A World of Curiousities

 by Louise Penny

I always look forward with anticipation to the Louise Penny books.  She is my favourite mystery writer.  However, while this book was very good I found the premise of the story a bit far fetched and the ongoing focus on criminals and revenge on Inspector Gamache less satisfying than a good old murder investigation.

She certainly knows how to develop a plot and build suspense.  The story starts in the past, early in the careers of Gamache and Beauvoir his assistant.  A woman's body is found at the edge of a lake.  It is later determined that the woman was a prostitute and drug addict and was pimping her kids to people including the local police.  The conclusion is that the children killed their mother.  The oldest child, a girl, is sent to prison, her brother is put in care.

Gamache and his wife continue to support the girl including helping her get an engineering degree while in prision (is this possible??).  Gamache didn't and still does not like her younger brother.

The book then jumps to the present when the niece of Myrna, the former psychologist and now owner of the Three Pines used book store, and the girl who was imprisoned for killing her mother are at a graduation ceremony.

The celebrations continue to Three Pines and the brother shows up much to Gamache's disgust.  He and his wife are hosting the boy's sister at their house as they have in the past but Gamache won't invite the brother to stay with them.  Later the boy gets his sister to let him into the house and he moves things around so that Gamache will know he has been there.  He also takes photos in the house.

While this is going on Myrna decides she needs more space in her apartment above the bookstore.  It is discovered that there should be more space and then her boyfriend receives an old letter in the mail indicating a bricked in wall.  They eventually break through the wall to find a modified reproduction of a famous painting (with alterations that appear modern, not 100 years old, an old book of spells.

Then things get really elaborate and complicated.  We find out that a dangerous serial killer that Gamache had imprisioned has escaped from prison, by paying off prison officials.  This killer has someone take his place in prison (how??).  The killer has produced this modified painting, broken into Myrna's place while she was away and inserted it through the ceiling of the bookstore).  He has also arranged for the boyfriend to receive the strange letter about the bricked wall.

To me all this preparation, the letter, the painting, the breakin etc are too hard to believe.  Supposedly the prisoner worked on it while in prison and imbedded some code into it as well.

In the end we find out the prisoner is the father of the girl who was imprisoned for killing her mother. Gamache, his wife and Beauvoir are almost killed when the criminal and the girl's brother hold them hostage in their home.  Gamache ultimately kills the serial killer who has been involved with two more recent killings, along with the boy.  The boy and girl go to prison for the killings and kidnappings.  The boy hates Gamacher for ruining his family, taking his sister away from him, and ruining his life (being in care) and also for rejecting him while helping his sister over the years.

It was an action packed read but as I said I wish she would stop the plots that are so personal against Gamache and go back to some good old crime solving.

A Killer in King's Cove

 by Iona Whishaw

This book is by a Canadian author.  It is set in Nelson BC just after the second world war.  

A young British woman who worked as a spy during the war has moved to Canada to try to get away from her memories of the war.  Locals are curious about her.  A local young man is pestering her for attention.  There is an American couple that is also a curiosity to the locals.

She has a very grumpy neighbour.  One day she discovers she has no water.  As she is going to go to investigate her grumpy neighbour comes to tell her has no water either and blames it on her.  They go to investigage theit water source and find a body stuffed in a wooden channel.

The police are summoned, no one knows who the dead person is, he isn't a local.  They young woman is arrested temporarily.  The police officer is attracted to the young woman and has trouble believing she could have committed the crime

The police are surprised when a British official arrives and the police find out that both the dead man and the young woman were working as spies and are sworn to secrecy.  The British official tries to force the young woman to return to Britain to work for the government but she refuses.

Eventually it comes out that there was no connection between the two Brits are not connected.  The young man was actually coming to find his birth father.  He had recently discovered he was adoopted and that his mother had put him up for adoption.

We find out that the man's father attacked him, not knowing he was his son and the young suitor disposed of the body.

The book has a curious cast of characters including one "mad" woman who goes around the area with a gun shooting at things.  It was an okay read. 

Estates Large and Small

 by Ray Robertson

I bought this book because it was getting good reviews, because it was about a bookseller, but I didn't know what the book was really about.  If I had I probably wouldn't have bought it.  However, I am glad I did buy it.

The book takes place in covid times.  It is about Phil Cooper who has reluctantly had to close his used book business.  He is drowning his sorrows taking drugs and listening to the Grateful Dead.  He is sorry he as lost his business but especially misses his contact with customers.

He has all his book inventory in his house and is getting an online website set up with the assistane of his nephew and a young woman techie who is in a wheelchair.

The title reflects what Phil does, he goes to peeople's homes to evaluate the book collections of the deceased.  However, one day when he goes to check out a collection he is startled to learn that the woman he meets is actually the owner of the book collection he is evaluating.  She has stage 4 cancer.  He agrees to wait until she is gone to buy the books from her.  The woman invites him to visit her and they strike up a friendship and eventually become lovers.

In addition to the man's lover we also meet a favourite customer of his who comes to visit him along with his dog.  The man's mother is in a care home because she has dementia.

Phil had been trying to learn about the history of Philosophy.  As his friendship with Caroline develops he suggests they study the history of philosophy together so they meet regularly with wine and marijunan spicing their discussions to talk about the Philosophers and their key philosophical thoughts.  I think they continue doing it because they are trying to figure out the meaning of life, what makes a good life, from the philosophers.

Phil's customer's dog dies and one day Caroline tells Phil she doesn't want to suffer to the end.  She wants to die after a good day. 

 Kant - A single moment is no different from eternity (Pg.254)

She also tells him she wants him to be with her when she takes the medicine.  Phil isn't sure he can deal with this.  But he is there with her/for her when she decides to end her life.

This book appealed to me as a book lover, the author really captured the addiction to books of the bibliophile.  It was tough to read with the talk of impending death.  It was about loss, loss of life, loss of your business, loss of your memories, loss of a beloved pet.  But it is also about the vital importance of human connection.

It was very painful to read, I cried at the end, but while I want to give it away because I don't know if I will ever want to read it again, I feel it is brilliantly, beautifully written so I won't give it away for now,

The Librarian Spy

 by Madeline Martin

This book takes place during the second world war and involves two stories, one about an American Librarian who is hired and sent to Lisbon to pick up newspapers and microfilm them and send them to the U.S.  The goverment officials scan these papers for tips about what is going on in France and other parts of Europe.  

The other story is about a woman in Paris whose husband disappears.  She finds out he was working for the resistance and he never told her.  She eventually joins the resistance and ends up giving a Jewish woman her ID.  She then works to give the woman a safe place to live and works to get her out of France,.

The woman is working on publishing resistance papers.  She puts a coded message in the papers asking someone to help get the Jewish woman and her son out of France.

The American girl sees the message and works in Portugal to get the woman and son to Portugal.

Maybe it is my chemo brain fog but I found the book a bit difficult to follow, especially the work of the American in Lisbon.

It was an okay story, they do manage to get the woman out of France and eventually get her reunited with her husband who had managed to get to the U.S.  The book does a good job of explaining the danger the resistance people faced.

Trust

 by Hernan Diaz

This is actually four books in one.  It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on.

The first story is a fiction book about a reclusive New York business man who gets rich by manipulating the stock market.  He brags about how successful he has been and how he has saved the American economy especially during the time of the crash.  His wife enjoys music and contributes to charities.   Her father had mental problems and disappeared from a facility in Switzerland.  In the end the woman has mental issues and ends up in the same institution where she dies.

The second book starts with a man bragging about how his ancestors were early arrivals in America.  They were dirt poor but managed to gain a fortune.  He brags about how he has built on this, taking advantage of the stock market, saving the American economy etc.  Again no humility here either.  At points there are a few notes made of things to talk about later.   Curious...

The third book is about a young woman who applies for a job at the second man's firm.  She is very poor, her father is a typesetter with communist leanings.  There are many candidates for the job but when as part of the interview process she is asked to write about her life she writes an entirely fictional account.  She is hired but then finds out she whill not be a secretary or stenographer, rather she will write a book to counter the lies the owner of the company feels were in the first book.  He and all of New York society know the first book was written about him and his wife.  The girl learns that the man's wife was involved in society and charities in New York and a very generous philanthropist.  The man creates a foundation for her charitable endeavours.  His wife died of cancer and was in Switzerland at a hospital for treatment when she died.  The man pays the girl handsomely.  She never tells her father what he real job is she knows he will be outraged that she is working for a rich man helping him write a memoir to justify his behaviour.  However, she comes back and tells the housekeeper that she has permission to see it.  The room is very stark and empty.  Not at all the fitting with the description the man gave of his wife and her interests.  Curiouser and curiouser. The book is never completed as the man dies suddenly.  The one thing the man had told her that she cannot see is the wife's bedroom.

The young girl is shocked and dismayed that a reporter, who had apparently been courting her has actually stolen some of her notes when she wasn't home.  She gets a ransom note saying that if she doesn't turn over more info her father will be outed as a communist.  But she gives the young courier a bribe and he tells her the name of the man who sent him -- her boyfriend.  She suspends contact with him.

