The Last Letter from your Lover

London 1960: Jennifer Stirling wakes in a hospital to learn that she has survived a terrible car accident. She is the wife of a wealthy business magnate who provides Jennifer with a life some women only dream of. The problem is, Jennifer can't recall who she is or who she was - until she discovers a heartfelt love letter signed with the letter "B," asking her for forgiveness and to leave her husband. It proves to be just the jolt Jennifer's memory needs in reconstructing the past and a love-affair she only half-remembers.

Jojo Moyes (Sheltering Rain, The Peacock Emporium) structures this captivating romance in chapters named for the months surrounding the fateful accident in 1960 and weaves a tale that ultimately unravels in 2003. A modern day journalist, Ellie, caught in the throes of a complicated love affair of her own, discovers love letters misfiled in a newspaper archive. Searching for meaning in her own life and a story that might save her career, she sets out to find and reunite the lovers immortalized on the page. But is it too late?

At times, the shifts of chronology might make the reader feel as off-balance as Jennifer in piecing together the facts that resulted in the accident and its tragic aftermath. But Moyes is an intelligent, engaging storyteller who lures the reader through the complexities of the narrative via dramatic twists and turns of missed opportunities, glitches that keep lovers apart and cliff-hangers that build up reader expectation only to deliver the unexpected.

The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 978-0670022809, 400 pp.
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please 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 (7/19/11), click HERE

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“When a chapter of your Life Book is complete, your spirit knows it’s time to turn the page so a new chapter can begin. Even when you’re scared or think you’re not ready, your spirit knows you are.”  (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman)

It's 1967 in Willoughby, Ohio, and Cecelia Rose (CeeCee) Honeycutt is no ordinary 12 year-old. Largely abandoned by her father, CeeCee emerges as her mother's self-imposed caretaker - a woman with mental illness who clings to a shining moment in 1951 when she was crowned Miss Vidalia Onion Queen. When CeeCee's mother is killed by a speeding ice cream truck, it would appear as though things have gone from bad to worse, and CeeCee's world has irrevocably been torn apart. But what underlies the tragedy is a miraculous saving grace in the form of CeeCee's elderly great-aunt, "Tootie" Caldwell, a woman whom CeeCee has never met.

Setting off in her aunt's shiny red Packard convertible, which is as colorful as her personality, CeeCee is whisked away to live with well-to-do Tootie in her historic, Greek-revival style home on Gaston Street in Savannah, Georgia. It seems a magical place, and CeeCee wonders if it is providential that she has arrived in the very city to which her mother had always aspired to return. This coming-of-age story depicts a transitional summer for a wounded, frightened young girl who is anchored back to the world via a cast of strong, Southern women - each a survivor in her own right and each with her own unique blend of eccentricities and challenges in the class-conscious, racially-charged south.

It is through the wit and wisdom of these likeable, well-drawn characters--and the climax of the story that centers around a robbery attempt--that CeeCee is rescued and buoyed by the love that ultimately surrounds her. Hoffman has a real flair for turning out lively metaphors that leap off the page, where tight, concise scenes transform this bittersweet story into one full of comfort and hope.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 9780670021390, 320pp.
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

The Girl In The Garden

While her lover sleeps, a young woman, Rakhee Singh, uncertain about her feelings regarding her impending marriage, slips off her engagement ring, leaves it on the bedside table and sets off from the NY-Metro area to India on a journey to reclaim her past and hopefully, rediscover herself.

This powerful first chapter that opens The Girl In The Garden, a debut novel by the very talented Kamala Nair, encourages the reader to take up the narrator's cause and travel with her as she goes back in time. Throughout the narrative, she recalls the summer of her tenth year, when her emotionally troubled mother mysteriously whisks Rakhee away from her father and their home in Plainfield, Minnesota and takes her back to her ancestral village in India. Once there, Rakhee becomes acquainted with an unfamiliar culture and relatives she has never known - and she also discovers a walled-in garden hidden in a thicket behind the family home. She and her young cousins have been told the garden is off-limits as a Rakshasi, a witch, is said to inhabit the empty space hidden in the forest. This restriction is exactly what piques Rakhee's interest until she decides to see for herself what resides therein.

