Review of HIEROGLYPHICS by Jill McCorkle (New Release)

3 Stars

This book is narrated from four perspectives:  Lil, Frank, Shelley, and Harvey.  Lil is trying to make sense of her life and is determined to leave a history for her children, so she sifts through letters, notes and diary entries to write the family story for Becca and Jeff.  She reveals some family secrets, mostly involving her husband Frank.  Frank wants to revisit his boyhood home and check out the root cellar to see if what he left there remains.   Shelley is the single mother who lives in Frank’s boyhood home; she is stressed because of her work as a court stenographer and because of her son Harvey whose over-active imagination causes difficulties with his peers.

This is not a light read.  Death permeates the novel.  Frank is obsessed with “the myths of death and all the ancient beliefs of the afterlife.”  He is also pre-occupied with hastening (“hastening the inevitable while it’s all still in our control”) and proposes that he and Lil die together since they’re experiencing only “some pale imitation of living.”  Lil, therefore, worries about Frank’s plans whenever he leaves the house.  Shelley seems to be running from ghosts in her past while listening to the details of a homicide case, and her young son is fixated on ghosts and serial killers. 

Tragic deaths also overshadow the lives of characters.  Lil lost her mother in a fire, and Frank lost his father in a train accident.  When they first met, it is these childhood tragedies that brought them together.  Both still struggle with trying to remember and understand these parents they lost.  Both repeatedly think about their last day:  Lil wonders who was with her mother at the night club the night of the fire and Frank wonders whether his father’s last moments were really like his mother remembered.

A major theme is the inability to fully understand our parents.  Lil writes to her children, “As parents, we pack your bags and strap them to your little backs before you are even old enough to carry them, and then you have to spend the rest of your life unpacking and figuring it all out.”  And sometimes parents keep secrets from their children or lie to protect them; this is certainly Shelley’s parenting technique.  Another theme is the connections between past and present:  “We all are haunted by something – something we did or didn’t do – and the passing years either add to the weight or diminish it.”

The narrative feels scattered because it moves among characters and back and forth in time.  Events are mentioned but then not detailed until later.  This rambling structure is appropriate because it imitates how memories work.  Unfortunately, I found this structure frustrating.  Lil and Frank’s stories were interesting but Shelley’s much less so.  Harvey’s perspective was often just confusing.  The characters are connected through Frank’s childhood home, but there seemed to be a lack of cohesion among the four stories.  In the end, however, I just didn’t care to spend time analyzing what I’d read.

Perhaps I read the book at the wrong time because it didn’t have the impact on me I initially expected.  I kept thinking I should be enjoying the novel more than I was; more than once, I found myself wishing it would move on from being a slow burn.  There is substance but little impression of a unified whole.  The title is very appropriate because reading the book sometimes felt like trying to make sense of enigmatic symbols.

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

Review of THE WOMAN AT NUMBER 19 by J. A. Baker

2 Stars

This book is marketed as a psychological thriller, but there is little thrilling about it.

Esther Nesbitt is grieving the loss of her husband and two children in a car accident.  She has become a bit of a recluse; her only friend is a young woman named Amy who lives nearby.  Since she passes by Esther’s home on her way to her job as a nurse in a local hospital, she drops by regularly to check up on Esther.  From her window, Esther watches her new neighbour Veronica and becomes concerned when she witnesses her erratic and abusive behaviour towards her husband and children.  Feeling guilty that she could not help her own children, Esther decides to observe Veronica and report her to the authorities once she has sufficient evidence, but she starts to get distracted by inexplicable events happening in her own home.  She becomes increasingly frightened and bewildered and starts to question her grip on reality.

My major issue with the novel is its predictability.  Basically the prologue gives away the plot.  Then there are so many heavy-handed clues that a reader would have to be very obtuse not to notice them.  I kept reading because I thought surely the author wouldn’t be so obvious, but the foreshadowing led exactly where I thought it would. 

