Review: Kill Me Softly

Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A long time ago, in the year 2000, I graduated with a Master of Arts in English.  Despite the fact that there was no formal path for this at my university, I focused my studies on fairy tales--specifically, the literary fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and others.  My interest in fairy tales coincided with a boom in scholarship about them.  Jack Zipes, Maria Tatar, Ruth Bottigheimer, Donald Haase, and more were establishing that fairy tales were an appropriate area to study and that the tales were far more complicated than we remembered.  They also examined the ways in which fairy tales have been reused, revised, and repurposed by modern artists.  Zipes, in particular, studied the cultural work of Disney and didn't like what he saw.



After having devoted about three years of my life to studying fairy tales, I decided to purpose a more standard path of study and did my doctoral work on nineteenth-century British literature.  However, since I can't stand to be too mainstream, I at least focused on the Gothic as a subgenre. 



In the years since then, I've kept my eyes out for fairy tale retellings.  I'm still fascinated by the short tales and the hold they exercise over our cultural imagination.  I was delighted to find Sarah Cross's Kill Me Softly, and even more excited when I received an advance reader's copy of the book from Netgalley.



After reading this book, I set down my nook and simply said "yes."  Finally, here, an author has explored fairy tales in a way that gets to the darkness at their root while still creating a new and interesting mythology of her own.  Finally.  Yes.



The book opens with a startlingly apt quotation from Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire.  "I don't want realism.  I want magic!" Blanche DuBois states, and that sentiment shapes this novel.



Mira has lived her entire life in the care of her godmothers.  They're lovely, kind, and caring women, and they took in Mira as an infant after her parents died in a fire at her christening.  Now that she's nearly sixteen, Mira is horrified to betray them, but she also feels that needs to do something that's been nagging at her for years.  She needs to return to the town of her birth, Beau Rivage, and visit her parents' graves.  Since this means running away from home, Mira is willing to do that.  She's planned her escape well by creating a false trail leading to a make-believe online boyfriend.  But she's never managed to plan what to do once she arrives in Beau Rivage, and that realization hits her shortly after her arrival in the city.



Mira finds herself alone in a casino cafe called Wish, and it's here that her plan starts going awry.  She meets another teen, a young man with blue hair, who calls himself Blue.  He tries to get her to leave the casino (which is called Dream), claiming to be the son of the owner.  Blue wants her to leave before she can meet his brother . . . and he fails.  Mira does meet his brother, Felix, and falls for him.  Hard.  Felix comps her a room at Dream, and he vows to help her find the graves.



Dismayed to find that she hasn't left, and horrified that she's met Felix, Blue attaches himself to Mira as well.  The two brothers don't share their time with her; instead, she seems to drift between them a bit like a pinball.  Quickly, Mira becomes aware that Blue's friends are odd.  They share inside jokes that disturb Mira, and none of them are really happy.  Viv has a wicked stepmother (sorry, normal stepmother, Freddie explains) and an obsessive gardener with a crush on her.  The apple logo on her laptop is covered by tape.  Small animals and birds cluster around Freddie, who is helpless to push them away.  Still, Mira isn't freaked out too much until Viv's mirror tells the girl that she's gorgeous, which is something she clearly doesn't want to hear.  They talk of curses, and stop when they realize Mira is listening.



As the cover copy makes clear, fairy tales are real in Beau Rivage.  Mira is shocked to learn that, just like Blue and his friends, she too has a role to play.  And fairy tales are not pleasant stories at all.



Cross is an elegant writer, and she deftly explores the menace and beauty that attracts readers to these tales.  However, she's not content to let them rest with the "happy ever after" versions that we've come to know in the last 100 years of children's stories.  Instead, she looks back to the tales when Cinderella's sisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the slipper (and the prince didn't notice until birds told him that blood was spurting out of the shoe!).  She's clearly read the darkly wonderful collection of tales by Angela Carter called The Bloody Chamber.  The first line of one of the stories in that book, "The Tyger's Bride," is wonderfully evocative of the entire book's tone: "My father lost me to the beast at cards."



Thrust by her own stubbornness and desire into a world that both confuses and attracts her, Mira must learn to navigate the rules in order to survive.  She must decide which brother to trust, which tales are true, and she must learn how to shape her own fate.  Otherwise, she may just become a character in someone else's story, and she won't like how that one ends at all.



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Review: Die for Me

Die for Me by Amy Plum

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Wow. I have very little to say about this book. While I liked it in the beginning, as it wore on, the book seemed to lost both originality and charm. I did like the fact that Kate, the heroine, recognizes that Vincent's devotion to her and need of her may become a burden. But other than that, there's very little here. The novel presents no real insights into life, the human condition, sacrifice, or what it means to love. Instead, we have a story about an insecure young woman suffering from depression after the recent death of her parents discovering love for the first time with an impossibly gorgeous supernatural man. Yawn.

*start rant* Also, I have to add that I'm getting really sick of Absentee Parent Syndrome in young adult novels. It's normally just irritating. However, in this book, Kate's parents are dead, and it's a case of Depressed Orphan Syndrome. While Plum does a good job portraying Kate's depression at the loss of her parents, I have to say I'm getting sick of dead parents as a plot device. As an orphan myself, I find it rather sickening. *end rant*



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World Book Night

I picked up my books for World Book Night today. In one week, I get to walk around Detroit and give them away. I can't wait.

Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



On April 23, 2012, I will be giving away 20 copies of this book as a part of World Book Night in Detroit.

In order to be better able to "sell" the book (aka, convince people to take a free book from me), I bought a copy and read it. I started the book yesterday afternoon and I finished it today--before noon.

There is very little that I can say about this book that has not already been said. It is tragic, and hopeful, and incredibly painful. I cried as I read about Henrietta Lacks' death. I found the struggles of her children heart-wrenching as well.

