The Bandit Queens

When I picked up Parini Shroff's debut novel The Bandit Queens (#1,298) I thought I was getting an Arabian Nights sort of fantasy/adventure, especially because of the striking cover art.  What I got instead was a novel of contemporary India which deals with the strength and importance of female bonds of friendship.

Set in a small rural village, Geeta is a pariah.  Everyone is convinced that she killed her husband when he disappeared five years ago.  So when a member of their five-person female microloan group defaults on her payment, the rest of the group decides that Geeta will supply the missing money.  Instead of being grateful, the woman she bailed out blackmails Geeta into killing her unwanted husband.  Once the word gets out, everyone wants in on the action...

It's a very black comedy where social norms, caste, money, religion and sex all play a role in rendering women powerless.  Geeta tries to change things by emulating the real-life heroine, the Bandit Queen.  Maybe by working together her microloan group can change things for the better for themselves and their village.

It was hard to read about the everyday lives most Indian women still lead, with its dire poverty and disregard for women other than as sex objects or breeding stock.  Still, if you don't know about these things, there's no hope of ever changing them.  The Bandit Queens is a real eye-opener.

The Twilight Garden

I've been holding onto Sara Nisha Adams' second novel The Twilight Garden (#1,297) as a treat to read at the right time.  I absolutely loved her debut novel The Reading List even the second time I read it.  Alas, I was disappointed this time around.  I'm sure The Twilight Garden will find its readers; it just won't include me.

This novel about a badly neglected London garden shared by two townhouses switches timelines between two neighbors who shared the garden forty years ago and turned it into a community asset, and the feuding present-day tenants goaded into action by a series of photos of the garden in its glory dropped through their letter boxes.  If you're a gardening fan, I'm sure you'll relate.  Since I'm not, I couldn't see the attraction of digging into the dirt and planting things constantly destroyed by foxes.

But the real story here is about the characters, all of whom have more than their share of problems and issues.  Frankly, I had to force myself to read all the way through to the end, hoping that things surely had to get better for one or the other of them.  By the end of the book, it sort of came together with a whimper rather than a bang.  There are plenty of books out there that I knew if I read them would make me feel depressed.  I didn't expect that of The Twilight Garden.

On a positive note, I really did like the cover art.  It's enough to make you want to read the book.  You'll have to decide that for yourself.

The Housemaid

Everybody talks about Freida McFadden's books at my book club, but until I found The Housemaid (#1,296) in my book bag recently I never had myself.  (I swear I don't know how it got there, but it's obviously fate that I read it!)  Okay, not really my choice of reading material, but now I understand how Ms. McFadden wound up on the top of the Best Sellers' List and has stayed there.

It really is a page-turner with plot twists I didn't see coming, right up to the very last page.  The author successfully plays with your mind while you read it.

I really don't want to say anything more about the book for fear of spoiling it for you if you've one of the few other people who haven't read it yet but be prepared to give up on doing just about anything else while you read it!

The In-Between Bookstore

I picked up this book at the last minute from a book club meeting because I saw the words "time travel" on the cover blurb, but when I saw that the main character was trans, I put The In-Between Bookstore (#1,295) back in my bag to take back to my next meeting.  Then I got a recommendation from my local library for this coming-of-age novel by Edward Underhill, and I decided to give the book a second chance.  I'm glad I did.

Darby is not having a great day.  The start-up company he works for in New York City has just failed, his landlord has just raised his rent on his studio apartment to an amount he couldn't afford even with his job, and he has to meet his friends for a birthday party at an unknown trendy bar.  It's enough to make him think about moving back home to Oak Falls, Illinois, just until he can get things sorted out.  He has an excuse - his mother has sold his childhood home, and he tells his friends he's going back home to help her move.  But in his heart Darby is at a crossroads; he doesn't know if he'll ever come back to his chosen family here in New York.

