Book Review: Days of Awe by Lauren Fox

Title: Days of Awe
Author: Lauren Fox
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: ARC
Content Alert: Some sex and swearing

In the last year, Isabel Moore's life has fallen apart: her best friend died under mysterious circumstances, she and her husband separated, and her only daughter morphed from a lovable child into a preteen she barely recognizes. Isabel is still haunted about all of the babies she lost, and she wonders if she'll ever feel normal again.

Days of Awe is a book about grief, forgiveness and understanding, and I felt that the book was at its strongest when Isabel was trying to figure out her relationship with Josie. Fox does a nice job going back in time to scenes when Josie, who was complicated and fractious and pretty difficult, was alive and juxtaposing those with Isabel's present. I felt that the story of the end of Isabel's marriage was less strong. There didn't seem to be anything cataclysmic that brought the couple to divorce (which I think is realistic) but the possibility of their reconciliation (which they hinted to several times early in the novel) wasn't resolved. Her new budding new relationship wasn't entirely satisfying either, mostly because Isabel hinders herself so much. I think the character development in Days of Awe is realistic and well-done, but that didn't always make it enjoyable.

Book Review: A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Title: A God in Ruins
Author: Kate Atkinson
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Wartime violence, sex, swearing

If you loved Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (the story of Ursula Todd, an English girl born in 1910 who gets to live her life over and over again until she gets it right) like I loved Life After Life, then you probably anticipated the companion story, A God in Ruins, as much as I did. While Life After Life was full of sorrow, whimsy, and hijinks (and ended with a fist-pumping cheer from me), A God in Ruins felt wholly different in tone. While Ursula Todd's life had more and more possibilities each time she lived it, Teddy Todd's (Ursula's younger brother) narrative feels very straightforward in contrast. Teddy goes off to war, where he's an RAF bomber (where the average life span was about two weeks after being called into action), who returns home from the war to marry the girl next door, father a child, and life a quiet life in York. There are the usual domestic tragedies, but all in all, it's a good life.

I have a friend who was reading A God in Ruins and asked if I'd read it yet. She then told me that she found the book underwhelming, especially after Life After Life. I was really glad that I talked to her before delving into the story myself, because it tempered my expectations enough that I could appreciate the story for what it was. Yes, this story is long, and at times feels a little mundane (although expertly told). There were times when I almost gave up on it, but I persisted, and I'm glad, because the last few pages are knock your socks off-- they reframed the previous 460 and made the whole read feel worth it.

Book Review: The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Author: Richard Flanagan
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: War, sex, language-- it's definitely a book for adults

Dorrigo Evans is a fine doctor, although what would have been his crowing achievement as a surgeon, a new cancer surgery, didn't work out. Although he's been married for many years, he's a complete failure as a husband, and a minor failure as a father, a role that seems almost forgotten as he nears the end of his life. He's been a serial adulterer forever. He once knew true love. And a long, long time ago, he led a group of POWs in Burma during World War II. For that, the people of Australia consider him one of their greatest heroes.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a complicated book. The narration, which goes back from the 1910s and forward to the 1990s with many stops in between, isn't always easy to follow. Dorrigo's motivations are often unclear as well. Why does he act so nobly on behalf of his men, dying by the dozens as they work to build a train line, but so ignobly at home? Does the loss of one love kill all other opportunities for love? What purpose does sex serve when it doesn't bring two people together? The Narrow Road to the Deep North is beautifully written and very thought-provoking. There's a scene toward the end of the novel when he sees a woman he hasn't seen in years which is possibly the loveliest and most painful thing I've read in my life. It's not an easy read, but it as a rewarding one.

Book Review: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

Title: The Light of the World
Author: Elizabeth Alexander
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: This book digs deeply into grief and loss

Poet and Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander expected April 4, 2012 to be a regular evening, juggling work and child care of her two boys, Solomon and Simon, with her husband, Ficre. Then, the bottom dropped out of their lives when Ficre, so healthy and full of life, suddenly died of a heart attack while exercising on the treadmill. The Light of the World is an elegy in prose, in which Alexander shows how Ficre, an Ethiopian painter and chef, brought color and spice to her life, and how she and her boys mourned and lived in the time just after his death.

I listened to The Light of the World in less than a day, and I would have listened to Alexander talk about Ficre and her love for him for ten times as long if she had written more. This isn't a whitewashed love story-- she's open and honest and raw about the imperfections of their life together, but that doesn't diminish the story-- it endeared me to them. I loved the inside view Alexander gave us into her life-- it takes a brave author to be willing to expose the private aspects of life, especially and love and grief and raising teenagers, and Alexander shows herself both wise and brave in The Light of the World.