To make matters worse, the book is short but still unnecessarily long.  The chapters alternate between Esther and Veronica’s viewpoints; Esther’s chapters tend to be repetitive.  The last part of the book (about 10%) could be totally eliminated.  The ending is just added for extra zing, but it left me saying, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

What is also troubling is the misrepresentation of mental illness.  The author did not do any research to ensure her portrayal is accurate.  One character seems to have the symptoms of several mental disorders. 

There is little to recommend this book.  It has no real suspense because the plot is so predictable.  Its unrealistic portrayal of mental illness is almost offensive to anyone who has experienced mental health problems. 

Review of HAMNET AND JUDITH by Maggie O'Farrell (New Release)

4.5 Stars

In Stratford-upon-Avon, a young Latin tutor falls in love with Agnes, an unconventional woman known as an herbalist and healer.  They marry and have three children, a daughter Susanna and a set of twins, Hamnet and Judith.  The father moves to London and while he is there, Judith becomes ill with the bubonic plague.  The first part of the book focuses on how Agnes and her husband meet and the early years of their marriage; the second part is a study of grief and loss as we see how the death of a child affects the parents and family and the toll it has on the marriage.

From the book’s title and the plot summary, most people will know that the story is based on the life of William Shakespeare.  The playwright, however, is never named; he is described as “the son” or “the tutor” or “the husband” or “the father.”  Perhaps he is unnamed so that he does not overshadow his wife who is really the protagonist of this retelling. 

Agnes is a spirited woman who has an uncanny ability to read people.  She also has the gift of foresight which allows her to sense future events.  She is a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast supporter of her husband.  It is the relationship with her husband that I found especially imaginative.  When she first meets him and takes his hand, she feels “Something of which she had never known the like. . . . It was far-reaching:  this much she knew.  It had layers and strata, like a landscape.  There were spaces and vacancies, dense patches, underground caves, rises and descents.  There wasn’t enough time for her to get a sense of it all – it was too big, too complex. . . . She knew there was more of it than she could grasp, that it was bigger than both of them.”  Later, she tells him that she has seen the place in his head:  “’a whole country in there, a landscape.’”  When she sees his writing, she does not understand what he is writing but knows that “The branches of the forest are so dense you cannot feel the rain.”  What wonderful ways to describe the mind of a literary genius!

Agnes is not portrayed as a countrywoman who is not the equal of her husband.  She is an intelligent woman who senses her husband’s unhappiness.  He is a restless soul abused by a violent father.  When she sees his melancholy, she conspires to send him to London where she suspects he may find opportunities appropriate to his mind.  She would prefer him at home with her and the children but she loves her husband so much that she sends him away so he can become who he is meant to be.

The second part of the novel, which describes the grief at the loss of a child, is almost too painful to read because it is rendered so exquisitely.  The twin, Susanna, and the parents all grieve differently.  Agnes is almost totally destroyed.  Because she and her husband cannot speak of their loss, they misread each other’s responses.  Agnes’ husband feels that “the magnitude, the depth of his wife’s grief . . . exerts a fatal pull.  It is like a dangerous current that, if he were to swim too close, might suck him in, plunge him under.  He would never surface again; he must hold himself separate in order to survive.  If he were to go under, he would drag them all with him.”  He chooses to return London, and Agnes feels he has abandoned her and his family.  In an interesting twist, the author connects the loss of a child with the writing of one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. 

The poetic prose is hauntingly beautiful.  Even a mundane activity like removing honeycombs is described elegantly:  “She brings a honeycomb out of the skep and squats to examine it.  Its surface is covered, teeming, with something that appears to be one moving entity:  brown, banded with gold, wings shaped like tiny hearts.  It is hundreds of bees, crowded together, clinging to their comb, their prize, their work. . . . The bees lift, in unison, to swarm above her head, a cloud with no edges, an airborne net that keeps casting and casting itself. . . . the honey leaves the comb with a cautious, near reluctant drop.  Slow as sap, orange-gold, scented with the sharp tang of thyme and the floral sweetness of lavender, it falls into the pot Agnes holds out.  A thread of honey stretches from comb to pot, widening, twisting.”

