Review of THE WOMEN OF CHATEAU LAFAYETTE by Stephanie Dray (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This historical novel chronicles the lives of three women in three different time periods who are connected to Lafayette’s ancestral home in France. 

In the 1770s, Adrienne de Noailles marries Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette who fights for American independence and sparks the French Revolution.  While her husband is often away from home, she raises the children and unfailingly supports him and his battles for freedom and justice, even if she has to risk her life to do so. 

Beatrice Astor Chanler, a New York socialite, is inspired by Lafayette to urge the U.S. to support France in World War I.  She helps raise money for humanitarian aid, eventually turning Lafayette’s chateau into a school, orphanage, and preventorium for the care of frail and malnourished children, as well as a museum of the life and family of Lafayette.

During World War II, Marthe Simone is a teacher at the Chateau Lafayette where she grew up as an orphan.  When the Germans invade, she becomes involved in secretly hiding Jewish children at the chateau. 

The book describes historical events from the perspective of women.  Adrienne Lafayette and Beatrice Chanler were real people who influenced events, whereas Marthe is a fictional character.  All three women are courageous, resilient, resourceful, tenacious and intelligent.  Though Beatrice and Marthe are flawed, Adrienne seems flawless. She is unfailingly loyal and supportive and supremely heroic. 

Just as Adrienne is portrayed as virtually perfect, the same is true of the depiction of Lafayette.  The author and the three protagonists all seem to suffer from hero worship.  I understand that Lafayette is an almost mythic figure for Americans so the mere mention of any flaws might seem almost sacrilegious, but showing him to be less than perfect would make him more realistic.  In this regard, omitting Lafayette’s 30-year relationship with Diane, the Comtesse de Simiane was a mistake. 

Marthe’s story is also problematic.  A woman is sexually attracted to a woman, but seems to adapt to marriage to a man rather easily?  She says, “I don’t long for her anymore.  I’ve let that go.”  Is the author making a comment about homosexuality? 

The novel’s chapters alternate among the three women.  Often chapters end in cliffhangers which are only resolved two chapters later.  The author can be commended for connecting the three narratives.  One of Marthe’s chapters ends with Americans landing in North Africa; it is followed by Beatrice’s chapter which begins with Americans joining the war.  One of Adrienne’s chapters ends with a reunion; it is followed by Beatrice’s chapter which begins with a reunion.  Several characters from Beatrice and Marthe’s stories overlap.

Dray can also be commended for her extensive historical research.  Perhaps, however, she should have written three novels.  This one, at 550+ pages, feels too long.  A trilogy, with one book devoted to each character, might have worked better.  In the Author’s Note, Dray mentions that she began by wanting to tell the story of Adrienne Lafayette and perhaps one book devoted to her would have depicted both her and her husband more realistically.  The other books could have continued the story of the Lafayette legacy, ostensibly the purpose of this book. 

Readers who enjoy historical fiction and strong female characters will find much to like in this book.  Though I appreciate the message about the necessity of fighting for one’s principles, I wasn’t always totally engaged, primarily because of the worshipful characterization of the Lafayettes.  And Beatrice and Marthe are inflicted with unquestioning, rapturous adoration of this couple.  For me, a more nuanced portrayal is always preferable. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE SPEED OF MERCY by Christy Ann Conlin (New Release)

 2.5 Stars

Christy Ann Conlin is a Canadian author I had not yet read, so I was interested in reading her new book.  Unfortunately, I was disappointed.  It is an odd book which I think needs revision.

The book alternates between two timelines:  2021 and 1980.  In post-pandemic 2021, Malmuria Grant-Patel (Mal), a podcaster, travels to rural Nova Scotia, to an area two people disparagingly describe as the “Georgia of the north.”  Her intention is not to visit her mother’s birthplace but to uncover what happened at Mercy Lake years earlier:  she is told “there was a link between a place called Mercy Lake in Nova Scotia and a group in New York that hid under a cloak of business, billions and blackmail – money and power providing an impenetrable shield for traditions, beliefs and rituals going back hundreds of years.  A company called Cineris International.  An old family named Jessome, in New York. . . . The woman was terrified.  What they did to her went way back.  There were others, lost in time.”  Mal tries to talk to Stella Sprague, the sole living survivor of a fire that burned down the Mercy Lake Lodge where this secret group used to meet.

