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 handmaid’s tale, by Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood

When I first came across this book, I didn’t bother to read the synopsis, assuming it would be a medieval tale of some sort (the illustration on the cover made me think so, the word “handmaid” helped as well); something I would enjoy, but nothing “special” I should consider reading as soon as possible, until I began to read about the TV series and the actual plot of the book. I found a medieval tale, yes, but not the kind I expected.

Offred (meaning “Of Fred”, the name of the man who owns her) is the narrator of her own tale, a story of a country that turned itself from a so called democracy into a patriarchal dictatorship in which a few privileged people live more or less as the time before, whereas the rest serve them. For the women this means they have to provide healthy children for the regime, but not freely with their husbands, but submitted to their owners and separated from their families. Love is forbidden. Friendship is forbidden. Culture is forbidden for women too. To make things worse, Offred lived in “the time before”, so she had to be reeducated in a special centre to serve to this new society, and she often goes back in time in her narration to talk about the life she had with Luke and their little daughter, her mother, her best friend Moira…

The book addresses the assumption of human adaptability to whatever the circumstances we face. The issue here is that the political environment doesn’t change for the better, for the achieving of more freedom and favorable rights for the people, as we foresee as the path for future generations, but instead it goes for restrictions and terror for the majority of the population. And as the author has said, this idea is not her own, but borrowed from history (nazism, for example). And yet the heroine is not so, in the usual understanding of a character fighting to take her life back, but instead she just goes with the flow, paralyzed by the fear and living the life this new patriarchal elite has decided for her. And that’s what I liked about her because, in my eyes, she is real. I mean, most of us have probably gone to a protest march against any political issue or another, but would you go if you were likely to be imprisoned for life, or even executed? I am sure I wouldn’t, and this fact made me sympathize deeply with Offred.

This is the second book by Margaret Atwood that I read (Cat’s eye was the first), and I have found them very different regarding the plot but with similar characters; both women, both confronting a situation they can’t or don’t know how to face, and both lonely and carrying such sadness over their shoulders.

PS1.: The ending, which will not be discussed here, was absolutely great because it is open to many possibilities.

PS2.: I listened to the audiobook narrated by Claire Danes and she is the protagonist in my mind. I love her, by the way.

The handmaid’s tale
Margaret Atwood
Anchor Books
311 pages

Let me be Frank with you, by Richard Ford

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Richard Ford

As I am writing this, I am trying to decide whether I want to finish this book or not…

This was a book club pick, probably based on the fact that Richard Ford was the Princess of Asturias (Spain) award-winning for literature in 2016, but this particular book is a collection of short stories in which the main character, Frank Bascombe, is the character of three previous novels that, needless to say, I haven’t read. So I think this is not the most appropriate choice to start reading Ford.

Now regarding the stories (the book contains four short stories), Ford uses Frank Bascombe as an instrument to explain how it is to be American; and this has a good side and a bad side for a foreign reader. First the bad, which is basically the amount of references to situations or places that I can’t understand because I don’t share the author’s culture on this regard: I don’t know if he is being critic, sarcastic or funny when he addresses a certain neighborhood or town because it is assumed that the reader knows what he is talking about. And I have no idea; I didn’t get many of the points he tried to make. I don’t want to blame Ford entirely, for I am sure that some of the unseen references are plain ignorance of my part, but the cultural gap is there too.

However, what I did understand made me think I was reading a great book on American life. The two stories I read were basically an internal monologue of Bascombe, with no action, and through this character he addresses interesting issues like being black in a white neighborhood, how to be politically correct without being overwhelmed about being politically correct, or the problem with the American soldiers returning from Iraq to find that the idea of themselves and the country they were fighting for was just wrong. Bascombe is amusing because he is unable to act as a normal person, but I got to like the man – I agreed with him most of the time.

Well, maybe I have convinced myself a little towards finishing Let me be Frank with you, but what I am sure of is that I want to try another novel of Richard Ford. Perhaps Canada…

Have you ever experienced this cultural gap with a book? I think it could be solved with a proper work of the translator explaining the things the reader has not knowledge of. It might be tricky because, as I said, I assume the reader’s ignorance plays its part, but not entirely impossible.

