Review of FIVE FEET APART by Rachael Lippincott

2.5 Stars

I’m not certain how this book came to be our book club read.  It’s a Young Adult romance based on a screenplay.  Like The Fault in Our Stars, it’s yet another book about teenagers with a chronic/terminal illness.

Stella Grant and Will Newman are teenagers in a hospital for treatment for cystic fibrosis.  The two begin a budding romance though, because of concerns about infection, they are, at all times, to remain at least six feet apart.  Stella follows her treatment regimen religiously because she is hoping for a lung transplant; Will, however, is ineligible for such a transplant because he has contracted B. cepacia, a bacterial infection that is highly transmissible and drug resistant. 

As is to be expected in YA romances, Stella and Will are opposites who are immediately attracted to each other though they do not make positive impressions when they first meet.  Stella is the rule-follower and Will is the rule-breaker.  Despite their differences, they make a connection and in a short time change the other’s outlook and make him/her a better person.  “It’s like seeing everything for the first time.  I didn’t know it was possible for a person to make old things become new again” (188).  Yikes!

There are many unrealistic events.  A nurse breaks confidentiality and tells Stella about Will:  “’A CFer and then some.  B. cepacia.  He’s part of the new drug trial for Cevaflomalin’” (36)?  Stella and Will and their friend Poe have the run of the hospital so that it becomes their playground?  The birthday party scene is totally unrealistic!  Stella has an infection and the doctor says that staff will keep an eye on it (98 – 99); the next time it’s mentioned, that doctor says, “’We need to take care of this.  It’s too far gone’” (126)?!  Stella has a surgical procedure under general anesthesia even though her lungs, functioning at only 35%, may not be strong enough.  Nonetheless, hours after the procedure, she’s sprinting across the hospital, even up and down stairs (158 – 160)!?

There is also unnecessary melodrama.  The narrative involving Abby is just too much, as is the plotline involving the one character of colour (who also happens to be gay).  And don’t get me started on the scene on the ice.  There is just too much emotional manipulation.

The book can be commended for raising awareness about cystic fibrosis, but I have concerns about the realism of the portrayal of the disease.  CFers often have major digestive problems and mucous tends to be much more of an issue than any of the CFers in the book experience.  It seems to me that we have a sanitized version of this genetic condition. 

Review of ISLAND by Johanna Skibsrud (New Release)

2.5 Stars

On an imaginary island in the Pacific, a rebellion takes place; the goal of the rebels is to overthrow the island’s occupying power identified as the Empire and to capture Ø Com’s outer station, the location of the Empire’s entire wireless operations. 

The points of view of two women are given.  Lota is a young revolutionary who has come under the spell of Kurtz, an older woman who leads the rebels.  Rachel is the First Secretary of the Empire’s embassy on the island.  Lota describes events from the inside of the rebel group as she takes part in the insurgency.  Rachel, who is looking forward to her last day of work at the embassy before she returns to the Capital to join her husband and their daughter who fled the island after escalating racial tensions, is taken captive.

In many ways this book is a modern retelling of Heart of Darkness.  Like Conrad’s novel, it examines the hypocrisy of imperialism.  “The island was an independent nation, but everyone knew that all the real decisions were made by the capital - and . . . by Ø.”  There are suggestions of “the Empire’s involvement in the forced rendition of illegally held prisoners.”   Kurtz maintains that on the island, there is “’a top-secret heavily guarded black site, home to roughly sixty-five of the Empire’s most-wanted terrorist suspects, political prisoners, and other detainees.” 

The style of the novel I found to be tedious.  The constant use of the em dash becomes annoying:  Rachel felt – as she had so often that fall – backed into a corner” and “It was useless to think about any of this now.  She’d had no other choice at the time – or she’d felt that way, which amounted to the same thing.  If she’d changed her mind and made a fuss – pressed for an immediate reassignment – she’d have looked impulsive, even unstable, difficult to please” and “She moved – following Baby Jane this time – toward the embassy doors.  If she couldn’t feel as she had this morning – as if she’d entered, or was just about to enter, the future itself – she might at least, she thought, focus on the here and now.”  Parentheses are also overused:  “Here she was (the lump stuck; Lota blinked back a swell of hot tears), surrounded by history” and “That was the thing with intelligence, though, she reminded herself (drawing mostly from what she’d learned from TV)” and “The same relief she’d felt just a moment ago as she (Yes!) had given in, too, allowing – no, inviting – the past to simply slip away.”

