Review of DEATH AND OTHER INCONVENIENCES by Lesley Crewe

 4  Stars

Despite what its title might imply, this book is a fun, cozy read.

Margo Sterling is left a widow when her second husband Dick dies suddenly. She is left floundering, especially when she learns that Dick was a real dick and left her homeless and virtually penniless. The appearance of Dick’s ex-wife Carole and daughter Velma who hate Margo adds to Margo’s problems. Fortunately, she has a supportive family: her son Mike and daughter Julia and their partners, her ex-husband Monty, and her sister Eunie and brother Hazen.

This is very much a late-in-life coming-of-age story. Margo, 62, is meek and mild, insecure and indecisive; because of her lack of focus, she comes across as a bit of an airhead. Her sister Eunie knows her sister well. As a child, she had been spoiled by her parents; as an adult “Margo felt things very deeply and was always afraid of making a mistake. She could never make up her mind and people would get impatient with her.” Margo is always touching up her makeup so it’s obvious that “’Makeup is her protection. A mask she hides behind.’”

Though naive, Margo has a heart of gold so it’s understandable why others stand by her side to support her. It’s heart-warming to see her gradually gain confidence and become more independent. She comes to enjoy living alone for the first time, and she stands up for herself.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of. Besides the immediate family, there’s the partners: Julia’s husband Andre, Mike’s girlfriend Olenka, Velma’s girlfriend Joanne, and Monty’s husband Byron. Other relevant characters are Holly, Eunie and Hazen’s lodger; Gerda, Olenka’s mother; Hazel and Posy, Margo’s granddaughters; and Harman, Margo’s best friend. And then there are the animals: Stan and Mr. Magoo and Fred and Ginger and Wilf. Fortunately, each character is distinct in some way so I did not find it difficult to remember who is who. Some of these other characters also grow and change.

There is a lot of humour. Olenka always compares human behaviour to that found among animals so we learn that “’Eighteen percent of first-time [spotted hyena] mothers die when their penis-like genitalia rips open’” and “’[Giraffes’] calves fall six feet to the ground when they’re born. That breaks the umbilical cord and gives them the incentive to take a breath.’” The young granddaughters make unintentionally humourous comments. For example, when Margo stops using a lot of makeup, Hazel asks her, “’Did you lose your crayons?’”

Reading Lesley Crewe’s books has been compared to receiving hugs. I love that description. This is a heart-warming book that touches on relatable events happening to relatable people. My favourite line is from the last page: “’Older females are the world’s most adaptable creatures.’”

Review of A DAUGHTER OF FAIR VERONA by Christina Dodd

 3 Stars

This retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a romantic comedy/mystery.

The narrator is Rosaline Montague, eldest daughter of Romeo and Juliet. In this version, the star-crossed lovers survived their suicide attempt and are now parents to seven children; theirs is a “loud, exuberant, contentious, laughing, singing, loving and passionate family.” Though nineteen years of age, Rosaline is uninterested in marriage and has avoided romantic entanglements, but now she is betrothed to Duke Leir Stephano whose last three wives died under mysterious circumstances.

At the betrothal party, she meets Lysander Marcketti and experiences love at first sight just before stumbling across the body of her husband-to-be who has a dagger in his heart. Suspicion falls on Rosie since everyone knows she was a reluctant bride-to-be, but Prince Escalus tries to protect her. Knowing she will continue to be suspected and may herself be in danger, she hopes to identify the killer. When there are more deaths, revealing the killer(s) becomes even more important.

At times Rosaline reminded me of Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew. She is intelligent, witty, sarcastic, outspoken, and independent. Her parents’ “true and impetuous love” is legendary but she hates poetry and scoffs at romance, and has manipulated her way out of several possible betrothals. With men she doesn’t behave meekly as is expected; even with the prince of Verona, she is sassy. She is Friar Laurence’s apprentice and she has even learned swordplay.