Stella is now 54 years of age and living in a care home.  She suffers from memory loss and has been mute since a traumatic event 40 years earlier, an event she doesn’t remember but identifies as HA, the Horrific Affliction.  She reminisces back to 1980 when she and her father moved to Nova Scotia after her mother’s death.  Stella becomes friends with Cynthia, the daughter of her father’s best friend, Franklin Seabury, a wealthy businessman.  Stella learns things about her father’s family that she had not known, but she is also uneasy around Cynthia and her father.  It is obvious that the Horrific Affliction occurred soon after Stella’s arrival in Nova Scotia, but will she be able to remember what happened?

Events often require the reader to suspend disbelief.  For example, Mal learns about a cult at Mercy Lake because she casually uses the word mercy in an interview with a woman from Nova Scotia who “then dropped her story out of the blue”?   Two days after that conversation, Mal receives a threatening phone call warning her not to investigate when no one knows her intentions?  Mal has no difficulty finding Stella, but those who might feel threatened by Stella haven’t found her in 40 years?  Every woman Mal and Stella encounter is creative?   Why would one survivor with incriminating evidence not go to authorities but leave it with Stella whose memory is untrustworthy:  “we kept the memories for you, until you could hold them again”? 

And then there are the contradictions.  Stella turns over a postcard forty times, hoping it will jog her memory, that it “might break the spell, what she couldn’t remember” and then five sentences later we are told “Stella didn’t want to remember.”  We are told “Mal was not the sort who scared easily” but she seems frightened most of the time.  Mal “wanted to go home” but six sentences later, “Mal was not going home now.”  A character says, “”What you need to focus on is your own safety, Mal.  Right now we have to find Stella and Dianne, especially if some crazy person is following women around.’”  So what is Mal supposed to do?  A character is told, “’your father owes my dad money.  And now your grandfather’s debt is your father’s debt’” and she asks, “”What?  What do you mean they had to pay them back?  With what?’”  So often I was left shaking my head.

Vagueness is also an issue.  Mal discovers very little about Sodality.  When it is mentioned – described as a fellowship or a “weird men’s group” or a cult – very little real information is given.  That’s the same problem with the Offing Society.  And then there are unexplained events.  A woman drives “without the seat belt, surprised it didn’t work, that it was jammed, but not worrying about it.”  Is that supposed to suggest something about what happens?  Why does young Cynthia behave as she does, keeping secrets from Stella and keeping secrets for her?  What are we to make of Cynthia’s comment that “’my mother can sort of see the future, [my father] says.  That’s why he needs her to spend time with him.’”

The novel does touch on some important subjects.  For instance, if offers several examples of how women, especially older women, are dismissed.  The repeated message is that old women should not be underestimated.  The treatment of the people with mental health issues is examined; often those suffering are not seen as victims but blamed for their situations.

The book has potential, but as I said at the beginning, it needs revision.  When I received the digital galley I was informed that the book would be released on March 23.  Now I understand that it won’t be released until August 3.  I’m hoping that date change means that revision will be done. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE RELATIVES by Camilla Gibb (New Release)

 4 Stars

Three characters, connected - though they are unaware of their connection -  grapple with the definition of family.

Lila is a social worker.  Adopted as a young child, she knows virtually nothing about her biological parents other than that her mother was a teenaged refugee who committed suicide two years after Lila was born.  This experience of being abandoned affects her work with children whom she wants to rescue:  “I’d wanted to be a mother to a child who had experienced her deepest injuries elsewhere, rather than be the one responsible for the psychic damage I would undoubtedly cause a child of my own.”  Each rescue attempt becomes a “shameful mess” that almost ends her career.  However, having lost both of her adoptive parents, she yearns to have a family because “What is the point of a human life unrelated to any other human life?” 

