Tag Archives: identity

Like the Appearance of Horses, by Andrew Krivak****

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I first read Andrew Krivak in 2017, when The Signal Flame was published. His glorious prose is something few authors can match. Here we have another novel involving many of the same characters and to an extent, the same setting. I am happy to get back to it.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Highbridge Audio, and Bellevue Literary Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

One of the things that initially drew me to Krivak’s writing is that he occupies a sparsely populated niche with his historical fiction. Who else writes about the Romani Resistance of World War II? Who writes about Romani refugees? Most authors are as susceptible as anyone else to trend following and bandwagonism. Krivak is not. He sets his own course, and he does it with spellbinding prose and sterling self-discipline.  

Here we see three generations of men that go to war, starting with World War II, then to a P.O.W. camp during the Vietnam War, and finally, to Iraq. This is a rough read, friends. There’s just about every possible trigger, so if you’re protecting the more tender parts of your mind, you may need to pass on this one. On the other hand, if you are looking for a catharsis to bring about a good ugly cry, rush out and get this book right this minute.

Krivak doesn’t write page turners; instead, he draws me in and makes me forget where I am and what I was doing a minute ago. His work is deeply absorbing and at times, moving.

Narrator Jamie Renell gives a flawless performance here. The book is tightly plotted enough, however, that the listener needs to pay careful attention. I had both the audio and ebook formats, and I still got confused once in awhile and had to backtrack.

If I could add one more thing to ice Krivak’s literary cake, it would be a well developed female character. The women that appear here seem to have been planted for the purpose of developing the male characters. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Krivak has crafted this story around a set of actual people and events, though he says it’s a loose representation, and so I can see why he chooses to focus on the men that go to war; yet, since he is taking a few liberties anyway, would it hurt so very much to send off a soldier girl?

This complaint is a minor one. Krivak is a badass, and I do recommend this book to you.

Piglet, by Lottie Hazell****

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“Such a special day.”

Piglet is an offbeat novel that marks the debut of author Lottie Hazell. The protagonist is a young woman named Pippa, but everyone calls her Piglet. This author has me before I open the book, because with a nickname like this, I have to see what’s behind it, and where it’s going. My thanks go to NetGalley and Henry Holt for the review copy; this book is available to the public now.

Piglet lives in London, far from the working class area where she was raised, and where the rest of her family still resides. She’s a cookbook editor for a publishing company, is engaged to marry Kit, who is handsome and comes from a well to do family, and they have recently purchased a gorgeous home. Her star is clearly rising.

It’s a tightrope walk, to be certain. People with money have expectations, and so it’s not easy for Piglet to advocate for herself in the presence of his family. But she genuinely likes them, and so she works with them—which generally means that they get their way. Her own family mildly embarrass her when the two families meet, but her folks won’t often cross paths with these people once she and Kit are wed.

Then, two weeks before the wedding, Kit confesses a terrible, terrible betrayal, and Piglet has to decide whether she is in or out. As she unravels, I watch in horror. Piglet, you see, is an emotional eater.

In many ways, Piglet is the protagonist I have been wanting to read all my life. So often female main characters respond to stress by not eating. The lesser characters around them cluck over how pale, how thin they’ve become, and I sit back on my ample behind and say, “Yeah, right.”

But Piglet’s stress eating is epic in scope, and I also worry that the resolution will involve therapy, a new diet and a wedding gown in a size smaller than anything she’s ever owned. And since this much comes from my own imaginings rather than the book, I’ll go ahead and tell you, no. That doesn’t happen, and I am so grateful.

For most of this novel, I feel an intimacy with the protagonist that is rare. I can’t wait to find out what happens next, but I also can’t tolerate interruptions, and so I choose my reading sessions carefully. I am fortunate enough to receive both the digital review copy and the audio galley, and at the outset, I do what is my usual routine in such circumstances, listening to it while I am doing something else, but with the DRC nearby so that I can make notes or highlight likely passages for quotes. But by the time I am about thirty percent in, that’s over, and instead I am listening while reading also, because how can I think of anything else?

There are two things that I am dying to know. First, does she stay with Kit? And more importantly, what terrible thing did he do? Piglet keeps this information close to her vest, but the few people she tells are uniformly horrified, and so I know it’s bad. But what is it? Just what the hell did he do?