Some sections of the book are difficult to follow:  “Lota gripped the seatback tighter.  Yes, she thought.  What was any revolution, therefore, but this?  Yes, this.  Despite her personal doubts and misgivings.  The revolution – the future – was this.  Was Kurtz drumming her hand on the dash.  Was the sound of her voice as it beat out the time. Was – Yes! This island.  This air.  Was yes this water.  This dirt, this van, this rutted road.”

No one seems to know what anyone feels:  “A wave – first of horror and then of intense desire – passed over her.  And then (because she was suddenly unsure which feeling was which, or if the two feelings were actually one) she was hit by a still more powerful wave of confusion” and “Rachel watched as the woman’s expression changed slowly, betraying – What?  Confusion, certainly.  Anger.  Fear.  And . . . something else.  A sort of (or was this only a projection?) instinctive, physical relief.” 

This book didn’t do anything for me; I found myself wondering how much more I had to read to reach the end.  Perhaps I was not in the right frame of mind for the book or perhaps it’s just too esoteric for me.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of SEARCHING FOR SYLVIE LEE by Jean Kwok

3 Stars

Being interested in things Dutch, I chose this book because it is partially set in The Netherlands; unfortunately, though the novel begins well, it soon degenerates into a soap opera.

Sylvie, 33, is the successful daughter of a first generation Chinese immigrant family living in New York.  She spent the first 10 years of her life in The Netherlands living with her maternal grandmother and the Tan family which consists of her mother’s cousin Helena, Helena’s husband Willem, and their son Lukas.  Amy, 26, is Sylvie’s sister, but she is drifting through life, not really certain what she wants to do; she still lives with her parents Ma and Pa.    

Sylvie flies to The Netherlands when she learns her grandmother is receiving palliative care.  She spends about a month there and then disappears.  Amy decides to fly over to see if she can discover what happened to her sister.  Even before she leaves, Amy comes to realize that Sylvie’s life is not as perfect as she led others to believe.  In The Netherlands, she also learns that the ten years Sylvie spent there were not as happy as Amy thought. 

Chapters alternate between Amy’s perspective as she searches for her sister and Sylvie’s point of view a month earlier during her stay near Amsterdam.  Occasionally, Ma’s viewpoint is given, interspersed with transcripts of phone calls/emails/texts and newspaper clippings.

At the very beginning, there is a quote from Willa Cather:  “’The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”  Later there is an observation that, “In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories.  We are the ultimate unreliable narrators.”  These statements prove to be true when it comes to the two sisters:  despite their closeness, they don’t really know each other.  Each suffers from low self-esteem and thinks the other sibling is extraordinary.  For instance, Amy comments, “Often there’s a dichotomy between the beautiful sister and the smart one, but in our family, both of those qualities belong to my sister.  And me, I am only a shadow, an afterthought, a faltering echo.”  Whereas Amy describes Sylvie as “’So talented, so amazing’”, Sylvie describes Amy as “’the one with the real talent in the family’” whose “beauty glowed from within, whereas I was all about the surface.”  Amy has convinced herself that Sylvie lived “a glamorous life in Europe” even though Sylvie “doesn’t often speak about her life in the Netherlands.”  Obviously, the title refers to more than just a physical search. 

