The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

 by Kiran Desai

This book was longlisted for the Booker and has had good reviews.  I got 3/4 of the way through but couldn't finish it, it was too depressing.

As I started it I enjoyed her writing and language.  She is very critical of traditional Indian class structure, the mysogyny etc.  However the story was just too sad.

Stories include:

- a young woman returns home after 6 months marriage and looks after both her parents thinking she will be taken care of financially.  But when her father dies she learns he has gambled away most of his money.

- Sunny is a student and later young reporter in the US seeking a green card.  He has a nagging mother who lives in India in a joint property with her brothers in law.  She would really like to move to th US to be with Sunny but he doesn't want her to.

-Sonia is a young student in the US.  She keeps phoning her parents in India and crying about how lonely she is.  She meets and older man, an artist, he makes her is mistress.  He is emotionally abusive to her.  Eventually his wife shows up and sends her packing.  Later she finds Ilan has painted her naked and painted them making love.  She feels even more abused.

Her parents live in India.  Her mother decides to leave her husband and move to a cottage in the mountains.

At one point Sonia's family suggested a marriage between Sonia and Sunny but Sunny's family rejects this.  Sonia and Sunny do meet and have an on again off again relationshop and then seem to split. 

Sunny's mother decides to sell the family home and thinks she will get a lot of money.  She is told by the brothers that some will be sent to Sunny. She does get enough cash to buy an old place in Goa, where she is very unhappy.  But no money gets to Sunny and the two brothers are brutally murdered.

More bad stuff happens when Sunny goes to Mexico.....  I just couldn't take any more sadness and despair...

I skipped to the last two chapters but in the end Sonia and Sunny do get together and live with Sunny's mother in Goa.

Desai is a great writer, great descriptions of people and relationships but i don't think i will ever read her again given what a downer this book was. 

Remarkably Bright Creatures

 by Shelby Van Pelt

This was a  cute story.  It takes place in the pacific northwest of the US.  There is an old woman, Tova, who works as a cleaner at an Aquarium.  She talks to the fish and other creatures and especially likes the Octopus, Marcellus.  One day while she is cleaning the lunch room she sees something on the floor.  She thinks it is a sweater but it turns out to be the Octopus, tangled in some electrical cords.  Tova frees him, but gets some sucker marks on her arm.  She takes Marcellus back to his tank.  Tova's husband has died and her 18 year old son drowned/disappeared when he was 18.  He was a good boatman so that is mysterious.

The second major character is Cameron.  Cameron's mother abandoned him and he was raised by an aunt.  He has come to the town to find his birth father.  He thinks the birth father is a rich businessman.  Eventually after much effort he tracks the man down but finds out that he is not his father.

Eventually we find out that Cameron is Tova's grandson.  They are both delighted at this.

A lot more happened along the way, including Tova releasing Marcellus back into the ocean as he nears his death.

It was a cute, uplifting story, despite the sadness. 

The Secret Christmas Library

 by Jenny Colgan

Mirren Sutherland stumbled into a career as an antiquarian book hunter after finding a priceless antique book in her great aunt's attic.  The book is on display at the British Museuim with a note giving her credit for finding it.  A man in the museum asks about who found the book and Mirren introduces herself.  He tells her needs someone to find a book for him, she thinks he is joking but eventually calls him.

She is sent by her company to the man's scottish castle, ostensibly to survey the building.  While she is there the owner Jamie, his sister Esme, Theo, an antique book dealer prowl around the castle which has books piled haphazardly everyone around the house.  The books had been collected by Janie's grandfather.  Jamie is stressed because he has inherited the castle but it is in very poor condition.  His grandfather had hinted at a valuable book.  So the four young people set out to solve various puzzles they find from the grandfather.  

It is a stormy winter and their lives are threatened as they look through a maze for clues.  To get out of the maze they set fire to a section thinking that the snow will put out the fire.  Unfortunately the fire is not put out and eventually reaches the castle and destroy's most of it.  As they search for clues they find letters that indicate the grandfather had a love and likely affair with a housekeeper.

However Jamie and Mirren are able to find a valuable book in the housekeeper's house. The housekeeper had passed away but her granddaugher has been working as the sole housekeeper.

In the end Mirren is laid off from her job, no explanation of if her salary for doing the supposed survey was ever paid.  She moves to Scotland to be with Jamie.  They have rescued some books and offer tours of what is left of the property.

It was an okay read, a bit slow going at times but you knew Jamie and Mirren would eventually hook up. 

The Midnight Bookshop

This is the story of three people who meet at a food bank.  One is a rich girl who is dropping off food, another is a woman who is in an abusive relationship and whose husband doesn't earn enough money as a car salesman and another, a teen whose mother is ill with fibromyalgia and can't work.  His brother has him delivering drugs for him because if he gets caught he will get a lighter sentence as a youth.

 The three people briefly meet and get a brochure which invites them to go to a midnight bookshop.  They are reluctant at first but decide to go.  They find a magical place and a strange woman who invites them to find a book that wants them to find it.  The rich girl finds The Great Gatsby, the older woman finds Oliver Twist and the young boy finds One flew over the Cuckoos Nest.

