The Painting by Charis Cotter

Jan27

Annie and her mother don’t really understand one another. Annie likes to look at picture books and imagine and sketch pictures; she doesn’t care about schoolwork. Her mother believes in facts and lists and academic success.

Claire and her mother don’t see things the same way either. Claire’s mother is an artist, and she loves living in a lighthouse near the ocean in Newfoundland. Claire misses her home in the city, and she wants to pursue her education in a good school back in the city.

Annie and Claire, however, do share some things in common. They’re both about the same age, and they both believe in ghosts.

When Claire and Annie meet, Claire thinks Annie is the ghost of her dead sister, also named Annie. And Annie knows she is not a ghost, but why is she able to enter into an old painting and talk to Claire, a girl who lives in a different time? Does the painting have anything to with Annie’s mom’s car accident and the coma that she is struggling to emerge from?

The Painting is a convoluted, time-slip, mother/daughter ghost story that kept me guessing until the very end. Is one of the two girls a ghost from the past or from the future? Did Claire’s sister, Annie, die in an accident, and was she reincarnated as a present day Annie? Or is Annie’s mom in the hospital really Claire’s mom, too, or Annie-who-died’s mom or only Annie’s mom or what? As long as you’re OK with ghostly time travel and very short chapters that change perspective back and forth from Annie to Claire and back to Annie again, this book is a winner. I didn’t like the quick perspective changes, but I did enjoy the story in spite of them.

If you like this book, there are several other middle grade ghost stories you might want to check out:

The Swallow: A Ghost Story by Charis Cotter.
The Children of Green Knowe by L.M. Boston, and its sequels.
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.
The Court of the Stone Children by Eleanor Cameron.
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co., #1) by Jonathan Stroud, and sequels.
The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage
The Saracen Lamp by Ruth M. Arthur.
Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett.
The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn by Dorothy Hoobler.
Grave Images by Jenny Goebel.
Locked Doors: A Pameroy Mystery in Wisconsin by Brenda Felber. Part of a series of ghostly mystery stories that will eventually include one mystery ghost story set in each of the fifty states. Pameroy Mystery series.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

Jan26

McEwan’s book is about a judge who must decide a case concerning a minor whose Jehovah’s Witness parents don’t want him to have a blood transfusion that could save his life. It’s a book that garnered a lot of notice and a fair amount of praise back in 2014 when it first came out. I’ve been planning to read it for a while, but when I found a copy at Goodwill the other day, I decided to go ahead and do it. It’s only little over 200 pages long, so it’s not that much of a commitment.

The point of view protagonist is Fiona May, a British High Court Judge, almost sixty years old (my age!), and specializing in family law, custody disputes and decisions involving the “best interest or welfare of the child.” Unfortunately, at the same time that she is deciding a controversial case about a seventeen year old, Adam Henry, who is refusing, along with his parents’ approval and consent, a life-saving blood transfusion, Fiona May is also dealing with her husband who asks her permission to have an affair because their marriage has grown stale and sexless.

These two crises are supposed to be related somehow, I think, but really I could only see that they were related because they both were happening at the same time in relation to Fiona. The judge uses the complexities of the Jehovah’s Witness case to escape from her tumultuous thoughts about her broken marriage. And maybe she becomes personally involved in Adam’s life, visiting him in the hospital before making her ruling on the merits of the case, as some kind of demonstration to herself to prove that she is not as cold and passionless as her husband accuses her of being.(?) Otherwise the two plot strands are really separate events, and Fiona is curiously passive in both her relationship with her husband and her relationship with the boy, Adam. And yet, at the same time, as a judge, she plays God and berates herself for not being all-knowing and all-wise enough in her chosen role.

I thought the novel brought up many interesting themes and questions. How is a secular court to decide what is the “best interest” of a child whose parents can’t agree? Especially when religious doctrines and secular philosophies clash, both the religion and “philosophy” are deeply held beliefs, and the court cannot favor one over the other. But, of course, it inevitably does favor one religion over the other (secular) religion because the court, or the people who administer justice, have their own religion, usually secular, and their own values, usually valuing peace and safety and enjoyment in this life over any eternal values that some religions may claim to hold as more important. Thus, Adam’s fidelity to his convictions as a Jehovah’s Witness, a faithfulness which he believes will usher him into eternal life and right standing with God, is not as important as his earthly physical life which is in danger unless he has the blood transfusion.

The book doesn’t really solve the dilemma of competing worldviews and values, but it does give the reader something to think about. The secondary plot having to do with Fiona May’s marriage is less interesting and not so thought provoking.