There are some plot elements that are just distractions.  The cache of family jewels and its theft just seem outlandish.  The trip to Venice with Sylvie’s flirting with both Lukas and Filip is like a soap opera and does little to gain sympathy for Sylvie.  It also makes little sense to have Sylvie taking cello lessons and a trip to Italy while her grandmother is dying.  And she buys her dying grandmother a gift of “a white-gold key chain with a dangling Sommerso key”?  Amy, on the other hand, just seems clueless:  she doesn’t realize that Filip shouldn’t know her name; she doesn’t connect Filip, the cellist, with Sylvie’s cello teacher; she doesn’t understand that a diver would be looking for a corpse.  Instead, she focuses on how much a search will cost her even though she is told from the onset that the search organization is a non-profit organization which relies on volunteers.

There are other unrealistic elements.  Whenever Filip performs, he plays one of Amy’s favourites:  “the Bach Cello Suites are some of my favorite pieces” and “Dvořák’s Rusalka, a favorite of mine”?  A body found in a canal would not automatically have an autopsy performed?  A newspaper would speculate about the identity of a body before identity was confirmed?

There are also some style issues that bothered me.  How many times must we be told that the Dutch are tall?  But why would they be described as long:  “He had always been a long boy”?  Then there’s the melodramatic writing:  “The key fell from my stupefied fingers, hit the wooden floor, and shattered.” 

The book sheds light on the discrimination faced by non-white immigrants.  The Lee family in the U.S. and the Tan family in The Netherlands both encounter prejudice.  Amy is accustomed to “aggression back home” but an acquaintance tells her, “’We have our problems here in the Netherlands too.  There is stupidity everywhere and we are not used to having many foreigners here.’” 

The themes of people hiding their real selves from others, even loved ones, and every secret having a price are not developed in a unique way in this novel.  There is also supposed to be a mystery, but that mystery is easily solvable.  And unnecessary and unrealistic elements detract from the book as well.  A search for a good book should dismiss Searching for Sylvie Lee.

Review of GONE TOO LONG by Lori Roy

3 Stars

Though it has echoes of Emma Donoghue’s Room, this novel is a cautionary tale about the rise of white supremacy.

Though it is 2017, five years after losing her husband and son in an accident, Imogene Coulter is still grieving.  Then she finds a young child living in the locked basement of a boarded-up house on her family property.  Who is he and how did he come to be there?   Imogene is convinced that her father, Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Southern Georgia Order, who just died, was involved in keeping the child captive.  Though Imogene has rejected her family’s racism, her family has a long connection to the Ku Klux Klan, and her brother Eddie, sister Jo Lynne, and brother-in-law Garland are active members of the KKK. 

Besides Imogene’s story, we are given the perspective of Tillie, Imogene’s father-in-law, who left the Klan forty years earlier.  And then there’s the first-person narration of Beth, a ten-year-old girl, who was abducted from her home in 2010.  What happened to Beth since the child in the basement is a young boy named Christopher?  Who is the boy’s Mama whom Christopher claims is always brought back to the basement?

There are major plausibility problems with the plot.  It is unbelievable that Imogene does not realize the identity of the person keeping Christopher captive.  Imogene’s mother seems almost totally oblivious to what is happening around her.  Beth’s behaviour in the last scene which she narrates doesn’t make sense.  A policeman who has lived in the town for ten years is so naïve about the actions of the Klan in his town?  

Mystery is the technique used to create suspense, but in many ways, the author’s message takes precedence over the narrative.  The title, for example, refers to people not paying sufficient attention to the rise of white nationalism:  “Regardless of when it first began, Tillie didn’t see it coming, this rising of the Klan yet again, because he had let himself get rusty.  For too many years, those sorts had been out of sight, and so they were out of mind too.  For too many years, he’s been gone too long from paying attention.  A lot of folks have been gone too long.”

Interspersed throughout the book are short chapters outlining the history of the Ku Klux Klan.  The last of these chapters mentions the 2017 rally in Charlottesville and the white supremacists’ praising President Trump for refusing to specifically hold them accountable for what happened.  The last page of the novel has an explicit warning:  “while those men no longer march past, dressed in their robes and hoods and carrying torches, they’re still out there, just underfoot.”

This book has an important message; unfortunately, that theme is developed in an unwieldy fashion.  The novel has much real-world resonance so I wish it were of better literary quality. 

