Some were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked, or more or less dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed, or jerseyed. There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers. Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade; heads brown, fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored, heads muttering, whispering, heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated. Something was being done. – from Lord of the Flies, page 13 -

A plane crashes on a deserted island, leaving in its wake children – the only survivors. These children are British school boys, civilized kids with manners and well-versed in respect for authority. There are very small children – the “littluns” who don’t seem to understand the enormity of what has happened. And there are older kids, boys who quickly recognize the need for a leader, a chief of sorts. A new society is forming, and before long survival demands a return to one’s baser instincts.

Lord of the Flies is a classic. Penned in 1954 by Nobel Laureate William Golding, it is a novel which asks deep moral questions and examines what happens when the civilized world is stripped away and individuals are left to create their own society.

Two main characters emerge early on. Ralph is a sandy-haired boy who is quickly chosen to be the “chief” and who focuses on building shelter and maintaining a fire to attract rescue. He holds “assemblies,” where participants are called to participate with a blow from a conch and are designed to maintain order. Jack is a charismatic boy, the leader of a choir of boys, who quickly establishes himself as the hunter, tracking down the wild pigs on the island with a sharpened stick as a spear. Before long, Jack and Ralph are in a competition for leadership with Ralph being the voice of reason, and Jack appealing to the more savage aspects of the boys’ personalities.

Another character, Piggy, emerges as the philosopher and the scapegoat. Piggy is obese, bespectacled, afflicted with asthma, and a bit of a know-it-all. Despite his wisdom (or maybe because of it), he is bullied.

There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor. – from Lord of the Flies, page 60 -

There is also a fourth character, Simon, who plays an important role in the novel. Simon is a loner, but he is also reasonable and practical and gifted with an insight which the others lack. When talk of a beast begins, it is Simon who refuses to acknowledge a physical beast and instead recognizes that the beast is the fear within them.

These four characters – Jack, Ralph, Simon and Piggy – take center stage in a novel about the disintegration of morals and the descent into savagery.

I first read this novel in high school…and my memory of it is inexact. Of course, I remembered Piggy for his victimization, but in terms of theme, my memory was lacking. During this re-read, the story returned to me and I found it so much more compelling from my adult point of view. Classic literature is defined as something which stands the test of time…and there is no doubt that The Lord of the Flies meets that definition with its memorable characters, shocking twists of plot and ruminations on what it means to be human. Written in the 1950s, it could easily have been penned today.

Lord of the Flies is a novel which will generate great discussion in book groups and in the classroom. It is not an “enjoyable” read, and yet it is an engaging one. There is a good deal of violence in this slim book and I found myself anxious as the plot unfurls and it becomes obvious that things are going very, very wrong.

This is a classic, dysptopian-type novel about good vs. evil, but it also forces the reader to look within and to examine his or her role as part of a larger society.

Highly recommended.

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You take your fragile secret out of the darkness and expose it to the light. You lay it on the ground, where anyone can tread on it. - from The Invisible Ones -

Ray is a private detective who is working through his own personal demons after separating from his wife. He doesn’t like missing person cases so it is with some reluctance that he listens to a Romany man tell him about his missing daughter, a girl gone six years now. Despite his reticence, Ray finds himself pulled into the case and promising to find out what happened to Rose Janko all those years ago after she wed a Gypsy named Ivo.

JJ is Ivo’s nephew, a fourteen year old boy without a father who has grown curious about his family’s secrets. He loves his cousin Christo, Ivo’s son, who is suffering from a mysterious family disease. JJ wants nothing more than to find a cure for Christo and uncover the identity of the father he has never met.

As Ray and JJ get closer to understanding what is hidden beneath the surface of the Janko family, things get more dangerous, and what appears to be the truth ends up being something entirely different from what they expect.

Set in Northern England in the mid-1980s, Stef Penney’s second novel takes the reader on a convoluted journey to uncover a mystery. Rich in detail about the nomadic life of the Romany people, The Invisible Ones is an intriguing and well-written book. There are two narrative threads which intertwine. JJ’s point of view is that of an insider, while Ray (although part-Gypsy himself) is clearly viewed as an outsider. In large part, the novel deals with the idea of identity and how the cultural, familial, and individual roles we play come together to form the complete person.

