A Test of Wills

A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

In 1914, Ian Rutledge left a brilliant career at Scotland Yard to fight in the Great War. Now, in 1919, he is back, burdened with a heavy secret: he is still suffering from shell shock. With him almost constantly is the cynical, taunting voice of the young Scots soldier he was forced to have executed on the battlefield for refusing to fight.

In a desperate gamble to salvage his sanity, Rutledge takes up his duties at Scotland Yard. But a colleague, jealous of Rutledge's pre-war successes, has learned his secret and maneuvers to have him assigned to a case that promises to spell disaster no matter what the outcome. In a Warwickshire village, a popular retired military officer has been murdered, and the chief suspect is, unhappily for the Inspector, a much-decorated war hero and a friend of the Prince of Wales.

Rutledge, fighting his malady and the tormentor in his head (who is the personification of his own doubts and guilt), doggedly goes about his investigation. He digs into the lives of the villagers: the victim's ward, a young woman now engaged to the chief suspect; a local artist shunned because of her love for a German prisoner; the reclusive cousins whose cottage adjoins the dead man's estate. But the witness who might be able to tell him the most is a war-ravaged ex-soldier who chills Rutledge with the realization that if he loses control of himself, he could become this man.

A TEST OF WILLS is an extraordinary first novel in a series that combines a unique kind of psychological suspense with vivid atmosphere and a tantalizing mystery.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

An intricately plotted mystery.  I'm looking forward to finding the rest of the series.  I would rate this with four stars****.

-Mona

Cockroaches

Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo

 

The thrilling sequel to Jo Nesbo's debut novel, The Bat, The Cockroaches sees Harry Hole sent to Bangkok to investigate the murder of the Norwegian ambassador.
     Detective Harry Hole arrives in a steaming hot Bangkok. But it's work, not pleasure. The Norwegian ambassador has been found dead in a seedy motel room, and no witnesses have come forward. The ambassador had close ties to the Norwegian prime minister, and to avoid a scandal Harry is sent there to hush up the case. But he quickly discovers that there is much more going on behind the scenes and very few people willing to talk. When Harry lays hands on some CCTV footage that will help him unravel what happened that night, things only get more complicated. The man who gave him the tape goes missing, and Harry realises that failing to solve a murder case is by no means the only danger in Bangkok.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

As thrilling and compelling as this novel was, I found it to be somewhat confusing and complicated as it made it's twists and turns through it's many social, political and emotional changes throughout.  I would rate this with three stars***.

-Mona

America and the Americans

America and the Americans by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck may be known best by average readers for his iconic American set pieces Cannery Row, Grapes of Wrath and his semi travelogue/essay on America, Travels With Charley, along with many others. America and Americans is a written essay by him which features associated and expanded photo journalism from many noted American photographers, all in black and white.

What makes this brief read from the distant past (1966) worth reading for me is its creation in the midst of my most formative decade, the 1960's.  And perhaps that is enough recommendation for anyone of any age to read it. Steinbeck was nearing the end of his life at the time of its publication.  Some say he knew this about himself and felt the need to write a work which might challenge folks after him to live their American lives differently for the sake of his and their grandchildren's futures. He is concerned.

He is concerned with how non-Americans see his beloved countries citizens.  He is concerned about pollution, overcrowding, racism, military interventions by the US overseas and sex.  He doesn't get too heavy or at all explicit in the sex stuff.  He just covers enough to let you know that this deeply believing Christian liked some of the sexual revolution and disliked more.

He defends heartily his Grapes of Wrath closing which features a young mother breast feeding a starving old man as completely non-sexual and derides American men who make so much of the female mammary gland as frustrated bottle fed babies.  After all, he alludes, there is a part of the female anatomy much more important to the procreative process. Why are men so distracted from that?  Why indeed.  In the midst of our 6th decade since this book was written I would have to say modern pornography and erotic literature/film production seems to leave nothing out any more.

