Here we are on Father’s Day and it is yet one more gloomy cold day in the Hinterland. We all survived a weekend of graduation festivities; however youngest’s cough is still hanging on, I caught his cold as did my mom, and my dad got sick as well. Himself is studiously trying to avoid all of the germs. And eldest’s cold has also lingered too long so he is off to the doctor. Not much reading was done this week other than the last Harry Potter – it was all my mind could hold onto. Himself has turned in spring grades and is now in the process of whipping his bonsai trees into shape as well as doing all the administrative stuff a professor has to do. The big news is that I finally bought the Kindle my mom gave me for my birthday. I am waiting for a clearer head to open it and get started so youngest say I haven’t lost my soul yet but he knows it is coming soon.
Here is what caught my interest this week:
A book I have been eagerly waiting for was published last Tuesday – Before I go to Sleep by SJ Watson has been favorably reviewed by several bloggers (Buried in Print, Leeswammes Blog, and Savidge Reads). Watson’s novel explores memory loss and how that results in identity confusion, massive trust issues, not to mention the day to day coping you would have to do. Christine wakes up every day not knowing who she is, who is sleeping beside her, or even what she did the day before. Her husband tells her each day about an accident years ago and each day, unbeknownst to her husband, Christine gets a phone call from her neurologist who tells her where to find the secret journal she has been keeping. The novel is told through Christine’s journal so the reader experiences what Christine is experiencing. This also leads to a question of reliability of narrator. I have already placed my library hold.
Harriet Divine mentions that she is reading Linda Gillard’s latest novel Emotional Geology (It is not yet available in the US) and she also mentions how much she liked Gillard’s House of Silence. I have seen this book on other blogs and it is generally highly praised. It is now available in the US by Kindle for the amazing price of $2.99! House of Silence is described in one review as a cross between Rebecca and Cold Comfort Farm. Orphaned wardrobe mistress Gwen is invited to her boyfriend’s family home for Christmas. She eagerly accepts and they go of to Creake Hall, a ramshackle Tudor mansion in Norfolk. Once there, she doesn’t find the normalcy she desperately seeks. There is a mentally broken mother, four older sisters, family secrets, a moody boyfriend, all partnered with the hold the dead have on the living. Sounds like the perfect airplane read.
My niece is spending the summer with her sister is the lake country of New York and they recently posted pictures on Facebook of the two of them sitting on dock out into the lake surrounded by beautiful mountains. It reminds me of the summer I spend in New England in college and my aunt and Uncle took my cousin and I up to a lake in New Hampshire. For a California girl, the scenery was breathtaking. It is this setting, the sturdy mountains of New Hampshire, that Ann Joslin Williams places her novel Down from Cascom Mountain. Mary Hall returns to the White Mountains of her youth with her husband hoping to make a life in the natural setting she loves. Soon, her husband falls and dies while hiking and Mary must struggle with her grief. This is more of a character driven novel rather than plot driven but I tend to like novels like that as well as novels where the setting plays such an important role. And it seems that the novel is not just about grief but also about resiliency as well as the importance of the journey. After reading Caribousmom review and her interview with the author (with a giveaway) and reading the first few pages, this one is definitly going on the list. Here are the opening lines:
There was the sound of rain falling, but no rain. The Sun cut paths between tree trunks, laying narrow strips on the ground as the three young people climbed. The forest ticked as it dried. Above, through the high branches, the sky was light and changing, letting go of its pale mist, blue seeping in. They hiked in single file. A breeze moved through the wet leaves, releasing drops in a flurry, nearly as loud and sudden as an explosion of wings. (Prologue, pg 1)
When eldest turned five we began our journey with organized sports – he started playing soccer. He was, and I say this most affectionately, never the best player – more the daisy picking type but he developed a love for the game and enjoyed being a referee when he was older. Youngest started 3 years later (also soccer) and with him we saw the whole spectrum – from recreational to travel club. And we have seen it all from the parent side as well – supportive to abusive, to obsessive. So when Matt from A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook reviewed Parent’s Behaving Badly by Scott Gummer I sat up and took notice. Gummer is a respected sport’s writer and this is his debut novel. Set in the world of little league baseball, it an examination of the pressures parents put on their children. But it is also much more: it is about legacy as the main character struggles to reconcile his memories of his dead father; it is about the relationship between a man and his wife; it is about ego; and to top it off, it is a satire as well. Matt writes. “The tales spinning off these characters meld together seamlessly; glued together by pain, fear, and laughter. The writing is so contemporary that it echoes off our daily interactions, not to mention we all probably know some of these characters down the block. ”
Jen of Devourer of Books has highlighted yet another potential good read – The Girl in the Garden by Kamal Nair. Rakhee is the daughter of Indian immigrants to the United States. When she is eleven, her unhappy mother takes her to India – not to the cities, but to the countryside and the family’s old house. Behind that house is a secret garden and Rakhee explores as she realizes adults are more complicated then she realized and that families have secrets. The novel opens with Rakhee as an adult and the verge of an engagement. She leaves her ring at her fiancee’s bedside and flies of to India to confront, at last, what happened that long ago summer.
