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Andrew Malan Milward’s short story collection I Was A Revolutionary is all about Kansas and as a whole, it is pretty amazing. Like all collections, there were some stories that resonated with me more than others, but it was really the whole picture that got my attention. I don’t know much about Kansas history (just the “greatest hits”) and Milward clearly knows his stuff. The way he weaves that knowledge into both historical and contemporary stories is quite impressive and by the time you turn the last page you are going to wonder what you missed about the other 49 states.

What you find here includes a stupendous historical story set during the bloody 1863 raid on Lawrence led by William Quantrill; a contemporary tale of a historian’s assistant researching the state’s populist political past; a story of fading love that spins at the fringes of George Tiller’s abortion clinic, and a journey that tests every inch of the spirit to the African American settlement of Nicodemus. The title story focuses on a Kansas History professor who reflects upon all his students do not know about their state’s past and his own wishes for what he had done differently as a younger man.

Taken together these words are sweeping and quietly intense; a picture of a place that while not complete (that would take a dozen books), is certainly a significant glimpse into what makes Kansas the place it is today.

I wish every state had a collection like I Was A Revolutionary; it would make state history a lot more enjoyable to learn.

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From Jenny McPhee's novel about a tabloid reporter (Marie) who is given the assignment of a lifetime--to prepare the obituary for dying film star Nora Mars, someone Marie has idolized her entire life:

Marie's excitement, however, was accompanied by an equally charged sense of dread. If she wrote the article, using a story that might well not be true, she would effectively transform a national female icon into a megalomaniacal baby killer. She imagined Brewster winking a Morse code message: "How bad do you want it, Marie?" What was "it"? she asked herself. Fame, fortune, immortality, or simply a decent raise and a promotion after ten years on the job?

As Marie tracks the mysteries behind Nora's tangled life, she is forced time and again to decide what matters in a life story, what is the right story to tell, and whose story is the one that is true. At the same time she is deeply involved in mysteries about her own life and missing her long estranged brother and completing a philosophy of science paper she has been working on for fifteen years, ever since she left graduate school.

Basically, Marie is a bit of a hot mess in several ways, but a very smart mess who realizes she is at a personal fork in the road that Nora Mars has just happened to drop down into through virtue of her impending death.

None of this sounds like a lot to make a book around and yet again (this is the second time I've read it), I really enjoyed the heck out of The Center of Things. There is a lot of old movie trivia (which I love) and a lot of general science talk (also love) and time spent in a library, natural history museum, Impala convertible, and at a desk, writing furiously. There is also a family mystery which never gets old, some investigative reporting (shades of Lois Lane!) and the brainiest romance I have ever come across in fiction.

Find a copy if you can, this one is a treat.

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From Jenny McPhee’s novel about a tabloid reporter (Marie) who is given the assignment of a lifetime–to prepare the obituary for dying film star Nora Mars, someone Marie has idolized her entire life:

Marie’s excitement, however, was accompanied by an equally charged sense of dread. If she wrote the article, using a story that might well not be true, she would effectively transform a national female icon into a megalomaniacal baby killer. She imagined Brewster winking a Morse code message: “How bad do you want it, Marie?” What was “it”? she asked herself. Fame, fortune, immortality, or simply a decent raise and a promotion after ten years on the job?

As Marie tracks the mysteries behind Nora’s tangled life, she is forced time and again to decide what matters in a life story, what is the right story to tell, and whose story is the one that is true. At the same time she is deeply involved in mysteries about her own life and missing her long estranged brother and completing a philosophy of science paper she has been working on for fifteen years, ever since she left graduate school.

Basically, Marie is a bit of a hot mess in several ways, but a very smart mess who realizes she is at a personal fork in the road that Nora Mars has just happened to drop down into through virtue of her impending death.

None of this sounds like a lot to make a book around and yet again (this is the second time I’ve read it), I really enjoyed the heck out of The Center of Things. There is a lot of old movie trivia (which I love) and a lot of general science talk (also love) and time spent in a library, natural history museum, Impala convertible, and at a desk, writing furiously. There is also a family mystery which never gets old, some investigative reporting (shades of Lois Lane!) and the brainiest romance I have ever come across in fiction.

Find a copy if you can, this one is a treat.

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The title of The Stonehenge Letters immediately caught my eye for reasons obvious to any history lover. The description though was the real seller - a novel about a researcher who discovers a cache of letters in the Nobel Prize "crackpot" file that are all written by Nobel winners, (Marie Curie, TR Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling and Ivan Pavlov), and all seek to solve the mystery of Stonehenge. The narrator, who previously was occupied with trying to determine why Sigmund Freud was not awarded a Nobel, then changes course and seeks to discover what Nobel's connection was to Stonehenge. That historical mystery (which actually is true) along with the letters and why their authors were interested in writing them (all of which is fiction) makes up the plot of this diverting and smart novel.

Much of The Stonehenge Letters is straight up nonfiction and previously published in many other places, from Nobel's childhood, the conflicted relationship with his family (one of his brothers was blown up in an accident) and his romantic affairs. Karlinsky does a nice job of providing brief biographies of the major players at the end as well as a bit of his own historical research. Personally, I never knew that Stonehenge was privately owned (or for how long) and found that very interesting. (Nothing like being told by the government you own something crucial to the nation and thus can't sell it but you are responsible for its upkeep, protecting it from the public and the public from it and the government won't help you in any way financially.) (Go Britain!)

I loved the diversionary aspect of this novel, it's dips into and out of history, (the photos are fantastic!) and the cheekiness of the author. The narrator is a rather stuffy person but committed to the truth of his story and the truth here is as wild as you would expect. Roosevelt in particular does not disappoint with his outlandish proposal which includes bonus (!) Robert Peary!

You could believe all of this, it's that well thought out, and personally I loved the fun of believing it for awhile. It's exactly the sort of imaginative pop-culture/history mash-up that I don't think we get enough of in literature. Karlinsky took a chance here with his idea but his execution is perfect. Well done on Coach House Books for publishing such a fun book.

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Okay folks, I'm calling it now--The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain (translated by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken) is the best novel I'm going to read this year. A perfect follow-up to Laurain's delightful The President's Hat, this upcoming release has the most common of set-ups and yet becomes the best meet-up story ever. That it manages to be a fairly traditional romance that is not the slightest bit mushy but rather the very definition of wit and smarts and downright cool is proof positive that any tale can be retold in a refreshing way. I knew there would be a happy ending here as I knew the protagonists would meet (beyond that we can't know), but the journey was so lovely; I'm still trying to figure out just how Laurain accomplished so much in so few pages.

