"I was so effing sick of other people's love stories, today in particular. Why would some higher power send me to a nun, only to have her tell me this?..........This, right here, this was my story, and love had no place in it."
-Shandi Pierce, from the novel
This novel starts out with a bang, quite literally! I could hardly put it down for the first few chapters as protagonist Shandi Pierce is held hostage in a convenience store robbery attempt. Her precocious 3-year-old is there with her along with a few others, including William Ashe who she instinctively feels will be the one to save the day. He starts out by protecting and comforting Natty, her son, immediately endearing himself to Shandi. After this frightening episode has ended, the two are understandably connected emotionally.
Shandi and William each have unresolved traumas in their recent past. Shandi's story shifts to William's and back frequently. She has a platonic friend, Walcott, on whom she greatly depends. William's equivalent is Paula, best friend of both him and his wife, Bridget. These two secondary characters provide some conflict, along with Shandi's at-odds divorced parents and a "ghost" from her past.
The author uses Southern flavor, humor and realistic dialogue to produce a good story, one with a surprise (and I would say rather abrupt) ending. I have read 4 other books by this author and I think the first two were my favorites, Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia. This one I will rate a 3. I admit to being a bit disappointed.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen
"Riled, righteous and rip-roaringly funny...Hiaasen's novels ought to bear the warning label: may be hazardous to your sides. They may split."
-from New York Newsday
This novel is a sequel of sorts to Bad Monkey which I finished listening to recently on CD. A few characters are the same but many more wacky ones are introduced. Protagonist Andrew Yancy is still trying to win back his detective badge and hang onto his girlfriend former M.E., Rosa. He gets involved in another wild and crazy case. Buck Nance of the "Bayou Brethren" reality show (think "Duck Dynasty") disappears while his agent, Lane Coolman, is the victim of a " bump and grab" car accident followed by his being kidnapped. The driver of the car and kidnapping accomplice is Merry Mansfield, the eponymous "razor girl." (You'll have to read only a few pages to find out why!) While this is going on, Yancy meets his would-be next door neighbor on Big Pine Key, Deb, who has lost her $2000 engagement ring.
Add to all this lunacy a crook who steals sand from one beach to sell to another, a lawyer of questionable integrity, a criminal who electrocutes himself via a Tesla, a Mafia boss, a rabid fan of "Bayou Brethren" who pushes a Muslim off the conch train to his death and some giant Gambian pouched rats! Talk about outlandish predicaments---one after another!
Razor Girl is set in the Florida Keys, much of it in Key West. I have been there a couple of times so I enjoyed the references to Duval Street, the La Concha hotel (where we stayed), Mallory Square, the Southernmost Point, the conch train and the countless chickens that roam everywhere. So not only was the novel good for a bunch of laughs, it brought back memories of a pretty cool place!
I will rate this one a 5 for high entertainment value! Literary value---not so much.
-from New York Newsday
This novel is a sequel of sorts to Bad Monkey which I finished listening to recently on CD. A few characters are the same but many more wacky ones are introduced. Protagonist Andrew Yancy is still trying to win back his detective badge and hang onto his girlfriend former M.E., Rosa. He gets involved in another wild and crazy case. Buck Nance of the "Bayou Brethren" reality show (think "Duck Dynasty") disappears while his agent, Lane Coolman, is the victim of a " bump and grab" car accident followed by his being kidnapped. The driver of the car and kidnapping accomplice is Merry Mansfield, the eponymous "razor girl." (You'll have to read only a few pages to find out why!) While this is going on, Yancy meets his would-be next door neighbor on Big Pine Key, Deb, who has lost her $2000 engagement ring.
Add to all this lunacy a crook who steals sand from one beach to sell to another, a lawyer of questionable integrity, a criminal who electrocutes himself via a Tesla, a Mafia boss, a rabid fan of "Bayou Brethren" who pushes a Muslim off the conch train to his death and some giant Gambian pouched rats! Talk about outlandish predicaments---one after another!