There are several references to Shakespeare. Rosaline even speaks lines similar to her mother’s: “’Lysander, why must you be of the house of Marcketti, and my enemy?’” Romeo and Juliet even attend a play, Two Gentlemen of Verona which Rosaline does not like because “’Silly men don’t interest me.’” Shakespearean phrasing is used but so is modern slang so there are sentences like “’”Anon, good Nurse” was my mother’s line when she was fooling around with Papà.’”

There has been some attempt by the author to have characters remain consistent with their personalities in Shakespeare’s play. The Nurse continues to be talkative and raunchy: “’perhaps a woman is like wine and the longer her cork remains intact, the more intoxicating she becomes.’” Romeo and Juliet are as in love as ever. Though he is 36, women still fall in love with the handsome Romeo, but Juliet is the only woman for him. Rosaline is embarrassed by the passion that still exists between her parents. And interestingly, Romeo remains rash; he tends to lose his temper quickly and engage in fights, though his skill with the sword is unmatched.

The ending suggests this is the first of a series and the author’s note at the end confirms this. I’m not certain I’ll follow the series. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the book, but it’s really just fluff like most romantic comedies.

Review of GRANITE HARBOR by Peter Nichols

 3 Stars

Alex Brangwen, a Booker-nominated British novelist, is now a police detective in Granite Harbor, a coastal community in Maine. A teenager is brutally murdered and his body left at the Settlement, a local archaeological site where locals work as historic enactors. Fear in the community ramps up when a second teenager disappears. To complicate matters for Alex, his daughter Sophie is friends of both teenagers, and she and another friend fear they may be the next victims as it seems a serial killer is on the prowl.

I listened to an audio version and I think my feelings about the book were influenced by the audio narrator. He used an unidentifiable accent for Alex and had him speak in a monotone that really bothered me. Alex ends up sounding like a stereotypical villain in a bad movie. Actually, the narrator uses a flat, unmodulated voice for the entire novel.

This is supposed to be character-driven crime fiction, but it doesn’t work as such for me. Alex is not a compelling character. Most of the time he doesn’t seem to know what to do and in fact ends up doing very little. He doesn’t know about tracking apps on cellphones? Were it not for the assistance of Isabel and her psychic visions, Alex would get nowhere. Don’t get me started on how the use of paranormal elements is just a cop-out!

The perspective of the killer is included. Though he remains unnamed until late in the book, we learn about his difficult childhood. I appreciated that the villain is not portrayed as totally evil, but his motivation becomes weak. His first killing has a strong personal element, but the more recent attacks are less convincing in terms of motive.

Then a lot of random characters are added to serve as potential suspects. Ah yes, here’s another Settlement enactor. Though considerable background information is given about these secondary characters, I found little to differentiate them in terms of personality. It was difficult to keep track of who was who, though the person who first becomes a suspect is so obviously a red herring as to be laughable. Some of the characters, like the insufferably obnoxious ex-wife and the arrogant FBI agent, are just stereotypes.

There are many scenes which, for lack of a better word, I’d call fillers. They give a lot of information that has little to no relevance to the investigation. It almost seemed like the author needed to make the book longer and so bogged it down with extraneous details. This approach adds to the slow pace but certainly does not add suspense. Only its climactic “will the next victims be rescued in time” scene has any real suspense.

This novel just felt flat. Its plot is unremarkable, though the graphic violence seems to be intended to add a gruesomely creative aspect to the ritualistic killings.  For me, the book just seems scattered and unfocused, its thin plot padded with irrelevant details which serve only to distract.

Review of THE MORTAL AND IMMORTAL LIFE OF THE GIRL FROM MILAN by Domenico Starnone (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This is a quiet, reflective novel; although it’s a genre I usually enjoy, I sometimes found myself losing interest while reading this book, a translation from Italian.

An elderly man looks back at his youth, beginning with a pivotal event when he is 8 years old in the early 1950s in Naples. He sees a black-haired girl dancing on a balcony across from his and falls in love. An imaginative child, he daydreams about being her hero, fighting duels and even rescuing her from death. Only later does he realize that what he remembers may not truly reflect the reality of what happened to his first love.