Strange, isn’t it, how you can think of yourself as one thing for ninety-five percent of your waking life, and then an encounter with something or someone jerks you into remembering you’re something else, that other five percent that’s always been there, but slumbering, keeping its head down. – from The Invisible Ones -

Penney has a way of constructing her novels to provide tension. This novel had me guessing right up until the end when Penney inserts a twist I did not see coming. Despite some moments of implausibility, the plot of this novel held up in the end.

Readers who enjoy suspense mysteries embedded in family sagas will enjoy The Invisible Ones.

Recommended.

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All of us, every one of us, has had a moment when a window opened, when we caught a glimpse of the open, sunlit world beyond, but all of us, on this bus, have had that window close and remain closed. – from Translator Translated -

The Artist of Disappearance is a collection of novellas which are all set in India and have the similar themes of identity, searching for meaning in one’s life and how place can define who we become.

The Museum of Final Journeys, the first novella in the book, introduces the idea that memory is fragile and unreliable. Another theme in the story is the delicate balance of the natural world in a modernized society. In this story, a young man arrives in a dusty, desolate town where he has been posted to complete his training for a government position. He laments the long, dull days and the slovenly conditions of his new home. Then, one afternoon, a clerk arrives to make an appeal – he is the curator of sorts of an unusual museum but he can no longer afford to keep it running and wishes for the government to take it over. Intrigued, the narrator agrees to visit the museum. What he finds is astonishing and surprising – a treasure trove of objects, the unusual story of a family, and a creature whose life depends on the benevolence of her caretakers. Years later, his memory of the event is fragmented and frail like a mirage – perhaps as a way to resolve the guilt he feels for his lack of action.

The second story in the collection, Translator Translated, centers around Prema, an Indian woman who unexpectedly runs into an old high school friend and gets the opportunity to realize her dream of translating fiction. In this novella, Desai explores the different cultures of India and the loss of little known languages, as well as the role language plays in our identity. Prema loves the language of Oriya which is her mother’s tongue, but it is a language which very few people speak or understand. When Prema begins translating a book from Oriya into English she finds herself struggling to connect the two halves of her own life which includes the inter-caste marriage of her parents. As Prema works, she finds it harder and harder to be faithful in her translation of the author’s work.

Wasn’t this what the Impressionist painters had done in those early adventurous days, breaking up flat surfaces to refract light into many scattered molecules, and so reconstruct the surface and make it stir to life? – from Translator Translated -

As the novella unfolds, Prema becomes more lost to herself as she converts her mother tongue into the colonial language of English. Translator Translated is a beautiful meditation on the loss of culture and identity in a modern world.

The final story of this collection is, perhaps, my favorite. The Artist of Disappearance centers around Ravi, an odd man who is isolated from society and lives in the burned out shell of his family’s home. Ravi has always been different from others. He is especially connected to nature.

Outdoors was the life to which he chose to belong – the life of the crickets springing out of the grass, the birds wheeling hundreds of feet below in the valley or soaring upwards above the mountains, and the animals invisible in the undergrowth, giving themselves away by an occasional rustle or eruption of cries or flurried calls; plants following their own green compulsions and purposes, almost imperceptibly, and the rocks and stones, seemingly inert but mysteriously part of the constant change and movement of the earth. – from The Artist of Disappearance -

Ravi’s story is about nurturing that part of ourselves which is connected to the earth. In the towns around Ravi’s home, bulldozers are destroying the land and mining has stripped the earth of living creatures. But, high in the mountains, Ravi constructs a beautiful glade made from stones and trees, flowers and berries. Ravi is completely disconnected from society while being wholly connected to the physical space he calls home.

As a whole, Desai’s collection is nearly dreamlike in quality. Her characters have unfulfilled dreams and are disillusioned with their lives. Each character is presented with opportunities to enrich themselves and then find they stumble because of their human imperfection.