Part four of the book occurs as the Rich man's home has been turned into a museum.  The young girl, a seventy year old woman now finds she can now face going back.  She has done research in the museum and finds out it was the man's wife who actually had the financial and mathematical acumen and not him.

A fascinsting read with lots of twists and turns.  Plus a critique? commentary? on whether well can really benefit/save an economy or are the rich deluding themselves when they say that. Especially these days as the rich are getting richer because of the pandemic and with the large inflation the rest of us are fallling farther and farther behind.

 

Sutra of the Pearl

 by Lee Kaiser

This is another book I bought on impulse at Chapters.  It is supposed to be by a local author but the bio is very brief.  I think the book is self-published.

At first I didn't think much of the book but by the end I felt that maybe I should read it again.

Page 193 "Do you know a pearl starts as a parasite?  Over time these foul innards inside the oyster release a protective coating around the poison.  That becomes the pearl.  If nature can create the strength and purity of a pearl from such ugliness , why not believe that people can change no matter how far they've strayed..

At first I didn't like the book.  The main character, Julie was a bit of a hysterical, dependent person. The first sentence in the books is "Julia Paglia was a crackerjack of a liar, just like her mother".

The book seemed a bit disjointed at first.  Julia travels the world as a travel writer.  Her goal is to be published in National Geographic.  Julia hates her drug addict mother who is dying of lung cancer.  She believes her mother killed her young brother years ago.  She thinks of turning her mother in to the police.

She goes to India because she found an article that says that Jesus spent some time in India.  She thinks if she can find proof she could get rich and famous.  But when she gets to India she gets obsessed with saving all the diseased dogs she finds in the street.  She frantically tries to save them or at least give them a peaceful death.  

She hears about an underwater city and finally finds a group of people who will take her out in a boat to look at it at night.  The area is in a goverment restricted area, that is why they have to do the dive at night.  She gets some good pix and sends some to National Geographic.  She is shocked to learn that the people who took her out are really terrorists who want to destroy a nuclear plant that is on land near where she was diving, that is why there is a restricted zone.

She develops a relationship one particular Indian man and a few other people.  A friend from Canada also comes to join her.  The authorities eventually find out she was in the restricted area and they put out an arrest warrant for her.  Her friends remove the images from her computer so that should be no evidence against her.  

Her boyfriend is estranged from his brother (one of the terrorists) and his father.  She eventually meets the man's father and likes him.  She can't understand why her boyfriend doesn't get on with him.  The man gives her a book of Buddhist prayers/thoughts. 

She is eventually located and deported.

However, a few years later she sneaks back into India thanks to a back door into India and bribes to officials by her boyfriend. She learns that the father was very poor initially but became rich when he bought some land (from which others were evicted) from some officials who were re-allocating the land.  The father gives her a book and asks her to take it to someone he knew years before.

Disaster stikes when the terrorists take the brakes off a train loaded with fuel.  They think it will careen down a hill and into the nuclear plant but instead it crashes on a curve in a nearby village.  Much of  the village is destroyed and many people are killed or maimed.  The girl, her boyfriend and others, including his father rush to rescue the injured as police say emegency vehicles will not enter the area. The father is shot trying to rescue the injured.

The girl eventually gets the book to the man per her boyfriend's father's instructions.  She finds that the inscription in the book gives the recipient the father's share of the business.  The recipient is one of the people the father wronged years before.

Julia is devastated when she learns her boyfriend is leaving her to marry his mistress in Sweden who is pregnant with his child.  She and the man had planned to marry.  

Finally Julia decides to set out for Nepal to seek out the writings that would confirm Christ spent time in India.  She spends time at a monastery where in return for some help around the monastery, and promising to attend daily meditation, she is allowed access to the monastery's library.  The head monk is an American.  On her last day at the monastery he gives her the writings she is looking for.

She takes the writings or at least a copy and deposits them at the National Geographic office anonymously.

There was a lot going on in this book and a lot to think about -- unintended consequences for eg.  A lot of people did some bad things, the questions arose, can you change once you have done bad things? can you make amends for the wrongs you have done? The author seems to think yes and yes.

I will have to re-read it again to get all the details straight and also get a better understanding of the many complex issues.

 

Murder at the Book Club

 by Betsy Reavley

I picked this book up on impulse at Chapters.  It is about a very disfunctional bookclub. Some people met on an online bookclub and decided to start meeting in person.  They invited others to join.  One of their bookclub members is killed and as police investigate they find that the people in the book club don't like each other and often squabble with each other.  It makes you wonder why they belong to the club as it is so stressful.  

When a second member of the book club is killed the police suspect it really has something to do with the book club.

This wasn't a very interesting book.

State of Wonder

 by Ann Patchett

This is the second book I have read by this author.  The first book I read, Bel Canto, is one of my favourite books.

This book is about a woman researcher who is sent into the Amazonian jungle to find out 1)why/how one of her colleagues who was sent down died 2)how the research is going to find a product to extend women's fertility later in life.

The woman arrives in a city and eventually makes contact with people who are looking after the apartment of the Head Researcher.  They won't take her to see the researcher and say they don't know when the woman will come back to town for supplies.

Eventually the researcher does show up and the other researcher insists on going back into the jungle with her.  The pilot on their boat is a native boy, about 6 years of age, who is deaf.

The women and boy arrive at the spot where the Lakshmi live.  The second researcher's luggage disappears and she is eventully coaxed out of her last clothing and put in a dress the local women wear.  She is introduced to the trees that the local women visit in the forest.  The women chew the bark.  It is thought that chewing the tree keeps the women fertile and also prevents malaria. The head researcher is wanting to work on the fertility discovery but she also wants to pursue a cure for malaria, something she knows her company won't be interested in so she keeps stalling with her researcher.  There may be some kind of connection between the trees, mushrooms that grow at the base of tress and a moth that is attracted to the bark where women have chewed.

The second researcher is shocked to learn that the Main Researcher, her former mentor, is pregnant at 73 years of age.  The researcher is shocked at what her mentor has done and eventually has to perform a c-section on her boss to remove her deformed fetus which has died (the fetus had a mermaid tail rather than legs).  While there the researcher does a c-section on another woman, saves the deaf boy from an anaconda so she has a lot of status in the community.

Eventually she figures out that her co-worker is not dead but is at another village of cannibals.  She and the deaf boy go to rescue him.  The only way she can rescue her co-worker is to give up the boy to the cannibals.  The Mentor is furious with her for having done this.  

The woman and her co-worker return to the U.S. in the next couple days.

This was an interesting story with lots to think about.  One review I read said the book is not as good as some of her other works but I really enjoyed it.

French Braid

 by Anne Tyler

Pg. 2344"They would start with two skeins of hair high up near her temples, very skinny and tight, ad then join in with two thicker braids lower down".

"Oh, a French Braid", Greta said.

"That's it.  And then when she undid them her hair would still be in ripples, little left over squiggles for hours and hours afterward"...

"Well", David said, "that's how families work too.  You think you're free of them, but you're never reall free; the ripples are crimpled in forever".

This is the story of the Garrett family over several generations.  The book is a true picture of a family that interacts but doesn't really connect.  There are the "good" ones and the "bad" (unconventional) ones.  There are memories and jealousies and a lot unspoken.  The book covers several families and generations.

The matriarch of the family was never a good mother, she preferred painting to looking after her kids.  After her last child moved out she gradually moved to a "studio" to paint and gradually moved over her clothes and other items.  She never divorced her husband, they never talked about it, and the kids did not talk or ask her about this arrangement.  One of her granddaughters likes to paint and joins her grandmother in the studio to paint one afternoon a week.  The gradmother takes her granddaughter to New York one day to see an exhibit of one of her artist friends.  The grandmother dies on the train ride home.

The author does a great job of portraying a somewhat disfunctional family.  They don't communicate regularly or well.  Members have a habit of showing up with a fiancee or going off and getting married and then telling the family.  Family members are often puzzled by behavior of other family members, for example the brother who marries and older woman.  He had announced one day he was bringing someone when he came to visit and arrived with the woman and her young daughter.  Later the woman contacts the family to say that they had gotten married.  Near the end of the book the character David, tells his wife that he believes his father didn't like him.  What a pain to have carried.  His father did not treat him well.  The family was surprised that he did not keep in touch when he went away to college.  No surprise.

The book did a very sensitive, insightful job of portraying the disfunctional family. The book is very poignant at times, for example one of the family members is afraid to tell the family that he is gay.  His lover tells him... they know.....

This author has written more than 20 books.  I was surprised to learn this is the first book of hers I have read.  She is often on the best seller list and has won the pulitzer for a previous book.

The Crossing Places

 by Elly Griffiths

This book is the first in a series about forensic archaelogist Dr. Ruth Galloway.  The book is set in the north of England.  The police call in Dr. Galloway to examine some bones.  They turn out to be very old bones which makes Dr. Galloway excited but not the police.  There are two young girls who have gone missing in the area, one 10 years ago and one recently.

