Everyone Brave is Forgiven - Chris Cleave

I'm crunched for time this morning, but I learned from the last purloined review that if I don't hurry and put fingers to keyboard and knock out a review it'll just hang over me like an albatross. Today's review, then, will be more concise than usual, but since I make the rules around here that's just the way it's going to be. There's not really a point to these reviews: they are, after all, just one old broad's opinion, but they serve as a good way for me to remember what I've read. You're just along for the ride, but I love you for it.

Anyway.

This was one of three novels that I asked my son to buy for me when he was out in Portland a few weeks back. I haven't BOUGHT a book since Capitol Book closed, you see. I'd been enjoying reading the stash I bought in a frenzy in the waning days, and checking books out of the library, but I knew there were a handful that I just wanted to own, and Everyone Brave is Forgiven was one of the three, because Chris Cleave's magnificent Little Bee is on my all-time-best-books-ever list. I was willing to take the risk with this purchase based solely on that.

Cleave's book is set in London in the early days of WWII, and tells the story of four fetching young adults being pressed into varying forms of service to their country. Each of them -- Mary, Hilda, Tom, and Alastair -- find their lives uprooted and inexorably changed. Cleave furrows no new rows in that, of course; it's standard fare for any novel set in wartime. Even the ways in which they find and lose and find themselves again (for the most part) aren't particularly fresh.

What I admire so about Cleave's writing is his vibrant dialog, the way in which you find yourself visualizing the slightest change in facial expressions of his characters in much the same way as you can visualize the set of your best friend's face when speaking to her over the telephone.

There was much in this novel that jolted me, primarily Cleave's use of racial epithets I'm accustomed to reading in books set in the American South during this period, but which I suppose I didn't realize were also used in Europe. These are not incidental: an important secondary character is a young black boy in whom Mary becomes emotionally invested, and who figures prominently throughout the novel.

I was only disappointed in this novel because it didn't quite measure up to the power of Little Bee, but even so, I find I can and will recommend it highly. 

Where It Hurts -- Reed Farrel Coleman

Since I last posted a review (it feels like a century ago!) I've undergone a very significant life event: I have begun working again. I am now the Donor Services Manager for the Central Alabama Community Foundation, and while the work could not be more different from my nearly three decade gig as a bookseller, it is just as wholly satisfying.

When I was a bookseller, my job every day was to serve as a matchmaker between the written word and folks who needed something good to read. The CACF is also a matchmaker of a sort. Donor's gifts are pooled for long term investment income, and either by their direction, or through a grants and scholarships process, those monies are then distributed to non-profit entities in Central Alabama. My great-grandfather, Jefferson Davis Beauregard Lee Russell Crawford, known as The Reverend J. Russell "Jack" Crawford, once said, "Surely it takes grace, grit, gumption, and greenbacks to succeed." What a fortunate thing it is that each of those four elements come into play every day at the Foundation, and even more rewarding is that I get to play an admittedly small role in helping others make so many good things happen.


All those years working as a bookseller inculcated within me the desire to provide an experience to each customer that left them feeling appreciated and important. More than any other skill I have brought with me to this new place, this is the one that comes from my heart. Whether a donor has entrusted the Foundation with a sizable gift, or a contributor has added to a scholarship fund with the change they found in their sofa, I want them each to come away from any encounter we might have knowing that the Foundation and I have the utmost respect and gratitude for the role they play in making our shared communities the best that they can be.

*****

Anyway......

My reading has slowed down a bit of late, which is not to say that I haven't been thoroughly doing it. The book I'm reviewing today is one that my former boss (and past, present, and future sister-in-law) strongly recommended I read..... as in dragged me into her house and put it in my hands and then pushed me out the door saying, "We'll talk when you finish it."  

At least that's the way I  remember it. 

Reed Farrel Coleman is by no stretch a newcomer, but I'd never read him. Shoot. I'll be honest here... I'd never even heard of him until he made an appearance at the 2015 Alabama Book Festival, and even then I wasn't drawn to his books. Not a clue why -- that's a me thing and not a him thing. I decided to dive in with Where It Hurts because it's the first in a new series, so Reed and I could both start out fresh with one another.

And boy, was this ever a good read. Gus Murphy is a courtesy van driver for a hotel. Gus had once been a happily married police officer, but that life was over for him in the aftermath of a profound personal tragedy. A phone call from one of the bad guys he'd brushed up against more than once in his former life, asking for his help in finding out who killed his son, draws Gus back into the orbit of people he'd never thought to work with (or against!) again. Murphy, who had lost his own son, is drawn to help against his better judgment.

While the plot plays out in great fashion, what I take away from Where It Hurts is that Coleman writes with tremendous heart and compassion. There were numerous times when I felt like I was sitting across a table, warming my hands around a cup of coffee, letting Gus just pour it all out.

I am so grateful to Cheryl for literally putting this one into my hands, and am looking forward to more Gus Murphy novels in the future.

Highly recommended!

