Memory Collectors

 by Kim Neville

This is a book by a BC author.  It is an unusual book, but unlike Peaces, I enjoyed it.

The story starts with a young girl who likes to help her father collect old furniture and restore it.  Then we find out that the girl and her sister became orphans.  The girl, Ev, now dumpster dives to find things with good feelings about them.  She has a sensitivity to the energy/stories contained in objects.  She seeks and sells the good feeling ones because she knows they will appeal to people.  We learn that she and her sister were raised in foster homes and now are estranged.

Ev has a friend, an artist, Owen, who also dumpster dives to seek objects for his art projects.  He befriends Ev.  One day they discover some potentially interesting boxes in an alley but are chased away from them by a woman, Harriet.  The boxes are hers.  She had them in the hallway of her apartment building and one of her neighbours has thrown them out on her.  Owen offers to take them back to her apartment and finds she is a serious hoarder.  Harriet senses that Ev is special and wants to make contact with her.  

Harriet has received an eviction notice and in deciding what to to do decides to buy an abandoned building and make a museum of happy objects.  She wants Ev's help but Ev is reluctant at first because some of Harriet's objects have very evil or unhappy feelings and these really upset Ev.  She finally agrees to help when Harriet agrees she can decide what doesn't get kept.

Ev's sister, Noemi shows up, she keeps bugging Ev for what she knows about their parent's murder suicide.  Ev claims she doesn't remember.  

As the story progresses we find that Harriet has stored boxes of the girl's family possession in her old family home.  The girls eventually break into the house to retrieve what they consider their property.  Noemi eventually leaves with the boxes in her car.  By this time Ev has told her she had nothing to do with the murder and actually saved her little sister from the father.  They find that Noemi also has some of Ev's powers but she is more selfish and self serving so we do not know how she will use them.  ONe nice thing she did for her sister was get her sailing lessons.

Harriet eventually sets fire to her house, Ev develops a company going to houses to cleanse them.  She has learned that she can take the evil out of things.  Owen takes Ev to live with him.

The only puzzling part of the story was Harriet went to the library to find out about Ev and her backstory.  However, if she had bought all their stuff at the estate sale why wouldn't she already know the history of the family?

It was an interesting read, nice to see peculiar people treated with kindness and acceptance.

Peaces

 by Helen Oyeyemi

This book has been getting a lot of buzz and the reviews have been good.  That is why I bought it.  However, I felt the book was unusual but not interesting or engaging.

The story is about two gay men who are given a free "honeymoon" trip on a mysterious train by the aunt of one of the men.

The young man, relative of the aunt, was bounced around from one set of relatives to another as a youth as he was an orphan.  His aunt is the only one who seemed to care about him.  On one of the trips when he was travelling from one relative to another he is alone in a train car.  A man and his young daughter join him.  The young boy is attracted to the girl.  Later a woman joins them and attacks the man, if I remember because of some past history.  The man's daughter ends up killing the woman.

Back to the "present" the two young men board the train, destination unknown, with their pet mongoose.  While they are travelling they are upset to learn that the former boyfriend of one of them seems to have dropped in to visit the aunt.  They are suspicious of his motives.  While on the train a clown? gets on and the men get him tossed off

They are told they should make no effort to meet the owner of the train, a recluse.  They do meet her, find out that she plays the thermin and also has a mongoose.

As they tour the train they also run into a woman who is the girl who killed the woman on the train when the one man was a boy.  As the story progresses they learn that the recluse is isolating on the train because of a will she is close to inheriting.  If she can stay sane for a few more days she will inherit the wealth.  The man who is on the verge of leaving her the money had an adopted son (was he the clown) but decided to leave him nothing and leave the money to her.  The woman had come to the man's house to play the thermin during the night to comfort the son.

As the story ends it appears the woman has reached her deadline to inherit and the other people on the train can no longer see the young men....

Weird, no idea what the point of this story was.  I like unusual stories but this one didn't grab me at all.

 

 

 

Dark Tide Rising

 by Anne Perry

This is a mystery about William Monk a former police inspector who was dismissed and later became a Commander with the Thames River Police.

The wife of a wealthy London man has been kidnapped, the kidnappers want the ransom delivered to an unsavory part of the London waterfront.  The man asks some of the Thames River Police to accompany him on the drop.  Monk chooses a number of his best men but someone their presence was expected and they get beat up, the money is taken and the man's wife is found brutally murdered.