The novel takes advantage of the fact that little is known about Shakespeare’s family and imagines an explanation for what is not known:  Why did Shakespeare marry a woman older than he, especially one who would be considered an unlettered countrywoman?  Did he have to marry her because she was pregnant with his child?  Why did he bequeath his wife the “second-best” bed? 

I highly recommend this book.  I first read Maggie O’Farrell last year.  Her The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox impressed me very much (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2019/08/review-of-vanishing-act-of-esme-lennox.html).  This book left me in total awe.  Though it begins slowly, it becomes an intimate, eloquent study of grief that is powerfully affecting.  It will leave you moved, much as you might be by a play written by the protagonist’s husband. 

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

Review of THE LIVES OF EDIE PRITCHARD by Larry Watson (New Release)

3.5 Stars

We meet Edie, the protagonist, at three different stages of her life twenty years apart.  In 1967, she is Edie Linderman, married to Dean, an insecure man who represses his jealousy of his fraternal twin Roy.  Dean knows Roy is attracted to Edie, but he does nothing to stop Roy’s constant attempts to pull Edie away from her husband.  In 1987, Edie is Edie Dunn, married to Gary, a controlling, possessive man, with whom she has a teenaged daughter Jennifer.  In 2007, Edie is 64-year-old Edie Pritchard, living contentedly alone until her granddaughter Lauren arrives with her boyfriend Billy and Billy’s brother Jesse.

Edie is a beautiful woman and that beauty is used to define her.  People draw conclusions about her because of her looks.  Roy, for instance, constantly makes comments about Edie’s appearance to her; he mentions her hair, her clothes, and her body, even though the comments make her uncomfortable and she tells him so.  Edie tells Roy that he sees only what he wants to see or what he wants her to be: “’It’s not me.  It’s some idea of me’” because “’you turned me into this, this ideal.’” 

Edie’s hometown is Gladstone, Montana, and growing up in a small town means people formed an opinion of her that never changes:  “’I mean, all of us, are someone else in the eyes of others.  And for all I know, maybe that other is as true, as real, as the person we believe we are.  But the thing is, when you’re back home, you never have a chance to be someone other than who you were then.  Even if you never were that person.’” 

For the longest time, Edie’s life is defined by the demands of others, especially men.  She tries to get Dean to move away from Gladstone but he refuses.  Dean never seems to consult his wife for her opinion, as his brother points out:  “’But you never talked any of this over with her, did you? . . . You never asked her what she wants, did you?’”   Edie’s marriage to Gary puts her in another trap where her movements are controlled by her husband.  She constantly has to compromise because her wishes never seem to take precedence.  Even being a mother seems to mean not being able to be herself; Edie tells a friend, “’I don’t believe Jennifer ever forgave me for wanting to be anything besides her mother.’”

Edie is a dynamic character who eventually finds independence and contentment.  In the last section, she lives alone but is happy:  “’I’ve learned how to live alone in an apartment . . . I have my routines.  And I like my apartment.’”  She learns to speak up for herself; she tells one man, who keeps walking by her workplace so he can get her attention, “’you need to find yourself a different street to walk up and down.’”  She won’t even let a man stay on the couch for protection:  “’If you don’t leave, I might get used to having you here – needing you here – to feel safe.  No, I have to get through the night without you here.  If I don’t I’ll feel like I can’t make it without you here.’”

Edie also learns that it’s not always possible to keep others from making mistakes.  Jennifer wants to return to a man who cheated on her even though Edie tells her, “’If Patrick cheated on you once, he’ll do it again.  Cheaters cheat.’”  Lauren is involved with Billy, but they can go nowhere without Jesse.  From experience, Edie knows that there will inevitably be problems when a couple is actually a threesome, but will she be able to rescue her granddaughter from repeating Edie’s mistakes?

From the beginning, there is a feeling that things could go terribly wrong, that violence could occur at any time because of male ego and guns.  Roy’s encounter with the Bauer brothers and the road trip Dean proposes to Bentrock create suspense, especially because guns are present.  Guns again come to the forefront in the third section. 