Family secrets are at the heart of this quietly told, incredibly gripping novel narrated from Rakhee's point-of-view in one long flashback sequence that depicts a series of fully drawn characters embroiled in domestic complications. The hidden garden becomes a compelling metaphor for what happens when we compartmentalize the sorrows and challenges of our lives. The meaning of love and fidelity, and the consequences of hiding from the truth rather than facing it, are central issues that ultimately force Rakhee to circle back to the present and reconcile her own life.

The Girl In The Garden by Kamala Nair
Grand Central Publishing, Hardcover, 978-0446572682, 320pp.
Publication Date: June 15, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness  To read this review (in a slightly shorter form) on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/24/11), click HERE

Cleaning Nabokov's House

What does the cover of this book say to you?  It's part of what intrigued me and led me to it...

Love and longing (and fondly remembering) a missing, deceased father is what anchors Barbara Barrett back to the world and her life when this divorced mother of two is deemed by a court as "psychologically unstable" to care for her children. In Cleaning Nabokov's House, Leslie Daniels has written a uniquely original debut novel that transcends grief and breathes levity (and often, unbelievable) satirical absurdity into a story that might have, in less clever creative hands, flat-lined into melodrama.

When the book opens, the reader joins Barbara's story after the court order has been handed down, and she is scrambling to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and figure out a way to get her children back. Barbara, originally a Manhattanite, feels like an outcast since moving to her ex's (and now also her children's) hometown of Onkwedo, New York (a fictionalized version of Oneida). She feels stuck in a rut. Her lackluster job at a small dairy, writing response letters to disgruntled ice cream consumers and the like, isn't much help either. But her luck suddenly changes when she moves into a house once inhabited by the great Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the seductive classic, Lolita. Tucked behind a false wall in the house, she discovers a manuscript she believes is an unpublished masterpiece written by Nabokov himself about Babe Ruth...of all people.  Could having the novel authenticated and getting it published serve as a winning lottery ticket to fulfill Barbara's quest? It is this discovery, along with a cast of equally quirky and absorbing characters, that ultimately empowers Barbara to reinvent her life in often laugh-out-loud ways that she, and the reader, could never have imagined.

Cleaning Nabokov's House by Leslie Daniels
Touchstone, Hardcover, 978-1439195024 , 336 pp
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
To purchase this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Happy Father's Day!

Opinion: Things I Remember About Dad

Friday, June 17, 2011

Opinion/Editorial Section (page 23)

BY KATHLEEN GERARD

The Record

To read the op-ed in its entirety, click on the highlighted article title above

Faith

Faith by Jennifer Haigh is a novel that reads like a fictional memoir. Father Art, a respected and lauded Catholic parish priest in Boston was accused amid the pedophilia scandal in 2002. Sheila, Father Art's step-sister, is an all-knowing narrator who tells the story much like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby - by standing on the periphery of the larger story. From the outset, she spells out her intent to shed light on the facts that implicated her step-brother in the alleged abuse of an 8 year-old boy. This leads to a novel well-structured in three parts and told largely in flashbacks. Part one details how and why Art became a priest. Part two delves into the ramifications of Art's life in the priesthood and what led to the scandal. And part three unravels the story, exposing how the scandal that plagued Art rocked his life and the lives of every member of a rather old-school, Irish-Catholic family.

Jennifer Haigh embroils her characters in a moral dilemma and renders them with great sensitivity and compassion. For every flaw revealed, Haigh presents a plausible justification that ultimately exposes redeeming qualities - in everyone. Haigh's writing--the straight prose and the pivotal scenes--is beautifully nuanced, and she made me care and feel for these people . . . Art, a truly faith-filled, yet isolated, man, who gave 25 years of his life to his church only to have that church betray him; Sheila, unwavering in her belief in her step-brother's innocence, but not without regret and sorrow; Mike, who convicts his step-brother from the get-go but who goes to great lengths to ultimately form his own conclusion; and the now elderly matriarch and patriarch of the family, who are steeped in denial - perhaps with good reason.

These characterizations, coupled with a plot that is hinged on discoveries and epiphanies that culminate toward the end of the narrative, ultimately deliver a suspenseful book that is fascinating in both its presentation and portrayal.

Faith by Jennifer Haigh
Harper, Hardcover, 9780060755805, 336pp.
Publication Date: May 2011
To purchase this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

In order to write this review, I received a copy of this book via TLC Book Tours in conjuction with HarperCollins Publishers.