Race to the Bottom of the Sea by Lindsay Eager

Jan25

Pirates. Sharks. Treasure. A librarian. And a girl genius inventor who’s kidnapped by Merrick the Monstrous so that he can take advantage of her oceanographic skills to find a lost gift—at the bottom of the sea.

Eleven year old Fidelia Quail, daughter of the famous marine biologists, Dr. and Dr. Quail,has been inventing science tools and studying ocean life since she was old enough to walk. Now she has built her own miniature research submarine, the Egg, and Fidelia and her parents are out on the ocean on the last day of the year for tagging sharks before the Undertow comes in and puts an end to ocean research off the coast of their island home, Arborley Island. Little does Fidelia know that her life is about to change with the loss of both of her illustrious parents, a new home with Aunt Julia, the librarian, and worst of all, a kidnapping by Meriick the Monstrous, the most infamous pirate in the world.

I found this story a delight, appealing to shark enthusiasts and to those who love a good pirate story. Oh, and there’s also romance and adventure and a satisfactorily bittersweet ending. The books clocks a hefty 423 pages, but the print is nice and bold and well-spaced. The morals that can be drawn from the story are not deep:
Life is an adventure.
Even evil pirates may not be all bad.
Books can only take you so far.
There is no cure for a black heart.

Still, Race to the Bottom of the Sea is a grand adventure story with a spunky, intelligent protagonist. Ms. Eagar, who lives in landlocked Utah, certainly knows a lot about the ocean and about sharks and about marine life. She says that a teacher had her read Shark Lady by Ann McGovern when she was in grade school and started her on a lifelong obsession with sharks. Be careful what you have your children read; you never know where a book might lead them.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Jan24

At first I thought the author was trying too hard to be relevant, and cool, and “this is how black teenagers live and talk in the ‘hood”. But I kept reading.

And even though some situations and characters were indeed stereotypical and maybe exaggerated, I was completely absorbed in the story and the people in it. And I came to the conclusion that this book provides an important perspective on current events, contemporary racial issues, and violence in our communities. And the author does try to be “fair” by including as supporting characters a black uncle who is a (good) cop and a white boyfriend who tries to understand the perspective of his black sixteen year old girlfriend. The girlfriend, Starr, is the central viewpoint character who sees her best friend, Kahlil, murdered by a white policeman during a routine traffic stop.

From Gina Dalfonzo’s review at Breakpoint:

“Thomas’ realism also means that the book is very heavy on profanity and on damaging, sometimes dangerous behavior. In Starr’s community, people help and care for each other, often to the point of great and admirable sacrifice; but the community also is full of broken families, men who beat their girlfriends and children, fighting, and promiscuity.”

And:

“None of this means that Angie Thomas is telling this story from a secular perspective. Thomas is a churchgoing Christian, and her faith influences her work. Starr often refers to Jesus as ‘Black Jesus’, a cultural construct she was raised with that nonetheless doesn’t seem to change her understanding of who Jesus is. We see her and her family praying together and attending church, her parents teaching her to ‘keep doing right’ no matter what.”

What she said. It’s worth reading and discussing, maybe with your teen, if you can deal with the language and the violence and the open talk about sex and relationships.

Mandala by Pearl S. Buck

Jan23

Oh, my. I have read and enjoyed several novels by Pearl S. Buck, but this 1970 novel set in in India wasn’t one of them. I did read about 4/5 of the story before I skipped to the ending and put myself out of my own misery.

The book presented such a cliched view of India, of Americans, of British, of priests, of men and women, of sex and sexuality. The entire book was hard to read, not because it was philosophically difficult, but because it wasn’t—but tried to be. Prince Jagat, the male protagonist, is a man of the “new India”, full of ideas about how he will fit his life into the changes that have come about since the ending of the British Raj. And yet he expects his wife and his daughter to passively respond to his every whim and demand. And for the most part, they do.

Other cliches and stereotypes include the bluff, good-hearted American Bert Osgood; the mysterious and beautiful American lady Brooke Westley (really, Westley because she’s a Westerner, get it?); the rebellious daughter Veera who eventually gives in with a pout; the ghostlike Moti, Jagat’s wife, who glides about in her traditional sari, drinking tea and mumbling wise proverbs; Father Francis, the priest who has sublimated his sexuality in doing good works among the poor; and of course, beautiful, mysterious, esoteric India itself. Common Indians are “poor but happy”, uneducated, stuck in the past, unwilling to give up customs and religious practices that are damaging to their own well-being, but at the same time essential to their Indian heritage. They are stuck between the past and modernity, and no Westerner can truly fathom the depths of the history and heritage that have made the Indian culture what it is. Ah, it is a mystery.