I found it interesting that a male author chose to focus his novel on a woman and her conflicts, including men’s misperceptions of women.  Many writers would not dare, but his portrayal is very realistic.  I found Edie a relatable character in whom I could see some of myself.  Watson’s thanks to his wife, “my inspiration and my test case for all things Edie,” are undoubtedly deserved.   

The book is written in Watson’s typical understated style with prose that can only be called restrained.  He writes like an Impressionist painter, focusing the reader’s attention on gestures and actions and letting him/her figure out the significance.  This style may not appeal to all readers, but it works in suggesting that Edie can be known - if proper (not superficial) attention is paid to her. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on July 21.

Review of CUT TO THE BONE by Ellison Cooper (New Release)

3 Stars

Agent Sayer Altair, an FBI field agent and neuroscientist, is placed in charge of a case which begins as a dual murder and ends up as a kidnapping of a busload of high school students.  She puts together a team of colleagues for whom the search becomes more desperate as false leads send them on wild goose chases and bodies multiply.  At the same time Altair is being followed and her life threatened more than once.

I requested a galley of this book because it sounded interesting and because it was described as a standalone novel.  As soon as I began reading, it became clear this is part of a series.  There are repeated references to earlier cases involving Altair.  Much backstory is missing.  For instance, we are told that Altair has adopted an adult daughter Adi, and that’s all we are told.  There’s obviously much more to the story.  The ending also indicates that there will be at least one more book in the series.  I detest such false advertising.

Altair has a coterie of very loyal colleagues who hold Altair in high esteem.  The problem is that, because the book does not show how her relationship with these people developed, their loyalty seems unfounded.  Why are they so unquestioningly trusting?  There is a similar issue with Subject 037, a non-criminal psychopath that was a subject in a research project.  All we know is that he is fixated on Altair for some reason.  Why?  What transpired during the research? 

Altair is the strong female lead, but sometimes her reactions are unbelievable.  Considering what she loses in a fire, she has so little reaction?  More than once, reference is made to her reputation but, again, we are only told about this reputation.  She has supposedly earned this reputation because of previous cases, but simply being told does not totally convince this reader.   Her continuing to work while injured is a tad much.

The book definitely reminded me of an episode of Criminal Minds with some elements of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.  But I hated the chapter titles which are just indications of location like “Tino’s Apartment, Alexandria, VA” and “Andrew Mellon Memorial Fountain, Washington, D.C.”   “Road to Hearing Voices Institute, Great Falls, VA” is followed by “Dr. Lilenhammer’s Office, The Hearing Voices Institute, Great Falls, VA.” 

The plot is rather far-fetched.  How many people can fake their deaths?  Charred bones left after an IED attack are “autopsied and found to be consistent with” those of the sole occupant of the vehicle?  Wouldn’t DNA be used to identify remains?  The military would give glowing reports about someone “who has a fairly gray line between right and wrong” and who causes “unexpected collateral damage”?  After one murder, Altair concludes that a serial killer is responsible:  “’The lack of sexual element, the lack of anger, and the clear preplanning of the body dump, coupled with the intensely ritualized aspect of the victim display suggest the possibility of a serial killer’”?  Altair is supposedly an expert but wouldn’t an expert be more cautious in drawing such a conclusion on the basis of one death?  Towards the end, a character somehow informs two people about the whereabouts of various other people when there is no time when he is alone to do so? 

There is a lot of suspense and the book, with its short chapters, is a quick read.  I would however strongly recommend that people read the first two books in the series.  Convincing development of character and relationships is missing.  The reader must also be prepared to suspend some disbelief.

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

Review of THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd

3.5 Stars

This book will undoubtedly be considered blasphemous by some people since it imagines that Jesus was married.