Skloot explains that she originally wanted to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks, in part because so little was known about her as a person--despite all of the knowledge about the HeLa cells, grown from slices of her cervical tumor. In her effort to learn about Lacks, Skloot contacted a professor that had access to the family. After long, continued effort, Skloot managed to meet and speak with Henrietta Lacks' surviving children. They had been continually abused by the medical community (even having their genetic profiles published in a medical journal without their permission in the 70s), and it was a difficult task to gain their trust. In the process, this book shifted and changed. Originally about Henrietta and the HeLa cells alone, instead it became a book about the Lacks family and the use of tissue cultures in scientific research. Henrietta's surviving daughter, Deborah, specifically wanted the book to be about Henrietta and her older sister, Elsie, who died at 15 in an institution for insane African American patients. (Elsie was not insane--her exact diagnosis remains unknown, but she most likely suffered from a combination of deafness and developmental mental problems.) This also became a book about Deborah and her struggle to understand her mother's role in modern science.

This is a moving, difficult book about a complex situation and a series of ethical mistakes. I highly recommend it to anyone, but especially to those entering the medical field. We must remember the ethical failures of our past so that, just like every important lesson, we don't repeat them.

If there is one final lesson that I think this book teaches, it is that we cannot have such a thing as "informed consent" if don't have an informed population.



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Review: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I originally bought a print copy of this book when the bookstore I was working for closed; I had seen it on the shelf for months, and it kept drawing my eye. In my house, too, the book drew my eye, but I never bothered to pick it up. It was enough to have the book on the shelf.

However, this title was offered as the "Nook Daily Find" at the beginning of February, and when I spent another $2.99 to buy an ebook copy, I realized I had better read it after having paid for two copies. (I donated the print copy to the county library.)

This book was everything I had hoped it would be. It is the story of the murder of Saville Kent, a three-year-old boy, and the subsequent obsessive attention paid to the crime by the newspaper and public. Initially, the local police attempted to solve the crime, but eventually Detective Inspector Jack Whicher of the London Metropolitan Police was sent to lead the investigation. Summerscale illuminates the Victorian obsession with detection as well as their fear of invasive outsiders learning the secrets of the home. Summerscale grounds her book in the legal and newspaper reports of the crime as well as at least one book written about it shortly after young Saville's murder and Whicher's inability to discover the killer. The legal system of Victorian England was alarmingly different from what we know today; for instance, the defendant was not allowed to speak at his/her own trial. The case was bungled by local law enforcement, and when Whicher was sent from London, the case was already cold.

Throughout the book, Summerscale references Victorian sensation fiction--the precursor of today's psychological fiction and the detective novel--to illustrate the public's ambivalent response to the case and to the detective in charge of it. Initially, Whicher is a detective-hero, but as the case grew colder and murkier--and his conclusions more shocking--public opinion turned against him. The highly regarded Inspector Buckett of Bleak House and Sergeant Cuff of The Moonstone become the amateurish Stephen Audley of Lady Audley's Secret, a young man tormented by the crime of detection itself in addition to the crime he is trying to solve.

Some readers may be turned off by Summerscale's extensive use of period documents to trace the crime and its investigation. They may be expecting a more straightforward narrative about the death of a little boy. That's not what this book is. Instead, this is an analysis of a moment in Victorian England where a boy is killed, a detective is maligned, and the public becomes aware of the number of secrets that may be hiding in a middle class home. I loved every minute of this book.



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Review: Moonlight in the Morning

Moonlight in the Morning by Jude Deveraux

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Forgive the execrable title. If you're a full member of the Cult of Deveraux, you'll love this book, as I did. If you're a part-time, non-dues paying member, it might not do much for you. If you're completely unfamiliar with Deveraux, I'd recommend going back to Lavender Morning (the start of her Edilean series) and catching up a bit before you hit this one. At the very least, you need to read the contemporary Edileans--Lavender Morning, Scarlet Nights, and Heartwishes. But that's not too much to ask, is it? Read three books in preparation for this one? Ah, who am I kidding? If you're drawn to Deveraux, odds are that you've picked up her books a few times over the years. This book is much like her others--a career woman meets a wonderful, dreamy man who is also a professional and they must figure out if their desire for each other is enough to support them if it means abandoning their work. If you've read Deveraux, or if you have any common sense, you'll be able to see the answer long before her characters. However, I enjoy the ride enough that I don't mind knowing in advance all the curves in the road. As predictable as she is, there is something sweet and satisfying for me in a Deveraux novel. And that's about all I can say.



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Review: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I'm not a zombie fan. I don't go out of my way to watch zombie movies or read zombie books.

But I do enjoy a good zombie story (book or film), and this one was fantastic. The best zombie stuff that I've run into over the years hasn't been about the shuffling undead. Instead, it's about survival and what we're willing to do to see the next day.

Basically, it's the ultimate expression of naturalism, where the world is truly hostile and out to wipe you off the face of the planet. In that vein, wouldn't Jack London's "To Build a Fire" have been better with zombies?



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Review: Ten Things We Did

Ten Things We Did by Sarah Mlynowski

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I'd have to rank this book as merely OK. It was not especially bad, but I also didn't love it.

April is the protagonist. She's a sixteen-year-old with some rather extreme problems, problems that don't become clear very quickly in the novel. As the book opens, April is living with her father and stepmother in New York and learns that the family is moving to Cleveland for her father's new job. Her mother is remarried and lives in France with April's younger brother. April refuses to leave her hometown--and manages to convince her father that she'll be living with her friend Vi, under Vi's mother's supervision. But Vi's mother, Suzanne, is in a traveling production of Mary Poppins, and the two girls will be living alone. To make the situation more implausible, April's mother remembers how flighty Suzanne is, and when she realizes the girls are living alone, she doesn't intervene. Each chapter of the novel is set up around something that April and Vi do that they really should not have done. Some of the problems are slightly silly and don't have serious ramifications, such as their decision to buy Hula the hot tub. Others, such as their decision to adopt a cat, have far reaching implications.

