Review: The Mistress of Nothing

I think I saw The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger on an IndieBound List. Either that or an NPR book list. Those are my two main sources of finding new books to read outside my norm. I was drawn to it by the title.

I didn't know till I finished it, but apparently this novel is based on the true story of a English ladies' maid who devotedly follows her lady to Egypt. Lady Duff Gordon lived the last seven year of her life in Egypt, where the hot, dry air kept her living longer than the cold, wet air of England would have allowed her to. The story is told by her maid, Sally Naldrett.

Sally is completely loyal and dedicated to her lady, but her life changes the longer she lives in Egypt. And she discovers how far her lady's own loyalty and gratitude will--or will not--go when Sally tries to live her own life and make her own decisions.

I think I would have liked this book better if I had realized from the beginning that it was based on a true story, because it is such a strange story for the time and the people who lived in it. It was almost too far fetched when I thought it was simply fiction. But it's fascinating when you realize that the basics of the story are true (though the author had to fill in gaps where we don't have any documentation).

So, overall it was an interesting historical fiction. And it was very short and a quick read, especially for a historical fiction.

Review: Great Expectations

I finished reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I feel more relief than anything. I took longer to read this book than any other--even longer than it took me to read Moby-Dick, which I read over two summers while I was an English major. I just can't get through the heavy reading like I used to. If I have something else, I always turn to the lighter read instead of Dickens. I finally finished it by putting the book next to the toilet and reading a few paragraphs at a time while I went to the bathroom or while my daughter played in the bath.

I know people who love Dickens. But it's just not me. I can appreciate his work, but I never really enjoy it. I have another unread Dickens on the shelf, but I think it will take me a long time to pick another one up. I have dozens of other TBR books waiting for me. We're going camping this week and I'm definitely choosing something lighter to read while we're gone.

Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is one of those classics that I've always meant to read but never got around to. And I enjoyed it even more than I expected to.

It's about a young girl growing up in poverty in Brooklyn in the early 20th century. Though it's a work of fiction, it has enough similarities to the author's own childhood that there is no doubt she knows what she's talking about. It's what I would call true fiction.

The heroine, Francie Nolan, is engaging and interesting and it is easy to feel for her, though she rarely feels sorry for herself. One of the things that impressed me the most about this book is the compassion that the author had for just about every character. None of them were demonized--not the alcoholic father or the unaffectionate mother. She knew that people were weak, but she seemed to understand why and had sympathy for them. The only overt criticism of a character in the book is of the rich when they are demonstrative of how giving they are to the poor. Why can't they just give without pointing out how rich they are and how poor we are? Francie wonders. And I can't blame her.

If you haven't read this book, then go and read it now. My only regret is that whatever I read next is likely to pale in comparison. I had better pick something completely different.


from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

"Laurie's going to have a mighty easy life all right."

"She'll never have the hard times we had, will she?"

"No. And she'll never have the fun we had, either."

"Gosh! We did have fun, didn't we Neeley?"

"Yeah!"

"Poor Laurie," said Francie pityingly.

Review: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks has long been on my TBR list. When I was finally able to read it this week, it did not disappoint.

The story was engaging, the history fascinating. Though fictionalized, this story of a town that voluntarily isolates itself in order to contain the plague is based in fact. Which makes the horrors witnessed by our narrator and heroine, Anna, all the more vivid and terrifying. I feel very lucky to live in a time and place free of plague and witch hunts.

I definitely recommend this book, though you should keep in mind that many of the images are gruesome.

Review: Swamplandia!

I haven't posted anything in a while because I have been in the swamps with Ava Bigtree. Written by Karen Russell, Swamplandia! is set in an alligator theme park in the swamps of Florida. It could hardly be a more foreign landscape, but the story was all too familiar for me.

Ava's mother dies and her family is then faced with the possibility of losing her home while her family falls apart. Well, that last part is not familiar. But last year my father died and my family lost their home. I think our family has held together much better than Ava's does, thank goodness.

It is hard to explain the plot of Swamplandia! because there are so many twists and turns. It was at times painful to watch the family struggle. Ava's naivete hurt me, and sometimes her. Her poor brother tries so hard to make something of himself so he can save his family, but he is no better equipped to live on the mainland than the rest of his family. He continually mispronounces big words because he has only ever seen them in books, but never actually heard them in conversation.