Monk feels one of his men may have betrayed them and spends a lot of time worrying and trying to figure out who it might be.  There is a low level criminal who is suddenly spending a lot of money.  Monk thinks he might have had some involvement with the kidnapping and murder but before they can get him to interrogate him, the man is found murdered.

In order to raise the money for the ransom the husband has had to get the trustee of his wife's pending inheritance (she would inherit in a couple years), to agree to release the funds for the ransom.

One of Monk's key staff becomes romantically interested in the cousin of the dead woman.  This is a conflict of interest.  Monk really feels for the man because the woman who is now his wife was once kidnapped.  So he thinks he knows how the man feels.

A young woman comes forward to say she has evidence of some financial irregularities by the bank that held the man's accounts and his wife's trust account.  Before she can deliver proof to Monk she is found dead.

Eventually the husband is arrested for murder.  Monk is trying his best to prove the husband innocent but in the end it is discovered that the man did indeed arrange the kidnapping to get at his wife's money, he may have felt she would leave him.  We never find out who actually did the brutal killing.

Monk realizes that he let his emotions over-rule his judgement in this case.

I enjoyed this book, it kept you interested and guessing.

The Good German

 by Dennis Bock

Harv read this book before I did.  He said he liked it.  I did not.

The book is an alternate history following WWII but I don't think it really did much to carry through on the idea.

The book starts with a young German man who prepares a bomb that kills Hitler.  He thinks that this will stop the war but instead Goring takes over and carries out pretty much what Hitler did.  The man tries to escape but is caught at the border to Switzerland.  He is interrogated and tortured.  Eventually he is sent to a prison camp.  He manages to escape from there and makes his way to England on a ship.  However, the ship is captured and he is taken by German soldiers in control of England and made to do clean up in London following a nuclear bomb or bombs having been dropped on London.  

Many of the people who are given this job go blind from the exposure and the man and others are shipped to Canada to a hospital run by nuns.  In this story the person who is the U.S. President is sympathetic to Germany so the U.S. never enters the war.  And, for some reason never really explained Canada now seems to be run by Russia.  Russian officials with Geiger counters often visit the hospital to take readings,

The man had come to Canada with a young woman he met in Europe.  She has her baby in Canada but is devastated when the baby girl has deformed hands.  The woman kills herself and a young German woman from the town, who has been forced to serve as a helper at the hospital is made to be the wet nurse for the baby.  Eventually the man is given cataract surgery and is able to leave the hospital but he leaves his daughter behind afraid of what she will face because of her deformed hands

The book switches to more recent times when two brothers are being picked on because their mother (the wet nurse) was German.  They are bullied at school and once a year on the annual federal holiday locals set a fire in the front yard of their house.  The boy's mother has kept in contact with a Brother in Germany.  Eventually she decides it will be better if she returns to Germany, that this will take the pressure off her family.  The family is devastated and it doesn't change the abuse they face.  One anniversary evening the fire lit in their yard sets their house on fire.  The boys survive but their father doesn't.

The younger of the two brothers volunteers at the hospital and becomes friends with the young girl. News reports say that American Jews are going to be deported to Canada.  The boys think they might get praise and less bullying if they are able to help.  But they don't succeed.  The young girl introduces the young boy to a young Jewish girl she has found and taken to the hospital.

Eventually the boys, the girl, and the girls father set up a reverse underground railroad taking German Canadians to the U.S. and all of them eventually make their way to the west coast of the U.S.

I didn't find the book interesting. I think the author could have done more to explain why Canada was controlled by the Russians. I did'nt find the writing engaging nor the characters interesting.

Transcendent Kingdom

 by Yaa Gyasi

This book is getting a lot of acclaim these days.

It is the story of a young American woman, of Ghanian descent, who is trying to make her way in the academic community and try to understand all the tragedies that have occurred in her family, through her scientific pursuits.

The girls mother was very religious and the girl spends a lot of time in her youth attending church, praying to God and trying to figure out how to be a good person.  She sees contradictions around her, e.g. the Minister's daughter gets pregnant out of wedlock.  Part of the story, perhaps not written outright, is the conflict of praying to God for help and not getting the help you need.