Dr. Galloway starts studying some of the research and the pathways in the marshes and is able to locate the body of the most recent girl who disappeared, in the centre of an ancient round circle.  There are people in the neighbourhood who are under suspicion including a protester.  The police have received many letters, some typed, some handwritten, teasing them for not being able to locate the girls.  The letters quote the bible and use other terminology which might only be used by an archaeologist.

One of Dr. Galloway's cats is brutally murdered and left on her step.  She also receives threatening texts saying they know where she is.  At one point she feels so threatened she goes to stay with a friend.

Eventually Dr. Galloway is roaming on the marshes and while she is disoriented locates a bird blind in the marshes.  She is shocked to discover a girl imprisoned under the blind (the girl who disappeared 10 years before).  She and the girl try to get away but they are chased by a man Dr. G thought she could trust an environmental officer/birder.  

Fortunately they get away but the birder and a former colleague of Dr. G, who sent some letters to the police because they were angry about a different death the police were involved with, drown in the marshes.

It was a well written mystery but I really dislike the "fat shaming" of Dr G by the author.  This is completely insensitive and unnecessary.  Because of this I won't be reading any more books in this series.

The Lost Chapter

 by Caroline Bishop

This is the story of an American woman who was sent to a girl's school in France in the 50's.  She did not adjust well to the rules, the curriculum -- organizing parties, flower arranging, managing staff in a household etc.  She is befriended by one of the girls.

The story gets a bit confusing.  There are two girls at the school, they are on an outing to the opera and The American girl falls for a man she meets at intermission.  She eventually convinces her brother to write letters as her father saying this man is her relative and he can take her on outings out of the building.  They eventually have sex and she gets pregnant.  The man tells her to have an abortion.  She can't afford it and decides to run away.  She invites her friend to join her.... but then the friend doesn't show up.  We find out this girl may have killed this man later on accidentally.

We then meet this American woman who is now 70 years of age, a cat lady and print maker.  She befriends a young girl who is grieving the death of her best friend who was hit by a car.  The mother tries to be close to the girl but isn't having success.  The old woman tries to get the girl interested in print making and to go to art school instead of study business.

Then the old woman discovers a book, authored by the woman who was her best friend.  She starts to read it and realizes it is roughly based on her time at the school in France.  The woman decides she needs to reconnect with her BF and invites the girl and her mother to accompany her to France.

The woman does meet up with her friend.  It is the French girl who had a baby.  She and her daughter now run a flower shop. She finds out the man who got her pregnant did not die after all and is still alive.  This takes a big weight off the American.

The old woman and the girl's mother try to convince the young girl that she is not responsible for her friend's death.  However, I am not sure I agree, she had a fight with her friend and pushed her into the street where she was hit and killed.  I think that she is somewhat responsible.

I found the story a bit confusing, with the different woman in life and in the book.  It was kind of predictable.  They keep referring to the girl's father but he is nowhere around, not sure if the parents are divorced or what... I was glad when I was done.

Oh William!

 by Elizabeth Strout

This is one of the books nominated for the Booker Longlist this year.

This book is about a woman, whose second husband died recently, who is having to cope with some issues with her first husband, whom she left years ago.

The woman had periodically met with her first husband over the years, for coffee etc.  It seems that her first husband was very remote and uncommunicative.  The book describes her relationship with her husband and mother-in-law.  It also describes the much better relationship that she had with her second husband.

Her ex-husband's second wife has now left him.  He is not handling that well.  In addition, the man has found out that his mother had a child before him whom she gave up for adoption.  He wants his ex-wife to accompany him on a trip to meet this step sister.  She reluctantly agrees.

The author does a great job of describing the frailties in people and the complexities in their relationships.  The protagonist still loves her ex in some ways but also knows that he drove her and continues to drive her crazy.

They fly to near where the ex was raised and tour a number of locations where he lived, eventually finding the very humble house where is mother was raised (they had not realized she was so poor as a child).  She was wealthy as an adult.

There is also some tension because the ex's mother left her husband to marry a German POW in America.  So there is some tension between the fact that the man's father was a German soldier and the woman's father a solider for the allies.

They eventually stop at the ex's step sister's house.  The woman goes in to talk to her.  Why didn't she make her husband go in and meet the step sister?  It was not her role??

Anyway she finds out the woman has had a good life but does not want to meet her step brother.  Maybe if he had come to meet her she might have changed her mind.

A fascinating character study, except for the woman continually enabling her disfunctional ex husband. Oh William!! about sums up the book.

I can certainly understand why this author has won the Pulitizer prize and other awards for her other books.

 

 

Two Nights in Lisbon

 by Chris Pavone

I have never read anything nor even heard of this author before.  He has published several other action/suspense books.

In this book an American couple travel to Lisbon.  The wife has accompanied her husband on a business trip.  When the wife awakes in the hotel room she is shocked to find her husband is not there and within a couple hours she is in touch with the police to tell them her husband is missing.  She keeps trying to reach him on his cell phone but he is not answering. This seems a bit quick to react and the police tell her that.  She admits they have not been married long but that this is out of character for him.  Eventually she is able to see video surveillance which seems to show her husband getting into a car around 7 a.m.

She then goes to the American embassy where she is again assured that probably nothing is amiss.

Both the American embassy and the police investigate further and find that both the woman and her husband have changed their names.  This raises suspicion.  Somehow the CIA also seem to be involved so these three agencies start investigating further and tracking the woman's movements.  Eventually one of them tracks the husband's phone to a garbage can in a warehouse district so they think something bad might have happened.

The woman is walking down a street and a motorcycle roars up and hands her a cell phone.  The driver tells her to answer it when it rings.  She does so and is told that her husband has been kidnapped and she needs 3 million euros to get him free.  She and her current husband do not have a lot of money so the woman says she doesn't know where to get that kind of money.

We then learn that the woman was previously married.  While married to her former husband and associate of her husband raped her at a party at his house.  When the woman's husband doesn't support her in her grief and her desire to avenge herself on the rapist she leaves him.  However, she does confront the rapist, telling him she got pregnant from him.  He agreed to give her some money, which she has put in trust for her son, and she has to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

In order to get the money she needs she contacts her ex who tells her he cannot get her the money. She then asks him to get his "friend" to contact her.  The man reluctantly gets in touch with her and she tells him she needs the money and will break the ND agreement with evidence on him if he doesn't help her. He is able to get $2 million dollars to her.

The woman eventually pays the ransom, and gets her husband back.  They are interrogated by the police and decide to try to leave Lisbon.  They sneak out of the hotel, despite a lot of surveillance on them, and manage to make it to Spain.  They decided to try to book separate flights back to the U.S.  The woman is detained by the Spanish police at the request of the Portugese police.  The husband is not located.  The woman is shocked that her husband has disappeared and apparently genuinely upset at this  development.

While all this is going on a blabber mouth employee of the woman as told someone else about the NDA. There is also a reporter the woman encountered in Lisbon who has figured out the rapist is the man in line to be nominated for VP of the US.

In the end we find out that the woman's marriage was a marriage of convenience.  Her husband's sister had also been raped by this man (at 16 years of age) and has not recovered.  The two of them cook up the plan to marry, stage the kidnapping, with the money going to the man's daughter.  Their other goal is to updend the plans for the man to become VP.  As other people break the story the woman is not guilty of violating the NDA.

This was an action packed book, I have to say I didn't anticpate the ending.

Tomb of Sand

 by Geetanjali Shree

This book won the Booker International Prize this year.  It is a massive book, more than 700 pages.

I found the book interesting but a bit frustrating. I enjoyed the creativity and the story but the author has many chapters of "jibber jabber" which may or may not have related to the story itself.  If this had been taken out the book could have been half its length.

The story is about primarily about an old woman in India.  After her husband dies she is living with her son and basically gives up on live.  Refusing to get up or leave her room.  Then one day her grandson gives her a cane with butterflies on it and all of sudden people come to her for her blessings.  

One day the old woman goes awol.  When they find her her daughter, a freelance writer, decides to take her mother home to stay with her for a while.  The daughter is happy to have her mother with her as the mother seems to perk up staying with her.  However, this disrputs her relationship with her boyfriend.

The book is interesting as it tells how the various family members react to and interact with the old woman.  The wife of the son keeps phoning her son who lives in Australia to explain the antics of the old woman and get his advice.

The daughter is pleased to have her mother with her but is concerned that her mother develops to close a relationship with a two spirited person, the female figure a healer, the male figure a tailor.  This person seems to come to control the old woman including convincing her to leave saris behind and just wear long dresses.

The old woman is distraught when she finds out her two spirited person has died/been murdered.  She then insists that she wants to travel to Pakistan/Kashmir.  Is she determined to finish a mission for her murdered friend?  The daughter agrees to travel with her and they do a bit of touring hosted by embassy officials but the old woman gets to places she is not supposed to travel and gets arrested.  The woman and her daughter are treated quite well in prison but the old woman gives the police interviewers a lot of difficulty as she answers nonsense to their questions.