Book of the year, folks. Book.Of.The.Year.

The plot is straightforward: Laure is mugged on her doorstep returning home late one night, losing her purse and getting hit in the head in the process. With no way to get into her apartment, she walks across the street to a hotel, convinces them to let her have a room for the night and then, more injured than she realized, slips into unconsciousness overnight. She is rushed to the hospital in the morning and her part of the story is thus paused.

Divorced bookseller Laurent comes across a discarded high quality purse while out getting breakfast and impulsively picks it up and even though it lacks identification, decides to try and find the owner. Going through the contents, an image forms in his mind of the woman who owns them and he can not resist the allure of the mystery she poses. Laurent thus becomes an amateur detective and even though the reader already knows about Laure, it's impossible to resist Laurent's search for clues and be cheered by his every success.

Slowly, Laurent finds his way to Laure's life just as she reenters the story through her friends and co-workers and recovery. Laurent's daughter and ex-wife are introduced, readers learn more of his life and Laure's own past is revealed as well. They are two extremely ordinary people--there are no tales of horror and high drama to force the plot along. But Laurain is such a great writer that these characters become more and more compelling the more they are on the page. Laurent's previous career, Laure's job, their mutual love of books (bibliophiles will rejoice!), their families, their hopes, their dreams and of course, the red notebook.

Laure keeps a notebook in her purse where she writes lists of what she loves, what she's afraid of, what she longs for. Here's a bit:

More things I like:

Summer evenings when it gets dark late.
Opening my eyes underwater.
The names 'Trans-Siberian Express' and 'Orient Express' (I'll never travel on either).
Lapsang Souchong tea.
Haribo Fraises Tagada.
Watching men sleep after making love.
Hearing 'Mind the gap' on the tube in London.

The Red Notebook resonated with me for several reasons, I think but mostly it was the extraordinary appeal of these characters who managed to sneak up on me and settle into my heart. This book could have been so many things--it seemed destined to be Meg Ryanesque* more than anything else--but it's a thoroughly grown-up story about how two adults come to know each other. That it is remarkably literary as well is just a huge bonus.

Don't miss this one; it's really something special.

*Not that there's anything wrong with that!

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Oh, this is such a bleak book.

It feels small to write that because I don't think bleakness is truly appreciated anymore. We get our heartstrings tugged so frequently, so casually by many authors. What David Connerley Nahm does with Ancient Oceans of Kentucky is much more than convenient sadness as a plot point though. He takes sorrow to a whole other level and infuses this novel with so many careful layers of emotion that you feel drained by the end.

This is bleakness of the Scottish moors in a 19th century novel kind of sadness and the fact that it takes place today in Kentucky is just another layer of heartbreak.

The plot hinges on the childhood disappearance of Jacob, the little brother of protagonist Leah. There is no mystery here though--the missing boy is deep in Leah's past and there are no police to swoop in now and uncover clues and find him (living or dead). Jacob's disappearance is just the first of many haunts in Leah's life, the ghost that she revisits as the narrative wanders back and forth in time and Jacob disappears again and again in her memory.

It is not surprising that Leah has not gotten over the loss of her brother or wishes still for that thing we call (so casually) "closure". But Namh doesn't just give readers a character with an eye on the past; he gives us overworked Leah at her non-profit job helping desperate families in desperate situations and failing again and again at giving them what they need. (And not even trying for what they might want.) Leah can't save these people--there is no money to save them, no resources, no places to take them in or programs to give them assistance. All she can do is try and as anyone who reads the news these days knows, all the trying in the world isn't enough for all the need.

Leah is overworked and underpaid (of course). She's lonely and sad and can't forget her brother (of course). She feels guilty for what she said and did and didn't do when they were kids (of course). Her family was never the same after Jacob disappeared and now, she doesn't seem to remember what a family is anymore or why it matters. And she watches all the families come in her door and their disappointments break her heart even more. And then, maybe, Jacob comes back.

In some ways Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky seemed almost too much for me to bear as a reader. But for all that this book includes a child abduction (a very unusual event), it is primarily a story of the most mundane aspects of life. It is about getting by, about hanging on, about the falling apart that happens when a family doesn't pull together. There are a thousand familiar stories in Leah's days and as Nahm uses her to anchor his novel, he touches on many of them. His fiction thus forces us to open our own eyes a bit more, to look a little deeper, to recognize the bleakness that fills our world.

The back cover copy says that "Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky is a wrecking ball of a novel..." This is incredibly true; it reminds us just how horrific a wrecking ball truly is.

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This was a surprise!

Unmentionables begins with a bit of a bang as main character Marian Adams presents a speech to the fine Midwestern folk of Emporia on the impossibility of women's undergarments. In 1917 this is indeed an "unmentionable" topic and yet as Marian speaks, it makes perfect sense--women are literally being dragged down to the ground by the clothing society requires them to wear. How can they ever succeed? How they can achieve anything when it takes so much simply to move around?

Marian's comments are received differently by those in attendance, although as part of the weeklong traveling Chatautauqua assembly, they are accustomed to being challenged now and again by a few outrageous (to them) ideas. The idea is that someone like Marian will drop into their lives, share her opinions and then move on to the next town. Marian stumbles while climbing off the stage however and severely sprains her ankle. She ends up spending several days in Emporia and lives, including her own, are upended by this intrusion.

In many ways, Unmentionables is a standard smalltown drama. There is the newspaper editor, a widower, and his difficult relationship with his wealthy father-in-law. His grown stepdaughter is desperate to break out on her own but her grandfather insists on keeping her under his thumb. The next door neighbors (brother and sister) are tangled up in their issues; she has an unrequited love for the newspaperman and he is a rather fickle businessman who owes a debt that he does a poor job of paying attention to.

The rest of the town is filled with people good and bad, there is generosity and pettiness and, in this time of war, some startling cruelty. Page by page, Loewenstein tosses out much of the difficult times, truly immersing her readers in the cares of 1917. She also shows deep affection for her characters, especially Marian, "Deuce" and Helen, who dreams of joining the suffragist cause.

This is a period that begs for great sweeping novels and I was especially happy to lose myself in the lives of these interesting people. The whole notion of Chautauqua and the "adult improvement" period appeals to me (traveling speakers under huge tents!). There were so many ideas, good and bad, swirling about the world in that time, questions that had to be considered and great strides about to be taken. Just think of the layers of clothing women wore in 1917 and then how much of that changed by 1927. The world was spinning so fast in the teens - women about to vote!!! Yet Lowenstein brings it all down to a level that makes the issues sharply personal. And then Marian goes to France to make her mark and that is some daring stuff as well.