Tess has never wanted to be a mother.  Her career is her focus and she worries how a child would affect her:  “Even in the best circumstances, I’ve seen female colleagues lose their footing on the ladder once they have children.”  Tess’s partner Emily pleads, so Tess finally agrees and gives birth to Max.  Tess has “no instinct for babies” so Emily does most of the child care; it is only when Max is older that she enjoys spending time with him.  Then after Tess and Emily have separated, Emily announces she wants to take one of Emily’s frozen embryos to have a child, though her pregnancy would be difficult.  Tess does not want to give Emily an embryo because she does not want “’to be forced to assume the psychosocial burdens that come with being a genetic parent.’”  Tess believes that being a parent tore apart her family.

Adam is the anonymous donor whose sperm is used by Tess.  When he was young, he donated sperm to help pay his way through graduate school.  He has no desire to be a father:  “He sees himself as someone who simply went some small way toward helping people who wanted to become parents.  And they helped him by paying him for a supply of something he has wasted plenty of in his life.”  As the novel opens, Adam is being held captive by al-Shabaab in Somalia.  Will the experience lead him “to want something more permanent?  A home, a family’”?

The novel examines how lack of a stable family can affect people.  Much of Lila, Tess and Adam’s feelings about family are a result of their childhood experiences.  Lila’s early years were unstable; she didn’t form “a secure attachment” to her mother and was abandoned.  Tess’s mother suffered with severe anxiety and depression so Tess was raised by her father and “protected” from her mother.  Adam’s father committed suicide so he doesn’t even think of him as his father because “’A father is a man who is present in your life.’” Adam doesn’t think the world needs more children when so many are not cared for:  “China is all over East Africa now, in mining and infrastructure, creating a generation of fatherless half-Chinese Africans who are being neglected and shunned.  We’re such sloppy creatures, men, he thinks.  What is the point of us?  To just keep producing children?  But we don’t even take care of the ones we have.”

The message, however, is that people can move past any deficiencies in the families to which they were born and create their own families which meet their needs.  A woman who “wanted to be found by a mother.  Remembered, longed for, searched for, found” can be a good mother to a child and so heal herself.  A person can build “a sense of community” around a child and so create a family of sorts.  Even the various children of a common sperm donor can construct a type of family:  “children conceived with the same sperm . . . might one day be curious about or even known to each other” so no one knows “the kind of circles that start to form as a result of its dissemination.”  I came across a comment by Camilla Gibb in a Chatelaine interview which I think summarizes the theme of this novel:  “family is a feeling between people more than it is an arrangement” (https://www.chatelaine.com/living/books/camilla-gibb-heartbreak-family/).

Characterization is outstanding.  All the main characters are complex and flawed.  There are times when the reader will disapprove or disagree with choices made by Lila, Tess, and Adam, but it is always possible to understand why they behave as they do.  I found much of my interest lay in watching these three people learn and grow. 

There is much to like about this book.  The believable, complicated characters have very different but interesting stories which give the reader much to ponder. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of THE WILLOW WREN by Philipp Schott (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This is a fictionalized memoir of the author’s father, Ludwig Schott.  The focus is Ludwig’s life when he is between 6 and 15 years of age in the 1940s in Germany. 

Ludwig’s father Wilhelm is a senior Nazi leader.  His position means that initially the family does not suffer unduly when compared to other Germans.  However, once fighting comes to Germany, Wilhelm is not able to protect his family and their situation becomes more challenging.  Leaving her husband in Leipzig to continue his duties for the Reich, Luise takes her children to Colditz, a town deemed safe from bombing because it is home to a POW camp for officers.  Once the war is lost, Colditz is controlled by the Soviets.  The Schott family faces harsh conditions, including food shortages.  Ludwig, as the second-eldest child, helps however he can to ensure that he, his mother, and his five siblings survive. 

The book provides an interesting perspective of World War II, that of a German child living through the war and its aftermath.  The book shows the situation in Germany during the war but also after the war.  Civilians suffered greatly.   The Americans entered Colditz, but they were replaced by Soviet occupation forces when Germany was divided into four occupied zones.  It is this latter period that I found most interesting, since I have encountered little written from a first person perspective about the Soviet occupation of Germany. 

