News of our loved ones, by Abigail DeWitt

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Abigail DeWitt

In this novel we follow the history of a French family in a little village throughout several decades and places. Beginning in 1944, a sixteen-year-old girl is secretly in love with a boy who passes by their house riding his bicycle every day at the same hour and, thanks to her daydreaming about her love for him, the Nazi occupation of the village and the sirens wailing each night disappear from her mind. But in the end the place is bombed by the allies, and the family members will be separated at this particular moment in which lives and dreams are lost forever.

Every chapter is told from the point of view of one character in a certain stage of the family history, and sometimes we come back to this French village in the forties, but other times we find ourselves various decades later in Paris, and it is as if each chapter is an independent short story by itself because the characters won’t star in more than one although, at the end, you feel a cycle coming to an end with the whole history of every family member since that day in 1944.

This way of storytelling has been the most remarkable peculiarity of the book; I was hooked to these little portions of the family history through the eyes of different characters, like the pieces of a puzzle, wondering about this or that one, often recreating past events of one of the sisters through a thought or a conversation decades later into the chapter of another family member.

It could have been an average novel of the Nazi occupation, but the narration makes the story of this family unique, and those glimpses into this sister’s, the aunt’s or that child’s life go further into filling the atmosphere of the family and the time than a linear narration would.

Thanks to Harper books for the galley.

 

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In the midst of winter, by Isabel Allende

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Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is one of the authors whose books have always had a place at my parents’ library, and I actually think they have all of her titles, so this was one of the first authors I read when I began reading adult books, but somehow I stopped reading her for so many years until now, and I have found the experience very pleasant for I have enjoyed her expressions and choices of words in this unique Latin American way, so colourful and fancy, far from our “boring” Spanish words.

I guess English-speaking people reading translations can’t experience this, as well as I read translations from authors from all over the world that seem to have been written by a person born in Madrid, but I wanted to share the experience of reading from authors whose language looks identical to your own, but yet it’s so different that it surprises you in every page.

Now, let’s talk about the book.

We are in Brooklyn in a particularly terrifying snowstorm, when Richard Bowmaster, a university professor in his sixties, has a little accident when his car hits another vehicle driven by Evelyn, a young Guatemalan girl who later seeks Richard for help because not only has she taken the car without her employers’ permission, but there is also a corpse in her car trunk. Richard, in turn, calls her unusual tenant Lucía, a resolute Chilean lady who works with him at the university and decides that Evelyn is in danger of deportation for being undocumented, so the three of them have to get rid of the corpse and protect the girl.

Of course, nothing is what it seems, and in their journey the author tells us their background stories, talking about the recent history of Chile and Guatemala, as well as the cultural gap between Richard and his Brazilian wife, being Evelyn’s the most emotional one. The girl left her country running away from violence to start a journey that for many people ends up in death, prison or as a sexual slave, so you realize how these people risk everything they have towards a very uncertain future.

However, the book is not only a tragic story; the journey that brings together these three strangers is kind of crazy, and the ideas and comments from Lucía makes the story hilarious, so in the end you see it becomes a story of hope, joy and second changes at any age.

It may not be the best book by Isabel Allende, but I found it pleasant, with the right amount of drama and humor, and three characters who makes you want to keep reading.

In the midst of winter
Isabel Allende
Atria Books
Publishing date: 31st of October 2017.

Heart Mountain, by Gretel Ehrlich

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Gretel Ehrlich

I received this book thanks to Netgalley.

In the 1940s, during World War II, Japanese-Americans were forced to move to interment camps around the US while their constitutional rights were suspended, by a government that was supposedly fighting against fascism in Asia and Europe.This is a story set in one of those camps, Heart Mountain in Wyoming, and the people who were confined in there, whose inner conflict was caused for the feeling betrayal by their own country, for which they would have fight for if allowed, since most of them were born as US citizens and view themselves as Americans.

On the other hand, there are also characters from the nearby town and farms; men who aren’t allow to join the army for their physical disabilities, women running their farms alone, not knowing if their husbands are still alive, etc., addressing the war from many different points of view.

