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.

Murder in Chianti

 by Camilla Trinchieri

This story is set in Tuscany.  The main character is a former New York Police Officer.  He and his Italian wife spent a lot of time in Italy and after he is dismissed from the force because he destroyed evidence in a case he and his wife return to Italy.  His wife dies of cancer.  The man is now renting a house and trying to figure out what to do with his life.  He helps out for free in a local cafe.

One day as he is having breakfast he hears a gunshot.  Shortly after when he goes for a walk in a nearby forest he finds a dead man whose face has been shot off.  The man is wearing an expensive watch and gold running shoes, the shoes make the man think the victim must be American.

He contacts the local police who have limited experience with murder cases.  When the local police officer finds out the man is an ex-cop with homicide experience he seeks his help with the case.

The book then follows the police work as they find out the man was actually an Italian who is now living in California.  As they try to figure out why he had an expensive bracelet in his pocket with a charm with a specific date on it, they interview various local people.

There are lots of quirky characters in the book, including one man who constantly spouts Dante or his version of Dante.  The main character wants to help but he finds his affection for some of his friends, who might be potential suspects, clouding his judgement.  There are rumours about the victim having raped a woman and possibly fathered a local child,

Eventually we find out that the victim's estranged sister hired a local young man to kill her brother so she could get some inheritance from him.  

The book was an okay story with lots of local colour.