It's a new book

....if you haven't read it!
Being a column about previously published books: perhaps reissued, perhaps just discovered, perhaps just reread, perhaps just recommended by a friend, perhaps on sale as an ebook. Or perhaps a library find!

Title:  Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
4.5 Stars ****
Publisher: Random House        384 pp (July 2015)
Genre: literary fiction, memoir fiction, novelized memoir, historical novel, Africa,
Author:
Paula McLain is the author of several novels (including two poetry books), and the international best seller (2012) The Paris Wife. She has definitely found her niche writing gorgeous stories about interesting women. Her writing is richly evocative of time and place, the engaging characters are well developed, however famous, and they are well researched. Her books, best sellers and NYTimes listed, have won notable awards and nominations; NPR named Circling the Sun one of the best books of 2015. Film rights have been optioned!
Story line:
Much of the story takes place in Kenya, Africa during the 1920s and 1930s. This is a short chapter in the life of Beryl Markham, ending with her transatlantic flight in 1936 (she lived another 50). Her life is full of bad choices and tragedy, but also held together by an indomitable spirit. Her love of Africa was a driving force, while social conventions were mostly to be ignored. So although this is white colonial Africa, she appears to be a much more modern, complicated woman. I thought her unruly girlhood (wild Masai tribe) was a rather romanticized, but the social frustration with conventional expectations were truly appalling. I keep thinking how far we've come, and then wondering if we really have. She was an extraordinary woman, adventurer and aviator. Her story deserves to be more widely known. She was the first and youngest woman to be a licensed horse trainer and the first woman to fly solo transatlantic (east to west), 1936).
While Beryl is the main character, Africa is an immense, constant presence, beautifully detailed and enjoyed by the reader. I also love her realistic descriptions of flying, which also show the love affair with the African landscape. This would be a perfect summer read.
Read on:
Beryl Markham West with the Night (1942)
Isak Dinesen Out of Africa
Quotes:
Prologue 1936. The Vega Gull is peacock blue with silver wings, more splendid than any bird I've known, and somehow mine to fly.
First Line 1904. Before Kenya was Kenya, when it was millions of years old and yet somehow still new, the name belonged only to our most magnificent mountain.

Received as an ARC ebook from Netgalley, as well as purchased hardcover. Available from Rochester Public Library (and as Ebooks).

Summer Reads

Title: House of Hawthorne by Erika Robuck
Publisher: NAL/Penguin. 402 p. May 2015
Genre: biographical historical fiction, literary fiction,
4 stars narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal
Author:
Robuck is the bestselling author of Hemingway's Girl as well as several other novels : Fallen Beauty (poetess Edna St Vincent Millay, 2014), Call me Zelda (2013), Receive me Falling (2009). Each of her books is well researched, and her writing style is appropriate for the subject period.  She is a member of the Hawthorne Society, Hemingway Society, Edna St Vincent Millay Society and the Historical Novel Society.
Story Line:
Evident from the title, this is the story of Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Peabody. The story is told primarily from her perspective as a fictionalized memoir (b1809-d1871). She is looking back on a rather tumultuous life from the 1830s to the Civil War. She was the invalid of the famous intellectual/artistic Peabody sisters, with crippling headaches but she became a powerful muse, inspiring he always financially struggling Hawthorne. But she was also a gifted amateur artist in her own right (painter and illustrator, as well as author of her journals) and married life was both a grand passion and a burden. She gives up so much for his happiness, yet knows more joy than her childhood allowed her to dream. There are timeless gender questions of identity and self expression. There is an interesting look at the 19th century intellectual class with romanticism, transcendentalism, women's independence/social reform. Having read Marshall and Capper, I found this story rather emotional and idealistic. She outlived Hawthorne by 7 years, was buried in London, reburied in Sleepy Hollow next to her husband (2006).
There are lovely glimpses of Thoreau, Melville, Emerson, Fuller and others as well as interesting travel details of life in England, Portugal, Italy and New England. I enjoyed the charming period prose, in this first book I have read of hers. It won't be the last as I already have Hemingway's Girl and am intrigued by Fallen Beauty.
The Rochester Public Library has both book and audio version.
Read On:
Lynn Cullen Mrs Poe
Naomi Wood Mrs Hemingway
Paula McLain The Paris Wife
Elizabeth Berg The Dream Lover
Nathaniel Hawthorne House of Seven Gables, Twice Told Tales, Scarlet Letter
NF: Megan Marshall The Peabody Sisters Charles Capper Margaret Fuller
Quotes:
He has fought the coils and stain of the black weave of his forefathers. Even changing the spelling of his surname.
Nathaniel's need for elevation inspired the tower of the third floor of our home The Wayside.... The only home we have ever owned...the dear rooms have embraced our family...now hosts a stubborn ghost. 
The courtship letters, the marriage journal, the sketches and pressed flowers brought back from the places we traveled....artifacts from our past that are calling to me, urging me to look for something that I do not know is missing.

