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Reviews by Gail B. (Albuquerque, NM)

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Miss Austen
by Gill Hornby

Miss Austen (2/16/2020)

This novel will appeal to Jane Austen fans, of which there are multitudes over 200 years later. Aside from insight into romance in Georgian England, MISS AUSTEN gives an interesting glimpse into the Austen family dynamics. Cassandra, older sister of Jane, stands as the backbone of the family, supporting Jane through highs and lows, success and disappointment. This was a time when middle class women had few choices: marriage and many children or spinsterhood dependent upon the kindness of others to survive. Careers outside the home were limited. It was a real breakthrough when Jane's work was published anonymously, then under her own name. The brief bios at the beginning of the book were essential to keep track of these large intertwined families.

The Yellow Bird Sings: A Novel
by Jennifer Rosner

A SUCCESS (12/3/2019)

THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS might have been just another World War II book, but this one is spectacular. A prodigy violinist who was able to develop in the midst of chaos, amazing. The loving connection between mother and daughter, extraordinary. The mother's work to keep her daughter occupied and quiet, imaginative. The separation of the two and their efforts to find each other, heartbreaking. The need for connection to another person, so true. Can't wait for the book to be released so I can share it with my book club. Congratulations to Jennifer Rosner.

Remembrance
by Rita Woods

A WRINKLE IN TIME (10/24/2019)

Is voodoo real, or is there truly a portal between time and space? REMEMBRANCE demands a leap of faith -- but then the reader is in for a treat. The novel begins in a modern-day nursing home and spans time from the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti, to mid-19th century Louisiana to today, as black women struggle for freedom. The community of Remembrance is surrounded by "the Edge," which allows its residents to move through time and place. Rita Wood has written such an intriguing story, I read it twice.

You Were There Too
by Colleen Oakley

Who Was There Too? (8/19/2019)

Colleen Oakley's novel is a good enough summer-at-the-beach read. Who wouldn't be caught up when Harrison whispers "Dios Mia" into his wife's hair? The couple has lived a seemingly perfect relationship for eight years, spoiled only by Mia's inability to carry her pregnancies to term. But then there are Mia's dreams, a cheesy device until she recognizes Oliver as the man in her dreams and she's tempted to play with fire. The book is rescued when the author connects various strands with some recognizable situations like how to experience grief or the importance of friendship. What may be the saving grace is the Reader's Guide, which gives the book some depth. I didn't understand the sudden appearance of, for example, Harrison's name as a chapter title. This recurs occasionally with little purpose until it begins to make sense in the final chapters.

Ellie and the Harpmaker
by Hazel Prior

A Match Made in Exmoor (4/15/2019)

In the words of Shakespeare, "If music be the food of love, play on." The promise of ethereal harp music made me want to read on. Ellie the Housewife and Dan the Harpmaker both need compassion and understanding. Ellie's marriage to a manipulative alcoholic is on the brink of failure, a fact to which she seems oblivious. Dan seems to be an idiot savant, compulsive but marvelously talented in creating Celtic harps to support himself -- or to give away impulsively to strange women. Their impossible situation eventually resolves itself in a surprise ending.

Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard

A Tale of Politics, Love and Rivalry (2/19/2019)

On Mary Todd's twenty-first birthday, her sister Elizabeth whispers to her, "Don't panic," implying that SURELY some man would come along to save Mary from a lifetime of spinsterhood. There is nothing "wrong" with Mary. She is attractive, vivacious, talented in womanly arts. Her drawback -- she has "standards." She wants more than a dancing partner; she wants a man she can talk to. In Springfield she meets her "match" in A. Lincoln, who has just begun his career in politics.

The story alternates between Mary's version and that of Lincoln's roommate, Joshua Speed. It is interesting to see another side of Lincoln's life. It remains to the reader whether it is believable.

The Night Tiger: A Novel
by Yangsze Choo

A Real Ghost Story (12/8/2018)

The Night Tiger follows parallel adventures for 49 days in 1930s Malaya. The paths of main characters: Ren, an 11 year old houseboy and his dead twin, step-siblings Ji Lin and Shen - and a host of other characters, are woven magically through the story. A tale of love, loyalty, food and perhaps even weretigers, gives insight into Malay/Chinese traditions and folk legends. The author was so skillful that she kept the reader hanging in suspense to the last page. I couldn't put it down!