Book Review: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Title: The One and Only Ivan
Author: Katherine Applegate
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: A clean read, perfect for family road trips

Ivan the gorilla lives at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall, where he's the star attraction. Or at least he once was, back when he was little and cute. These days, the mall is struggling, and Ivan, along with Stella, an elephant with a painful foot infection, and Bob, a dog, are sort of neglected by day, then trotted out several times a day for a show. When Ruby, a baby elephant, shows up at the mall, the trio soon discover that she was poached, separated from her family and secretly shipped out of Africa. This scenario reminds Ivan of his own childhood, and he becomes determined to find a better future for Ruby, doing his best to communicate with the sympathetic humans around him. The One and Only Ivan shows that big dreams are sometimes rewarded with big payoffs, especially when they're motivated by love.

Honestly, it's a little bit difficult to get comfortable in the mind of Ivan the gorilla. Part of the reason is because he's depressed and unhappy after spending many years subject to the whims of Mack, the man who raised Ivan after he was separated from his family and treated him as part of the family until he grew too big. But I persevered with this story, and found it sweet and heartwarming. Ivan does what we would all do for our families-- he sacrifices and tries to make their lives the best they can be. Although I really enjoyed listening to the story, apparently the paper version of the book includes illustrations (Ivan's big dream to save Ruby is an art project) and I think that having them would have been beneficial to the story.

Book Review: Malice at the Palace by Rhys Bowen

Title: Malice at the Palace (Her Royal Spyness #9)
Author: Rhys Bowen
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Although the book opens with a sex scene, it's actually a pretty clean read

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a sucker for Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness books. The series focuses on Georgie, a lesser royal, trying to scrape by in London with no man and no means of support in the 1930s, and usually ending up solving some kind of major crime, sometimes despite herself. The nine books in the series have ranged from delightful and refreshing to rushed and sloppy, and Malice at the Palace is one of the better books in the series. The queen (Georgie's great-aunt) asks her to live at Kensington Palace to act as a companion to Princess Marina of Greece during the weeks before her marriage to Prince George (George and Marina's were actual people whose wedding took place in November 1934). When Georgie discovers a body on the palace grounds her first night there, and learns that the dead woman was one of many who had relationships with the prince, her loyalties are torn-- does she want to know who killed this woman?

I don't know if I've ever stated this on the blog, but in my mind, I've equated the Her Royal Spyness and the Maisie Dobbs series. Right now, they take place at a similar place and time in history (London in the 1930s), and both involve female sleuths. I've always thought as Her Royal Spyness as Maisie Dobbs lite. And while this may be true, maybe now it's only because Maisie Dobbs has taken such a dour turn. While Georgie was pretty silly in the early books, she has matured, as have many of the characters (with the exception of the infuriating Queenie, her maid), and this book in particular feels on point historically, especially as it takes on the issue of unwed mothers during the period. Malice at the Palace is a pretty fun read, with a little more gravitas than some of its predecessors.

Book Review: Do No Harm by Henry Marsh

Title: Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
Author: Henry Marsh
Enjoyment Rating; ****
Source: Hardback Copy
Content Alert: Possibly some swearing

Henry Marsh is an eminent London brain surgeon who writes about his experiences in Do No Harm. Marsh delves into individual cases, devoting a chapter to each, and talks about what he's learned, both in the operating theater and in life, from each one.

If Derek Shepherd is your idea of a brain surgeon, get ready for those assumptions to be tested by Henry Marsh. While I do think someone has to have a certain amount of self-confidence in order to cut into someone's head and take out pieces of their brain (especially when that person is alive), and Marsh does occasionally come off as self-important, he tends to focus a lot more on his failures here-- the cases that went wrong, the people that he tried to fix but couldn't, the cases he shouldn't have taken. Do No Harm feels a lot like a catalogue of regrets, and I think it takes a certain amount of self-awareness and humility to be able to write about your failures. This book was illuminating in illustrating some of the downfalls of the NHS in Great Britain, and the behind-the-scenes look at surgical protocols. It was also very humanizing to see Marsh talk about his relationships with patients and their families, especially when things did not go as planned.

Book Review: What She Left Behind by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Title: What She Left Behind
Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Psychological abuse, some swearing

Izzy is seventeen, and has been living with relatives or foster parents for a decade, since her mother killed her father and was sent to prison. When her newest foster parents get Izzy involved in a history project at a recently-closed mental hospital, Izzy gets captivated by the story of Clara, an apparently healthy eighteen-year-old girl who was institutionalized in 1929. Through coming to understand Clara, Izzy gains insight into her mother's motivations, and begins to gain some hope for her own future.

