The Wonder

Emma Donoghue

This book is by the author of  the popular book "The Room".

It is the story of a British nurse who is sent to Ireland to watch a girl who has stopped eating.  A local committee want to verify that she is truly not eating.

The girl is the daughter of a poor Irish farming community.  She meets the local priest, Doctor, the girl's parents and a nun who is to watch the girl in alternating shifts along with her.

We find out that the Irish are very strong Catholics, somewhat superstitious too (fairies).  The girl and her parents are very religious.  The nurse, a trainee of Florence Nightengale, first searches the girls room for hidden food, she then starts to document the girls vital signs.  She finds no evidence of any food being left or given to the girl but she is suspicious that the nun, might be working with the family to create a believe in miraculous behaviour.

The nurse and nun have been hired to watch the girl for two weeks.  At first the girl's health seems to be okay and stable but after a week the nurse notices a definite deterioration in her condition, she becomes weak, her breathing and heart rate are affected.  The nurse learns that the girl stopped eating shortly after her first communion (confirmation).  She thinks it might be a hysterical reaction to this sacrement.  The girl is praying all the time and cherishing her pictures of saints and other items.

However, she finds out later that the mother had been coming to the daughter's room and giving her food from her mouth.  Now that the observers are there she has not been able to do this.

The girl's condition is deteriorating rapidly and the nurse notifies the doctor, the priest and eventually the committee.  They all seem prepared to have the girl die. The nurse shouldn't do it but she confides her concern for the girl to a newspaper reporter who has come to do a story about the girl.  He urges her to act on her concern.

The nurse eventually discovers that the girl's brother, who died previously had been having sexual relations with her.  When the girl heard that this was a sin she fears her brother is in purgatory or hell for his behaviour and that this is why she is doing this extreme action... to save her brother.  The nurse convinces her that she can die and become a new person, Nan.  She convinces the girl that eating will kill her and give birth to this new girl Nan.  The girl agrees to do this.  While the family is out to a mass in honour of the girl the nurse sets fire to the girl's room and she carries the girl to the waiting reporter who takes the girl away.
It is assumed that the girl died in the fire.  In reality the nurse, reporter and girl have fled Ireland and will start life as a new family.

This book really examined the role of faith, faith taken to the extreme, the pain of denial.  The mother was told about what the Brother did but she admired him so much she told the girl to never speak of it again so the little girl was bearing this burden.  It was an interesting story.

The Party Wall

by Catherine Leroux

This is a Quebecoise author, the book is translated into English.  I think it is a finalist for the Man Booker or the Governmor General's awards this year. 

It is a series of short stories, involving pairs of individuals.  There are several stories for each of the pairs and at the end of the book several of the characters, from the different stories, get connected.

I don't usually like short stories but I have to say she is amazing at how she portrays powerful stories/situations in a very few pages.  The stories are a bit quirky.  One is about a woman whose son is a drifter.  He comes home because he is ill and when she gets tested as an organ donor for him she is told she is not related to him genetically.  She later learns that she is a Chimera, two distinct DNA in her body because of an undeveloped twin within her.  Another story is about two sisters who wander around their town and one of them loses her legs on train tracks.  A third pair is about a man who succeeds in becoming Prime Minister but whose success is destroyed when his wife discovers that they are actually brother and sister.  They were given away for adoption when they were born.  They still love each other and head out to the prairies to start a new life under assumed names.

It was a fascinating read, very sad at times, but an exceptional book.

When the Music's Over

by Peter Robinson

This book was just released.  Generally I have enjoyed the books by Robinson about Inspector Banks but I found this one very disappointing.  Robinson has not published for quite a while and I am wondering if he has run out of ideas/inspiration.

I did not enjoy this book.  I felt it was too derivative. It has two parallel crimes.  One is a famous celebrity from years before who is being accused of sexual harassment of underage girls decades before.  The other is the murder of a 14 year old girl who had sex/was raped by three people shortly before her death and was later brutally battered and found dead on the side of the road.

The story of the aged celebrity is just piggy-backing on recent news stories in Britain.  The second story involves angst against immigrants and immigration in Britain and it turns out the young girl was part of a Pakisani run sex trade ring.  The book may reflect the current mood in Britain but again I feel he was again just borrowing fron current events.

