#107: San Miguel

San Miguel, by T. C. Boyle

(New York: Viking, 2012)

 Summary:
"This latest novel from Boyle (The Women; When the Killing's Done) portrays two families living and working on barren San Miguel Island off the coast of California. In 1888 Marantha Waters leaves her comfortable life on mainland California and moves out to San Miguel with her adopted daughter and husband, a steely Civil War veteran convinced that he'll have success sheep ranching on the island. Marantha is seriously ill, but instead of breathing the clean, restorative air she expected, she must live in a drafty, moldy shack in a damp environment where the sun rarely shines. Years later, in 1930, Elise Lester, newly wed at 38, moves to San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran. Though Herbie has his highs and lows, they are happy, and they have two daughters. The outside world learns of their pioneering ways, and they achieve a celebrity Herbie hopes will translate into additional income. Then World War II arrives, and with war in the Pacific, their insular island location may no longer be a refuge"

Opening Line:
"She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood."

My Take:
I don't think I'll ever be quite as transported by another of Boyle's books as I was by The Tortilla Curtain, but I know that's my problem. He's a fascinating writer, very skilled technically and with recurring themes (humans vs. nature, government vs. the civilian everyman or -woman, and with the addition of this to When the Killing's Done, apparently the Channel Islands) I enjoy. Intriguing characters here, especially if they were based on real people ... which would explain why the story seems not to have much of a real ending.

#104: Daughter of Fortune

Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende 

(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)

(New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008)

Summary: 
"An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, vivacious young Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849. Entering a rough-and-tumble world of new arrivals driven mad by gold fever, Eliza moves in a society of single men and prostitutes with the help of her good friend and savior, the Chinese doctor Tao Chi'en. California opens the door to a new life of freedom and independence to the young Chilean, and her search for her elusive lover gradually turns into another kind of journey. By the time she finally hears news of him, Eliza must decide who her true love really is"

Opening Line: 
"Everyone is born with some special talent, and Eliza Sommers discovered early on that she had two: a good sense of smell and a good memory."

My Take:
Maybe it's because I'm now getting into the more recent parts of my backlog, or maybe it's just that Isabel Allende is a brilliant writer, but when I decided it was time for a Latin American-themed flight of books, this was what I had in mind. (The fact that the protagonist's name is Eliza doesn't hurt, but I'd have loved Daughter of Fortune anyway.) Exciting adventure story with just enough twists and turns, and great characters. Just blogging about it and remembering how much I enjoyed it is almost enough to make me look forward to my long commute tomorrow and listening to Ines of My Soul. Almost.
 

#103: Dancing to "Almendra"

Dancing to "Almendra," by Mayra Montero 

(translated by Edith Grossman)

(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007)

Summary:
"Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquin Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mobster's when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he 'knows too much.' In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquin gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love.

"The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquin's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana's brilliantly evoked enigmas.

"In Dancing to 'Almendra,' Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is 'the basis for the clamor of the city,' and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes."

Opening Line:
"On the same day Umberto Anastasia was killed in New York, a hippopotamus escaped from the zoo in Havana."

My Take:
Awesome as that opening line is, I think this was one of those books I'd hoped to like a lot more than I did. More good writing (how I wish I could produce it instead of just recognizing it, but sadly, whatever facility with words I once had, I don't have two original thoughts to rub together), and certainly Batista-era Havana is as much a character in the novel as anyone else. Noir isn't really my favorite genre, though, so I'm probably not the person who'd get the most from this book.
 

#88: The Quickening

The Quickening, by Michelle Hoover

(New York: Other Press, 2010)

Summary:
"Enidina Current and Mary Morrow live on neighboring farms in the flat, hard country of the upper Midwest during the early 1900s. This hardscrabble life comes easily to some, like Eddie, who has never wanted more than the land she works and the animals she raises on it with her husband, Frank. But for the deeply religious Mary, farming is an awkward living and at odds with her more cosmopolitan inclinations. Still, Mary creates a clean and orderly home life for her stormy husband, Jack, and her sons, while she adapts to the isolation of a rural town through the inspiration of a local preacher. She is the first to befriend Eddie in a relationship that will prove as rugged as the ground they walk on. Despite having little in common, Eddie and Mary need one another for survival and companionship. But as the Great Depression threatens, the delicate balance of their reliance on one another tips, pitting neighbor against neighbor, exposing the dark secrets they hide from one another, and triggering a series of disquieting events that threaten to unravel not only their friendship but their families as well."

