Crocodile on the Sandbank

 -by Elizabeth Peters

 (Amelia Peabody #1)

What fun!

This enjoyable light read offers a playful romp through Egypt with a bit of mystery (albeit, predictable), romance, intrigue and humour thrown in for good measure. I'm looking forward to delving head-long into the rest of Peters' series - she writes with wit and a deft turn of phrase, but also bestows a certain amount depth to her characters.

Narrator and unlikely 'heroine', Amelia Peabody, is matter-of-fact, unflappable and very believable (I took to her in an instant); she resigned to the idea of becoming an 'old maid'. While in Rome, she rescues Evelyn, an English gentle-woman who has found herself on the losing end of a an imprudent relationship and in a compromising situation that jeopardizes her respectability. She soon becomes Peabody's companion and close friend, as the two head to Egypt to spend the winter months on the Nile - Peabody to escape the dullness of England's winter and Evelyn to escape a scandal. A chance encounter brings them into the acquaintance with the Emerson brothers, encamped at an ancient Egyptian archeological site. Strange occurrences begin to plague the dig, involving a run-about Mummy intent on frightening off the small party! New friendships are forged, and new enemies made, as the mystery at the archeological site begins to unravel.

Being the first of the series, this book "sets the scene", and is no doubt more of an introduction to the characters and their personas, as opposed to an elaborate storyline. (Emerson is quickly becoming a favourite!) It was certainly an enjoyable premiere!

Bring on the next!

The Convenient Marriage

- by Georgette Heyer

 
 A fun "Georgian Romp" well worth reading!

Fun, well-written, and refreshingly comedic, I thoroughly enjoyed The Convenient Marriage. It was everything I hoped it would be and, while lacking in the deep-thinking department, it more than made up for it in wit and humor. 

At the outset of the story we are introduced to the eldest Winwood daughter, Elizabeth - a beauty of of noble birth, yet virtually penniless. At the prodding of her well-intentioned mother, Elizabeth is about to turn her back on her true love, Captain Heron, and marry a complete stranger, the Earl of Rule, solely for his vast wealth. However...

Enter: Horatia ("Horry") Winwood, Elizabeth's younger rebellious sister. Though rather young and uncouth, as well as stuttering and stubborn, Horry decides to save her sister from a loveless match! After much scheming, and to her elder sister's relief, Horry eventually takes her her position as the Countess of Rule. The Earl accepts the swap, but not without 'enduring' the adventure and hair-brained antics that ensue, involving the Countess herself, Pelham (the Winwood's congenial gambling brother) and his drinking buddy.

The Convenient Marriage literally brims with witty dialogue and interesting back-and-forths, with well-drawn characters and a quickly moving, easy-to-follow plot. The ending, albeit predictable, will satisfy any romantic at heart.

This was my first Heyer experience - I was so charmed by it that I *know* it won't be my last. :)

Swan Place

Swan Place
-by Augusta Trobaugh

304 pages (2004) Plume Publishing, paperback
ISBN 978-0452284142

MY RATING: 3.5/5

warm and delicate like a southern breeze

Trobaugh returns to her southern roots with Swan Place, a coming-of-age tale of familial hardships and triumphs, that unfolds in a sleepy little town in Georgia. Despite the cloud of sad events, Swan Place allows glimmers of hope and contentment to break through, at the characters develop and grow.

At the heart of the story is Dove, a sensitive 14-year-old who loves her mother dearly, and has a sense of responsibility beyond her years. Dove, along with two younger siblings, is raised by her fun-loving "honky-tonking" Mamma who works as a hairdresser at home, and her simple kind-hearted husband, a step-father to the children. Despite the struggles to make ends meet in the small town, the family are close-knit and happy, and manage to instil respect and a sense of duty in their young daughter.