In conclusion, I guess I would say that the writing is excellent, the story is engaging, the characters are real, but this book is not for the faint of heart. It made me think of some of the Southern Gothic Fiction books that I read in college--definitely not light reading. But great literature all the same.

Review: Sacred Hearts

"She is only a young woman who did not want to become a nun. The world is full of them."

I don't remember where I first heard of this book, but it was a good gamble on an author I hadn't read before. This is my kind of historical fiction--a completely fictional story steeped in history.

The idea behind the book is told best by its brief introduction:

"By the second half of the sixteenth century, the price of wedding dowries had risen so sharply within Catholic Europe that most noble families could not afford to marry off more than one daughter. The remaining young women were dispatched--for a much lesser price--to convents. Historians estimate that in the great towns and city-states of Italy, up to half of all noblewomen became nuns. Not all of them went willingly..."

The story was engaging, the history heartbreaking, the way some of the characters adapted to or fought against their fate inspiring. We've all heard the stories, true or not, of disgraced young women being forced into becoming nuns while their illegitimate children were sent to orphanages and such. But I had never known or considered that such large groups of women were forced into convents.

I was swept up by the story, despairing when the heroine despaired and cheering when she found some little bits of joy or respite. It made me pause and think about the countless real women whose lives were bought and sold by their fathers and husbands. A woman might have been sent to a convent simply because she had a sister who was prettier or more cunning or older. Though often, the convent might have been a safer and possibly happier fate.

How happy I am to be able to choose my own path in life, even if I merely stumble along it.

Review: The Help

"Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. No that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."

I know I'm late on the bandwagon of reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. My hold copy finally came into my library--and then I moved. I reserved it at my new library and the copy finally came in--a few days before I was moving. (I don't recommend moving twice in the same year if you can help it.) I put it on hold yet again and got it via books by mail.

And it was just as good as I'd heard that it was. I completely agree with what I've heard--everyone should read this book.

I'm not surprised to see that the book is being turned into a movie, and I hope they do it justice. I'll be watching it--though I will most likely be really late in seeing it just as I was with reading the book. Better late than never.

Review: Barrel Fever

I have long enjoyed David Sedaris's sense of humor. An essay he wrote about an unflushable poo has stayed with me longer than any story about poo should. So on my last airplane ride I picked up Barrel Fever, a collection of stories and essays.

Flying with a toddler did not afford me much time for reading, so it's taken me much longer to get through it. And it only took a few of his short stories for me to realize that I'm actually not a fan of Sedaris's fiction. He seemed more crude than I remember his nonfiction stories being. Or maybe it's harder for me to swallow crudeness when it's made up than when I believe it to have really happened.

Whatever the case, I skipped the rest of the short stories and dove into the essays. Which I enjoyed as much as I remembered enjoying Sedaris. So I recommend his nonfiction, if you get his sense of humor. But save your time by not reading his fiction.

Review: Ape House

I was completely swept away when I read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, so I had high expectations for Ape House. I was not disappointed. There was a time in the middle section when I was not quite as engaged because the main stories had diverged, but once they came back together for the climax, I was fully committed to the story and its characters again.

Sara Gruen is a good storyteller. And I admire the way she can write from the point of view of anyone--male, female, primate.

This was not only a good story, but it had fascinating ideas about how much the title characters, the six bonobos, can learn and communicate with humans. They could understand spoken English and then reply in American Sign Language.

"One of the most exciting discoveries to come to the language lab was that once bonobos acquired human language they passed it on to their babies, communicating in a combination of ASL and their own vocalizations."

This is especially interesting to me because we have been teaching our daughter to sign to communicate since she was born. For a long time, it honestly felt pointless to me. It took her months to learn one sign. But now at 16 months, she often learns multiple new signs in one day. And she has definitely started using her signs to communicate her needs. I didn't notice this at first because I often knew what she wanted anyway. But one day when I thought she was hungry, she told me very distinctly that she was actually thirsty by signing "drink." She says "book," but it sounds like many of the other words she says that start with a "B." But when she signs "book" at the same time, there is no question of what she wants.