Opening Line:
"My boy, you might think an old woman hasn't much to say about the living, but your grandmother knows when a person does right by her and when they don't."

My Take:
Lovely, lyrical language, but I felt like I missed something here. Maybe it's just that the characters and plot, like the setting and Hoover's writing, is spare -- so much so that it was hard to get much of a sense of Mary or of how the relationship between the two women evolved over time (though Eddie did feel authentic and likeable, at least where I was concerned). I've read books like this before, where we need to draw our own conclusions about characters' relationships based on a handful of events with many years in between, but here it just felt like there wasn't enough to go on to let me connect the dots. Eddie's eagerness to reconnect with her departed daughter and never-seen grandchild is compelling, but not given quite enough airtime (unless it was just too subtle and understated for me to appreciate) to fully draw me in. Might be better on a second reading, or with a group, but for now -- just OK.

#84: Redemption

Redemption, by Leon Uris

New York: HarperCollins, c1995

Summary:

"Master storyteller Leon Uris, internationally acclaimedauthor of such bestsellers as Exodus, Topaz, QB VII, Trinity, the Haj and Mitla Pass, continues the epic story of the Irish struggle for freedom in Redemption. A dramatic saga set against the backdrop of growing unrest in Ireland and a world on the brink of the First World War, Redemption weaves together a cast of unforgettable characters that form the heart and soul of three extraordinary Irish families.hey love freedom more than life,and they will fight to the death to win it.

"From the magnificence of New Zealand's green mountains, to the bloody beaches and cliffs of Gallipoli, to the streets of Dublin and the shipyards of Belfast, Redemption follows three Irish Patriots on their odysseys of freedom and passion- in a monumental tale of the men and women who loved, fought, and died for the chance to be free."

Opening Line:
"If the earth were flat, New Zealand would have fallen off it a long time ago, it's that far from Ireland."

My Take:
Much better when it sticks to storytelling. The purported letters from Winston Churchill and (towards the end) news reports from Theobald Fitzpatrick get boggy and boring at exactly the worst places. I also wish we'd spent a bit more time on the principal characters of this story (Conor Larkin's brother Liam and his son Rory, as well as Atty Fitzpatrick, Caroline Hubble, and the latter's sons), and not on replaying the events of Trinity. Still a good book, but I hope that's not a trend that's going to continue through Uris's other novels; he's otherwise a great author to read while traveling.

#81: In the Kingdom of Men

In the Kingdom of Men, by Kim Barnes

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012

 Summary:
"1967. Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Raised in a two-room shack by her Oklahoma grandfather, a strict Methodist minister, Gin never believed that someone like Mason, a handsome college boy, the pride of Shawnee, would look her way. And nothing can prepare her for the world she and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy to cook their meals, and a gardener to tend the sandy patch out back. Even among the veiled women and strict laws of shariah, Gin’s life has become the stuff of fairy tales. She buys her first swimsuit, she pierces her ears, and Mason gives her a glittering diamond ring. But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, washed up on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Gin’s world closes in around her, and the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found.

"Set against the gorgeously etched landscape of a country on the cusp of enormous change, In the Kingdom of Men abounds with sandstorms and locust swarms, shrimp peddlers, pearl divers, and Bedouin caravans—a luminous portrait of life in the desert. Award-winning author Kim Barnes weaves a mesmerizing, richly imagined tale of Americans out of their depth in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her."

Opening Line:
 "Here is the first thing you need to know about me:  I’m a barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma, and all the marble floors in the world will never change that."

My Take:
An engaging read in spite of the book jacket (which gives away and greatly overemphasizes events that don't take place till much later). The story is less about the disappearance of the aforementioned young Bedouin woman, and more about a very young woman's learning the meaning of marriage, friendship, and independence in a totally alien world. 

#75: The Book of Fires

The Book of Fires, by Jane Borodale

(New York: Viking, 2009)

Summary:

"It is 1752. Winter is approaching, and two secrets -- an unwanted pregnancy and a theft -- drive seventeen-year-old Agnes Trussel to run away from her home in rural Sussex. Lost and frightened as night descends on the menacing streets of London, she is drawn to a curious sign depicting a man holding a star. It is the home of Mr. J. Blacklock, a brooding fireworks maker who is grieving for his recently deceased wife. He hires Agnes as his apprentice, and as she learns to make rockets, portfies, and fiery rain, she slowly gains the laconic Blacklock's trust. He initiates her into his peculiar art and sparks in her a shared obsession for creating the most spectacular fireworks the world has ever seen.