Ah, for the good old days of 'dirty books' hidden behind the drug store counter and twin beds, never doubles, in TV couples bedrooms.  I give this book 4 stars ****.
-Ken

The House of Special Purpose

The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne

 

Eighty-year-old Georgy Jachmenchev is haunted by his past - a past of death, suffering and scandal that will stay with him until the end of his days. Living in England, with his beloved wife Zoya, Georgy prepares to make one final journey, back to the Russia he once knew and loved, the Russia that both destroyed and defined him. As Georgy remembers days gone by, we are transported on an exciting and emotive journey to St Petersburg in the early twentieth century, to the Winter Palace of the Tsar and his family. It was a time of change, threat and bloody revolution. And, as Georgy overturns the most painful stone of all, we uncover a truly horrifying story, the story of 'the house of special purpose', a so-called safe house that was in fact a place of confinement, destruction and death. Spanning over eighty years and moving from Russia to Paris to London, "The House of Special Purpose" is a sweeping, epic read from a truly accomplished author.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

A wonderful, many-layered novel created by the author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.  I would rate this one with five stars*****.

-Mona

Sweetwater Creek

Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons

 

From bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons comes a bittersweet and finely wrought story of friendship, family, and Charleston society. 

At twelve, Emily Parmenter knows alone all too well. Left mostly to herself after her beautiful young mother disappeared and her beloved older brother died, Emily is keenly aware of yearning and loss. Rather than be consumed by sadness, she has built a life around the faded plantation where her remote father and hunting-obsessed brothers raise the legendary Lowcountry Boykin hunting spaniels. It is a meager, narrow, masculine world, but to Emily it has magic: the storied deep-sea dolphins who come regularly to play in Sweetwater Creek; her extraordinary bond with the beautiful dogs she trains; her almost mystic communion with her own spaniel, Elvis; the dreaming old Lowcountry itself. Emily hides from the dreaded world here. It is enough. 

And then comes Lulu Foxworth, troubled daughter of a truly grand plantation, who has run away from her hectic Charleston debutante season to spend a healing summer with the quiet marshes and river, and the life-giving dogs. Where Emily's father sees their guest as an entrée to a society he thought forever out of reach, Emily is at once threatened and mystified. Lulu has a powerful enchantment of her own, and this, along with the dark, crippling secret she brings with her, will inevitably blow Emily's magical water world apart and let the real one in -- but at a terrible price. 

Poignant and emotionally compelling, Anne Rivers Siddons's Sweetwater Creek draws you into the luminous landscape of the Lowcountry. With characters that linger long after you've turned the last page, this engaging tale is destined to become an instant classic.

-FantasticFiction.com.

Anne Rivers Siddons' books are compelling, filled with love, compassion and yes, at times, pain and this one is no exception.  Escape once again to the Lowcountry and drink in it's warmth and beauty.  I rate this one with five stars*****.

-Mona

On the Road

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac

Called "The novel that defined a generation", and, "The quintessential American vision of freedom and hope."  I found Jack Kerouac's best selling book and literary classic an eerily compelling, dangerously provocative, and anarchic tale of gypsy life with no Gypsy Nation.  There was no purpose to being on the road other than seeking 'kicks' through substance abuse, sex, and living as low, or 'beat', as the generation is called, as you can.

Work as little as you must and live to leave the ones you should be closest to to dance and drink and smoke and needle your way to the next high with the ones you think are your best friends. The definition of 'Beat' is not 'rhythm', which I have thought it was all these years.  The def truly is what it sounds like: beat up, broken down. And the 'beatnik' is not the silly guy portrayed on the Dobie Gillis Show or the artsy emaciated beret wearing wine drinker in the blues bar in Greenwich Village, but the hobo. The tramp, tramping or driving the roads and railroads of North America.

"On the Road" is a mid-twentieth century Kerouac bi-opic-novel re-make of Jack London's actual bio "The Road" in which London rides the rails before highways were high or even very good ways from coast to coast.

So why did I read it?  And why did I finish such a non-productive, darkly depressing at times book when there are so many much better, more uplifting books to be read in my more and more finite life?  Because in reading this book I saw myself, saved only by the grace of God and an amazing wife. I could have been Sal Paradise, the Kerouac character in the book, following, indeed mesmerized by the charismatic character Dean Moriarty into doing things and being a person of, at times, no redeeming value other than to himself.

I thank God that the next high, the next kick, is not for me the 'quintessential American vision of freedom and hope.  My hope is in a much more sure place than the next hit or bottle or bed.  My freedom is with my life partner on a road filled with new and old friends, none of which, I pray, are forgotten. Or, as Dean Moriarty would have it, dropped off the edge of his world.

I read the book, perhaps, to see what my life might have been, if...  Now it's read.  And I move on from it's learning to literary joys far more high than any joint or pill Jack Kerouac ever tried.