Finally, my mom called while I was getting this post ready and told me she was in the middle of reading The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (author of The Transit of Venus) and she was loving every minute of it. So I looked it up and and it does look good. Aldred Leith has survived WWII in East Asia as well as a two year walk across transforming China. In 1947 he arrives in post-war Japan and meets the two children of an tyrannical Australian administrator. Benedict and Helen are tied together by the books the read and Aldred develops a friendship with the siblings. This book is about the aftermath of the war and how does one recover from such massive trauma. Here is what The New Yorker said about the book in their 2005 review:
Hazzard is nothing if not discriminating. Hierarchies of feeling, perception, and taste abound in her writing, and this novel—her first in more than twenty years—takes on the very notion of what it means to be civilized. The fire of the title refers primarily to the atomic bombing of Japan, but also to the possibility of transcendent passion in its aftermath. In 1947, a thirty-two-year-old English war hero visiting Hiroshima during the occupation finds himself billeted in a compound overseen by a boorish Australian brigadier and his scheming wife. He is immediately enchanted, however, by the couple’s children—a brilliant, sickly young man and his adoring sister—who prove to be prisoners in a different sort of conflict. In the ensuing love story, Hazzard’s moral refinement occasionally veers toward preciosity, but such lapses are counterbalanced by her bracing conviction that we either build or destroy the world we want to live in with our every word and gesture.
The Great Fire won the National Book Award in 2003 and Caribousmom reviews it here.
Happy Reading!
Thanks for mentioning my Kindle novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE. Can I correct a mispapprehension? My 2nd Kindle e-book EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY *is* available in the US, priced $2.99. See http://www.amazon.com/EMOTIONAL-GEOLOGY-ebook/dp/B0055T357G/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1308536004&sr=1-1
My 3rd e-book, STAR GAZING was published last week, also in the US.
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You’ve discovered some really good books there!
I loved Before I Go To Sleep, it’s a very quick, captivating read.
A cross between Rebecca and Cold Comfort farm sounds great, but unfortunately, I don’t “do” Kindle. Oh well, so many good books out there, I can’t even contemplate reading them all!
I’ve heard great things about Hazzard! And I’m quite annoyed I can’t buy Gillard’s ebook for my Nook. 😉
I’m sorry Eva. 😦 A lot of people in the US have expressed their disappointment about this, but I haven’t had time to investigate how to get HOUSE OF SILENCE onto Nooks. FYI the Kindle app is free to download and available for use on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
Sadly HOS is unlikely to make it into print. This is a book that my publisher turned down as “unmarketable” because it was mixed-genre, so I e-published independently as I knew my readers would love it. It’s since become a Kindle bestseller in the UK, though it hasn’t done much yet in the US.
some interesting books there ,all the best stu
As usual, you have me adding books to my TBR List! The sun is finally out west of the mountains so maybe it will clear up for you soon. Have a great week.
Linda – thanks for visiting and explaining why the book will be an E-Book only. It is too bad that publishers won’t take more chances sometimes.
Lee – my son thinks I have sold my soul for buying a Kindle.
Stu – as always it is a pleasure to hear from you.
Eva – I am so glad that you are felling better.
Gavin – two days of sunshine!!!!
Sounds like you had a busy weekend. Graduations are such a big milestone.
I hope u are all feeling better soon.