Review of HEAVEN, MY HOME by Attica Locke (New Release)

3.5 Stars

This is the second instalment in the Highway 59 series; readers would be advised to read Bluebird, Bluebird before picking up Heaven, My Home since there is a great deal of overlap and the latter takes place shortly after the end of the former.

Darren Mathews is a black Texas Ranger who is sent to Jefferson in east Texas because a nine-year-old boy has gone missing.  Levi King is the son of Bill “Big Kill” King, a prominent Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT) member currently imprisoned for drug charges.  Mathews’ task is not so much to assist in the search for Levi but to learn anything about the ABT which could be used in an indictment against the organization.  Many people think that Levi was killed, and Leroy Page, a black man, soon becomes the main suspect.  Darren is not convinced and tries to uncover what really happened to Levi. 

The novel is set just after the 2016 election of Donald Trump.  There is concern that the incoming administration will have little interest in pursuing charges against white supremacists so there is an urgency to getting as much information about the ABT as quickly as possible.  There are repeated references to the election:  Darren “marvelled with befuddled anger at what a handful of scared white people could do to a nation . . .  white voters had just lit a match to the very country they claimed to love – simply because they were being asked to share it.”  There is also repeated reference to a spike in racial violence in the wake of the election:  “There had been more than fifty incidents of hate-tinged violence across the state in the four weeks since the election.”

Darren regularly faces racism, even when he is wearing his badge.  Some of the incidents are difficult to read.  What is interesting is that Darren has ingrained prejudices of his own.  He admits to having “blind spots when it came to black folks, the feelings of deference that shot up through him like roots through fertile soil – the instinct to protect and serve that came over him around black folks, especially those of advanced age, men and women whose challenges and fortitude had made Darren’s life possible.”  He tends to equate all older blacks with his uncles who raised him and “were men of truth, in all things.”  Unfortunately, Darren’s biases mean that he is not always able to be objective.

Darren is a complicated and flawed protagonist.  His personal life is in turmoil; his relationships with his wife, mother, uncle, and best friend are all in upheaval.  He wants to remain loyal to his upbringing, profession, and spouse, but struggles.  His decision to protect a black man in Bluebird, Bluebird means he has broken the law and so put his career in jeopardy.  He has also left himself open to blackmail.  He finds himself asking “Could there ever be honour in lying” and feeling “unsure of who he was half the time or what he believed.”

The book is rather pessimistic.  Darren is hopeful about Levi if he is found alive, not convinced that his future can “be divined from the leaves of his family tree,” but others imagine that if he is alive, he will, in short time, become “a homegrown terrorist” and “a man-child with SS bolts inked on his wrist.”  Darren actually admits that his job has left him pessimistic that “the Brotherhood and what it stood for would ever truly be eradicated.  There were too many of them; in tattoos or neckties, they were out there.  Everywhere.  The country seemed to grow them in secret, like a nasty fungal disease that spread in the dark places you don’t ever dare to look.”  Also ominous is Darren’s comment:  “’Can’t have all the hate talk out there and it not end up in violence some kind of way.  It’s just human nature.  You talk it enough and it carves out a path of permission in your heart, starts to make crazy shit okay.’”  Considering the recent mass shooting in El Paso, this comment resonates with truth. 

There are many unresolved issues at the end of the book, so I can only assume that there will be another book in the series.  I do not always like Darren’s choices, but I have empathy for him and so want him to be able to extricate himself from his dilemmas.  I will definitely be looking for the next instalment. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of MELBA'S WASH by Reesa Steinman Brotherton (New Release)

2.5 Stars

I requested a digital galley of this book because much of it is set on Grand Manan Island which I’ve visited several times and is one of my favourite places in Canada. 

Despite the book’s title, this is more the story of Esther, Melba’s daughter, than it is about Melba.  Esther, born in 1954 to an impoverished family on the island, is sent to live with Melba’s sister Flora and her Jewish husband Sammy in Montreal for ten years.  Then Esther is returned to Melba until she is 16 and moves to the mainland.  Esther’s adult life, most of it lived near Calgary, is also sketched in. 