The ending feels incomplete to me. There are so many things that Hazell could have done and didn’t that I am disappointed by what feels like a slightly bland resolution. This is a good book, but it could have been a great one.

Hazell’s word smithery skills are stellar, and when I was done, I found I’d highlighted over 150 passages. Obviously, I won’t use them all here. Most of the novel’s tone is quite serious, but there are a few moments of dark humor that leave me shaking my head in admiration. In particular, there’s a wedding photographer that makes me howl!

The narrator is outstanding.

One way or another, Lottie Hazell is an author to watch. I look forward to seeing what she produces next.

When the Summer Was Ours, by Roxanne Veletzos***-****

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3.5 stars, rounded upward. I had proclaimed myself to be over and done with World War II fiction; there’s been a glut of it in the publishing world, and I have well and truly had my fill. My soft spot, however, is for any book written by an author whose work I have read and enjoyed. I reviewed Veletzos’s charming debut, The Girl They Left Behind, in 2018, and so when the opportunity came up, I agreed to read and review this one, too. It was a good decision.

My thanks go to Net Galley and Atria Books for the invitation and review copy. This book is for sale now.

Eva Cesar, daughter of the well-to-do but terribly strict local bourgeois, falls in love when Aleandro, a Romani artist stops in her tiny town in Hungary. He is a painter and a fiddler, raising his younger brothers alone following the deaths of their parents. Eva’s father knows nothing of this romance, and it’s a darned good thing. Not only is her father a Nazi sympathizer and bigot, but she is already engaged to marry Eduard, a dedicated Red Cross physician whom she also loves.

The story follows all three of them over the years, shifting points of view. All three are likable characters; Aleandro is obsessive enough that he seems a little creepy at the outset, but as the story develops, that’s no longer the case. Eduard is a stable, likable human being, but he is the one that is least developed. Eva often makes passive decisions, which I find grating, yet these are the early 1940s, and women don’t yet know they’re entitled to be decisionmakers, at least in many regards. The plot seems to go all over the place, but it comes together quite nicely at the end.

There are two related developments I would have liked to see handled differently. First—and I’m telling you this because it occurs early—Eva becomes pregnant after just one night of passion with Aleandro. Picture me sticking two fingers down my throat. Gag, spit, gag some more; what an overused trope. But then it gets worse. Eva heads to a clinic where abortions are performed quietly, since the procedure isn’t legal; the facility is filthy, and the staff are rude; we briefly meet the doctor, who virtually has horns and a spiky tail, and dines regularly on the flesh of aborted embryos and fetuses. More or less, anyway. And with women’s rights to choose our own reproductive decisions under attack, this is the very worst possible time to put such vile propaganda into a novel. She flees, of course, and has the baby, of course. In fact, as I write this, I question my choice to knock off only half a star from my rating. I’m growing madder by the minute, just writing about it.

Moving on!

The most difficult aspect of a complex story like this one is deciding how to end it. I come back around when I see how tastefully and realistically this is achieved. The ending is both credible and sweet.

There it is; you decide.  

City of the Dead, by Jonathan Kellerman*****

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The Alex Delaware series began in 1985 with the publication of When the Bough Breaks, and it’s been going strong ever since. City of the Dead is number 37, and in many ways, its style is closer to the original than more recent editions, and I consider this a good thing. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is available for purchase today.

The story begins with a moving van, and two drivers looking to beat that nasty Los Angeles traffic by starting early. They’re making their way through an upscale residential neighborhood when something hurtles toward them in the dark, and the van makes a sickening crunch as it rolls over it. It’s a man, clad in his birthday suit alone; nobody can see the face anymore, because that’s where the wheels went. Once it becomes clear that the man was already dead when he was tossed into the street, Detective Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is called in. Milo is a homicide cop; Alex Delaware, our protagonist, is a child psychologist as well as Milo’s best friend. Milo often consults with Alex—sometimes officially, sometimes not—when a case has tricky psychological contours.