Tangent over. It was a good book. I recommend it.

Review: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a long book. And apparently a classic turned into a Hitchcock movie (which is waiting for me on hold at the library). I enjoyed it overall. But I found it tedious at times. It was a little melodramatic, a little predictable. But that just might be the genre and writing of the time.

It definitely could have been shortened--the middle bit was much longer than it needed to be. Besides lengthy landscape descriptions, the main character often spent a lot of time imagining how things might happen (and they never do).

The main character marries the much older Maxim de Winter whose first wife, Rebecca, recently died in a suspicious manner. The second Mrs. de Winter (who is never given a first name which drove me crazy because her first name was often alluded to and one of the reasons I finished the book was to find out her first name) is haunted by the memory of beautiful, charming, perfect Rebecca. Drama and intrigue ensues.

I called it predictable even though there were some plot twists that surprised me. But if the creepy housekeeper who adored the first wife and hates you makes a "friendly" suggestion that you have a dress made to look like the one in the painting in the hall for the fancy dress ball--don't do it! It's obvious that Rebecca wore that same dress at one point.

I felt very sorry for the second Mrs. de Winter at times. She is so young and timid. Her husband tells her that he has no problem with firing the creepy housekeeper if she wants. So fire the creepy housekeeper!

I suppose my frustrations with the book show that I ultimately liked it. I would not get so frustrated with a character that I didn't care for. So if you like a "classic tale of romantic suspense," I say go for it.

Review: Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys explores the character of the mad woman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

I love Jane Eyre and mostly enjoyed Wide Sargasso Sea. The book helps you sympathize with the mad woman that was Rochester's first wife rather than just seeing her as an obstacle to Jane's happiness. It's also an interesting look at what it means to be crazy and almost, but not quite, asks the question of whether or not being treated like you're crazy can eventually make you crazy.

My one issue with this books was that I was occasionally confused about the point of view. The first section was easy enough to follow, but after that we get a few different characters' points of view, but at times, I wasn't sure who we were following.

You could probably read this book even if you haven't read Jane Eyre. But really, if you're going to read one of these books for the first time, you ought to be choosing Jane Eyre.

By the way, I love the 1996 movie version of Jane Eyre, and while I was looking up that link I found out that they are making another version to be released in 2011. Not sure how I feel about that. I will end of watching it I'm sure, but I'm skeptical. One of the appeals about the 1996 movie was that the actress who played Jane was actually plain; the actress for the upcoming version is far too pretty to be Jane.

Review: Nectar in a Sieve

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live."
-- Coleridge

I decided to read Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya for one of the most random reasons. I am working on reading Great Expectations (Dickens is always a long journey for me, and I start and finish many other books before one of his is conquered). My copy of Great Expectations is a Signet Classic. After finishing a chapter, I was flipping through the Signet ads in the back and found a list of the top 20 Signet Classic Books. I discovered that I had read all of them but one, which I had never even heard of.

So I read Nectar in a Sieve with no idea what it was about. And I wish I had left it that way. Partway through, I began to read the back cover and I felt it gave too much of the plot away--it told me some of the struggles the main character, a peasant woman in rural India named Rukmani. And so I kept waiting for them to happen. "Oh this must be where blah happens..." (I will not ruin it for anyone who wants to read it by repeating the overtelling of the plot.) So if you read it, do not read the back cover.

And I do think it is worth reading. It is nothing like the things I usually read and Rukmani and I have little in common besides our humanity and being mothers. She lives in a different time and place with completely different ideas and values. She works hard and accepts her lot in life, though she is always struggling and often starving. It definitely made me more grateful for the abundance of food we have. I am so glad that I don't live in a mud hut that I have to smear with dung to keep it standing. And yet, though anyone who reads this book will obviously be better off than Rukmani, it is never presented in a way that you feel that you should pity her or that you are being judged for your lack of poverty.

It is often heart wrenching, always moving. The language is simple which made it a quick read, but I wouldn't call it an easy read because of its content. The short book follows Rukmani from when she is given away as a child bride until she is an old woman.

Review: Too Much Happiness

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro is the best contemporary collection of short stories that I've ever read. The title story was the last one and almost long enough to be a novella. Munro wrote it after she discovered Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevsky and was fascinated her life and her work.

