Summerlong

It was a long summer, and I have neglected more than this poor blog.  Here's a lovely book for you.


Summerlong by Peter S. Beagle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A reader can always count on Peter S. Beagle to create a clear and gentle setting, one that the reader wishes she could escape to. In this case, it's an island off the coast of Seattle, with clear waters for kayaking, a long-established diner, and a long-established, older couple, settled into comfortable patterns. Abe writes scholarly books and works on perfecting his harmonica skills. Del is a flight attendant whose senses and sensibilities seem to provide clarity. Into this setting drops an enigma - an ethereally lovely young woman named Lioness - and the patterns slowly unravel as everyone falls in love with her. Even Nature seems to fall in love with her, as flowers grow wild and breezes stay balmy.

But what is she? Where did she come from? How does she do - what she does - who is she running from?

Beagle's descriptions are golden, as always, and a certain wistfulness pervades, as always. The reader might not be happy with the outcome of this novel, but myths don't always end well, do they?

Highly recommended.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.





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Knitlandia

Knitlandia: A Knitter Sees the World by Clara Parkes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Clara Parkes, whose first subject as a professional writer was travel, takes us on a tour of knitting and fiber festivals. Some of her adventures as a yarn evangelist are set in venues that thousands of knitters have shared -- Rhinebeck, Taos, Scotland, Portland, Maryland. Some tell background stories of festivals and events we dream of attending - Squam, TNNA, Vogue Knitting Live, Madrona. We are there at Sock Summit for the first knitting flash mob, we are in Denver to film "Knitting Daily" (as she is encased in makeup that makes her feel "like Ronald MacDonald in drag," and we go along on a tour of sheep-intensive Iceland. Always, there is pho, her comfort food, and yarn, in all of its incarnations and manifestations.

My favorite moments are in Paris, where she breaks a promise (no yarn! just family!) and visits a petting zoo of a shop" that offers yarn and tea. Years before, she tells us, she fell in love with fountain pens in Paris. How can anyone not be delighted with this book?

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy in exchange for a fair review.


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Loving Eleanor

Loving Eleanor by Susan Wittig Albert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is excellent on so many levels! As fiction, it enchants, as reporter Lorena Hickock meets, loves, and mentors Eleanor Roosevelt, whose aversion to being a public persona is transformed - to the benefit of the United States, but not always those who love her. How much time and energy can one woman have?

Based on extensive research, including the enormous trove of letters between these two fascinating women, Loving Eleanor is a glimpse into the life of a pioneering woman journalist, and the times she reported on - including the most dire poverty of the Depression. Without Hick's advice, Eleanor would not have written the columns ("My Day") that endeared her to the masses. Without Hick's reporting (and company on trips to mining camps), Eleanor's understanding of how people were suffering would have been secondhand.

Some of the details in this book, such as the lives of people so poor they could only offer a bowl of tumbleweed soup to visitors, are so graphic that your heart will ache. Others, such as the gradual realization by Hick that the post-political idyll she wanted for herself and Eleanor will never happen, are heartbreaking in a very personal way.

I'm grateful to Albert for including endnotes and an extensive bibliography -- I want to learn more about both of these women, and their times.

Recommended. Thank you, NetGalley, for giving me an ARC to read and review.


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The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy by Elizabeth  George
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Annapurna (a/k/a Janet) is a librarian with a Special Ability. Mildred is an Indomitable Force. Add one indie bookstore with money woes, adventure-seekers with deep pockets, a best friend who can't keep a secret, and a dollop of literary opinions. Voilà - fifty pages that will leave you laughing and yearning for a friend named Annapurna.

Janet has always been able to lose herself in a story. Literally. Not as a character, already written, but as a participating extra. As a sickly child, she drank tea alongside Alice in Wonderland, tried on Cinderalla's slippers, and climbed down Rapunzel's hair. Her secret was never meant to be public. Ah, but after she settled an argument with her talkative friend by transporting her to a pivotal scene beneath an oak tree in To Kill a Mockingbird, she became a very popular girl indeed.

Years later, she has long eschewed her talent, and has spent 15 years travelling the country in a school bus with folks who want to duplicate "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." Her now-married friend, Monie, entices her back to her hometown; a library job is the lure, but a desire for temporary escapes from her dullard husband is the real motivation. Monie really, really needs a trip to the terrace at Monte Carlo where Maxim proposed to Rebecca's nameless successor. (The delicious scene with Mrs. Danvers will have to wait.)