I appreciated the novel’s portrayal of the thoughts and emotions of a young boy. It feels so authentic. He longs for a dramatic life and death so romanticizes everything. He dreams of “perishing heroically” but “if I got a scratch or felt pain or saw blood, then life was intolerable, and even worse if accompanied by a few humiliating sniffles and tears.” His infatuation for the girl is not an ordinary infatuation but a life-or-death infatuation. Even in early adulthood, his aspirations are not just about succeeding in life: he aspires to acquire immortality through his writing.

What the book emphasizes is the difference between his romanticized love for the girl and the very real, unconditional love of his grandmother. The girl is beautiful and speaks proper Italian whereas his grandmother is ugly and speaks a rough Neapolitan dialect. He focuses on loving the distant and idealized love object instead of the ever-present, tender and attentive grandmother. He sometimes appreciates what his grandmother does for him but, “To tell the truth, underneath it all, I don’t think I even loved her that much.”

A university exam on glottology, the history of language, forces the protagonist to pay attention to his grandmother’s dialect. He realizes that language constantly changes and can never truly capture what one is trying to express: “marks and signs are constitutionally inadequate, fluctuating merely between what you try to say and pure dismay.” He decides to write “without ever caring about approval, or truth, or lies, or raising issues or sowing the seeds of hope, or how long something might endure, or immortality or any of the rest of it.”

Of course it is not just language that changes. Nothing lasts forever. Eventually, the narrator confronts his childish delusions and prejudices. His grandmother changed from a beautiful young woman to an old, stooped woman, but we are all a “mass of living and decaying matter.” A favourite quotation from the book is the comment, “’We spend half of our life studying the mortal remains of others and the other half creating mortal remains of our own.’”

At 144 pages, this is a short novel but it gets bogged down occasionally with long paragraphs about linguistics. While describing his first-year university studies, the narrator goes on and on about topics such as toponyms, changes in spellings of words, phonetic writing, and “how phonemes are classified.” This book was written in Italian and its intended audience is Italians who have some familiarity with different regional dialects and how they differ from standard Italian. Not being one of those people, my interest waned. What am I to make of this: cchitaratoperméss, eh, mestaifacènnascípazz, taggiocercatadapertútt, macómm, tujescecàsasènzadicereniént, moverímmoquannetòrnanomammepapà, moverímm?

This book contrasts reality and fantasy, familial anomd rantic love, and old age and youth. Much of it resonates. However, the information dumps become tedious.

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

Review of BLUE LIGHT HOURS by Bruna Dantas Lobato (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

This is a quiet novel about the bond between mother and daughter.

An unnamed young woman is attending a liberal arts college in Vermont as an international student. Her mother remains in northeastern Brazil. In the blue light of their computers, the two communicate, and as absence disrupts their usual routines, they develop new rituals to maintain their bond.

The book examines the immigrant experience. The young woman has to adjust to a new country with a different climate, culture and language. As one would expect, she makes friends mostly with other international students who can understand her feelings of not fitting in and her homesickness and loneliness. Because she is a scholarship student, she doesn’t have the money other students have to return home for periodic visits.

But the book’s focus is on the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship as it inevitably changes because of the distance that separates them and because the daughter’s experiences are so alien to the mother. The daughter, though she often feels isolated and adrift, is grateful for the opportunities she has and wants independence, but at the same time as she enjoys her life, she loves her mother and feels guilty about leaving her alone. The mother’s health issues add to the daughter’s concerns. The mother realizes she has more freedom and fewer responsibilities but loves and misses her daughter very much. She wants her daughter to have opportunities, “to have the ocean,” but has to come to terms with changes in her daughter, including hearing her speak a language she herself doesn’t understand. Both want to maintain a connection while having to find new identities and purposes and learn “how to live alone, and to keep going.”

Three-quarters of the book is from the daughter’s perspective in first person. This section covers her first year in the U.S. Then there’s a shift to the mother’s perspective but her section is in the third person. Though very short, the mother’s chapter covers years. The final chapter entitled “Reunion” takes place five years after the daughter’s leaving for her education. I found the large time jumps to be awkward, and the switch to third person has a distancing effect.

