Women in Sunlight

Four very different American women experience reinvention and self-discovery when they settle in Tuscany and explore all that Italy has to offer.

Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun, Under Magnolia) returns to the sensuous glories of Italy in her beautifully rendered and richly woven novel Women inSunlight. 

Catherine "Kit" Raine is an American expat in her late 30s. She has lived and worked as a successful writer and poet nestled in the Tuscan hills of San Rocco for 12 years. Her current project is a biography of fellow American Margaret Merrill--an older woman, good friend and a writer whom Kit admired--who set down roots in Tuscany much earlier.

When Margaret died, she surprisingly bequeathed her estate to Kit. Their friendship was at times rocky and difficult. However, Margaret's posthumous generosity made a lasting impression on Kit. In trying to broaden the readership of Margaret's work--and better understand her enigmatic friend--Kit grapples with memories on the page that lead Kit to examine her own life and future.

Kit's quest deepens when three American women--and their unruly dog--move into the villa next door. The three women are new friends, all retired, who met at an orientation for a 55-and-over retirement community near their homes in Chapel Hill, N.C. The threesome are still vital and active enough to assert their independence. 

Mayes's writing glimmers with masterful sensory descriptions. Readers can practically taste the white foam that tops cappuccinos, step into elongated shadows cast by cypress trees and feel the echoing cold retained amid old stone villas. Mayes delivers another intimate story, told in lively episodes, that details how unexpected friendships can lead to reinvention and bright new beginnings at any age.

Women in Sunlight: A Novel by Frances Mayes

Crown, $27.00 Hardcover,  9780451497666, 448  pages

Publication Date: April 3, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 24, 2018), link HERE

Nina George: Writing, Loving, Fighting

The Writer's Life

Nina George is the author of the bestselling novel The Little Paris Bookshop, a story about how books have the power to change destinies. She also writes (in German, with her husband, Jens "Jo" Kramer) a mystery series set in Provence under the pseudonym Jean Bagnol; has written science thrillers as Nina Kramer; and many titles about love, relationships, Eros and femininity as Anne West. In her 27th book, The Little French Bistro (see my review below), George tells the fictional story of a 60-year-old German woman's quest for reinvention and self-discovery. 

Why use the word "little" in the titles of both novels?

In every language, my books have totally different titles. Every market has its own rules. And let's face it: I like to write intimate stories, set in a specific place--because the place is a sort of secret protagonist. Every landscape, every room has its character, which helps me to describe certain emotions and cultural attitudes.

Both "little" books are journey stories. What did you learn about yourself in taking the journey to write these novels?

I love to tell "road stories." The art of developing a "quest," the searching and finding, is one of the oldest ways to create legends. You have to move on--our own, real lives are daily-quests, too. With The Little French Bistro, I found my writing voice. I had nearly 18 years of practice in professional writing, but with Marianne (the protagonist of The Little French Bistro), I reached the magical point of telling the story just exactly the way it wanted to be told. A story finds its way to a writer in different ways. When I found the tale of Marianne, it all started with her "getting lost at the end of the world." And like Marianne, I also found my home--at the "end of the world."

That "end of the world" reference is to Kerdruc, the setting of this novel.

Yes, Kerdruc is a very, very small village in the "Commune Nevez," which is part of the Region Cornouaille in the Department Finistère in the State Brittany (Bretagne) of France. Some call it a place at the "end of the world."

How did you discover Kerdruc?

Years ago, my husband and I traveled without any GPS, and one day we ended up at the Port of Kerdruc. It was like a slap in the face: I had the idea to develop a setting right then and there.

You divide your time between Berlin and Brittany.

Brittany is the place where I feel at home. I belong to the sea, the beauty of the nights; I feel familiar with the savage seashore, the stones and the stolid nature of Bretons.

Did that Breton sensibility spark the idea for this story?

The idea was born when I noticed a group of older people hanging around in a Bar Tabac on a Monday morning--drinking, chatting, enjoying their friendship and their time left together. I wanted to tell a story about older people and why they are still together--is it friendship? Is it love? Is it just home? What is necessary to do in your own life to find the exact place that is meant for you? 

Is that why you chose to create Marianne--the protagonist of The Little French Bistro--as a 60-year-old, as opposed to someone younger?