The story unravels with wistful delicacy, as Dove must overcome seemingly insurmountable struggles in the formative years of her childhood — the heartbreak of watching her once vibrant mother wither away with a terminal illness; assuming the household duties and the role of 'mother' to her two younger siblings; and the remarriage of her step-father to Crystal, an inexperienced 17-year-old and former bar dancer, a child herself in many ways.

After yet another family tragedy, Crystal, Dove and the two babies are left to fend for themselves. Ridiculed at school, and fearful of losing her dear siblings, Dove comes to discover that writing offers solace, as she pens stories and experiences in her journals and notebooks.

When Doves dead-beat biological father returns, threatening to break apart the little family, the girls’ only choice is to go into hiding. They enlist the help of Dove’s Bible-thumping Aunt Bett and an interesting array of newfound friends, to assist in their escape. The girls ultimately find themselves in the keep of the gruff but loveable “Buzzard” – the housekeeper of an affluent estate, hidden away on the outskirts of town, known as Swan Place. Buzzard and her fellow devout black women’s Christian group keep the girls safe and help them to bear up under trials.

A common thread throughout most of Trobaugh's books, Swan Place attests to the strength of love, familial relationships, and spirituality and how, combined, they can be a formidable foe in opposition to hopelessness, poverty and racism. It is a simple yet touching – and sometimes saccharine – read that will not be easily forgotten.

— reviewed for Curled Up With A Good Book

Memoirs of a Geisha

Memoirs of a Geisha
-by Arthur Golden
512 pages (1999)
 

cliché Geisha?

While a piece of fiction, Memoirs of a Geisha is presented as an actual life story from the viewpoint of a Geisha - definitely an ambitious undertaking, if one considers the fact that the author is a white male from America.

The voice of the story is Chiyo (who is later given the Geisha name "Sayuri"). Her memoirs chronicle her life as young girl sold into a Geisha's life by her poor widowed father. In a stoic, frank way, she narrates the challenges, the desperation, the achievements, the abuse, the secrets, and the cruelty that she experiences as she becomes one of Japan's most prominent Geisha.

While the milieu of the novel is often described in luxuriously striking detail, the characters are never really developed to a great extent throughout the novel. Despite the fact that the plot is charged with emotional intensity, the main characters remain fundamentally cardboard-like and stereotypical - "the antagonist", "the protagonist", "the love interest", and "the benefactor" are painfully obvious and often 2-dimensional and insipid.

Granted, Golden's attention to detail and research into the life of a Geisha is apparent from the outset of the novel. However, the actual writing of the account, while at times enjoyably metaphoric, was mediocre at best.

Nevertheless, Memoirs of a Geisha, in spite of its many flaws and clichés, remains a weekend page-turner that gives us a westernized glimpse into the disquieting life of a Geisha, often shrouded in mystery.

Buy Memoirs of a Geisha at Amazon.com

10/23/2006

Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Homes

Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Homes
-by Paula McLain
240 pages (2003)

An unforgettable memoir about "forgotten" children

Candid, painful, sobering, yet hopeful, Like Family: Growing Up In Other People's Houses is McLain's compelling childhood memoir that spans a 15-year period in swestern America in the 1970-80's. 

Abandoned by their parents at a young age, McLain and her two sisters' lives as foster children begin in chaos. Displaced, not unlike refugees in their own country, they are shuffled from foster home to foster home. With little time to settle in or form close bonds with foster parents, Paula and her two sisters are often at the mercy of bureaucracy. 

Through McLain’s simple and yet touching narrative, the reader experiences the inner torment of the forgotten child in a "make-shift family"…the exploitation, the neglect, the abuse, and the anguish of being abandoned by the ones who should care for you the most. 

McLain allows her award-winning poetic expressions to shine, bringing her painful story to the fore...and never in an apologetic or pity-evoking manner. Like Family is well worth the read.