Read as an ARC from Netgalley. Thank you!

Romantic illusions

Title: The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg
Publisher: Random House
368 pp
Genre: historical fiction, biographical novel, literary fiction, George Sand
5/4.5 stars****
Author: Elizabeth Berg is a NYTimes best selling author (25 books).  Open House was an Oprah a bookclub select (2000). Durable Goods and Joy School were selected by ALA as a Best Book of the year. Talk before Sleep was shortlisted for an ABBY Award (1996). She won the 1997 NE booksellers Award for her body of work. A nonfiction work Escaping into the Open: the Art of Writing True was published in 1999. I was introduced to her writing when I lived in MN as she was born in St Paul. I would rate her novels consistently 4 stars, although I have always found them sentimental. This novel is different from her others, in that it is a biographical novel of a famous literary bohemian, George Sand. I personally think it is her best novel (5 stars for the writing/ emotion and 4 stars for the technical plotting, although her life is quite difficult to sort out). I put this book on several friends must read list two months ago when I first read it. A second reading was equally rewarding.
Story Line:
This novel reads like a memoir, in lyrical first person. It concerns the French romantic writer George Sand, (1804-1876) the pseudonym for Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin/Dudevent. Here, as an older woman, she is retracing her steps. Memories which can always be somewhat unreliable can also be vividly informative with the distance of time.
Berg has an intimate, sympathetic voice. From an unusual and unhappy childhood, to a disastrous marriage, her early years reveal her intelligence and understanding of an unforgiving society. In Paris she gives herself a fresh start pursuing her dream of writing and a new name. The success of her first novel gives her a degree of independence as her husband continues to squander her inheritance.
She embraces life, unconventional and scandalous to the times, a pioneer feminist. There is a cast of characters (and lovers) in her life that is larger than life: Alfred de Musset, Gustave Flaubert, Franz Liszt, Eugene Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Marie Dorval, Frederic Chopin, Pauline Viardot. Many appear in her works. She wrote five memoirs, 42 novels and 12 plays which gave her some financial security to live an independent life. She was also conflicted, always seeking love while being independent. I was surprised by the vulnerability which shines through. Her lasting love (10 years with Chopin) is a small portion of this novel, almost an afterthought for an extremely complicated relationship: friend, lover, confidante, nurse.
Sand was strong and disciplined with her writing, yet vulnerable and influenced by her passions (children, artists, lovers). Is it not telling that Victor Hugo could boast of 2000 conquests, while Sand had perhaps 20 lovers? Much criticism and antipathy has been generated of her and her works simply because she was not a "proper lady".
If it seems like a sad novel, the timelessness and resilience of her art shines through. I hope this novel brings her works more exposure. There is also an interesting PBS series on her life.
In The Dream Lover, there is an everyday, ordinary  feeling for what was then an unconventional and controversial woman. It is a well researched and thoughtful account, true to the character of a unique literary figure.  The reader will note many parallels to current affairs: wide ranging book club discussions are expected. The pace of this novel is leisurely and descriptive, almost the 19th century writing style. Yet these were also turbulent times with enormous social and political change. It was also very interesting to get the feel of her life in conjunction with what she was writing, a perspective on her work. This is beautifully written (I have 1/3 rd of the book highlighted for lyrical passages). I would have appreciated a list of sources, as well as excellent translations. (I can still remember considering one novel dreadful in English class and being completely changed by a different translation. See Kathleen a Robin Hart.) There are fabulous descriptions of the beauty and energy of Paris, gardens and estates of France, the sublime nature of the countryside as well as interesting portraits of social interactions and mores.

"There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved." George Sand

Read On:
George Sand Story of my Life, Indiana, Gabriel (translated by Kathleen Robin Hart)
Susan Cheever American Bloomsbury
Megan Marshall Peabody Sisters and Margaret Fuller
Benita Eisler Chopin's Funeral
Dan Hofstadter The Love Affair as a Work of Art
Nancy Horan Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Robin Oliveira I have Always Loved You
Susanne Dunlap Liszt's Kiss
Lucasta Miller The Bronte Myth
Nancy Milford Savage Beauty
Dea Birkett Spinsters Abroad
AS Byatt Possession
Quotes about her:
"What a brave man she was, and what a good woman." Ivan Turgenev
"George Sand was an idea. She has been released from the flesh, and is now free. She is dead, and now she is living." Victor Hugo
To George Sand: A recognition Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"What inexhaustible goodness, always so quiet and calm, always such an essential part of her character." Pauline Viardot

Read as an ARC from Netgalley! Thanks!