The best part of the book was the psychological realism of April. The plot itself is rather unrealistic--I simply cannot imagine a parent buckling to a teenager's refusal to move to another state. Once you get past that point, the novel becomes more and more interesting. Each of April's decisions illustrates how broken she is. Even before her father announces his new job, April feels isolated from him and her mother. Her refusal to move to Cleveland has less to do with being unwilling to explore a new city and more to do with her unhealthy reliance on her friends and boyfriend as her sole sources of emotional support. April is quite lost, and the burdens she places on her friends are rather unfair in that they are simply not mature enough to bear them as yet. But this is a lesson that April must learn. She's already learned that her parents are not perfect, and she must learn to deal with that as well.

Overall, I thought the novel was well-crafted and well-written, but it simply didn't wow me as much as I had hoped it would. I have the feeling that I would have loved it as a teenager. The sexual content is heavy but not explicit. Some would recommend this book only for older teens; I'd disagree. I'd say this is appropriate for readers 14+, as it does explore the ramifications of teen sexuality in a nuanced and realistic manner rather than simply making it titillating.



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Review: Teen Idol

Teen Idol by Meg Cabot

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is one of my favorite Meg Cabot novels, and I'm surprised I don't read it more often. I'm not too proud to admit that, as a teen, the sort of story in this novel would have been immensely appealing. I was the sort of imaginative kid, weaned on teeny bopper magazines, that could imagine what it would be like if a teen celebrity moved to my town. (And, rumor had it, Patrick Swayze almost did move to my town--but the homeowner refused to sell the stable with the house, and the deal fell through. While Swayze was not a teen at the time, all of us just knew that if he moved to our town, other famous people were bound to visit him . . . and so the daydreaming would start.)

Part of the reason I like this novel so much is because it does present that fantasy, but, at the same time, it doesn't buy into it. Jenny Greenley, the protagonist, is far too sensible to crush on a celebrity--even when he comes to visit her school (undercover, of course) and she's assigned as his two-week tour guide. One of Jenny's friends, Trina, once referred to Jenny as "mayonnaise," and that description has stuck with her forever. Jenny knows that she's the glue that keeps her disparate group of friends together, that smooths things out so that they work. However, when Luke Striker comes to Clayton, Indiana, he upsets her vision of her town and herself. Luke, the stranger, can see what Jenny cannot. She's no bland mayonnaise--she's the special sauce. She's the nice person that can get things done and create real change at her school, if only she'll have the confidence to do it.

There are three things that really bother Jenny at Clayton High--the treatment of a classmate known as "Cara Cow," Jenny's role in the show choir (which is like an evil version of Glee), and the kidnapping of Betty Ann--her Latin teacher's doll. Inspired by Luke's faith in her, Jenny sets out to fix what she can at Clayton.

I love this book because this is Jenny's journey. While Luke's comments might inspire her, she's the one that steps forward and takes action. And, to top it off, it's just plain good fun.



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Review: Tell Me Lies

Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This book wasn't quite what I look for when I Jennifer Crusie's novels. That, in and of itself, could account for the relatively low stars I've given it in comparison to her other works. The dialogue was fun, as it is in every Crusie book, but there wasn't much else to recommend the story.

I'd say this book belongs in a special subset of chick-lit that I like to call "adultery-lit." These are the books wherein a spouse seeks and finds fulfillment outside of marriage. Maddie, our protagonist, has very good reasons for wanting to end her marriage to Brent, but my inner prude doesn't like the timing of her new love interest. Admittedly, part of this book was about Maddie throwing off the chains of expected behavior, so the fact that she engages in an extramarital relationship isn't really all that much of a shocker. It's just not something I enjoy reading too much.

Otherwise, the book was fun and rather entertaining, but it pales in comparison to the better Crusie titles.



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Missing

For the last few days, I’ve been reading a fantastic book: The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.  It’s hitting me with a powerful emotional punch, one that seems to knock out my air every time I set the book down.  I’ve cried several times reading it.  I think it’s because I sympathize too much.

I’m not adopted.  My mother was not adopted.  No one in my family has surrendered a child for adoption.  But, still, I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of it.  As a small child, I learned that I was briefly in foster care.  My mom told me about it, but since she’s been gone for 21 years, I can’t verify anything with her.  And I don’t talk to my father.  But after I learned that I was in foster care, I always wondered what the family that had for me for a time thought.  Did they love me?  Were they sad to see me go?  When they took in this baby, were they aware that it was temporary?  From what I understand, this occurred before my parents’ divorce, when they were trying to work on their marriage.  I was two when they divorced.  (Dad was a real winner and left on my older sister’s fifth birthday.)  I was also briefly taken in by my Uncle Jim and Aunt Rita during my first year.  I don’t think that these fosterings were the same event.  Rita and my cousin always felt a close bond with me due to the time I spent with them.  I’ve never known what Jim thought—he was not a nice man.

Always, in the back of my mind, I’ve known that I was taken in by outsiders (as in outside of the nuclear family) for a time.

I’ve already said that I don’t have a relationship with my father.  After the divorce, he remarried three times.  (This last one is a keeper—he’s been with her 20+ years; his next longest marriage was to my mother for seven years.)  In the first three years after the divorce, he was married twice.  I know this because he had children with his third wife, and my brother is five years younger than me.

I found out about my brother shortly after he was born, when I was in kindergarten.  I treasured my baby picture of him.  A year or so later, I had another sister, too.  That year, Dad gave us a family picture of his other kids—my brother, my sister, and their older step sister.  (Side note: their older half sister is their mother’s daughter.  She’s the same age as my older full sister, and they have the same first name.  My brother and sister have two half sisters named Karen.  Creepy.)  For a time, when I was in the third and fourth grades, I was pen pals with their sister Karen, but that ended when my dad and their mother divorced.

In that time, I only ever had those two pictures—the solo pic of my brother and the family pic of him and his siblings.