Back in Oak Falls, Darby is drawn back to The In-Between Bookstore, where he worked in high school.  When he walks into the store, it's all exactly as he remembered it - including his younger female self working behind the register.  Bumping into Michael Weaver, his best friend growing up on the street outside, Darby is forced to confront issues which he's never really resolved about his transition.

It's all very relatable when couched in terms of the painful process of growing up with additional layers to deal with.  How Darby deals with his past and his present make for an engaging story.  Take a chance on The In-Between Bookstore yourself.  I'll bet you'll be glad you did!

Upon A Starlit Tide

I haven't read a lot of romantasy to date, but Kell Woods' Upon A Starlit Tide (#1,294) was such an engrossing read that I'm going to have to change my mind about this genre.  As Ms. Woods herself says, the plot is a mishmash of the Cinderella and Little Mermaid fairy tales and both Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Anderson would be proud of what they've inspired.  And while we're at it, let's throw in a nod to Lisa See with her historical fiction discussion of Chinese foot binding.

Lucinde Leon grows up as the third and youngest daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant in eighteenth century St. Malo.  It's a time when the fairy folk still inhabit Brittany, but their influence is waning as they gradually leave the region and their powerful thunder stones behind.  With her crippled feet, Lucinde is most comfortable by the seashore and in the water itself to relieve their aching.  She's been befriended by an English smuggler, Samuel, who teaches Luce to sail and spins stories of his adventures at sea.  She dreams of seeing the world for herself.  Then one day, she spots a handsome young man clinging to piece of driftwood off her cove and dives in to rescue him, changing her life forever.

What makes this story stand apart for me is the word painting of Ms. Woods.  The words shimmer on the page.  The life of a wealthy mercantile family of the mid 1700s is accurately described in way that plants the story in a France that could have existed, but the fantastical elements give her the leeway to take her story to new places where seamaids are real, and magic exists in the very stones.

I really hated coming to the last page of this book.  I hope Kell Woods continues to work in this genre. I'll look forward to anything else coming from her pen. Highly recommended!

The Island of Missing Trees

A fellow book club member recently highly recommended I read Elif Shafak's novel A River In The Sky, but I haven't been able to get it from my library yet, so I started by reading an earlier novel by this Turkish/British author, The Island of Missing Trees (#1,293).  I must say, I've never read anything like it before.

In many ways, it's a Romeo & Juliet story, featuring a Greek and Turkish couple from Cyprus in the early 1970s, when such a pairing was not allowed as the island was divided in a fierce civil war.  It begins in a more recent London, however, with the couple's daughter acting out in her British classroom, scaring herself and her schoolmates.  Her mother Defne had died less than a year ago, and Ada is feeling increasingly isolated from her botanist father.  Kostas is absorbed by caring for a fig tree he is burying in their garden to preserve it, when someone from the past arrives to upset the household.

Told from a number of perspectives, including the fig tree itself, Kostas and Defne's story gradually unfolds from the 1970s to the recent past in fascinating glimpses of a lost Cyprus.  Not just the human aspects, but the effect war has on nature as well.

I know I will be thinking about this powerfully written book for a long time.  Highly recommended.

Christmas With The Queen

Christmas With The Queen (#1,292) cleverly weaves together the threads of Queen Elizabeth II's early Christmas speeches with those of two people involved in her household: Jack Devereux, a chef in the royal kitchens and Olive Carter, an ambitious reporter with the BBC assigned to cover the Queen's speeches.  It turns out that Jack and Olive have a history together.  Although they only see each other for a brief time each year as their duties separate them, there is a spark between them which plays out over the years.

The novel provided some unique perspectives on life in a royal household as Elizabeth sought to find her own voice as monarch, wife and mother.  Tradition was important but so was establishing a new order to suit her own style.  Jack and Olive each contribute to Queen's progress in their unique ways.  Jack through introducing some spice into the royal menu with his New Orleans-based cuisine, and Olive through her knowledge of what works to enhance radio, and later TV, presentations to bring out the best aspects of the Queen's speech. 

Jack and Olive eventually do come together, but it takes an excruciatingly long time to get there. Much as I liked the overall book, co-written by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb, I did feel that it bogged down about three quarters of the way through.  I could feel myself mentally shouting "Get on with it, already!"  And much as they include Jack's concentration on recipes from his grandfather, and putting together new and unique recipes to suit the royal household and later, Jack's restaurant in book format, there isn't a single recipe included for the reader!  That might have been a nice addition at the end of the book.  Just saying...

The Life Impossible

Matthew Haig's latest book, The Life Impossible (#1,291), has gotten mixed reviews from the critics.  If I remember correctly, their objections had to do with the fantastical turn his novel took.  Have they read his previous best-seller, The Midnight Library?  The fantastical is Haig's thing.

I enjoyed this story set on the island of Ibiza, a place I have never been to, but have now added to my list of places to see before I die.  The premise is that the protagonist writes to his former teacher about how miserably his life seems to be going, and in return, gets a lengthy letter from her, telling how an act of kindness many years previously led to her being left a house on Ibiza.  Recently widowed, she decides to explore her inheritance on the island.  Things do not turn out as she expected!

I won't spoil things for you, but there is definitely a woo-woo aspect to her encounters as she meets friend and foe alike and her rather ordinary life is changed forever.  If you liked The Midnight Library, you won't have any trouble suspending disbelief to immerse yourself in The Life Impossible. 

Twelve Days of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas, it's appropriate that I review Debbie Macomber's Twelve Days of Christmas (#1,290).  I must say, it was a bit of a letdown for me.  I normally enjoy her writing enormously, especially her holiday books, but this one didn't quite do it for me.

Julia is caught up in her job and volunteer activities as Christmas approaches in Seattle.  But she is seriously annoyed by Cain, the rude and grumpy neighbor across the hall.  The day he steals her newspaper in the lobby right in front of her is the last straw.  Her best friend suggests that "killing him with kindness" could be her best revenge.  If she blogs about it, it could help her achieve her ambition of landing a job in social media.  The Twelve Days of Christmas blog becomes an overnight sensation, of course.  Her kindness campaign is also working, though...

I guess my main problem with this book is the character of Cain.  He is so aloof and unpleasant that I could not buy the speed at which Julia won him over, or that she fell so hard for someone who so obviously wants to be alone.  Just something about his chauvinistic character never appealed to me in the least.  And if you can't root for the protagonists, who are you going to root for?

The book includes the first few pages of the next holiday book by Ms. Macomber, Dashing Through the Snow, and reading those few pages of a book I do remember fondly was enough to carry on with a Christmas tradition.  There's always next year!

Nosy Neighbors

The tenants of historic Shelly House have all received eviction notices; their landlord intends to tear down the building and replace it with a luxury high rise apartment house.  Not all the tenants are taking this lying down.  Freya Sampson's novel Nosy Neighbors (#1,289) does a wonderful job pulling together an unlikely cast of characters to bond for a single cause.

Dorothy Darling has been there in Flat 2 for over thirty years, and nothing is going to budge her.  Across the hall, her nemesis, Joseph Chambers, has yet another illegal subtenant - one with neon pink hair!  Then there's the unsocial tenant above her, the big man with the pugnacious and smelly dog, and Gloria with a constant parade of unsuitable men in and out of her apartment.  The Siddiqs, father and daughter, are about the only other tenants Dorothy is willing to tolerate, but even she misses the wonderful food odors which used to waft from their apartment while Mrs. Siddiq was still alive.  It takes a body being carried from Shelly House to begin to unite these reluctant neighbors with a little help from Joseph's Jack Russell terrier, Reggie.

I think I enjoyed this book so much because it reminded me of Clare Pooley's books about community-building from unlikely sources.  The book doesn't have a fairy tale ending, but Ms. Sampson does write a satisfactory open-ended conclusion.  Can't ask more than that!