Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Powerful. Mudbound is a book with staying power, creating images and emotions that resonate long after the last page is read. Laura, a proper city girl, was resigned to spinsterhood until she meets and marries Henry McAllan. Henry had gone to college and was a successful engineer in Memphis, but his real dream was to farm his own land. He buys some property and takes Laura away from Memphis and her family to an isolated Mississippi Delta farmhouse without indoor plumbing, a place Laura names "Mudbound." "When it rained, as it often did, the yard turned into a thick gumbo, with the house floating in it like a soggy cracker." Not only is her life now a never ending cycle of "pumping, churning, scouring,scraping. And cooking," Laura must also share her small farm house with Henry's racist, redneck father. The old man embodies bigotry and ignorance.

World War II has just ended, and two young veterans return to the Delta: Jamie, Henry's charming younger brother, and Ronsel, the son of black tenant farmers. Even though black soldiers had fought in the war, serving with honor, they were isolated in segregated companies and encountered unchanged attitudes of racial prejudice and hatred when they came home. The tensions created by these hatreds curl sharp talons of danger and brutality around life in the small community.
The book begins with the two brothers burying their father's body in the mud. The story unfolds through six different voices, six different viewpoints. Jordan makes each voice distinct and identifiable. She masterfully uses language to define her characters. Mudbound is a story of love, betrayal, and evil. A rarity - a thought-provoking historical page-tuner with three-dimensional, unforgettable characters. One the best - right up there with To Kill a Mockingbird.

Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch

The minute I read the first review, I knew I HAD to get my hands on this book. Reading the dust jacket - "Meet Sarah Walters, a Charleston debutante with questionable manners and an inherited weakness for bad ideas" - I felt a tremendous shock of recognition. Granted I was from Atlanta, but take it from me, this book rings so true I was transported back to another time and place. Charleston society was Atlanta times 3 - or 4. In the South, Charleston is the top of the heap, the grand dame of southern gentility and manners. Southerners care about and know who your great-great-great grandfather was and adhere to a convoluted set of social rules. The society Crouch depicts really existed and still lives. Her setting is drawn with detail that truly conveys the place - not only the town with its hot, sticky summers and old homes, but also the stifling "old family" milieu.
Sarah is a Camellia. She is the daughter of an old family, so she is a Camellia by birth, and as she says, "once a Camellia, always a Camellia," whether you really want it or not. So true, so true. With charm and wit, Crouch unfolds the story of a small group of girls as they grow up, leave, but never entirely get away from their Camellia roots. Crouch gives us romance with a dark edge and endings that, while not necessarily happy, are very satisfying. Sarah and her friends (by birth but not by choice) leave Charleston with relief, liberated, going "North" to college and escaping the strictures of a culture built on rules for proper behavior. (Southerners really do say "yes, ma'am.") They build new lives around the inheritance of their past, like setting furniture around a large elephant in the living room. Most of the book relates what happens to these Charleston flowers after they leave home. The plot is not sugar-coated and what happens to the Camellias easily flows from the background and story structure.
Highly recommended for the Southern Reading Challenge. A great summer book. I could almost taste the sweet tea.
Reviewed by Vidalia - Cotillon member and graduate of the Margaret Bryan school of ballroom dance, where you would have found me (step ball step), maybe, on row four, a little confused about why I was there. (one, two, cha, cha, cha)

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

I had read, and enjoyed, Jackson's Between, Georgia; so, upon hearing that she had written a new book, I immediately placed a hold request at the library. While I wasn't disappointed and found the plot compelling, the tone of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is much darker than that of its predecessor.
Laurel Hawthorne thought she had eluded the ghosts that haunted her, but after 13 specter-free years, she abruptly awakens in the middle of the night to find the spirit of a drowned girl in her bedroom and the body of her daughter's best friend floating in the swimming pool. Laurel is convinced she sees a shadowy figure run from the yard. Concluding that a neighbor with suspicious habits was the shadow and that he was somehow involved in Molly's death, Laurel sets out to prove her hypothesis with the aid of her free-spirited, but acidly honest, sister, Thalia. She also suspects that her daughter Shelby knows more that she is telling. Intertwined with Molly's drowning are memories of Laurel's uncle Marty, shot by her father on a hunting trip.
As in Between, Georgia, Jackson highlights the chasm separating southern social classes. The impoverished "white trash" are both to be pitied and feared. Her portrayal of Laurel's mother's hometown, DeLop, shows rotten roots that the family has tried to ignore. Ignorance and want. Secret upon secret, fortified with steady denial, has created a fragile illusion of family stability.
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming is a mystery, a domestic drama, and a social portrayal.
Jackson considers the question of nature versus nurture in both books. With the character of Bet Clemmens, a young cousin visiting for the summer, we see the damage caused by environment.
Yes, this book is a page-turner, but after the mysteries were solved, the characters and the questions remained.