(I especially liked that she carried Emporia with her even to France and the letters exchanged between the two places are a lovely touch.)

I found a certain amount of "earthiness" to this novel--a perspective on life that reads very much about people most readers know and will recognize. There are heroes and villains (plus a dog that dies to prove just how dastardly one villain truly is which, as you know, I hate to find any novel), and some hard won victories. I think I especially liked the history here though, how Lowenstein so effectively weaves bits about milk inspection and disease and racism and education into the overall story. This is how we live, after all, with so much big and small going on around us.

[Post pic of Chautauqua Assembly in Clarinda, Indiana circa 1908. Courtesy Library of Congress.]

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Hélène Gerstern's upcoming novel, The People in the Photo, is absolutely sublime. Translated by Emily Boyce and Ros Schwartz, this epistolary tale is a family mystery, a sweet romance and a serious page-turner. It snuck up on me, plain and simple and I couldn't put it down.

The story is, on the surface, pretty simple. The main character (also named Hélène) lives in Paris where she works as an archivist. Her mother died when she was 4 and her father has also recently passed away. Her stepmother has Alzheimer's and is in longterm care. While going through her parents' apartment, she finds a picture of her mother with two men she does not recognize. She runs the photo in some French and Swiss newspapers as an advertisement asking if anyone recognizes the men or the sporting event (tennis) they participated in. Stéphane Crüsten responds that one of the men is his deceased father and the other his best friend.

In the letters that follow Hélène and Stéphane try to uncover how their parents came to know each other. More pictures are found and Stéphane visits the family friend in search of more clues. Bit by bit the two learn how their families were connected and the numerous secrets that are buried in the past. Also, bit by bit, they surprise themselves by falling in love thus providing a light romantic tension to the mystery.

Everything about The People in the Photo works. The pacing is fantastic - the buildup of the romance is subtle and true to the characters' restrained emotions. But even without that element (which I enjoyed very much), it is the slow unfolding of the past that keeps the pages turning. Finding out who these people in the photo were and what their level of involvement was and why on earth it has all been kept quiet (Hélène's mother died in a very prosaic way after all - a car crash), are questions that I really wanted answered. I also liked very much that Gerstern doesn't back away from ugly moments and gives readers the kind of emotional payoff that the story promises from the very beginning. The ending is powerful stuff and serves all the characters (past and present) well. There's just not a single disappointment to this novel; it's really a wonderful book.

And for me, of course, The People in the Photo brought to mind all the secrets hidden in my own family photos; all of the faces I look at now that hide so much from decades ago. I know many of these secrets, others I am still hoping to uncover. I identified a great deal with Hélène and Stéphane and their search for the truth and I can tell you, all of it rings powerfully true.

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I lucked into a copy of The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain, (translated by Gallic Books, who published it in English), and found it to be one of the more charming and quietly funny books I have come across in ages.

It's such a simple premise: French President Francois Mitterrand forgets his hat in a restaurant where it is taken as a souvenir by a nearby diner and then, in succeeding sections, passes in ways accidental and purposeful from one person to the next and all of them enjoy some rather amazing experiences while possessing it.

Is the hat magical? Not in the modern paranormal fantasy sense. It just seems to carry a whiff of good luck that turns each life into an engaging (and not utterly unexpected) direction. One man gets back on track, a woman finds an idea that leads to professional success, another man finds his voice, and on and on. Nothing spectacular here - no monsters slayed or mountains climbed. And yet all of these changes result (as the final pages reveal) in wholly new and exciting lives. Essentially, good things happen to some find decent people and in one way or another, the hat is key.

A lot of reviewers have praised The President's Hat, as they should, but one thing I don't think has been stressed is how adult the novel of connected lives is. Every character is facing a questioning moment in their life about job or calling or romantic relationship, and actions taken with the hat propel them into one choice or another.

There was one section in particular, about husband and father Bernard, that especially resonated with me. Sitting through another endless dinner with some insufferable acquaintances, Bernard voices his honest opinion on a political subject. In the withering silence that follows and the subsequent shock of his wife on the drive home, Bernard starts to reconsider what kind of person he is. There is nothing in his home that is unexpected, nothing she says or does that isn't mindful of what others think. He has become someone he never wanted to be and resolutely sets forth to change that in ways big and small. (The furniture has to go!)

While everyone goes through moments like this, I think you really have to be on the far side of 40 to grasp that if you want your life to be different then you have to start living it differently now. In several different ways, The President's Hat is about the little leaps of faith needed to make change happen. That Laurain puts so much sly humor into his novel and makes it a delight to read is an extra treat on top of the rather thoughtful narrative.

A metaphorical turn in Mitterrand's hat would be good for all of us I think. I know I've been thinking about how I would fit into this title since I finished it a couple of weeks ago. What would I change, what I would try, what would i make happen in my life? Just think about that for a minute - imagine the possibilities. Dream a little and if you need a push, read this lovely book.

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A couple of things I have a literary softspot for: pre WWII Egypt and curious women. This is largely due to my childhood fascination with all things Egyptian archaeology but mostly because of Amelia Peabody. (If I have to tell you who Amelia Peabody is then I don't think you should be on this blog.) (Okay, that's rude. Read all about her here.)

When I find a new book that is the slightest bit Peabody-esque then I pounce on it like a tiger. (A tiger who looks like a woman and is standing in a library but you get my drift.) Shadows On the Nile by Kate Furnivall is set in 1932 when Jessie Kenton's brother Tim, an archaeologist, disappears after attending a seance. Jessie follows the thread of his disappearance--left in Sherlockian clues from their childhood that only Jessie would understand--all the way to Cairo and Luxor and the tomb of King Tutanankhamun. Along the way there are thrills and chills and bad guys and maybe good guys (but do you ever really know?) and THE guy.

THE guy is the only weakness in this novel. He's actually a pretty good character but the romance doesn't work. You have Jessie & hero guy charging all over everywhere trying to find Tim and then there is a bombing (Egypt had some issues with their British colonial overlords in 1932) and then they just fall into each others arms. This read to me a bit like "insert major romantic leap here". The bombing (although it fits with the politics) also seemed designed solely to force the romantic moment. Our guy and girl work as a couple of sleuths and friends and potential romantic partners, but not this much, not this fast.