There are two threads to our plot. The first is the aforementioned corpse under the van; a small trail of blood leads the police to the house from which it came, where they find another body, that of the woman that lived there. There are all sorts of twists and turns; the woman turns out to be someone Alex knows slightly from a case in which he testified, but the man proves much harder to identify.  The second thread is more straightforward, a custody case he’s been asked to evaluate for the court. Ultimately, there is some overlap between the two threads, and this is not something I can recall seeing in other books in the series. It’s very well done.

One thing I often forget between Delaware novels is how funny Kellerman can be. In this case, the story unfolds fast, and it isn’t until about the 70 percent mark that the humor is interjected. Delaware and Sturgis are interviewing a couple of enormous bodyguards, and the scene makes me snicker out loud. The pacing never flags, and there is a lot of dialogue that crackles and makes the pages turn

There are two elements I’ve complained about in recent Delaware novels. The first is the sordid stuff; kinky sex that comes off as a bit seedy and leaves me with a sour gut. None of that this time! I’m so pleased. The second is the unrealistic elements in which Alex does way too much cop stuff for a civilian. There have been times, in other books, where Alex tackles bad guys, or is given a Kevlar vest, and when that happens, the magic is compromised. It makes me think about the author, because I’ve stopped believing 100 percent in the characters. Again, that is scaled way back here. In fact, there’s one instance where Alex suggests that he be the one to entice a suspect into giving up a coffee cup or something else containing DNA, and Milo shuts that down. It’s not necessary, and they’re not doing that.

The last several Delaware novels have been four stars from me, because although I did enjoy them, the elements that I just mentioned kept me from going all in. This time I feel everything was exactly right. You can jump in if you’re new to the series, but once you do, you’ll want to go back for the others. Highly recommended.

Mother May I, by Joshilyn Jackson*****

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Joshilyn Jackson is one of my favorite authors, and so I was delighted to see that she has another novel coming out this spring. My heartfelt thanks go to Net Galley, Harper Audio, and William Morrow for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

One of the things I love about Jackson is that she recognizes and includes social class as a large factor in the lives of her characters. I am initially sorry to see that her protagonist, Bree Cabbat, is married to a wealthy man, but once the story unfolds, it becomes obvious that the story won’t work any other way. Although Bree is rolling in it now, she grew up poor, the child of a single parent that took her back-to-school shopping at a Goodwill two towns over from their tiny Georgia town, carefully making sure that Bree’s classmates not recognize their own castoffs when Bree wore them. Later, theater classes helped Bree refine her accent to make her more employable; acting lessons helped her project the carefree confidence that is common to young adults whose families have money.

Now she is married to Trey, a man “who’d grown up with Scooters and Biffs and Muffys.” As the story progresses, there are frequent subtle reminders of this; Trey has a gun safe; Trey has a bottle of whiskey, a gift, that cost over two thousand dollars; their daughters are in an upscale school with a nice theatre program, and their daughters are enrolled in extracurricular activities like Quiz Bowl and Robotics. Yes, our Bree has come up in the world, alrighty. And so when their baby is kidnapped out from under her very nose, naturally Bree’s assumption is that there will be a ransom, and that she and Trey will pay it.

But this time, she is oh so wrong.

When the call comes, it turns out to be a very elderly woman bent on exacting revenge against Trey’s business partner, who is also his cousin. Bree must do exactly as she says, because if she sees any sign of police, “I’ll break his flimsy neck…I’ll twist his little head right around backward.”

Dear God.

 This story grabbed me by the hair and didn’t let me go till I was done with it. I was initially approved for the audio version, and by the time I was given access to the print version, I had finished the first galley. Ordinarily, when something like this happens, I write my review, submit it to both places, and figure my work is done here. But for Jackson I do due diligence and more, and it’s a pleasure to read her book twice, so I did. And while both versions are excellent, I give a slight edge to the audio version. Print is a desirable medium anytime one is reading any mystery, because sometimes we want to flip back to check a detail or two. But Jackson always records her own audio books, and so I know the interpretation of the reader is always completely consistent with the writer’s intention. And in this case, the key side character—Marshall, an ex-cop that was married to Bree’s best friend, now dead—has a distinctive voice that comes through somewhat in the printed version, but much more plainly in the audio. I love the way she voices him, and although Marshall isn’t the protagonist, his role in this story is critical. The narrative shifts between Bree, who speaks to us from the first person limited, and Marshall, who comes to us in the third person.