Anita Desai writes beautifully. She captures the beauty of India, but also does not hesitate to reveal its faults and complexities. I thoroughly enjoyed this slim volume of stories whose characters struggle and search for meaning in their lives.

Highly recommended for readers who love literary fiction.

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FTC Disclosure: I received this book through Library Thing’s Early Reviewer program.

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Even after all these years, the injustice still stuns. Innocent boys sentenced to die, not for a crime they did not commit, but for a crime that never occurred. Lives splintered as casually as wood being hacked for kindling. Young manhood ground to ashes. – from Scottsboro, page 1 -

Ellen Feldman’s novel Scottsboro is based on the trial of the Scottsboro boys where nine black youths were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in March of 1931. Eight of the nine were initially found guilty and sentenced to death. The case was later heard by the United States Supreme Court in 1937, and although the lives of the nine were saved, it was almost twenty years before the last defendant was freed from prison. The case has historical significance because for the first time, a mass movement of blacks and whites (led by Communists and radicals) was successfully able to beat the Jim Crow legal system.

Feldman’s fictional retelling of the story introduces the reader to a female journalist named Alice Whittier who gets assigned the story and travels from New York City to Alabama to interview the two women who made the accusation of rape: Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. Both women come from poverty and have been forced to prostitute themselves to survive. Alice feels some empathy towards Ruby, a woman who appears to feel conflicted about the lies she has told. During the actual case, Ruby testified against the boys in the first trial, then later reversed her testimony in the subsequent trials.

The novel unfolds primarily through the voice of Alice, although Feldman also gives Ruby a chance to narrate the story in some chapters. I found Ruby’s voice the more compelling of the two. She is uneducated and highly prejudiced, and yet she seems to have a social conscience. Her extreme poverty and ignorance drive her motivations early in the book. She later becomes a sympathetic character when she tries to do the right thing.

“Ruby Bates would have broken your heart,” I said. “When you see what her life has been like, you can understand why she did what she did. All she’s known is poverty and misery and deprivation.” – From Scottsboro, page 137 -

I expected to really love this novel and instead I found it oddly lacking. Perhaps it was my inability to connect with the primary narrator. Alice reveals little of herself and feels a bit cardboard as a character. At times I felt Feldman was using Alice more as a literary device to tell history, rather than a fully developed character with conflicts of her own. There were times I wished Feldman had chosen to eliminate Alice altogether and instead tell the story from the opposing points of view of Ruby and one or more of the boys.

Because this is an historical case and the outcome is known, I believe Feldman needed to give the reader something surprising or compelling to enliven the plot. Instead, I found the novel lacked adequate tension in order to keep me satisfied and involved in the lives of the characters.

Scottsboro explores the themes of racism, antisemitism, feminism and social justice. Readers who are familiar with the Scottsboro case will not find much new information within Feldman’s novel. The research is thorough and Feldman does an admirable job of laying out the case – but often the novel feels like a piece of non fiction rather than a work of fiction.

Scottsboro was short listed for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.

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FTC Disclosure: I received this book through Library Thing’s Early Review Program.

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Opium is like the wind or the tides: it is outside my power to affect its course. A man is neither good nor evil because he sails his ship upon the wind. It is his conduct towards those around him – his friends, his family, his servants – by which he must be judged. – from River of Smoke, page 166 -

A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal threatens the Ibis and its crew and passengers, and tosses crates of opium about the hold of the Anahita. Another ship, the Redruth, carries Fitcher Penrose, a horticulturist, and his plants – beautiful specimens which Penrose hopes to trade for plants in China. As these ships converge on the south coast of China, their passengers will connect in surprising and unusual ways. Hovering above it all is the smoke of opium and the smell of money, two things which will elevate tensions and ignite the beginning of the Opium Wars.

Amitav Ghosh’s second novel in the Ibis Trilogy begins with a familiar character, Deeti, who is making her home on Mauritius. Years have passed since her fateful trip on the Ibis and she is imparting her stories to a new generation. So it is Deeti’s voice which reverberates through River of Smoke as the reader uncovers the destiny of the characters from Sea of Poppies.