-Ken

The Photograph

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

 

Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a photograph he has never seen before. Taken in high summer, many years earlier, it shows his wife, Kath, holding hands with another man. Glyn's work as a historian should have inured him to unexpected findings and reversals, but he is ill-prepared for this radical shift in perception. His mind fills with questions. Who was the man? Who took the photograph? Where was it taken? When? Had Kath planned for him to find out all along? As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the certainties of the past and present slip away, and the picture of the beautiful woman they all thought they knew distort.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

Lively's novel is engaging as each character relates his/her perception of Kath and their relationship with her...an example of elegant writing.  I rate it with four stars****

-Mona

The Housemaid's Daughter

The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch

 

Duty and love collide on the arid plains of central South Africa. Previously released as 'Karoo Plainsong' this is a fully revised debut novel. Cathleen Harrington leaves her home in Ireland in 1919 to travel to South Africa and marry the fiance she has not seen for five years. Isolated and estranged in a harsh landscape, she finds solace in her diary and the friendship of her housemaid's daughter, Ada. Cathleen recognises in her someone she can love and respond to in a way that she cannot with her own husband and daughter. Under Cathleen's tutelage, Ada grows into an accomplished pianist, and a reader who cannot resist turning the pages of the diary, discovering the secrets Cathleen sought to hide. When Ada is compromised and finds she is expecting a mixed-race child, she flees her home, determined to spare Cathleen the knowledge of her betrayal, and the disgrace that would descend upon the family. Scorned within her own community, Ada is forced to carve a life for herself, her child, and her music. But Cathleen still believes in Ada, and risks the constraints of apartheid to search for her and persuade her to return with her daughter. Beyond the cruelty, there is love, hope - and redemption.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

This debut novel by Barbara Mutch was a wonderfully moving story of faithfulness, love, beauty....and injustice set in South Africa just before and during the years the years of apartheid.  I highly recommend it and can't wait for the author to write another novel!  I rate this one with a very solid five stars*****.

-Mona

The Gardens of Kyoto

The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert

 

Nothing is quite as it should be in this first novel by Kate Walbert, author of the celebrated story collection Where She Went. Set in wartime Philadelphia, the story is told by Ellen, a character inhabiting a rather complex narrative device. Namely, she's looking back on the war years, from some future vantage point, recounting her experiences to her own child. This framing device allows Walbert to create a novel in which the past is neither as innocent nor as simple as the reader assumes.

Ellen, the youngest of three sisters, lives for her annual visit to see her cousin Randall. Something in his odd-duck imaginings speaks to her; their bond is cemented by the fact that they both have red hair (relationships have been built on less). Yet this portrait of Randall is shadowed by loss, and we know from the first that he will be killed in the war. Small wonder that nostalgia sweetens Ellen's account of their friendship: "Sometimes, when I think about it, I see the two of us there, Randall and me, from a different perspective, as if I were Mother walking through the door to call us for supper. One will never grow old, never age. One will never plant tomatoes, drive automobiles, go to dances. One will never drink too much and sit alone, wishing, in the dark."

Ellen tells of meeting the father of her child, of her sister's disappearance, of a friend's abortion. These are in fact the story's recurrent motifs: vanishing women, endangered children, and men permanently damaged by war. As for the titular gardens, they make but a brief appearance, in a book Randall bequests to the narrator. Yet Walbert's description of them lends an extra resonance to her themes of distance and loss, even as we discover that Ellen has been deceiving herself--and us--all along. --Claire Dederer, Amazon.com
-FantasticFiction.com

 

This book of reflections and imaginings told in the first person was sometimes very confusing as the story thread jumped around quite a bit in the telling of the lives if several individuals and how their lives intersected.  I would rate it with three stars***.

-Mona

The Contract Surgeon

The Contract Surgeon by Dan O'Brien

A factually researched historical novel that describes, with documented preamble, the last day of the life of Crazy Horse, perhaps the most charismatic holy man and war chief of any North American Indian heritage.

Dan O'Brien weaves his own fictional detail through the mostly true story of why Crazy Horse fought for his people and why he had to die for them as well.  Mysteries and secrets kept hidden by the War Department are revealed in the way a modern thriller of total fiction might be expected to hold your attention.

It's a short read at only 221 pages, but you will never consider the US-Northern Plains Indian War in the same light again. As someone similarly said just a few decades ago: What if we actually all could get along?