Modern literature often ignores older people in the autumn of their lives. At 60 years old, the layers of your emotions, your memories, and also the cage you have built up around you, are more complex.

Community is the centerpiece of both "little" books.

Our memories are made of the people we've spent our time with. Life is not about what you get. Not your career or success. It's about who you choose to spend your short time on earth with: friendship--short or long-term--love, an encounter with a stranger on a train by night....

What research was necessary to tell this story?

For several weeks, I traveled through the Finistère; watching, listening, visiting forests and chapels, feeling the loneliness and freedom of this part of old Europe, learning how to cook like the Bretons.

Cooking and gastronomic delights are backdrops of the novel. Are you a cook?

Bah oui! I was raised in a family of cooks. For me it is normal to get something good on the table--to please me, to please the one I love. And I really love to take care of guests. One day, I will open a guest house with a fine kitchen and a library in each room.

How has your life changed since the success of The Little Paris Bookshop?

It took me 20 years to become famous "overnight"... but those years help me to stay humble today. No one tells you beforehand that it is even harder to write another successful novel after having a bestseller. The success also makes it easier for me to support others. The royalties allow me to advocate for authors' rights, for women in literature and to defend those whose voices are silenced. We have to care for the world and the future.

Will there be another "little" book?

I am working right now on a new novel, my 28th, which asks the existential question: Did I become (the woman) who I could have been? It will be based in Brittany again in an endless summer, an intimate play between two women and two men. 

Note: This interview is a reprint and is being published with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this Q&A with Nina George as originally published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (7/7/17), link HERE.

The Little French Bistro

A small, lively town in France offers an unfulfilled, 60-year-old woman liberation and a chance for personal reinvention.

While vacationing in Paris with her demeaning ogre of a husband, unfulfilled and unhappy, 60-year-old Marianne Messmann from Celle, Germany, decides to end her life by taking a plunge into the River Seine. But when a stranger rescues Marianne, she sets off on a journey to find her true self--the woman she sadly left behind and lost when she married 41 years before.  

Marianne's second chance at life seems dictated by providence. This begins in the hospital, where she finds a glazed tile depicting a beautiful harbor and a dainty red boat, sails slack, named Marianne--"a magnificent scene in the tiny space." On the back is written Port de Kerdruc, Fin. Marianne takes this as a sign. She ditches her husband and sets her sights on Kerdruc, located miles away in the Finistère region, a place in western France that "bulged out into the Atlantic--Brittany."  

Kerdruc is all Marianne imagines and hopes for. She lands a job at a bistro where she's befriended by a host of locals--dynamic characters, artists and dreamers--who also carry challenges and burdens of loss, regret and a lack of love and fulfillment. Amid Marianne's liberation and self-discovery, she falls in love again. But when her contrite husband tracks her down, Marianne is faced with a difficult choice. Loyal bonds of community, the tug of romance, gentle humor and poignant revelations buoy Nina George's (The Little Paris Bookshop) beautifully written, French-infused story brightened with hope. 

The Little French Bistro: A Novel by Nina George

Crown, $26.00 Hardcover,  9780451495587, 320 pages

Publication Date: June 13, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE



NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 7, 2017), link HERE

The Invoice

In this thought-provoking existential comedy, a lowly video store clerk receives an astronomical bill for simply living his life.

The absurdities of life coupled with the strangely surreal are hallmarks of Swedish actor and playwright Jonas Karlsson's work (The Room). His second novel, The Invoice, again turns on a Kafkaesque premise: a nameless, 39-year-old part-time video store clerk and film aficionado--a loner with only a handful of friends, whose most notable indulgence in life is having a pizza and taking in a movie in his one-room Stockholm apartment--receives a bill for 5.7 million kronor (roughly $875,000) in the mail. Thinking the bill--imprinted with a nondescript logo--is a mistake or a scam, the narrator disregards it. The next month, he receives another bill in the same amount, but with a surcharge of 150 kronor tacked on as a late payment. When the narrator calls to inquire, he makes matters worse as it is soon discovered that he owes even more than originally calculated. "What am I supposed to be paying for?" the narrator asks. "Everything," says the representative. "Being alive costs."

