Book Review: Have Mother, Will Travel by Claire and Mia Fontaine

I think when I go home, I'll see female colleagues less in terms of our age differences and more in terms of the shared experiences of our gender. (Mia Fontaine, ch. 13)

Claire Fontaine and her daughter Mia take a trip to seven countries in Asia and Europe, to renew and strengthen their mother-daughter relationship, to find out more about themselves, and to find out about other women around the globe.

They travel to China, Malaysia, Nepal, Cairo, Greece and the Balkans, and to Avignon in France as well as to Budapest. There they interact with and observe other women, mothers and their daughters, as well give us the feel and the flavor of the countries they visit. The trip is designed as a scavenger hunt for the travel group they are with, where each group chooses things or places, foods or events to find and experience. Along the way, mother and daughter manage their inevitable conflicts, ask each other pointed personal questions, and share new discoveries.

Reading the book was having an interesting armchair travel experience, seeing the countries and people from their points of view and also learning about the shared history that made up their first memoir, Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back. Mia has come a long way from the runaway teenager and user that she had been to a more independent and responsible woman and daughter.

I did find myself confusing one person with the other while I was reading, as mother and daughter share chapters, both writing as in a journal. Claire's entries are in regular print and Mia's thoughts are in italics. As I found their writing styles not too dissimilar, I would forget to switch and would sometimes read Mia's entries thinking it was Claire's and vice versa. That was the only confusion for me, keeping them straight at all times, in spite of the difference in the fonts.

I like that you can pick up the book and start at any chapter. Here is an excerpt from Claire's thoughts, chapter nine:

My heart and soul, however, came alive in Plovdiv, a verdant, historic hilltop town in Bulgaria.Till now, I wasn't sure why. As Mia and I sit for lunch against a low stone wall and a cascade of ivy tendrils and the wind blows the little green corkscrews across my cheek, I suddenly understand....
It lies on the same latitude, exactly, as Cleveland Heights, where I was born and spent much of my childhood. It has the same plants and flowers, the same trees, insects, climates and constellations, the same fragrance, light, and colors. One I hadn't been surrounded by in decades.

I did enjoy their travel narratives and interactions best of all.

For more reviews of the book, visit the TLC Book Tour schedule.

Title: Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World by Claire and Mia Fontaine
Published April 2, 2013; William Morrow paperback
Objective rating: 4/5
Genre:  memoir, travel

Claire Fontaine is a former screenwriter living in the US and Europe. She is a certified relationship and life coach. Mia Fontaine is a motivational speaker who has written for the New York Times, blogs for Ms. Magazine, and is at work on a narrative nonfiction book. She lives in New York City. Find them at their website or on Facebook.

Thanks to the publisher and TLC Book Tours for a review copy of the book.

Linked to Cym Lowell's Book Review Link Up/Ben's Recovery Fund.

Book Review: What Alice Forgot, A Novel by Liane Moriarty

Title: What Alice Forgot: A Novel

Author: Liane Moriarty

Genre: women's fiction, fiction

Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 432 pages, hardcover

Publication date: June 2, 2011

Source: Publisher

Objective rating: 4.75/5

"Tacky? I said that? I said that about you? I would never say that!" Alice was horrified. Had she turned into a nasty person who judged people by their choice of career? She'd always been proud of Elisabeth. She was the smart one, the one who was going places, while Alice stayed safely put. (ch. 7)

About: Alice Love, age 29, is in love with her husband and expecting their first child. She remembers buying a wonderful old house with two stone lions in the front whom they name George and Mildred. One day she wakes up in the hospital after suffering a concussion from a bad fall at the gym and is told that it's really ten years later, she is 39, and she has lost all memory of the past ten years. She must face the fact that she has three children under the age of 10 whom she doesn't remember, and that she is about to get a divorce from the husband she adores, Nick.

Alice notices she is skinnier than she used to be at 29, as she often works out at the gym, a place she used to hate. She finds she is in a strained relationship with her older sister, Elisabeth, and even with some of her friends and her former friendly neighbor. Alice tries to remember the ten years she has dropped from her memory and to change the past back to the one she knows, if she can. In the middle of this, one name keeps cropping up in conversations, a name she doesn't recall - Gina.