I generally like Peter Robinson's books but this one was really disappointing as far as I am concerned.

The Light of Paris

by Eleanor Brown

This story is about a woman who is in an unhappy marriage, bullied and controlled by her husband.  He tells her what to wear, criticizes what she eats, selects their homes and furnishings.  He thinks that if he keeps her nicely dressed she will be happy an accompany him as required to social events.

She gets angry at her and he threatens to divorce her.  She is shocked by this announcement and thinks about trying to reconcile with him but she has a trip booked to visit her mother and she decides to do that so tha her husband can calm down.  When she gets to her mother's, with whom she does not have a good relationship, she is shocked to find that her mother is planning to sell the family home and move to a condo.
She starts prowling around the house and discovers her painting supplies in the basement.  She remembers how much she loved to paint as a young woman.  She also finds a diary of her grandmother's in the attic.  In the diary the grandmother describes how she was being encouraged to get married by her parents.  To avoid this fate she agrees to act as escort for a disagreeable cousin on a trip to Europe.  It become clear on the boat over to Europe that her cousin won't listen to her and doesn't want her around.  She hopes her cousin will settle down when they reach Europe but instead the girl leaves her for friends she met on the boat.

The girl's grandmother is forced to tell her parents what has happened.  They are furious as are the cousin's parents and want her to return home immediately.  She has arrived in Paris and doesn't want to leave so she gets a temporary job at an American library in Paris.  She meets a French artist and they fall in love and have an affair.  After a few months she finds out that he has had five years of freedom funded by his family and he must now return to take over the family business and marry as decided by his family.

She is distraught and gets pneumonia.  She is "rescued" by a family friend who happens to be in Europe.  He had escorted her at her coming out party and they had had sex on that occasion.  Once she recovers the man asks her to marry him.

The main character is engrossed in her grandmother's story and finds it hard to reconcile the girl in the diary from the straightlaced Grandmother she remembers.  While she is staying at her mother's she meets a kind man who has opened a restaurant next to her mother's house.  She is also intrigued to see the life in the neighbourhood, the shops, the friendships.  It seems like a much nicer place that what she remembered as a young woman.

Her husband arrives and takes her home.  She decides she cannot live an lie and leaves her husband to go back to her home town.  She finds a small apartment and plans her new life.

The book was a bit of chicklit but it was an okay story.

A Country Road, A Tree

by Jo Baker

This book is by the author of Longbourn, which I have also read.

It is a story about Samuel Beckett and his life in France during WWII.

The books starts off just prior to WWII and describes the social life of Beckett as he hangs out with famous people in the artistic community in Paris including James Joyce and Duchamp.

However, as WWII starts and France is invaded the artistic community leave Paris for safer locations.
It describes how Beckett could have returned to Ireland and had a safe life, as Ireland was neutral.  But instead he decides to stay in France with his lover Suzanne.  Things deteriorate rapidly, food becomes scare, they have little money to live on and Beckett is struggling to write.

Then they get invovled with the resistance and eventually their group is infiltrated so they must obtain new indentity papers and escape Paris.  They are often hiding in barns, fields, they are often hungry as being in hiding they cannot get ration coupons.  The title refers to a night when they were waiting to be picked up and taken to a safe location.  They were told to wait by a tree on a country road but were not sure if they were by the right tree.

They get involved with the resistance again in the south of France, passing information, carrying weapons to resistance fighters.  Beckett's health suffers as he is on the verge of starvation.  He is in pain because of his bad teeth.   The book does a superb job of portraying the situation on citizens and the resistance and the hardships they endured.

Near the end of the book Beckett has returned to Ireland and is living with his mother.  He is appalled and embarrassed at the ordinary life there, with cakes and cream.  It seems obscene compared to the deprivation he knows people in France are still facing.  He wants to go back to France but unskilled people are not really wanted.  A doctor friend of his invites him to join him as Quartermaster, setting up a small hospital in rurual France.  Beckett jumps at the chance and is eventually able to get back to Suzanne.

This was a fascinating book.  It makes me want to read Beckett again, I think I will now have a better understanding of the reason for the angst and despair in his works.