They read the books and come back to discuss them later.  They find the books reflect on their own lives, the rich girls parents are like Gatsby, the young boy is trapped like the characters in the Asylum and the older woman has an evil controlling man in her life.

Eventually the married woman is able to get rid of her husband, the young boy flushes his brother's drugs down the toilet and gets beat up by drug dealers and the young girl decides to move out from her parents home to get away from the loveless family.

The older woman invites the boy and his mother to come to live with her, with financial assistance from the rich girl.  She also decides to apply for a job in a library.

As they go back to the library they realize that the place is magical and the bookseller seems to have been around for more than 100 years.  Once is it is clear that they have written new lives the bookstore disappears.

Five years later the young girl and boy are living together.  She has become a teacher and he is working on an English degree.

It was a cute story, obviously with a feel good theme. 

 

The Paris Express

 by Emma Donoghue

This book is one of the bestsellers right now.

It is the story of one journey on a steam train that leaves from Normandy heading to Paris.  The author creates some very detailed depictions of the various travellers on the train and the crew.  The engineer and his assistant are working hard to keep the train on time, despite various delays including a big wig politician insisting he have his private train car attached to the middle of the train.

The friendship, comraderie of the engineer and his assistant is well detailed.  Some of the passengers include a prostitute, a priest, a young pregnant woman, a Russian woman, a young black American painter, a young female scientist, a businessman and his mistress, a rich man travelling with his wife and sick daughter, and several politicians.  One passenger of note is a young woman who has brought on board a lunch box in which she has concocted a bomb.  She is against the establishment and plans to blow up the train, and herself, in protest.

As the story proceeds some of the passengers engage in some conversations among themselves.   

As the story nears its end two tense situations develop.  The engineer decides to speed to make up ten minutes they are behind schedule because he wants the Christmas bonus the company gives for good perrformance, and the young pregnant woman does into labour.  While this is all going ont the Russian lady suspects that the young girl might have evil plans but when she tries to bring this up to the officials they are too worried about the late train to listen to her.

As the train approaches the young girl is called to help with the pregnant woman and doesn't explode her device and the braking mechanism fails on the train so it ends up careening into Montparnasse station and the engine ends up going through the far wall of the station.

The author does a wonderful job or portraying the jobs and concerns of the crew, of depicting what life would be like for people and on the train at the time so it was an interesting read.

The story is based on an actual historical event in which no passengers were killed but a woman newspaper seller was crushed by debris in the station, 

 

Life at the Precipice

by R.F. Vincent

This is an absurd story about a man who hears about a fabled settlement in northern Vancouver Island, a land cut off when there was an earthquake which modified the landscape.

He makes his way to the area and is welcomed into the settlement which is centred around a lake surrounded by steep cliffs.  Some of the locals belief and ogopogo type monster lives in the lake and one man has a home in a tree at the edge of the cliff so he can watch for it.  

The settlement has several queer characters who live in strange dwellings designed by a local eccentric architect.  The architect has an assistant, he will not let the assistant into his house but invites the guest.  He explais that the assistant cannot enter until the house is finished, however he admits it is indeed finished.  It has a huge exterior and a small room inside in which he dwells. Another house is shaped like a book, you enter through the spine of the book.  The characters and the description of the houses were very creative.

The community is fed by a local couple who won a lottery years before.  They bring in supplies periodically.

The book introduces us to the various eccentric people who live there include a man who writes a local newsletter which he circulates out into the world on occasion.  

The book is interesting in its description of the characters and their housing options.  In the end the narrator of the story decides to stay there.  I guess that is no surprise but it seemed somewhat anticlimatic.

A Slowly Dying Cause

 by Elizabeth George

This is the first book I have read by this author.  It is a book about Inspector Lynley and Sgt Havers.  I have to say I did not enjoy the book, Lynley and Havers only showed up about 3/4 of the way through the book.

The book is about a man who is murdered.  He had divorced his wife after falling in love with a 19 year old girl them met on a cruise for his wife and his 25 anniversary.  The man is an artisan working with metals that are mined near his property.  The man and other local people are being wooed by an agent who is trying to buy their land or get licences for their property to mine for lithium.  This agent has left his wife and is in love with a 17 year old girl who is anxious for them to wed.

The book jumps from the present back to text by the dead man about his life.  The book is very very wordy, almost 600 pages.  

The dead man has a father and his somewhat slow son working for him.  The young man is found murdered based on very incriminating evidence.  The sister of a love interest of Lynley's asks Havers, who is on leave after the death of her mother, to help prove the young man innocent.  Eventually Lynley finds out and steps in to help investigate.  The story also considers whether the man's children might have murdered him to get money from the sale of the property.

We eventually find out that the young woman and the dead man's husband convinced the slow son that she was being abused by her husband, he gets so worked up that he does kill the man to protect her because he really cares for her.

I felt there was too much verbiage, and the extra storylines of extra family members, the lust of the agent, and visits by Havers to Lynley's family home which is in crisis because of the need for major repairs. I forced myself to finish reading it and am glad I did, sort of, as I wasn't expecting the ending, nor Lynley professing his love for his love interest.

I am not sure I will read other books by her....

There is a new series on TV with Lynley and Havers but it isn't nearly as good as the original.