I was really shocked by the internment camps for the Japanese Americans, which I had never heard or read of, so I began this novel with enthusiasm, expecting to immerse myself in a great piece of historical fiction but, despite how much I wanted to like the book, I couldn’t connect with the characters – there are too many of them, each chapter told from every one’s perspective, and sometimes the plots aren’t relevant to the story. I first thought the author wanted to tell a story about the interactions between the camp people and the locals, but there are many secondary plots about local characters on their own, with things happening out of the blue for no purpose whatsoever. In the end, the only parts I enjoyed were the descriptions of the seasonable work with the cattle in the mountains, riding for days in that beautiful scenery.

So, as you would have guessed, I can’t recommend the book. There are too many characters and I haven’t really connected with their stories, regardless of the appeal the internment camps as a theme represent.

Heart Mountain
Gretel Ehrlich
350 pages
Published by Open Road Media

 

 

Under a Pole Star, by Stef Penney

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Stef Penney

I received this book thanks to Netgalley

What do you do when your hometown is beaten by a dreadful heatwave? You read one of Stef Penney’s stories to find yourself transported to the most northern, snowy and chilly places of the earth.

 

Under a Pole Star is a fictional recreation of the first expeditions who went to the North Pole in the late 1800s, journeys that were equally thrilling and dangerous. The main character is Flora Mackie, a motherless girl who, from the age of twelve, is taken by his father to Ellesmere Island on his whaler, spending most of her younger years living with the Eskimos. However, as she grows up into a young woman, his father no longer thinks a ship full of men is suitable for her, so she is left in Britain to get a formal education. But, for Flora, the North is her home and, despite women don’t travel to such places, she sets up an unprecedented expedition, leaded by herself.

I have enjoyed so much reading about these expeditions. First of all, they had to find sponsors to cover all the costs, to whom they would later named newly discovered peaks and lakes after. The men spent the winter in the Eskimos’ villages trading, packing and planning for their trips, which started in springtime and must inevitably include Eskimo hunters with their dog sleds, because the British and American men were unable to provide food or transportation for themselves under such conditions.

And then, from a humanly approach, the explorers were under the pressure of discovering something to bring back home, to have a successful adventure that claimed new land to their countries, to discover new species, new islands, new whatever; and such pressure may lead some of them to embellish their notes up to the point of deceiving the general public in order to get new funds for further journeys. All in an atmosphere of competition among the different expeditions in a land where the best you can do to survive is work together.

I could be talking about the expeditions forever, but coming back to the main storyline, I loved to see a female character leading groups of men into the Arctic. Everyone was really surprised to see a woman there – except for the Eskimos, who knew Flora since she was a child and could speak with her in their own language – so she had to look and act severe to be respected. The story also includes a romance between Flora and Jakob de Beyn, an American geologist who meets in Greenland, and goes back and forth between the two, one in America and the other in Britain. They share a deep fascination for those remote lands and the lack of attachment to the rest of the world, and this understanding leads to a unique love story.

I can’t help but recommend this book that, for me, has everything: historical notes about the golden age of explorers in the Arctic, a woman assuming what at the time was a man’s role, beautiful but indomitable lands, and a delightful romance.

PS: I chose this book because I have already read Penney’s The tenderness of wolves (review), which I also enjoyed.

Under a Pole Star
Stef Penney
Quercus Books
610 pages

The ballroom, by Anna Hope

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Anna Hope

I received this book from Netgalley

In 1911, a young woman called Ella is confined in a mental asylum against her will. In her first moments there she tries to escape and catches the attention of John, another inmate who is working in the fields around the institution. But Ella’s attempt to flee doesn’t succeed and soon she finds herself getting used to the routines and the people of the asylum.