The author blurb suggests that in many ways this novel is autobiographical:  “Born into an impoverished New Brunswick family, Reesa Steinman Brotherton was taken to Montreal, raised Jewish, then at age 10 sent back to her family of origin.”  It seems that the novel is a way for the author to work through her experiences; it sometimes reads like something written to help her understand herself. 

Esther certainly earns the reader’s sympathy.  She is moved around without any consideration for her feelings; she is, as she repeatedly points out, traded “for a black and white floor model RCA Victor television set” and later a flush toilet.  Melba and Flora’s behaviours are difficult to forgive, especially because both abandon more than one child. 

Yet one can also feel some sympathy for Melba because she is a victim of poverty.  Melba’s husband Russell drinks excessively and the family home has no bathroom or running water.  The community, however, does little to help:  “Shame on you Baptists, and Catholics and Anglicans and Pentecostals.  Didn’t you know that you can tell a lot about a family by looking at the laundry hanging out on their clothesline?  Didn’t any of you see Melba Girling’s wash?  Diapers flying in the salt breeze, greying and thinning season after season, blue and red, blood stained polka dot handkerchiefs hanging wrung out of square, patched knees on pants, mended dog-ears on shirts, and darned, and darned again, work socks.”  Melba has a difficult life and seems to have no friends.  It is obvious she longs to be loved:  “Esther had no idea that maybe Melba needed a friend and that if a person were desperately unhappy enough, they might not be very choosy about picking him or her.” 

Of course, it is not only Melba that suffers.  Her daughters look for love and happiness which they do not have in their childhood home.  Marriage is seen as a way out, but it and the pregnancies that follow only continue the cycle of poverty.  By the time Frieda, Melba’s oldest daughter, is 24, she has six children and lives with them and her husband Roger in “a two-room shell of a house” and “No one knew if Frieda and Roger ever did get off welfare.”  Access to birth control would have made such a difference in the lives of so many women in the novel. 

The author’s portrayal of life in the 1950s and 1960s is very realistic.  Esther is born in my birth year so I can relate to the descriptions of growing up in that time period.  References to ordering from the Sears catalogue and mixing “the orange egg yolk-looking blob” into margarine brought back memories.  There is even humour in some of the references:  Esther “didn’t know what we used the Simpson’s catalogues for.” 

Esther’s sense of not belonging is nicely emphasized by the repeated appearance of islands.  She is born on an island and spends ten years on the island of Montreal before returning to Grand Manan.  Even in High River during the flood, she lives in an apartment surrounded by water.  In every home, she feels she is from another place and doesn’t belong:  And “if you were from away, you could never really belong in the fullest sense of the word, and you weren’t trusted when it came right down to it.”

Unfortunately, there is too much telling and not enough showing.  For instance, it is inevitable that Melba’s fractured upbringing is going to have an impact on her life.  Does the reader really need to be told that her removal from her secure life in Montreal is the beginning of “the building anxiety that would last for the rest of her life”?   Her fear of abandonment is unnecessarily emphasized:  Esther “wondered why it was that she was so bad, what was so wrong with her, that even two mothers didn’t want her.  Esther would wonder this for her whole life.”  Esther’s actions clearly show her struggle with identity, yet the author insists on telling us, “In her mind, Esther lived between a Christian and Jewish upbringing.  She lived this duality her whole life.”  And we’re told that “Seeds of doubt, chaos, anger and abandonment, depression and anxiety, pill-taking and suicide were planted in her short time on Grand Manan, and would follow Esther the rest of her life.”  As an adult, “Esther was unhappy.  How many times would she have to move?  How much money would she have to spend replicating her childhood home? . . . This road would spread before her for most of her life.”

The majority of the novel focuses on Esther’s life until the age of seventeen.  Then the last 15 percent covers over 40 years.  We are shown little; we are just repeatedly told that Esther moved again and again and that she is addicted to prescription drugs.  This last section of the novel needs considerable revision.  The detailed description of the High River flooding is excessive, yet other information is lacking.  We learn that Esther’s sister Liona “eloped with Ross Mackie” but when she reappears she is addressed as Liona Green?  A niece that has never been mentioned drives Esther to pick up her car after the flood? 