Hello August!

Good reads all summer long!
Summer is a time for indulgence - a time to get away from it all.
You don't have to travel, skip the trip and get lost in a good book! It's called a staycation, and there's still time!  Enjoy the forbidden pleasures of reading  by the pool, in the shade, in a hammock, on the beach and don't forget to read to your child, a grandchild, or any child!

Sarah Jio. Goodnight June.
I have recommended several of her books before: I simply loved her first novel  The Violets of March (which also won a library journal best book of 2011 award, and especially Blackberry Winter and The Last Camellia (still my favourite). Her books take place in a variety of places, from NYC to PNW to England to the Pacific and are often historical love stories/mysteries. I think they are perfect summer reads, for escapes in time, place with fascinating characters and interesting historical events.
Once again she has written a lovely tale, this time about one of our favourite childhood stories Goodnight Moon, (Margaret Wise Brown 1947) because no one knows what inspired her to write this story.
This is a delightful heartwarming  story that will make you wish you had a bookstore. It is an important story about installing a love of reading in children (and grandchildren). There are a number of mysteries and secrets that are uncovered mostly through letters between Aunt Ruby and Margaret Wise Brown. Don't miss this tender story, foremost of family and the importance of being there, forgiveness and second chances.

"When you are looking for something, it is right where you find it."
"We didn't have much, but we always had books."

4 stars (only because, while charming, it was predictable. And disbelief with Bill Gates.)
Popular with book clubs
This is a Penguin publication, always a good literary read.

Definitely a summer read!

The Collector of Lost Things (2013) by Jeremy Page
My next new British author - I must immediately find his first two books, Salt and Sea Change. Page is also a great photographer and screenwriter. He grew up on the north Norfolk coast where half of his world was the sea. The first book has biographical elements and this book he says he always had an interest in the Arctic. The meticulous research creates a wonderfully vivid prose, while his poetic language transports you to the place and time: the desolate, freezing, dangerous beauty of the Victorian Arctic. A young researcher/ naturalist Eliot Saxby joins an 1845 arctic expedition to find the mythical possibly extinct (1844) Great Auk. But he's on a trading (hunting) ship The Amethyst with a dubious motley crew. It used to be a slave ship, which also provides a sense of foreboding. There are excellent seafaring details and life on board: oil lamps. Sheep's head clocks, canvas sinks, lime washed shiplapped wood of his  tight quarters, mizzensail, masts (14 sails) and salt. You are in the middle of the icy, grey weather, the frigid relentless cold, and the devastating isolation in which you are easily lost. In a sea of madmen, how could it get worse? It does. Don't read this in winter.

The Collector of Lost Things is a dark gothic tale  filled with haunting mystery, obsession and doom. The use of the claustrophobic ship in an isolated harsh environment with an uneven, barbaric crew feels like a descent into madness at times. There is a building tension between the moral sensibilities and commercial motivation, with  questionable sanity, violence and cruelty.  But here is also the possibility of love, wonder of nature, and hope that creates a thrilling tale.

The Collector is an engaging historical novel which was inspired by true stories by European explorers / traders, who exploited the marine environment. It is a rather brutal telling of profit  especially for the last known specimens which were sold to museums and collectors. That this happens to be particularly relevant to our own times with the destruction of the environment, and specifically the Arctic and Antarctic, is depressing.  The  graphic description of slaughter and animal cruelty was an horrific reality then, worse, it is still happening.  The detailed butchery of seals, walrus, seagulls, anything in its wake can make for difficult but still essential reading. This is a complex but ultimately rewarding tale.

"It felt as though the ship was a tree among a forest of trees, further hidden by a thicket of thorns and climbers,  rigging growing over her and the ships moored alongside, purposefully disguised....I couldn't see the ship and perhaps I never saw it for what it was."
"These things move towards us from the horizons, whether we set sail for them or not."
..."I worried that I might not be able to cope with his enthusiasms, in such confined quarters."
"It was an unknown environment with its own rules."
"The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the earth had torn in two along this line."
"We have filled the hull of this ship with dead things. It is the weight of their souls that has caused us all to suffer."
"Perhaps one day, man will save the Arctic in all it's multitude of extraordinary life, but perhaps by then man will be too late, as he always seems to be."