"But her condition is becoming harder to conceal, and through it all, the clock is ticking -- for Agnes's secret will not stay hidden forever. Soon she meets Cornelius Soul, seller of gunpowder, and she conceives of a plan that could save her. But why does Blacklock so vehemently disapprove of Mr. Soul? And what is Blacklock hiding from her? Could he be on the brink of a discovery that will change pyrotechny forever? A summer storm is brewing -- but Agnes has no idea that her mysterious mentor has been watching her, and hatching plans of his own.

"The Book of Fires vividly evokes a dark bygone world and offers a masterful portrayal of a relationship as mysterious and tempestuous as any the Brontes imagined. Jane Borodale's portrait of 1750s London is unforgettable, from the grimy streets to the inner workings of a household where little is as it seems. Beautifully written, complex and layered, The Book of Fires is a captivating debut of fireworks, redemption, and the strange alchemy that will forever change the fortunes of a young woman once bound for ruin."

Opening Line:

"There is a regular rasp of a blade on a stone as he sharpens the knives."

My Take:

If I've read a few books lately that didn't quite live up to my expectations, I had the opposite experience here. I had only a short time to visit the library and stock up on books before my latest trip so I went through my list and grabbed about the first 8 I could find. Were I been home, this might have been one of those that stayed on the shelf untouched until it was due back ... as it was, I read almost everything I bring along as choices are limited, and I'm glad I did. Agnes is such an interesting narrator, the landscape she inhabits so unusual, and the central conflict -- will Blacklock discover her pregnancy and send her away? -- so well-crafted that I was sad for the story to end. Borodale manages to make the other characters, particularly Blacklock and the other 2 house servants, Mary Spurran and Mrs. Blight, both believable in their time and engaging for a contemporary reader. Likewise, the setting is sufficiently detailed that I felt like I could picture it without being so overly so that it lost me in the descriptions. I'll be on the lookout for other works by this author.

#68: The Piano Teacher

The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y. K. Lee

(New York: Penguin Books, 2009)

 Summary:

"In the sweeping tradition of The English Patient, Janice Y.K. Lee's debut novel is a tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn Hong Kong. In 1942, Englishman Will Truesdale falls headlong into a passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a beautiful Eurasian socialite. But their affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong to work as a piano teacher and also begins a fateful affair. As the threads of this spellbinding novel intertwine, impossible choices emerge-between love and safety, courage and survival, the present, and above all, the past"

Opening Lines:
"It started as an accident. The small Herend rabbit had fallen into Claire’s purse."

My Take:
This was another of those novels that I expected and really wanted to like more than I did. On paper the plot has promise: What will become of the rarefied world Will and Trudy inhabit (though neither really fully belong) as the war comes ever closer? What's happened to Will between the earlier, 1942-43 story line and the 1953 one featuring Claire that keeps him in Hong Kong, now as the Chens' remarkably underutilized chauffeur?

Trouble is, at least from my vantage point, it doesn't quite deliver. We learn what happens to all these people, of course, and naturally, this being a war story, some of the answers aren't pretty. But it didn't feel like we learned enough about what made the principal characters tick to really picture them in these harrowing settings and make us see the events through their eyes. Claire's pilfering habit (not a spoiler, as you learn about it somewhere around the first chapter) is interesting, but Lee barely scratches the surface of why she starts or what the purloined objects mean to her. We're told that her marriage to husband Martin is safe, conventional, and, well, not very exciting, but we don't see enough of Claire to understand exactly what she wants beyond that. Likewise, Will is a promising character I never really felt like I understood. As a prisoner of war, he shows not quite heroism, but a quiet, understated integrity and strength ... which doesn't quite jibe with how passive he seems in his relationship with Trudy.

Perhaps there's some meta-commentary here, but I found myself feeling like I imagine Lee's two chief European characters felt in Hong Kong: like a fish out of water, with things not quite fitting together as you'd expect. Not awful, and maybe I'm just not getting it, but the book didn't really resonate with me, either.

#67: Mohawk

Mohawk, by Richard Russo

(New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1994, c1986)

Summary:

"Mohawk, New York is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work -- because in a place like Mohawk, it doesn't pay to be too smart.

"In Mohawk, Richard Russo explores these lives with profound compassion and flint-hard wit. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, he has created a richly plotted, densely populated, and wonderfully written novel that captures every nuance of America's backyard."