Buy Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses: A Memoir at Amazon.com

12/01/2005

- reviewed for Time Warner

The Anniversary

The Anniversary
-by Amy Gutman
342 pages  (2003) 

Three women. Three notes. One fear…

On the fifth anniversary of the trial and execution of infamous serial killer Steven Gage, three women separately involved in the Gasey case – Callie Thayer, Melanie White, and Diane Massey – each receive an ominous missive that they haven’t been forgotten. But almost as quickly as the women can digest the full meaning of the message, the threats leap from the printed page and into reality. Determined to no longer be a passive victim, Callie Thayer commences the battle of her life to expose the personified evil force responsible for so much terror and violence. Nothing prepares her for the entangling web of guilt, suspicion and untruths she will ultimately uncover. 

Talented author, Amy Gutman, weaves this gripping psychological courtroom thriller with stunning skill and white-knuckle suspense. Riveting, intense and most definitely addictive, I was feverishly impelled to finish The Anniversary in one sitting…and on the edge of my seat the entire time!

- reviewed for Time Warner books

Redemption

Redemption
-by Nancy Geary
322 pages  (July 2003)

 Hold your breath - this book is cunning and dark

Be on your guard and trust your instincts, for things are not always what they appear to be. Such was the case in a seemingly idyllic affluent community, the setting for Nancy Geary’s second novel Redemption - a solid whodunit in the 'old school' style that will keep you guessing until the end. 

When the beautiful, pampered debutante, Hope Lawrence, is found dead the day of her wedding, her visiting cousin Frances Pratt must work with the local police to unravel what is supposedly a clear-cut case of suicide. Little prepares Frances for what she discovers – shameful family secrets, and shrouded goings-on which the community itself is hiding behind its opulent veneer. 

As a seasoned mystery fan, who hankers for a good Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes adventure, I admit to being fastidious over the quality of mysteries that I read. Modern-day thrillers in particular, are usually of little interest to me. However, Geary's suspenseful page-turner is a refreshing exception. While skillfully setting the scene for a most intriguing murder case, Geary weaves the tale so cleverly, it cannot fail to capture the reader almost immediately. The cast of convincing characters, each with a definite skeleton is his/her personal closet, is brought to life with amazing detail yet with an ease that makes them credible.

Everything else aside, Geary’s novel has the added value of being highly readable. It is easy to become enveloped in the plot in just one sitting, pulled along by the delicious suspense and momentum found within its pages. I reached the last chapter of Redemption in few days, complete with accelerating pulse, perspiring hands, and a flurry of speculation. Well done, Geary.

- reviewed for Time Warner books

The Nearly Departed: Or, My Family & Other Foreigners

The Nearly Departed: Or, My Family & Other Foreigners
-by Brenda Cullerton
220 pages (2003)
 

An intriguing and touching collection of family memories

"As mother taught me, life was a stage - a real stage, with no metaphor intended - and everyone on it but us was an extra." 

-The Nearly Departed: Or, My Family & Other Foreigners

Far from prosaic and most definitely diverting, Brenda Cullerton’s unabashedly candid memoir “The Nearly Departed: Or, My Family & Other Foreigners” is a refreshing departure from the autobiographical norm. Dancing between dark humour, stinging wit and poignant life realities, the author’s recollections of her wildly outlandish family are often more bitter than sweet. To be sure, the collective confessions from the ‘Cullerton Family Crypt’ will have you sobbing, guffawing, sighing, and feeling strangely schizophrenic – all in one chapter. 

The truth is, Brenda Cullerton’s family would raise anyone’s eyebrow. At the forefront of these eccentric anecdotes are her parents – a social misfit mother who gardened in baggy black undies, lavish jewelry coupled with pop-it beads, and her hair bedecked in curlers; and an alcoholic father who was usually found anywhere but home, and amassed a hidden fortune as traveling businessman in the shoe trade (only to later hide his cash in their dilapidated barn, stuffed in the toes of moldy footwear). 

