The God of Animals - Aryn Kyle

Alice Winston is twelve. She has a reclusive mother who rarely emerges from her bedroom, a beautiful, high-spirited sister, Nona, who ran away with a rodeo rider, and a father overwhelmed by money problems and preoccupied with his horses. Absorbed by their own dreams and disappointments, they don't really see Alice standing on the periphery in isolation. Alice has no friends. When her shop partner, Polly Cain, drowns, Alice posthumously invents a friendship with the dead girl and forms an unsettling relationship with her English teacher.
To save their ranch, Joe Winston, begins to board horses and sells Nona's prize winning Cap to a girl he hopes can be taught to win. As the summer heat seres Desert Valley, the family's lives become enmeshed with the wealthy women who come to groom their animals and drink cocktails from their thermoses. Alice begins to understand and resent the security that money can provide. It's a summer of lies and promises, cruelty and generosity.
COMMENT: Aryn Kyle adeptly captures the voice of a twelve-year old girl. Sometimes Alice speaks with a wry humour ("I was the only person present who couldn't sue my father if the mare crushed me into pieces") and sometimes with heartbreaking sadness ( "I kept my eyes closed, letting myself pretend that she was someone, anyone, who loved me.") The plot development is strong and through Alice's eyes, the characters are well drawn.
Recommended

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

PLOT Cameron Brown, prominent neuroscientist, finds his historian-mother, Elizabeth Vogelsang, dead in the river, a prism clutched in her fist. He asks Lydia Brooke, his former lover who was also Elizabeth's friend, to return to Cambridge and complete the missing last chapter of the book his mother was writing about Sir Isaac Newton, Trinity College and alchemy. Lydia moves into Vogelsang's studio and of course, in addition to rekindling her affair with Cameron, strange things begin to happen. Papers disappear or blow away when there is no breeze. And then there are the odd lights and shadows, the strange man in red, murders and mysteries, both past and present, a violent animal rights group, and a blurring of the 17th century with the 21st. Lydia, pursuing the truth behind the 17th century deaths, soon finds herself haunted and pursued herself.
COMMENT Ghostwalk could be called creepingly eerie, or eerily creeping (toward its end). It's full of historical detail about 17th century Cambridge, alchemists and Isaac Newton. Stott's style borders on essay-writing in some chapters dealing with Vogelsang's research while she's almost poetic in others. Written from the first person (Lydia) to a second person (Cameron), Ghostwalk's use of "you" was disconcerting and a bit confusing at first. Imagery, delivered in snapshot sentences, is definitely effective in creating the ominous mood.
I sensed a supernatural threat from the beginning and was surprised by the plot addition of the real-time threat posed by NABED, the animal rights group. But this really is a ghost story with one century bleeding into the other.
Sometimes Stott's erudition might be a barrier to digesting Ghostwalk . If you aren't familiar with Mondrian, her reference to the painter will not create the image she intended. To explain the entanglement of past and present, she delves into quantum mechanics - which is fascinating, but not light reading.
Overall, I enjoyed Ghostwalk, but I am really looking forward to my next book by Dean Koontz.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards

I should have known - on the cover is glowing praise from Sue Monk Kidd, author of Mermaid Chair. I didn't like Mermaid Chair (But enjoyed Secret Life of Bees) I am beginning to think that there is something seriously wrong with my literary tastes. Memory Keeper's Daughter is the flavor of the season - a bookclub darling. There are still 32 requests for it at my library - in other words, 32 people are in line, breathlessly waiting to read it. (The library has 14 copies plus a bookclub kit and CD.) It was published in 2005, so it's not just a flash in the pan! Now for the truth - I found the book slow, annoying and well, numbing.
David Henry, orthopedist, on a snowy day in 1964 delivers his own twins. Without telling his wife, Norah, he "hands over his daughter," who has Down Syndrome, to his nurse, Caroline Gill, telling her to take the baby, Phoebe, to an institution. Caroline just can't do it and decides to keep Phoebe, raising her as her daughter. What ensues is 25 years of interminable introspection, alienation, and regret. Oh goodie.
There is a lot of repetition of imagery and thought in this book. For instance, Caroline, when pondering whether to leave Phoebe at the institution, keeps returning and returning to the image of the dark haired young woman in a slip being shorn of her hair in the institutional cold. David Henry refers again and again to the day he "handed over" (using that phrase) his daughter to Caroline Gill. I get it, I get it!!
The Memory Keeper's Daughter functions on the premise that the family is torn apart by David Henry's secret, but I think Norah is a basically weak character, and she would never have been able to cope with Phoebe. She's too concerned with moving in the proper social circles as shown by her reaction to Kay Marshall. She would have been a promiscuous lush anyway. I just couldn't cope with this book's bleak view of relationships (maybe that's my problem - but I loved the Moviegoer. Go figure.) Paul, the son, rails constantly about his father's lack of love for him in spite of the fact that David tries to connect. But, alas, somewhere along the line, David has expressed his reservations about Paul's being a musician and well, that's it! David can never convince the kid of his pride and love. It's really quite a sad story of a basically good man, who makes a bad decision. David Henry is burdened by secrets and surrounded by very needy people.
On a more positive note - I rejoiced in Phoebe's life and Caroline's love for her daughter.
To sum up: I found the constant, interior ruminations tedious - like listening to the slow ticking of a clock, and I could not muster much sympathy for Norah. Without that sympathy, the book for me was an exercise in endurance. And maybe I do need some sort of biblio-therapeutic intervention.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