But...that's okay. The couple bit is a small bit, a tiny quibble, and it's mostly okay. The overall plot, which includes a wonderful subplot about Jessie's other brother who went missing when they were children and got found without her knowing, is splendid. I love that subplot. I also enjoyed the politics, the train ride, Jessie's awful parents and everything Egypt.

So, in review: Shadows On the Nile is a good mystery full of lots of interesting characters, some killer settings and a message about family that resonates long after the final page is turned. The romance is iffy, but the rest is more than enough. In fact, a sequel would be most welcome (and then the romance would work!)

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I grew up on country music. I grew up on Marty Robbins and Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson and Tammy Wynette and George Jones. My mother played music from the 50s sometimes on the weekends and had a longstanding crush on Elvis, (Blue Hawaii is still one of my all time favorite movies), but the soundtrack to my childhood, the recurring music in the car and the house and on the beach blanket radio was always country. I hear Kenny Rogers sing "The Gambler" and I'm in a little ranch house on a two lane road that I can hardly bear to drive by anymore because it hurts too much to see how much it has changed.

I listen still to the music of my childhood because the reality of that place and time is too far gone and away.

Emily Arsenault's
Miss Me When I'm Gone is a subtle mystery about an author who might have slipped and fallen after speaking at a library or might have been pushed. Gretchen Waters had a surprise bestseller with a post-divorce memoir about driving around the south while visiting places connected to some female country music icons.

"Tammyland" was dubbed the "honky-tonk Eat, Pray, love" by Gretchen's publishers. She was at work on her second book, another memoir this time about finding her [unknown] father. But then Gretchen fell (or was pushed), and her family asked her old friend Jamie to serve as literary executor and put together her notes. What Jamie finds in the boxes of papers and notebooks and computer files is that Gretchen was writing about her murdered mother as much as her mystery father. She was also missing all of her deadlines and nowhere near a structured manuscript. Gretchen was drowning in her past and Jamie, sadly, did not know in time to toss her a line.

Arsenault does a great job of subtly building the thriller aspect of the narrative, of taking Jamie along as she catches up on her old friend's life which includes immersing herself in "Tammyland". Readers thus get not only bits and pieces of Gretchen's current work, (and Jamie's sleuthing as she visits the same places and meets the same people), but also read excerpts from the previous book. This gives you great words like these about Tammy Wynette:

Tammy's life--like her music--conveys a vulnerability that I think many of us are not comfortable with. You can hear the "teardrop" in her voice, and think, That's beautiful and honest. Or you can hear it and opt for the safer response: That's pathetic and maudlin, to which I am too cool and self-assured to relate. And for that reason, Tammy will never be hip like Johnny Cash or Loretta Lynn have become.

There.Is.So.Much.More. Arsenault writes so much great stuff about Tammy and Loretta and Dolly and even--YEA!--Dottie West! She gets under the skin of who they were when they made it big and what their songs were about and why so many of us connect so much with them. In reading about Gretchen's reaction to these women, Jamie discovers why her friend was set out on such an unexpected path in her new book and that discovery leads her down the same path which, of course, leads her to the answers about what happened that last night.

I really enjoyed the hell out of this book, loved the characters and the Nancy Drew-ish nature of the plot. But man, did I madly love everything that was written about the ladies of country. I wish "Tammyland" was a real book so I could read it again and again. I'll have to satisfy myself with the comforts of rereading Miss Me When I'm Gone and also, of course, from hitting YouTube. This is Tammy singing a song that is particularly special to me because, my childhood is in its every word.

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I read a lot of books for adults that I often end up recommending for teenagers. I was the kind of kid that read above my age early on and especially as a teen I was reading John MacDonald and Robert Parker mysteries and a ton of SFF all of which were published for adults. None of this should come as a surprise to most readers - those age categories are all too often nebulous at best (especially for nonfiction) but on occasion I read something that really can only be appreciated by adults. It's not because of the obvious (sex & violence) but because of the nature of the story.

Simply put, there are some thing you can not understand until you live a lot longer than 17 years.

Russell Hoban's (Bread & Jam For Frances Russell Hoban!) Turtle Diary is about two people who independently decide to set some sea turtles free from a local aquarium. Set in London, William is a bookseller and Neaera is children's book author and both are largely respectable and unremarkable people. They certainly aren't the lawbreaking sort. William is recently divorced and missing his life and suffering a mid-life crisis of mammoth (but largely silent) proportions. Neaera, by her own description, "looks the sort of spinster who doesn't keep cats and is not a vegetarian. Looks....like a man's woman and hasn't got a man."

First, it's not a romance. This is not about William and Nearera finding each other and making mad passionate love as the turtles find freedom. It's more about finding friendship and kinship and meeting someone who thinks your big crazy idea makes sense. It's an incredibly quiet book but a very powerful one because it makes so much sense. It's about making the kind of life you want out of the one you are living.

And turtles. It's also about turtles.

The rescue involves the London Zoo where three very large sea turtles have been living for decades. While it is not squalor or abuse they are dealing with, William and Neaera feel the animals are living stifled lives; it's simply not fair that giant sea turtles should be stuck in a tank for people to gawk at. Each wants to set the turtles free and each encounters their caregiver, George who quietly encourages them. Through alternately chapters readers follow the two as they inch along toward a plan and meeting each other. Along the way bits and pieces of their lives are revealed until, when the rather madcap adventure takes off, it makes perfect sense that these very sedate people would do something so rash and inexplicable.

Turtle Diary has been reissued by the New York Review Books and so, of course, it's a gorgeous edition. The intro is written by Ed Park which I thought was bit stiff for all of the book's sly humor, so don't judge the novel from those pages. It's a quiet read, a careful read and a very sweet one. But mostly it is a book that can not be fully enjoyed until you are of an age that knows what it is to need an adventure; to need to do something to shake yourself out of your life.

Could a teenager read Turtle Diary? Sure. But I think it takes an adult to truly appreciate it and all that William and Neaera need from setting something free.

Here's a trailer for the movie that was made in 1985 and if you like it, the whole thing can be watched on YouTube. (I haven't see it yet but with Ben Kingsley & Glenda Jackson I don't see how it can fail - the trailer sells it, big time!)

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While I'm not a 100% "judge a book by its cover" kind of reader, Snapper certainly caught my eye from across a crowded aisle at ALA Midwinter. It's not only gorgeous to look at though, it's also appropriate as the protagonist, Nathan Lochmueller, studies birds in his native Indiana. Readers follow Nathan in these linked chapters (there's really no big narrative arc to speak of) as he deals with romance issues, job issues, family issues, vehicle issues and a big love/hate relationship with his state. All the while he his studying birds and sharing inside information on the birding life.