Now in their winter years, Brenda Cullerton’s parents - suffering from ill health - evoke her return to this alien landscape called “home”. As the author painstakingly sifts through piles of family memories encountered along the way, not only does she learn more about these virtual “foreigners” who are family, but ultimately discovers herself and the all reasons for her insatiable desire to escape the past. 

Artfully and intelligently captured on paper, it is Cullerton’s ingenuous journey through introspection which makes “The Nearly Departed” quite nearly flawless. 

(Commissioned review for Time Warner books)

Quite A Year For Plums

Quite A Year For Plums
-by Bailey White
220 pages (1998)
 

Whimsical and witty…two words I would definitely not hesitate to use in description of this enjoyable little novel by Bailey White. 

Quite A Year For Plums dwells on the slightly off-center antics of small town citizens in south Georgia, and boasts an array of characters who breathe life into every-day occurrences. There’s Roger, a quiet peanut pathologist who is a bit of an unlikely hometown celebrity. There’s Meade and Eula, two elderly spinsters who believe it is their sole purpose in life to protect “their” Roger from having his heart broken…again. Then there’s somewhat subdued and eccentric Della –an artist who is obsessed with painting painstakingly detailed portraits of birds– who Roger falls head over peanuts for. 

Without even meeting Della, the peanut pathologist is captivated by the mysterious yet practical notes the artist leaves on the perfectly useful things she leaves at the community dump (“This fan works, but it makes a clicking sound and will not oscillate”, “If you’re tall maybe this lamp won’t shine in your eyes”). 

There’s not much else to say about Plums except that I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of this simple yet touching novel. It honestly put a smile on my face with nearly every turn of the page and had me saying to myself almost enviously, “Why couldn'’t I have thought of that?”

Jackals in Iron

Jackals in Iron
-by Merlin Douglas Larsen
425 pages (1999)



“The rolls of parchment, the ink and quills and pencils were arranged and then the monks waited for the Count to speak….”   Larsen’s Jackals in Iron is a “must read” for the avid history buff and for those who have a hankering for distinguished story-telling at it’s best. In impressive rich detail, every turn of the page expounds the history of the Norman incursion of England amongst other notable battles, chronicling the lives and actions of heroes, miscreants and citizens caught in the middle of life-altering movements of nations.

At the outset of the novel (1100 A.D.), we become acquainted with the principal character - Count Guy of Ponthieu - a “worldly hardened warrior” advanced in age and held in high esteem by his comrades. Along with his youthful wife Estelle, the Count is invited on a sojourn to the abbey of Saint-Evroult, to recount his life experiences, scribed for posterity by the monks residing there. As he relates his past in detail (the atrocities committed during war, the conquests, the family conflicts, and the inner battles, etc.) to the eager party of copyists, we are treated to a retroactive narrative. We become deeply entrenched in the Count’s read-worthy experiences, and consequences of his past decisions.

The reader is also generously provided with a glossary of terms, as well as lineage flow charts and maps, which I personally found very helpful in better understanding certain details of the story. They also added much richness to the read. Without a doubt, the extensive detail and research that must have gone into penning such a novel will astound even the most picky of history aficionados. 

Larsen unquestionably deserves the sincerest of kudos for this masterpiece. Jackals in Iron is highly recommended for those who prefer a more ‘meatier’ read that is most enjoyable.

08/02/2002

Visit the Jackals In Iron website

Driving Mr. Albert

Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein’s Brain
-by Michael Paterniti
211 pages (2000)

Driving Mr. Albert one is one of those unique works that elude interpretive hyperboles a ‘magnum opus’. You don’t describe it you experience it.

The weighty equation E=mc² and the theory of relativity, conjure up images of a wiry-haired wrinkled genius known to the world as Albert Einstein. The author, Paterniti, mixes his own equation with words. The result? More than just a relative success, Driving Mr. Albert is a light and amiable concoction of humor, eccentricity, wit, poignancy, as well as raw and often highly amusing observation. The ever-curious journalist (Paterniti) researches and finally meets Dr. Harvey, the mortician who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955. Scandal ensued when Harvey absconded and ultimately "disappeared" with the brain of the genius himself, claiming to be doing scientific studies to assertain if there were any unique facets to it. As Paterniti and Harvey's worlds collide, the result is far from prosaic.