The story carries an added social justice component: it’s MeToo on steroids. The things we learn about the men in the story add complexity, and though there’s a trigger or two here, I suspect most female readers will find the denouement deeply satisfying. I do.

The ending would ordinarily be deemed over-the-top, but because I believe the characters and story so completely by the time we get there, I also believe the resolution.

The one thing I would change here, if I wanted to be picky, would be to find a way to inject some of the epic laugh-out-loud humor I have enjoyed in Jackson’s earlier books. But that’s a tall order, given the intensity of this one.

One way or the other, this book is guaranteed to be one of the year’s very best. Don’t let yourself be left out. I strongly recommend this book to you, even at full cover price.

Paris Never Leaves You, by Ellen Feldman**-***

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2.5 stars rounded upward. I was invited to read and review this novel by Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press.

World War II fiction is a crowded place, and I have left it, for the most part, having had more than my fill. I am initially interested in this story because it takes place in 1950s New York, and that’s a setting I haven’t seen much. However, this setting alternates with the protagonist’s memories of Paris during the war, and so there I am again, back in Europe during the war.

Charlotte is a young widow, working in a bookstore to make ends meet. Her infant daughter, Vivi, is often with her. A German soldier is drawn to her, and she snubs him repeatedly, but when he brings food and milk for her starving child, she caves. When Vivi becomes sick, he smuggles in medication. Yes, this is one of those I-hate-you-but-I-love-you stories. This isn’t new; I’ve seen plenty of forbidden love stories, especially with regard to German soldiers. I’ve also seen plenty of love-hate romances.

But what strength I see in this one is in the grey areas. Is it all right to fraternize with the soldiers that are responsible for the deaths of loved ones, if those you’re befriended by can save other loved ones, particularly children? Is it all right to let someone think you’re Jewish, once the war is over, if that means they will save you? Is it acceptable to be Jewish, whether inobservant or otherwise, but pretend you are not, if it increases your odds of survival? What if that means taking other Jews prisoner, serving your enemy?

I’ve said this before in other reviews, and I’ll say it again here. It irritates the bejesus out of me, this World War II forbidden-romance storyline that is always, always, always between a Caucasian European, or Euro-American, and a German. Maybe someone has been wildly creative and included an Italian, but I haven’t seen it if they have. What do we never, never see? Ever? Never? (I could go on all night like this, and don’t provoke me or I’ll do it!) We never, ever see a WWII relationship between a Caucasian civilian from an Allied nation and a Japanese soldier. Or civilian. Or anything. It’s almost as if there’s a whispered subtext that insists, “It’s okay. After all, we’re both white, and that’s what really matters.” And authors that are far too progressive, too modern, too civilized to use any of the zillion ugly epithets that were common usage at the time by Allied service people and citizens toward Germans and Italians, nevertheless decide it’s somehow acceptably authentic to use the J word for Japanese. You know the one I mean. And Feldman is a serious offender here.

Because I was having trouble plodding through this story’s text, I visited Seattle Bibliocommons and borrowed the audio version. (Laurie Catherine Winkel does a fine job as the reader.)  I had listened to about seventy percent of this story when Charlotte has a conversation with her landlord, sponsor, etcetera about his own war experience, and boy does he pour it on. I think I must have found the J word on damn near every page, sometimes more than once. I nearly stopped reading, and I nearly gave this book a single star. I fast-forwarded a bit, and when the passage involving this veteran’s way-too-long speech ends, I don’t hear the word again, so I take a deep breath and forge onward to see how it ends.

The ending is bittersweet, and it’s not formulaic.

So there it is. This book is for sale now, but my advice is to either give it a miss, or read it for free or cheap. And if another forbidden WWII white-on-white romance turns up in my inbox, it’s going straight to my round file. Stick a fork in me, cause I am done.

In the Neighborhood of True, by Susan Kaplan Carlton*****

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“Shalom, y’all.”