When We Danced On Water

A chance encounter at a coffee bar in Tel Aviv rescues two lost souls from the abyss in Evan Fallenberg's (Light Fell) carefully crafted novel, When We Danced on Water. Teo is a hardened and domineering 85 year-old; an aged, influential choreographer whose life is riddled with sadness and sorrow. Vivi, a 40-something waitress with latent, "interdisciplinary" artistic talent, is completely stalled in her life and her work. The nature of art is what brings these lonely, disillusioned souls together, but it is also what will tear them apart. When their paths cross, a transformation is sparked in each of their lives - but not before they are forced to resurrect the past and face down long-repressed demons. When Vivi and Teo slowly start to form a relationship that seeps beyond the boundaries of artistic friendship, the reader is drawn and captivated by their stories from the past. Teo was a dancer with great promise, who forfeited love to pursue his career, only to have it stolen in wartime by a Nazi brute. While Vivi, an Israeli soldier, forsook her family and the traditions of her Jewish faith for a lover who would later betray her. The novel delves into themes surrounding the perils of passion, evil and regret; the transcendent power of art; and the ultimate healing power of love. The sensitivity that Fallenberg brings to the writing devoted to Teo's life as a dancer in the Danish Royal Ballet, while in the wings and on stage, is passionately evocative - as are the terrifying scenes of his captivity during the war. In the end, it is Teo's story that takes center stage and serves to ratchet up the dramatic tension--past and present--for both Vivi and Teo until the plot unravels into a surprising conclusion of forgiveness and rebirth.

When We Danced On Water by Evan Fallenberg
Harper Perennial, 978-0062033321, trade paperback, 272 pages
Publication Date: May 17, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness.  To read this review on their website link HERE

The State of Our Libraries



Opinion: The many chapters of our local library
Sunday, May 22, 2011

Opinion/Editorial Section (front page)

BY Kathleen Gerard
The Record

To read the op-ed in its entirety, click on the highlighted article title above

Hotel Angeline

What happens when 36 writers, of various genres, come together and work on the same novel at 2-hour live intervals for a period of one week? The Hotel Angeline is what happens...a wonderful new book by an imaginative collective of authors who all reside in and around the Pacific Northwest. The novel, written in chapters penned by each of the 36 participants, tells the story of Alexis, a precocious 14 year-old girl whose life is far from ordinary. She and her gravely ill mother live in (and serve as the landlords for) the Hotel Angeline in Seattle, what was once a mortuary, but has since been converted into apartments - dilapidated, run-down apartments that serve as "home" for a group of eccentric, misfit aging artsy types who smoke pot, detest Fox News and the conventionality of the ordinary. Beyond the liberal leanings of those who populate this insightful, well-rendered novel is a wonderful coming of age tale for fatherless, identity-challenged Alexis. She is faced with extraordinary choices and goes to great, often unexpected, lengths to do right by a mother whom she loves and wishes to honor. The unexpected arc of the plot keeps the reader turning pages as Alexis strives to save the Angeline and the residents therein. There is something for every fan of literature here - adolescent lit, thrillers, mysteries, fans of comic, fantasy, domestic fiction and even graphic novels. Over the course of the story, I marveled at how the voice of Alexis carried through the novel so distinctly and seamlessly, despite the influence of multiple authors who lent their time and talent to this project to benefit Seattle7Writers, a literary nonprofit organization. It was also great fun to read the novel with an eye toward authors whose work I already admire-- Elizabeth George, Garth Stein, Mary Guterson--to read their individual chapter contributions and the way in which their literary choices propelled the story forward with great insight, wit and sensitivity (fascinating!)...and also to discover the work of other voices and talents of which I was not familiar. 

Link HERE for a video about the project and the book.

Hotel Angeline (A Novel in 36 Voices)
Open Road Integrated Media LLC, 978-1453218785, 260 pp.
Publication Date: April 18, 2011
To order this book via Amazon.com link HERE

In order to write this review, a copy of the novel was provided to me via Open Road Integrated Media in conjuction with NetGalley

The Weird Sisters

The Andreas sisters are old enough to realize that the lives they've imagined don't measure up to the ones they're actually living. Is their disappointment and lack of self-fulfillment the result of being named for great Shakespearean characters - as imposed by their father, a scholar of the English Bard?