So, while I wasn’t adopted, all of my life I’ve had this knowledge, in the back of my head, that my siblings were out there.  I fantasized about meeting them, about reading my class roster and seeing that my brother was going to be in my class.  It never happened.  To this day, I still haven’t met them.

I use to browse the internet semi-obsessively, searching for their names and the name of their sister.  I’d go years between searches, but then it would hit me again, that I had a brother and sister I didn’t know.  And the searches would restart.  I specifically left a huge footprint on the internet at that time, so that they could find me if they happened to look.  But they didn’t look.  For a long time, they didn’t know they had more family than what they saw at Christmas.  I did find them, though.  I found my brother on Classmates.com, and since the basic info in his profile seemed like a match, I sent him a letter there.  I can only imagine his emotions on reading it; he’d only known about his older siblings for a few years.  When he replied to my email, I was a basket case.  Certifiable.

We chatted on the phone for hours, and he gave my sister’s info, too.  She and I chatted for hours as well.  It’s been a few years since I found them, and I haven’t met them yet.  Part of the reason for that is the simple fact that they live a two day’s drive away from me.  Also, I’m afraid.  They are a stable family unit, and they spent their lives without me in the picture.  I’m afraid to upset their balance, to ask more of them than they’re willing to give.  (There’s a reason I haven’t used their names here.)  I’m their blood, but I can never be their sister, not in the same way that their half sister Karen is.  She shared a childhood with them, saw them grow, and undoubtedly comforted them when they were in pain.  I don’t have that bond.  All I have is an aching sense of yearning, a dream that we’ll see one another and it’ll be great.

I do have pictures of them now.  If you put us in the same room, it’d be obvious that we’re family.  We have the same chin and overall facial structure.  My brother and I share our laughing eyes.  I look at his picture, and I see my joy in life and outgoing personality.  Our sister is more like my older sister—hesitant, unwilling to reach out in case she’s going to get hurt.  We’re family, and I love them.  Even without having met them, I know they’re out there.  I know they’re real, and a part of my heart is constantly reaching for them.

So, the book.

While I haven’t been adopted, I understand some of the yearning these mothers and their children feel.  My isolation from my siblings (and all of my father’s family) wasn’t my choice.  My mother chose to cut them off, to isolate us from them.  Throughout my childhood, my maternal family kept telling me about the importance of family—yet, they saw only themselves when they thought of my family.  They could never understand my yearning for my sibs—never understand that I’d learned their lesson more deeply than they’d intended.

I don’t think I can be objective about this book.  The aching and yearning these women feel is too real to me.  Often, they, too, had choices made for them.  Their children were taken from them, and no one ever offered them the choice of keeping their babies.  Several of them did reach out and find their children later—usually only if the child was searching for them, too.   Others have had to accept that they will never know their child’s fate.

I’m glad I found my siblings.  I want to meet them, but I don’t push too much.  They didn’t choose to make me part of their lives; when I contacted my brother, I pushed my way in.  Right now, I have to be satisfied with the fact that they’re alive, healthy, and they haven’t rejected me.  For now, it’s enough.

 

Technorati Tags: Family

Losses

Where were you? 

That’s the question that so many people ask about 9-11.  We can’t seem to avoid sharing that information ourselves—we always have to tell everyone else where we were when it all happened, when it all changed.

I was teaching at the Scott Park campus of the University of Toledo that day.  I had morning classes, so I used to leave very early to avoid traffic.  At the time, I was living in Adrian, Michigan, so I had a 45 minute commute on a good day.  It’s so long ago, now, that I can’t even remember what time my classes met.  I think the first one may have met at 9:30. 

There were no other classes in the room before mine, and since I didn’t have an office at that campus, I used to arrive early and sit in the room until the start of class.  I’d often read a book or plan my class.  Either way, I was early, and I was cut off from the rest of the world.  This was the era before smart phones, before all of the classrooms were equipped with wifi and computer stations.

When my first student walked into the room, he asked me if I’d heard what had happened.  No, I told him.  A plane flew into the World Trade Center, he said.  Another student confirmed this and said that a second plane had also hit the other tower.

With no way to monitor events from in our classroom, and no real understanding of what this event would mean for my life, I went ahead and taught class that day.

It seems silly to say that.  I was teaching a freshman comp class, holding onto the last vestiges of normal, as the rest of the country was glued to a TV set, crying.

My next class started five minutes after the first, and in a different room.  It also started much the same way.  Have you heard what happened , a male student asked me.  Something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, I replied.  And then the tower fell, he added.  Another student mentioned the Pentagon.

Clearly, my students were more aware of the horror than I was.  I still didn’t know what to think, but now I knew that it was real.

A few minutes later, one of the building secretaries went to all of the classes and dismissed them.  The University was closed for the day, she told us.  I kept her in my room after the students left.  What happened, I asked.  She told me, and it was only as I listened to her—to another adult—that the horror of the situation started to sink in.

I went to my car and tried to leave the campus in order to go home.  Scott Park campus is miniscule compared to the main campus at UT, but since all of the students were dismissed at once, the parking lot was jammed with cars trying to leave.  I can’t recall how long it took me to even exit the parking lot.  I was listening to 92.5, Kiss FM, as I sat in the parking lot in my blue Topaz.  The excitement and horror of the DJs told me that this was, indeed, a major event.  Still, I had to laugh when I heard that Mayor Carty Finkbeiner had evacuated the government offices in Toledo.  Like Toledo would ever be a target.  Thinking that this was the Pearl Harbor of my lifetime, I called my grandpa on my cell phone.  (This was many years after he’d hurt me, and I’d forgiven him, and a few years before he hurt someone else, for which I could not forgive him.)  It was terrible, he said, what one human could do to another.  Terrible.

It was hours later by the time I got to Adrian.  My husband, upon seeing what was going on, had immediately left our apartment and gone to his mother’s house.  We met up there and began our long saga of watching CNN.  George had to work that night—he was on second shift at the time.  His factory refused to shut down, and his boss told him that they’d deploy anti-aircraft missiles to keep the factory safe if necessary.