As a child, Ludwig is exposed to differing political views.  Ludwig’s father Wilhelm is devoted to Hitler; Luise tells her son that, “’If the Party said do not breathe on Sundays, [your father] would hold his breath until he passed out.’”  Even when the war does not go well for the Germans, Wilhelm has no doubts:  “The situation for our beloved Fatherland may appear to be difficult, but we must trust in the Fuehrer.  He has knowledge that we do not have, and he has wisdom that we do not have.”  Ludwig’s mother, on the other hand, is skeptical.  She calls Goebbels an idiot and the Nazis clowns.  Because of his parents’ differing views, his closeness to his mother, and his father’s emotional and physical distance, Ludwig questions what he is told.    

Ludwig is an interesting child.  He tends to be a loner who prefers his own company.  He is bothered by excessive noise and finds solace in nature in the company of birds.  He is an intelligent and observant boy.  Though he is not able to always fully understand what is happening around him, he recognizes propaganda and “lethal fanaticism.”  He is also a loving child who supports his mother as best he can even though he does not completely understand the burden she has of looking after six children.  Though his life is very much at the mercy of forces beyond his control, he doesn’t give up.  He certainly shows that he possesses the resourcefulness of the little wren, his favourite bird.

The story I would love to know more about is that of Wilhelm and Luise.  How did two people with such opposite personalities come to marry?  Luise seems not to wear blinders when it comes to her husband.  When Ludwig asks about what his father does, she begins with “’When he is not combing his hair or smiling at pretty young women . . .” before explaining his duties.  She emerges as an admirable person who looks after her children alone during very difficult circumstances.  Wilhelm, on the other hand, as one of his sons points out, “’doesn’t accept personal responsibility.  Not really anyway.  Not in an honest emotional sense.’”  Instead, he spouts, “‘Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that’s gone.’”   Wilhelm seems a stereotypical German:  emotionally cold, inflexible, and extremely disciplined.

I enjoyed the book.  It provides a look at a historical time period from an original perspective.  It also offers advice on how to overcome obstacles. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on March 23.  

Review of SILENCE IS A SENSE by Layla AlAmmar (New Release)

 4 Stars

The narrator is a young Syrian woman living in an unnamed English city.  Traumatized by her journey across Europe from war-torn Syria, she has been diagnosed with psychogenic mutism.  She isolates herself from the outside world; she admits, “I can go months without contact.”  She spends her time watching the residents of the apartment towers near hers.  She does write articles for a magazine in which she describes the refugee experience, but she is known only by a pseudonym “The Voiceless”.  Though she thinks “I was supposed to be safe here,” anti-Muslim sentiments appear in her neighbourhood and she has to decide whether to remain passive and voiceless or become an active participant in her community.

This can best be described as a fragmented narrative.  We learn about the young woman’s daily life and her thoughts and feelings but we also read parts of her articles; in addition, her memories and nightmares serve as flashbacks to her past in Syria and her travels as a refugee.  These flashbacks are not in chronological order but move back and forth through time.  The narrator understands that people “try to construct narratives . . . [into] a structure that makes sense . . . trying to stitch it all together into a coherent pattern – a beginning, a middle and an end,” but she cannot mold her memories “into something easy to digest . . . [because] The structure of narrative has collapsed; imprecise in my own mind, with jagged pieces it takes so much to screw together.”  The fragmented narrative, therefore, is appropriate.

This fragmentation, however, challenges the reader to piece together the different components of the story to make sense of it.  Personally, I had difficulty with three chapters, all entitled “The Eye.”  I understand that the Syrian government had sophisticated surveillance systems which were used against its citizens:  “There are eyes everywhere.”  The actions described in the chapters, however, are not clearly explained.  Are they just symbolic nightmares? 

Much is not fully explained.  Exactly what trauma the narrator endured is not described in great detail but sufficient information is given that the reader can infer what happened to her and people she loved:  “friends shot on their way to work . . . babies going to school and bombs falling from the sky . . . Desperate voices in dark basements.  Confined spaces.  Ahmed, tiny hands bound, eyes and mouth taped shut, a bullet in the head. . . . Cold, hungry, always thirsty.”  Of the trip to England she writes:  “the hot and overcrowded bus through Turkey and the camps in Greece and the little toe that became so infected I thought it would fall off like a rotten piece of fruit.  I wrote about guns to my head in front of the open backs of freezing trucks and that afternoon when we swallowed tear gas and dodged rubber bullets on the Macedonian border.”  For me, the most chilling is her mentioning that “between my legs . . . I can no longer distinguish pain from pleasure” and waking up “in dark, cold town squares in Germany or by railway tracks in Austria . . . sore with a taste like sewage in my mouth and a few euros in my pocket or stuffed down my shirt.”  More description would be overwhelming.