Comments: I enjoyed the premise of the book - a woman who forgot the past and is trying to rectify or change what she had done or become. It kept me reading just to find out how successful she would be, how she would react on meeting her three children as if for the first time, how she would gradually discover what happened in the past ten years.  

The author is an excellent storyteller and knows how to keep her readers guessing. The story is told  from three perspectives - Alice's, her sister Elisabeth's, and their honorary grandmother Frannie's. Her main character Alice is likable and sympathetic, and the other characters are also very realistic, especially Elisabeth, whose story is as moving as Alice's. I would recommend the book to all who are interested in the nature of family and friendships. 

About the author: Liane Moriarty has written Three Wishes and The Last Anniversary, translated into several languages. She also writes the Nicola Berry series for children. Liane lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and two young children.  

Book Reviews: "The Long Goodbye: a Memoir" and "Please Look After Mom: a Novel"

I found two excellent library books on similar subjects dealing with lost mothers, so am reviewing them together.

The Long Goodbye: A memoir by Meghan O'Rourke (April 14, 2011)
chronicles the days leading up to and the months after the death of the author's mother after a long illness. The book will resonate with anyone who has lost a close family member; it also discusses our society's general lack of mourning rituals that go beyond the period of death and burial. People go about their lives after the death of a loved one, but very often they may continue to mourn, very often alone and in silence. Fifteen months after her mother's death, O'Rourke is still affected by not having her mother in her life, but has come to a kind of acceptance. Heartbreaking and honest. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Please Look After Mom: a Novel by Korean author Kyung-Sook Shin
 (April 5, 2011) tells us about the children of a Korean woman whose mother is missing after being separated from her husband on a visit to the big city in the crowded and unfamiliar subway. The mother is elderly and becoming disoriented and forgetful; her daughter has only recently realized that her mother cannot read or write. They don't know how to go about finding the mother, apart from posting newspaper notices, searching through the streets, and passing out leaflets with her picture.

During their search, the children find out more about their mother and each member of the family gradually comes to have a deeper understanding of her and the life of sacrifice she has lived.

Set in Korea, I find the novel both culturally revealing and haunting in its view of a family's dynamics and a mother's relationship with her children and husband. Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Book Review: Mothers and Daughters, a Novel by Rae Meadows

Mothers and Daughters: A Novel by Rae Meadows

"When a box of Iris's belongings arrives on Sam's doorstep, she discovers things about her mother she never knew - or could even guess...

But she is puzzled by much of what she finds. She learns that Violet, the woman she knows as her grandmother, left New York City as an eleven-year-old girl and found a better life in the  Midwest. But what was the real reason behind Violet's journey? And how could she have come that far on her own at such a tender age?"

Book description: Mothers and Daughters is a luminous novel about three generations of women, the love they share, the dreams they refuse to surrender, and the secrets they hold.

Comments: I enjoy reading books that explore the relationships between mothers and daughters. This one is especially interesting because of the secrets discovered by Samantha about her mother Violet and her grandmother Iris. Uncovering history and the thread that connect three generations of women is the theme of the story.
The ARC I received from the publisher has an added bonus - an audio CD of the novel read by Maggi-Meg Reed.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (March 29, 2011)
Source: ARC from publisher
Genre: women's fiction

Author: Rae Meadows is author of Calling Out, which received the 2006 Utah Book Award for fiction and No One Tells Everything, a Poets & Writers Notable Novel. She lives in Minneapolis, Minn. Visit her website at http://www.raemeadows.com/

Book Review: Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Teaser Tuesdays asks you to choose two sentences at random from your current read. Identify the author and title for readers.

"Lucy isn't as happy as she should be.  She has some doubts."

"Rubbish!" Ted's mother exclaimed. "She had no doubts. Not until you manufactured them for her." (p. 25)

Call Me Irresistible: A Novel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Comments: I had some doubts about the main character, Meg Koranda, who had some reservations about her best friend's fiance, Ted Beaudine. Meg convinced Lucy Jorik that Lucy had made the wrong choice in a husband and helped her back out of the wedding. Was this self serving and did Meg have her eye on the bridegroom for herself?  Both Meg and Lucy are children of high profile parents. The sudden canceling of the wedding on the wedding day was a scandal. At the end of the book, I still couldn't decide if Meg knew all along what she wanted, or if things happened by chance in this interesting romance. By all means read it and let us know what you think!