Ghosh re-introduces many characters from the first book including Deeti, Neel, Paulette, and Ah Fatt. But he also brings to life several new characters both fictional and historical. Bahram, a Bengal opium trader, takes center stage as his ship, the Anahita, is threatened by the cyclone. Despite losing a huge amount of his precious opium in the storm, Bahram still retains enough of his merchandise to make him a rich man…except that the Emperor of China has decided it is time to stop the influx of opium into his country. As Bahram and the other wealthy traders arrive in Canton, their ships remain anchored in the waters surrounding the south coast of China with their bilges full of opium and no way to sell it. Bahram is a strangely sympathetic character despite his immoral choice of career.

It was evident too that Ah Fatt had been right to describe Bahram as a man who was widely liked, even loved. From his employees he commanded an almost fanatical loyalty not only because he was a generous paymaster and fair in his dealings, but also because there was something in his manner that conveyed to them that he did not consider himself to be above, or better, than anyone on his staff. It was as if they knew that despite his wealth and his love of luxury, the Seth remained at heart a village boy, reared in poverty: his irritability was regarded as more endearing than offensive, and his occasional outbursts and dumbcowings were treated like vagaries of the weather and were never taken personally. – from River of Smoke, page 211 -

Bahram represents the Indian people and the shame associated with the production of opium. The largest grower of opium, India’s society and people were also devastated by the drug during the nineteenth century. Many citizens of India turned to the production and trade of opium under British colonial rule as a way to survive in their poor economy. In River of Smoke, Bahram struggles with this moral dilemma.

It was because you knew that almost all the ‘black mud’ that came to Canton was shipped from your own shores; and you knew also that even though your share of the riches that grew upon that mud was minuscule, that did not prevent the stench of it from clinging more closely to you than to any other kind of Alien. – from River of Smoke, page 182 -

Ghosh deftly controls the narrative, weaving individual stories through the larger drama of the historical events. By the 1830s, China’s economy and society were being destroyed by the opium trade and a decision was made to halt the trade at whatever cost. Lin Zexu, a Chinese scholar and official, was dispatched to Canton to stop the trafficking of the drug in 1839. His decision to hold British traders hostage until they agreed to turn over their opium to the Chinese government, was the first spark in the Opium Wars. Money and greed, along with a disrespect of China’s laws made foreigners belligerent and resistant to giving up their trade in opium. British warships descended on China in an effort to continue smuggling the drug into the country. Ghosh’s novel is set during this turbulent time and examines the immorality and devastation of the opium trade through the eyes of the traders, the politicians, and the common man.

There is also a parallel story within the novel – that of Paulette, a Frenchwoman who has escaped the Ibis, and Fitcher Penrose, an English horticulturist. Paulette and Fitcher’s tale brings a different perspective to the novel. It is this narrative which shows the reader the beauty of the Chinese landscape with its brilliant flora. Their trade is in the delicate petals of flowers, and the allure of fragrant plants. Paulette’s flamboyant and hilarious friend, Robin, is an artist and their informant in Canton as they seek an elusive flower of unusual elegance.

Amitav Ghosh has written a sweeping historical saga which builds upon the previous book in the trilogy. Despite its huge cast of characters, the novel is quite accessible. Once again, Ghosh intersperses pigeon English, slang and unusual language throughout the story – a technique that at times is a bit confusing and may appear off-putting to some readers, although it did not bother me. My only complaint with the book was that the pace was sometimes slow. In comparing this novel with Sea of Poppies, I slightly preferred the first book of the trilogy.

That said, River of Smoke is a brilliant work of fiction and one which I thoroughly enjoyed. Readers who love historical fiction and are interested in the late nineteenth century in China will find themselves immersed in a culture and time in history which is endlessly fascinating.

Highly recommended.

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Readers who love this series may be interested to know that there are plans for a major motion picture.

FTC Disclosure: I purchased this book.