Considering what she has experienced, it is not surprising that the narrator has retreated from the world and has difficulty coping.  She wonders “if there was anywhere in the world that I belonged.”  She describes herself as “cornered by memories, caged in by recollections.  I feel persecuted by the things I remember and by what my mind chooses to hide from me.”  She doubts that “there could possibly be anyone in the world I can rely on.”  She feels danger is everywhere:  “We are not safe anywhere.  Not really.  From the moment you’re born, the moment they slap your bottom and you draw breath, the vigil begins.  Whether it’s bombs . . . or bullets . . . or a man telling you to just relax and it won’t be that bad, there is peril everywhere.  Peril for men.  Peril for women.  For children and fighters and lovers.  Peril everywhere, for everyone.”  It is not difficult to understand why she believes, “’There is only fear . . . There’s nothing else in life.’”  A medical report about the narrator when she first arrived in England is telling; it mentions her lack of trust, imagining everyone has malicious intent.  The final sentence of that report is chilling:  “Physical examination and medical history indicate that this is not an entirely irrational response.”

Clearly, the reader cannot be a passive reader.  And that ties in with the message that people must not remain passive but be like one man who befriends the refugee:   “’No one is truly voiceless, he whispered, either they silence you, or you silence yourself.’”  The narrator is amazed at this man’s actions:  “Who is this man, defending people he has no personal connection to, defending them simply because it is the right thing to do?” 

The one thing that bothered me is that the narrator seems to make little effort to find her family.  She wonders if her family arrived in Alexandria as planned:   “Did they all make it?  Do they know I think of them even though I don’t want to?  Do they think of me?”  Because she hides behind an alias, she doesn’t think family members could recognize her and find her through her articles.  Yet in the same breath, she acknowledges that “you’d be surprised where you can get a wifi signal” so why doesn’t she use the internet to try and contact family members like “cousin Mahmoud in Belfast” and try to find her parents?  She knows that her sister Nada arrived safely in Alexandria even before she left Syria, but she was given no contact information for Nada? 

This book is an intense read, but one that should be read.  The book will stay with the reader long after it’s finished.

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.  The book will be released on March 16.

Review of A FUNNY KIND OF PARADISE by Jo Owens (New Release)

 4.5 Stars

I loved this novel!

Francesca Jensen (Frannie) is a resident in an extended care facility in Victoria, B.C.  A massive stroke has left her mute, partially paralyzed, and tube-fed.  She is totally reliant on the staff for her care.  She spends her days watching and listening to the four other women who share her room and the rotating crew of care aides.  She also reflects on her life as a single mother raising two children (Chris and Angelina) while managing her own accounting business. 

Though she cannot speak, Frannie is the narrator of this epistolary novel.  She imagines she is writing to her best friend Anna who died three years earlier, and it is this letter that provides the narrative structure.  Though Frannie has physical limitations, she has not suffered cognitive impairment as is witnessed in her astute observations.  She comments on what she sees and hears and on her own thoughts and emotions.

Frannie is a dynamic character.  She has been in the facility for a year and she admits that she spent much of that year “so angry I couldn’t even think.  But now, a year later, I’m ready to come out of the dunce’s corner, like some sullen, grubby, pig-tailed schoolgirl, one knee-high crumpled to the ankle, temper under control but still holding a grudge.”  Since she has so much time for reflection, she thinks back and realizes she was not the best mother.  She worked hard to provide for her children but she was impatient and emotionally distant.  She admits she was “fussy, impatient, bossy and opinionated.”  She realizes that “my work defined me.  I wasn’t particularly friendly with my clients, but I liked the person I was with them – a professional.  I was confident, reliable, dependable and trustworthy.”  This attitude carried over into her parenting style, which she now regrets; she wishes she had been more flexible, had listened more, and had just been nicer to people.

