Sunday Caught My Interest

It is May 1st and after two days of driving, I am home again. I ran down to Salem to help my mom with a tea she was hosting and yesterday I drove up to Seattle, swung by the Amtrak station to pick up eldest, over to Shoreline to watch youngest run, then up to Bellingham. Eldest and I got to Bellingham late so we only had 10 minutes or so in Village Books in Fairhaven before they closed. Not enough time for me to browse but we did manage to pick up a sci-fi paperback for eldest. He was also texting various friends to find a copy of Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, having finished the second book in the trilogy – Catching Fire on the ride up to Bellingham. Sunday I was up early and hit the road for home glad to see sunshine when I got here instead of the snow they had late last week. I started to listen to The Last Town on Earth on the drive and read a little more of Ransom at the meet during down times. Youngest’s team did well, placed 7th out of 83 teams and beat their district rival as well. In addition, youngest made his college decision (on the last possible day) and will be attending the University of Portland next year. Grandparents are thrilled to have him just an hour up the road and my dad is already planning on cooking sessions with the kid.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

Diane from Bibliophile by the Sea has reminded me that The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey was released this week. This was one of the books that first caught my attention when I started reading book blogs (I tend not to post about them until they are published) so it has been on my list for over a year. The novel was short-listed for the Orange Prize and is about a couple who move to Trinidad from England in 1956. Roffey uses the couple, their marriage, their adaptation (or lack of adaptation) to their new surroundings, and a secret kept by a wife from her husband to explore post-colonialism in the Caribbean. This book is also reviewed by Teresa from Shelf Love.

Gavin from Page 247 writes a lovely review of a book that has been lurking on my radar – her review may just tip the scales – the quotes Gavin includes in her reviews are incredible. Agaat: A Novel by Marlene Van Niekerk was originally written in Afrikaans and is about Milla, the widow of a white South African farmer and Agaat, the black woman who is taking care of Milla as she is dying. The two women have a long history with each other and the author uses that relationship to explore the history of apartheid and its impact on Afrikaners and Africans. Gavin writes, “There is really no way I can completely do justice to this novel except to say that it is, in the end, a love story.   I can suggest, if this time and place in world history are of interest to you, that you read it.  Marlene Van Niekerk, a poet and novelist, has written what I consider a masterpiece.  There many layers of Afrikaans culture woven throughout this novel, bits of songs, games, rhymes and lore.”

Reading on a Rainy Day mentions that she has In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard on her nightstand so I went to look it up. The first few pages have me hooked – two fourteen year old girls in the 70’s babysitting the six children of two bikers and there is a fire. Unfortunately Amazon leaves me hanging, the kids are evacuated, the tarantula and snake are also and the narrator is “so embarrassed” in true fourteen year old fashion. This is a coming of age story with a sense of humor.

True confession time: I have never read Anne Tyler. But now I am tempted after reading Beth Fish Reads review of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, a story that follows a family from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. Beth writes, “The family history is not presented chronologically; instead, incidents are remembered in a more natural manner, and some events are told from more than one perspective. By the end, Tyler has painted a complex, multilayered picture of a troubled family.” That sounds like a book I would like to read.

After reading The Disappeared by Kim Echlin (which I highly recommend), I have been exploring Canadian Literature. I enjoyed Mary Lawson’s two novels and have several others on my to read list. Today, while reading Kevin From Canada, I found myself totally immersed in the opening paragraph of Elizabeth Hay’s newly published novel Alone in the Classroom. Kevin doesn’t rave about this book but what he does say really intrigues me. He says, “My qualification would be that this is very much a novel of “mother and daughters” (and aunts) involving three generations.” Earlier he states, “That supplies you with an outline of the narrative action that will motivate Connie’s voyage of discovery and rediscovery, a voyage that Anne will repeat decades later. It is important for the reader to realize, however, that this is simply a dramatic framework for the real meat of Hay’s story — the conflict between generations in families, the need to search for what parents have “neglected” to tell their children and the reasons why they made that choice.” I am a sucker for stories about the connections between women through the generations and I definitely have a thing for stories about family secrets. The opening passage quoted by Kevin is too long to include here so I recommend going to his blog to read it.

Once again a brief mention on a blog (The Boston Bibliophile) led me to The BookFox’s review of a collection of short stories by Robin Black entitled If I loved You, I Would Tell You This which recently came out in paperback. The ten stories took the author eight years to write and have been called “meticulously crafted”. The stories are about love, particularly the loss of love or a loved one. I love this quote from the author in an interview on the Amazon page for the book:

On a less logistical level, I think that some of what you call complexity and depth – thank you, Karen! – comes from a childhood spent trying to figure out the familial complexities into which I was born.  So many of my stories deal with aftermath, years of history echoing down, and I can see now that I grew up with a sense of a household still trying to deal with its own history.  Maybe this is true of all families, but in mine anyway, the stories from the past seemed to loom incredibly large and I was always aware that my parents and my grandmother, who lived with us, were carrying  the legacies of these complex narratives within them.  There had been deaths before my birth that were still being grieved, injuries and illnesses from which people had never recovered.  I know that isn’t unique and my preoccupation with those things is probably the strange part, but for better and worse, I have always been obsessed with the question of how personal history determines the present moment.

When I am tired like I am today, I like to read mysteries. And Tom from A Common Reader reviews a book by Swedish author Kerin Alvtegen called Shadow. Part mystery, part family saga, part psychological thriller – Shadow brings these three threads together into what looks like a highly readable novel. Tom says, “I don’t often enjoy a book quite as much as this one.  Its pretty damned good as they say.  Its a literate read and the characters are wholly believable and very complex.  I kept feeling that the book must have been written by a man for Karin Alvtegen seems to have burrowed deep into the male psyche and understood some typically male aspects of the motivations of ambition, sex, family and wealth.  Not to say that men and women can’t write about the opposite sex, its just that in Shadow, the male characterization is totally convincing.” Unfortunately, my library doesn’t have this book so I think I will pick-up another Alvtegen work – Missing.  Tonight I might have to settle with re-reading an Agatha Christie – the trouble is deciding which one.

Happy Reading!

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