So yeah, GREAT cover!

Without a big plot point - the romance is up and down, the job issues are up and down and there are no bodies discovered in the woods - Snapper keeps you with Nathan's voice. He's funny, often sarcastic, sometimes wry and always noticing things about the people and places around him (which makes sense as he studies birds for a variety of agencies).

There is some talk of politics here and a few slight digs about the difference between the Midwest and South (in the way of telling a few family stories). And there is some noticing of differences found in small town versus large illustrated quite sweetly at one point by a sojourn into the lives of the fine folks of Santa Claus, Indiana, where every Santa letter gets answered by the denizens of the local diner.

Basically, Nathan spends the book trying to find himself and the reader is along for the ride. This doesn't sound like much - it sounds like one of those exceedingly dull books about nothing in fact - but Snapper is funny and Nathan does evolve and Kimberling manages to make Indiana such a big part of the story that you feel like the state's identity is a character as well. Here's a bit:

I doubt anyone outside Southern Indiana knows what a stripper pit is. They don't exist anywhere else. This is sometimes embarrassing for me in conversation, if I say I spent many a happy adolescent hour there. People think I'm talking about Thong Thursdays at Fast Eddie's. The British Broadcasting Corporation once sent a reporter by boat to Evansville to investigate the wild ways of the inhabitants--the kind of thing they used to do in "deepest Africa," I think. We are Hoosiers after all.

A stripper pit is what remains of a bituminous coal mine, so, as explained in the next paragraph, this his how you get a lake spontaneously in the midst of some woods. Lest you think these are beautiful landscapes, Nathan explains, "At the bottom of those lakes you'll find old refrigerators and stolen cars and bags of kittens. It is Southern Indiana."

So what happens in Snapper? Nathan and his friends grow up, some amounting to something and some not. He does a lot of observing of birds and people and a lot of thinking about his on again/off again relationship with Lola. Eventually he moves away and finds the right girl and grows up (mostly). It's a life like a million others in America and in most every single way it is not the least bit special.

Except Brian Kimberling knows all of them are, and that's why Snapper is really such a great book.

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I keep thinking I'm going to feel 100% any moment now because I first got sick two long weeks ago and yet still, something is not quite right. It's all very frustrating.

I did read Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin in the midst of all this illness however, and I enjoyed it immensely. The basic facts of the Alice in Wonderland biography are here: Alice Liddell Hargreaves was the inspiration for the famous book, her father was dean of Christ Church, Oxford and that was how the family came to know Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Dodgson took photos of Alice and her sisters, he spent a lot of time with the girls and one afternoon trip he told them the Wonderland story and at Alice's urging later wrote it down. Then something happened between the Liddells and Dodgson and there was a brutal falling out and they never really spoke again. Later, Alice became very close to Prince Leopold (as in brother to the King and son of Queen Victoria) and they broke up - although they each named a child after the other.

Whew!

Benjamin takes all these facts, including Alice's eventual marriage and the birth of her three sons (sadly, two died in WWI), and folds them into a novel about her life that is enormously compelling. She writes about her complicated childhood as the daughter of a very important man (and one of the only married men at Oxford) and shows how difficult it was to stand out in such a big family. A lot of Alice's childhood struggles were ordinary and utterly predictable but the friendship she developed with Dodgson was something altogether different and just what it was about is a literary mystery for the ages.

Benjamin doesn't drop any major bombs here and she shouldn't; her restraint is perfect and lends itself well to this complicated history. What Alice did, what Dodgson did, what her sister and mother and father and everyone thought (and the source of their motivations) are handled with care and empathy. That is what makes Alice I Have Been so believable - you can see the history unfolding exactly as the story does and by the time Leopold comes onto the scene you are so caught up in Alice's life that you really wish the book would abandon the truth and give us the story we want (Alice as a princess!!).

And don't even get me started on the deaths of her sons. Brutal, absolutely brutal.

Melanie Benjamin has also written about Ameila Earhart and Mrs. Tom Thumb - if they are half as good as her treatment of Alice, then they must be read as well.

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I have been crazy sick for the past week and a half so all writing of all kinds (like here) has been pretty much impossible. I have been reading a bit though and wanted to highly recommend Alice, I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin. I'll be writing more about this novel of the real Alice, (Alice Liddell Hargreaves), in the next day or so but wanted to mention it now when I had the chance.

Also, there will be an Alice in Wonderland 2 apparently, due out in 2016. Hmmmmm.

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Deborah Coates is out with a sequel to her South Dakota rural fantasy Wide Open and I just read it and it is really really good.

That doesn't sound like what a professional book reviewer is supposed to say, but it's how I feel.

In Wide Open, Afghanistan vet Hallie came home to investigate the death of her sister. Hallie died in Afghanistan for seven minutes and since then she has been able to see ghosts. They don't talk to her but they hang out around her and through the ghosts she uncovers this whole mad plot by a crazy guy to control the weather.

And that's all I'm going to say because you need to read it to find out what happens.

In Deep Down, Hallie is wondering if she should stay in South Dakota. She has solved the mystery surrounding her sister, defeated the bad guys and now she's just not sure if staying at home with her dad is the right thing to do. Her military career is over and is ranching what she wants to do? There's a tantalizing job possibility and maybe she needs to find herself. But then there's a ghost and some dogs that aren't alive or dead (or ghosts) and Death and, well, a hole helluva a lot of bad stuff.

So Hallie has to stick around for awhile.

BUT...what makes Deep Down so good is that while the fantasy is great and I enjoy the world building a lot, it's the characters that Coates has created here that I truly adore. Hallie smart and tough but also very realistic - she doesn't know what she should do and she's scared she's going to make the wrong decision. Things are complicated by her budding romance with local cop Boyd. They are halfway to being serious but not quite there enough to be sharing life-changing decisions. The two of them are trying to figure themselves out as a couple and it's nice to see; it's very adult and normal and the fact that dead people are trying to kill them while they do this is just icing on the fantasy cake.