Through a cryptic, engrossing storyline that snowballs with staggering, thought-provoking complications, Karlsson reveals more about his underachieving hero. It seems contradictory that the hefty "happiness tax" in the whole country should be imposed upon someone living such a simple life. Fair or not, this leaves the narrator to scramble for deductions in the form of disclosures about free-floating anxiety, missing his parents and the loss of a secret love. The satirical, philosophical nature of this story delves into the meaning and purpose of life, how we measure joy and what truly constitutes a sense of accomplishment.

The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson

Hogarth, $24.00 Hardcover, 9781101905142, 208 pages

Publication Date: July 12, 2016

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read the review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/15/16), link HERE

This review was also published in a longer form on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (6/20/2016). To read the longer form review, link HERE

Owls: Our Most Charming Bird

Artist and avid ornithologist, Matt Sewell, has built a brand writing and distinctively illustrating informative, yet accessibly appealing books about birds. In Our Garden Birds and Our Songbirds, he presented two volumes, each exploring 52 favorite species from England—one bird for each week of the year. In Owls: Our Most Charming Bird, Sewell branches out beyond Great Britain and offers a world-wide compendium of various owls: multi-faceted, nocturnal birds of prey. Watercolors rendered in Pop-Art style and concise, lively prose highlight the individuality of 50 different species of owls that are indigenous to diverse regions of the world.

Sewell explores Woodland varieties like the Northern Saw-whet Owl--native to North America--which is "smaller-than-a-blackbird and fluffier-than-a-three-week-old Labrador" and has "pleading, puppy-dog eyes" etched with a permanent look of surprise. The Great Gray Owl, with a head like a "geodesic dome inhabited by a bunch of strung-out hippies," is considered a Wilderness variety that is a stealthy hunter built to survive in northern, glacial environments. The Elf Owl is one of the smallest that loves cacti and inhabits Wild West deserts of the USA and Mexico. While the Crested Owl is indigenous to tropical Central and South American climates and has eyebrows that appear like "incredible appendages" that serve to aid his camouflage efforts when pretending to be a branch.

This playful, well-conceived collection enhances--and also shatters--myths and folklores surrounding these "all-seeing, all-knowing" mysterious and imperious bird-hunters and proves fiercely entertaining and enriching in the process.

Owls: Our Most Charming Bird by Matt Sewell

Ten Speed Press, $12.99 Hardcover, 9781607748793, 128 pp

Publication Date: September 22, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (10/2/15), link HERE

The Little Paris Bookshop

Nina George's enchanting The Little Paris Bookshop deals with the nature of grief; the power of friendship, love and truth; and how reading and books have the capacity to change peoples' lives, souls and destinies. The narrative centers on 50-year-old Monsieur Jean Perdu, who owns a bookstore called the Literary Apothecary--actually a floating barge "the length of three truck trailers" that houses 8,000 books, moored on the Seine. Perdu lives at 27 Rue Montagnard and is a passionate bibliophile who believes that booksellers don't just look after books, they look after people. 

Things take a turn when two new residents move into Rue Montagnard. Max Jordan is a young author whose debut novel has made him famous, but he is plagued with writers' block. The other new neighbor is Madame Catherine, who moves into the flat across the hall from Perdu. The tenants of the building rally to help this newly cast-off wife who has nothing of her own to set up her new apartment. 

Perdu delivers a table to Madame Catherine's apartment, and she discovers a letter hidden inside that causes Perdu's head and heart to spiral into an emotional tailspin. He takes refuge in the Literary Apothecary, soon hauling anchor and setting sail--but not before Max, who's being pursued by paparazzi, jumps aboard the moving barge. 

George is a lyrical writer whose beautiful, sensory language and imagery enhance this adventurous, moving narrative. On their voyage, the men are frequently mistaken for father and son, and they pass the time by sharing life stories. In the end, their excursion propels Perdu to finally reconnect with himself--the person he was, is and who he will become in the future.

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Crown Publishing, $25.99 Hardcover, 9780553418774, 400 pp

Publication Date: June 23, 2015

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE 

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/30/15), click HERE

To read the full review of this novel as originally published as a special feature of Shelf Awareness: Maximum Shelf (4/8/15)--a much longer and much more comprehensive review--link HERE

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir

Sometimes you have to leave a place in order to appreciate it. Such was the case for Frances Mayes, who charts and examines her formative years before she wrote her blockbuster memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun. As a child, Mayes longed to escape her hometown of Fitzgerald, Georgia; she lived most of her adult life in Italy and California. But a trip to Oxford, Mississippi, for a book signing served as a conversion moment for Mayes. She and her husband relocated to Hillsborough, North Carolina, a small, historical enclave on the Eno River where many writers and artists reside.