Her change is convincing.  Having so many physical limitations, she has nothing to do but listen and think whereas in the past she never stopped to really do either.  In many ways, the aides model behaviour for her.  As Frannie comes into contact with the various aides, she comes to appreciate those who are gentle, compassionate, and take what little time they have to do the extras:  “I think of the loving care I’m given and the respect I’m almost always treated with, and I’m thankful for the pure, sweet luck that brought me here.”  She comes to realize that she did not always treat people, even her children, the way the aides now treat her.     

The various aides emerge as distinct characters with distinct personalities.  Some are more skilled and more compassionate than others, but Frannie comes to accept them despite their flaws because she realizes they too have lives which are not always easy.  One of the regular aides is Blaire, and initially, Frannie thinks of her as unfriendly, disengaged, hard, and tough but learns that Blaire has worries of her own; at the end, Frannie comments, “when Blaire is not my nurse, she pretends that I don’t exist.  It’s not personal.  She treats all of us that way. . . . But that’s okay.  That’s just Blaire.”  It’s ironic that the aide Frannie likes the least is the one who most resembles her younger self. 

The author has worked as a care aide for over 20 years so it is not surprising that her portrayal of life in an extended care facility is so realistic.  She shows the everyday struggles of the aides but does not suggest that they are all perfect.  During the Covid-19 pandemic where there have been so many deaths in long term care homes, this book sheds a light on the lives of front-line workers in those homes.  I saw the wonderful work of these people firsthand when my father was in such a facility and when my mother was supported on her journey from this life.

The novel has an uplifting message.  One is that “you’re never too old to change.”  Another message is that every life is important; one of the residents, a care receiver, is told, “’You don’t know how you’re going to affect another person, even now.  You just don’t know.  Something you say, some part you play may completely change someone’s life, maybe my life.  Maybe your own life.  You just have to trust that your life is still significant.’”  Certainly, Frannie’s fellow care receivers and their care givers do impact Frannie’s life in ways they will never know and never suspect.

This is a novel which will affect readers both emotionally and intellectually.  And the music list at the end of the book is perfect. 

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

Review of THE VANISHING SELF by Brit Bennett

 4 Stars

Barack Obama listed this as one of his favourite books in 2020.  It might not rank as one of my favourites, but in audio format it certainly entertained me on my morning walks.

Desiree and Stella Vignes are twins born in Mallard, Louisiana, a place where only light-skinned blacks live.  In 1954, at the age of sixteen, the two run away to New Orleans.  Later the two girls go their separate ways and lose contact.  Desiree moves to Washington where she marries a very dark-skinned black man with whom she has a daughter Jude.  Fourteen years after leaving, Desiree returns to Mallard with Jude who has inherited her father’s blue-black skin. 

Meanwhile, Stella has been passing as white.  She marries her boss Blake Sanders and they move to Los Angeles where they have a daughter Kennedy.  No one knows about her past though she lives in constant fear of exposure, especially when Kennedy meets Jude.

Covering about 40 years, the narrative moves back and forth through time and shifts between characters, primarily Desiree, Stella, Jude and Kennedy.  The women tend to be foil characters.  Desiree is the high-spirited extrovert whereas Stella is the bookish introvert.  Desiree embraces her black identity while her twin totally rejects her ethnicity.  Jude is hardworking and grounded while her cousin is spoiled and rudderless. 

The novel explores how identity is a performance.  We all wear masks so there is often a difference between our authentic selves and our projected selves.  When I was a teacher, I often mentioned how the profession was much like acting; what students saw was not always the real me but the persona I chose to construct.  In the novel, there are many characters who hide parts of themselves.  Stella is the major example, of course, but there is also her daughter who as an actor finds her passion in trying different identities.  Jude meets Reese, a transsexual who hides his female body, and Barry, a high school teacher who regularly becomes Bianca, a drag queen. 