The novel focuses on Ana, the daughter of the counselor and chief scribe to the tetrarch Herod Antipas and stepsister of Judas.  Her father allows her a tutor so she learns to read and write, and her ambition is to write the stories of women.  On the day that she is betrothed to an older widower, she meets Jesus, though it is not until later that she marries him.  Because Jesus must travel for work as a stonemason/carpenter, he is often away from home, leaving Ana with his mother Mary and his siblings.  Their separation lengthens when Jesus begins his ministry and Ana has to flee to Egypt. 

From her first appearance, when Ana is 14, she is a headstrong young woman with dreams of her own.  She accurately describes herself as “willful, impulsive, composed of strange hopes and selfish rebellion.”  Once she can read the Scriptures for herself, she realizes there are women in it, but their stories are ignored and forgotten:  “I swore an oath to set down their accomplishments and praise their flourishings, no matter how small.”  She possesses what would be considered modern sensibilities about women’s roles. 

Fortunately, Ana meets a man who respects and admires and loves the feisty Ana.  Jesus supports her passions however he can.  Because the two are well-matched, their relationship seems plausible.  Ana is certainly intellectually and spiritually curious.  Like Ana, Jesus tries to figure out his path in life.  What is interesting is that Ana’s yearnings may have “intimations of divinity” so both she and Jesus may have a higher calling. 

Of course, the book focuses on Jesus as a human and de-emphasizes his divinity.  The Biblical miracles are totally absent.  For instance, reference is made a wedding in Cana but no mention of the miracle that occurred there.  Lazarus appears, but Jesus’ raising him from the dead is omitted.  Regardless, because we know what will happen to Jesus, there is always a feeling of impending doom.  When references are made to John the Baptist and the Garden of Gethsemane, dramatic irony works to create suspense. 

The novel is an imaginative, woman-centred retelling of the New Testament.  There are several strong female characters.  Besides Ana, there’s her aunt Yaltha and her friend Tabatha both of whom suffer greatly at the hands of men, their “lives and fates left to men.”   Though the book emphasizes the voiceless status of women, several women find a way to express themselves and tell their stories. 

I found this an interesting read.  It cannot but leave one questioning why, even though little is known of Jesus’ life as a young man, it was decided that he was unmarried.  Ana asks, “Did they believe making him celibate rendered him more spiritual?  I found no answers, only the sting of being erased.” 

Review of THE DIAMOND HOUSE by Dianne Warren

3.5 Stars

I was pleased to discover that Dianne Warren, whose novel Cool Water won the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, had a new novel out.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find The Diamond House as engaging as her first novel.

The book focuses on Estella, the youngest daughter of Oliver and Beatrice Diamond.  When she is five years old, Estella finds some letters and learns that her father, a successful brick-factory owner, was once briefly married to Salina, an independent and unconventional woman who aspired to be a ceramics artist.  Raised by her mother Beatrice, a very traditional woman, Estella often wishes she had been raised by Salina.  She too longs to be independent, but her plans are always derailed by the needs of her family and, though she does have a career as a teacher, she always reverts to the role of a dutiful daughter. 

The novel begins in 1902 when Estella and Oliver first meet and ends in the present after “the Raptors had won the championship.”  It begins in the Ottawa Valley but soon moves to Regina and northern Saskatchewan. 

The contrast between Salina and Beatrice is striking.  Salina has an “independent manner” and does not want a “predictable life.”  She wonders how a young woman like herself can “become what she dreams of being.”  She runs away from home and sets off for Europe.  Beatrice, on the other hand, is anything but daring.  When she and Oliver move to western Canada, she is “unsettled by this wilderness, and she felt a longing for quiet, conventional Bryne Corners, Ontario, and the house she had grown up in.”  Whereas Salina was “a free spirit and a suffragist,” Beatrice “was determined to adapt as well as any woman to the role of wife and mother” and vows to offer Oliver “stability and a well-kept home.”

How could Oliver be attracted to two such very different women?  Would Oliver and Salina have been happy together when Salina was “not likely a woman who would have adapted well to being a homemaker”?  Certainly, Estella suspects that were Salina her mother, she would have encouraged her independent spirit. 