I missed all of the TV coverage of the events as they happened.  All I’ve seen is replays.  This means that, unlike George, I never saw the Jumpers fall from the buildings.  I never saw the buildings themselves fall in real time.

When I went back to teaching on Thursday, my students and I were still in shock.  Instead of holding anything resembling a normal class, we spent the hours talking about the Towers, about our response to what happened.  In my memory, this went on for weeks.  I know that I was teaching at Jackson Community College at the same time—my schedule there was probably Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  For some reason, I can’t recall much of what those classes were like afterward—just glimpses of students sharing their connections to the horror.

As it became clear that the Taliban was somehow involved in what happened, I couldn’t help but remember some news from March of that year.  I was (and am) a news junkie, and I read online how the Taliban government chose to destroy the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan despite international condemnation.  I told my students about the event that day, I was horrified to learn that they didn’t know about the Taliban or what was going on in Afghanistan.   I gave them a short lecture, and I wondered what they wound up thinking on 9-11.  Did they remember what I’d told them about the Taliban?  Did it somehow help them to have some sort of context?  Even back in March, I’d seen the destruction of the Buddhas as a dangerous thing—it seemed like the Taliban was deliberately thumbing their noses at world opinion.  I had no idea how deeply their hatred ran—that it would be so deep that they would shelter a world-renowned terrorist organization like al Qaeda.  But, as the demolition of the statues made clear, they didn’t care about world opinion.

Just as I managed to get my head in order again after 9-11, my friend Jean Flath died on September 25, 2001.  Jean was abroad, living in Italy for a month while her sister was a runway model in Milan.  I got the call telling me of Jean’s death that night.  Kavita, a mutual friend, was the one that let me know.  At the time she called, I was on another call with a mutual friend, but I could hear the tears in Kavita’s voice, and I knew this was an emergency.

Kavita asked me to call our mutual friend, Carrie.  Well, Carrie was a mutual friend of Jean & I—she and Kavita had had a falling out.  I’ll always regret that call.  When Carrie answered, I asked her if she were sitting down.  No, she said.  You need to sit down, I told her.  You have bad news, she asked.  Yes, I replied.  Is it Wayne, she asked.  Wayne was her husband at the time.  No, I said.  Are you sitting down?  Yes, I am, she answered.  Jeanie won’t be coming home from Italy, I told her.  What do you mean, Nancy, what do you mean, Carrie cried.  Jeanie passed away.  We cried together, until the end of our phone conversation. 

Jean was 28, and died of an enlarged heart.  I remember telling my grandpa (yes, that same grandpa) about her death.  Was she on drugs, he asked.  No, Grandpa, I told him.  Jeanie was a good girl.  A Catholic.  She was even in her church’s choir.  Ah, it’s always them, he replied. 

And he was right.  It was always them.  Jeanie, as I learned, was a classic example of a good person taken too soon.  Would we still be friends, today, if she were still alive?  I don’t know.  I do know that I’ve glorified her a bit in my memory.  I learned at her funeral service how little of her life that I was actually a part of—and I mourned both the woman I knew and the woman I didn’t know.

Because Jean died overseas, the timing of her funeral was greatly delayed.  Her family was unable to hold a visitation until Friday, October 5th, ten days after her death.  The casket was open at the funeral home.  I’ll never forget how she looked there—the funeral home had applied too much makeup in an attempt to make her look like something other than a corpse.  Lipstick was cracking on her lips.  Her hands were visible, holding a rosary, and her skin was collapsing.  I went to the funeral home alone—George  had to work that night.  While there, I was completely dysfunctional.  I tried to speak to Jean’s sisters to tell them that I was sorry, but I couldn’t talk for the tears dripping down my face.  I think they understood.  Kavita, Amy, and I went out to eat at one point—going to Jean’s favorite Japanese restaurant.  While I was eating—and even managing to laugh with Jean’s friends—Carrie and Wayne arrived.  They left before I returned, and I was once again unable to comfort my friend.

George was with me at the funeral service the next day.  We stood in the church’s vestibule together with my friends.  Jean was a friend from school—we’d done our Master’s work together—and our fellow classmates surrounded me.  George looked around, a little lost.  Just then, they brought in Jean’s casket, and he started crying.  I’d had ten days to get used to the fact that Jean was gone.  However, since I’d been calling her Jeannie, George hadn’t realized that Jean and Jeannie were the same woman.  He told me later that he’d been about to ask me where Jean was when they brought in the casket, and he made the connection.  It was horrible for him.

I was months in recovering from Jean’s death.  The horrors of 9-11 and the horror of losing Jean became one in my mind, and I was unable to deal with it.  I can never remember 9-11 without remembering Jean.  Her loss was completely unrelated to any sort of terrorist attack.  She died because her heart was too large.  It was, sadly, the most ironic sort of death imaginable, because she had a metaphorically large heart as well.  Losing Jean took something precious and irreplaceable out of the world for me, just as we all lost our complacency from the pre-9-11 days.

So, on this tenth anniversary of 9-11, what I’m posting is not just a story of where I was that day.  Instead, I wanted to tell you all about loss.  I don’t think this rambling blog entry was fully capable to saying what I needed to say, but it’s all that I’ve got.

I miss you, Jean Louise Flath.

Review: Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I received this book through the Goodreads First Reads program.

As I'm sure you can understand, I was thrilled to receive a free book. However, upon it's arrival, I saw how thick it was (608 pages). I was entirely unfamiliar with the historical period outside of high school history class. (I haven't even watched The Tudors despite a long-standing crush on Jonathan Rhys-Meyers.) Those facts, combined, caused me to shelve the book for a year.

I deeply regret that I waited so long to read it.