When their mother falls ill, the three, single sisters--each facing her own personal dilemma and demons--are suddenly reunited. There is Rose (Rosalind), the dutiful oldest sister, who has never left the hometown and is having a hard time committing to the man she loves; Bean (Bianca), a brusque, fashion-conscious middle child with a shopping compulsion; and Cordy (Cordelia), the beatnik baby of the bunch who has lived like a gypsy over the years.

With the trio back under the same roof to care for their ailing mother and emotionally-distant father, the disparate sisters are forced to face each other, their sibling rivalries and the limitations of their lives - all while struggling with issues of mortality, love, and the reversal of parent-child roles.

With fully realized characters, beautiful writing and a meandering story arc that encourages readers to linger over each and every word, what I loved even more about this book was the voice that led me through the narrative. "Our mother was facing a crisis..." "Our little sister was..." By writing via a first person plural point-of-view, it made me feel as though I, myself, were a member of this dynamic, literary-loving family - and that lent a sense of intimacy that further immersed me in this story and enriched my reading experience.

Eleanor Brown's THE WEIRD SISTERS  is a contemporary familial saga that stays true to the tenets of classical Shakespearean storytelling, where you can always count on a birth or a marriage to reconcile domesticity until it brims with hope.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, Hardcover, 9780399157226, 336pp.
Publication Date: January 20, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE

Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil

From the prologue of The Long Vigil, author Jerome Charyn does not mince words, thoughts or ideas about Joe DiMaggio, The Yankee Great, versus Joe DiMaggio, a man with glaring foibles, weaknesses and crippling limitations. Having been witness to the Yankee Clipper in action when he played in Yankee Stadium, the writing is rich with Charyn's passion and enthusiasm for the game, its history and his own personal intrigue over the larger than life mystique of "The Jolter," as he calls him. But for all of Charyn's adulation of DiMaggio's dignified and elegant baseball prowess, he deems DiMaggio, the person, a "savant" - a man insecure in managing life off the baseball diamond and grossly inept in maintaining interpersonal relationships.

Charyn divides the book into two parts. Part One, "The Player," delves into the years DiMaggio spent as a New York Yankee, racking up accomplishments and setting records. However challenging and physically demanding, for those thirteen years it would seem that Joe DiMaggio felt most alive. In the second part of the book, "The Demon Lover," DiMaggio struggles with the perils of life after baseball, and the story shifts to DiMaggio's obsessive relationship with Marilyn Monroe, the great love of his life. The before and after of these two sections set up possible reasons why Joltin' Joe ultimately left the game and gradually disappeared inside himself and his mystique.

DiMaggio and Monroe were star-crossed lovers who were both private, shy and distrustful of the majority of people who populated their worlds. Charyn sets up a paradigm that shows how alike the two were - Monroe's self-worth came from the screen, DiMaggio's from the baseball field. Both were "fractured beauties," vulnerable and fragile creatures, who achieved great success, yet both were filled with anger and rage that were made manifest in different ways.

When Monroe would not give up her acting career to become the wife and mother DiMaggio wanted, their relationship soured. Monroe's rejection--and later, her tragic death--is the devastating blow from which DiMaggio never recovers. In Charyn's account, DiMaggio wanders through the next 37 years of his life, a broken misfit of a man - yet one who treasured Monroe's memory until he died.

After Monroe's death, money became the priority of DiMaggio's life. Some claimed that to Joe, baseball was "just a business" that fueled his need to keep making a profit off his name, via the greed and stinginess for which he became legendary. The author postulates (p. 75) that DiMaggio's focus on money was all about pride and his way to soothe his own "narrow world of perfection." DiMaggio always had a need to be heralded as "The Greatest Living Ballplayer," and he cultivated that legacy with the same fervor and intensity he gave to the game. The facts Charyn presents indicate that a quest for perfection is inherent in all phases and aspects of DiMaggio's life. And it would seem that the New York Yankees, which would come to define DiMaggio and give his life its sole sense of meaning and purpose, tapped into those roots of perfectionism before he ever took to the field at Yankee Stadium for the first time. 