There is an interesting story here, but the writer’s style needs polishing.  The part of the novel dealing with Esther’s adulthood needs major revision. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE LONG CALL by Ann Cleeves (New Release)

3.5 Stars

This is the first instalment in a new series entitled Two Rivers; it is set in North Devon where the Taw and Torridge rivers converge and empty into the Atlantic.

Detective Inspector Matthew Venn becomes the lead investigator when the body of a man is found on the beach.  The victim of the fatal stabbing is identified as Simon Walden, a volunteer at Woodyard, a multi-use community centre managed by Jonathan Church, Matthew’s husband.  Matthew is assisted by DS Jen Rafferty and DC Ross May who end up interviewing several people, all of whom have some connection to Woodyard.  The investigation is complicated by people keeping secrets and the occurrence of other crimes. 

Since this is the first in a planned series, character development is paramount.  Matthew grew up in North Devon but is estranged from his family because he rejected the beliefs of the Christian fundamentalist community to which they belong.  His youthful devotion to the church has been replaced by his love for his partner whose surname is, appropriately, Church.  He trusts Jonathan “with a certainty that was almost religious.”  Though Matthew is competent and determined, he lacks self-confidence:  “The fear of looking foolish had haunted him all his adult life” and “He felt the weight of responsibility for all that was going on and worried again that he might be the wrong man for the job.” 

The two other members of the investigative team, Jen and Ross, are also developed to some extent.

It is Matthew’s opinions of them that are interesting.  For example, though he approves of her work, he “disapproved of Jen, his sergeant.  She’d had her kids too young, had bailed out of an abusive marriage and left behind her Northern roots . . . Now her kids were teens and she was enjoying the life that she’d missed out on in her twenties.   Hard partying and hard drinking; if she’d been a man, you’d have called her predatory.”  When it comes to his constable, who is also the DCI’s “golden boy,” Matthew also has a negative reaction:  “Ross’s energy exhausted him . . . Ross was a pacer and a shouter . . . A team player except, it seemed, when he was at work.”

Besides the murder case, the focus of the novel seems to be parent- child relationships.  Matthew has virtually no contact with his parents, and Jonathan is “nervous [and] jittery” around his parents who are “wary” around their son.  We see Jen’s relationship with her teenaged children, and Ross discusses his relationship with a surrogate dad.  There are several parent-child relationships that become relevant during the investigation:  Maurice Braddick and his daughter Lucy; Christopher Preece and his daughter Caroline; Susan Shapland and her daughter Chrissie; and Ron and Janet Holsworthy and their daughter Rosa. 

The plot is that of a typical police procedural.  It begins slowly but then tension is ramped up when others are placed in danger.  I did have an issue with how Matthew suddenly goes to visit a witness, one who helps unravel the case.  One minute he is pondering “the timeline since the opening of the Woodyard to look for a trigger” and then he rushes off to speak to someone.  There is no explanation of his thought process.  Are we just supposed to be impressed with his deductive skills?  The identity of Simon’s murderer is also somewhat unconvincing, considering the killer’s beliefs and assertion that “’Simon was a good man.’”  Are Jen’s falling for “a man’s blackmail or flattery” and Ross’s inability to refuse doing favours for a superior supposed to make the killer’s motivation more palatable?

There is little to distinguish this book from a standard murder mystery.  The element that might entice me to read the next instalment is the characters and the relationships among those characters.  Jonathan and Matthew are a couple but a description of their shadow as “one person, misshapen and weird” seems more than just an indication of their being polar opposites, especially when Matthew seems so insecure in his marriage that he worries that showing up late for a dinner “might be one step too far.”  Can Matthew become less judgemental of Jen?  Can Ross become less of a sycophant and more of a team player? 

I’ve enjoyed Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope and Shetland mysteries, so I will be interested to see how this series develops and compares. 

Note:  I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.