Opening Line:
"The back door to the Mohawk Grill opens on an alley it shares with the junior high."


My Take:
Was going to go for something fluffy again (Four Blondes, anyone?) but something about Russo's stories of hard luck former boom towns along the old Erie Canal seemed appropriate for my last scheduled week in Boston exile. He usually manages to be both wistful and warm-hearted at the same time. Let's see.

(time passes)

A good choice. As with Russo's other novels, he manages to portray upstate New York's Appalachia-meets-Rust-Belt, seen-better-days small towns and their inhabitants both so clearly, but with such compassion and warmth, that you almost find yourself seeing why it is that folks still live there (though you're not quite packing your own bags, of course). Mohawk isn't my world, but it's not too far away and I've driven through it often enough (this is metaphor, people; Russo's Mohawk isn't a real town, though it may as well be) that it was a good read for a homesick week. Recommended if you like portraits of small town Americana, or even if you just enjoyed Empire Falls and want to get a look at the town 30 years earlier. 

#62: The Wolves of Andover

The Wolves of Andover, by Kathleen Kent

New York: Reagan Arthur Books/ Little Brown and Company, 2010

 

Summary:

"In the harsh wilderness of colonial Massachusetts, Martha Allen is forced to take work as a servant in her cousin's home. Unwed and, at nineteen, considered by most a spinster, Martha locks wills with everyone around her -- including Thomas Carrier, the unusually tall and resolutely silent hired worker whose stubborn independence matches her own.

"There are whispers about Thomas's mysterious past and what role the taciturn 'giant' many have played in the English Civil War, which ended with the execution of King Charles I. As Martha comes to know him, she discovers a companion who respects her own outspoken nature and in whom she can confide the dark secrets of her youth. But in the rugged new world they inhabit, danger lurks both near and far. In London, King Charles II is conspiring with his lords to assemble a band of assassins to kill the man suspected of executing his father. Before long, they will arrive in New England to hunt down the man who cut off the head of a king. And at home, wolves -- in many forms -- are hungry for blood. As Thomas reveals to Martha his days as a soldier in England, she comes to see him as a kindred spirit, even as she realizes his secret will place her, and her loved ones, in danger."

Opening Line:

"The woman worked her way out of the crowd, grabbing Cromwell by the cloak, and pulled at it until he turned to face her."

My Take:

OK, something about that opening line just reminds me more than a little of Ellen in the first pages of Pillars of the Earth. That said ...

Slightly slow to draw me in (the colonial era isn't usually my favorite for historical fiction) but a compelling story once it did. Loved Martha's character and what we get to know of Thomas, who remains more than a bit of a cipher even at the end. Daniel, husband of Martha's cousin Patience and head of the household where Martha and Thomas work, turns out to have a few surprises up his own sleeve, too. Engaging and substantive read.   

#44: Walking to Gatlinburg

Walking to Gatlinburg, by Howard Frank Mosher (New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2010)

Summary:
"A stunning and lyrical Civil War thriller, Walking to Gatlinburg is a spellbinding story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery, and love in the time of war.

Morgan Kinneson is both hunter and hunted.  The sharp-shooting 17-year-old from Kingdom County, Vermont, is determined to track down his brother Pilgrim, a doctor who has gone missing from the Union Army.  But first Morgan must elude a group of murderous escaped convicts in pursuit of a mysterious stone that has fallen into his possession.

"It's 1864, and the country is in the grip of the bloodiest war in American history.  Meanwhile, the Kinneson family has been quietly conducting passengers on the Underground Railroad from Vermont to the Canadian border.  One snowy afternoon Morgan leaves an elderly fugitive named Jesse Moses in a mountainside cabin for a few hours so that he can track a moose to feed his family.  In his absence, Jesse is murdered, and thus begins Morgan's unforgettable trek south through an apocalyptic landscape of war and mayhem.

"Along the way, Morgan encounters a fantastical array of characters, including a weeping elephant, a pacifist gunsmith, a woman who lives in a tree, a blind cobbler, and a beautiful and intriguing slave girl named Slidell who is the key to unlocking the mystery of the secret stone.  At the same time, he wrestles with the choices that will ultimately define him – how to reconcile the laws of nature with religious faith, how to temper justice with mercy. Magical and wonderfully strange, Walking to Gatlinburg is both a thriller of the highest order and a heartbreaking odyssey into the heart of American darkness."


Opening Line:
"Years later Morgan Kinneson would conclude that it was probably reading that had gotten him and his brother, Pilgrim, into trouble in the first place."

