The Lantern

Finished The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson. What a cover! Yes, I often judge a book by it's cover and this one grabbed me. Reading that the inspiration for the novel was Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca clinched it. Set in Provence, it consists of two storylines. One, in the present, is the story of young woman and her boyfriend who purchases a rundown farmhouse. The other, set in the past, is the story of the family who owned the farm for generations beforehand, including Marthe Lincel, who went blind as a young girl, but later became famous for her Provence inspired perfumes.

Like DuMaurier's heroine, the current day heroine of the novel does not have her name mentioned. And like the second Mrs. DeWinter she slowly begins to suspect that her significant other is not what he seems. There are ghosts and ghostly forces in the past and the present, even the ghosts of smells. This book was riveting.

Watership Down

Finished Watership Down by Richard Adams. I listened to an audiobook recording of the novel, read by Ralph Cosham. Cosham's voice and the voices he uses for the various characters is so engaging. It really added to my enjoyment of the book. Many people read this book in high school. It makes perfect sense as a book to read for logic class. The problem solving that the rabbits accomplish as they attempt to establish a new warren is an excellent example of how to think out-of-the-box.

The rabbits' adventure is epic. Hazel, the protagonist, is an admirable sympathetic hero. Bigwig, although initially a bully, grows in many ways and acts with extreme valor. Fiver, the rabbit who has premonitions, is a wonderfully mystical character. My favorite character is Kehaar, the seagull. His phraseology is hilarious. The story is laced with rabbit folklore, reminiscent of Kipling's Just So Stories and The Jungle Book. I adored this book.

The Family Man

Finished The Family Man by Elinor Lipman. A co-worker passed this book on to me after she read it. It's charming and funny. Set in New York City, it's the story of Henry Archer, a lonely, retired. openly gay lawyer who reunites with the stepdaughter he lost in divorce 25 years earlier. A wonderful book about the evolving concept of the modern family.

The Paris Wife

Finished The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. The novel tells the story of Hadley Richardson and her marriage to Ernest Hemingway as his first wife. Hemingway was twenty-two when they married. Hadley was eight years his senior. The two met in Chicago and moved to Paris soon after they married.

McLain's prose is achingly true. I found myself so engrossed in Hadley and Hemingway's characters that I actually dreamed that I was Hadley. More than once.

Reading this book brought me back to my own writing and to my former appreciation of Hemingway's work, which I've now begun to re-read in the order in which it appears in the novel.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Finished The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Each summer I switch off between reading a novel by Hardy or one by George Eliot. Sadly, I was a bit disappointed in this summer's choice. I find no fault with the book, I just didn't like the title character, AKA Michael Henchard. Seldom have I encountered a character who behaved so stupidly and made such terrible decisions, except perhaps Undine Spragg. This was less bucolic than most of the Hardy novels I've read so far, something I found lacking as well. I much prefer my Hardy read from summer 2010, The Return of the Native.

Nantucket Nights

Finished Nantucket Nights by Elin Hilderbrand. Sometimes characters just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair. Which is too bad, because I loved Hilderbrand's first novel The Beach Club.

Maisie Dobbs

Finished Maisie Dobbs, the first book in Jacqueline Winspear's series of nine mysteries. It's 1929 and Maisie's mentor, Maurice Blanche, has retired. Maisie sets up shop as a "Psychologist and Investigator" in London. Her first case appears to be one of simple infidelity, but Maisie knows better. She is drawn into investigating "The Retreat," a farm where disfigured veterans of WWI live away from the gaze of the rest of the world. Her investigation drums up memories of her time as a nurse at a casualty clearing station in France, memories she has avoided these past ten years.

I enjoyed this book. It's set in a period that has always fascinated me. While the characters and circumstances of the novel are unconventional, everything melds together nicely, with the satisfaction of having the final, quiet mystery of Maisie's own past revealed in the last pages of the novel.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This is Niffenegger's first novel, published in 2003. Regardless of the title, I felt that this book was equally about Clare, the wife of the time traveler, and Henry, the time traveler himself. The narrative perspective jumps back and forth between them both and backwards and forwards in time.

While the book was intense at times (THE most horrific car accident description ever), one must be an intense reader when imbibing this book. That's not to say that you can't pick it up and put it down easily, because the perspective changes often, so that's easy to do. You just have to have your thinking cap on while reading each journal-like entry. I found it interesting that Henry time travels when he is most stressed. I've been feeling pretty stressed myself lately, and am thankful that this is not the result, but it emphasizes Niffenegger's concept of time travel as an ailment, rather than a perk. Sometimes it's a gift, sometimes it's a nightmare.

This is another novel set in Chicago that I was able to follow, street by street. I like that. I enjoyed this book and read it pretty quickly. It was emotionally clever and engaging, not a favorite perhaps, but a good contemporary read.

Gatsby's Girl

Finished Gatsby's Girl by Caroline Preston. This novel imagines the relationship between F. Scott Fitzgerald and his first love Ginerva King when he was a sophomore at Princeton and she was 16. Ginerva and Scott correspond at length after their first meeting. Their romance lasts about eight months and then fizzles out awkwardly during Scott's visit to Ginerva and her family in Lake Forest, IL. The novel then follows Ginerva through her adult years when she becomes aware of Fitzgerald's use of her as a character in various novels and short stories. Set mostly in Chicago, we see Ginerva's engagement taking place in the dining room of The Palmer House. We see her escort Scott's ailing wife Zelda around the 1933 World's Fair, and finally her lunch meeting with Scottie, Scott and Zelda's daughter, in The Walnut Room at Marshall Fields. While their relationship was brief it had a lasting influence on both parties, reinforcing the idea that our earliest romances are with us always.