All Things Cease to Appear - Elizabeth Brundage

I ran into some happy distractions right after I started reading Elizabeth Brundage's novel, but this is definitely a case when I was glad that I was compelled to slow down my reading pace a bit. To have rushed through this magnificently odd book would have been a crime. 

Here's the lowdown: There's this couple who dies a tragic death in this certain house, leaving behind three orphan boys. Then there's a woman who, a few years later, dies violently in that same house, the only witness her three year old daughter. 

I chose this book believing it to be a mystery. But it is not that. 

Once I was fully engaged I began to believe I must be reading a ghost story. But it is not that. 

What it is is undefinable, and nearly impossible to explain, so I'm not going to waste my time or yours going on about it. 

Suffice it to say that not since I read Gillian Flynn's brilliantly evil Sharp Objects has a book affected me this way. What the novels share in common is a malevolence that is lyrical; that sense of being pulled, ever so gently, utterly willingly, into the maelstrom. 

I know this review doesn't give too many details. You don't need them. You don't want them. You just need to read this. 

Trust me. 

Published by Alfred A. Knopf

March 2016

Book borrowed from the 

Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library

The Blackhouse by Peter May

This first in a series book has been on my To Read list for a long time. When I opened it up and saw a pronunciation guide I nearly ditched it. I get so bogged down in that stuff it makes me nuts, most of the time. There weren't that many names/words, though, so I dug in. 

While reading I had several run of the mill life distractions that didn't allow for much curling up and reading for extended periods of time. This is something that can be a real killer for me, especially in a crime novel. I read it in such a disjointed fashion, in fact, that there was a major element of the story in the beginning that I had completely forgotten about when it was mentioned again at the end. 

It's saying an awful lot, then, that it never crossed my mind to put it aside altogether. It is just far too compelling -- and I am not even talking about the mystery at the heart of it. 

The series is set in Scotland's Outer Hebrides on Lewis Island, which seems the perfect backdrop for bad things to happen. May's writing evokes a nearly tangible sense of isolation and describes an unforgiving landscape. When a man who has a long history as a bully is found murdered, it's clear there will be no shortage of suspects. Edinburgh Detective Fin Macleod, a native of Lewis Island, is dispatched to assist in the investigation. Macleod, recently back to work after a devastating personal tragedy, is on shaky emotional ground even before he is compelled to return to a place haunted by his difficult childhood and right back into the lives of people he had thought and hoped never to encounter again in his lifetime. 

May's Fin Macleod puts me in mind of Susan Hill's Simon Serailler in so many ways, and if this strong first in the series is indicative of what's to come, I am in for a treat as I work my way through this series. 

Book borrowed from the Coliseum Boulevard branch of the

Montgomery City-County Public Library

Published in hardcover by SilverOak

October 2012

Published in trade paperback by Quercus 

August 2014

Dimestore by Lee Smith

Where in the world have I been???

I don't expect that you've asked that, but I just realized that I'd slipped up and failed to publish my review of Lee Smith's new memoir, Dimestore.

It would be horrible if you wrote off my delinquency to lack of enthusiasm; it has been more a matter of my having been so delighted by it that trying to review it seemed like trying to review a charming visit with an old friend. 

I don't know Ms. Smith; I'd be stretching the truth even to say that I'd been one of her particularly avid fans. My sister-in-law strongly suggested I read this one, though, and passed it along to me as she obviously knew I'd eat it with a spoon. 

When Ms. Smith begins talking about the formative role movies played in her development as a writer I knew I was not in the hands of a literary snob. 

Was anything ever as scary 

as Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte? 

Or as sad as Imitation of Life?

Well, those two films are on my lifetime Top Ten list, so I sensed that now Lee and I understood each other. I mean, even now, if I need a cathartic cry I queue up Imitation of Life (the version starring Juanita Moore, Lana Turner, Sandra Dee, James Gavin, and Susan Kohner, featuring Mahalia Jackson as the funeral soloist), and I begin weepin' and wailin' the minute the opening credits begin. 

This is the sort of memoir I'd write if (a) I were a writer, or (b) had anything interesting to say. This is a life told in snapshots and snatches of memories of people and places and episodes. It's like all the best Southern conversations, eschewing linear structure, relying instead on jumping off places. Each chapter is wholly satisfying, and each shares not only some insight into what made Ms. Smith a writer but offers the tantalizing possibility that the reader might have what it takes, too, if we will just own our stories. 

What a gift. Please do yourself a favor and read this one. 

Algonquin Books

Publication Date: March 2016

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (and other stuff)

In 1992 I traveled to New Orleans to attend the Midsouth Booksellers' convention, courtesy of my bosses at the bookstore. There were two authors scheduled to appear there in whom I was particularly interested: Sharyn McCrumb, who had established herself as Southern Literary Mystery Queen with her Nora Bonesteel mysteries set in Appalachia, and first-time novelist Ann Patchett. I had read her debut novel, Patron Saint of Liars, and was bowled over by her talent. 

I rushed out of a session about children's literature so I wouldn't miss meeting either of these women, but proximity led me to Ms. Patchett first. I happened to be the very first bookseller at the convention she'd met who'd read and loved her book, and I think she was as excited to talk with me as I was to talk with her. 

