nebraska. Miles has given up living his own life, and possibly his hold on his sanity, in a desperate search to find his long-lost, possibly schizophrenic, twin brother.
Chaon uses the mundane details of the characters’ lives—Ryan sitting in a rental car office; Lucy watching movies in the motel; Miles at his job in a novelty shop—to cultivate the core essence of the novel. These meaningless details show that “most people . . . [have] identities that [are] so shallow that you could easily manage a hundred of them at once.” A person’s identity is so often defined by one’s job, hobby, or favorite movie—superficial attributes that can easily be culled from an Internet search—that anyone with a little determination could actually maintain several separate and disparate identities at the same time. It’s the ramifications of these multiple identities that propel the story to its satisfying conclusion.
As is often the case in real life, the small details in Await Your Reply can easily be overlooked by the reader as insignificant. It is not until the end that the reader is able to put everything together and realize what’s been happening the whole time. Await Your Reply is a novel that begs to be reread as soon as the reader finishes the final page.
(Review copy source: Ballantine Books via LibraryThing)
April 7, 2009
Book Review: Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center
As if being the harried mother of three young boys wasn’t enough, Lanie had to pack up her life and move halfway across the country for her husband’s career. She’s left behind her mother—her only lifeline—and every park she and the boys had ever known. At this point in her life, she is wearing her husband’s clothes, she’s mistaken as a pregnant woman, and her new (and young, of course) landlord has already seen her naked. And that’s just the beginning of Everyone is Beautiful by Katherine Center.
A wonderful addition to the mom lit genre, Everyone is Beautiful follows Lanie, a devoted if not outnumbered and defeated mother of three, as she tries to regain her “self.” This quick and easy read manages to address the very real issue of moms who give practically everything over to the people in their lives—kids, husbands, friends—leaving nothing for themselves.
Center has a good eye for the minutiae of motherhood, and her deft characterization of Lanie gives readers a protagonist they can both cheer for and cringe with. Because of Center’s witty yet touching writing, readers feel the joy and pain as Lanie navigates her new world—new playgrounds, new people, and new chances to find herself.
The secondary characters are equally well written and entertaining. Josh (Lanie’s single landlord), Nora (the widowed downstairs neighbor who is not-so-secretly referred to as “The Witch”), and Nelson (Lanie’s divorced photography teacher) all offer Lanie a glimpse of what her life could be like if she weren’t married to her husband.
Center weaves into the narrative Lanie’s memories of how she met her husband and the story of their courtship. These insights show readers how things used to be, and we anxiously cross our fingers and toes, hoping that Lanie’s relationship with her husband hasn’t changed as much as she thinks.
Moms of all backgrounds will relate to Lanie. It’s possible you may even run into Lanie at your local playground. If you do see her with her greasy hair in a ponytail, diaper bag overflowing, and quite possibly a nursing boob hanging out, don’t rush to judgment. Just ask her if she needs any help.
(Review copy source: Public Library)
March 14, 2009
Book Review: Night Work by Thomas Glavinic
Virginia Woolf may have advocated for a room of one’s own, but what if you had a world of your own instead? Jonas, a thirty-something living in Vienna, inherits just that when he wakes up on July 4 and finds that he may be the last person on Earth. In Night Work by Thomas Glavinic, Jonas is not only the last person left, but also the last living creature. There is no one to be found in Vienna—not a person, not a dog, not a cockroach.
The crux of Night Work doesn’t rest on finding out what happened to everyone else. Night Work is an intense study of how one survives, though certainly not thrives, on one’s own. What happens when you are left to your own devices, your own thoughts—both of your conscious and subconscious mind?
Glavinic deftly and subtly conveys Jonas’s growing paranoia. When Jonas is confronted by such things as his conjured wolf-bear and an intensely creepy character called The Sleeper, his brain realizes he is only paranoid, but it is a constant struggle to keep that paranoia in check. “He must cling at all costs to what existed. To what was definitely verifiable and beyond dispute.” If Jonas can’t do that, there is no way to survive in this new world.
One of the ways Jonas copes with this new world is to examine his life through deeply existential questioning. As he goes through old photographs and visits places from his past, he constantly compares his past self to his current self. There is at once a longing to return to the past, as played out when Jonas recreates his childhood home, and an almost remorseful sense of fulfillment at what he has experienced and accomplished since that past time.
Night Work may leave many readers unsatisfied. Those looking for a resolution to what happened to the world will not find one. It is an existential book following one man into the depths of despair. If readers can keep that in mind, they will find Night Work to be a gratifying, if not deeply disturbing, read.
(Review copy source: Public Library)