My Take:
I didn't hate it, but this was one of those books that I had high hopes for based on some laudatory reviews, and it didn't quite live up to my expectations. Every other reviewer, it seems, calls books "lyrical," and perhaps this one was; it's been over a month but I do recall the language being intriguing, and several of the characters and scenarios Morgan wanders into have a fascinating, almost fantastic appeal. Overall, though, I had the impression that I myself was taking a long road trip through unfamiliar country: interesting and lovely to look at in places, but rather slower than I'd like in many others.

#43: My Name Is Mary Sutter

My Name Is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira (New York:  Viking, 2010)

Summary:
"In this stunning historical novel, Mary Sutter is a brilliant, headstrong midwife from Albany, New York, who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Determined to overcome the prejudices against women in medicine -- and eager to run away from her recent heartbreak -- Mary leaves home and travels to Washington, D.C. to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of William Stipp and James Blevens -- two surgeons who fall unwittingly in love with Mary's courage, will, and stubbornness in the face of suffering -- and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career in the desperately overwhelmed hospitals of the capital.
Like Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Robert Hicks's The Widow of the South, My Name Is Mary Sutter powerfully evokes the atmosphere of the period. Rich with historical detail (including marvelous depictions of Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, General McClellan, and John Hay among others), and full of the tragedies and challenges of wartime, My Name Is Mary Sutter is an exceptional novel. And, in Mary herself, Robin Oliveira has created a truly unforgettable heroine whose unwavering determination and vulnerability will resonate with readers everywhere.


Opening Lines:
"'Are you Mary Sutter?' Hours had passed since James Blevens had called for the midwife."

My Take:
Here's where the reviews get pretty terse and cursory. As I said, before I came to Boston, I spent a few weeks in Ohio. What I hadn't yet mentioned was that I almost got sent to Memphis for a few months. When that looked like a possibility, I began looking into what there was to keep myself busy after work and on weekends, and began making grand plans to indulge my interest in both Civil War and Civil Rights history. The trip didn't happen but a number of historical novels set during the Civil War did, and I'm still slogging my way through James M. McPherson's master single-volume work on the subject, Battle Cry of Freedom. 

Anyway, I enjoyed Mary Sutter. If you enjoy Civil War stories and want one with a slightly different focus than you're used to, like books about iconoclastic women ahead of their time (as opposed to reviews by redundantly verbose readers!), or enjoy fiction that touches on the historical practice of medicine, give this one a try.

#35: My Name Is Memory

My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010)


Summary:
"Lucy Broward is an ordinary girl growing up in the Virginia suburbs, soon to head off to college. As she prepares for her last high school dance, she allows herself to hope that this might be the night her elusive crush, Daniel Grey, finally notices her. As the events of the night unfold, though, Lucy discovers that Daniel is much more complicated than she imagined, and perceives that there's something going on here that she really doesn't understand. Why does he call her Sophia? And why does it make her feel so strange?


"Daniel Grey is no ordinary young man. Daniel has 'the memory,' the ability to recall past lives and recognize the souls of those he's previously known. And he has spent centuries falling in love with the same girl. Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Lucy (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together -- and he remembers it all. It is both a gift and a curse. For all the many times they have come together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart. A love always too short.


"As we watch Daniel and Lucy's relationship unfold during the present day, interwoven are glimpses of their history together. From 552 Asia Minor to 1918 England and 1972 Virginia, the two souls share a long and sometimes torturous path of seeking each other time and again. But just when Lucy begins to awaken to the secret of her past, to understand her relationship to Sophia, and to understand the true reason for the strength of her attraction to Daniel, the mysterious force that has torn them apart in the past reappears. Ultimately, they must confront not just their complicated history, but a persistent adversary as well, if they are ever to spend a lifetime together."

Opening Lines:
"I have lived more than a thousand years. I have died countless times."

My Take:
Brashares is still a writer of young adult novels at heart, but this one was stronger and more grown-up than, say, Sisterhood Everlasting, or than The Last Summer (of You & Me), which I remember reading and being disappointed by, though it must have been before I started the book blog.