"Often, seemingly spontaneous acts come from a deep, unacknowledged place," Mayes writes in Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir, as she re-imagines and re-creates the solitary, bookish, willful childhood she had in the pre-civil rights South. Mayes's unhurried, stream-of-consciousness narrative provides an intimate look into her upbringing, an "intense microcosm" of family, friends and a home where pride seemed to prevail over realism.

"Secretive, inverted things informed my childhood," writes Mayes, as she traces the complex connections of a small town. She renders the trajectory of her life story—the people and the places she's fled—via pivotal scenes infused with colorful characters and sensory imagery. In describing one of the first funerals she ever attended, Mayes writes, "The smell of roses feels so heavy it's as if we've stepped inside a flower. Pink shades on hanging lamps make the room glow like inside a shell." Such vivid, poetic prose serves to enhance the bittersweet journey of a natural-born storyteller who rediscovers and reclaims her Southern roots.

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes

Crown, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780307885913, 336 pp

Publication Date: April 1, 2014

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (4/11/14), click HERE

Twelve Rooms with a View

I was actually standing on the edge of my mother’s open grave when I heard about the house. Some idiot with tattoos and a shovel had tossed a huge wad of dirt at me. I think he was perturbed that everyone else had taken off, the way they’re supposed to, and I was standing there like someone had brained me with a frying pan. It’s not like I was making a scene. But I couldn’t leave. The service in the little chapel had totally blown—all that deacon or what ever he was could talk about was god and his mercy and utter unredeemable nonsense that had nothing to do with her—so I was just standing there, thinking maybe something else could be said while they put her in the earth, something simple but hopefully specific. Which is when Lucy came up and yanked at my arm.

“Come on,” she said. “We have to talk about the house.”

And I’m thinking, what house?    

Twelve Rooms with a View (Chapter One, Page One) 

Can you imagine your estranged, alcoholic mother dying and leaving her second husband's $11 million dollar Central Park West (NYC) apartment, to you and your sisters? Well, acclaimed playwright (novelist and screenwriter) Theresa Rebeck imagined it and shaped it into her novel, TWELVE ROOMS WITH A VIEW. In the story, the Finn Sisters suddenly find themselves strategizing ways to keep the historic piece of inherited real estate in their possession - away from the Drinans, the three sons of the second husband who grew up in the legendary, Edgewood Building, and a co-op board that wants to usurp the property from both of the families.

The apartment itself (including a ghost), and the dead, eccentric mother, emerge as central characters in this book narrated by Tina Finn. She is a young woman, a house cleaner, who lives in a trailer park and is on the skids, both professionally and in the relationship department. After the mother's funeral, Tina is appointed by her much more successful and domineering sisters to move into the palatial Edgewood as a squatter and stake the sisters' claim to the apartment they feel they've rightfully inherited. However, when Tina settles in, she is met with legal opposition and entanglements from the quirky Drinan sons (one of whom is a NYPD cop and has romantic designs on Tina), the co-op board, and certain residents of the Edgewood with agendas all their own.

The arc of the story follows Tina, a petty thief, who is suddenly forced (at the age of 32) to assess her own life, the lives of her sisters, the life and death of her mother, and even the Drinan sons on a level much deeper than she's normally accustomed to. It is in doing so that Rebeck offers a fascinating exploration into the themes of family (and the flaws and secrets therein), grief, forgiveness, greed, self-interest and the lengths some people must go to in order to do the right thing and transform their lives - and the lives of those around them.

Rebeck writes big scenes and pitch-perfect dialogue. And while the richly woven characterizations and sprawling interior monologues often over-shadow the plot, for me that's what made the story even more compelling. Beyond the legal and real estate intricacies, you'll be eager to make the journey with Tina Finn because she offers a bold, comically honest and ultimately self-aware voice in modern, contemporary fiction.

Twelve Rooms with a View by Theresa Rebeck
Crown, Hardcover, 9780307394163, 352pp.
Publication Date: May 4, 2010
To order this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE