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.