Here, as the jacket suggests, Daniel is an old soul -- he's been around since at least the 6th century, in a sequence of different bodies and locations. What's uncommon about this is the fact that he remembers many of his past lives; most people, we're given to understand, have been around a few times before but are blissfully unaware of the fact. Daniel, on the other hand, has spent more than a millenium finding, falling in love with, and ultimately losing the same woman, always trying to make up for burning her house and village in a misdirected military raid in Asia Minor some time around 550 A.D. As you might guess, that girl/ woman is living in 21st-century Virginia as Lucy, a college-bound high school graduate who's had a crush on this mysterious Daniel guy all through senior year, and whose own sense of loss and isolation seems at first to stem (understandably) from the death of her older sister Dana from a drug overdose some years before the novel begins.

The novel's central questions are pretty much what you'd expect: Will Lucy ever remember knowing and loving Daniel in a past life? Will the two of them finally get it together on this go-round? And will Daniel's one-time older brother, Joaquin, a sinister dude who's been looking for revenge on Daniel and Sophia/ Lucy ever since Daniel stole his wife (guess who?) a couple of lifetimes ago, track them down and spoil everything?

Where the book falls short is in making the past-life romance between Sophia and Daniel seem believable. We're convinced by Daniel's recollections of the past that the two knew each other, and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that a basically decent guy could still be carrying around guilt over having massacred the young Sophia's entire family ... but other than that, we don't really see anything in their past that helps us understand how or why they fell in love. I'm not convinced that proximity itself is enough; if it were, those folks I seem to see in the grocery store or library every week might just as well be my own soul mates. However, for someone who likes a little other-worldly mystery with their romance, and even a few interesting observations on life and death and love, you could do worse.

#25: Caleb's Crossing

Caleb's Crossing, by Geraldine Brooks (New York: Viking, 2011)

Summary:

In her new novel, Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks once again takes a shard of little-known history and brings it vividly to life. In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard becomes the first Native American graduate of Harvard College. From the few facts that survive of this extraordinary life, Brooks creates a luminous tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure.

"The voice of Caleb's Crossing belongs to Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny island settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. Possessed of a restless spirit and a curious mind, Bethia slips the bonds of her rigid society to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native inhabitants. At twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other.

"Bethia's father is Great Harbor's minister, who feels called to convert the Wampanoag to his own strict Calvinism. He awakens the wrath of the medicine men, against whose magic he must test his faith in a high-stakes battle that may cost his life and his very soul. Caleb becomes a prize in this contest between old ways and new, eventually taking his place at Harvard, studying Latin and Greek alongside the sons of the colonial elite. Bethia also finds herself in Cambridge at the behest of her imperious older brother. As she fights for a voice in a society that requires her silence, she also becomes entangled in Caleb's struggle to navigate the intellectual and cultural shoals that divide their two cultures.

"What becomes of these characters -- the triumphs and turmoil they endure in embracing their new destinies -- is the subject of this riveting and intensely observed novel. Like Brooks's beloved narrator Anna in Year of Wonders, Bethia provides an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and to the intimate spaces of the human heart. The narrative travels from the sparkling harbors of Martha's Vineyard to the mean, drafty dormitories of early Harvard and, as ever, Brooks buttresses her richly imagined fiction with the fascinating and meticulously researched detail that has brought her legions of readers and a Pulitzer Prize."

Opening Lines:

"He is coming on the Lord's Day. Though my father has not seen fit to give me the news, I have the whole of it."

My Take:

Enjoyed it, but not as much as I did People of the Book or Year of Wonders. This may be in large part because the pre-Colonial/ Colonial/ Revolutionary periods just aren't my favorites where historical fiction is concerned. Part of it, though, was that I was a bit frustrated at not seeing and learning more of Caleb's life firsthand. On one hand, the book's supposed to be about him (at least, so I was led to believe by the jacket), but on the other, Bethia narrates it, and once their closeness wanes, we see only the scraps of his life here and there that she learns about. The quasi-epilogue of an ending was also less than satisfactory, as I didn't feel we'd seen enough of Bethia's life between the end of the main narrative and her old age (and presumably imminent death). Again, still a solid read that I'd recommend, but (in my opinion, anyway) not quite up to the level of the other Brooks novels I've read.

#23: Running the Rift

Running the Rift, by Naomi Benaron (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2012)

Summary:

"Running the Rift follows the progress of Jean Patrick Nkuba from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life. A naturally gifted athlete, he sprints over the thousand hills of Rwanda and dreams of becoming the country's first Olympic medal winner in track.

"But Jean Patrick is a Tutsi in a world that has become increasingly restrictive and violent for his people. As tensions mount between the Hutu and Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream that running might deliver him, and his people, from the brutality around them. But the day comes when he realizes there is only one way he can continue competing, and suddenly he's thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical -- where the man who sold him bread a few weeks ago now spews hatred, where an identity card bearing the right word becomes his most prized possession, and where the woman he loves may be lost to him forever.

"Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Naomi Benaron has written a stunning and gorgeous novel that takes us behind the headlines to reveal the causes and effects of Rwanda's tragic history and, more important, to portray the resilience of the human spirit. Through the eyes of one unforgettable boy who comes of age during that time, she explores the story of a country's unraveling, its tentative new beginning, and the love that binds its people together."

Opening Line:

"Jean Patrick was already awake, listening to the storm, when Papa opened the door and stood by the side of the bed."

My Take:

If you know me you'll know how rare this is, but I really have no words to do this book justice. Stunning, wrenching, and beautiful. I'm really trying to be objective here and not fall into that Saving Private Ryan fallacy of thinking any book that captures an especially harrowing moment must be good. But I don't think that's it; much of the book's power comes from the fact that for most of the book the violence is relatively understated, and only plays around the edges of the main characters' lives. Without spoiling too much, its most moving parts aren't pictures of graphic, wholesale slaughter after President Habyarimana's 1994 assassination (which are mercifully few), but the smaller scale human scenes that take place in its wake, specifically Jean Patrick's farewell conversation with his former schoolmaster, and Ineza's chilling insistence that daughter Bea run away with Jean Patrick rather than stay behind with her parents. I seem to be saying this left and right lately, but this is one of the best books I've read in a while.

#11: 11/22/63

11/22/63, by the inimitable Stephen King (New York: Scribner, 2011)

Summary:
"On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas. President Kennedy died, and the world changed forever.

"If you had the chance to change the course of history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?

"Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students -- a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

"Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane -- and insanely possible -- mission to try and prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life -- a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time."

Opening Line:
"Harry Dunning graduated with flying colors."

My Take:
This is what I'm talking about. Not perfect -- it's a very long book, and the extended, frustratingly subtle tracking of Oswald Jake-as-George needs to do to be sure he's stopping/ killing the right man drags a bit in places -- but mostly an entertaining and provocative book. As I've had to specify for other long-term King fans, it's not gory, either; this is not Cujo, or Carrie, or even the more recent Cell (which I happened to love anyway).

The time travel aspect of the book is well done. I particularly appreciated that through Al's experience, which happens off-screen before the novel opens, King's able to set up the rules for time travel fairly quickly and painlessly: 1) the portal always leads to Lisbon Falls, ME, circa 9/9/58; 2) no matter how long you stay in the past, only two present-day minutes have elapsed when you return; and 3) every time you travel back in time, it's a reset, and anything you changed on your last visit is erased. Establishing the above from the get-go allows Jake-George, and the reader, to spend more time on the really intriguing questions: Does the butterfly effect really exist? Can time resist being changed? Can one person make a difference?

But where the story really excels is in the everyday details of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was before my time, of course, but I'm not alone in thinking so; says Errol Morris's New York Times review, "The real events aren’t historical, they’re very small — giving advice to a football player, staging the school play, doing the Lindy Hop with Sadie. We are brought back to the weird quotidian, endlessly surrounded by the detritus of civilization: Kresge’s, Ban-Lon, Aqua Velva, Studebaker." Jake's experience of these days with the 2011 knowledge of all that's happened since is surprisingly poignant. It's not that he glosses over the darker aspects of the era; on one road trip, he muses on the "Colored" restroom he encounters (a wooden board over a creek, in the side of a hill covered with poison ivy), and evidence of the repressive, sexist mores of the day is everywhere. And then there are the moments at both so simple and so brilliant that you wonder how King comes up with this stuff. One of Sadie's first inklings that George isn't being completely honest with her comes when she hears him singing "Honky Tonk Woman" (which wouldn't be released for several more years) -- not simply because she's never heard the song, but because there's no way, no how any radio station in the country would have played those lyrics in 1961.

All in all, a darned good read.

#9: Nanjing Requiem

Nanjing Requiem, by Ha Jin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011)

Summary:
"The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing.

"In 1937, with the Japanese posed to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin -- an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women's College -- decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.

"With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin recreates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history."

Opening Lines:
"Finally Ban began to talk. For a whole evening we sat in the dining room listening to the boy."