Eventually the old woman asks to see a government official.  She eventually meets him but realizes it is father she wants to see.  She eventually is released from jail and gets to see the old man who may have been her first husband.  With the partition of Pakistan/Kashmir and India did she get displaced from her first husband?  That is what it looks like.   Leaving the old man's home she is shot and dies, as was predicted at the start of the book where it mentioned that she practiced getting pushed and hit so that when she fell down she would die face up.

A fascinating, sometimes confusing and overly verbose book but I could see why it was justified to win the Booker.

Black Cake

 by Charmaine Wilkerson

I found this a very interesting story.

It starts with a woman dying and leaving a tape for her children, one of whom she is estranged from.  The daughter comes back reluctantly.  She and her brother had been close but have drifted apart especially since she did not come back for her father's funeral.  We eventually find out she did return for it but had been beaten up by a lover and didn't want people to see her in that state.

The girl had fallen out years before when she couldn't settle on a career and especially when she announced she was gay.  She left home after her parents reaction to this announcement.

The mother's message tells them she had a past and a different name.  As a young woman in the caribbean her father, a gambler, was going to marry her off to the man he owed money to.  The girl is shocked that her father would do this to her.  When her groom dies at the wedding ceremony she runs away.  Everyone thinks she poisoned him.

She flees to England and then is involved in a train crash on a train to scotland.  She is assumed to be her frend, who has died in the crash, and goes along with the misunderstanding.  She gets a job, is raped by her employer and gets pregnant.  She has to give up the baby but is haunted by this especially as she ages.

She eventually runs into a boy she loved in the caribbean.  They both change their names and move to America where they marry and have two children.

The mother tells them she has tried to track down her lost daughter.  

The children are shocked at all this news, it takes them time to digest it.  The lawyer eventually tracks down their sister.  She is shocked by the news she has siblings and comes to meet them but then leaves

Evenutally she comes back and they share some of their mothers black cake.

This was a very interesting story.  I really enjoyed it.

Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

 by Stuart Turton

This is a kind of ground hog day scenario

A group of people as gathered at a family estate on the anniversary of the death of the son of the estate owners years before.  A guest at the estate sees what he thinks is a woman being attacked/murdered and is injured himself.  He manages to make his way back to the house.  Over the next few hours the man finds that he is inside the heads/bodies of several of the guests.  

He finds that he is tasked with trying to find out who murders the daugther of the family.  If he manages to solve this he will be allowed to leave the property.  The man finds it very disconcerting to inhabit these different people, at different times of the day.  He meets a woman Anne who appears to be trying to help him and he wants to save her also.

The book then goes through various times of day and characters as the "main character" tries to figure out what is going to happen.  I appears that the daughter of the family is engaged against her will to a much older man, a friend of the family.  The marriage is being orchestrated so that her husband will bail the family out financially.  The scenario seems to be that the young woman kills herself rather than go through with the marriage.

As the story progresses the main character eventually figures out that the young woman wants to fake her suicide but her brother actually tries to kill her.

It was a novel idea to a story and structured quite well between all the personas.  However by the end it was getting quite confusing as to who did what and who knew what.

Dictionary of Lost Words

 by Pip Williams     

This is the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, told from the point of view of the daughter of one of the men who worked on the project.  The daughter initially started as a young child, hanging out in the workshop where her father and others were working.  She spent a lot of time underneath the table where the men were working.

This project took several decades to complete.

The task was to identify words and then find usage of them in literature, or in newspapers that document the usage.  After that the team members attempted a definition of the term.  Some termswere open to a lot of discussion.

The young girl is sometimes left in the care of a young maid who works in the house on the property.  They become very close friends.  While the maid is only a few years older than the girl she becomes something like a mother figure for her as the young girl's mother is dead.

As time goes by the girl starts to realize that "women's words" do not necessarily make it into the dictionary or if they do they are often disparaged.  The maid takes her to the local market and the young woman starts writing down words she hears there and the sentence in which they are used, then cites the name of the person who spoke the words.  She keeps her precious words in a box under the maid's bed.

Eventually the young girl is given a job helping the men working on the dictionary, sorting words, running the papers with the completed words to the printers.  She meets a young typesetter there and they eventually become close friends and eventually marry.  Her boyfriend/fiance publishes her words into a book, The Dictionary of Lost Words.  She is overjoyed at this wonderful surprise.

The book is well written and gives excellent details as to all the work that went into the compilation of the dictionary.  I had picked it up on a whim and really enjoyed it.

The Messy Lives of Book People

by Phaedra Patrick

This book is about a woman, Liv Green, who is working several demanding jobs as a cleaner while her husband struggles to keep their publishing company afloat. She is frustrated and exhausted worrying about how the family will be able to afford university costs for their two boys. One of her jobs is as a cleaner for a famous author, Essie Starling, an author she adores.

Essie is working on her 20th book and has a tight deadline.  She has been a recluse for many years, much to the dismay of her fans and her publisher.  Essie doesn't speak to Liv much, she ignores her pretty much the same way all her employers and the people she encounters in her cleaning jobs do.  At times Essie disappears from her apartment giving no explanation.

Liv's father was a literature prof, he has died in a car accident.

One day Essie starts to talk to Liv about writing and gives the indication she would like to speak to her more about that.  Liv is excited about this opportunity but before things can go any further she is contacted by a lawyer.  The lawyer tells her that Essie died during/following? a surgery.  In her will she has specified that Liv should complete her final book but that her death should be kept secret until the book is submitted to the publisher on Nov. 1st.

Liv and the lawyer are flabbergasted by the will.  Liv quits her other cleaning jobs and tells her husband that she is now helping Essie as an assitant and will get some more money.  She then takes on th task of reading the draft, incomplete manuscript and realizes that Essie had lost her spark for writing.  So Liv starts making some minor changes to the book plus has the huge task of finishing the last eight chapters since all Essie's books have the same number of chapters.

While Liv is working on the book a reporter starts sneaking around trying to get an interview with Essie.  Liv thinks she has managed to keep her away but the reporter keeps digging and trying to contact people who know Essie for background info.  At the same time Liv starts to do some research about Essie to try to find out what inspired her and why Nov 1st is such an important date for her, other than that she won a prestigious award on that day but immediately after became a recluse.

Liv dresses in Essie's clothes and even goes to a book fair in Croatia pretendting that Essie is there with her.  This is a ridiculous part of the book.... what would make her think to do this.  There is a lot of suspicion that Essie is never seen and the hotel room points out that Essie's room is slept in but not hers.  The reporter also tracks down this info.

Once she is close to finishing the book the lawyer tells Liv what Essie has left her, a small student flat where Essie presumably lived as a university student.  Liv assumes this is where Essie fled when she wanted to get away to write.  As she goes through the things in the apartment she discovers that Essie was a student of her father and was in love with him.

Then she is able to put 2 and 2 together.  Her father died on Nov 1st, after he rejected Essie's desire to have a relationship.  Essie won the literary award on Nov 1st but on that day she found out her current husband was having an affair with another woman and is leaving her.  Now she knows why Essie hired her (she had mentioned her father in her resume letter).  She is the daughter of the man Essie loved and could never have.

Liv decides to end the final book, not with the heroine riding off with a lover, but deciding to make her own life.  A much more satisfying ending.

This was an interesting story, at first you wonder what would have possessed Essie to choose Liv as her ghostwriter. The other question is how did Essie know she was going to die and make the stipulation for Liv to finish her book? Did she have a premonition, given her failing health?

 

Kaikeyi

 by Vaishnavi Patel

This is a book which is based on some ancient Indian texts about a woman, Kaikeyi who banished her own son.  The book has some magical realism including some monsters, monsters that can take on human form and some visits from "the gods" etc. in it.

Kaikeyi is the daughter of a Raja.  She has three brothers.  When she is a young girl her mother leaves without any notice.  The children find out that their father has banished their mother because of a suspected indiscretion.  The girl and one of her brothers are especially close.  They are devastated by the loss of their mother.  The brother teaches her some fighting skills as well as how to drive a chariot in warfare.  Women would not learn these skills normally.

The girl's father doesn't pay any attention to her.  One day he tells her she is to become the third wife of another Raja.  She only agrees to the marriage if the Raja will make her son, if she has one, his successor.  When she moves to her new home she keeps to herself but eventually she comes to realize it is better and expected that she will mingle with the other wives and the court and she finds that they welcome her.  There is no jealousy even when she asks to sit in on meetings of the Raja and his counsellors.  The women eventually set up a women's court to help women.  None of the wives get pregnant so a ceremony is held after which all three women have sons.  Kaikeyi son is born second.  She assumes her husband will honour his promise to her especially since she saved his life in a battle.

Kaikeyi has a special power, she can sense how strong the connections are between herself and others, eventually she can see these connections between other people.

It is interesting that all three women consider all the boys as their sons.  Kaikeyi is disturbed to find that the boys are getting tutored by a man who think women have too much power and that things should return to the ways of old.  She gets this tutor dismissed.  However, later the oldest son and one of the other brothers are sent away for education and she is dismayed to learn their tutor is the one she had fired.