Time Abroad is Never Wasted

The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch.
Given the title and the name of the author I thought "Oh! Another Victorian mystery, but set in Oxford!" As in the gentlemen detective Charles Lennox in 7 erudite mysteries, with the 8th to be published this year The Laws of Murder. This book, however, is contemporary literary fiction, with more than a twist of memoir I suspect. It is also a well written, readable, interesting thought provoking novel. The privileged WASP protagonist is in his mid twenties, somewhat immature, naive and untempered, feeling adrift with the political campaign loss. He decides to take a hiatus/sabbatical (i.e graduate studies in literature) at Oxford. It is an older coming of age story, concerning a contemporary generation and gender I am somewhat removed from. I thought Will was a cad with unusual remarkable American charm, but still a bounder. That you like him and sympathize with his interior life is due primarily to excellent writing, clever plotting and intriguing host of characters which are integral to the story. Certainly an interesting perspective of the younger generation, with literary twists.

The atmosphere is spot on, with wonderful descriptions of British academia and Oxford. The title is a relevant, haunting Mathew Arnold quote from his Essays in Criticism (1865): "Oxford whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age . . . Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!"

Thoughts of this book lingered over several discussions concerning the themes of this book. Who are the speech writers of campaigns, how young is idealism, what differences in American and British universities, cultural differences in generation and privilege (the phrase American pet irks), noting marriage is no longer the next step on graduating (either high school or college), men's behaviour vs women's, teenage to adult angst - while I am also hunting for the greater good and personal responsibility.  I understand a sense of greater freedom, perhaps more potential, but those aren't irrevocably lost by aging.

"When you're finally grown-up, one of the things you find is that there are no grown-ups."

You will like this if you are a reader (great literary references), an English major (including former degrees!), an expat, anyone who loves the magic of Oxford (as the town plays a central character) or an academic (without having to experience office politics). I am ready to go back to his Victorian era any time too!

Book of the Moment - Letter from Skye

June 2013
The Bookmore Cottage

Dear Gentle Reader,

Summer is almost upon us and I am not sure what happened to spring. I somehow didn’t have enough time to read with all the gardening, travelling and packing, to say nothing of shoveling unexpected May snow. But planes are perfect places to read, so I have always loved summer travel. Cars invite audiobooks across miles. And of course, the chaise lounge on the back deck can take you so many places. Last week I ended up in Scotland, alternating between present day, WWI and WWII.

Letters from Skye is the charming debut novel by Jessica Brockmole. Dear Reader, you will love this beautiful portrayal of old fashioned love in the time of war, the nuances of letter writing, the captivating period detail, and the two cultures (American and Scottish) which will stay with you long after you have turned the last page.

Through these letters, I met a new friend that I think you will also adore, the lovely Scottish poet Elspeth Dunn from the island of Skye. Her letters sparkle with her love of countryside, youth, family, her fears and dreams and her compass. I felt the same sea breezes, gazed at the stormy seas, despaired for days and years, questioned my own journey and just so enjoyed her erudite company. The letters of her daughter Margarite, her American friend and lover David Graham, along with various family memebers reveal secrets, friendships, bravery and trials, but as with the very nature of letters leave some experiences to the reader’s imagination. There was a satisfying resolution which celebrated joy, something worth remembering in turbulent times. “I have never stopped loving you.”

I have always been a letter writer, an anomaly/anachronism more so with the passing to the electronic age. The graceful correspondence makes for easy reading and is punctuated with lovely humour, wit and passion. I loved the development of the realistic characters (I have a number of Scottish friends I recognised instantly) over the years but also through the eyes of other family members. I enjoyed being reminded of my Grandmother’s time, and also reminding me of how grateful I am to live in this time. And of course, I want to go back home to Scotland now.

Most Sincerely,

A British Bluestocking

PS  Be sure to Read on to:
Yes it has been compared with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows), but it reminds me more of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Julia Stuart’s The Tower, The Zoo, The Tortoise, or her Pigeon Pie Mystery and Mr Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons or Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simon (see previous reviews!).

Quotes:
“Like any whose blood runs tartan, I adore W.S…. his poetry really does a fine job of capturing Scotland in all of her changeable moods.”

“ All a person really needs to get them through the vagaries of life are the Bible and W.S. (both of them).”

“I like a good western too and reading things like Zane Grey when I want to take a break from ‘literature’.”

“Our world has already vanished," he said. "I can’t get it back, but I’ll sure as hell try to keep the rest from going to pieces.”

“The night was so pregnant, so poignant, one of those Scottish nights that make you understand why some still believe in spirits and wee folk.”

“Did you know that your eyes are the exact brown-green of the Scottish hills in wintertime?”

Read as an ARC
4 stars for a delightful summer read
Published July 9th 2013