Certainly, Estella is not encouraged to pursue a career other than marriage.  Oliver proves to be a traditional man who expects his sons to work in the family business but makes no room for his daughter; “he’d not taken his daughter seriously, and that consequence was her career as a mathematics teacher – a perfectly good career, but not a dream career.”  He never really considers her dreams, though he did once write to Salina that he has separated from his family because they have no dreams “and without dreams there is no joy.”  Because she is female and because she is single, Estella is expected to put her family’s needs first, so at different times, she ends up a caregiver to a brother, her mother, and her father.  Advancing  into an administrative role at school is not possible “because her teaching record had too many interruptions when she’d taken leaves to care for her brother, and her mother and . . . ”  Eventually, Estella takes steps to assert herself in the family business but there are unforeseen consequences and in the end she asks “Had it been worth it?” 

This book reminded me of another I recently read:  The Dutch House by Ann Patchett.  Just as Cyril makes the decisions about the house he and Elna will have, Oliver does not ask Beatrice what she would like in a house:  “He seemed to believe he knew what a married woman would want.”  Estella and Maeve are in similar positions; they are educated but the possibility of advanced education is never considered by their fathers. 

Though Estella does not live a stellar life that would befit her name, she is the star of the book.  She emerges as a fully developed character.  At times I found myself cheering for her when she did something daring and at other times, I could have cried in frustration as she coasted through life.   Perhaps because I’m older, I really liked the older Estella.  Her questioning the meaning of her life and her legacy is something with which I can identify. 

The novel does not cover new ground.  Many other books have showcased the limited opportunities for women because of societal expectations.  The Diamond House begins well but the pace really slows down (like Estella’s life perhaps).  Momentum picks up towards the end, but the middle is a slog.  A bit of judicious revision/editing would have this book shining more like the diamond in its title.   

Review of TO DARE by Jemma Wayne (New Release)

4 Stars

The novel is told from the perspective of three women.  Veronica and her husband George move into their newly remodelled home.  They are a successful couple who have everything they want, except a child.  Their dream home proves to be less than a total dream when they are assailed nightly by noise from their neighbours, Simone and Terry.  Simone is trapped in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship but cannot extricate herself and her two children from Terry’s control.  The third woman is Sarah who was friends with Veronica when they were young girls; however, Veronica’s memories of that friendship are much more positive than Sarah’s.

None of the three women is totally likeable.  Veronica is emotionally manipulative; she can feel good about herself only if she makes others feel worse.  Simone allows Terry to not only abuse her but her son as well and she does nothing to intervene.  Sarah suffers from low self-esteem and at one point sets out to take revenge on the person she holds responsible for her lack of confidence. 

What saves the book is that, despite their flaws, the women still earn some of our compassion.  They are all very much products of their upbringing.  Veronica, for instance, was neglected by her parents.  Feeling unloved and jealous of Sarah who has the love of a stable family, Veronica works at undermining Sarah.  Her behaviour is not commendable, but it is understandable. 

What is admirable about the women is that they show themselves capable of changing.  They recognize their demons and acknowledge their own mistakes.  Simone, for example, admits that she may not have tried to see things from her parents’ point of view:  “Perhaps her own parents had imagined that what they were doing was some kind of protection too.”  Now, as a parent, she realizes poor decisions she has made and dares to change things. 

The book begins slowly, but the pace does pick up and the suspense builds up.  Danger becomes a constant element.  Terry is an obvious threat to Simone but also to his neighbours, but then so is a woman who seeks vengeance for wrongs committed against her. 

This not a light-hearted read because it includes emotional manipulation, physical threats, rape, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and alcohol and drug abuse.  It is the portrayal of the effects of Terry’s emotional and physical abuse on Simone that struck me as particularly realistic.  Interestingly, Terry and Veronica are very different, but they also employ the same basic techniques to feel powerful. 

This is an intense read which slowly draws in readers by developing complex characters and ramping up the tension.  It also inspires us to ask how our own presents are defined by our pasts.  What we must do is to dare to move beyond those pasts. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher.