Review of LAND OF SHADOWS by Rachel Howzell Hall

3.5 Stars

I was looking for a new police procedural series to read and a friend recommended the Detective Elouise Norton series by Rachel Howzell Hall.  This is the first of the, thus-far, four-book series.

Elouise (Lou) is an African-American LAPD homicide detective.  She and her new partner Colin Taggert, a recent transfer from Colorado, investigate the death of 17-year-old Monique Darson who is found hanging in an unfinished condo complex.  The complex is being built by Napoleon Crase, a man Lou suspects in the disappearance of her own sister thirty years earlier.  Can Lou investigate the Darson case without bias?  Can she find out the truth behind her sister’s disappearance? 

Lou is the first-person narrator so we gather information as she does.  The only advantage the reader has is some chapters told by the anonymous killer.  Those chapters do give some clues, though mostly they suggest who he isn’t. 

What will motivate me to return to the series is the character of Lou Norton.  She is intelligent and high-spirited.  She is told that on the street she is known as Lockjaw because “’Once you’re on a case, you don’t let go.’”  Lou describes herself as “’sweet as apple pie’” but a colleague qualifies that description:  “’Apple pie laced with arsenic and rusty razor blades.”  She is respected by her colleagues because she is good at her job:  “Not to brag, but I had solved 90 percent of the investigations I had led.  Pretty good for a girl.’”  Lou’s troubled relationship with her husband adds a personal subplot that will undoubtedly be developed further.   

I especially love Lou’s irreverent sense of humour.  She brags, “I could spot a fake Chanel handbag quicker than I could spot a hooker on fire.”  She mocks her partner who concludes a suspect is a drug dealer with such certainty that “he folded his arms and nodded as though he’d just discovered Presbyterians on Uranus.”  She mocks herself:  “I was sweating like Kobe Bryant in Game 7 of the NBA finals against the Celtics and my reserve tank of patience had only three drops left.”  She mocks witnesses who are not forthcoming, calling one a “’goddamned dingleberry’”, later explaining that a dingleberry is “’a piece of poop that sticks to ass hair.’”

I did have difficulty with some of the slang.  For example, “strawberry” and “twink” and “chickenhead” had me checking a slang dictionary.   There are numerous pop culture references; for instance, Lou tells one suspect, “’This ain’t a TV show and you ain’t Stringer Bell, so stop with the bad-ass-thug routine.  You’re from Carson, son.’”    An older man will be described as “’old enough to remember the last episode of M*A*S*H” or as someone who hasn’t smiled “since Cheers went off the air.”  Some of the rap and hip hop references left me lost (KRS-One and Chuck D), and “Doin’ the Dougie”, meant nothing to me until I consulted Google. 

I will definitely be checking out the other books in the series. 

Review of DISAPPEARING EARTH by Julia Phillips

4 Stars

I’ve not always been happy with fiction consisting of interconnected short stories, but this book uses the structure very effectively.

The book begins with the abduction of 11-year-old Alyona Golosovskaya and her 8-year-old sister Sophia.  Each of the twelve subsequent chapters, which advance month by month in the year after the girls’ disappearance, focuses on a different woman and her personal struggles.  In several of these chapters, there is discussion of Lilia, a teenaged girl who went missing years earlier and has never been found.

The women’s struggles are various.  Some of the women’s lives are directly impacted by the case of the missing girls.  For instance, Olya loses her best friend Diana because Diana’s mother doesn’t want her daughter spending time with Olya who, like Alyona and Sophia, has an unsupervised life because her single mother works all the time.  And a university student’s boyfriend insists on constant check-ins after the girls are kidnapped.  For other women, the girls’ abduction is just a passing shadow as they contend with their own problems.  For example, women grapple with sexuality, an unfaithful husband, a health scare, and the loss of a loved one. 

There are connections among some of the women.  For example, one chapter focuses on Natasha, Lilia’s sister, and another on Revmira who is Lilia’s mother’s second cousin.  The protagonist of one chapter is Ksyusha, a university student, whereas the protagonist of another chapter is Ksyusha’s brother’s girlfriend.  Sometimes women are protagonists in one chapter but also appear as minor characters in another woman’s story:  Valentina, who works at Alyona and Sophia’s school, is featured in November’s story but also appears in Olya’s September story and is mentioned in the February chapter as well. 

Men are very much secondary characters and most are not admirable.  There’s a cheating husband and several absent fathers.  There’s the inept Max who forgets to bring a tent on a camping trip and whose carelessness results in the loss of a beloved dog.  Denis is obsessed with alien landings.  Yevgeny Pavlovich, the major general in charge of the police, seems clueless; one of his detectives tells a woman, “’It’s Saturday night.  The major general left work hours ago. . . . He won’t be sober enough to assist you.’”  The one exception to the one-dimensional men is Chegga who is mentioned prominently in two stories and appears in another; because he is shown from the perspective of two women and then plays an active role in another’s story, he has both positive and negative traits.

In some ways, this book is a locked room mystery.  The events take place on Russia’s remote, far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula:  “the region was cut off from the rest of the world by geography.  To the south, east, and west was only ocean.  To the north, walling off the Russian mainland, were hundreds of kilometers of mountains and tundra.  Impassable.  Roads within Kamchatka were few and broken . . . No roads connected the peninsula to the rest of the continent.”  The setting virtually becomes a character in the story.  Because the peninsula was a closed military zone until 1989, I knew little of the region so I was especially interested in the culture of the Indigenous peoples.  For instance, Ksyusha comes from a reindeer-herding family and she spent summers living in a yurt. 

Tensions between white Russians and the Indigenous peoples come to the forefront.  Ksyusha won a university scholarship but her classmates “spoke to her like she was part herd animal herself.”  One woman complains about the only city on the peninsula being overrun with Natives:  “’They used to stay in the villages where they belong.’” 

I was reminded of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women when it is made clear that the police and media give so much more attention to the two missing white girls from the city than was given to Lilia, an Indigenous girl from a remote community.  Lilia’s mother asks Alyona and Sophia’s mother:  “’Tell me, how did you influence [the police] to stay so active [in their search]?  You paid them? . . . You must have paid them, I think. . . . Otherwise, what reason would they have to continue? . . . I went to the city police station in person.  They didn’t listen to me.  But they listen to you.’”   The police “throw all their efforts into looking for two small white bodies” and look for the “Russian sisters tirelessly” yet when Lilia disappeared police “spread rumors about Lilia’s boyfriends” and concluded she ran away.  Being the daughter of “an old native woman,” Lilia is “the child of a nobody” so the police have no interest in continuing an investigation into her disappearance.

This look at the lives of girls and women is not an easy read.  Many of the main characters have few options in their lives and more than a few experience trauma.  Violence of one type or another is a common element.  Nonetheless, this book should be added to to-read stacks.  Though the novel is set in a remote region of the world, the struggles it examines are universal.  And there’s a mystery to be solved too! 

Review of THE SEVEN OR EIGHT DEATHS OF STELLA FORTUNA by Juliet Grames

3.5 Stars

This novel focuses on three female members of the Fortuna family, with especial attention to Stella Fortuna.  In a small, mountainous village in Calabria, Assunta marries a domineering and abusive man who disappears to America for years at a time, returning only to impregnate his wife.  Just as World War II is beginning, Assunta is forced to immigrate to the United States along with her sons and two daughters, Stella and Concettina (Tina).

Assunta’s sad and difficult marriage convinces Stella that she never wants to marry.  Spirited and independent, she tries to break free from a patriarchal society in which a woman has no value except as a wife and mother.  Of course, life has other things in store for Stella because she ends up having a large family.  Though she has several brushes with death, as the title clearly indicates, she lives to be a centenarian.  And though Stella and Tina are inseparable for years, the sisters “spend thirty years locked in a blood feud.”  All of this is outlined in the preface; the novel provides the details. 

The unnamed narrator is one of Stella’s granddaughters.  Because of a “cerebral haemorrhage and a lifesaving lobotomy,” Stella spends the last thirty years of her life “demented and resented” so “all the good she did in this world has already been forgotten and buried.”  Her granddaughter decides to reconstruct Stella’s “too-strange life” and restore “her besmirched good name.”

It is the character of Stella that steals the show.  Though uneducated, she is intelligent.  She is skilled and hard-working.  “Stella was quick-witted and self-sufficient, not to be trifled with or taken advantage of.”  She is beautiful and, though not vain, recognizes that her beauty is a power, “one of the few powers a young woman in a southern Italian village could possibly wield.”  Above all, she is tough:  “Each bad thing that happened to her only made her more stubborn, more retaliatory, less compromising.  Stella allowed for no weakness in herself and she had no tolerance for weakness in others.” 

This is not a light read, as indicated in the opening of the novel:  Stella “endured much bad luck and hardship.”  The narrator, when asking for information about her grandmother is warned, “’Some parts of the story, they no nice.’”  The reader also needs to be warned beforehand.  The book certainly left me wondering which of my female ancestors were not able to become who they wanted to be because of society’s expectations of women. 

And though the book is very much about the past, it is connected to the present:  “Over the years of human history, many people have made the choice to get on a boat to go to a strange and hostile place – can you imagine the desperation they must have felt in order to step onto that boat knowing there was a chance they would not reach their destination?  Most recently, these people have been emigrants trying to get into Italy, not emigrants trying to leave, and their passage is no easier or safer than that of their antecedents.  Thousands of refugees from Syria, Libya, Eritrea, Somalia, Ghana, and Nigeria have died off the coasts of Italy in the last ten years, capsized, drowned, sunk in flames.  History marches on, and names and destinations change, but not the injustices we let one another suffer.”

This book is recommended to those who enjoy multi-generational family sagas and/or stories of the immigrant experience.

Review of MOON OF THE CRUSTED SNOW by Waubgeshig Rice

3.5 Stars

In a small, remote Anishinaabe community, winter is about to begin when, one by one, all communication and power grids are lost.  Initially there is no great worry because outages are common; however, as time passes, anxiety rises, especially when the community learns about society collapsing in the outside world.  The food supply becomes a major concern, and panic starts to build.  When a white man arrives, he changes the dynamics:   power struggles begin.  Will the people be able to survive the long winter?

Most of the novel is narrated from the perspective of Evan Whitesky, a thoughtful young man who is skilled in the traditional Anishinaabe way of life; in the opening scene, he is hunting to provide food for his family.  Evan is the one fully developed character.  He is a man of integrity.  His major concern is the welfare of his family, but he also tries to help maintain order in the community and ensure that vulnerable people receive basic needs.  Though he has many positive qualities, he is not perfect:  though he understands the negative impact alcohol has had on his people, he drinks even knowing he will inevitably experience “his usual conflicted morning-after emotions of guilt and defiance.”

Development of other characters is missing.  There is little differentiation so it’s easy to think of the one-dimensional characters only in terms of labels like the best friend, the co-worker, and the well-intentioned leader.  Some development of Justin Scott would have been useful because his motives remain unknown.  Why does he choose to be a disruptor?  Is he just supposed to be a representative of the evil white man who has interfered and brought violence and destruction to Indigenous peoples?

Some characters are just dropped into the narrative without explanation.  For example, a man named Dave Meegis shows up in Chapter 15 and pores over “invoices, charts, and documents about energy consumption.”  Who is he?  Is he a band councillor?  All we know is that, given his surname, he must be related to the chief.  Later in Chapter 21, a sentence begins with “The woman screamed . . . ” but there has been no previous mention of a woman being present. 

There is a great deal of exposition in the book so I often had the impression that the author was more concerned with showcasing Anishinaabe culture and criticizing colonialism than with creating a work of fiction with literary qualities.  For example, “As he took from the earth, he gave back.  It was the Anishinaabe way, as he understood it” and “he planned to give a lot of the meat away.  It was the community way” and “hunting, fishing, and living on the land was Anishinaabe custom.”  The ritual of smudging is explained as “an integral part of Anishinaabe spirituality.  It represented a cleansing of the spirit, and the ceremony was believed to clear the air of negativity.”  Then the author feels compelled to give some history:  “This protocol had once been forbidden, outlawed by the government and shunned by the church.  When the ancestors of these Anishinaabe people were forced to settle in this unfamiliar land, distant from their traditional home near the Great Lakes, their culture withered under the pressure of the incomers’ Christianity.  The white authorities displaced them far to the north to make way for towns and cities.”  Of course, I understand the need to explain this culture and history to non-Indigenous readers who might have little knowledge of either. 

There is too much telling and not enough showing.  For instance, the power struggles, a main conflict in the second part of the novel, are not directly shown.  We are told that Jordan Scott causes divisiveness but we are not shown how he does so.  How can someone convince people to violate a strong moral code?  Suspense is certainly diminished because we hear about events instead of see events.   