I enjoyed this book enormously. It reminded me of Edna Ferber's Dawn O'Hara and of my early obsession with Fitzgerald's work. Background for the novel indicates that Ginerva was the model for Isabelle Borgé in This Side of Paradise, Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Josephine Perry in The Basil and Josephine Stories, which I have just started rereading. I've read Gatsby so many times, but in anticipation of the Baz Luhrmann film, set to be released Christmas 2012, I plan to listen to an audiobook recording, just for old time's sake.

I was about half way through Gatsby's Girl before I realized that I had recently read Preston's newest book, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

The Bad Beginning

Finished The Bad Beginning, the first book in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, and for me, it was a bad beginning. I just didn't like this book. Yes the characters are cleverly drawn and I can see why the series was popular, with the Baudelaire children being in constant peril, but for me it was just too mean. The idea of reading twelve more books from the series leaves me cold. No, shivering. No, shuddering.

Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man

Finished Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg. This is Flagg's first novel, published in 1983. Recently I'd been thinking of how I read Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistelstop Cafe so long ago and of how much I enjoyed the book. It's one of the few contemporary novels that has a permanent spot in my bookshelves. If I liked the book so much why hadn't I read any of Flagg's other novels? I had to get this one via interlibrary loan.

Eleven year old Daisy Fay is an only child whose father is constantly dreaming up get rich quick schemes and whose mother is growing more and more jaded by her unhappy marriage to Daisy's alcoholic father. This book made me howl with laughter. It's written as a series of entries in Daisy's diary beginning in 1952 and ending in 1959. Much like other books I've read recently (see Think of England and Five Quarters of the Orange), Daisy feels responsible for a fatal event that she has misunderstood. Filled with charm, wit and misadventure, this book is a must read for anyone who craves a good laugh.

Think of England

Finished Think of England by Alice Elliott Dark. For years I saw this book on the staff recommendations shelf at the Border's flagship store in downtown Ann Arbor. I was drawn to the cover as well as the title. It's been on my TBR list for about five years and I have finally gotten around to reading it.

Like Atonement and The Five Quarters of the Orange, this novel is the story of a woman who has spent her whole life blaming herself for something terrible that happened during her childhood, and how she finally is able to come to terms with it.

Barchester Towers

Finished Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, the second book in his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. I was assigned this book in a Victorian lit class when I was taking courses at Harvard in the summer of 1984. I remember the professor telling us that the book was very humorous. I wish he had emphasized this more. We were assigned a book a week and I was a slow reader. Other books included Middlemarch and Little Dorrit, some of my now favorites. I was a slow reader in those days, and spending three hours a day on the T to get to and from Harvard Square. I couldn't read on the train, it made me sick. So, I admit it. I bought the Cliff Notes. The fact is, this book is hilarious. Like the first book in the series, The Warden, there is the never ending fuss of high church politics. Underneath however, is a love story that mirrors A Midsummer Night's Dream in it's absurdity and confusion.

I also found myself thinking of Father Tim Kavanaugh, a longtime favorite character of mine, from Jan Karon's The Mitford Years series. In Barchester Towers, Mr. Arabin is the bachelor Vicar of St. Ewold. He is in his forties, and like Father Tim in the first Mitford book, At Home in Mitford, he has managed life fairly well as a man on his own. But then, just as Father Tim meets his new neighbor Cynthia, a divorcee, Mr. Arabin meets Eleanor Bold, a widow who makes him realize that life with a helpmate would be so much better. In both stories the would be lovers misunderstand each other and almost part, but of course neither Trollope nor Karon would ever allow that to happen.

The BFG

Finished The BFG by Roald Dahl, illustrated by Quentin Blake. BFG stands for Big Friendly Giant. While the BFG is big, he is considered a runt by the other giants who live in his land. None of them are friendly. They are horrible, odious, odorous fiends who snatch humans from their beds and eat them. The BFG, on the other hand, is a collector of dreams. He captures and jars them like fireflies and then releases good dreams into the rooms of sleeping children. He does this in great secrecy, in the dead of night. One night he is observed by a small girl named Sophie. When he realizes that he has been seen he picks Sophie up and takes her back to the land of giants. There he explains himself and alerts her to the danger of the other horrible giants. Sophie is appalled by his account of these giants and says that something must be done to stop them. Together, she and the BFG devise a plan to alert the Queen of England to the danger and enlist her help.

The BFG is benevolent. He is also the king of malapropisms. This book made me laugh until I cried. Blake's drawings of Queen Elizabeth II charmingly capture her facial expressions. This book is a new favorite and highly recommended.

Five Quarters of the Orange

Finished Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris. The story jumps back and forth between World War II and the present. Like Harris' Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, the book is interlaced with food descriptions and recipes that entrance the reader.

Biose has returned to her family farm in France forty years after she, her siblings and mother were driven away by the locals who blamed them for the massacre in the village. Biose returns under an assumed name and opens a creperie, making the recipes her mother transcribed amid emotional code in a journal during the war. While Biose fears discovery by the locals, it's actually family members who threaten her exposure. Meanwhile we learn the story of her childhood friendship with Tomas, a German soldier who gives her and her siblings chocolate and comic books obtained through the black market.

The book reminded me a bit of Atonement, in that both novels feature a young girl who witnesses adult situations that she does not understand. This character then becomes embroiled in a situation that leads to a tragedy which she will forever feel guilt over.

This book was intriguing. I read it quickly and also followed it's recipe for Creme de Frambiose. It has to sit in the basement for 18 months. We'll see how it comes out at Christmas 2013.