Blasphemy by Douglas Preston

I've been doing books and taxes for the family, in addition to my job, so I've fallen way behind in my blogging. All work and no fun; so, now I'm playing catch-up. Whine, whine. Some books I call "popcorn reading" because they are fun and quick to consume, while providing a minimum of nutritional value - which isn't to say that popcorn reading lacks worth, just that it's really not brain food, and there's nothing really wrong with that. Reading should be enjoyable. One of my favourite types of "popcorn" is chick lit. And some popcorn actually provides food for thought, like Mitch Albom's books, but absorption doesn't require much effort and the thoughts come easily. The thriller category also has a preponderance of popcorn. And with Blasphemy, you get the jumbo sized popcorn with a candy bar. Think movie. This was an ultimate popcorn experience. At Red Mesa, Arizona, tunnelled deep inside the mountains, mad(?) genius Gregory North Hazelius heads up the government-funded Isabella Project. Isabella, the most super supercomputer ever built, is at the heart of a mammoth, enormously powerful particle accelerator built to smash together subatomic particles, unleashing energies last created during the Big Bang. We dive immediately into intimations of danger - what if Isabella creates a black hole? The first run - Isabella is not responding as anticipated - Hazelius insists on continuing - and then, as Isabella and the particles scream in the tunnels - contact with another being. What is this being - the work of a hacker or maybe God? Add to the plot: Wyman Ford, ex-CIA, sent by the US government to find out what is really going on; Navajos protesting the mega project in their backyard; Reverend Don T. Spates, a slimy fundamentalist preacher experiencing sagging revenues; and Pastor Russ Eddy, one of the scariest religious fanatics I've ever met in print. There's blasphemy of all kinds in this book as well as fanatics of all persuasions who converge at Red Mesa. Can science be perverting our humanity or are the scientists showing the way to God? It all comes to a, well, roaring conclusion. Most enjoyable, easily consumed, and yes, thought-provoking.

Crazy School by Cornelia Read

Santangelo Academy is unique - a crazy school for crazy teens and their equally crazy teachers. The students all have "behavioral problems" (like beating people) and are on medication. The teachers too have past "issues." Madeline Dare, the newest teacher, has a secret or two herself. The headmaster, guru, chief therapist, David Santangelo incorporates some rather unconventional techniques into his educational philosophy. His methods are dubious, to say the least. Two students die in an apparent joint suicide after a party (I use the term, "party," loosely, because Santangelo Academy is not a partying place) - or, as Madeline suspects, was it murder? She, too, drank the punch and became extremely ill - was it poisoned and by whom? I really like Madeline Dare. She's strong, resilient and quick with an acerbic comeback. I thoroughly enjoyed Read's snappy dialogue and her feel for the setting and context of her characters. And, for once, I didn't guess everything before the end. A fresh, new find for me. I had fun - and that's a good thing! Think I'll try her other Dare book - Field of Darkness.

Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris

It's a new school year at St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, bringing with it the annual batch of new teachers, one of whom is a relentless psychopath intent on destroying this bastion of upperclass education. Roy Straitley - eccentric, intelligent, beloved Classics instructor - has been a fixture at St Oswald's for almost thirty years. Devoted to the school and to his boys, Straitley eventually is the only obstacle preventing the ultimate ruin of the school, staff and students. The story unfolds through three voices:

• Straitley
• the malicious, vengeful and cunning new arrival
• Snyde, the child that the once was our villain

Gentlemen & Players underscores the class differences inherent in the British social system - differences that the young Snyde felt acutely and that produced the monster plotting the utter annihilation of St Oswald's and those who love it. Snyde's story is particularly riveting, and the mystery as to the identity of the grown-up evil-doer is maintained until the very end. Straitley's voice is truly a treat to read - he's a witty, stubborn old luddite with a soft heart. Harris' writing really brings him to life. I could hear his accent and inflections as I read the words on the page. Gentlemen is beautifully composed. Characterization is excellent, the plot is compelling and if you're not really, really attentive to detail, the end is quite surprising.

The Devil's Labyrinth by John Saul

Let's see - a creepy Catholic school; a dark, winding labyrinth under said school; a secret, seriously creepy, chapel; rites of exorcism; possessed, de-possessed and re-possessed teens, both male and female; a troubled 15-year old boy; some yicky scenes with garbage, rats, and a decomposing body; a fanatical priest; an heirloom artifact; the Pope; a terrorist plot. Really over-the-top. A messy stew. My first book by John Saul - will not repeat the experience. I found it really easy to figure out who the bad guy or guys were while wading through blood and gore which made it all not just yucky, but boring - yuckily boring. Oh for Pete's sake, blow up them all up and get it over with! Horrific, but, for me, not horror at its best.