-Ken

This Burns My Heart

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park

Chamara is difficult to translate from Korean to English: To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? Such is the burden Samuel Park's audacious, beautiful, and strong heroine, Soo-Ja Choi, faces inThis Burns My Heart, an epic love story set in the intriguing landscape of postwar South Korea. On the eve of marriage to her weak, timid fiancé, Soo-Ja falls in love with a young medical student. But out of duty to her family and her culture she turns him away, choosing instead a world that leaves her trapped by suffocating customs.

In a country torn between past and present, Soo-Ja struggles to find happiness in a loveless marriage and to carve out a successful future for her only daughter. Forced by tradition to move in with her in-laws, she must navigate the dangers of a cruel household and pay the price of choosing the wrong husband. Meanwhile, the man she truly loves remains a lurking shadow in her life, reminding her constantly of the love she could have had.

Will Soo-Ja find a way to reunite with her one true love or be forced to live out her days wondering 'what if ' and begin to fully understand the meaning of chamara?

He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she'll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.
-FantasticFiction.com

 

Park's book is a moving story of love, loss and endurance in a culture that demands familial obedience.  I would rate this tale with four stars****.

-Mona

The Last Original Wife

The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

Experience the sultry Southern atmosphere of Atlanta and the magic of the Carolina Lowcountry in this funny and poignant tale of one audacious woman's quest to find the love she deserves, from New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank.

Leslie Anne Greene Carter is The Last Original Wife among her husband Wesley's wildly successful Atlanta social set. His cronies have all traded in the mothers of their children they promised to love and cherish - 'til death did them part - for tanned and toned young Barbie brides.

If losing the social life and close friends she adored wasn't painful enough, a series of setbacks shake Les's world and push her to the edge. She's had enough of playing the good wife to a husband who thinks he's doing her a favor by keeping her around. She's not going to waste another minute on people she doesn't care to know. Now, she's going to take some time for herself - in the familiar comforts and stunning beauty of Charleston, her beloved hometown. In her brother's stately historic home, she's going to reclaim the carefree girl who spent lazy summers sharing steamy kisses with her first love on Sullivans Island. Along Charleston's live oak- and palmetto-lined cobblestone streets, under the Lowcountry's dazzling blue sky, Les will indulge herself with icy cocktails, warm laughter, divine temptation and bittersweet memories. Daring to listen to her inner voice, she will realize what she wants . . . and find the life of which she's always dreamed.

Told in the alternating voices of Les and Wes, The Last Original Wife is classic Dorothea Benton Frank: an intoxicating tale of family, friendship, self-discovery, and love, that is as salty as a Lowcountry breeze and as invigorating as a dip in Carolina waters on a sizzling summer day.
-FantasticFiction.com

I love the southern wit and charm of Dorothea Benton Frank's books as well as the feeling that she leaves with the reader of actually being in the South Carolina Lowcountry.  The Last Original Wife did not leave me disappointed.  I would rate this one with four stars****.

-Mona

From Sea to Shining Sea

From Sea to Shining Sea by James Alexander Thom

As we prepare to begin our own Voyage of Discovery to the Western Ocean in 4 1/2 weeks finishing this read more than wets my appetite to see and experience what is just over the next hill, and around the bend in that forest road.  This is book two in the unintended series on the John and Ann Clark family of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Long Knife, James Thom's first period novel (reviewed earlier here) told the tale of George Rogers Clark, the military mind and pioneer spirit which won for America all of the 'Old Northwest' (Ohio-Illinois-Indiana and above) during the American Revolution.  From Sea to Shining Sea surrounds the tale of George with all of his nine brothers and sisters from the birth of brother Billy (William) to the Christmas 1805 family reunion in Louisville, Ky at William's return from his amazing trek to the Pacific with Meriwether Lewis.

For sheer adventure these novels work quite well, but as history they complete their task.  No wonder both became national best sellers.

Researched exhaustively by the author, Thom even spent a day up to his waste in freezing Wabash River water to understand the sacrifice of George's small army in it's attack upon the British fort at Vincennes.  He traveled the entire Lewis and Clark Trail to be able to better describe that famous east to west journey. And he read every document available on the Rogers and Clark families for the most accurate take on each family member.

Told very much from the perspective of their mother, Ann Rogers Clark, it is the personal contact through this writing that makes my desire so great to see and feel what remains at each place they lived, fought, parleyed and explored.