When the oldest son returns he convinces his father, who is still young and healthy, that he should retire and make him Raj.  Kaikeyi challenges this when her husband agrees and calls in two "boons" her husband had offered her when she saved his life.  She uses the two boons to have the oldest boy banned for 10 years.  There is some evidence that this oldest son is a god.  However, she and others think he is too immature to rule.  And she wants her son to rule instead.  Her son doesn't want the responsibility.

Things eventually develop that her brother plans to attack the state because his nephew has not taken power.  There is a battle and one of Kaikeyi's sons kills her brother.  She is so upset she retires to her quarters.  The question arises, did all the manipulations she tried prove for good or ill?

It was an interesting, if someone puzzling story at times.

 

Book Lovers

 by Emily Henry

I am always drawn to books about libraries and bookstores.  When I picked this up I didn't realize it would be a rom-com and a very poor one at that.  This book was SO PREDICTABL!!

It is the story of an uptight book agent in New York who feels responsible for her younger sister and her family.  She is a workaholic, known as "the shark" in the office.  Many of oher love interests have left her and the big city for life in the country in one place or another.

She meets a book editor for lunch one day and the two immediately dislike each other.

Her sister, who is 5 months pregnant with her third child, decides that she needs a holiday so they should go to a town that is featured in a best seller romance novel. The sister also has a to do list for them (her sister) while they are there, including wear flannel, kiss a stranger, save a local business..... see what I mean about predictable.

The main character reluctantly agrees thinking it will be good for her sister.  She finds the town doesn't live up to the rustic charm of the book.  She is shocked to find that the book editor is in the town, trying to help his parents who are running a failing bookstore in town.  Sparks fly of course between them as they agree to work together on editing a book by one of the author's the woman represents.

In the end the woman's sister and her husband decide to move to the small town as it is more affordable for them.  The love interest says he has to stay to help his parents.  But in the end of course he does leave his family in good hands and return to New York to be with her.

Not a very interesting, engaging read as far as I was concerned.  I ended up skipping pages (including the mild juicy bits) just to get to the end.

 

 

The Murdr of Mr Wickham

 by Claudia Gray

This book is a takeoff on Jane Austen, obviously.  The author has done a great job of writing in a similar style to Austen.  Apparently she is a Jane Austen fan and is shows.  The thinking and behaviour of the characters is very much in the style of Austen herself, with the class awareness, consciousness of social norms and not embarrassing oneself or ruining one's reputation.  Wickham, as portrayed in the book is very self-serving, deceitful and mean.

The story centres around a gathering at the home of the Knigtley's where characters from several of Austen's books have come to spend what they hope will be a pleasant month.  However, soon after the holiday starts Wickham shows up univited, as if gloating at the hatred the gathered people have for him, including the Darcys.  He takes special glee in having ruined or potentially financially ruined several of the families present who invested in a money making scheme of his which has been a disaster.  It seems Wickham has received money and many people still owe him money.

The Darcy's son Jonathan is one of the guests.  He seems to be a bit of a social misfit, perhaps a bit autistic.  She doesn't like social situatioins because he never knows what is expected of him.  There is a young lady in attendance also.  The two strike up a friendship.  The girl doesn't seem to mind all his quirks.

The weather is terrible, rain and storms so everyone is stuck inside for days.  Wickham's presence casts a pall over everyone.  One night he is found murdered.  As the book proceeds we find that most of the people in the house have reason to want him dead.  As the local offical tries to determine who killed Wickham, the two young people do their own investigating by listening and watching people.  They have to be careful to not be caught alone together as that would be scandalous.  Eventually they point out the actual murder weapon to the official and one of the guests admits that she killed Wickham because he made unwelcome advances to her. 

The magistrate decides that her actions were justified and it appears there will be no legal consequences for her.

It was an entertaining book and I was very impressed with how the author "channeled" Austin. 

Mansions of the Moon

 by Shyam Selvadurai

"the best people's souls- those Brhamins practising austerities and sacrifices in the forests - pass from the fires of cremation  into the air, rising to the moon where they dwell for six months in its mansions.  Then their Atmans continue upwards into the world of the gods and from theire into the Land of the Fathers.  Yet their journey does not end there dhara.  Soon a person who consites entirely of mind comes to lead them to the world of Braham, where they live in eternal bliss" pg 116.

This book is the fictional story of the life of Siddhartha, who became the Buddha, as told through his wife, Yasodhara.  I didn't really know anything about him other than that he was wealthy and left all this behind.

The story tells how Siddhartha, who is a disappointment to his father (uncle?), a raj, because he is not a good fighter and athlete.  Siddhartha goes away and gets acclaim as an administrator but when he comes back his father still doesn't like him and embarrasses him alot.  There are a couple other relatives who work with his father and seem to run things.  Siddhartha decides to marry a young girl he knew from childhood.  She is happy to marry him but shocked when instead of him getting a good job from his father he is sent to a distant outpost where they have no servants and must clean their own house and clothes, cook their own meals and even grow their own food.  His wife is at first distressed but finds she likes the manual labour and the joy that comes with growing things.  The people like Siddhartha because he is fair.  However Siddhartha does not like having to make judgements on people and he is attracted to teaching of ascetic monks.  He is visited by a former Raj, who gave everything up to become a monk, wandering the country.  Siddhartha is impressed by the man and his ideas and the fact he left everything behind.

A drought affects the countryside where Siddhartha and his wife live.  When the tax collectors come to collect taxes Siddhartha says they will give nothing because if they do the people will starve.  Shortly after his wife's brother comes and tells Siddhartha that because of his behaviour  he is being replaced.  The woman's brother is quite violent and has created alliances with some other local "tribes" because of the woman he has "married".

Siddhartha and his wife return to the family home in shame.  Siddhartha is appointed as a judge and seems to be doing a good job but he starts to go to visit some monks camped out outside the city.  His  wife announces she is pregnant thinking this will cause him to realize his responsibilities but shortly after the child is born he leaves his wife telling his wife that he has to follow his calling.  She is devastated.

Ten years after Siddhartha left rumours come that he is in the neighbourhood.  He has bome very famous for his teachings. His wife tells her son not to expect a visit from his father because his father has abandoned them.  Siddhartha does come to visit when he finds out his father is dying.  He meets his son and sees his wife again. When the Raj dies all the people in his household will have to leave their house.  The woman are worried about what will happen to them.  Siddhartha's wife asks him to intercede with the new Raj on behalf of his family of women.  He says he cannot do this as he would have.  She is further devastated when she finds her son has run off to join Siddhartha as have two cousins she was close to.

His wife decides that women do have the stamina to become wandering monks begging for a living.  She convinces many of the women to shave their heads, dress in white gowns and start to walk for 15 days to catch up with Siddhartha.  It is physically difficult but they are helped along the way.  When they catch up with Siddhartha the monks vote against women joining the order.  But the women persist and finally they are allowed to become monks with several restrictions on their behaviour basically making them subservient to the male monks.  The woman accept these rules knowing they will have little contact with the men.

Having read  up on the wife, Yasodhara, I learned that she lived to 78 years of age and Buddha died two years later.  Very long lives for those times.

Obviously very little is known about the real lives and interactions of Buddha and his wife, etc.  The author is a man.  He did a great job of presenting a story about what it might have been like, how difficult life was for women, so dependent on their males for their care and support.

Ayesha At Last

 by Uzma Jalaluddin

This is the second book I have read by this author.  I enjoyed it more than the first one.  It had more "meat".  The book is a bit of a homage to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

The story is about Muslim families living in the Toronto area.  The main character Ayesha is a modest devote Muslim who is struggling to get established as a teacher.  She has a cousin who is the popular one and a party animal, Hafsa.

Hafsa's goal in life is to get married.  Ayesha is in her late 20's but isn't too anxious to get married and her mother and grandparents, who live with her, are okay with her not wanting an arranged marriage.

The second story is about a very conservative, devote Muslim, Khalid.  Khalid has very set ideas about how a Muslim should behave and what a wife should be like.  He is getting grief from his new supervisor who has a hate on for Muslims based on her experience working in Saudi Arabia.  She doesn't like that Khalid won't shake hands and wears traditional Muslim attire and has a big bushy beard.  The supervisor is out to get him fired and finally decides to give him the job of setting up a website for an oversize women's lingerie business.  She figures this project will sink him.  She thinks this job will be for a tiny startup so it won't matter if the company loses the account.  She doesn't find out til later that the company makes multi-million dollars in sales per year.  Khalid is upset at this perceived demotion as he is an e-commerce consultant but he does what he is told.  The women from the lingerie company are supportive of Khalid because they see what his boss is doint to him.He is willing to have is Mother arrange a marriage for him.