A Fine Summer's Day

by Charles Todd

This book is a prequel to the Inspector Rutledge series of mysteries by a mother and son writing duo.
It is one of my favourite series.

In the first book of the series, Ian Rutledge, an Inspector with Scotland Yard returns from WWI a haunted man, haunted by the ghost of a soldier he had to have killed for insubordination.

This book takes place just prior to WWI and we meet Rutledge and his fiance as they are planning to get married.  Rutledge is asked to investigate one suspicious death in rural England.  He is convinced the young man arrested for the death is innocent.  He then hears of other suspicious deaths, some ruled suicides, which all have a common thread of laudanum poisoining.  He tries to figure out how all the various people could be connected.  They come from a variety of walks of life but all spent some time in Bristol.

He later discovers that all of the men were involved in a trial at which a man was deemed guilty and hanged for his crime.  Rutledge doesn't get much support from his superior at the Yard.  He runs into the murderer, the son of the hanged man, on two occasions but is unable to catch him.  Rutledge tries to stop future murders and is able to warn one potential victim. Then he receives a letter threatening his sister if he does not back off.

All this is happening as the circumstances that started world war I take place and the story covers the atmosphere, anxiety and patriotism of the British.  Rutledge's fiance encourages him to enlist because she doesn't want him to be seen as  a coward.  He is reluctant to do so but finally does enlist.

As he arrives in France to take on his duties he sees a stretcher with the murderer on it.  He has been wounded in the war.  Then shots ring out and the murderer is dead.  Rutledge notices the falsely accused man off to the side.  Perhaps justice has been done, or has it?

The writers tell interesting tales but also have a talent for portraying life around the world war.  This makes for books that keep you interested.




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The Nest

by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

This book is on a lot best seller, recommended reading lists.

It is the story about a family of siblings who had been expecting to receive a small inheritance when the youngest of them reached 40.  However, most of the money has been spent by their mother to bail their brother out of an embarrassing accident.  He was a successful business person, having sold a dot com company but was a philanderer.  He leaves a party with a young waitress and they get in an accident and the young girl loses one of her feet.  The man had forgotten to pay his car insurance.  The mother has paid off the medical bills for the girl and paid her off too.

The other family members are furious and want to meet with there brother to get his agreement to pay them back.  He has gone through a very costly divorce after the accident and his former wife got everything including probably some money from the "nest" also.  He agrees to come back with a plan to repay them but doesn't

The other family members are not wealthy.  One sister has an expensive house and wants to send her twin daughters to college.  She was counting on the nest to be able to do this.  Another sister had the potential to be a great author but hasn't succeeded and works at a magazine.  Another brother, a homosexual, owns a not very successful antiques business and has borrowed against his and his spouses beach house to keep afloat.

At first I didn't think I was going to feel sorry or like any of the characters but over time as you get to know them and as they come to realize they will never get the money they wanted back (their brother has skipped out of the country with a nest egg of his own he had in an offshore account) you see them start to analyze and adjust their lives.  The man has also left behind a baby from a relationship he rekindled after his marriage breakup.  One of the sisters actually has contact with the injured girl and helps her get in touch with agencies that can help her with future prosthetics etc. as she has spent/given away most of her award to family, etc.  For the most part the characters are probably happier at the end of the book than they were at the beginning.  We don't know the fate of the brother who caused all the problems, he is hiding, alone, on a tropical island. I thought it was an interesting story.

The Hero's Walk

by Anita Rau Badami

This was one of the books that were part of Canada Reads 2016.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the book.   It was read as part of the theme of change on CR and I expected some heroic behaviour but didn't see much of either in the book.

The story is about an Indian family whose life is disrupted when they are notified that their daughter and her husband, from whom they were estranged, were killed in a car accident leaving behind a young daughter.  Their daughter had asked them to be the child's guardian and they had reluctantly agreed to do so.  Now they have to go and retrieve the little girl.