Has any seemingly random figure in history caught your attention and held it? Mine is a woman named Hannah Dustan who lived in the early days of New England. She was kidnapped by Indians, her infant's brains bashed out on a tree in front of her. She later escaped and massacred and scalped her captors--men, women, and children. After she returned home, she was praised and paid for the scalps she took, even though that had been outlawed years before. I read a short story about her in a survey of American Literature class probably eight or nine years ago, but I still occasionally think about Dustan and what drove her to do what she did. What fascinates me most is wondering how she lived the rest of her life and how she felt about her actions years later.

Review: Fool

“Warning: This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank. If that sort of thing bothers you, then gentle reader pass by, for we endeavor only to entertain, not to offend. That said, if that’s the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!”

Fool by Christopher Moore is King Lear from the Fool’s point of view. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but readers should heed the warning above that the book opens with. It is a true homage to Shakespeare—full of blood and guts and betrayal and horrible people.

The title character, named Pocket, is sometimes horrible and almost always deceitful. But two things redeemed him: he was always concerned for his apprentice, a “natural” (someone born with some physical or mental incapacity); and the people he was manipulating were, without a doubt, far more evil than he.

I haven’t read King Lear in about ten years, and I think if it had been fresher in my mind when I read Fool, I would have enjoyed it just a tiny bit more. But I think anyone who is semi-familiar with Shakespeare can appreciate this book. It was terribly funny—even the footnotes were funny. But also tragic and ghastly.

Review: Beatrice and Virgil

Having read The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, I had to pick up his second offering, Beatrice and Virgil. I thought the cover of his second book was wonderfully reminiscent of this cover from his first one:



I don't know if it was the same designer, but whoever designed the second one definitely had the first one in mind. I think they would look wonderful next to each other on the shelf.

But onto judging a book by its content... What to say about Beatrice and Virgil? It was odd and surprising, and at times even shocking (especially the climax for me).

The plot device was a little trite. A writer who won awards and acclaim for his first novel has a hard time writing his second novel (hmm, feeling the pressure Yann?). And the entire premise was a bit circular--the writer writes about a writer who can't write and sets out to help an amateur writer with writer's block write his first play.

I don't think he's writing to entertain or to provide an escape for his audience, so I think he accomplished exactly what he set out to accomplish. As a philosopher, I think Martel wants his books to make his readers think, which this one certainly did. And I think he'd even be pleased to know that his latest fare made this reader a bit uncomfortable.


This book is not for the average reader. That doesn't mean I don't recommend it, I'm just not sure who I'd recommend it to.

Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

I liked The Time Traveler's Wife. And I wanted to like Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I almost liked it. But toward the end, I knew what was coming in the story and I didn't want it to happen. I even stopped reading it for a few days (and much to my chagrin couldn't read anything else). I did finish it because I was so close to the end and I hoped that somehow things would end differently that I expected. They didn't.

It was also hard for me to like any of the characters. Those I liked at first made decisions that made me despise them later and those I despised at first later earned my sympathy--but not quite enough to truly like them. There were some marginal characters that were interesting and almost likable, but I really wanted to like someone in the book more than I did.

Some people might love this book. It is intriguing. It's a story of ghosts, family secrets, and twins who are uncomfortably close. I like weird books and stories, but this one was just a bit over the line where it made me uncomfortable. I don't think Niffenegger wanted her readers to be comfortable with her characters, but for me it made it hard to then care about them.

Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

“Misunderstanding a culture’s symbols is a common root of prejudice.” –Robert Langdon in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I used to be a book snob. Still am to some degree. As an English major, I felt I should only spend my time reading what I considered good literature—good story, good character development, and most important of all, good writing. Then I entered a graduate publishing program and realized that my English Lit background did me little good there. I may have known Faulkner, but Faulkner is dead and I had no idea what people were actually writing and publishing today. So I swallowed my pride and began venturing out into the world of popular fiction.

Today I finished reading Dan Brown’s latest thriller, The Lost Symbol. Having read and seen the movie versions of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, the common protagonist, Robert Langdon, was much more concrete in mind while reading his most current offering. In fact, Langdon was Tom Hanks. But there are far worse things than having a figure as comforting and familiar as Tom Hanks in your head for a few days.