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more. – from We The Animals, page 1 -

Three young boys – brothers – grow up in a house of violence and passion. Their stomachs often ache with hunger. They throw their anger out into the world, then cling to each other while their parents fight and separate and come back together again.  Their father, Paps, is a man of Puerto Rican heritage who wants his boys to understand where they come from; while the brothers try to see themselves as part of their father, but different from him, too.

“This is your heritage,” he said, as if from this dance we could know about his own childhood, about the flavor and grit of tenement buildings in Spanish Harlem, and projects in Red Hook, and dance halls, and city parks, and about his own Paps, how he beat him, how he taught him to dance, as if we could hear Spanish in his movements, as if Puerto Rico was a man in a bathrobe, grabbing another beer from the fridge and raising it to drink, his head back, still dancing, still stepping and snapping perfectly in time. – from We The Animals, page 10 -

Ma fights depression and takes to her bed, forgetting to care for her children or pay attention to them. Locked in a cycle of abuse, she seems powerless to change the course of her life, much less the lives of her kids.

She stopped sleeping in her bed and took to the couch instead, or the floor, or sometimes she slept at the kitchen table, with her head in one arm and the other arm dangling down toward the linoleum, where little heaps of cigarette butts and empty packs and ash piled up around her. – from We The Animals, page 30 -

Narrated in the sensitive and observant voice of the youngest brother, We The Animals is a powerful and disquieting novella about family, love, poverty, domestic violence and the quest to find one’s way within the world. Justin Torres writes with compassion and uses poetic language to capture the day to day challenges that face his characters. Often dark and sad, the novella draws the reader into the bleak world of this family with its captivating prose.

During one poignant scene, the boys are being bathed by their father. As they splash and pretend to navigate “boats” through the shallow waters of their bath, the dark threat of violence is never far away.

After dinner he led us all to the bathtub, no bubbles, just six inches of gray water and our bare butts, our knees and elbows, and our three little dicks. Paps scrubbed us rough with a soapy washcloth. He dug his fingernails into our scalp as he washed our hair and warned us that if the shampoo got into our eyes, it was our own fault for squirming. We made moterboat voices, navigating bits of Styrofoam around toothpicks and plastic milk-cap islands, and we tried to be brave when he grabbed us; we tried not to flinch. – from We the Animals, page 44 -

It was moments like these where my heart felt like breaking for these children – for all children who find themselves in homes like this, desperate for the love of their parents, frightened by the violence they do not understand, growing up in a world where fear and poverty and addiction are a daily occurrence.

As the story unfurls, it becomes apparent that this is a novella about individual identity. How are we formed? Do our families define who we become? Can we tear away from our heritage and our upbringing and find our own unique place in the world?

I was completely engrossed in this book. I read it in less than a day, then set it aside and lived with the words for nearly a week before being able to sort out my feelings for it. This is not the kind of story that is enjoyable. It is difficult, sad, and heartbreaking. It is the kind of book which is hard to forget. I found myself waking up in the morning and thinking about the characters, my heart compressing with empathy for them. Any author who is able to touch a reader this deeply is gifted.

Readers who wish to be transported by original and lyrical prose and those who love literary fiction, will want to experience Justin Torres’ writing for themselves. Sharp, emotional, and darkly compelling, We the Animals is a brilliant first novel.

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Love, she thought. What a tangle. And she danced a few steps at being alone in the quiet street. The branch of a tree reached over a wall above a lamp-post, its leaves still young and fresh, a brilliant theatrical green in the artificial light. Between the lamp-posts the sky reappeared, a deep purple-blue where the moon was suspended straight overhead, but rusty pink with London’s glow where it came down at the end of the street to outline the roofs. She need not go home. She could decide to walk all night, make for the river or Hampstead Heath, because she was not tired and her shoes were comfortable in spite of their heels.  – from An Island -

Diana Athill will celebrate her 94th birthday tomorrow (December 21). Athill retired at the age of 75 after fifty years in publishing, and then went on to write a series of memoirs, one of which (Somewhere Towards The End) won her the 2009 Costa Book Award. She has also written a novel and many short stories. She is one of the most iconic figures in publishing (her response to V.S. Naipaul’s ridiculous comment about women only writing “tosh” was brilliant). Athill’s sharp wit and keen observations inform her latest collection of short stories: Midsummer Night in the Workhouse.