Gone So Long
by Andre Dubus III

Gone So Long (10/1/2018)

Raw emotions... love and hate, rage and tenderness.... The characters -- Daniel/Danny, Lois/Noni, Susan/Suzie Woo Woo -- all six tell their stories. Lost, lost, everybody lost except the one steadying force, a genuine nice guy who loves discordant, broken things and might pull them all together. This is a tough story to read but once into it, I couldn't put it down.

Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
by Keith O'Brien

No Powder Puffs Allowed (6/17/2018)

Like some of the early flights, Fly Girls got off to a slow start, but when a man (Cliff Henderson) entered the picture and organized the 1929 Air Race from Santa Monica to Cleveland, the book picked up speed. The reader will recognize some names (Earhart, Beech, Cessna), but a few others, forgotten today but familiar at the time, flesh out the tale. To realize that just 90 years ago there were fewer than two dozen female pilots, this is the story of courage and determination of a handful of women who took to the sky.

The Milk Lady of Bangalore: An Unexpected Adventure
by Shoba Narayan

Going Home to India (1/2/2018)

Expat and long-time resident of New York City, Shoba Narayan returns to her native home in southern India. As she moves into her new apartment, she is preceded into the elevator by the neighborhood cow, there to attend another resident's housewarming. Thus begins her unlikely friendship with Sarala, the Milk Lady of Bangladore, and a series of essays about the dairy industry and cow worship in India -- some serious, others irrepressibly funny -- like asking a cow if it had good new for the two cow-mothers (Sarala and Shoba), to which the cow nods vigorously.

Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces
by Dawn Davies

Motherhood (9/28/2017)

Who are Mothers of Sparta? Dawn Davies, in a series of essays about motherhood, writes, eventually, about her own experience of refusing to be a Spartan Mom willing to sacrifice her own damaged son.

Some chapters drew her as a self-indulgent hypochondriac with miserable pregnancies, colicky babies, smelly diapers, that nearly every mom experiences (unless she has a nanny). Some made me weep; some, howl with laughter. Poor girl, her life was a mess, but fortunately she managed to find a strong, kind husband who propped her up during the darkest hours.

I do feel her editor would have served her better by rearranging the essays so that the reader could understand sooner why, or if, she was a Mother of Sparta, rather than just another young wife with too many babies, too close together, with no support from a selfish husband. I believe this would have made her a more sympathetic character. Although to me this book was flawed, I wish her well and look forward to more Dawn Davies.

The Almost Sisters
by Joshilyn Jackson

Sisterhood (5/17/2017)

Almost Sisters gives us all sorts of "sister" connections -- Narrator Leia and her half-sister Rachel and grandmother Birchie and her companion Wattie are obvious. Violence and Violet are characters in Leia's comic book; Leia and her niece Lavendar perhaps sisters under the skin; and less obvious, ladies joining together to support or ruin the Birch family in a small Alabama town. An intriguing look into the bonds of sisterhood, as well as modern day life and dynamics in what the author calls the Second South. Also interesting was my introduction to Alzheimer-related "Lewy bodies" and the world of superpower comics. Can't wait to read Jackson's earlier novel, gods in Alabama.

The Barrowfields
by Phillip Lewis

Wanted to Like It Better (3/3/2017)

Sad to say, Barrowfields may belong in the burial ground of coming-of-age novels. On the plus side, the author created some elegant passages describing North Carolina's Great Smokey Mountains, the misty Blue Ridge Parkway, the magnificent night sky.
His character development -- in particular, Mother and sister Threnody -- leaves us suspended in the alcoholic haze that obscures his entire cast. And did the protagonist go home again to stay or merely to revamp the family fixer-upper? Why call it "haunted" when it was simply an architectural nightmare?
And then, his gratuitously pedantic vocabulary. Ultimately, he took a break for a few pages and then hit us with a girl's "erubescent" fingernails. Really! In short, to borrow a word from Lewis, who borrowed it from Thomas Wolfe, Barrowfields is, well, inchoate.