As Mr. Thom has mother Clark say from Heaven in the book's epilogue, "And here I end my family's story. I pray ye think on it, for there's no family ever did more to shape this land. And when you see a Clarksville, or Clarksburgh, or a Clark County or a Clark River or park or national forest anywhere across this land, as y'will, all across, from sea to shining sea, you'll know what Clarks they're speakin' of: my sons. Mine and John's, I should say."

For me, this was a five star read *****
-Ken

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King

 

In this the riveting sequel to The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Mary Russell has metamorphosed from able apprentice to skilled detective in her own right. After a tedious visit from relatives, Mary is looking for respite in London when she comes across a friend from Oxford. The young woman introduces Mary to the enigmatic Margery Childe, leader of the New Temple of God, a charismatic sect involved in the post-World War One suffrage movement, with a feminist slant on Christianity. Intrigued and curious, Mary begins to wonder if the New Temple is a front for something more sinister. When a series of murders claims members of the movement's wealthy young female volunteers, Mary, with Holmes in the background, starts to investigate, but events spiral out of control as the situation becomes ever more desperate, and Mary's search plunges her into the worst danger she has yet faced...
-FantasticFiction.com

 

Although a bit slow at times, Laurie R. King weaves a sometimes humorous story of suspense and intrigue involving the growing relationship between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.  I would rate this one with three and a half stars***.

-Mona

Mary Chesnut's Civil War

Mary Chesnut's Civil War, edited by C. Van Woodward

I doubt anyone ever expected a diary, no matter how old or about what time period, would ever win the Pulitzer Prize, least of all old man Pulitzer himself.  But in 1982 that's exactly what happened when C. Van Woodward published his exemplary work of Mrs. Chesnut's American Civil War collection.

Mary had kept a diary much of her life but as a resident of Charleston, South Carolina, she knew what she wrote might have important meaning as she saw her country driven apart in 1861 and she spent the next four years documenting her personal life midst the triumphs and agonies of some of her and husband General James Chesnut's best friends. Personages such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis and wife Varina, Texas General John 'Sam' Bell Hood, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, and more.

Her depictions of plantation life at 'Mulberry Hill' (still standing), the attack on Fort Sumter, the increasing deaths and maimings of friends and acquaintances in battle, Richmond at the several times her husband was posted their and the final days near Appomattox Courthouse, crystallize these scenes for any historian or Civil War passerby.

Woodward's careful and detailed notes fill in gaps the diary leaves out since Mary is only writing for herself, and assuming she will know surrounding details and people's full names or connections to history when she next opens her pages.  It is his ardent effort which earns him his Pulitzer Prize.

But it is Mary Chesnut's own words which have earned many lines from her diary places in such prestigious video documentary's as Ken Burn's Civil War, and quotes in almost every historical work on the Eastern Theater of the war written since 1982.

Finally, I must highly recommend this book because it's fine writing kept me going back to it time and again till all of it's over 800 pages were consumed.  I especially enjoyed reading it in sync with Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With The Wind'.  I found that while Mitchell never credits reading Chesnut's work as having influence on her book, each enlightened the other as I read.

I give this Pulitzer Prize 4 stars for historical and general interest, and the occasional humor I think is critical to keep someone reading on through any historical work.  ****
-Ken

The Amorous Nightingale

The Amorous Nightingale by Edward Marston

 

Acclaimed beauty and singer Harriet Gow has earned a position envied by every available women of the Restoration period: she is the King's favourite mistress. After seeing her perform, Christopher Redmayne is also captivated. The impression Harriet made is still lingering in his mind when he is summoned urgently by the Charles II. Harriet has been kidnapped, and Redmayne, with the help of his friend Jonathan Bale - a Puritan constable - is engaged to resolve this delicate affair. The facade of elegance and gentility soon begins to crumble in the face of their investigations. Harriet is, indeed, an amorous nightingale; the fabric of her life entangled in jealousy, avarice and lust. Just as Redmayne and Bale start to question whether she is really the victim or the guilty party a brutal murder provides the answer...
-FantasticFiction.com

 

I found this second book in the Christopher Redmayne series to be interesting, but somewhat slow and predictable.  Not one of the best mysteries I've ever read.  I would rate this one with three stars***.

-Mona

Practical Magic

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

 

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared, even into adulthood, brought them back--almost as if by magic...
-FantasticFiction.com

 

A whimsical fantasy of witchcraft and love, Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman rates four stars ****.

-Mona