The romance is just a small layer to the novel though; in fact it's more about the consideration of relationships rather than what you think of when you think romance. Here's a passage between Hallie and her father that I just love that shows you what Coates is doing in the midst of all the battling against evil forces:

He smiled. "Before you were born, or Dell either, your mom and I went to Florida for a couple of weeks. We did all the things you're supposed to do--snorkeling, parasailing, took a boat ride through the Everglades. And it was --different as hell--but that was part of it. We flew back into Rapid City at night and it was starting to snow as we headed back here. Snowed harder and the wind came up and it was pretty much a whiteout by the time we hit the end of the drive. We made it up to the house, practically sideways the whole way. We didn't have boots, coats, nothing. Snow over our shoes and we're bent against the wind crossing the yard.

"Then it stopped. Snow still falling, but straight down and the moon came out. Your mom and me, we stood there in the cold like idiots looking out across the fields all clean and still and home. That's the thing, we knew were home."

He looked at her finally. "It's not prettier or better than other places and it sure as hell isn't an easy place, but I know how to live here. And that counts."

And that is what made this book such a winner for me. It's about who you are and where you belong and the people you want to be part of that decision. It's thoughtful while still being full of mystery and danger and magic. It's just a good story and I can't wait to see where Coates takes these wonderful characters next.

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I've been reading Jenny Davidson's The Magic Circle for the past few days and it has thinking all over again about the endless appeal of abandoned buildings with mysterious histories.*

What is it about former factories and prisons and asylums that makes our inner explorers want to peek in the windows and crack open the doors? Why do we wander past cemeteries and monuments, consider old train stations and schools, and linger just a few moments longer then we really have time for? It's not treasure but something else - something more appealing then flash and cash.

We don't study the history of buildings that much in school but boy, do we yearn to know more when we drive past them on the highway.

In The Magic Circle, which is a thriller somewhat in the terrifying vein of Single White Female (although the roommates are 100% not the enemies....really), two of the characters are creating games that center on buildings in New York City. One is focused purely on the virtual world - you walk the route and play through your iphone which gives you information, challenges and rewards as you go. The other is gearing up to more hands-on (I'm only halfway through the book) and seems to involve challenges with some dangerous possibilities.

I just know that things are not going to end well for everyone in this one.

As the characters talk about playing the two games in The Magic Circle, I can't help but remember times that I was drawn into something similar when I was in college. It was never this indepth or detailed but still - the longing was the same. We wanted to find something in a forgotten place; we wanted to discover something. We wanted an adventure that gave us a chance to be brave. Jenny has perfectly tapped into that longing and for all that her book is set in New York City, it reminds me very much of the Florida I knew and the girl I was.

I know this one is going to end well for everyone, but it's no surprise to me that I can't stop reading.

* I should point out however that Libba Bray's The Diviners has thoroughly cured me of every going near anything that appears to be a haunted house.

[Post pic of Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital in Orangeburg, NY.]

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I am reading an amazing book - Play Pretty Blues by Snowden Wright. It's a novel about Blues great Robert Johnson told from the perspective of his primary wives/girlfriends who serve as a Greek Chorus of sorts and view his life from afar.

Johnson's life is as much myth and legend as fact (he was the musician who met the Devil at the Crossroads), and Wright works in and out of fact and fiction in this novel in a way that can only be considered musical in the best sort of the way. This is great writing, inventive and smart and incredibly engaging. I've been a Johnson fan forever so I'm the perfect audience for it, but anyone interested in southern writing or a novel steeped in music history will fall hard for it. I'll be reviewing this one down the line; I'll keep ya posted on that and my continued reading of it.

Here's a bit though to give you an idea of the language:

We have lived in the shadow of a ghost. In the first few years after his demise, some of us migrated north to St. Louis and Chicago, some of us west to Texas and Oklahoma, all in trace of the path taken by his posthumous musical influence. Claudette collected a dossier of evidence of his life and death, including fingerprints, oral accounts, facial sketches, Mason jars of sampled soil, photographs and lithographs and phonographs, vials, beakers, bottles, locks of hair hermetically sealed in Tupperware and Glad-Lock. Mary Sue, the oldest of us, seduced every headliner she heard cover a Robert Johnson song. Tabitha, the youngest, spent years harassing his murderer's family with coins glued to their porch's floorboards, caps twisted loose on their salt shakers, and staples removed from their Swingline. Betty sought solace in the bottle. Helena, who never forgave herself not not bearing our mutual husband an heir, eventually married a writer of crossword puzzles and gave birth to three boys named various anagrams of "Robert Johnson."

[For another amazing book on Johnson, look to Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje.] [YES - Michael Ondaatje!!!!]

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I recently finished Whitney Otto's Eight Girls Taking Pictures and found it a very interesting read. Some of the characters were more compelling to me than others but that's just personal preference; overall I thought it was really quite good and if you like quiet historical fiction about women then I recommend it. There were several passages that especially stayed with me.

From the first chapter, detailing the life of a woman in the early 20th century:

Cymbeline had learned from an early age that money buys things that people with money never even realize they've bought, like time and freedom. Because their privilege came to them so naturally, it was unimaginable that others didn't have it too; that is to say, if others didn't have it, perhaps that was because it would be wasted on them, the rich always seeming to believe themselves meant for better things.

That one really made me think a lot about my great grandmother who was a factory girl in 1910 and no matter how hard she (and her husband) worked, getting out of poverty was never more than a dream for the next generation; it could not happen for her.

I have often wondered about the women who wore the clothes she and her friends worked so hard to make and if those women thought of her (and those like her) at all. It makes the factory workers of Bangladesh that much more real to me.

From a chapter set during WWI:

No one really survived the Great War. No person, no place. It was too far-reaching, too catastrophic, too unimaginable. Those who made it home weren't the same, and those who waited at home were also changed. Everyone became a stranger of the most dislocating sort because everyone became, once again, unknown. Unknown yet looking familiar, everyone resembling someone he or she used to know. Sweethearts, young marrieds, parents and children, children and parents all had to relearn each other. This didn't even take into account those who returned yet never seemed to come back at all. Gertrude Stein coined the the expression "a lost generation," but isn't every generation following any war a little lost?

See the War/Photography exhibit for how little that post-war "lost generation" has changed in the last century.

And then there is this for a chapter set in Germany during the lead-up to WWII:

They knew that even the most neutral neighbors would be tempted to take what they had not even thought to covet until recent events had made them understand that possession was nine-tenths of a law that favored them. It was not uncommon for someone to show interest in your jewelry , your home, your job, your painting, maybe even your wife - it was as if the temptation was too much, the possibilities of possession too great to pass up. If you were Jewish, you began to spend all your time trying to go unnoticed. Or making your winter coat go unnoticed. Or your car, your garden. It was nearly impossible to have things and hide them at the same time. How could anyone fight was a Jew now represented to many Germans? It was if they were walking catalogs of splendid goods and real estate and business and career openings.