Charles, one of the doctors of the institution, is a frustrated musician who, in an attempt to bring his job and his calling together, is studying the effect that music has on the mentally ill people under his care, gathering the women in a music room during some hours of the day, and assembling a dance for the men and the women together every Friday evening in a magnificent ballroom inside the building – the only moment men and women are allowed to interact with each other. Charles’ revolutionary method seems to go very well, supplying the doctor with enough evidence to support that mental illness can be cured – the doctor wants to present his conclusions against the Eugenics movement, whose supporters think of castrating men with these mental conditions as the solution to the spreading of illness and poverty.

The asylum where the book is set really existed.
Source.

As the previous novel of Anna Hope, I was hooked on the atmosphere of the book. Ella’s point of view is of a weak woman, scared of this new place where people are “crazy”, but secretly brave enough to try to find her way out. John’s chapters are more masculine and apathetic; he is always working outside in the fields whereas the women are always doing chores inside the building. But from his first meeting with Ella, the seed of freedom begins to grow, so he tries to bring little treasures from the outside world for Ella, taking risks to write and send her letters, and feeling like his old self again. On the other hand, Charles’ chapters talk about the way other people see the institution and how dangerous was to be considered “different” in that time, taking into account the healing methods in mental asylums.

This is probably the best novel I have read this year; from the story of impossible love between these two characters whose destiny are in others’ hands, to how easily one might confuse madness and sanity and who has the right to decide if you must be freed or locked in; I felt the author has created a wonderful story on the basis of mental health.

The ballroom
Anna Hope
Published by Random House
320 pages

Memoirs, tales and short stories: mini-reviews from October’16 Readathon

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Anna Gavalda, Marga Minco, Sjón

As I told you, I chose short books for the Readathon, and that was the best idea I ever had: I read five books during the event! And, this is remarkable, all of them were interesting and enjoyable reads. This was a surprise because I just browsed the library and borrowed books based entirely on their number of pages, without any further information about them but the synopsis on the back cover.

I read almost all of them in Spanish, but I have seen they have also been translated into English, so I am free to recommend them here on my blog  🙂

Bitter Herbs: The Vivid Memories of a Fugitive Jewish Girl in Nazi Occupied Holland (Marga Minco)

This is a memoir of the author, and I think it is considered a classic in some Northern European countries, like The diary of Anne Frank.

The story starts when the German soldiers enter Marga’s town and, when she asks her father if they are going to deport the Jews, like they were doing in Germany, he says that ‘Something like that could never happen here‘. Her family didn’t want to leave the country and none of them survived except Marga.

It is a terrible story, of course, but the author doesn’t put any sentimentalism on the text; she just gives us her memories as facts for us to cover the passages with the fear and pain Marga must have felt in her youth.

Book on Goodreads.

The blue fox (Sjón)

This is a short tale set in the middle of the Nineteenth Century in Iceland. I thought I was going to read a story of men against nature, but I was very wrong.

The story starts with a priest chasing a fox for its fur but, as they move towards the mountains through the snow, the narration is interrupted to tell us what has happened those days in the village. There has been a death, and thanks to the preparations for her funeral, we are going to know the story of a girl who was “different”.

This is that kind of book you don’t want to talk about so much, for the prospective readers to discover the story by themselves. It is thought-provoking, sad and beautiful.

Book on Goodreads.

I wish someone were waiting for me somewhere (Anna Gavalda)

This is a collection of short stories and, even though it is not a genre of my liking, I have to recommend it, because most of the stories are shocking, affecting the reader in one way or another.

What they have in common is the impact of one single event that, in less than a minute, changes everything. Apart from this, there are different genres, characters, situations, etc.

I specially liked three of them: a humorous story about two rich boys who take their father’s car without permission; one about a female veterinarian who has trouble making herself a place in a small village; and one about a salesman whose life has been destroyed by himself alone.

Book on Goodreads.

The lost diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Sarah Bates

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Sarah Bates

I received this book thanks to Virtual Authors Book Tours

The lost diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a work of fiction based on the early life of this historical figure, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: her family background, her education, and her willingness of being equal as any men from an early age; all of which is presented in small chapters narrating some events, followed by the possible entry that could have been written in this girl’s diary.