PLOT Hosseini portrays the tumult of Afghanistan's last thirty years as reflected in the lives of two woman married to the same man. Miriam was a harami, a bastard,loved by her father,Jalil, but not quite enough. She's quickly married off to the brutal Rasheed to safely rid Jalil's legitimate family of her embarrassing existence. Laila is young, beautiful and well-educated by her doting father, but as the violence of Afghanistan's repeated upheavals decimates her family, she, too, marries Raheed to survive. In the midst of killing and oppression, bombs and hardship, beatings and tears, the two form a bond that enables them to continue living.
Why I Pulled This Book from My TBR Shelf I had read and loved the Kite Runner, one the the most powerful and beautiful books I've ever experienced.
Comment A Thousand Splendid Suns presents much more history than does The Kite Runner. In Suns, Hosseini intertwines periodic history lessons with the story (and it's obvious these lessons are a digression), even giving all the names of the warlords, where they were from, and their political goals. While in Runner, the history is there, it functions as a backdrop against which the plot unfolds. Suns, occasionally bordering on didactic, and perhaps incorporating too much information for some readers, did give me a much better sense of why Afghanistan is so torn and what the Afghan people have endured. The character development is excellent - I understood and identified with these two women even though my world is so different. Hosseini's writing "engages" the reader with both the characters and the setting. He has the ability to draw you into his world - I felt as if I experienced both books with all my senses. Highly Recommended.

Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind - Ann B. Ross

Absolutely Delightful! A Real Treat!
PLOT "Miss Julia" Springer is surprised when the sudden death of her pillar-of-the-community husband, banker Wesley Lloyd, leaves her a very rich widow. Just when she's considering central air-conditioning for her home (Wesley Lloyd deemed it to be a waste of money), she discovers, right on her own doorstep, something else he's left - Wesley Lloyd Junior - a pale nine-year old. Pretty soon, Pastor Ledbetter, her clergyman, is trying to claim her inheritance for the church; a Bible-thumping televangelist, "Brother Vern," arrives looking for Little Lloyd; the police suspect Miss Julia might be involved foul-play, and she's driving a get-away car.
COMMENT Ross writes with wry humour, delivering a warm and witty (cliche wording, but very true here) portrait of small town life. The images of the formerly prim and proper Miss Julia adopting a new style of merging into traffic (step on the gas and go) or speeding down the highway protected by a phalanx of big rigs were laugh-out-loud material. I chuckled all the way through this book, not only because I could recognize so much that was familiar, but also because reading it is just plain fun. As she gains her own voice, Miss Julia's observations and comments are filled with both wisdom and dry humour. She muses, "Now I understood. Anytime a preacher starts talking about stewardship, he's talking about your money and his plans. Especially his building plans." A big thank you to fellow book blogger Tiny for recommending and lending Miss Julia to me for the Southern Reading Challenge!

Our Former Lives in Art - Jennifer S Davis

PLOT LINES Alabama native Jennifer S Davis draws us into the lives and emotional conflicts of her characters. Set in the Deep South, her nine short stories capture with insight, power and compassion, the turmoil and drama of human relationships. In the title story, a father whose lifetime joys are football, hunting and fishing tries to connect with his young son whose first word was "art" and who has created, since the age of two, amazingly realistic, detailed, and gory drawings of Civil War battles. In "Lovely Lily," as part of a program ("Love Knows No Age") to pair the old with the young, the rebellious, troubled title character finds a surprising kinship with a man who is "sucked dry as a husk from emphysema." In "Rapture," Opal knows she shouldn't get in her car and go out with a tornado roaring toward her town. In her head, she hears, with apprehension, the whisper, "Now, the time is now," but she does get in her car and her world is redrawn.
COMMENT Davis follows in the tradition of southern authors like Welty and O'Connor. Her stories are haunting. She writes with a wry, bemused voice and a strong talent for description. Please note: this is NOT "chick lit." Highly recommended.

Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger

PLOT Nice girl from a hippie-organic background joins an upscale PR agency and becomes a shallow, weight-and-fashion-obsessed borderline bimbo with the "in crowd" at the "in crowd" clubs of Manhattan. Lots of lovingly described apparel - a setting filled with gorgeous people relentlessly pursuing the life of the rich, famous and useless. Happily, girl is saved at the very end by down-to-earth prince charming.
Why in the world did I pick this book The Devil Wears Prada - I saw the movie (which I enjoyed), so I should have known better (plots like this play better on the big screen). I thought Weisberger was true chicklit and I should experience one of her books.
COMMENT If I hadn't listened to this book, I probably would have given up in the first 50 pages, but, as I've said, I have a long commute, so, with a book on CD, I'm not really wasting too much time. To enjoy Everyone Worth Knowing, you have to really care about,well, everyone worth knowing, be able to understand all the inside jokes, recognize the celebrity names, and know your Prada from a whatever (see, I don't and I don't care - can't even think of a designer). Bette Robinson is appealing enough to engage your interest, but, in 20 years, books like this one will be soooo passe, dahling. You can only go so far with pop culture. Weisberger, is a skilled writer, however - she skillfully skewers the players in this milieu just by describing them, BUT, it just wasn't my kind of book. Sigh - maybe I'm just too old to get it.
Reader Stina Nielsen was OK, just OK. Her reading lacked expression and was not convincing in many places. Too often, she sounded like a grade 11 drama student trying out for the lead part in a high school play.