That passage makes what was happening to Jews before the war all the more terrifying to me. That your neighbors - people who had known you for years - could just so easily decide that they could go "shopping" in your life, your home. That they felt entitled and empowered to do so. Well, it makes you wonder just what humanity is, really, and why on earth it is always so easy for us to be cruel to each other.

[Post pic of Lee Miller, one of the inspirations for Otto's characters.]

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As I've mentioned in a few posts here and there, I've been slowly reading an ARC of Andrea Barrett's upcoming story collection Archangel. Her fans are going to adore this; it's everything you expect from Barrett and more - a truly fabulous set of stories. I love it.

The final story is "Archangel" and includes the main character from the earlier story "The Experiment", now all grown up and fighting in WWI. It's 1919 in "Archangel" and although the war is over, for these men it continues in Russia, where they are assigned to The Polar Bear Expedition and bizarrely, stuck in the Russian Civil War. I have never heard about this force which is pretty stunning as I heavily studied US military history in college (it was the main focus of my history degree) and I've read a ton on WWI. (It seems like I'm always finding out more of history that I've missed. So frustrating!)

Barrett does amazing stuff with the setting and characters and brings alive all the confusion and fear of this war-after-a-war where nobody has any idea what is going on. Because this is Barrett there is also a second character, a woman, who is an x-ray technician. The science history of x-rays blends into military history as if they were always meant to be, and readers fall in love with these two people so far from home and so uncertain as to why they are there and what will become of them in that miserable place.

You will read "Archangel" and hate war all over again. It's sublime - brittle and sharp and slices your heart. I ripped me apart a bit, this story, and the final paragraphs were worthy of a Wilfred Owen poem.

I can't wait until you all read this book - I just can't wait.

[Post pic: En route to Archangel, a group of 339th Infantry Regiment doughboys pose with their newly issued M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles. From the Army Sustainment Bulletin.]

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I don't talk much about my son here but he's eleven years old and while he loves a good story (I read all of the Harry Potter books to him several years ago), he is not always patient enough to read them. He prefers graphic novels and shorter nonfiction and so when I caught him up in bed, reading ahead in Elise Broach's Superstition Mountain books, I knew they were something special. He loves these two books and is d-y-i-n-g for the third to come out. I felt it was my duty (*grin*) to make sure everyone knew about them.

In every possible way Treasure on Superstition Mountain and Missing on Superstition Mountain are cut from the cloth of classic middle grade adventure. You have four likeable kids - three brothers and their spunky girl neighbor - the pensive, more bookish child is the narrator, the parents are all decent admirable folks who support these curious active children (while also being busy enough to let them disappear for awhile) and there is a huge mystery - HUGE - that demands to be solved.
In this case the story is all about the Lost Dutchman's Mine, a very real Arizona legend that Broach discusses in her excellent afterwords. The kids go hiking on Superstition Mountain (a real place), and through an accident discover something sinister. In search of clues about what they've found, the kids hit the library, which adds an unexpectedly creepy character to the story, and the cemetery, which gives us a slightly unhinged character, and to the historical society - where we find a hero! Huzzah! It's all very Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Trixie Belden at their best and the scary is just the right amount of scary to keep readers turning the page while not terrifying. My son loves that each chapter ends with you wanting more and even though both books end without cliffhangers, the main story arc clearly continues. Broach is great at pacing and think that is a big part of why these books succeed so much.

We have both titles in hardcover for as my son says, he "NEEDS' them and can't stand the thought of them falling apart at some point. The covers catch the eye of their audience (kids in action!) and the drawings in the text are quite good - though, surprisingly, my son has not relied upon them. The story keeps him moving forward, not the pictures.

I can't wait to see how Broach ends this trilogy. There are some bad guys, and a lot of questions but mostly I'm enjoying how the characters have evolved and grown to ask more questions and think more deeply about what they are finding and learning. Plus she has managed to work a library and ghost town into the narrative - how cool is that?

Highly recommend, of course!

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Adam Braver's Misfit manages to be a novel that is entirely about Marilyn Monroe while appealing far beyond any crass celebrity story type moniker. I came to it primarily because it is published by Tinhouse and after being quite gobsmacked by my love for Alexis Smith's Glaciers I really want to give something else by them a try. It helps that I have a certain affection for Monroe's work and also find her a Hollywood tragedy that seems to me is far more about being a woman of her time then a victim of the rich and famous. But none of that matters really because the moment I picked Misfit up and started reading it became a novel I could not put down and am still thinking about.

A lot of people have written about Marilyn Monroe but you need to set all of that aside when picking up Misfit. Braver frames the book around the last weekend of her life, when she traveled with Peter Lawford and Pat Kennedy to Frank Sinatra's resort up on Lake Tahoe. It's about her attempt to get away from an enormous amount of professional and personal stress and her deeply felt desire to rest.

The facts of the trip are true, the feelings expressed by Monroe are, of course, fiction. At Sinatra's lodge she fell to pieces and because everyone by then expected nothing less of her than that, no one thought to save her. She went home and she died. Whether the Lawfords or Sinatra wished they had done something more, whether any of them could have done something more, is really irrelevant. Braver is not looking to cast blame here. What he wants is to show how complicated this woman was, how little anyone truly knew her and how desperate she was to be free of....herself. In that respect she was so much like so many woman from her era that I have known that I quite forgot I was reading about a movie star. Sinatra could have been anyone, her friends represent everyone, Monroe's position could have been anything, her spouses were just like so many other husbands of their time. Misfit is about the woman we knew so little, not the famous star and even though Clark Gable and Dean Martin and so many other famous people are here, it is the sheer normal-ness of all their actions and reactions that will strike you deep and hard.

Braver moves back and forth in time, always returning to the lodge and that last weekend. He gives readers some of Monroe's tragic childhood, her discovery on an assembly line, her marriages and her serious study of acting. A lot of the book is taken with her role in the film Misfits (with Gable) and her final role in the unfinished film Something's Got To Give (with Martin). He gives readers a full picture of a complicated person but mostly he just shows you how damn hard it could be to be a woman, let alone a famous and talented one, in the 1950s. After reading Misfit it's clear to me that Marilyn Monroe really never had a damn chance and I hate that. But wow, do I ever love how Braver made me realize that truth and how incredibly beautiful his way of imparting it was.

I love this book; can't wait to read another one (Karen Shepherd's The Celestials is due out in June) from Tinhouse.