Elizabeth was born in a wealthy family and was exposed to the law, and the inequality of it regarding men and women rights, thanks to her father, the judge Daniel Cady. She liked, from an early age, to take part in the lessons and discussions that her father assembled at home with his students and, being Mr. Cady an abolitionist, she took some of his ideas as her own.

She fought hard to get an education further than what was expected for a girl like her, and she always presented herself like an equal to the men she encountered on parties and other social gatherings, trying to make points in conversations that were not supposed to be suitable for women. This behaviour, perhaps, didn’t make her a good match at the eyes of the prospective husbands of her time, but it certainly gave her the opportunity to choose a husband whose ideals match her own, as finally happened.

I found the book interesting – a great portrait of the time and personal background of this woman, addressing all the important events in her life, such as her academic awards, the death of her older brother, her approach about the abolition of slavery, a setback caused by the influence of the Revival meetings when she was a student, her forbidden love for her brother-in-law, etc. However, I have to say that sometimes the narration appeared as a mere description of events, lacking the emotional display needed in some scenes (to my liking, at least). Besides, the opening of the book introduces Elizabeth in her sixties, about to give a lecture, and then goes back to her childhood until the last chapter, when I had forgotten all about the lecture and the characters involved in the first chapter, which was kind of a shock because I didn’t remember what was happening and why now one of the characters was upset.

But, in summary, I have to say that I really enjoyed knowing about this historical figure. The book fulfills its role as an introduction of the early years of Elizabeth and how she became the strong-minded woman who fought for women rights and the abolitionist movement later in life.

The lost diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, by Sarah Bates
420 pages
Book on Amazon
Book on Goodreads
Follow the tour
Sarah Bates’ website

Buxton Spice, by Oonya Kempadoo (a #diverseathon book)

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Oonya Kempadoo

When I signed in on Twitter after the exams I saw everybody talking about a discussion generated on BookTube that crystallized in a “diverse-a-thon”, meaning a week for reading “diverse” books and learn intentionally about other cultures, religions, races, sexual orientations, etc., through your reads. I didn’t have to look so far, for I had already a book from the library set in Guyana that fitted perfectly for the purpose of the event.

Buxton Spice is a coming-of-age story narrated by a pre-teen girl in a fictional village of this Caribbean country, surrounded by an atmosphere of political change and ethnical disturbances that makes the discovery of her new sexual nature even more disturbing.

I think that the main goal of the book is to describe how girls’ sexuality is developed within this community, with Lula and her friends as guides. At the beginning of the narration the girls’ approach towards sex is an amusing one; it’s something they witness on a daily basis so, even though they don’t understand it completely, they joke and play games about it. However, Lula’s encounter with one of the village’s boys, make her actually feel it, and that changes her.

The discovery of sexuality is the theme of the book, and I have to say that sometimes it is overwhelmingly so; it’s an environment in which sex is everywhere and young girls want to be part of it too because they are somehow exposed and expected to be so, but they are still so misinformed and naïve, trying to make sense of their new sensations. So if you, as a reader, have any prejudice towards this subject on books, this may not be of your liking.

Anyway, I am glad I have read the book because the author makes you take part in this community, which is so different from what I have experienced; and I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t even know where Guyana was in the map – such is the size of my ignorance, which was sorted out thanks to this story. However, there were aspects of the novel that didn’t like that much. For example, the narration sometimes is focused on describing certain characters and, therefore, lacking action and making the read slow and, when there are actually events happening, you don’t feel them connected. Besides, and that is my own handicap to blame, the language used in the book is that of the dialect or the accent of the people of this country, and I really had trouble in understanding some of the conversations.

Nevertheless, Buxton Spice is an interesting read with a subject not wide spread through literature in a country where most of us haven’t read books set in, and those are points to take into account when looking for diverse reads, aren’t they?

Did you participate in the diverseathon? Do you have any recommendations?