Razor Girl is set in the Florida Keys, much of it in Key West. I have been there a couple of times so I enjoyed the references to Duval Street, the La Concha hotel (where we stayed), Mallory Square, the Southernmost Point, the conch train and the countless chickens that roam everywhere. So not only was the novel good for a bunch of laughs, it brought back memories of a pretty cool place!
I will rate this one a 5 for high entertainment value! Literary value---not so much.
Monday, June 12, 2017
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
"Birdsong. A nightingale. She hears it singing a sad song. Nightingales mean loss, don't they? Love that leaves or doesn't last or never existed in the first place. There's a poem about that, she thinks. An ode."
-Isabelle's hallucination, from the novel
What can I say about this novel? It is a gripping story told beautifully! Rates a 5, for sure. The plot was so compelling I could hardly put it down---read it in only a few days.
Though the beginning setting is Oregon, 1995, a flashback soon takes the reader back to 1939 and the village of Carriveau, France. Two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac, about as different as siblings can be, must learn to deal with the ominous arrival of the Nazis. Vianne has a daughter she must protect at all costs while Isabelle is an impulsive and defiant 18-year-old, unwilling to yield to Nazi occupation. Both sisters end up involved in the French Resistance---Isabelle, quickly and wholeheartedly and Vianne, reluctantly at first, but then with great courage. Both women exemplify selflessness, resilience, determination, compassion and love.
This novel reminded me so much of Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan which I read very recently. In it Pino Lella becomes involved heart and soul with the resistance movement in Italy during Nazi occupation, beginning by leading Jews through an "underground railroad" of sorts through the Alps into Switzerland. Isabelle undertakes similar risky missions in The Nightingale with numerous treks through the Pyrenees. Though Isabelle is a fictional character and Pino is an actual person, both demonstrate great courage and show that heroes can be people you would least expect---women, before they were given much credit, and teenagers.
Both these novels are emotionally intense so maybe you'd want to read something light and humorous in-between. Just saying.....
----------------------------------------
The Nightingale was very popular with our Page Turners: average rating a 4.7, highest of 2017 to this point. We had a wonderful discussion including some personal reflections about duty, war and prejudice. In answer to questions provided by the publisher, most of us agreed that both sisters did what they had to do and we admired them both. We acknowledged that even though the Mauriac women were fictional characters, there would have been numerous real women who performed the kind of heroic deeds described in the book. Some of us did not realize the degree to which the French people suffered during this terrible time. We thought that the narrative structure of the novel, switching settings, as I described earlier, added intrigue and some relief from the intensity of the 1939 story. We were kept guessing as to the narrator almost to the end! If you like historical fiction, this one's a winner!
-Isabelle's hallucination, from the novel
What can I say about this novel? It is a gripping story told beautifully! Rates a 5, for sure. The plot was so compelling I could hardly put it down---read it in only a few days.
Though the beginning setting is Oregon, 1995, a flashback soon takes the reader back to 1939 and the village of Carriveau, France. Two sisters, Vianne and Isabelle Mauriac, about as different as siblings can be, must learn to deal with the ominous arrival of the Nazis. Vianne has a daughter she must protect at all costs while Isabelle is an impulsive and defiant 18-year-old, unwilling to yield to Nazi occupation. Both sisters end up involved in the French Resistance---Isabelle, quickly and wholeheartedly and Vianne, reluctantly at first, but then with great courage. Both women exemplify selflessness, resilience, determination, compassion and love.
This novel reminded me so much of Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan which I read very recently. In it Pino Lella becomes involved heart and soul with the resistance movement in Italy during Nazi occupation, beginning by leading Jews through an "underground railroad" of sorts through the Alps into Switzerland. Isabelle undertakes similar risky missions in The Nightingale with numerous treks through the Pyrenees. Though Isabelle is a fictional character and Pino is an actual person, both demonstrate great courage and show that heroes can be people you would least expect---women, before they were given much credit, and teenagers.
Both these novels are emotionally intense so maybe you'd want to read something light and humorous in-between. Just saying.....