The local Mosque is organizing an event for young Muslims.  Khalid, Ayesha and her cousin are recruited to help plan the event.  Hafsa wants to start an event planning business but also wants to meet a boy so she convinces Ayesha to say she is Hafsa.  Why Ayesha agrees to this I don't know.  Khalid and Ayesha spar alot because of their different views of Muslim acceptable behaviour but they are also attracted to each other.  Khalid's mother finds out about the attraction and hastily arranges an engagement between Khalid and Ayesha's cousin.  When Khalid hear's his future wife's name he is happy because he thinks it is Ayesha bu of course it is his cousin.

The mistaken identities is a plot taken from Shakespeare.  The angry mother who warns off a woman and the scene where Khalid tells Ayesha how much he loves her despite all her faults is straight out of Pride and Prejudice.

In the end Khalid says no to his mother and wants to marry Ayesha.  He is fired from his job, but a co-worker has evidence that will sink the boss.  He is okay with being fired because he has been hired by the women's lingerie company.

It was a light romance but I enjoyed how she developed the plot with references to Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

All the Queen's Men

 by SJ Bennett

I read the previous book by this author, The Windsor Knot, and found it quite entertaining.  Like the Windsor Knot this book involves Queen Elizabeth II discreetly employing some sleuthing techniques to find out if the death of a staff member was murder or an accident, how a painting she was fond of ended up in a Maritime Museum and who is sending poison pen notes to various employees of the Queen.

The book features the Queen and her Personal Assistant Rozie plus a number of additional characters.  As the book moves on we find that the woman who was murdered was a cleaner who was disliked by almost everyone.  On further investigation it is determined that she was acutally hired as an art restorer, curator, but got demoted.  The dead woman had unearthed some valuable works by a woman artist.  Later the paintings were determined to be copies.  It appears the originals were stolen and replaced with copies.  The investigation also turns up additional corruption with items owned or given to the Queen being sold off.

The book was a bit plodding, I didn't find it as engaging as the first one.

The Mayfair Bookshop

 by Eliza Knight

This is the fictional story of the life of one of the infamous Mitford Sisters of England, Nancy Mitford.  After turning down two suitors, one of whom she seems to have really loved but with whom she had an on again off again engagement, Nancy marries a third man and enters a very unhappy marriage.  Her husband spends all their money on excesses and mistresses.  She is unhappy but doesn't believe he will give her a divorce.  At the same time two of her sisters and her mother fall under the influence of Hitler.  One of the sisters apparently becomes Hitlers mistress.  This sister later shoots herself in the head.  She ends up a vegetable rather than dead.  One of her other sisters leaves her husband and children for an avowed communist

Nancy and her husband end up working for the war effort in different roles.  Nancy is engaged by the British government to "spy" on French soldiers in England to ferret out any that might be pro-vichy and against De Gaulle.  At times she works helping refugees from Spain and Franco's war, who have fled to France.  She and her husband help to get them to other countries.

She had quite a life.  Eventually she ended up getting a job running a bookstore in London.

There is a second story in the book, a young American woman, who is a book seller, seeking out special titles for private collections is a fan of Mitford and comes seeking to identify who a person Mitford calls Iris really is.  The girl's mother had a Mitford book with a written dedication to Iris in it but apparently she never picked it up from the books store.  The girl is able with the help of others to identify the woman and get the book to her.  She is ultimately offered a job in England where she had a budding romance.

This was an interesting story.  Lots of historical information.  Much better than I expected it to be.

Mindful of Murder

 by Susan Juby

This book is by a BC Author who wrote Alice I think, Miss Smithers and more.

The book is about a young woman, formally a Buddhist Monk who left the Monastery to help a friend run a spiritual retreat on an island on the BC Coast.  After she had been there for a while her friend/Mentor paid for her to attend an expensive course for Professional Butlers.  The young woman has just graduated when she learns that her Mentor has died.  Apparently she took her own life as part of a planned death.  The young woman has to return to the retreat to carry out some of the wishes of her Mentor.  Two of her classmates from the Butler school come to help her out.

The young woman is suspicious about the apparent suicide.  She feels her Mentor would have told the members of her death group and her death doula about her plans.  She did not do this.

As part of carrying out the wishes of her Mentor the woman has to invite the woman's nieces and nephews to the retreat where they will partipate in a flower arranging class, a dance/movement class and a meditation class.  After a couple weeks the young woman is supposed to decide which of the four young people should take over the task of running the retreat.  Three of the four candidates are spoiled rich kids who seem to have fallen on hard times, the fourth is a relative unknown to all of them, a bit of a hippy chick.

There is lots of grumbling by the participants and squabbling.  Strange things start happening, one of the people insists someone threw stones at them, another person had their flower arrangement destroyed.  A young man, associated with one of the girls is found murdered and then a huge storm causes damage to the building and one of the Butlers is drugged.

Eventually they find out that one of the girls killed the aunt and her "boyfriend".  The two boys, brothers, cooked up a plot to create a journal in the Aunt's forged signature indicating she wanted them to have everything.

The butler decides to entrust the retreat to the hippy chick, the only one she thinks she can trust.

It was an interesting, sometimes comical read.

Second Place

 By Rachel Cusk

This writer is acclaimed for a trilogy she wrote a few years back.  I wasn't enamoured with those books but thought I would try this one.  I wasn't impressed with this either, nor was a reviewer at The Guardian.

The story is written as the narrator M, recounts to someone named Jeffers (we never find out who this is) her misadventures in inviting an artist to stay at a guest house on her and her husband's property.

The book starts out by saying the woman met the devil on a train.  Then she goes on to talk about how she feels invisible, un-noticed.  One day in a funk she went out walking in London and stumbled upon an art exhibit.  She became enamoured with the artist, feeling he would save her somehow.

Years later she is married, has a grown daughter.  She and her husband have a guest house on their property that they make available to artists.  She writes to the artist she was enamoured with and invites him to come to stay.  He says he will but then doesn't show saying he got a better offer, a tropical island.  She is devastated at this news.

Eventually the artist does show up with an attractive young woman in tow.  The woman is upset by this.  She tries to get the artists attention but he ignores her or is rude to her.  He wants to paint others but not her.  When he paints her husband he paints him as a tiny figure on a big canvas.  How disparaging!  Eventually the artist paints a garish garden of Eden scene on the wall of the guest house featuring a very unflattering image of the woman.  She is devastated by her dreams of him saving her having failed and his cruelty to her.

He eventually leaves and dies poverty stricken and alone in Paris.  His last paintings re-establish his fame in the art community.

This was a very depressing, boring book.  I don't understand why the woman had so little self esteem.  She seemed to have a loving supportive husband who put up with her weird personality.  Apparently the book was sparked by a book by another author.

Quote in the book, Sophocles said "how dreadful knowledge of the truth is, when the truth can't help you."

I don't think I will bother with any more Rachel Cusk books.

Looking for the Durrells

 by Melanie Hewitt

I have really enjoyed the books in the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell and the PBS series based on the books.  I picked this up because I need something light to read these days.

This book is about a young woman whose father has just died and who broke up with her fiance around the same time as her father died.  She and her father used to enjoy reading the Durrell books and talked about visitng Corfu sometime.  The young lady decides to go to Corfu for a month to nurse her grief and also to remember her Dad.

While she originally intended just to be an anonymous tourist she soon makes several friends in the local town.  As part of her trip plans she wants to visit the various locations where the Durrells lived while they were on Corfu and also the house where the series was filmed.  The locals help her to get to those places.

While she is in Corfu she keeps getting messages from her ex-fiance.  She ignores them, having realized he was not the guy she wants to spend the rest of her life with.  She is attracted to a local young man, a lawyer who left a successful practice in England to return home to fish with his father and do boat tours for tourists.  It looks like romance might be blossoming but then her ex shows up.  She dismisses him.

There is another "love" story in the book.  The owner of a local restaurant, a widow with a young son, is in love with a local scholar who was the best friend of her husband and godfather to her son.  She finally tells him how she feels about him.

At the end of the book it looks like she and the young Greek know they love each other but there is no clear indication of what she plans to do.

So, the book is about following your dreams and your heart, why waste time being alone and lonely.  A nice story with lots of local colour.

Lincoln Highway

 by Amor Towles

Boy can this author ever write!! I read his book a Gentleman in Moscow a few years ago and really enjoyed it.  This is a very big book, almost 600 pages, I was not looking forward to a big, long book. However, this book was worth it!

It is the story of a young man, who has been in a juvenile detention facility, because he accidentally killed another boy.  The young man's mother left the family years ago and his father died of cancer while he was serving his sentence.  The farmer next door and his daughter were looking after the boy's 8 year old brother until he was released.  The father was not a successful farmer so the family farm is being foreclosed.

When the young man (Emmett) returns he decides their is not point in staying around, there are too many hard feelings against him in the community.  His young brother (Billy) wants them to go to San Francisco because that was where the last postcard they got from their mother was from.

The young man is shocked to find out that two of the inmates of the prison stowed away in the warden's car and are now at his home.  He offers to drive them to the nearest train station but things go off the rails and the other inmates end up taking his car and heading to New York.  In taking the car they also took all the money Emmett's father set aside for him. So penniless, Emmett and Billy jump on an east bound train.  