Her subsequent novels bore out the promise of that first one. Whatever reservations the reader might bring her characters or stories is overcome by novel's end, because of the power she has to elicit that moment of recognition -- that we are all bound by our humanity, even when the binding might be thin as filament. 

So you might well be asking yourself: Bel Canto came out in 2001, and it took you 14 years to get around to reading it?   And the painfully short answer is yes.

I did try to read it in 2001. The advance copy had come to the store and I pounced on it. After work I headed out to pick up a child from school. He was at a rehearsal or practice or detention  or something, so I knew I'd have some time in the parking lot to wait. I opened up Bel Canto and for reasons I now have a profound inability to recall, I just flat did not like it. When my son joined me I chucked the book in the floorboard. I didn't bring it in the house when I got home, and then, I don't know -- maybe it rained and a passenger plunked their wet feet on it, or somebody spilled something on it, but it was doomed. 

National buzz--the buzz Patchett deserved beginning with that first novel--began to build, and soon Bel Canto had taken the book world by storm. My heart became hardened to it because I was a little ticked off that this woman for whom I'd been a passionate advocate for so many years was finally enjoying her success with a book I did not like. Bel Canto, for me, was like trying cold asparagus from a can one time and forever after refusing to try asparagus, no matter how it's prepared. Not. Going. To. Do. It. 

A few weeks back I visited the library and was browsing the shelves, and horrors of horrors, ran across Bel Canto OUT OF PLACE on the shelf. Not just a little bit. A LOT. This, dear reader, I took as a sign. I checked it out. And this time I actually, you know, read it. 

And I loved it, and I have no idea who that woman was who sat in that parking lot and went pffpth but she was wrong. 

Whatever your reason has been for passing on this one, don't wait a minute longer. You'll lose no points for being tardy, I promise. 

Note: Just so you know, I did read all the novels after this one the minute they came out, and was just as dotty for them as I'd hoped to be. In order of publication, her books are Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder. Read them all. Really. I mean it. 

The Quick Reads Edition

I took a couple of days off last week for a trip with my granddaughter, and it threw me so utterly off my schedule for everything. Of course, it's odd to say I took days off at all, considering that in my present circumstances, I don't exactly have on days. I suppose that's the same sort of thing as designating Monday - Thursday evenings as school nights, and using that as a reason not to go to the movies on them, when you've not had a school aged child in your home more than a decade. What I did manage to do, though, was get a little ahead in my reading, so this week's review post gives you a double dose. 

The two books I'm reviewing in this one space could not be any more different, which is the way I like to stagger my book choices. 

Just before finishing Karin Slaughter's brutal novel Pretty Girls, I headed to the library looking for something lighter and friendlier to have at the ready. I'd put off reading any of Alexander McCall Smith's novels featuring Mma Ramotswe, but this seemed the perfect time to begin at the beginning, with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. 

I expected to be charmed, and I was. My friend SuziQ, author of the Whimpulsive blog, tells me I really need to hear these on audio, and if I were better at staying awake and/or intensely focused I would love to try one in that format. I actually listened to, and enjoyed, the original Serial podcast on NPR, but even so I found myself snapping out of reverie so often and having to back up that I was months longer getting to the end that anyone else I knew who was listening. 

Anyway. 

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Precious and her friends and suitors and clients. McCall Smith interjects what are sometimes jarring reminders that human beings are prone to frailties, sadnesses, and darker impulses. Most of the mysteries Mma Ramotswe are hired to solve she handles with delicious wit and common sense. I found myself chortling more than once, and when she attempts to intimidate a person she's questioning by telling them that she just cut a cobra in two pieces, I nearly fell out laughing. (You need to find out for yourself why, of course.)

Was it a great book? No. Not by a long shot. There was a tendency for things to move along so quickly that at times it read more like a series of vignettes than a novel. But I will go back to Botswana to spend more time with Precious, because it was tonic. I can certainly foresee using them as "breathers" between novels that require a little more from me, or which leave me clamoring for places and people that don't get under my skin in a bad way. 

Published in 2003 

Anchor Books

*****

Minette Walters wrote a couple of novels some years back--The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle--that were unnervingly good. I'm not sure whether it was a her thing or a me thing, but I quit getting a rush from her novels, just a skosh at a time, until I quit reading her entirely. She's been off the radar for a few years, but when I learned that she was releasing a new book hope began to well up that she'd honed those sharp edges again. 

The novella, The Cellar, is the story of Muna, a young woman kept slave for years in the cellar of the home of the Songali family. She has spent her years with them being cruelly abused by more than one member of the household. When one of the sons of the family goes missing it becomes necessary for the family to introduce Muna as their daughter, and to allow her access to the world beyond her dark confines. Suffice it to say, she has a number of issues that come up those stairs with her, and the moral of the story has something to do with reaping what one sows. 

It was a fast, fast read, and at nearly every turn a predictable one. 

Published in February 2016

Mysterious Press