Ruth Robb was born and raised in New York City, but following her father’s sudden death, she moves with her mother and sisters to Atlanta, where her mother’s family lives. The year is 1958. Almost immediately she is faced with a critical choice: should she quietly avoid mentioning her Jewish roots and allow her peers to make assumptions based on her grandparents’ standing in their Protestant church, or should she risk her newfound popularity with candor? My thanks go to Algonquin Books and Net Galley for inviting me to read and review. This book is for sale now.

The family has barely begun to grieve their loss. Everything is tossed into boxes and they leave New York, soon to be embraced by Ruth’s loving grandparents. Their new home, however, is almost too good to be true:  the house is large and luxurious, with a pool; her grandparents are generous and solicitous; their deep roots in the community make for nearly instant acceptance among the girls’ peers. But Ruth’s grandmother, called “Fontaine” within the family, has plans for Ruth and her younger sister, Nattie. They are enrolled in an elite Christian school, and Ruth is sent to private lessons for a “pre-debutante.” There’s a little pink book that serves as a grooming and etiquette guide, and it is specific and proscribed.

What isn’t in the pink book is the synagogue. Fontaine immediately informs the girls that they are, after all, “Half Christian,” but their mother quickly reminds her mother that she is a convert, and the girls are Jewish, period.

The characters are so resonant and believable that I find myself reflecting on the amount of stress that the girls, Ruth in particular, are experiencing. First, they must leave all of their friends, and the culture in which they’ve been raised, behind; their father is gone forever; and now there’s this tension between their loving grandmother, who provides them with everything, and their mother. This is not a dramatic conflict; but it shimmers under the surface constantly. They are a loving family, and they’re civilized. Yet Ruth is torn. But her nearly instant popularity galvanizes her, and she decides not to decide, by skating around questions of church and religion. After awhile her evasions become deception. Her mother is a discreet but unmovable force, with a sort of Jiminy Cricket demeanor: don’t forget who you are, Ruth. When are you going to tell your friends? What do they think you are doing on the weekend? The ante is upped when Ruth falls in love with Davis, who’s a big man on campus.

Things come to a head when the local synagogue is vandalized.

Carlton’s author blurb says that she had a similar experience, although she wasn’t the teenager, she was the mom. No doubt this is responsible for some of the story’s authenticity, but much of the compelling narrative has to be chalked up to excellent writing. There’s never a stereotype, and I never felt I was being lectured. Instead I am absorbed. What the heck is Ruth going to do? And though I am unfamiliar with Atlanta, there are several times when colloquial expressions that have fallen out of use pop into the story, expressions I recall from my early childhood in the 1960s. But the author never leans on pop cultural references; rather, they drop in naturally. It’s smooth as glass.

Sexual references tend toward the general; there is sex included, but not much detail. I include this information for teachers and parents considering including it in their libraries. If in doubt, read it before you present it to the young people in your life.

Since retiring from teaching language arts to adolescents, I have generally avoided reading young adult novels. I’ve been there and done that. But there’s an exception to everything, and I am glad I was given the chance to read this one. Highly recommended.

When I Was White, by Sarah Valentine****

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Sarah Valentine was raised to believe that she was white, and that her dark complexion was the product of her Greek ancestors. But whereas she does have Greek ancestry in her DNA, Sarah is also of African descent. This strange but compelling, searingly honest memoir came to me courtesy of Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press; it will be available to the public tomorrow, August 6, 2019.

Valentine is an excellent writer, and she spins us back in time to her childhood, spent in a private school, a Catholic upper middle class family, celebrating European cultural events. She is the only African-American or mixed race student at her school, and every now and then, someone there will make a remark that infers she is Black. This puzzles her. Her own mother makes remarks bordering on White Supremacy, assumptions about the habits and character of Black people; of course, none of this should apply to Sarah, in her view, because she insists that Sarah is Greek and Irish, and Irish, and Irish.

Reading of her experiences, I am initially surprised that such culturally clueless, entirely white parents would be permitted to adopt a Black child; but here’s the thing. She isn’t adopted. She is her mother’s biological child, and to talk about who her biological father is, is to recognize that her mother was not always faithful to her father. It’s a keg of dynamite, one that her parents carefully navigate around. Not only have they not spoken about this to Sarah; they have not spoken about it to each other. It is a fiction that holds their marriage together; toss a tablecloth over that keg of TNT there and for goodness sake, don’t bump it.