Mantel has done a wonderful job here creating the mind of a very influential man. By the end of the novel, I felt that I understood Thomas Cromwell, and at the same time, that his motives were more a mystery to me than ever. The cover copy hints at the relationship between Cromwell and his king, asking what will be the price of Cromwell's victory in helping Henry to marry his second wife. In many ways, I don't think that's the ultimate question of the novel. Instead, I think this is more a meditation on the one man that no one saw coming. Born of peasant stock, educated by his own hard work and through his relationship with his patron, Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell rose to prominence so quickly and in such a way that the nobility and power brokers were utterly unable to anticipate him. A number of narratives emerge throughout this book. It could be read as: 1. The relationship between Cromwell and Thomas More--Cromwell knew More as a child, and one could read this as the story of their relationship. 2. Cromwell's revenge on those that harmed Wolsey. Throughout Cromwell's rise, he was able to bring down, or rejoice in the fall, of those that had attacked his patron. 3. The story of a nation in flux, as education and literacy combine to cast doubt on faith.

No matter how you read this book, I think it is a delicate and precise story, written by a master. Mantel does not overload the book with detail, but at the same time, the setting of the book is truly present. One doesn't need to have a great knowledge of the Tudor period in order to enjoy this book. All you need is interest.

(After having read the book, I did look up Henry VIII on Wikipedia. I was shocked to learn that scholars no longer think that Henry had syphilis--I guess that may go down as a lie my teacher taught me.)



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NPR's SF/F List

I originally posted this list on my LiveJoural blog, but I thought it could use a cross posting.

How many have you read?

Bold for read
Italics for intending to read
Underline for partial read series/books
Strikethrough for never ever reading

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams - read it on a dare from a childhood friend in January. Liked it.

3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin I read the first book in the series and liked it, but I never had the gumption to reread it so that I could read book two. And, as time went on, I started actively hating it and Martin's obsession with breasts.

6. 1984, by George Orwell

7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury .

8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman - :)

12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan -  I stopped reading them a few books back.  I'll finish the series once it's complete and I'm done with my diss.

13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell

14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson

15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore

16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss Some of the best new fantasy I've ever read.

19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

22. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

23. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood  I was too young for this when I tried it.  It deserves another chance.

24. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King

25. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

26. The Stand, by Stephen King

27. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson .

28. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

29. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

30. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

31. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams I hate books with animals as the primary protagonists.

32. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

34. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

35. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne

38. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys

39. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells

40. The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings

42. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley  I hated this book violently and gave up midway.

43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven

45. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

47. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White I read this while in middle school. Yes I was a nerd.

48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman not my favorite.

49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke

50. Contact, by Carl Sagan

51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

54. World War Z, by Max Brooks

55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett - I will get to this one. I've got almost all of the Discworld books.

58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson

59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

61. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

62. The Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind Sorry. Not interested.

63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

68. The Conan the Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard

69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

71. The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

72. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne

73. The Legend of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi

75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey I'm two books away from finishing the whole thing.

78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

79.Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire - I love Maguire. Haven't read the Wicked Years books yet, though.

81. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde. Love Fforde.

83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

87. The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon I've read half of it. That was enough.

90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley  One of her last good books.  What happened that created Pegasus?

93. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge

94. The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony - I gave up on this long ago.

100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis I hate C.S. Lewis.

Review: Kiss an Angel

Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



I bought this book for $1.99 yesterday from Barnes & Noble. I want my money back. Or at least the hours I spent reading it.

When I bought the book, I couldn't see the summary of the text, as BN was displaying information about a book by Eloisa James. However, having worked in a bookstore, I know how popular Phillips is, and I decided to give her a chance even though I had no idea what the book was about. Big mistake.

Daisy Deveraux is the spoiled (and illegitimate) daughter of a former model and an ambassador. After her mother's death last year, Daisy went on a completely insane spending spree; she didn't know how to handle her grief or the perplexing notion that she was finally free of her mother. However, her finances, even with her inheritance, couldn't keep up with the money she spent, and Daisy passed a bad check. Facing jail time, she turned to her father for help. However, the only way he'd help her is if she'd marry someone he picked out for her.

Already, this isn't my cup of tea.

Daisy marries Alexander, and she even has to be reminded of his name during the ceremony. Alexander very quickly moves to establish his dominance of her, quickly taking Daisy away from the wedding and on a flight to South Carolina. We learn in the elevator of her building that Daisy is afraid of dogs and most animals. This is amusing to Alex because he works for a circus.

Alex threatens Daisy that she'll learn her place, and he doesn't really explain either what her place is or how he plans to enforce it. When she arrives at his trailer, she's horrified by the terrible conditions he lives in, and even more horrified by the sight of a whip on his bed. Don't worry, though--Alex isn't that much of a jerk. It turns out that the whip is a prop in his circus performance. However, he does understand that she fears the whip and continues to use it a vaguely threatening manner.

The novel tries to redeem Alex's initial bad treatment of Daisy, and tries to kill of any interesting aspects of Daisy's character. The slightly befuddled Daisy of the wedding is interesting; she rebels against the solemnity of the marriage by wearing a short gold dress and gladiator sandals. However, upon arrival at the circus, she quickly learns the value of hard work and bonds with the animals. (Including a bizarre and stupid telepathic link to the tiger SinJin.) The sweeter and more accommodating Daisy gets, the more I want to gag.

Also: the circus? That was a odd and lifeless group of carnies if I ever saw one.

Alex & Daisy's sexual encounters are interesting for a very little while. Of course, he doesn't realize she's a virgin and all that fun stuff that's so typical of a cheap romance. Suddenly, they're spicing up their love life with dominance games, as when he tells her in the restaurant to go into the bathroom and remove her undergarments. Of course, the sheath dress she's wearing is suddenly see through. Bleck.

I kept reading only because this was a quick book and because I wanted to see if it was possible for it to redeem itself. It failed to do so on every level.

When my husband and I find that we've wasted time watching a truly wretched movie, we'll say to each other, "Let us never speak of this again." That's how I feel about this book.