The book also examines the impact of choices on both the one choosing and his/her family.  Stella often thinks of the effort needed to maintain her façade.  She also lives with a constant fear that someone will see her that she is masquerading as a white.  Her life is a lie and so she becomes alienated not just from the family she has rejected but from herself.  Kennedy senses that Stella is hiding things and so comes not to trust her mother.  Stella pays a high price for passing; she has financial security but she does not feel happy and fulfilled. 

Racism is at the heart of so much that happens.  Though the twins and their parents are light-skinned, they are not safe from racialized violence, an instance of which scars the girls for life.  Stella and Desiree are expected to work as cleaners for whites.  Interestingly, Stella’s white life begins when she gets a job as a secretary in the marketing department of the Maison Blanche chain of stores.  Because Jude is so dark, when she moves to Mallard she becomes a victim of colorism (a bias against people of darker skin from others within the same race).  Stella believes that only as a white can she acquire the stability and security she so desires.

There are a number of coincidences that further the dramatic action but still feel forced.  Jude and Kennedy meet by chance in Los Angeles and later in New York.  A bounty hunter is hired to find Mrs. Winston and then learns he is looking for the woman who was his first love.  Of course, these chance encounters are expected if there is to be any type of reunion. 

This book presents many ideas for the reader to consider, so I’d certainly recommend it.  The audiobook version narrated by Shayna Small is excellent.  

Review of OSLO, MAINE by Marcia Butler (New Release)

 3 Stars

Twelve-year-old Pierre Roy, because of a head injury, suffers memory issues.  His father Claude has difficulty accepting the changes in his son while his mother Celine numbs herself with pills.  Their neighbour, Sandra Kimbrough, teaches Pierre how to play the violin, and he proves to have exceptional talent.  Music becomes his solace while life swirls around him. 

The narrative moves among Claude and Celine, Sandra and her husband Jim, and two other residents in Oslo:  Edna Sibley and her grandson Luc who has intellectual challenges.  All the adults have secrets which the reader gradually learns.  Connections among various characters are also revealed.  Another character who makes periodic appearances and whose perspective is given is a moose who roams the area around Oslo.

One cannot but feel a lot of sympathy for Pierre.  Because of an accident, he has difficulty remembering for even short periods of time.  As a result, he is bullied at school.  His parents are little help; they are more concerned about themselves.  Claude is despicable; when he first appears in the novel, he mulls over “the specific disappointments he felt with regard to his son”:  he thinks of Pierre as weak and hates that his son loves to read and play the violin.  For Claude, Pierre is “an embarrassment.”  In addition, Claude’s illegal activities and his behaviour in the past are deplorable.  Celine is very much an absent mother; she takes pills so she doesn’t have to face reality.  Not only does she neglect her son, but she is deceitful and disloyal to “the best person Celine had ever known.”  The moose’s care and concern for her calf exceeds the care Pierre receives from his parents.

The book touches on a number of difficult topics:  physical violence, sexual violence, adultery, animal cruelty.  My issue is not the novel’s subject matter but its purpose.  What is it trying to say?  A theme could be the power of music.  Another could be the interconnectedness of the human and natural world because every time the two worlds collide, there are major consequences.  If the moose had been left alone, Pierre’s family might not have disintegrated.  Is the message that the natural world has much to teach humans?  Is the message that we need to focus on the present?  Things turn around when Claude takes responsibility for his actions.  Is that supposed to be a moral? 

The portrayal of the moose is not convincing.  I don’t believe in heaven for humans so have difficulty accepting a “risen-animal world.”  We are to accept that a moose would worry about the fate of a dead calf:  “Would he rise?  Would he ever enter the animal world beyond?”  It’s not clear why disposing of an animal in a dump means “her calf would rise.”  And then we are to believe that an animal can commit suicide?  The anthropomorphism just doesn’t work. 

What also does not work is the ending.  The epilogue offers too much of a happily-ever-after ending.  Edna solves everything for virtually everyone?  A moose “brought [Pierre] to understand the beauty of now”?  So the capture of an animal is acceptable if it inadvertently teaches someone to not worry about the past or the future but to see the value of the present?

I enjoyed the portrayal of life in rural Maine; the book is realistic in this respect.  However, the anthropomorphism of the moose doesn’t work, and the development of theme is scattered.  The overall effect is to leave the reader puzzled about what he/she just read.

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.