Publisher's description: "Lucy Jorik is the daughter of a former president of the United States.
Meg Koranda is the offspring of legends.

One of them is about to marry Mr. Irresistible—Ted Beaudine—the favorite son of Wynette, Texas. The other is not happy about it and is determined to save her friend from a mess of heartache.

But even though Meg knows that breaking up her best friend's wedding is the right thing to do, no one else seems to agree. Faster than Lucy can say "I don't," Meg becomes the most hated woman in town—a town she's stuck in with a dead car, an empty wallet, and a very angry bridegroom. Broke, stranded, and without her famous parents at her back, Meg is sure she can survive on her own wits. What's the worst that can happen? Lose her heart to the one and only Mr. Irresistible? Not likely. Not likely at all."
 
Hardcover: 400 pages. Publisher: William Morrow (January 18, 2011). Source: Publisher. Genre: romantic fiction. Objective rating: 3.75/5.

Book Review: The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meier

The Season of Second Chances: A Novel by Diane Meier

Synopsis: After 15 years teaching among dry, competitive, and unfeeling academics at Columbia University in New York, Joy Harkness leaves for Amherst College in Massachusetts, where she finds warm hearted people, friends, the perfect house to refurbish for her own, and a lover. Divorced, she is given a second chance at life.

My comments: Friendship and community in a small city are balanced against hard driving ambition, competition and the fast life of a big city. I liked the theme of the benefits of a less complicated life among friends at work and at home. The novel was well written, the characters engaging.

However, I found the character of the handyman/lover of Joy's somewhat inconsistent. Teddy appears very capable and sensitive to adults and children and yet has an overpowering weakness that seems out of character with the smart person he is. Joy however is the likeable and consistent person to follow in this "season of second chances." Anyone interested in reading contemporary women's fiction should enjoy this novel.

Author: Diane Meier
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1 edition (March 30, 2010)
Genre: Women's fiction
Source: ARC from publisher
My objective rating: 3.75 to 4

Book Review:The Blind Contessa's New Machine and author interview

The Blind Contessa's New Machine: A Novel by Carey Wallace, published 2010.
Genre: historical novel

My comments: Wonderful descriptive writing, capturing the surroundings and the delicate feelings of the Contessa Carolina Fantoni during the gradual loss of her sight. We follow her amazing ability to cope with daily life.

The book is set in Italy in the early 19th century. I read it as the story of a young woman's coping with a new husband and home and the narrowing of her world visually. Carolina, the Contessa, relies on the devotion of a friend Pellegrino Turri, an inventor who creates and makes a typewriting machine for her to continue her correspondence with friends. Turri is also married, but his relationship with Carolina develops into much more than ordinary friendship.

Carolina also has her dreams, which allow her to create a new world for herself. I found this part of the novel lyrical and insightful, and the emotional journey of the Contessa poignant, her story bittersweet.

Here is an excerpt from page 86:

For those first several weeks, the darkness was complete. But then Carolina began to see again in her dreams.

At first the glimpses were so slim, they might only have been memories; the sun blazing through the new spring leaves, which seemed to be in danger of disintegrating in its rays; a box her mother kept by her bed, red cloth, embroidered with a white parrot; a silver bowl full of lemons.

The ending of the novel was an interesting surprise, subject to more than one interpretation, but the basic facts follow the true story of the Contessa and her intimate friend.

Here is what Carey Wallace, the author, has to say about her novel. Welcome, Carey!

(photo by Alicia Hansen)

1. What inspired you to write an historical novel set in Italy?

The evocative details of the actual invention of the typewriter inspired me to write the story: a beautiful blind woman, an inventor who’s inspired to create the first typewriter out of love for her, and the fact that they were both married to other people. The added fact that the typewriter really was invented in Italy was just another lucky element in a wonderful collection of historical scraps. But I was delighted to get to create a corner of a fictional Italy, since I think Italy occupies a special place in the imaginative landscape of the whole world: from the Greek and Roman myths that still dominate so much of western fiction, to more modern writers like E.M. Forster who find Italy to be a playground for the imagination – it’s a place where, at least in literature, anything can happen.