Castle of Water: A Novel
by Dane Huckelbridge

Castle of Water (12/6/2016)

Two perfect strangers, American Barry Bleecher and French Sophie Ducel, live through a plane crash near a tiny island between Tahiti and the Marquesas. In a captivating modern day Robinson Crusoe talk, each contributes his/her experience to survive in most inhospitable conditions. On the surface, they have nothing in common -- sex, background, career, nationality, language, and for the first year they don't even like each other. However, they face the dilemma of how to survive with nothing but a first aid kid and a few green bananas. What choice do they have? They face despair, loneliness, and ultimately they choose life over death to find companionship and, yes, love. A beautiful story that I can't wait to share with my fellow readers.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
by Kathleen Rooney

A Walk through Manhattan (9/17/2016)

Lillian Boxfish/real life Margaret Fishback, the highest paid ad writer in 1930s New York, as she often reminds us, decides to take a walk around Manhattan on New Years Eve 1984. We travel from her apartment in Murray Hill to Delmonico's Restaurant to a party in the old National Biscuit Company building to the site of her success, R. H. MACY'S, 151 W. 34th Street. As I am unfamiliar with the city, I am grateful for the map on the frontispiece, and I find the story of her walk interesting. However, I must be out of step with the tedious account of her life after her forced retirement due to pregnancy. Perhaps she finds it tedious, too.

The Book That Matters Most: A Novel
by Ann Hood

Attn: Bookies (6/14/2016)

What book matters most to you? If your book club is searching for a good reading list, here you are.

Even in childhood Ava thought of herself as inferior to her perfect sister Lily, who died so young. Then her perfect mother Charlotte could not survive the loss, Ava's perfect marriage crashed, and finally daughter Maggie did her utmost to destroy herself.

The parallel stories of mothers and daughters are linked by addiction as well as a love of books. Maggie dreams of being the new Hemingway, Charlotte opens a book store. And Ava joins a book club.

A Certain Age: A Novel
by Beatriz Williams

A Certain Age (3/14/2016)

Beatriz Williams borrows freely from the opera Der Rosenkavalier while she modernizes the setting to 1920s Manhattan. On page one, she invites us to relax and read "in the comfort of our armchair," as we meet the cast of characters in her captivating, jazzy style of prose. Who would not want to know more about high society Mrs. Marshall of a Certain Age, the deliciously handsome Mr. Octavian Rofrano, the nouveau riche Patent King and his daughters? And the Trial of the Century? Carry on, Dear Reader! You're in for a treat!

Fallen Land
by Taylor Brown

Brutality vs Love (12/8/2015)

If anyone still has a romanticized view of war, the Civil War novel FALLEN LAND will certainly dispel it. One reviewer called it a tale of "the worst and best of humanity." The worst: at times, the brutality is almost too difficult to read. A band of renegade bounty hunters sweeps down the ridge of the Appalachians across Georgia in pursuit of young Callum, Ava and their horse Reiver. Southerners whose paths they cross can be equally as savage. All are starving, fighting to protect what little they have stashed away from marauders or Sherman's Union troops, who often are starving, too. The best: the boy and girl whose loyalty and love are heart-wrenching. Reiver, the great black horse, I came to love nearly as much as they did.

Author Taylor Brown skillfully weaves fact and fiction into a captivating tale of the War in the South -- the struggle of civilians to survive, as well as Sherman's determination to destroy the means to fund the Confederate enterprise and to break the will of the people.

Natchez Burning: A Penn Cage Novel, Natchez Burning Trilogy #1
by Greg Iles

Natchez Burning (9/25/2015)

Exciting to meet Greg Iles at last. Natchez Burning explores the complexity that still exists in the Deep South, plus strengths/weaknesses of family relationships. Interweaving of history and mystery is masterful -- though at times a bit bloody. Such evil exists, but her Penn Cage comes to the rescue. Can't wait to dig into another Iles book, it's fascinating. My only criticism is the length (800 pages), but what to cut???

The Devil in Jerusalem
by Naomi Ragen

Disgusting Evil (7/1/2015)

The Devil in Jerusalem is the gruesome story of Daniella Goodman, who feels worthless thanks to her mother's harsh criticism, and husband Shlomie, son of decent blue-collar parents, feckless dilettante scholar, who doesn't understand much about life except how to make babies and study obscure Jewish kabbalah.

Daniella is smitten at first sight by handsome Shlomie, wants to follow him to Israel, loves the idea of motherhood but is out of her depth with seven young children, and only sporadic help from her husband. Their naivete makes them easy prey for a manipulative, cult master.

As it stands, the book is just a revolting, sadistic fiction. Apparently, the events were well publicized in the Israeli press, but not until the Acknowledgements is the factual basis of this book made clear. Had the author begun with this information in a Prologue, the novel might have had some merit, rather than pages of gratuitous cruelty.