Her parents moved from Ghana to America before she was born.  Her parents struggled to make survive financially in the U.S.  Her mother was a care giver for sick people, her father did odd jobs for not a lot of money.  Eventually the marriage broke down and the father returned to Ghana.  It took the kids a while to figure out he has never coming back.

The brother was a very successful basketball player and people thought he would have great success.  However, after an ankle injury he was prescribe oxy contin and became a drug addict, eventually dying from a heroine overdose.

After the brother died the girls mother retreated to her bed.  After a few months the girl was sent to Ghana to stay with an Aunt.  After her mother recovered somewhat the girl came back to live with her mother. But the mother's grief was still hanging around her.

The girl went on to university and was working on the study of addiction and avoiding negative stimuli by studying mice, including attaching electrodes to their brain.  She could see what parts of the brain were activated by different stimuli.  But did this tell her anything about why people do what they do and how to stop doing things that are bad for them?? It is obvious that she did this in a desperate attempt to try to figure out what was/had gone wrong with her family members.  I am not sure she found an answer.

While the girl is close to finishing her work at university her mother has another breakdown and comes to live with her.  The mother basically just lies in bed.  The girl doesn't know what to do but tries to provide food to her. 

I found the book hard to read at times because it was so sad.  Some people try to befriend the girl but she seems reluctant to take their friendship.  Her lab partner tries to be her friend. If people really believe in God, (the Mother)why can't they find the relief they need from their depression through him???  I think this just confirmed how irrational people can be, unable to do what is really best for them and avoid what is bad for them.

At one point the girl attends a funeral for one of her mother's patients.  The girl is shocked by all the nic things people say about her mother, about how caring she was etc.  This does not jive with the girl's impression of her mother.  Her mother was not a warm person, never gave hugs, was often critical of her and her brother.  How can a person be so different to strangers and to their own family.

I think the author did a great job of portraying a young person trying to figure out what life is all about and struggling with their identity and religion.

The book is called Transcendent Kingdom.... no idea why, not sure I saw any transcendence here. The ending is a bit surprising and I think weak.  After all the sadness, the book ends, in a few pages, with the character having married her lab partner and having a family.  Not that this is a bad thing but I think there could have been a bit of an explanation for why/how the character decided to take a chance on a normal life.  It almost seemed like the author didn't want the book to end on a sad note so she quickly came up with this ending.

 

Last Garden in England

 by Julia Kelly

This is the story of a British garden and its history in three time periods, early 1900s, 1940's and the present.

The story starts with a young woman being hired to design a massive garden on an estate in England.  This job ends up being her last garden in England.  After this she moves to the U.S. where she makes a name for herself.  As the story progresses we find out the garden designer has fallen in love with the brother of the family that owns the estate.  She gets pregnant but loses the baby.  To escape the shame of her affair and to be allowed to marry the couple leave England, changing their names to avoid scandal to the family.

The second story is about the same estate in world war II.  The house has been taken over to be a hospital for recovering soldiers.  The woman of the estate, recently widowed, is struggling from the death of her husband in the war and the "invasion" of her house.  The widow has a young son whom she is overprotective of.  Her sister-in-law has come to be Matron of the hospital and they often tangle over things.  As the story goes on the woman realizes how much she gave up to be a wife, including playing her harp, which she loved doing.

Some "land girls", girls sent to work on farms to help wartime food production also figure in the story.  There is one girl who hates the life there, another really thrives on it.  She becomes friends with the cook on the estate through delivering produce there from the farm and she becomes acquainted with the owner who gives her permission to draw the gardens as a hobby.  This young woman eventually falls in love with and marries one of the soldiers.

There is another young woman on the estate, a young cook.  One day her sister arrives, a recent widow also, with her young son in tow.  She wants to leave the boy with her sister as she fears London is not safe and she is working in a factory.  She does not provide any money for the boy's upkeep.  The lady of the house agrees he can stay and this boy and the owner's son become fast friends.  The young cook really resents having the boy their, she doesn't know how to be a mother.  Eventually the boy's mother is killed in a bombing in London.  The young cook is devastated.  She had hoped to get a career as a secretary and eventually be able to travel a bit but now her dreams are shattered as she has the responsibility for the boy.