The Lost Symbol is another strange mix of history, science, and religion, of fact and fantasy. The characters range from the fanatic to the realist, the scientist to the priest. My favorite character was Langdon’s newest female sidekick, Katherine Solomon. She’s beautiful and rich so you want to hate her, but she’s also real, smart, and ingenious, so you admire her.

Once again, one of Brown’s antagonists is an odd-looking man who likes to hang out naked (remember the albino?). Not titillating naked—scary naked. It made me wonder about Brown’s penchant for bad guys who walk around naked. But then, as an English major, I’m sure I could come up with some critical explanation for it. Let’s go with something about the villains hiding nothing about their evil natures from us.

It’s a lengthy novel, of course. And the resolution was a little long and redundant. It took fifty pages for Brown to wrap things up after the climax. Even in a book this long, that accounted for 10% of the book. I found myself skimming the end because I already knew what happened in the end (and that’s the point of a Dan Brown novel, finding out what happens next), and it was repeating a lot of the same ideas that had been presented throughout the book. But the chapters are short, and the narrative moves quickly, so it’s a fast read.

If you liked Brown’s other novels, The Lost Symbol will not disappoint. It’s full of twists and turns that range from predictable to surprising, but they’re all fun. Though he was a little melodramatic in some places (“The bowl contained one inch of thick crimson liquid. ... The liquid was _______’s blood.”), there was one major plot twist that I can honestly say I didn’t see coming. Of course, I can’t tell you about it or it would ruin the book.

The Lost Symbol is great escapist literature. And considering his popularity, a Dan Brown novel may one day grace the syllabus of an American Novels course.


The Lost Symbol
By Dan Brown
Doubleday, 2009
$29.95

Review: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

There are a few authors whose new books I read no matter what—Margaret Atwood is one of them. So I picked up The Year of the Flood without reading any descriptions or reviews. I didn’t even read the inside flap before I read the book.

There seem to be a lot of post-apocalyptic movies and books coming out now, and Atwood’s version was pretty timely with the h1n1 scare. Her “flood” was a waterless flood—a pandemic that wipes out most of the human race. She follows the stories of two survivors and the events that led to their isolation when the sickness broke out and killed almost everyone else in the world.

Based on its title, The Year of the Flood, I was surprised at how little of the book was actually spent on the year of the flood. The flood was in year twenty-five by someone’s reckoning and much of the book was spent on the years leading up to it. The back story was interesting and much of it was needed to understand the characters during the year of the flood, but I expected more flood.

I often wonder if an established author’s later books would have been published if they were an unknown writer. I loved Vonnegut’s last book, even though it was the rantings of a cranky old man, because I loved Vonnegut himself. I wonder if I would have even finished Atwood’s latest book if it wasn’t Margaret Atwood.

My official opinion on The Year of the Flood: it was weird. Honestly, I don’t know what happened in the end. It just stopped. I wasn’t sure if Atwood meant for it to be hopeful or despairing. Maybe she was leaving it up to her readers to decide, but I wanted to know what she and her characters thought. If you’ve never read Margaret Atwood, don’t read this book. Start with The Handmaid’s Tale. And if you’re a Margaret Atwood fan, I guess you’re like me and you have to read The Year of the Flood. No matter how baffled it leaves you.

The Year of the Flood
By Margaret Atwood
Doubleday, 2009
$26.95

Review: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant, is the story of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob from the book of Genesis. Diamant’s story is so well-researched and beautifully written that I believed that this was Dinah’s voice.

For someone who grew up with the stories of the Bible told simply and with no questions of who the good guys and bad guys are, it was a little strange to alter the way I thought about the iconic Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But this is Dinah’s story, and I embraced it. I have never wanted a happy ending for any character as desperately as I did for Diamant’s Dinah.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, but especially for women. It is a book about mothers and daughters and should be read by anyone who is a mother or a daughter.

Though I wish I’d known about this amazing book long ago, it would have been a completely different experience if I had read it before I was a mother myself. I look forward to reading it again and again at different times in my life to see what else I can get out of it.

The Red Tent
By Anita Diamant
Picador, 1997