Buxton Spice
Oonya Kempadoo
Published by Phoenix (UK and Canada)
Paperback, 184 pages

The tenderest scenes in “Orphan Train”

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Christina Baker Kline

One of the books this year for my book club was Orphan train and, thanks to Allison, who sent me a copy two years ago, I have read the original version.

The book was very popular when it was published and I have very little to add to the wonderful reviews I’ve read (here you can read Allison’s), so I have decided to write about the scenes I liked the most in this story and the feelings arisen while reading:

1) The comfort Vivian found in the school she attended to when living with a poor and miserable family in the country. I liked the character of the teacher, a young woman who represents all those teachers in rural areas who knew that the children were expected to little more than learning to read and write, so then they can help in the farms, escaping from the very thing that could made them live a better life: education. Despite the circumstances, they welcomed the children every day with a smile, trying to make the school a place for them to enjoy, a refuge to act as the children they still were.

2) The feeling of finding someone who knows the real “you”; someone with whom you don’t have to pretend. Vivian has lived in different places, with different families, her name changed a couple of times… But after some time she reunites with a boy from her childhood, and the bond they have makes her feel like she has finally found a place to call home. It’s very romantic!

3) These peculiar beliefs we experience regarding objects: we rely on objects that make us feel safe, when in fact we are the ones responsible for our own safety and happiness. In the book, Vivian and Molly, in the past and the present, have amulets they don’t want to get rid of because they think that otherwise they will forget their roots. It’s not possible to forget certain people or memories, but still, we hang on things which represent them.

This is a book written to be loved by the readers – a story based on true but not well known events of the past, and a lovely child as main character to touch our hearts. Highly recommended.

Orphan train
Cristina Baker Kline
Published by William Morrow Papaerbacks
276 pages

And after the fire, by Lauren Belfer

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Lauren Belfer

I received this book from the publisher for review.

“And after the fire” tells the story of a lost cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, stolen from a house in Germany after World War II and now in the hands of a young woman, Susanna, who, in order to find if the manuscript has any value, asks music scholar Dan Erhardt for help. Not only does Dan confirm that the manuscript has Bach’s own handwriting on it, which could lead to an astonishing breakthrough, but he also notices the extremely controversial verses accompanying the music – anti-Semitic verses written in German to perform in church services, no less.

Alternating chapters, the story of such manuscript is revealed from the moment Bach’s eldest son gives it to his most talented music student, a Jew young woman called Sara Itzig, in the belief that she will comprehend its value and keep it from anti-Semitic Christian hands, who are gaining power in Prussia in the late eighteenth century. This – the decay of the Jewish prominence in the European elite – is the main topic of this half of the book, in which Sara’s family endure, devoting themselves to music.

The historical part of the story, based on real characters of the past, was as interesting as the main plot set in the present, where Susanna and Dan try to discover the whereabouts of a cantata that has been hidden for so many years, and the implications of revealing its existence to the public – music and verses written by the master which claim the convenience of burning the Jews don’t seem very appropriate, right? Besides, these contemporary characters are interesting by themselves; their backgrounds make the reader feel sympathy for them.

There are minor parts of the book I didn’t found that good, like the kind-of love triangle that includes Susanna, Dan and a friend of his, unnecessary in this story, but there is one scene that I particularly disliked and I need to tell you: Susanna and Dan travel to Germany and, at the hotel, people stare at her in disgust because she is a Jew and they end up making a scene there. In 2010! I’m not talking about the fact that they are in a hotel and the other guests might not even be Germans, but I find it utterly implausible the author’s affirmation that Germans nowadays are anti-Semitic and are keen to show this in public, not to mention the fact that I don’t really think people can tell someone is a Jew just by their appearance. That said, I have never been in Germany myself.

So I’ll pretend I haven’t read such a scene because, overall, this was a good book; I enjoyed reading about real musicians of the past, as well as wondering if we’ll ever find out about the mysteries that have been kept secret.

And after the fire
Lauren Belfer
Published by Harper
464 pages