2. How much of your book is based on actual people and facts?

When the first typewriter was invented, nobody knew it was the first typewriter. The inventor wasn’t the same person who eventually commercialized it, so the historical details are scarce, but I did work within them. The typewriter really was invented by Pellegrino Turri for Carolina Fantoni, a noblewoman who went blind in her early twenties. Using the machine, they carried on a correspondence of only a few years, which ended around the time Carolina’s family moved away from the area. The original machine was returned to Turri’s family upon Carolina’s death, and it does not survive: only a handful of her letters that prove that she was in possession of the first machine to fit the modern definition of typewriter. 

3. The description of the Contessa's gradual loss of sight seems very realistic. Do you have first hand experience with people who are blind or have lost their sight?

Thankfully, I don’t – although I’ve always valued the fact that my near-sightedness gives me more than one way to see the world. The descriptions of blindness in the story date back almost ten years, to a church retreat when I wound up in a room with a woman who worked for an eye doctor. Over the years, she had learned to read patient tests well enough that she could diagnose problems herself, and sometimes knew that a patient was destined for blindness before the doctor told them. This was a difficult weight for her to carry, and she spent several hours explaining different varieties of blindness to me in extraordinary detail. For years, I struggled to write about this experience. It just never seemed to fit anywhere I tried to put it. But over time, my writing went through a shift. Instead of trying to manage the trauma of the world through my work, or even to bear witness to it, I got interested in creating new worlds. Pain still had a place, but it was transformed. And the simple stories of modern patients struggling as they lost their sight finally emerged, reborn as The Blind Contessa’s New Machine. 

4. How much and what research did you have to do for the novel?

As a writer, I’m interested in evocative scraps of history that provide jumping off points for the imagination. The story of the invention of the typewriter is an almost perfect example of this: a small but wonderful group of facts mostly garbled beyond recognition on the internet or collected with more accuracy in out-of-print books by typewriter aficionados. I tracked down the previously-printed facts thoroughly, but there weren’t many to find, which gave me the leeway to create with abandon around the kernel of the true story.

5. I was a little puzzled by the ending. Can you enlighten us a bit about your decision to end the novel in the way it did?

The Blind Contessa’s New Machine really has two distinct narrative arcs: one that tells the story of the romantic complications surrounding the invention of the typewriter, and a far more private story about a young woman creating a world of her own making to inhabit as blindness steals the sighted world from her. To me, that story is at the heart of the book, and has a true resolution by the end. The romantic arc, as with so many actual romantic arcs, doesn’t have such neat resolution. That’s deliberate: it’s meant to question whether the meaning of the book was ever really to be found in the romantic arc, and send readers looking for the meaning Carolina finds for herself, outside of the relationships she has with Turri and her husband.

6. Some of your favorite authors and books?

Penelope Fitzgerald is my favorite modern author. She began writing fiction to entertain her dying husband when she was already over sixty, and won a Booker Prize less than five years later. Her books are slim, intelligent, beautiful, and so strong you can get drunk on the first sip. She’s got a sharp eye, but a generous heart—a rare combination. And she can set her novels convincingly in Russia, Italy, or on the Thames. Julio Cortazar is the writer I name most often as my favorite: even in translation, his writing breaks into some category beyond prose, and his books work more like dreams than stories. I love Hawthorne best among American authors, followed by Raymond Chandler, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Tennessee Williams, along with a deep affection for Cornell Woolrich, whose hypnotic prose I sometimes think works not in spite of but because of its imperfections. Dostoyevesky and Tolstoy are always the cornerstones of anything I’ve managed to learn about books, balanced on the side of wonder by Borges and Marquez. A portrait of the Bronte sisters, with their brother Branwell painted out, has hung over my desk since I was a teenager. I’ve read both Gone With The Wind and The Count of Monte Cristo many times. I read Thomas Merton almost daily. And Flannery O’Connor helps me in a host of ways, not least of which is her sheer cussedness. 