Let me be Frank with you
Richard Ford
Bloomsbury Publishing
240 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

Summer thrillers 2016 (#MiniReviews)

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Paula Hawkins, Shannon Kirk, Terry Hayes

Summer is definitely a time for reading thrillers. I enjoy sitting down in the coolest room at home and turn pages like crazy, oblivious to the heat outside, trying to make the summer pass a little faster too…

Here is a quick summary of what I have read lately on this genre.

I am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes

Do you like books on Islamic terrorism? Neither do I, and that’s why you have to read this book! The author turns a subject I actually dislike into a story I was hooked on from beginning to end. That is something, don’t you think?

The book follows the advances of the ultimate terrorist on his master plan to destroy the western culture – a plan which has been carefully designed throughout his entire life and admits no failure – and his nemesis: an American secret agent, the best among the best. The action mixed with the protagonists’ backgrounds makes this book fascinating. I was so tense and edgy while reading it that, in a way, it was a relief when it finished. One never knows if it’s going to end well or not.

5/5 stars

Method 15/33, by Shannon Kirk

This is a story of a pregnant teenager that has been kidnapped, but she is an exceptionally gifted child, and her captors are the ones who should be scared, for she plans to make them pay.

This story is pure entertainment and the main character, being so different from a normal sixteen-year-old girl, together with the peculiar personality of one of the agents that are trying to find her, make you have a great time. Nevertheless, I expected a different momentum in the story, and the epilogue was too long for my liking, and that’s the reason it doesn’t have many stars.

3/5 stars

Girl on the train, by Paula Hawkins

Everybody knows this one already!

Yes, I was hooked on at the beginning. Yes, I enjoyed it. BUT I read a book at the beginning of the year written by the French Pierre Lemaitre that had the same plot twist and was so superior to Girl on the train in many aspects, that I couldn’t avoid comparison between the two. And Hawkin’s book loses.

I’m sorry, I expected more excitement.

3/5 stars

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

My brilliant friend, by Elena Ferrante

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Elena Ferrante

The so-called Ferrante Fever reached my country some months ago with this book series titled “The Neapolitan novels”, and I decided to read it just because everybody was reading it. However, what I found was not the typical bestseller, meaning a thriller you are hooked on for a couple of days, but a slow story about a complex friendship between two girls, framed in a low-class Italian neighbourhood.

Lila is brilliant; a girl who can achieve whatever she desires to, resourceful, witty and with charisma. On the other hand Lenù, our narrator, is an introvert, hard-working and not so outstanding girl. She is very good at school and she gets to study further courses than the majority of her classmates but, somehow, Lila always seems to go ahead of her in every aspect of their lives, making Lenù fight an internal battle between trying to be better than Lila and the feeling of guilt about her disloyalty to her friend.

The narration is set in the fifties in Naples, in a society in which everything seems to be like in the past. Girls are expected to find a suitable husband, the sooner the better, a task described as the finest art in the book; the richest families will always be superior and respected; the boys will always dominate their female friends and find any excuse to start a fight… But for our young protagonists there is also the hope that you can be something else through education, which is the only thing Lila and Lenù have in common: their willingness to learn and dream higher lives for themselves. However, they both are confined within the borders of this small place they live in, whose rules are hard to break.

My Spanish edition

It took me a long time to read the book; as I told you at the beginning, this is not a page-turner, but a slow narration that takes its time but does invite you to keep on reading. I enjoyed the dichotomy Lenù faces regarding this peculiar friendship; she depends on Lila in a way her friend does not, and that makes the relationship unbalanced and, therefore, the story interesting.

The only negative thing I have to point out is the abrupt ending – a chapter is over and the story doesn’t continue, hanging on in the middle of a scene, so to speak, for you to pick up the second volume I guess… Which I will soon do.

Are you also a victim of the #FerranteFever?

My brilliant friend
Elena Ferrante
Published by Europa Editions
331 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