The theme of the novel is that Indigenous people have been in survival mode since the arrival of whites and they will continue to survive if they live according to their traditional ways.  An elder points out, “’Our world isn’t ending.  It already ended.  It ended when the Zhaagnaash come into our original home down south on that bay and took it from us.  That was our world.  When the Zhaagnaash cut down all the trees and fished all the fish and forced us out of there, that’s when our world ended. . . . But then they followed us up here and started taking our children away from us!  That’s when our world ended again.  And that wasn’t the last time.’”  Those like Evan’s brother who have adopted white values and become too reliant on the ways of the whites have the most difficulty trying to survive, whereas those like Evan who live off the land by hunting, fishing, and trapping, and work together in “the Anishinaabe spirit of community” are more successful.  “The collapse of the white man’s modern systems” may in fact lead to a rebirth of “new life nestled deep in the heart of Anishinaabe.”

In many ways, this book reads like Young Adult fiction.  It is written in a straightforward style with unadorned prose.  It is informative about First Nations culture and history which Canadians, especially the youth, need to learn about.  The novel is not of exceptional literary quality but it is worth reading because it provides a new perspective. 

Review of OLIGARCHY by Scarlett Thomas (New Release)

3 Stars

The novel focuses on Tash (Natasha), the daughter of a Russian oligarch, who arrives at an English girls’ boarding school.  Life at the school seems to revolve around eating or, rather, not eating:  “90 per cent of the school has some sort of eating disorder.”   One girl dies and her death is ruled a suicide, but Tash suspects she was murdered and sets out to uncover the truth.

The title refers to the school which is a perfect example of an oligarchy, government by the few.  In the school, the thin girls, the popular girls, rule.  Only those who become obsessed with weight loss and body image are accepted.  They even take turns inventing strict diets for the other girls to follow:  “On Monday everyone starts a new diet.  It’s Lissa’s invention.  The diet is this:  wholewheat bread and Sandwich Spread only.  No butter.  Vegetables are allowed but no fruit.”   

It is possible to have some sympathy for the girls.  They are rich but are virtually abandoned by their parents.  Tash, for example, never sees her father; the parental figure in her life is her Aunt Sonja who tells her, “Do everything you can to keep your beauty.  Exams are not important” and warns her, “if you put the weight on once you will never, ever take it off.  Well, you can do it temporarily, but once it has been there it will always long to return, like a missing lover, like a weed, like a boy gone to the army.”

The problem, however, is that it is difficult to like the girls.  They laugh at what they consider to be the pathetic lives of regular people whom they call “plebs”.  A teacher tells them, “You’re all so shallow and annoying” and that description is perfect.  None of the girls really emerges as a round character with a distinct personality; they are just mean, privileged girls who are fixated on body image and consumerism.  As a result, the reader may not feel as much sympathy for them as the author might want. 

There are some other aspects that did not appeal to me.  The structure is rather choppy with a lack of smooth transitions.  The style is emotionless.  A plot is almost non-existent.  Why is the word “fluorescence” repeated 13 times? 

At times, this book seems to read more like Young Adult fiction:  “Tiffanie gets out a Sherbet Fountain which she calls a ‘dib-dob’ and “Bianca has secretly joined a Pro Ana WhatsApp group and . . . does not TePe daily.”  It is, however, not a book I would want to give to a young person dealing with eating problems or body image issues. 

On the other hand, I don’t think I’m the target audience for the book either.  Maybe because I’m a “pleb”, I just can’t empathize enough with these uber-wealthy, superficial, nasty girls who are so pre-occupied with false values.   

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

Review of THE NANNY by Gilly Macmillan

3 Stars

When Jocelyn Holt was a young girl living with her parents in the family mansion known as Lake Hall, her beloved nanny, Hannah Burgess, disappeared.  Thirty years later, Jo returns to the family home with her daughter Ruby.  Jo has always regarded her mother Virginia as emotionally distant and remembers her childhood as unhappy once Hannah left.  Jo returns only because her husband died and she has few financial resources; she hopes the stay at Lake Hall will be a short one. 

One day, Jo and Ruby discover a human skull in the lake.  Virginia believes it belongs to Hannah, but then a woman claiming to be Hannah reappears.  Because her happy childhood memories revolve around Hannah, Jo is happy to reconnect with her.  Virginia, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with the woman.  The central question is whether Hannah is really Hannah.  If it isn’t Hannah, who is impersonating her?  If it is Hannah, why is she behaving as she does?

The story is told from the perspective of four characters:  Jo, Virginia, Hannah, and Andy Wilton, the detective in charge of the investigation concerning the body in the lake.  The narrative also moves back and forth through time.  Slowly, the reader is given more and more information to piece together the puzzle of who is who and what people are hiding. 

The pace is uneven.  It begins slowly and lags in the middle and then moves very quickly towards the end.  There is a subplot involving the Holt family business which ends up being totally unnecessary.  The red herring the police follow is too much of a focus, and Detective Wilton’s perspective adds very little to the plot.  Some judicious revision would have tightened the narrative.  At times the plot seems contrived; for instance, more than one character reappears at a very opportune time.  Having Jo basically repeat Virginia’s actions is artificial plot manipulation.

Other than Ruby, there are no likeable characters.  Both Jo and Virginia earn some sympathy at different times but their overall behaviour negates much of that sympathy.  Virginia was not a good mother and Jo has such blind loyalty to her nanny.  If the two of them just communicated honestly, so much drama could have been avoided.  Certainly their involvement in the family’s finances does not show them in a positive light.  The way both women remove threats, seemingly without regret, cannot but leave the reader feeling uncomfortable, despite the women’s motivations. 

This book has murder, adultery, deception, obsession, and manipulation but not too many surprises.  A frequent reader of thrillers will accurately predict much of what happens.  If you want to read a thriller featuring a nanny, I’d suggest The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani.

Review of DEAR EDWARD by Ann Napolitano (New Release)

3 Stars

Twelve-year-old Edward Adler is the sole survivor of a plane crash in which 191 people die, including his parents and his brother Jordan.  The book focuses on Edward’s struggles after the crash:  he has to recover physically and cope with paralyzing grief, overwhelming guilt, and unwanted celebrity.  He is taken in by an aunt and uncle who try to support him as best they can, but it is Edward’s friendship with Shay, the daughter of a neighbour, which becomes his anchor and helps him find meaning for his life.

Interspersed throughout are sections telling the story of the flight from boarding to impact, including the background of some of the passengers and crew on the ill-fated flight.

The book is an emotionally exhausting read.  As expected, Edward’s grief is staggering.  He initially copes by detaching from the world:  “Edward feels unmoored, like he might be anywhere in space, anywhere in time.”  He cannot eat and has difficulty sleeping.  As the only survivor, he feels “He had to carry the burden of so many lost lives.”  He describes the grieving process as swimming in pain and loss for years.  Three years after the crash, he feels like he “’should be over it’” but finds that he “’still [thinks] about it all the time.’”

A book blurb describes the book as a “luminous, life-affirming novel” but this is not accurate.  How can a book detailing the emotional and psychological effects of unimaginable tragedy be anything but serious and dark?  Edward does learn that there can be life after loss but that life after great loss is a life which includes always learning to live with that loss:  “’What happened is . . . not going away.  It’s part of you and will be part of you every moment until you die.  What you’ve been working on . . . is learning to live with that.’”  Discovering after many years that life can still have value does not mean that the journey to that discovery, the journey described in this book, is luminous or optimistic.  There is no disguising the fact that the book is a heavy, bleak read which offers signs of hope only near the end.

I was disappointed with Edward’s decisions concerning money at the end.  His choices are rather shallow, almost self-serving.  More growth on his part would have been shown if he had been more imaginative in his selections, options showing him directly addressing the needs of the loved ones of the lost. 

Some might argue that there is some relief from Edward’s constant misery in the descriptions of the other passengers.  The problem is that we know they are all going to die and their plans and hopes and goals will never be attained, so more sadness is added.  There is a further issue with some of these people.  Veronica, for example, is a cliché of a flight attendant whose unprofessional behaviour is unrealistic.  She is the senior attendant but doesn’t know how to deal with a situation that arises?  Mark is a cliché of a Wall Street player, and Linda’s discovery mid-flight is just plot manipulation.

The relationship between Edward’s aunt and uncle needs more attention.  Though they try their best, Lacey and John do not really know how to help Edward.  John is supposedly overly protective, but no real boundaries are established for Edward’s behaviour?  There is repeated reference to marital difficulties but few specifics are given.  John’s explanation that Lacey thought he was too protective and obsessive does not seem sufficient.  Then there’s an almost immediate “softening between Lacey and John”? 