7. Are you working on another book at this time?

I am working on five other books: one about a girl who falls in love with a ghost who can’t remember who he was before he died, one about the secret bride of a train robber, one about a young vampire, one about the relationship between art and faith, and one about my family’s experience with my mother’s chronic illness, lupus – the disease that killed Jack London and Flannery O’Connor. This is no guarantee, however, that any of these will be the next to appear.

8. Is there anything else you would like to add for readers?

Just my gratitude to them for being readers. The noise and demands of the world get more crushing every year, and no other art form demands as much imagination, attention, and time from people as a book. I think it’s a small miracle every time someone makes the choice to read, and I hope you’ll find The Blind Contessa’s New Machine offers you a real gift in return.

9. How can readers reach you?

I’d love to hear from people through my website: http://www.careywallace.com/, or directly at theblindcontessa@gmail.com.

Congratulations again on your novel, Carey, and we wish you the best!

About the author: Carey Wallace grew up in a small town in Michigan. She is the founder of the Hillbilly Underground, a retreat in rural Michigan that draws international artists. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is at work on five other books.

Book Review: Half Life by Roopa Farooki

Half Life by Roopa Farooki

The novel: Aruna Ahmed Jones decides suddenly to leave her physician husband Patrick and return home to Singapore where her old friend and former lover Ejaz or "Jazz" lives.  In the meantime, in Malaysia, Hari Hassan lays dying in a hospital bed, wanting to reconcile with his son Jazz and even to tell him the truth, finally.

"Jazz," he will write, again, and again, until he is heard, "we need to forgive each other. You need to forgive me. You need to let me go." (p. 18)

My reactions: The stories of Hassan, Aruna, and Jazz intertwine and each chapter returns to events in the characters' lives that have led them to their present situations. Hassan's and Aruna's poignant stories and Jazz's love for Aruna carry us on an emotional journey to face the past and deal with the present. The use of numerous flashbacks in the narrative was distracting, however. I didn't find that the technique worked as well in this novel. The story of Hassan, a very sympathetic character, was not linked to Aruna's story until well into the book, although both stories were told from the beginning in different chapters. But the story, in its entirety, is moving and very worthwhile reading.

About the author: Roopa Farooki is the author of The Corner Shop and Bitter Sweets. Born in Pakistan, she grew up in London, attended new College, Oxford, and teaches creative writing at the Canterbury Christ Church University. She lives in England and France.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Title: Half Life
Author: Roopa Farooki
Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
Genre: women's fiction
Source: Library

Book Review: The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

The story helped the miles pass as we listened to the 17 discs over several long trips. The Swan Thieves tells the sad story of a disturbed man and his obsession with a painting which he tried to destroy with a knife in the National Gallery, and the story of the painter and the subject of the canvas he attacked.

The two stories are meshed nicely by author Elizabeth Kostova. My traveling companions thought the purpose of the novel was to tell the story of the artist Beatrice, adding Robert Oliver only as an interesting way to tell her life story as a gifted but thwarted artist.

I thought the names of the people in the story were significant. Beatrice was adored by Robert Oliver and an inspiration for his art in The Swan Thieves, just as a different Beatrice was the muse for the poet Virgil in the Aeneid. Marlow the psychiatrist observes and tells most of Robert's story in Kostova's book, just as a different Marlow observed the crazed Kurtz in Conrad's The Heart of Darkness. The connections just popped into my mind as I listened to The Swan Thieves.

Reactions to the audio version: The voices matched the characters very well, I thought, except in the case of Beatrice. I could tell that the reader was not French and only trying to imitate a French accent for Beatrice. As a result, many of words sounded as if French speaking Beatrice was speaking English with a lisp. Beatrice's lisping bothered me till almost the very end of the audio. The other speakers, including Anne Heche as Robert's first wife, were excellent.

Art lovers and those who like women's fiction will enjoy The Swan Thieves, as will anyone eager for good storytelling.