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Review: Unnatural Issue: An Elemental Masters Novel

Unnatural Issue: An Elemental Masters Novel by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Another lightweight entry in the Elemental Masters series. This one tries to follow the "Donkeyskin" story by Charles Perrault. As the book opens, it would seem that Lackey does a good job of staying close to the tale, but by the end of the book, it's very much another one in her series. That's not necessarily a bad thing--the final confrontation is as good as anything that Lackey has written. However, despite her willingness to include extreme violence, Lackey's books are never all that horrifying. As readers, we know precisely what Susanne's father wants to do to her (heck, even the cover copy gives that away!), but Lackey's writing lacks the necessary punch for it to really sink in and disturb. I don't want to say that Lackey dodges the hard questions or fails to explore the darker side of this tale. That's simply not true. The sad fact is that Lackey is just not a good enough writer to make readers invest in the characters in such a way as to be horrified. She used to be able to that; her Last Herald-Mage series is one of the most disturbing litanies of character torture that I've ever read. But this book doesn't have that emotional force.

For a very dark, very emotional version of this tale, I recommend Robin McKinley's Deerskin. Be warned: it is dark, and if you read Lackey for her lightweight nature, you might not like Deerskin. But more than anything else, Deerskin is a novel about healing, and it is good.

Perhaps that's part of my problem with this book. Despite the horrific events Lackey writes about, only one character is deeply wounded mentally and still in recovery at the end of the book. If our protagonists can walk away from such things without psychic bruises, is it any wonder when I, as a reader, feel next to nothing of their pain?



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Review: Blood Magic

Blood Magic by Tessa Gratton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



If a book were likely to give me nightmares, this one would be it. (Sadly, books don't give me nightmares at all, so I miss that little thrill.) I stayed up to 1:30 in the morning just to finish it.

I loved this book, but I'm hesitant to recommend it too much. If I were still working in a bookstore, I'd call it "dark" and say that it was for a "mature teen audience." What that translates to is simple: while not loaded with sexual content, this book is violent. Our main characters occasionally make bad decisions, and those decisions have devastating consequences.

This book is the story of Silla and Nick. Silla is in her senior year, and she's recovering from the recent death of her parents. She found their bodies together in the home--her mother shot in the chest, her father in the head. Murder/suicide. Except that Silla still trusts that her father was not capable of that sort of violence. She still loves him. Now she lives with Gramma Judy (just Judy, thank you) and her slightly older brother, Reese. When a package arrives in the mail for Silla, containing a book in her father's handwriting and a short letter from someone named "Deacon," Silla's world shifts again. The book is a collection of blood magic spells--fueled by the caster's own blood. Curious, wanting to believe that this might provide some sort of explanation for her parents' deaths, she tries a spell. And it works.

Nick is the new guy in town, and he saw Silla work her first blood magic spell in the graveyard that night. He knows blood magic, too--his mother was a practitioner, and he doesn't have good memories of what she did.

Nick and Silla are drawn to one another, and Silla is, in turn, drawn to the magic. But even as they explore the book, and each other, another force is waiting for a chance to attack.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. It was dark, which is appropriate for a book with this subject matter. I do think it's a bit much for some teens, but others will find it a welcome relief from the YA paranormals out there that duck the hard questions. Too often, YA magic is shown as something without a significant price, as something that is as bland as a suburban life. In this book, Gratton explodes those conventions and reminds readers that, no matter how young a teen may be, he or she is playing for real-life stakes. Decisions do matter, even if they're made by teenagers.

I do recommend this book highly, but only to a limited audience. It is not recommended for those that dislike dark and violent teen reads.



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Review: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This is a genre romance novel with pretensions of grandeur.

I was intrigued by this book because of it's duel format. It features a Harvard Ph.D. candidate in history researching the famous (in her world at least!) Pink Carnation, a British spy during the Napoleonic Wars. Eloise, the student, travels to London after a bad break up and decides to research primary sources on the Pink Carnation. The novel opens with her in a slight jam--she's crushed in an overcrowded Tube ride, has spilled coffee on herself, and discovers that it's raining and she doesn't have an umbrella. All of this makes her a truly hapless sight when so goes to interview a descendant of the Purple Gentian (a spy that inspired our Carnation).

Her host is a nice old woman and immediately gives Eloise access to private family papers.

And that's where the book goes downhill.

Eloise is apparently reading journals and letters, but that's not what readers see. Instead, we are simply taken into the story of Amy Balcourt and Richard Selwick (who happens to be the Purple Gentian). Their story is a very typical romance novel. Amy is returning to France for the first time since she left it during the Terror. She's been living with her English relatives for the last 15 years, plotting and planning how she could help the famous British spies--the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian--restore the monarchy in France. Or at least expel the Republicans. Or Napoleon. In any event, she wants to help. Her father was killed by the guillotine, and she has a powerful hatred of the current French government. Richard has posing as a French sympathizer, working as their head of antiquities, all the while spying for his native England. Amy, of course, doesn't know this, and is repelled to learn that such an attractive young man could work for the side of the devil. Richard, in turn, is drawn to Amy. He knows her brother is involved in something underhanded, and in his attempt to investigate, he stumbles into Amy late at night. She doesn't know who he is due to the mask, but her hero worship of the Gentian leads to a slightly compromising situation. Cue the rest of a standard romance novel involving mistaken identity.

This novel would have worked so much better if readers had been able to read the same letters and journals Eloise was reading. We could have learned the story as she did. Instead, Eloise has access to different information than the reader. For a novel that's based around the idea of historical research, it doesn't read as being very authentic. Amy and her friends are unrealistic, and the graphic sexual encounters do not read as anything that would appear in a young lady's journal. Considering Richard's dangerous occupation, he would have been unlikely to keep a journal of his encounters with her either.

Further, I would have liked to see more of Eloise. I didn't like her as a character--she was too much the cliched chick lit heroine--but with only roughly four chapters to her credit, she was never able to properly establish her identity as a character or as a researcher. Sadly, the framing device of Eloise's narrative seemed like a pathetic attempt to elevate the book out of it's genre--the historical romance. Both the size of the book--a trade paperback--and the period artwork cover would seem to imply that it is more than a genre romance, but that's simply not the case.