300+ pages of Eastern mysticism combined with agnosticism, adultery and religious speculation is just too much. The end: “Believing and unbelieving, he gave a great sigh. ‘I do not know,’ he said, and believing and unbelieving, he went his way.”

10 Best Adult Fiction Books I Read in 2017

Jan22

News of the World by Paulette Jiles. It’s a surprise, even to himself, when in Wichita Falls Captain Jefferson Kidd agrees to deliver ten year old Johanna Leonberger to her relatives near Fredericksburg. Johanna has been a captive of the Kiowa for four years, and now the girl has been recovered. But, unfortunately for her, Johanna still believes she is Kiowa, but the Indians don’t want her back and the only choice Johanna has is whether or not to go quietly to her unremembered relatives’ home in German country.

The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge. A lovely novel about enduring suffering and finding one’s place in the world.

Safely Home by Randy Alcorn. American businessman Ben Fielding discovers the truth about the persecuted church in China when he goes to visit his former college roommate, Li Quan.

The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara. A fictionalized history of the American revolution as seen through the eyes of George Washington, Nathaniel Green, Benedict Arnold, the Marquis de Lafayette, British Generals William Howe and Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. Dr. Annick Swenson is working, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, on a fertility drug that will revolutionize the world, if it can be brought to market. The trouble is that Dr. Swenson can’t be bothered to communicate with the pharmaceutical company that is sponsoring her work and that hopes to make a fortune by selling her discovery. The company has already sent one person down to Brazil to find out what’s going on, Anders Eckman. But he’s disappeared, reported dead. Now, they want Dr. Marina Singh, a researcher who worked with Eckman, to go to Brazil, find out exactly what happened to her friend and colleague Anders Eckman, and bring back a firm timetable for the completion of research on the fertility drug.

Frederica by Georgette Heyer. Solid Regency romance with strong characters and witty and slangy repartee. I liked the romantic leads quite a bit, and I even felt sympathy for the ingenue parts, played by Frederica’s sister Charis and her crush.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. World War I veteran Tom Sherburne, returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, a small, isolated island off the coast of western Australia. He marries a local girl, Isabel, and although the marriage is happy, the isolation of the lighthouse leads Isabel to make a fateful decision.

Kindred by Octavia Butler. Dana, a twentieth century black woman, is transported back in time to the early nineteenth century in a slave state where she is forced to decide again and again whether she should do something to save the life of a young white slaveowner, Rufus.

Demelza by Winston Graham. This second book in the Poldark series ends with death, destruction, and loss. From its hope filled beginning with the birth of a child for Ross and Demelza Poldark to the end when all is dark with only a hint of light in the last line of the novel, the story is an engaging look at late 18th century Cornwall and its politics, characters and social customs.

Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham. The third book in the Poldark saga.

Escape From Aleppo by N.H. Senzai

Jan20

The two previous books by N.H. Senzai that I read, Shooting Kabul and Saving Kabul Corner, were both about Afghan immigrants to the United States, and they were both good, informative reads. Escape From Aleppo is set in Syria, mostly in 2013, as the protagonist, Nadia, becomes separated from her family and is caught between government troops, rebel brigades, and ISIS fighters, as she tries to flee to Turkey for safety and to find her family.

The story is a little heavy on the “informative” side, probably necessarily so considering the ignorance of most Americans in regard to Syrian history and politics. Nevertheless, I enjoy learning about history and current events through the medium of fiction, and Escape From Aleppo tells a good tale of life and the struggle for survival in a war-torn country.

Fourteen year old Nadia, even as she is escaping the bombs and snipers of Aleppo, remembers her twelfth birthday, December 17, 2010, which happened to coincide with the beginning of the “Arab Spring” insurrections and demonstrations, all ignited by a young man’s suicide in Tunisia. The civil unrest and rebellion against “authoritarian regimes” moves to Syria in 2011, and to Aleppo where Nadia lives in 2012. All of this history is covered in the book by means of interspersed flashback chapters that interrupt the flow of the narrative about Nadia’s journey to safety at the Turkish border through war-torn Aleppo and through the Syrian countryside. However, I’m not sure how the background information could have been conveyed in any other way, and I did learn a lot about recent Syrian history and government, and a little about more ancient Syrian history.

The story includes some mystery; who is the mysterious old man with the donkey who agrees to help Nadia reach the Turkish border? And there’s quite a bit of suspense and adventure. Of course, since it takes place in the middle of a war, there’s violence and tragedy, but none of the descriptions is too horribly graphic. Nadia is the central and most fully realized character in the book, and readers will identify with her fight to grow up quickly, be brave, and take charge of her life and her journey.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

The Stranger from the Sea by Winston Graham

Jan19

This eighth installment of the Poldark Saga begins with King George III and his final descent into madness in 1810, and it ends with a marriage proposal for one of the Poldarks, refused, in 1811. Ten years have passed since the ending of the seventh book in the series, The Angry Tide. The growing-up years of Ross and Demelza’s children—Clowance, Jeremy, and little Bella—have been largely happy and uneventful. The Ross Poldark family are neither immensely rich nor poor, neither socially active nor reclusive, and finally comfortable and happy. Ross and Demelza are comfortable in their marriage; the enmity between George Warleggan and Ross Poldark has moved into a phase of distant truce, after the death of Elizabeth Warleggan at the end of The Angry Tide. Ross’s tin mine produces an adequate living, but not too much.

George Warleggan continues in this book to be rich, although he nearly loses his fortune in a bad investment decision. Ross Poldark continues to be idealistic and somewhat eccentric. Demelza is still salt of the earth and beautiful and commonsensical, all at the same time. In fact, all of the old characters from the previous seven novels make an appearance, each one playing his part. But the focus has shifted in this book to the younger generation: Ross and Demelza’s children, Valentine Warleggan, Geoffrey Charles Poldark, the progeny of the Sawle villagers, and other turn of the century young adults who are now coming of age and making their own decisions about love, friendship, and business.

Then, there’s the “stranger from the sea”, one Stephen Carrington, rescued from drowning by Jeremy Poldark and friends. It’s a bit odd that the book is named for Stephen Carrington, and I wonder who had the authority to give titles to these books, the author or the publisher? If Mr. Carrington were not the eponymous “stranger” of the title, he would not be nearly so important a character in the book as he seems, given the reference. Stephen Carrington is certainly mysterious throughout the book; I never did know whether to believe a word he said, even though he was a likable, perhaps harmless, liar. But the story is really about Jeremy and Clowance, not Carrington or any one of the other suitors attracted to Clowance, and certainly not either of Jeremy’s erstwhile flames. Jeremy is really more in love with steam engines than with with girls, although he manages to have loved and lost (a girl) by the end of the book.

I find the history woven into these novels—the Napoleonic wars, the madness of King George, the political maneuverings of Whigs and Tories, the Industrial revolution—by Mr. Graham to be fascinating, and the picture Graham draws of a society in the midst of upheaval and change is excellently well done. I recommend all of the Poldark Saga novels that I’ve read so far, and I plan to read the next one, The Miller’s Dance, post-haste in hopes of finding out what will happen to Miss Clowance Poldark and Master Jeremy Poldark as they come into adulthood.

You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins

Jan18

A multigenerational story of a family that combines and stands out with so many common traits and differences that it’s hard to keep up with who resembles whom and who’s going to defy cultural and family expectations and strike in a new direction.

The Das family is Bengali to begin with, immigrants from India/Bangladesh to the United States, via England and Ghana for brief stays in both of the latter places. Over the years in the U.S. the Das girls, Sunny and Starry, find their own connections to their Bengali heritage while forging a new connection to the United States and to its many peoples and varied cultures. And their children, the third generation, also have to negotiate the sometimes delightful and sometimes treacherous decisions that come with upholding tradition and opening oneself up to change at the same time.

I found this book to be both insightful and challenging. I am plain bread white Texan (with maybe a little bit of Native American heritage that’s been mostly lost in the annals of time). I have no cultural heritage except for the culture of white Southern/West Texas country folks. My family never expected me to square dance or two-step or enjoy certain books or music or dress is a certain way. And yet. I understand the pull of family expectations, both the ones I felt from my parents and the ones I have for my own children. I get the difficulties of combining very different families and learning to accept each other’s differences while appreciating the commonalities. Families are a great joy and a great challenge, and this book speaks that truth in a Bengali/American context.

It’s also a great book about growing up, about appreciating your family and their strengths and weaknesses while at the same time working to differentiate yourself from them. Sunny and Starry grow up to be just like their parents, except for the many ways that they are not at all like their parents. And the book also takes socioeconomic differences and challenges and decisions into account as yet another set of intricate cultural influencers that make the characters in the book look at themselves and and others in disparate, sometimes conflicting, ways.

Don’t get the idea that Sunny and Starry and their parents and their children are simply flat, stand-in characters representing Every Immigrant or the “immigrant experience” or AnyTeen who has a journey to make to “find herself”. The people in You Bring the Distant Near are memorable, well-rounded people who make choices that are sometimes surprising and sometimes predictable, always thought-provoking and endearing. Not all of the people in the book make the best decisions, but they are all trying, and as a reader I was rooting for them to succeed in building strong families and strong connections, the same things I want for my own family.