Review: Nancy's Theory of Style by Grace Coopersmith

Nancy's Theory of Style by Grace Coopersmith (Paperback, May 18, 2010)

Genre: women's fiction, romance

My comments: Nancy's Theory of Style is funny, original. I loved the romance and the characters. Nancy is a perfectionist in her tastes - her dress, her apartment, and her relationships have to be "just so." When she splits from her husband because of what he did to their dream house in her absence - putting a gigantic wet bar in their bedroom, for instance - she leaves for her San Francisco apartment and hires an assistant, Derek, who is equally fastitidous about style. Because he is gay, Nancy assumes their business relationship will work out perfectly.

Nancy's style is put to the test not only by Derek, who becomes increasingly attractive to her, but also by a four year old child literally left on her doorsteps by Nancy's irresponsible cousin, Birdie. How does Nancy cope with toys on the living room floor, a puppy in the closet, and the mayhem that a young child brings?

I can't wait for the next romantic comedy that Grace will write! I loved Nancy's Theory of Style! And not just because I was given a free copy of the book by Simon and Schuster to review! For romatic comedy, I give this a five.

See Grace's guest post: Mayhem Ensues by Grace Coopersmith

Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge,
 

Guest Post by author Grace Coopersmith, Mayhem Ensues

Mayhem Ensues, a guest post by Grace Coopersmith, on her debut romantic comedy,

Nancy's Theory of Style by Grace Coopersmith, (Paperback, May 18, 2010)

Thanks and welcome Grace, for visiting to discuss Nancy's Theory of Style. Why did you switch to this genre? How easy was that for you?

Grace:  I studied literature and creative writing, so naturally I feel guilty about writing romantic comedies. After all, there are so many serious topics to cover: war, pestilence, families ripped apart by abuse and addiction, political corruption. These fabulous topics can be paired with characters who feel a sense of ennui, or alienation, or unspecified rage. I’m utterly dazzled by the range of Oprahish subjects that reveal moral depravity in a convenient, fictionalized form.

Sometimes I daydream about writing such a book. It will be in dispassionate third-person, present tense natch, and I’ll strive to make it simultaneously stark and turgid. It will have tortured metaphors and detail so painstaking that readers will wish they were having a root canal instead. In other words: it would have artistic merit. I’d be able to tell my intellectual friends that I’m working on this noble tome, and they would be impressed and invite me to speak at their book clubs.

Instead, when people ask me what I do, I mumble, “Comedy, um, set in San Francisco, er, young woman, very stylish, contemporary…Oh, are those grilled prawns on the buffet?”

Why do I do it then, when I must suffer the scorn that accompanies a writer of, ugh, romantic comedies? Because I am deeply and irrevocably flawed. Because I would rather laugh than cry. Because I’m delighted when I make others laugh.

My agent told me that I can’t use the term “romantic comedy” to describe my books. “It’s the kiss of death,” she said. Frankly, I have a hard time keeping up with publishers’ What’s Hot/What’s Not Hot lists. Anyway, Nancy’s Theory of Style is a romantic comedy about a young socialite, Nancy Carrington-Chambers, who leaves her gauche husband and their tacky McMansion. She returns to her pied-a-terre in posh Pacific Heights to focus on her event planning company, Froth.

Nancy hires the perfect assistant. Derek Cathcart is a British, gay, and impeccable. Then Nancy’s irresponsible cousin deposits her four-year-old in Nancy’s care and takes off to places unknown. You know what I’m going to say now, right? Sure, you do. Mayhem ensues! I love that phrase. There is a party that goes tragically awry. Parties that go tragically awry are a common theme in my stories. And in my life. But let’s not go there.

When I wrote Nancy’s Theory of Style, I was thinking of our society’s materialism. People were overextending themselves to buy horrible huge houses with rooms they never used. There was a sense of entitlement. There was a sense that things could provide happiness. I also thought of those women who have an unrealistic list of requirements for any man. Then they wonder why they’re alone.

So my message, if any, is that perfection is not only unachievable, it is undesirable. The quirks in life make it interesting and beautiful.

-------------------
Thanks so much, Grace, for giving us so much insight into your new book! Here is my Review of Nancy's Theory of Style

Grace Coopersmith is one and the same as Marta Acosta, author of the CASA DRACULA books. 