This is anything but a light and easy read because it meticulously details one boy’s struggles to recover emotionally and psychologically from unbelievable trauma. 

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

Review of RECIPE FOR A PERFECT WIFE by Karma Brown (New Release)

3 Stars

There are two narratives in this novel.  In the one set in 2018, Alice Hale has just unwillingly moved with her husband Nate from Manhattan to the suburbs.  Having left her job, she thinks she will write a novel but suffers from writer’s block until she chances upon a vintage cookbook and letters left by Nellie Murdoch, a previous resident in the house Alice and Nate have bought.  Alice slowly becomes aware of the secrets Nellie hid about her marriage.

The second story is set in the 1950s and focuses on Nellie and her life with her husband Richard.  That life consists of little other than cooking, cleaning, and entertaining.  Gardening is her solace, especially because her marriage is not a happy one since Richard is domineering and physically abusive. 

As the title and dedication indicate, the book examines the expectations with which women have had to contend.  Certainly, women were expected to marry, and one of the most interesting elements in the novel is the advice women were given about fulfilling the role of wife.  Interspersed throughout are quotations from actual books offering advice like “Be a good listener.  Let him tell you his troubles; yours will seem trivial in comparison” and “Happiness does not flourish in an atmosphere of dyspepsia” and “Do your best to make him happy and you will find happiness yourself” and “From the wedding day, the young matron should shape her life to the probable and desired contingency of conception and maternity.  Otherwise she has no right or title to wifehood” and “your most important job is to build up and maintain his ego” and “in case of an occasional lapse on the part of the husband . . . forgive and forget.”

It is obvious that Nellie tries to follow this advice.  She outlines her “education on what it meant to be Richard Murdoch’s wife”:   “the most important thing she could do was stand by his side, take care of him, give herself over to him bit by bit.  He needed her to look pretty, cook him hot meals, open her legs to him without feigning a headache or lady troubles.  She was to keep her opinions to herself while also keeping his dozen or so white dress shirts sparkling and clean of other women’s lipstick.”  The reader cannot but feel sympathy for her; she has few options.

Alice, however, does not elicit any sympathy.  She constantly lies to Nate and keeps secrets, even asking at one point, “What did it say about her, and her marriage, that she hadn’t simply been honest with Nate from the beginning?”  Her deceptions show her to be immature, selfish, and manipulative.  Her position is nothing like Nellie’s because Alice has many opportunities to speak up for herself but she doesn’t take them.  Nate is certainly not Richard because he is not abusive and allows his wife to express her opinions.  Granted, he does make some decisions without consulting Alice, but since she chooses not to communicate her feelings, she bears some responsibility for misunderstandings.  Sometimes, Alice is just stupid:  in 2018, an adult, who could not but be aware of the health dangers, would take up smoking and even go so far as to cut off the filters? 

There are hints that the house is haunted by Nellie and that she gradually is taking over Alice’s personality.  When she and Nate first see the house, Alice sees “movement out of the corner of her eye.  A flutter of curtain from the top left window, as though someone was pushing it to the side.”  Alice starts cooking Nellie’s recipes, wearing vintage clothing and using Nellie’s cigarette holder.  The realtor pointedly mentions that Nellie died in the house; there are references to temperature changes; Alice comments that “’the house likes it when I cook’”; and Nate comments that “’Maybe we never should have moved here. . . . It’s not good for you, or me. . . . This goddamn house.‘”  Closing references to Alice’s planting certain flowers so the housewife would be “pleased to see how well her beloved gardens were faring” and Alice’s “invoking the housewife’s ghost” suggest that Alice can always do what Nellie did!?  This supernatural element is unnecessary and just muddies Alice’s narrative in a way that the author probably did not intend. 

I enjoyed Nellie’s story but found Alice’s much less compelling.  Alice presents a poor portrait of a feminist if she is supposed to be seen as one.  Surely, the author does not intend to suggest that feminists are dishonest, non-communicative, and manipulative?  Perhaps the two stories are supposed to be parallels, but it is difficult to see many parallels between Nellie and Alice.  Nellie is a victim of society’s expectations of a wife whereas Alice, if she is a victim, has only herself to blame.  In the end, I’m left confused as to what the author was trying to communicate.

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