I will admit that I enjoyed Amy & Richard's story. It was fun and trashy, and there were actually a few surprises. Other than the mustache-twirling villain, the supporting characters were delightfully madcap. Unfortunately, all of the characters were smarter than Amy, which didn't work well. They were able to see through Richard's subterfuges before Amy, allowing her to make an ass of herself repeatedly while they looked on knowingly. Gwen the chaperone was perhaps the most inspired character--but she was also almost a caricature.

If you're looking for a fun romance without pretensions, pass this book by. If you just want a trashy book set in the Napoleonic Wars, and you're willing to overlook the Eloise sections, have at it. I picked up the second book in the bookswap at the same time as I grabbed this one. I will probably continue with the series through that book alone. Unless the modern storyline develops further, I simply don't see enough her to elevate it above the usual genre romances and into a permanent place in my library.



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Review: Pawn of Prophecy

Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


While I was cleaning off my shelves yesterday, this series caught my eye. It had been almost 20 years since I'd read them, and I wanted to decide whether I should keep them on the shelf, box them, or give them away. In order to make up my mind, I started reading.



I was happy to discover that Eddings was a much better writer than I realized. I'd remembered his humor and the witty back-and-forth dialogue among the characters. I'd remembered the running gags (such as Barak's horses and their dislike for carrying the giant Cherek). But I'd forgotten that Eddings was actually good. The first real hint of that shows up in the prologue, where he masters the voice of a nineteenth century text. Some of his phrases were especially strong, as when he talked about the "eternal summer" of Garion's youth. All of this left me thrilled. The Belgariad had been one of my first entries into high fantasy, and I was happy to see that it wasn't crap.



That said, I noticed more features about the book that got on my nerves this time around. Eddings had a very subtle sort of misogyny in the book. Polgara was held up as this paragon of womanhood, yet she spends most of the book scolding men. The men all seem to accept this and tell Garion that he'll have to get used to soothing a woman's scolding.



The other big problem I had was the racism. I understand that this was high fantasy, written during the Cold War. I understand what Eddings was doing by having each nation affiliate itself so strongly with its chosen god. However, the result of that affiliation is that each nation wound up with a character--and the divisions between nations take on a strong sense of racism. As a Cold War text, the primary divisions are between East and West--although one of those apparently "Eastern" countries is due south. The map of the world is suspiciously European, down to having the Viking-like Chereks live in what would appear to be Scandinavia. And the best place of all? Riva--a suspiciously England-ish island to the north. The enemies (Nadraks, Thulls, Malloreans, Murgos, and Grolim) seem to be analogues of Iron Curtain nations--with the Malloreans perhaps as China. Torak, the enemy god, seems to be both Marx and Hitler.



I did enjoy this book, as Eddings's writing is really quite good. But I can't read it with the same carefree joy as I did when I was 12. Despite having enjoyed the book, I chose not to reread the rest of the series. Once Ce'Nedra shows up, the misogyny is even harder to avoid, and I had no desire to read about her stomping her tiny feet as she threw a tantrum. I did decide the box the series, though. The books are good, and they're a fundamental part of my development as a reader.



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Review: The Apothecary's Daughter

The Apothecary's Daughter by Julie Klassen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is the first book I've read that was marketed as "Christian fiction" in some time.



To give that remark some context, I should explain that I don't consider myself a Christian as I don't practice any faith. I tend to avoid Christian fiction because I'm not that fond of the evangelical movement; the best label for me is <a href+"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism">agnostic</a>, and most evangelicals I've met dislike my ideas almost as much they dislike atheists. I don't consider myself hostile to Christianity, however.



That said, I often have a hard time reading books marketed as "Christian fiction." The ones I've come across in the past are often poorly written or serve as some kind of allegory for how one should believe.



The Apothecary's Daughter does not do that. Instead, it tells a story about a young woman with a deep sense of faith. She attends church regularly, and when she falls out of attendance, she feels ill at ease with herself. When she's distressed, she seeks solace in prayer. Her faith is not the only aspect of the story or the defining aspect of her character. Instead, it serves as a center for her in a turbulent world. Her faith, as represented in the book, is historically accurate for Regency England.



As the novel opens, we readers learn that Lilly's mother recently abandoned the family. Lilly imagines her mother off having adventures, but the rest of her small village understands what is more likely the truth: Lilly's mother has abandoned the family for another man. Three years after her mother leaves, her mother's brother arrives and expresses interest in fostering Lilly--taking her into his household as an adopted daughter. Lilly leaves for London, and enjoys two seasons, but her aunt and uncle are unable to arrange an advantageous match. The scandal of Lilly's mother, and the fact that Lilly's father is an apothecary (aka, "in trade"), make her a less than desirable connection for most gentlemen. She does have a few serious suitors, including a young gentleman and a young doctor.



A family emergency forces Lilly to return to her village, and it's here that the major action of the novel takes place. Lilly must choose which future she wants--the London life of her uncle, the village life she's known, or even the sinful life of her mother. The paths are all open before her, and Lilly struggles to choose the right one. Most of the paths she sees involve choosing a spouse, and she understands that making the wrong choice and marrying for something other than love can lead to a life of sin.



I liked this book and found it rather entertaining. Lilly's character is three dimensional, as are the characters of a couple of her suitors. Happily, the novel itself is not particularly judgmental. Several characters commit grave sins, but rather than turning from them, Lilly continues to love them. The problems I had with the book probably have more to do with it as a genre work than with the writing or the characters. Even after having been exposed to opportunities outside her class, Lilly feels compelled to stay within the station of her birth. This conservative aspect of the book--reinforcing the status quo of class relationships--bothers me. I would have liked to see Lilly reach farther, even though that may have been unrealistic at the time.



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