Monroe on the set of Somethings Got To Give.

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The short story collection Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins has gotten quite a bit of attention in the past few months and it was one of the books on my holiday list that showed up under the tree. (Yea for books for Christmas!) There are several very powerful stories in this collection, most notably "Ghost, Cowboys" about her father's membership in the Manson Family, but the overriding theme is that of disappointment. A lot of people die in Watkins's world, a lot have horrible relationships, a lot find only dead ends personally and professionally and pretty much overall every single story in this collection ends with a whimper of grimness.

It's not exactly a vision of a bold new day in America.

Please don't think I'm picking on Battleborn however, because there is nothing different in this book then a lot of others I've read lately. Heck, I'm the person who wrote a book with "Dead" in the title, so I'm as guilty of pessimism as the next person. (Though writing about aviation without writing about crashes is pretty much impossible.) What struck me about Battleborn though was that the unhappiness is not due to a sudden change in circumstance - an accident or unplanned twist of misfortune - but rather to the choices made by the characters and their unwillingness to make other choices then to change the situation.

You have a young man who visits a bordello in Nevada and falls for a prostitute, foolishly thinking he is in love. The story is about how she is willfully manipulating him in the hope of financial gain and how the manager of the facility is horribly lonely. No one is happy in this story and no one knows how to be happy.

In another a woman breaks up with her unpleasant boyfriend only to discover she is pregnant and then meets her former boyfriend (the nice guy whose baby she aborted) and thinks about having this new baby. No one is happy in this story either. (Except maybe her sister but she's not the point.)

There is a couple who goes camping and the wife is trying to figure out if she is happy as a wife and mother, the pregnant teenage girl who is discovered in the wild after a drunken party and might be impregnated by her father (I really wasn't sure) but goes back with him anyway and obviously is not happy. (I really couldn't figure out why the cops weren't called on this one but I was too busy being glad the dog didn't die to dwell on it.) And there's the woman who tells her lover about how she peer pressured a friend into having sex with multiple guys they did not know when they were in high school and how the two of them stopped being friends afterwards and the other girl ended up in an abusive relationship and clearly did not live happily ever after. (This was probably the saddest story ever because the whole thing happened out of manipulation bred by boredom - they could have gone to a damn movie instead.)

The story I had the most trouble with was a historic one about gold mining brothers. One plans to get rich and return to marry his girl, who will wait for him - of course. They nearly die getting to the gold fields, lose all their equipment, struggle to find any gold, the girl doesn't write, the brother goes mad, innocent people are killed (bonus - they are Chinese killed due to their ethnicity!) and the sane brother flees without ever knowing what happens to the crazed sibling he left behind. Jack London and everybody else did this already and better, but the point is clear - no one got happy trying to get rich in the gold fields and the girl will never wait for you. (Really - is there a story where the girl EVER waits like she promises?)

Again, in all these stories the writing is powerful, the characters well drawn, the sentences elegant. It's all the good stuff you expect in literary fiction. But honestly, when I was done reading this book I couldn't reach for a fluffy romance novel fast enough. I was tired of all the negativity and it was really wearing me down. I needed something hopeful stat.

What bothers me about so much contemporary literature is that it seems that serious work has to mean unhappiness. We have turned so hard against unearned happy endings (the princess model) that to get respect you have to show the failures of the American dream - the ways in which life beats us up again and again and again. No one just meets the person of their dreams and buys a nice little house and loves their job and enjoys themselves. Can you think of a non-genre title where this happens? Can you think of something lauded as serious literature where just nice pleasant things happen to the characters^*? Are we so jaded we don't even want make believe people to be happy?

Am I the only one who wonders about this or still believes that happily-ever-after is an okay thing to think about?

^*The only one that comes to mind for me right away is Glaciers by Alexis Smith, the wonderful novella from Tin House. It's thoughtful and written with great care but contains a definite measure of happiness that really makes it heartwarming.

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Ada's Rules: A Sexy Skinny Novel by Alice Randall
Ada Howard is the wife of the preacher and has a lot of responsibilities.  She hasn't been making time for herself recently.  After Ada hears that her 25 yr college reunion is coming up she decides to lose weight to impress an old boyfriend.  Ada outlines her journey and new ways of living healthy in each chapter.  This was an excellent read.  The author manages to keep it light and fun as Ada rediscovers herself and her body. 

Author Pearl Cleage's blurb says it best " Ada's Rules might be a diet book disguised as a novel, and it might be a novel disguised as a diet book, but I guarantee it will make you laugh and make you think, while it nudges you oh so gently in the direction of a brand new way to think about and celebrate your body"

Beyond the laughter, Randall has created a very realistic character in Ada Howard with valid concerns that readers will easily cheer for as she tries to for something better at 50.   This would make an excellent Mother's Day gift. 

Read the first three chapters via the publishers site
Starred Publishers Weekly review

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The World We Found by Thrity Umrigar
I've heard a lot of great things about Umrigar's writing. When I worked at Borders many customers would come in to buy The Space Between Us by the author. It was a very popular book club read. Having recently finished The World We Found, I understand Umrigar's appeal.

Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita and Nishta grew up together and were once very close. In the 1970's when things were changing in India, the four friends questioned and challenged authority. The novel begins in present day, they have grown apart and leading their own lives. Only Laleh and Kavita the two still living in Bombay are in regular contact. Though when Armaiti's reaches out to tell them she has a fatal from of cancer, Laleh and Kavita promise to find Nishta. Armaiti wishes to see her friends one last time.

The strength and beauty of Umrigar's writing is present from the start.

"The tooth broke three days after she received the awful news. There was no blood. No pain, even. For three days she had believed that it was her heart that had broken into tiny fragments, but turned out it was another part of her body that decided to mourn the news. No pain, no blood. Just a moment of puzzlement as she bit into the soft French toast she made for breakfast this morning and felt something hard and brittle in her mouth. She spat out two small pieces into her cupped hand. She rinsed her mouth with cold water, and only then did she look up into the mirror. Until now, her teeth had been as sturdy and even as piano keys; but then, until now her oldest friend in the world had not been dying. It was right somehow, in this week of reminders of mortality, that she sacrifice something too."

Before Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita and Nishta can be reunited, they must come to terms with and address an event that changed the course of their lives and friendships. Umrigar has crafted a beautifully emotional story. This was one of those novels that I loved falling into completely. I highly recommend The World We Found, and look forward to reading more by the author.

Read the first five chapters via publisher.

A few professional reviews via author's site.

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