Along the way they meet some people who help them and also some who want to hurt them or steal from them.  Billy is constantly reading a book about Heroes.  When he meets a black man named Ulysses who helps and protects him he is convinced that Ulysses is the modern reincarnation of the Greek Hero.  Sally, the girl from the neighbouring farm rescues the boys when their car is stolen.  Later she manages to find them in New York.  In the end she insists that she will go with them rather than go home.  She is sick and tired of cooking and cleaning for her father, especially after he bought the boy's farm at a good price as it was being foreclosed on.

The book has many twists, turns and surprises, almost one in every chapter. Eventually the boys do meet up with the two escapees, Woolly and Duchess and more adventures ensue as Duchess tries to settle some scores along the way.  In the story Woolly is not quite the brightest light in the universe.  He was jailed because of some pranks he did that went wrong.  He is now a drug addict. Duchess, who is the really evil, manipulative, one with no conscience at all was actually framed by his own father.  While he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of he has turned out to be very bad.

The goal of the criminals is to get to New York to raid Woolly's grandfather's safe at a lake cabin (his family was very wealthy).  They make it to cabin and Billy is able to figure out the combination for the safe.  Woolly commits suicide leaving a note saying he leaves the money to the two brothers and to Duchess.  Emmett is so tired of Duchess and all the trouble he has caused them that he knocks him out, then puts him and his share of the money in a boat at the property.  When Duchess comes to he finds the boat is filling with water.  It sounds like he doesn't make it as he can't swim.  Something of a just end for this very bad character.

This book had incredible stories, characters and twists to the plot.  It was a great read.

The Maid

 by Nita Prose

This is the story of a maid at a large hotel.  She appears to have some level of autism, judging from her  thought processes and behaviour.  She is very lonely as her grandmother who raised her died about a year ago.  She is struggling to make ends meet because a beau she had cleaned out all hers and her grandmother's savings.

She is a hard worker and prides herself on making rooms very clean.  She has a crush on the bartender and thinks he likes her.  She helps out a dishwasher in the kitchen by giving him the key to rooms that are empty as she has been told he is homeless.  She then cleans the rooms the next morning before they can be booked out.  This is a bit fishy, how  would she know the room wouldn't be rented out later in the day?  One day she enters one of the rooms to find the bartender, two big thugs and the dishwasher in the room.  She is puzzled but they tell her everything is okay so she heads on her way.

She befriends the trophy wife of one of the wealthy couples that frequently stay at the hotel.  The husband is rude and abusive of his wife.  The wife confides in the Maid and the maid thinks they have become friends.  One day she goes back to the couple's room to finish cleaning the bathroom and finds the husband dead on the bed.  She reports this to the office and is brought in for questioning.  Her behaviour confounds the police and she doesn't tell them everything as she wants to protect the wife.

Later the wife shows up at her apartment and asks her to retrieve a gun she had stored in the ceiling in the bathroom.  The Maid, Molly, agrees to do this and puts the gun in her vaccuum cleaner. Molly confides this information to the bartender who she thinks has a crush on her. Shortly after the police show up at her apartment and arrest her for the murder of the rich man.  They tell her they found the gun in her vaccuum cleaner and found drugs in her locker.

The doorman of the hotel, and his daughter who is a lawyer, seek to defend the maid.  Eventually she tells the police about the activities of the bartender and the dishwasher.  It turns out the bartender had been blackmailing the dishwasher into helping them move drugs.  The rich man was also involved in this drug business.

Molly still feels sorry for the trophy wife and helps her leave the building.  It turns out the trophy wife was having an affair with the bartender and planned to leave her husband, going with the bartender to a property in the caribbean. It turns out the bartender was using both women.  He is eventually arrested for the drug dealing and murder of the rich man.  Molly later learns that it was actually the rich man's ex wife who murdered him but she doesn't share this information with anyone.

It was an interesting mystery story.

Hana Khan Carries On

 This book is described as a romcom, but it is a bit more than that.

It is about a young Muslim woman in Toronto.  Her father is an invalid as a result of a traffic accident, her mother is running a not very successful Halal restaurant. Hana works there part time but her dream is to get into radio.  She has a job as an Intern at a radio station.

In addition to this Hana has created a blog about her life and experiences.  She remains anonymous on the blog.  She has one follower with who she has developed a chat relationship.  They share their challenges with each other and give advice to each other.

Hana is devastated to find out that a fancy new Halal restaurant is going to open up in the neighbourhood and will likely put her mother's restaurant out of busines.  While this is going on Hana's pregnant sister who had also been helping out at the restaurant is told to take bed rest.  An aunt arrives from India and takes over Hana's room.  A male cousin also arrives to help out at the restaurant.

Hana meets the father and son who are opening the rival restaurant, they are very rude and cutthroat.  She decides to create online accounts and go on social media to spread negative rumours about the new restaurant. 

Hana feels her radio boss doesn't want to listen to her ideas and that she is being sabotaged by another intern so she quits her intern job.

As time goes by Hana finds she is attracted to the young man from the rival restaurant.  One day Hana's cousin convinces Hana to show him around Toronto and invites the young man from the rival restaurant to come along.  At one point they are verbally assaulted by some white supremacists, in the rucus Hana falls down.  Hana's cousin has filmed the incident and puts in on social media where it becomes widely watch with both supportive and not supportive comments.  Hana is very angry at her cousin for raising this situation online.

Hana and her cousin get busy trying to organize an annual neighbourhood street festival but they find their posters and some businesses get defaced.  Hana is very demoralized by this but they decide to work on.  On the day of the event there are some white supremacist protestors but also some counter protesters.  Once some musician arrives people in the neighbourhood decide to dance and ignore the protests.

A lot of other things happen in the book including that the young man of the rival restaurant gets to meet his mother.  He had been told by his mean father that she had died when the boy was young.  Hana and the young man marry.  Hana's cousin buys her mother's restaurant and updates it.  There is some interest in a podcast Hana has created about her aunt and it looks like she may get more opportunities in the broadcast field.

While there was a romance interest there was a lot more going on in this book with the neighbourhood politics, the racism, etc.  I liked the mix of story, podcast text and text messaging in the book.  It was a light but entertaining read.

Women of Chateau Lafayette

 by Stephanie Dray

This was a large book, 500 pages. I don't normally have the staying power for a long book but this one was certainly worth it.

It is based on real historical characters.  The story is about three different women, two of whom were real people.  The first story takes place in the 1770's the second in WWI and the third in WWII.

The story starts with a woman Adrienne, who marries a man named Lafayette.  Her family are nobles and her father works to get her and her husband active in the french court.  She is warmly welcomed by Marie Antoinette but her husband is teased.  Her husband, against family wishes, leaves for America to fight with the Americans to get them free of the British.  He is highly regarded by the Americans for his leadership and bravery and comes back to France Highly regarded.  However, the mood in France changes both towards him and towards the king.  He tries to get the King to agree to a constitutional Monarchy and the King signs papers but soon indicates he has no intention of following through.  This results in the French revolution.  Lafayette soon becomes hated by the french as they see him supporting the king.  Eventually he is imprisoned in Austria where his wife eventually goes to join him rather than be separated.  His wife is almost beheaded but escapes thanks to the intervention of an American diplomat.  Her mother, grandmother and sister are not so lucky.  Eventually the Lafayettes settle in the family estate, the chateau Chavaniac where the locals welcome them warmly.

The second story takes place  in WWII. A stage singer/actress marries a rich British man. She is the second real person. He is an adventurer.  At first they are very much in love but then the husband injures his leg and he doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with his wife and children.  His wife, waffles between love and disgust regarding her husband.  Although they aren't getting along the man buys his wife Chateau Chavaniac.  She decides to turn it into a shelter for orphans and sick children during the war.  She then becomes very active travelling back and forth between the U.S. and France, against her husband's wishes.  She and another woman set up a Lafayette Foundation to fund the work of the Chateau.  Because of her husband's name she has lots of connections in the U.S. and raises lots of money for her cause but she cannot get the U.S. president to send troops to aid in the fight in Europe.  The woman has a romantic relationship with a wealthy french soldier, he wants her to leave her husband and marry him.  While she does love him she decides not to marry him and eventually returns to the U.S. and her children but she keeps a hand on the running of the Chateau in France.

The third character is a girl Marthe, who has grown up as an orphan at the Chateau.  She longs to know who her parents were.  She is now a teacher at the chateau.  WWII is raging and the girl's fiancee, a livelong friend, is killed in the fighting.  The girl marries a local gendarme and this allows her to use her artistic skills to create false documents for some of the patients at the chateau and for others fleeing france.  Eventually she confesses and is about to be arrested but her husband arrives on the scene and while attempting to support her he is shot.  Eventually the woman is able to go to the U.S. on a scholarship to study art.

This was a fascinating story.  I never really knew about this french involvement in the American war of Independence and learned more about the turmoil in France in the 1700's.    It was dreadful all the innocent people who were killed by the masses.  A great read.