Enter the Indomitable Force, a stalwart fundraiser for local causes. She learns about the Special Ability. Enough said.

(Janet, by the way, is not a pushover. She has always sent people into books they had not requested, because a trip on the Argo is better than a game of quidditch, n'est pas? She insists on Dracula instead of trips with glittery vampires, refuses all requests for Danielle Steel, and acquaints many with The Scarlet Pimpernel and Pemberley.)

Elizabeth George has concocted a wicked funny book, a total delight. Will you think about "Being John Malkovich" and larks by Jasper Fford? Of course. That's part of the fun.

Five stars for a book that's short, but oh, so savory.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


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(By the way -- I played the Book Fairy in my first-grade play. I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone...)

At the water's edge

At the Water's Edge by Sara Gruen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The proprietor of a Scottish loch-side inn, the men and women who work there, the townspeople who keep the faith during the dark times of WWII: these are well-drawn, real characters whose survival matters deeply to the reader. Their folklore (including the Loch Ness Monster), their remedies for everything from seasickness to the devastation of domestic violence, their soups and teas - these illuminate personalities of a terrified, but far from fractured community.

Unfortunately, these are secondary characters, used as backdrop for three Americans whose heedlessness, selfishness, casual cruelty, snobbishness, and backbiting are only a hair's breath from cartoonish. A young, married couple is disinherited by insular, callous parents. They and an equally callow friend go to the Loch to film (by any means necessary) the Monster, which the beastly father had filmed - falsely - years before. The two men mistreat everyone they come across - except, possibly, each other - and the woman, left behind at the inn for days at a time, grows a soul.

There are love stories mixed in here, some of which engage the reader. There is so much backstory in the first third of the book that the reader may despair of finding the thread of a worthy plot.  There are glimpses of what the real war has done to real people, both military and civilian, and there is hope - because the reader knows the outcome of the war.

Disappointing, but worth two stars for the heart and soul of the small town that takes in three hapless Americans.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


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The Witch of Painted Sorrows

The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M.J. Rose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
M.J.Rose writes lush, evocative, sensual, smooth prose that brings the reader through a labrynthine multiple-timeline, filled with art, history, satin, velvet, and the pervasive scent of violets. The Witch is La Lune, a 16th-century courtesan whose passion for art and life illuminated her own live, and has captivated the lives of all of the women in Maison de la Lune house for centuries.

Sandrine is an American woman who has fled her abusive husband at the end of the 19th century. She goes to her grandmother's house, the Maison. Grandmother is a courtesan, one of a line that has charmed generations of generous men with wit and intellect. She is also a pragmatist, and she discourages Sandrine's growing passions for painting and her own architect, Julien, whose Art Nouveau style has begun to challenge Parisian standards of beauty in the Belle Epoque.

At first, Sandrine reads The Portrait of Dorian Gray while her grandmother holds her salons. Soon, though, she begins to explore the ornate mansion, and devises an audacious plan to force the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to accept her as its first female student.

Many worlds collide in this novel: Cabala and alchemy v. pragmatism and reason, duty v. passion (beautifully rendered in erotic interludes and transgressive art), fictional characters v. cameo appearances by Gustav Moreau, Debussy, Satie, and others. Can a long-dead enchantress overpower and inhabit a modern woman? Where does imagination end and possession begin?

I read this heady novel slowly, savoring and admiring the author's immersion in the details of houses, paintings, philosophers, folklore, and the customs of the courtesans. That I sensed the depth or research instead of becoming immersed as a reader is one of the flaws of this novel. The other is that the ending, after all of the struggles, seemed abrupt.

Still, 4 stars.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

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As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Delectable. Like all of the books that star Flavia de Luce, this installment is a confection. The setting has changed because Flavia has been banished (three syllables, please!) from her beloved home in England. We meet her on the ship carrying her to Toronto and her new home - Miss Bodycote's Female Academy. She is heartbroken. Her mood lightens, however, when a body falls out of the chimney in her new room. Wouldn't anyone's?

The investigation reveals that girls have gone missing, her mother's membership in a secret society may be connected to the odd tasks she is given, and her new chemistry teacher is a soulmate who was once tried for murder. Some of the students seem to hint at her anticipated initiation into the society; others are brutes. Add to the mix the possibility of poisons (her favorite subject) and the changes she is going through as she turns twelve and begins to have unusual mood swings. Pour a cup of tea (and check the brew before you sip) and enjoy!

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is an honest review.



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