I came away feeling sorry for her father.

There’s a lot more going on between Sarah and her parents, particularly her mother, a talented but not entirely stable parent who assigns impossible standards to her daughter. Meanwhile, as Sarah grows up and leaves for college, the fiction of her heritage is uncovered, first as a mere suspicion, then later as fact.

This isn’t an easy read or a fun one. It can’t be. Sarah’s pain bleeds through the pages as we see the toxic ingredients and outcomes in her story; her mother’s mental health and her own, as well as eating disorders and the implosion of her parents’ marriage. The particulars of her lifelong struggle make it impossible to draw a larger lesson in terms of civil rights issues; there are some salient points that will speak to women that grew up in the mid-20th century as Sarah’s mother did, and as I did. And here we find one small spark of optimism, the fact that when women are raped, whether at college or elsewhere, we stand a greater chance of being believed than we did in the past. Still, it’s a grim tale overall, and I don’t think there’s any other way Sarah could honestly have told it.

Clover Blue, by Eldonna Edwards*****

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Edwards is the author of This I Know, and here, once again, she creates a powerful story based on a youthful yearning for identity. My thanks go to the author and her publicist for the printed galley, and to Kensington and Net Galley for the digital copy.  It will be available May 28, 2019.

Our setting is a small commune in California in the early 1970s. Our protagonist, Clover Blue, sleeps in a tree house with some of the other commune members. There’s no running water or electricity, but we don’t miss what we don’t have, and California has a mild climate. Though decisions are made collectively, with younger and older residents each having a vote, Goji is the spiritual leader of the group. In place of formal education, young commune members study with him. Blue can read as well as other children his age, and he knows more about nature than most would because it’s part of his everyday experience. He doesn’t remember living anywhere else; his life is happy, and his bonds with his communal family are strong ones.

But everyone wants to know their origins, and Blue is no different. As puberty approaches, he begins to ask questions. He gains the sense that older members know things they won’t tell him, and it heightens his desire to find out. Goji promises him that he will be told when he turns twelve, but his twelfth birthday comes and goes, and still Goji evades his queries.

And so the story darkens just a bit as Blue undertakes research on his own. He has a hunch as to who his biological parents might be, and despite the communal culture that regards every older person as the mother or father of every younger person, he wants the particulars and is determined to get them. The things he learns are unsettling and produce further questions.

A large part of the problem the communal elders face is that the State of California does not recognize the commune, and the living conditions and educational process used there are not legally viable. Because of these things, Goji discourages interaction with the outside world, and sometimes essential services—such as medical care—are given short shrift because of the risks they pose. Instead, naturopathic remedies are used, often to good result.

Edwards builds resonant characters, and I believe Blue, the sometimes-mysterious Goji, and Harmony, the member of the commune that is closest to Blue. There is enough ambiguity within each of them to prevent them from becoming caricatures; everyone holds various qualities within them, none being wholly benign or malevolent. The way that we judge these characters isn’t built upon their ability to do everything well, but in how they deal with their mistakes when they make them. In addition, some writers of historical fiction—which technically this isn’t, but it has that vibe—fall into the trap of establishing time and place through the cheap shortcut of pop cultural references and well known historical events. Edwards doesn’t do that, but she does use the speech of the time period so effectively that at times, I feel transported back to my own adolescence. There are aspects of the period I’d forgotten entirely that surprise and delight me; if there are errors, I don’t see them.

Ultimately, the story takes a turn that harks back (somewhat) to George Orwell’s classic, Animal Farm, in that while everyone at the commune is said to be equal, some are “more equal than others.” Cracks in the foundation of their once-idyllic lives form, and we see who has strength of character, and who is lacking.

If I could change anything, I would make the ending less rushed, and I’d also urge the author to be less afraid of letting the ugly parts play themselves out as they most likely would in real life. In this novel and her last, it seems like the tragic aspects that occur near or at the climax are a hot stove, and we have to move away from them quickly. I’d like to see Edwards let the stove burn a little more.

 I do recommend this book to you. In fact, it may be a five star read, but it’s almost impossible to evaluate it without comparing it to what the author wrote earlier, and this made the five star standard difficult to achieve here. Those that love historical fiction should get it and read it.