Actually, there’s a feeling of detachment throughout. The style contributes to this because it feels detached and emotionless. There were many times when I wanted more feeling. The plot is also minimalist so parts felt incomplete; not much happens. For instance, the daughter’s life is described vaguely; it’s an impressionistic approach. I understand that the author wanted to focus on theme, but I would have appreciated more depth.

This is not a book for readers wanting lots of action since it describes only the mundane daily activities of the young woman and her mother. I sometimes found the book repetitive and its slow pace frustrating. However, it will appeal to readers interested in a realistic portrayal of a mother and daughter relationship as the two learn to let go and move forward while still maintaining a close bond.

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

Review of THE STOLEN CHILD by Ann Hood

3 Stars 

 This book has a predictable plot with a few too many coincidences.

During World War I, Nick Burns was an American soldier in France. Camille Chastain, an artist, befriended him until one day, as the German’s advance, she thrust her paintings and her infant son Laurent into Nick’s arms and fled. Nick abandoned the child near a village well where he hoped someone would find him. Then in 1974, Nick is given a terminal cancer diagnosis; with only a few months to live, he decides to make one last effort to find out what happened to Laurent and his mother. He hires Jenny, a college dropout whose life has been derailed and who is desperate for adventure, to assist him. The two travel to Europe to begin their search.

The novel alternates between Nick and Jenny’s perspectives, but then a third viewpoint is added. We follow the story of Enzo Piccolo in Naples from the 1930s to the 1970s. Though he’s a master craftsman of Nativity figures, he also opens up a Museum of Tears in which he displays the vials of tears he collects from people. As expected, his story eventually connects with Nick and Jenny.

The major theme is that of regret. Nick has been haunted by life-long guilt and regret because of a choice he made as a young man. Nick observes, “Funny how at the end of your life you understand so much but you can’t undo any of it” and “How sad life was. When it was too late, you figured out everything you should have done.” Jenny makes a mistake that has altered her life forever. Enzo regrets letting his older brother Massimo always force him to do things he doesn’t want to do. Another character, Geraldine Walsh, regrets waiting too long to take decisive action.

There are plot holes and coincidences that really bothered me. How can someone travel from Europe to the U.S. without a passport? How can Daniel find Jenny’s hotel in Paris when he doesn’t even know she’s travelling? And that hotel knows how to find her in Rome? Of the 24 soldiers who might know what happened to Laurent, only three are alive and it is exactly those three who are the key to the puzzle! Geraldine is so much in love but it takes her years to finally act on her feelings? It’s a little too convenient that the film The Graduate is shown on the island of Capri just when needed. Actually the entire romance between Daniel and Jenny is a bit much, the stuff of a rom-com, not reality.

Though slow-paced, the book is entertaining, but the reader must be willing to suspend disbelief because the plot is contrived and there are too many coincidences to be believable. There are some attempts to make this a serious novel, but it actually has more romantic fluff than substance.

Review of THE TALNIKOV FAMILY by Avdotya Panaeva (New Release)

 3 Stars

This is a translation (by Fiona Bell) of a Russian novel first published in 1848.

Natasha, the narrator, grows up in the 1820s in St. Petersburg in a chaotic and abusive family surrounded by siblings, various other relatives, and cockroaches. Her mother is neglectful, her father mercilessly whips his children, and the aunts and governess administer daily punishments for all misdemeanors, however small. Going to bed hungry is routine: “I was so often left without tea, without dinner, and without supper for a whole month that I was quite accustomed to this sort of punishment.”

This is not an easy read. To call it dark and depressing is almost an understatement. At least semi-autobiographical, it is full of relentless misery from which Natasha and her siblings find only fleeting moments of joyful escape. There is some humour in the way the unwed aunts fight for the attention of possible suitors, but even in these episodes there is sadness because the desperation of their situations is obvious.