Charyn paints a picture of New York City, post-Babe Ruth and pre-DiMaggio:  "There was an emptiness, a terrible void, that no one could fill." The author points up the proliferation of Italian-Americans crowding New York and most big-league cities at the time. From a business standpoint, the Yankees' franchise cleverly capitalized on those statistics to boost the appeal of DiMaggio and their fan base. A headline in The Sporting News even read, "Fans Expect Recruit From Coast to be Cobb, Ruth, Jackson In One." Imagine the pressure that placed on the rookie. If DiMaggio, by nature, was a perfectionist, then surely the expectations placed upon him (and even those he placed upon himself) only exacerbated his one-track focus, discipline and dedication to the art of the sport. It brought him the recognition he craved. However, did he ever really feel a sense of personal fulfillment?  Charyn's account suggests that DiMaggio's lack of dominance and control outside of baseball only served to heighten his personal insecurities, making the remainder of his life anti-climactic.

Charyn (The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson) once again succeeds as a thorough and thought-provoking writer. The Long Vigil presents the many facets of the price DiMaggio paid for his success and the sad, tragic burden there was in living the life of Joe DiMaggio - on and off the field.

NOTE:  In order to write this review, I received a copy of this book from Tribute Books.

Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn
(Yale University Press, Hardcover, 9780300123289, 192pp.)
Publication Date: March 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE

The Lincoln Lawyer

All right, I'll admit it - it was Matthew McConaughey who drew me to read THE LINCOLN LAWYER by Michael Connelly. I don't normally lean toward this type of book, at least not since I devoured Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow more than 20 years ago. But as a fan of MM, I was eager to examine how the story will translate from page to screen. I have yet to see the movie. But having read the book, I cannot picture anyone but Matthew McConaughey playing this part. I wonder if the author wrote the story with this leading man in mind?

The plot boils down to this: high-powered (yet jaded) attorney, Michael "Mickey" Haller knows what he's good at and has a very high opinion of himself - at least amid the legal system. Instead of an office, he works out of his car - a Lincoln Continental (of which there are actually four in the fleet), which serves to chauffeur him to what seems like revolving doors at various courtrooms throughout Los Angeles County. Mickey has done fairly well for himself (his slogan as printed in the Yellow Pages is "Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee") by defending a slew of guilty lost souls who live on the fringes of society - drug dealers, junkies, prostitutes. You name it and Mickey's defended it - and probably more than once.

Mickey is stymied when he's called upon to defend Louis Ross Roulet, a wealthy resident of Beverly Hills arrested for a violent, ugly assault. Mickey initially sees dollar signs with what he calls a 'franchise case' - an expensive trial with a laundry list of billable hours. But when Mickey rolls up his sleeves and gets down to business, he soon discovers that he's being as hustled as the clients he normally defends. A case that Mickey represented--and plea bargained years before--figures prominently into the Roulet case. Mickey suffers a crisis of conscience and a moral dilemma. Did Mickey's legal counsel of Jesus Menendez, a past client, put Menendez behind bars for the rest of his life for a crime his current client, Roulet, actually committed? It's an ingenious twist that adds texture and depth to this economically written, first person p-o-v story of gripping suspense, vibrant dialogue, and meticulous plotting.

Connelly sets up the first half of the book by establishing the status quo of Mickey's world - one filled with two failed marriages (and two ex-wives who still have a part in Mickey's life), his own shortcomings as a workaholic dad who hasn't always been there for his daughter, and the terrain he mines as a no-nonsense defender of the down and out. The Roulet case tilts Mickey's world on its axis as he tries to figure out a way to help his innocent, yet jailed client (Menendez), while trying not to jeopardize the Roulet case, as it suddenly puts Mickey's own life at risk. The second half of the book deals mostly with the trial and the challenges Mickey faces amid politics on the bench and the back room deals of the legal system.

In the end, however, it is Connelly's flawed protagonist and the arc of his journey that deepens Mickey's redeeming qualities and gains the unwavering empathy of the reader. You can bet that with or without Matthew McConaughey, I'm bound to read Connelly's next legal thriller (The Fifth Witness, a new Mickey Haller book, is due April 5th)...and maybe the backlist of his books, too!

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly
Grand Central Publishing, Mass Market Paperback, 9781455500239, 544pp.
Publication Date: January 25, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND click HERE