The stories in this collection are connected thematically and revolve around women (mostly young women finding or losing love). In No Laughing Matter, a young woman experiences first love and faces the wrenching decision about whether or not she will lose her virginity. The Real Thing introduces the reader to a woman in her first year of University who is enthralled by her first kiss even though it lacks the passion she had expected.

I stood quite still while Toofat was kissing me – it didn’t take long – and I was doing a lot of things all at once: thinking ‘This is me, being kissed’; remembering Thomas Hardy; noticing the tree with the lights and the green grass outside the windows; listening to the music from the house; smelling the honeysuckle; thinking that I must fix every bit of it in my mind for ever. – from The Real Thing -

Love for the women in Athill’s stories is not always unencumbered – they consider cheating on their spouses, they have one night stands, they get drunk and dream of a life unattached to their husband. One woman has a week long affair and then is haunted by the possibilities for years afterwards as she plods through her predictable marriage. Another woman leaves her husband at a party and walks home alone and drunk – along the way, she appreciates the beauty of a wine glass and the moon in the sky and hopes to remember the feeling of being utterly alone in the world.

I must remember, I must remember how beautiful it is, because now I can see it. It is so still, and the grass has just been cut, and the leaves are being blown, they are just settling together, sometimes, on the air, and the wine glass is standing on the railing, and I am alone. I am me, under the moon, on a summer night, alone. – from An Island -

Perhaps my favorite of the collection is the title story, Midsummer Night in the Workhouse, where a writer finds herself at a luxurious retreat battling writer’s block and a charming author whose work is perhaps just ordinary. Cecilia reflects on the other writers at the retreat, and is distracted by Charles Opie, a man whose wife has divorced him because of an affair and who has enjoyed an element of fame associated with his writing. In this story, the sexual tension is played out against the backdrop of a woman’s struggle with her career, self-doubt, and the difficulty of finding inspiration within her life.

The horror in wait at Hetherston, nearest in her room but present everywhere, even after dinner when she talked with the others or pub-crawled with Philip, came from the knowledge of how closely her work connected with her own experience and dread that everything of significance in that experience might have been used up. – from Midsummer Night in the Workhouse -

Athill’s writing is fluid, simple, perceptive and sometimes funny. She is able to capture the internal conflict of her characters with ease, uncovering their insecurities, dreams, joy and despair. I thoroughly enjoyed this delightful collection of stories, slipping into the lives of women who could define a generation. There was a time when a woman was supposed to be proper, not take risks, focus on family instead of career, and be the dutiful wife. Athill’s prose reveals the hidden desires and adventurous spirits of woman who came of age in that era.

Readers who want to be transported by an author who has established herself as one of the best writers of the late twentieth century, will be well rewarded by picking up a copy of Diana Athill’s collection of short stories.

Highly recommended.

FTC Disclosure: The publisher provided me with this book for review on my blog.

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I didn’t want to be dogless ever again. Life just felt right with a dog in it. Not to have one would be all wrong. – from The Puppy That Came For Christmas -

Megan Rix and her husband, Ian, were struggling to conceive a baby, when they unexpectedly connected with Helper Dogs – an organization which trains dogs to be placed in homes to assist persons with disability. They never dreamed that deciding to become puppy parents to a Helper Dog puppy in training would change their lives…but it did. Neither Megan nor Ian had much experience with dogs, so when Emma (a sweet golden retriever puppy) arrived at their home, they did not know what to expect. Showering Emma with love and toys, the couple soon fell in love with their new puppy. When the day came to give Emma up so she could continue her advanced training and be placed with a person who needed her, Megan and Ian were devastated. Quickly they accepted a new foster puppy named Freddy, once again putting their hearts at risk. When Freddy also left them to advance in the Helper Dog program, Megan and Ian decided it was time that they found a puppy who would stay with them forever.

In The Puppy That Came For Christmas, Rix relates the joy, the heartbreak, and the rewards of fostering puppies to help those in need. Intertwined in the story of becoming a puppy parent is the grief and frustration of infertility. Rix shares her sustained efforts to become pregnant – the fertility drugs, the pain at seeing those around her conceive while she remains infertile, and the toll that infertility takes on a woman and her partner. In a book about love, loss, and healing, Rix’s memoir reveals the power of a dog’s unconditional love to alleviate even the deepest emotional pain.

My only complaint with the book,which I admit is a personal one, was Rix’s tendency to propagate the stereotype of the German Shepherd breed as aggressive and scary. She mentions the breed several times, always in a negative light. Having owned several German Shepherds in my life, I know they are loyal, intelligent, highly trainable, and very lovable…even with small puppies and children. Any dog, regardless of breed, has the potential for aggression (in fact, my German Shepherd pup experienced an unprovoked attack by a lab mix which left her with a deep puncture wound to the face and nearly cost her the vision in her eye when she was only six months old). In a book which shows just why dogs are so special, I was dismayed that Rix chose to perpetuate a myth about a specific breed.

Rix does tell the reader that she knew little about dogs when she stepped into her role as puppy parent, so I can forgive her gaff when it comes to the German Shepherd breed…especially because the rest of the book is a heartwarming portrayal of the importance of dogs in our lives.

Readers who love dogs or who have ever considering fostering dogs, will find much to enjoy in Rix’s poignant memoir.

FTC Disclosure: The publisher provided me with this book for review on my blog.

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Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. – from The Night Circus, page 381 -

“The circus arrives without warning.” This is the first sentence of Erin Morgenstern’s enchanting debut novel, The Night Circus. It sets the tone for a story of magic, love, and imagination. Celia arrives at her father’s home unexpectedly as a young child in the late nineteenth century, and is immediately put into training to become an illusionist. Her father is himself one of the most renowned illusionists in the world, but he is also a dark and menacing man with a penchant for cruelty. One day a mysterious man in a gray suit arrives and a deal is struck – there will be a competition between Celia and a player of the man’s choice, a game of sorts which will leave one person left standing.

Marco is a young boy, an orphan, but he seems to have what it takes to learn the art of illusion, and he becomes Celia’s opponent. Both Celia and Marco are unaware of each other as they are drawn into a circus like no other. The circus travels the world, suddenly appearing and opening its doors from dusk to dawn with its striped tents and unusual and remarkable acts which include fabulous illusions, a contortionist with a mysterious past, and red-headed twins who can see the past and the future. The circus delights those who visit it and attracts a group of people obsessed with following it around the world. As the game unfolds and the players become more defined, Marco and Celia discover something even more magical than the illusions they have been trained to create: love.

The Night Circus is a feast for the senses, conjuring up beautiful scenes and luscious scents. It twists and turns and leaves the reader wondering what is real and what is illusion? Morgenstern shifts the narrative back and forth in time, a technique which adds to the unsettled feel of the novel. I will admit that this time shifting felt confusing to me at first. But eventually, I stopped paying attention to the dates, and simply allowed the story to sweep me forward…and it was when I did this that the novel captured me.

The Night Circus is a wonderful feat of storytelling. It is perhaps this idea of story which resonated the most with me. Stories transport us to places we can only imagine. They have the power to move us emotionally. Sometimes they open a door to a place within us that we had not known existed. And that is what The Night Circus is all about. Morgenstern describes all her stories as being “fairy tales in one way or the other,” and I think that is an apt description of this novel. There is evil versus good, magic, enchantment, and a slip away from reality which is mesmerizing.

As I read this novel, I began to envision Morgenstern’s world of a mysterious circus. This novel would make a tremendous movie.

The book is not without its faults – a lack of depth to the characters, a confusing time shift in the narrative, a plot which is sometimes hard to grasp…but despite these faults, I found myself loving The Night Circus for its originality, allure and spellbinding imagery.

Morgenstern is a young writer with a unique and talented voice. I will be looking forward to her future work with great anticipation. Readers who love the thrall of a story, who wish to be swept up in a world of magic and illusion, and who delight in novels where imagery takes center stage, will want to pick up a copy of this book.

Highly recommended.

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FTC Disclosure: I purchased this book.

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Exile is threaded into your daily life long after you have become a citizen and pledged your allegiance and can make the best brownies in the neighborhood. I was compelled to make sense of my parents’ journey from Iran to America to understand the world they inhabited. Just five years shy of my mother’s age when she immigrated, I have to wonder if I possess a fraction of her will to start over at square one. Now that her tablecloth has been folded for the last time, the recipes are my only key to unlocking my parents’ experience as immigrants, looking back to see into their lives as I move forward into mine. It turns out, I don’t need to forget to move on. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 6 -

Donia Bijan’s book is part memoir and part cookbook, a heartfelt examination of how our mothers and the love they serve up with our favorite foods become the inspiration for our lives. Bijan’s family fled Iran during the Revolution of the 1970s when Bijan was a teenager. Forced to leave behind everything, they began a new life in the United States. Bijan’s father was a renowned doctor who had opened a hospital in the heart of Tehran, while her mother was a talented nurse who later became a voice for Iranian women as an activist for women’s rights. When the Shah was overthrown, Bijan’s mother became a target for the new Khomeini regime.

My mother took on any establishment that did not give women a voice, and that was essentially every institution. If her drive had not coincided with that of a monarch who wished to modernize Iran rapidly, she most certainly would have been chided and silenced. But instead, she found the support and the blessings of Queen Farah. My mother found that she had a knack for politics and diplomacy, and soon she was on the boards of various organizations, fighting for women’s rights, becoming the director of Tehran’s first nursing school. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 73 -

Maman’s Homesick Pie takes the reader from those earliest days of exile through the death of Bijan’s parents many years later, telling the story of Donia Bijan as she grew into a young woman enthralled with food and searching for her cultural identity. Bijan attended the Cordon Bleu in Paris despite her father’s disappointment that she would not pursue a career in medicine. Her mother’s support and the inner strength which she instilled in her daughter, were the motivation Bijan relied on to pursue her culinary dreams.

She believed a parent’s job was to provide love and security without staking any claims on a child’s future, that children owned their dreams, their mishaps, their triumphs, and their failures. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 98 -

Later, after internships in France and working in a number of renowned restaurants in San Francisco, Bijan achieved her life’s goal of opening a French-inspired restaurant, L’Amie Donia, in Palo Alto.

Interspersed through Bijan’s memoir are wonderful recipes, some belonging to her mother, others those which she adapted as her own. Some of these are ones I will most certainly try myself: Orange Cardamom Cookies, Braised Chicken with Persian Plums, Potato Waffles with Creme Fraiche, and My Mother’s Apple Pie.

The book is filled with exquisite details of France, and mouth-watering descriptions of food. Bijan writes beautifully, capturing the nuances of what it is like to grow up in a foreign country while struggling to define one’s cultural identity. Her memories of her parents are often bittersweet, and her longing to memorialize her mother is evident.

When feelings well up from the past, a longing for a voice, a place, I reach for the manila envelope that holds her recipes. If I knew how to sew, perhaps I’d look through her sewing basket for the measuring tape, the velvet pincushion I bought her in Chinatown one Christmas, the buttons in the cookie tin. But I’m a cook, so I look at her recipes. – from Maman’s Homesick Pie, page 235 -

I enjoyed this earnest memoir with its peek inside a family who was forced to flee their homeland. Readers who enjoy the genre of memoir and who love food and cooking, will find much to appreciate in Bijan’s book.

Recommended.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher as part of BOOK CLUB and for review on my blog. Discussion of this book will take place on December 13, 2011 on Linus’s Blanket.

Readers wishing to purchase this book from an Indie Bookstore may click on the book link below to find Indie sellers. As an Indiebound Associate, I receive a small commission if readers purchase a book through this link on my blog.

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