----------------------------------------
The Nightingale was very popular with our Page Turners: average rating a 4.7, highest of 2017 to this point. We had a wonderful discussion including some personal reflections about duty, war and prejudice. In answer to questions provided by the publisher, most of us agreed that both sisters did what they had to do and we admired them both. We acknowledged that even though the Mauriac women were fictional characters, there would have been numerous real women who performed the kind of heroic deeds described in the book. Some of us did not realize the degree to which the French people suffered during this terrible time. We thought that the narrative structure of the novel, switching settings, as I described earlier, added intrigue and some relief from the intensity of the 1939 story. We were kept guessing as to the narrator almost to the end! If you like historical fiction, this one's a winner!
Friday, June 2, 2017
Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston
"I have known the joy and pain of deep friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's a living."
-Zora Neale Hurston
I believe Zora Neale Hurston must have been an amazing woman---definitely ahead of her time. She lived and worked at a time before the Civil Rights Era when women were still pretty much second-class citizens. As a black woman she still seemed unfazed by it all. In fact she was denigrated by other black writers of her time because she did not speak out strongly enough against racism. It simply had not been her experience.
I chose to read this book in preparation for an adult class I was planning to teach on Florida Authors: Then and Now. She would be one of the "thens." Our Page Turners group had read Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered Zora's masterpiece, several years ago and most of us liked it.
Dust Tracks... is her autobiography so I chose it for my class, thinking it would allow students to learn of her life as well as her writing. I had been warned by a reliable source that it was not a typical autobiography with perhaps even some stretching of the truth. As I read other sources before starting Dust Tracks... I could see that even her place of birth was argued---Notasulga, Alabama or Eatonville, Florida. Zora says the latter but most other bios say the former. Apparently her family moved to Eatonville when she was still an infant.
Choosing a quote was a difficult task since she was quite witty and even philosophical at times. I didn't realize Hurston was an anthropologist, folklorist and playwright as well as a novelist and I learned she was the first African-American to graduate from Barnard College. But the most surprising thing about Zora Neale Hurston was that after she reached the pinnacle of her career in the late 30's to early 40's, her work fell from grace and she ended up working as a maid, a librarian and a substitute teacher in the 50's before dying of a stroke at age 69 in a county welfare home. It was not until 1973 when Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, published an article in Ms. called "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" that interest in and respect for Zora's work was rekindled.
Biography is not a favorite genre of mine but as I said, this one isn't typical. I will rate it a 4. It has inspired me to read more of Zora's work.
-Zora Neale Hurston
I believe Zora Neale Hurston must have been an amazing woman---definitely ahead of her time. She lived and worked at a time before the Civil Rights Era when women were still pretty much second-class citizens. As a black woman she still seemed unfazed by it all. In fact she was denigrated by other black writers of her time because she did not speak out strongly enough against racism. It simply had not been her experience.
I chose to read this book in preparation for an adult class I was planning to teach on Florida Authors: Then and Now. She would be one of the "thens." Our Page Turners group had read Their Eyes Were Watching God, considered Zora's masterpiece, several years ago and most of us liked it.
Dust Tracks... is her autobiography so I chose it for my class, thinking it would allow students to learn of her life as well as her writing. I had been warned by a reliable source that it was not a typical autobiography with perhaps even some stretching of the truth. As I read other sources before starting Dust Tracks... I could see that even her place of birth was argued---Notasulga, Alabama or Eatonville, Florida. Zora says the latter but most other bios say the former. Apparently her family moved to Eatonville when she was still an infant.
Choosing a quote was a difficult task since she was quite witty and even philosophical at times. I didn't realize Hurston was an anthropologist, folklorist and playwright as well as a novelist and I learned she was the first African-American to graduate from Barnard College. But the most surprising thing about Zora Neale Hurston was that after she reached the pinnacle of her career in the late 30's to early 40's, her work fell from grace and she ended up working as a maid, a librarian and a substitute teacher in the 50's before dying of a stroke at age 69 in a county welfare home. It was not until 1973 when Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, published an article in Ms. called "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" that interest in and respect for Zora's work was rekindled.
Biography is not a favorite genre of mine but as I said, this one isn't typical. I will rate it a 4. It has inspired me to read more of Zora's work.
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