The Department oeef Rare Books and Special Collections

 by Eva Jurczyk

This is a book written by a Canadian Librarian from Toronto

The story is about a woman who is the assistant to the Director of a Rare Books and Special Collections Dept at a University.  She is on sabbatical working on writing a book.  However, she is called back to work when her boss is struck ill with a stroke.  He is in hospital in a coma.

Things are tense at the university because a rare collection of books had recently been acquired by the university.  The books are supposed to be locked in the safe in the Director's office but no one knows the current combination for the safe.  When the Assistant Director, now Acting Director manages to get the combination from the man's wife, they are shocked to find that the safe is empty.

The Assistant Director may feel that she could be the Director but she really seems to be unable to handle all the stress and takes to drinking, or drinking more than she did.  She leaves phone and email messages unanswered. She has a husband who is supposed to be a painter but who seems to be depressed and unmotivated.  The woman doesn't seem to get much support from her colleagues, some of whom feel that she is not suited for her new job.

The people who donated money to acquire this special set of books are eager to see the books at a special event.  The University President tells the woman to stall for time, she tells the patrons that insurance has not yet come through on the books so they offer them a glimpse at an old, rare early mathematics book instead.  The woman then spends time down in the storage area going through books with another colleague trying to find out if the missing books were shelved by mistake.  What a totally unmanagerial thing to do. A prof comes to the woman asking to carbon date the math book.  She is at first reluctant to do this but eventually agrees.  She is devastated to learn that the book is a facsimile.

Around the time all this is happening one of the staff, a woman, comes and asks to speak to the acting director, she is quite upset.  But because an event is underway the Acting Director tells her she will see her later but she does not followup with her.  The female employee does not show up for work for several days.  Finally the woman contacts the woman's estranged husband and eventually the police to report her missing.  The news breaks that this woman stole the missing books.  Eventually they find out that the woman drowned herself.

In the end it is discovered that the dead woman was having and affair with the director and somehow found out he was stealing books from the library and keeping them at his house.  His wife didn't know because he never let her into his office.

The book was about libraries but I had no sympathy for the main character, she seemed a bit of a disorganized whimp.  She did eventually find a police officer who believed her that the dead woman was innocent and helped her get to the truth.

A Passage North

by Anuk Arudpragasam

This book was nominated for the Booker Prize last year.  It takes place mostly in Sri Lanka.  I thought it would be interesting as it was about a young man revisiting the times of turmoil in Sri Lanka.

However, I found it a long worded, directionless book.  I skipped large parts of it.  I couldn' really see how the various parts were connected or why.  The young man was a student in India, where he met and fell in love with a young woman activisit.  They have a passionate affair but eventually she breaks up with him to devote her time to her activitsm,

The young man seems to be seeking a meaning in his life.  He had done some work with a NGO in the area where the fighting had been but eventually returns to the capital city to live with his mother, his grandmother and his grandmother's care giver. The caregiver had been traumitized by fighting, she lost her husband and two of her sons in the war and has psychological problems which require medication and electo shock therapy to help her cope.  The woman goes to visit her family and ends up dying by falling in a well.  The young travels a long distance to attend the funeral.  He hopes to find out if the woman's death was an accident or suicide.  He finds out at the end that this doesn't matter, as she is dead one way or the other.

Not sure how the love interest and the caregiver story and his mother/grandmother matter at all.  The book was too introspective at times, I skipped large portions.  It does seem that family and tradition and respect played a part in the book but there was no resolution for the man as far as I could see.

Very disappointing, don't know why it was picked.

When Will There Be Good News

 by Kate Atkinson

I have read several books by this author and have enjoyed them all.  This one is another in the series about the former police inspector Jackson Brodie.  He is trying to determine if a child is his or not but somehow seems to be on a train going the wrong way.  The train crashes and it at first is thought that he isa recently released murderer.  He has amnesia and believes people at first.

The murderer actually murdered a mother and two of her children for no reason several decades before.  One of the children was able to get away and is now a successful doctor.  When the prisoner is released from prison she is notified of his release.  The woman is married to a shady businessman.

As the story goes on Jackson Brodie continues to use the ID of the murderer and the police are trying to track him down.  The story follows the police trying to track down Jackson, as the murderer, and the real murderer.  The story gets complicated as the doctor's husband sees a few of his businesses damaged or set on fire as another con man wants to take over the territory.

One of the main characters in the book is a sad orphan girl who has been hired to babysit the doctor's baby.  The little girl is the only one who insists that the doctor has been kidnapped when the doctor disappears.  The police assume she was kidnapped by the murderer but she was actually kidnapped by associates of her husband.  Eventually the young girl is able to convince the police and Jackson to help her find the doctor.  The poor girl has a brother who is a criminal and she ends up getting her family home trashed and then set on fire by bad guys looking for her brother.  The girl is dismayed when the doctor's husband tells her his wife has gone visit an aunt.  The girl doesn't believe him especially when she sees that the doctor did not change out of her work suit and her car is still in the garage.

It was an interesting read that kept you guessing.  I think it was more interesting than her most recent mystery book, Blue Sky.

Astra

by Cedar Bowers

This book is the first book by this B.C. author.  It is the story of a girl/woman called Astra.  Each chapter is told by a different person who meets her in her life.  Astra is a very complex, damaged creature who people feel obliged to help.

Astra was born on a commune.  Her mother died in childbirth and her biological father refused to acknowledge her as his child.  He lets her run wild on the commune and she has lots of accidents which leave her scared physically.  The lack of her father's attention and love leaves her scared emotionally.

She eventually leaves the commune and lives with several people, threeboyfriends; one of whom gets her pregnant, a rich one who keeps her and her baby in find style until she decides to leave and a man she marries an later divorces; a family she babysat for and a woman she knew from the commune who turns out to be her most enduring supporter.  As Astra leaves a  path of confusion behind her she loves her son in her way but they don't necessarily have a good relationship.  Eventually the boy leaves her to go to Toronto to meet his birth father.  Against his mothers wishes he moves in with his girlfriend, they eventually marry and have a child.  After a few months they take the baby to meet Astra.

Eventually the old lady from the commune dies, leaving Astra not only her house but also the deed to the commune land.  Astra is shocked to find out that the woman had been sending her father money for years as he couldn't make enough money to support himself on the commune.  At first Astra thinks about selling the commune land but she keeps pay her father some money.  Eventually she finds out her father has dementia and she is called to deal with her father.  He is moved to a demetia ward.  She goes to visit him.  He asks if she knows his daughter, she eventually says she does.  He tells her he didn't want Astra to be beholding to him or something like that.  That seems to make her forgive him for all the hurt he caused her.  I am sorry I don't think that would make me forgive a jerk who abandoned me my whole life.

It was an interesting read the way we got the story of her life from various people's persepectives.  The author did a great job of portraying this poor troubled girl but in the end she seemed to be getting herself together.

Dark Tides

 by Philippa Gregory

This book takes place in the 1670's in London and New England.

The story is about two families.  One of the families consists of a brother who has decided to settle in the U.S. because he doesn't agree with having a King back in authority in England.  His hope for living in the U.S. was to be able to live free without hurting or stealing from anyone else. He lives a reclusive life and is befriended by some of the local natives who teach him and give him things to help him survive the brutal winters.  He eventually learns that the settlers are going to fight the natives to take land away from them by force.  He cannot agree with this so just heads off heading north.  

The man had been communicating with his sister in England and sending her some produce/products to sell.  His sister and her daughter are running a small export business with a warehouse.  They are surprised when a man, a former love interest of the woman arrives at their place one day and offers to adopt the woman's son. He tells her he is without and heir and is wealthy.  He would like to make his illegitimate son his heir.  Eventually he learns that his son had died.

While he is visiting the women he meets a woman who has shown up on their doortstep from Venice with a baby.  She claims she is the widow of the woman's son.  They believe her and though they are very poor they agree to finance her sheme to bring antiquities (from her first husband's estate) to England to sell.  She promises to pay them back and eventually buy them a house and a warehouse in a better part of town.

The women meets up with the man who visited and convinces him to sell her products out of his house.  The man should be cautious when his brother says he does not think the pieces are authentic but the woman keeps him wrapped around her finger and he continues to support her.  She gets some money from her sales but doesn't share them with her relatives.

The mother of the family gets suspicious.  She cannot believe her son is dead so she sends her granddaughter to Venice to investigate.  The girl finds out that they widow is really a con artist.  She betrayed her second husband to the authorities and he is now languishing on a plague island serving as a doctor.  The man who was helping her prepare fake antiquties in Venice believes she plans to marry him but when he is told the woman is now engaged to the man in England he goes back to England with the granddaughter.  They arrive as the widow is marrying the man she conned.  Her husband says he is alive so she shouldn't be able to marry to other man but the courts rule that Venetian law has no place in England so they let the new wedding stand.  The rich man is devastated, his reputation is ruined and he doesn't want to live with the woman he is now married to.

The book was a bit slow at times but it did a great job of describing life and the time and portraying the various characters.  An intesting read.