The young master one day eats a poisonous plant and dies.  Why would a gardener plant poisonous plants in a garden??? His mother withdraws to her room.  But eventually she offers to adopt the other boy as her son.  She locks the garden where her son died, only after burying a box with pix of him, a favourite toy, and the adoption papers for the othter boy, then throws the key to the gate in a pond.

The third story has a young woman who has been hired to re-establish the garden on the estate as it was originally designed.  Part of it is overgrown, part of it has been destroyed in the past, she has a lot of research to do to figure things out but the owners do find some drawings and a neighbour finds some paintings his grandmother (the land girl artist) did of the garden.  Eventually the woman and her partner climb over the wall into the garden and start bringing it back to life.  They uncover the buried box.  The owners of the house are shocked to learn that the man they thought of as their grandfather was actually an adopted boy. The woman and her partner also piece together why the original garden designer likely left England.  The present day garden designer had been a bit of a gypsy with no  fixed address but she meets someone on this job and decides to settle down in that area.

It was an interesting read, certainly gave a good sense of what was going on in the war years in England.  An okay way to fill the time in pandemic days.

Klara and the Sun

 by Kazuo Ishiguro

This book is by the Nobel Prize for Literature winner of Never Let me Go.  I was really impressed with Never Let Me go but not his later book about a Giant.,

This book got good reviews but I have to say I found it disappointing.  It is about an Artificial Intelligence Robot but it was not anywhere near as interesting at the book Machines Like Me by McEwan.

This one is about an AF (Artificial Friend) Klara who is chosen to be the companion of a young girl Josie.  Josie has been "lifted" not sure what that involves but supposedly it is some type of genetic modification. However, due to being uplifted Josie is in poor health.

There is only one other neighbour near Josie's house.  The neighbour's are Rick and his mother.  Rick as not been uplifted but his mother hopes he will be able to get into an exclusive university because of his intelligence and with coaching from Klara.

Klara does have some other "uplifted" kids visit one day.  They are self-centred and cruel to Klara.   Josie falls in with their behaviour rather than defending Klara and Rick who is also there and feeling very uncomfortable.

Josie had a sister who died, possibly she also had been uplifted.  Josie's mother has been traumatized by the loss of her one child and doesn't want to lose Josie.  She is in contact with an "artist" who has proposed having Klara adopt the persona of Josie, should she die.  Totally Bizarre!!  Josie's parents are divorced and not on good terms.  Josie's father does not agree with this idea.

Klara gets her power from exposure to the sun.  One day she sees a large machine in front of the store she is in spewing smoke and blocking the sun.

Josie's health starts to decline severely and Klara gets the idea that if she can communicate with the sun, as it sets in a barn in a nearby field she will be able to convince the sun to heal Klara.  She promises to stop the smoke making machine and that that will placate the sun. I think an artificial intelligence robot which would be learning how to behave around people would have the ability to check out a crazy idea like this and realize it was untrue.

One day while Josie's family including her father are in town Klara tells  the Josie's father of her plan to stop the smoke machine.  It turns out she has to sacrifice some of the special fluid from her own body to affect damaging the machine. This seems to impair her ability somewhat.  She is devastated to find that there are still other smoke making machines around....

While Josie and her family are in the city Rick and his mother are meeting a man who was formerly his Mother's lover.  Rick's mother hopes the man can use his influence to get Rick into a good university. The man and Rick's mother have a big fight over how she has wronged the man in the past and how dare she ask that the man intervene.

Eventually Klara does get better, one day when the sun shines on her.  Rick goes to a different university.  I think this book was about the love between Josie and Rick, a true innocent love unlike the  warped behaviour of the adults... Rick's mom and Josie's mom.  At one point in the book Josie's father discussing Klara taking on Josie's "persona" if she dies and they talk about knowing someone's heart.  This I found disappointing too, our personalities are in our brains, not our heart.

In the end Josie and Rick go their separate ways and Klara finds herself in a junk yard where she cannot move but can look around.  The former store manager comes to her and asks her if she was a good AF, was treated well, and enjoyed her life.  She says yes to all this.

Sad, one of the only characters in the book who was willing to make a real sacrifice for the one she cared about ends up on the junk heap.... she could teach the adults a thing or two.  She remained optimistic, even if her solution was misguided, even when everyone else gave up on Clara's health improving.

An interesting story but not as good as it could have been.