The family consists of the father who disowned his daughter when she decided to marry a man in Canada, where she was studying, rather than her Indian fiancee, chosen by the family.  The father feels she has dishonoured them and refuses to hold the wedding in India or have anything to do with her.  His wife is sad about the situation but doesn't stand up to her husband about this.  She treasures the letters her daughter has sent her.  The family has a son living at home who isn't working and seems to be devoting his energy to activism.  The father is frustrated by his "laziness" as the family could really use the additional money if the son was working. The house has fallen into disrepair and the father is contemplating selling it to settle debts.  The household also includes the man's mother and his sister.  The mother is a selfish woman, totally focussed on her needs and entirely disregards any one else's needs or wishes.  She wants her daughter to stay with her and look after her, she keeps turning down every potential suitor who comes along.

The little girl is overwhelmed when she arrives in India, the different culture, living with people she doesn't know, the nagging great grandmother, food she isn't used to.  She is so shocked by all the change that she does not speak.  The girl's grandmother tries to be friendly to her as does the son but she keeps to herself.  The great grandmother, the mean person that she is, steals a jacket (the mother's jacket) that the little girl has been treasuring as a memory of her mother.

The father gets ill and eventually takes early retirement from his job, his sister has a crush on a man next door (from a family her family considers criminal and beneath them).

Things finally come to a head when the little girl disappears.  She is lured away by a crazy woman who lost her daughter years ago.  When the little girl is found she finally starts to speak, the son announces that he has a job in a nonprofit in another city, the sister accepts a marriage proposal from the neighbour and the great grandmother dies.  It seems like things did fall into place and a somewhat happy resolution but not through any intentional heroic effort on anyone's part.  I suspect the father and mother did change and regret their past behaviour but killing off the great grandmother was a convenient way to dispose of her.

I can't say that I cared for any of the characters in this book, except perhaps for the poor sister.

Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

Wow!  What an incredible book.  This was one of the most beautifully written books I have read in a long time.

The author is from Kamloops.

The story is about a young native man who doesn't do well in school.  He is teased for being a native and a loner.  He is living on a farm with an older man.  He really likes the hard work of the farm life and enjoys going out into nature to wander or to hunt.  He has learned how to read the signs of nature and survive in the wild.

Occasionally his father shows up on the farm, or asks the boy to come to visit him in the town in which he is living.  These are always traumatic events for the boy as his father is most often drunk.  One time the boy goes to visit his father and he is drunk and has a woman in his room.  They are so drunk they don't even remember the boy is in the room and have sex in front of him.  He is disappointed and disgusted by his father's behaviour.  He does of course wonder why his father abandoned him.

Then one day his father tells him that he is dying and he wants the boy to take him out into the woods to die.  The boy reluctantly agrees.  He doesn't like his father or feel he owes him anything but he agrees to do it.

As they travel in the woods his father finally tells the boy his life story.  How he lived with his mother but had to leave her when he and a friend attacked her boyfriend who was beating her.  Then the father and his best friend signed up to fight in the Korean war.  His friend gets wounded and the boy's father kills him to put him out of his misery.  The father is devastated by what he did and takes to drinking.   He wanders around doing work when he can find it just to feed his alcohol habit.

Then one day he meets a beautiful indian woman.  Later he is called to the farm where she is living with a man and asked to install a section of fence.  He and the woman fall in love.  The man she is living with is furious at the betrayal and they are chased off.  The father then stays sober for a while but when the woman gets pregnant he starts drinking again and he isn't there when she goes into labour.  He does get her to hospital but she dies in childbirth.  The father knows he cannot look after the boy and takes him to the farmer the woman was living with.  That man agrees to raise the child.

The boy has thus learned why is father is so haunted and he learns who his mother was and why he is being raised by the farmer.

When the father dies the boy buries him in the hills and hopes his father is at peace.  He returns to the farm a more knowledgeable and probably less angry young man.

This was a sad story but a very powerful and beautifully written story.  The author has a subtle, gentle, very vivid way of telling the story.  It was an incredible tale, well told.  The father had a lot of hurt in his life and chose to drown himself/kill himself with booze.  The boy was obviously very hurt at being abandoned by his father and with no knowledge of his mother.  However, he chose a way of peace and caring and this probably brought him the peace he sought. 

I had had the book for a while and had planned to read it several times.  I am so glad I finally got to do it.