 

Book Review: Pearl of China by Anchee Min

Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min (Hardcover - March 30, 2010)

Very moving; excellent writing. I learned a lot about the China that author Pearl Buck grew up in and left, its history from the 1880s to after Nixon's visit and China's admission to the U.N. in the early 1980s. About 100 years of history, plus a fictional account of Buck's friendships in her former home in China, where she lived with her missionary parents, Absalom and Carie Sydenstricker.

The author weaves Pearl Buck's life into the historical novel, which is about the friendship between a young girl, Willow, whom Pearl meets in the small town of Chin-Kiang. This friendship continues into adulthood, through Pearl's marriage to Lossing Buck,  and even after the writer left China for good. The friendship lasts through the Boxer Revolution and anti-foreign sentiment, through the war with Japan, the Communist Revolution, and even to the time of Pearl's death in the U.S. in the 1980s. Anchee Kim has changed the dates of some of the historical events for the sake of her fiction, but she has kept the flavor of China, and certainly brought me to tears with her accounts of the kinds of atrocities that happened during  the Cultural Revolution.

Most moving of all was that Pearl was not granted a visa to accompany President Nixon on his historic visit to China in 1972. She was not allowed to return there after almost 40 years' absence, in spite of her sympathetic and moving depictions of the ordinary Chinese peasants in books such as The Good Earth.  Madame Mao, the instigator and leader of the Cultural Revolution, blocked her visit saying the country had declared Pearl, who openly opposed Mao, an "American imperialist." Pearl Buck died in Pennsylania in 1973 at age 81, not long after Nixon's visit to China.

Beautifully written and heart rending in parts, Pearl in China is a deserving homage to the Nobel Prize-winning author, Pearl S. Buck.

Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge, China Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge

 

Library Loot: Mysteries and Women's Fiction

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg @ ReadingAdventures and Eva at A Striped Armchair.

I've done it again. I've gone to the library and borrowed too many books, all of them unusual in their genre, a few downright bizarre. I have an eye for mysteries and books set in exotic places - that's the armchair traveler in me.

Here's what I found in the mystery genre:

Snakes Can't Run: A Mystery by Ed Lin. (Hardcover - March 30, 2010).
"An epic of New York Chinatown noir in the vein of George Pelecanos and Richard Price. This is the riveting sequel to This Is a Bust." (Minotaur Books description, front flap). I was intrigued by the book cover, a photo of a woman's back tattoed with a phoenix and Chinese characters. The author's web address, edlinforpresident.com, shows his sense of humor.

Arabesk: Inspector Ikmen #3 by Barbara Nadel (Paperback - July 25, 2009). "Confined to his home on sick leave... Inspector Ikmen of the Istanbul police is forced to hand his latest case over to his protege, the newly promoted Suleyman....At the real heart of this operatic catastrophe, are the conflicts inherent to the city itself." (Publisher's description).

A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta by Paul Theroux. (Hardcover - Feb. 11, 2010). Paul Theroux, well-known travel writer, tries his hand at crime fiction. I'm half-way into the novel and think I've already figured out the culprits and the motives. Can't wait to see if I'm correct.

To balance things out, I borrowed three contemporary works of fiction by women authors:

 Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz. (Hardcover - June 9, 2009). "A breathtakingly honest, gloriously written memoir about the complexities of forgiveness - the story of a young widow who discovers her husband's secret life only after his sudden death." (Publisher's description, front flap).  I was attracted by the cover, the title, and the summary on the book jacket. Can't wait to read this one.

Pearl of China: A Novel by Anchee Min. (Hardcover - March 30, 2010). Set in the end of the 19th century in China, the book tells the story of the young Pearl S. Buck, later a Nobel Prize-winning author, and her new Chinese friend, Willow, whose friendship endures through adulthood and the tumultous years that follow. I assume the novel is based on historical fact and want to know more about Pearl Buck's life in China.

Noah's Compass
 by Anne Tyler ( Hardcover - Jan. 5, 2010). "From the
incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life." (Publisher's description, front flap). That first paragraph was all I needed to borrow the book!

I think I came away with a great set of library books. Now to read them all...among others, is the challenge.