Paterniti writes with such a personal flourish of his own, I was instantly captivated and found myself a passenger aboard his eccentric cross-country pilgrimage with Dr. Harvey and their third “passenger”, Einstein’s brain (bobbing in a formaldehyde-filled Tupperware container stowed in the trunk).

Driving Mr. Albert is the embodiment of the cliché: it’s not the destination, but the journey that counts. As Paterniti and Harvey bomb towards California in a rented Skylark to rendezvous with Einstein’s granddaughter, Evelyn, the author not only ascertains much about the contradictory persona of Einstein, and Dr. Harvey’s fascinating life, but also about his own existence. The words I absorbed enraptured me in laughter, had me strolling down my own memory lane, and brought me near to tears during unexpected poignant scenes. The story and the intriguingly vivid characters, coupled with Paterniti’s descriptive rhetoric made for an utterly arresting read. It also makes for wonderful light weekend reading -as its mere 211 pages will attest - and can be finished in a few sittings. With a plethora of these factors in its favor, Driving Mr. Albert is an entertaining anecdote, both deep and humorous.

06/10/2002

Encore Provence

Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France
-by Peter Mayle
226 pages (June 8, 1999)

You've got Mayle!

Peter Mayle's "Encore Provence" ...the third novel in his Provence series. His books are always great fun; reading them is like going on vacation. In this installment of the series, Mayle (an Englishman by birth) writes about returning to Provence after a four year absence, when he and wife moved back to England. The novel - so vivid and rich in its explanation of the smallest detail of life in Provence - makes one yearn to be transplanted to that picturesque landscape. 

The characters are true to life and wonderfully portrayed. As I made my way through its pages, Mayle's cheeky humour (almost sarcastic at times) had me giggling surreptitiously on the bus this morning. What better way to start off a Friday morning? More to follow...including rating and reaction to the book in entirety.

Another success in non-fiction, Encore Provence is agile and amusing (aren’t all of Mayle’s works?). The author takes a bit of an off-the-path route in Encore, opting to focus more on tourist attractions and eating establishments, rather than chronicling his actual experiences with Provençal life. The book ventures beyond the confines of Provence and into the surrounding areas. Suffice it to say, it is more of a lavish tourist guide and less of a novel. Granted, it makes very agreeable reading. In my humble opinion, however, Encore doesn’t reach the brilliant apex of Mayle’s previous two masterpieces: A Year in Provence, and Toujour Provence, both of which I found equally enjoying. Regrettably, Encore definitely lacks the pinnace of its predecessors. Nonetheless, it’s redeeming qualities are still evident in it’s many entertaining anecdotes, and it’s indisputably informative pages when it came to “touristy” points of interest (to those who long to know the *real* Provence).

06/29/2001

The Song Of Daniel

The Song Of Daniel
- by Philip Lee Williams
302 pages (1989)

touching and heartfelt

After completing Williams' exuberant novel Jenny Dorset, I set out to read one of his earlier novels - a touching piece entitled The Song of Daniel.

The Song of Daniel was a very heartfelt and sincere story about a young man named Daniel Mitchell, living in a world of his own. It was a peaceful life - an escape from reality that he created for himself, after he had been exposed to unspeakable violence in his early childhood. This realm of Daniel's remains untouched, until he meets worldly and somewhat cynical Rebecca. As a result, they learn much from each other. 

In this masterpiece, Williams has conveyed Daniel's thoughts, vulnerabilities, and deepest fears with such an indescribable intricacy that puts us in his shoes. Finally Daniel deals with the uprising of his past in his own way. I really enjoyed this book.

12/11/2000