Wiseman does a lot of things right in What She Left Behind: both Izzy and Clara are interesting and complicated, and their alternating narratives are nicely balanced and subtly parallel. The book is also painstakingly researched, and the view of mental hospitals in the mid-20th century is pretty heartbreaking.  What I didn't like about the novel is that many of the supporting characters are very flat. We never really understand what motivates Clara's parents to lie about her mental state and have her forcibly committed. I mean, we understand that they're upset that she has fallen in love with the wrong kind of man, but who has their daughter put into a mental hospital (basically worse than a jail) for that offense? I didn't find their actions believable. I was similarly annoyed by the bullies at Izzy's school, who seem in the thrall of a single mean girl (why?) and whose offenses go way beyond just razzing the new girl. I could go on with the staff of the mental hospital as well. If the characters were more nuanced, or at least their horrible actions were more clearly explained, I think I would have liked this book a lot better.

Book Review: Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Title: Modern Romance
Author: Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
Content Alert: Holy cow, I must be getting old, because it seemed like every other word in this book was the f-word. And if the title didn't clue you in, this book is basically all about sex.

Comedian Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg look at the ways that dating and falling in love have changed in the modern era, focusing a lot on how technology (texting, online dating, tinder, and the like) and a prolonged period of early adulthood have changed relationships. Much of the research for this book was collected during Ansari's standup routines over the last few years.

First of all, the content of the book is fascinating. I met my husband in 1993, when we were both freshmen in college, and we got married in 1997, about a week before I got my first cell phone. It's amazing to me that although I'm not all that much older than Ansari, my dating experience could not have been more different. Ed and I met when we were eighteen, decided we liked each other, and the rest was history. According to Ansari, dating is a lot more complicated than that now, and social media and online dating muddy the waters and add some anxiety to what is, for many, an already anxious process. Ansari actually had members of the audience come up on stage and read their texts from potential romantic partners to the audience so everyone could give them feedback on subtle messages and subtext. Brilliant, right?

I've spent the summer watching Parks and Recreation, at the request of my teenage daughter. Unlike Annie, who is on her third watch of the show and can bust through an entire season in a weekend, I'm a little slower. I'm halfway through season four, and I go through phases where I adore Tom Haverford and where I loathe Tom Haverford, played by Aziz Ansari. I know that Tom Haverford and Aziz Ansari are not the same person, but in Modern Romance, I got the sense that Aziz Ansari is someone Tom Haverford would like to become, if he could get out of Pawnee, Indiana and into standup comedy clubs all over the world. I guess what I'm saying here is that I think I would have liked Modern Romance better if it had a little less Tom Haverford in it. A little less smooth music, a little less jokeyness, a little less f-bomb. The dating stuff? Fascinating. But Ansari plays the audiobook with a very heavy hand.

Book Review: A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray

Title: A Song for Issy Bradley
Author: Carys Bray
Enjoyment Rating: ****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Death of a child, some mild language

One morning, four-year-old Issy Bradley wakes up feeling sick. Her dad is gone being the bishop of their ward in England, and their mom, busy with a birthday party for one of her four children, is preoccupied and doesn't register the seriousness of her daughter's illness, and by the next day, Issy, the baby of the family has been lost to spinal meningitis. In the following weeks, each member of the family deals with their grief in separate ways-- one brother hoping for a miracle, another turning to petty crime. Their mother, Claire, is wracked by guilt and finds herself unable to function, while their father, Ian, functions beautifully, never taking a step back from his role as the shepherd of his family and his ward. He must endure, especially when everyone else seems to be falling apart.

I feel pretty conflicted about A Song for Issy Bradley. The story is gripping, and Issy's death definitely hooks the reader into wanting to read more. Bray does a lovely job with the pacing, and I appreciated seeing multiple perspectives throughout the story. However, the adult Mormon characters, which the exception of Claire, all feel like caricatures. There's Ian, whose singular focus on living the letter of the law often results in completely ignoring the spirit of the law and making the people in his family resentful. The stake president, who isn't as ardent as Ian, comes off as a hypocrite. The members of the ward seem either needy or nuts. It's no wonder the family is in a state of spiritual crisis. These aren't the Mormons I know-- the Mormons I know, for the most part, are complicated and genuinely trying to do their best, but aren't nearly as inflexible as Bray presents them in the novel. While I really liked the story (and loved the ending), and strongly identified with Claire's character, ultimately I felt that Bray spent too much time grinding her ax to write with nuance in A Song for Issy Bradley.