The novel actually emphasizes the lack of women’s autonomy. The spinster aunts are totally dependent on relatives so they compete to curry favour. Natasha outlines their situation: “They, too, were deprived of life and freedom, and we often bore the consequences; disgruntled with our mother, our aunts took their anger out on us.” They all yearn for the escape that marriage would grant them, but of course there is no guarantee that their situations would much improve once they are wed. Certainly the marriages portrayed in the novel are less than ideal.

Of course children have even less autonomy. They receive little affection, education, food, and proper clothing. They are virtual prisoners; even their outdoor time is limited. What they are given is physical beatings and psychological abuse. Natasha is repeatedly told she is stupid, useless, and ugly. They long to escape the home, but when they are sent out into the world into the care of others, they often receive more mistreatment. That’s actually a problem: there is little to differentiate among the adults who are almost equally deplorable.

For me, the mother is the most despicable of the characters. A total narcissist, she is totally indifferent to the welfare of her children. Even the death of a child is met with indifference; she sheds no tears. When Mama witnesses another woman crying over the death of her child, Mama says, “’What a fool! What is she crying about? . . . Must be her first! I’ve got plenty to spare.’” She wants to be the centre of attention and becomes angry and envious when anyone else steals her limelight.

I did not find the style inviting. There are long paragraphs of exposition with limited dialogue. The lack of a plot and the presence of repetition makes reading somewhat tiresome. In a lengthy introduction, the translator admits, “Readers today may be put off by Panaeva’s frequent repetition and non-sequiturs. The novel often reads like its author’s breathless attempt to recount every impression and every wrongdoing, sometimes at the expense of literary style.”

I believe this is the first Russian novel I’ve read that was written by a woman. Written from the perspective of a young woman, it describes a totally dysfunctional family. I can understand why the book was suppressed in Russia, “the censor blocking publication by calling the novel ‘cynical’ and ‘undermining parental power.’” For modern readers, it certainly sheds light on family dynamics in the early 19^th century in Russia.

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

Review of BIRDS OF A FEATHER by Jacqueline Winspear

 2.5 Stars

Though I wasn’t overly impressed with the first book in the Maisie Dobbs series, I thought I’d give the second book a chance. I think I will be giving up on the series because this installment was not an improvement.

Maisie is hired by Joseph Waite, a wealthy grocery magnate, to find his daughter Charlotte who has once again fled her gilded cage. Locating her whereabouts becomes more pressing when Maisie discovers that three of Charlotte’s friends have recently met violent deaths. Is Charlotte the murderer or will she be the next victim?

Characters introduced in the first book reappear: Billy Beale, Lady Compton, Maurice Blanche, and Frankie Dobbs. Billy and Frankie both end up needing help but, as expected, their problems are solved fairly easily because of Maisie’s connections. New characters are introduced of course. One that bothered me is Charlotte. Her behaviour, given the circumstances, doesn’t always make sense.

Maisie continues to be too perfect. What irritated me this time is her total control; she never gets flustered and always has control of her emotions. She needs some flaws other than not eating enough and having tendrils of her hair always coming loose. What is also unbelievable is her use of empathy to investigate: She can sense auras and thereby knows not to leave a room because a clue is waiting to be found? This weird supernatural vibe means that she actually finds clues without any clever sleuthing. Isn’t she an investigator/psychologist, not a psychic?

The mystery is lacklustre to say the least. The title of the novel is so obviously a clue; given the setting of the novels, I immediately thought of the white feather campaign. The mystery would have been solved very early on if the author didn’t keep the reader in the dark. For instance, Maisie picks up two items in two different places but what she pockets is not identified until later. Keeping evidence from readers means this is not a fair-play mystery.

The pace can only be called glacial. Even when Maisie has definite clues as to Charlotte’s whereabouts, it takes her days to check if her suspicions are correct. I don’t need an action-packed plot to keep my interest, but I definitely expect something a little less sedate in a mystery, however cozy it is supposed to be.

This novel is set in 1930, twelve years after the end of World War I, yet all Maisie’s cases relate to events in the war? I understand the lasting impact of that horrific war, but not all crimes committed years later were connected to it. And why, if the murderer is motivated by events during the war, does s/he act only a dozen years later?