My Take:
Had high hopes for this one. Sadly, it didn't deliver. Ha Jin's writing style, at least here, was just too detached and clinical for the book to be effective. Certainly the Rape of Nanjing was horrific -- heck, it makes That History Place's online list of the worst genocides of the twentieth century -- but Nanjing Requiem reads more like a chronicle of atrocities than a portrait of the human beings involved. Neither Minnie nor the narrator, Anling, really come to life in any meaningful way here. I have to agree with Marie Arana's Washington Post review, which calls the novel "unnervingly flat" and says it "doesn't quite pack the voltage it deserves. ... The action can read like a textbook, with intermittent spatters of gore."

#7: The Red Garden

The Red Garden, by Alice Hoffman (New York: Crown Publishers, 2011)

Summary:
"The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in history in our own lives.

"In exquisite prose, Hoffman offers a transforming glimpse of small-town America, presenting us with some three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption in a web of tales where characters' lives are intertwined by fate and their own actions.

"From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives.

"At the center of everyone's life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look."

Opening Lines:
"The town of Blackwell, Massachusetts changed its name in 1786. It had been called Bearsville when it was founded in 1750, but it quickly became apparent that a name such as that did little to encourage new settlers."

My Take:
The language Hoffman uses here really is lovely, as are some of the stories ... but that's how this book reads; more like a collection of loosely connected (by place) short stories than a coherent novel. Perhaps I'm just reading this one too closely on the heels of Last Days of Dogtown, but that novel conveyed a truer and more nuanced sense of place than The Red Garden manages to do. Then too, I'm not a huge short story fan, and don't usually care for the handful of supernatural elements the author throws in. Well done, but not an all-time favorite.

#4: The Story of Beautiful Girl

The Story of Beautiful Girl, by Rachel Simon (New York: Hatchette Book Group, 2011)

Summary:
"It is 1968. Lynnie, a young white woman with a developmental disability, and Homan, an African American deaf man, are locked away in the School for the Incurable and Feebleminded, and have been left to languish in the institution. Deeply in love, they escape and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow. But the couple is not alone -- Lynnie has just given birth to a baby girl. When the authorities catch up to them that same night, Homan escapes into the darkness and Lynnie is caught. Before she is forced back into the institution, she whispers two words to Martha: 'Hide her.'

"And so begins the forty-year epic journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha, and baby Julia -- lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret pact and extraordinary love."

Opening Line:
"At the end of the night that would change everything, the widow stood on her porch and watched as the young woman was marched down her front drive and shoved into the sedan."

My Take:
OK, this isn't saying much yet as it's not quite 4 weeks into the year, but this is certainly (sorry, Anita Diamant) my favorite book of 2012 so far. Recently, I heard someone say that what makes a book "literature" is that not everyone can read and understand it right away. If so, The Story of Beautiful Girl doesn't qualify, but it's still a beautiful book. Simon's language is lovely, and her characters endlessly fascinating. My favorite is definitely Lynnie, who's the "beautiful girl" of the title; Homan, who's not only deaf but never learned to read, and knows only an idiosyncratic sign language some deaf neighbors taught him as a child, refers to her this way for the entire story, though said references are mostly in his mind as (without spoiling too much) it takes the two, and Julia, a very long time to find one another again. Lynnie's experiences in The School are horrifying without being overly graphic or sensational, and the final chapters ... well, they made me cry. I'd have liked to see a bit more of Martha's and Julia's experiences over the years, but giving them as much time as, say, Lynnie or even Kate (one of the few, if not the only, decent staff members at the School, who remains close to Lynnie even after deinstitutionalization), would have made this a far longer and more complex book, and I suppose I can understand the author's not being quite up for that. Even so, I recommend this one highly.

#3: The Last Days of Dogtown

The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant (New York: Scribner, 2006)

Summary:
"Set on the high ground at the heart of Cape Ann, the village of Dogtown is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and 'witches.' Among the inhabitants of this hamlet are Black Ruth, who dresses as a man and works as a stonemason; Mrs. Stanley, an imperious madam whose grandson, Sammy, comes of age in her brothel; Oliver Younger, who survives a miserable childhood at the hands of his aunt; and Cornelius Finson, a freed slave. At the center of it all is Judy Rhines, a fiercely independent soul, deeply lonely, who nonetheless builds a life for herself against all imaginable odds. Rendered in stunning, haunting detail, with Diamant's keen ear for language and profound compassion for her characters, The Last Days of Dogtown is an extraordinary retelling of a long-forgotten chapter of early American life."

Opening Line:
"Judy Rhines decided to take the footpath through the pasture."

My Take:
Outstanding, gentle book with memorable characters.