Review: Arcadia Falls

This book bears distinct resemblance to Goodman's earlier Lake of Dead Languages. Both take place at elite private schools in the northeast. Both books' main characters are single mothers and teachers who move to these schools to teach under difficult circumstances. And both books rely heavily on student and faculty obsession with old myths. In Arcadia Falls the single mother in question is Meg Rosenthal, recently widowed folklore scholar, who moves herself and her daughter to a remote region of upstate New York to take a much-needed teaching job at the Arcadia School. The school began its life as a feminist artist colony, whose founders wrote and illustrated fairy tales. The school's founders, Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhart, are professional and romantic partners, but with the arrival of a charismatic sculptor at the colony, Lily finds herself in the midst of a troublesome love triangle. The consequences of this triangle will lead to Lily's death. It quickly becomes apparent to Meg that the Arcadia School is a dangerous and deadly place,not just in Lily's time, but in her own, too. The books is the retelling of three stories, that of Meg and Sally Rosenthal, that of Vera Beecher and Lily Eberhart, and the fairy tale, The Changeling Girl. Goodman does an excellent job of weaving these tales together. While the book does bear some similarities to some of Goodman's earlier work, it is not merely the same story retold. I was captivated with discovering who or what was responsible for Lily Eberhart's death. I did find that after the circumstances of Lily's death were revealed the book was neither as compelling, nor as plausible. The ending is not the most satisfying, but this was still an enjoyable and suspenseful read.

Carol Goodman, Arcadia Falls (Ballantine, 2010) ISBN: 0345497538

Review: Born under a Million Shadows

I know very little of Afghanistan outside of war reports, so I was intrigued to read this novel about a boy and his family in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The novel follows 11-year-old Fawad and his mother as they move into the employment and residence of a house of foreigners. Curious and clever, Fawad busies himself spying on his new housemates and trying to figure out the complex world of adult relationships. Fawad is especially captivated by the romantic fortunes of Georgie, Fawad's favorite of his new housemates, who has fallen in love with a local warlord. Through all of Fawad's childhood games and fantasies the reader sees the troubled landscape of Afghanistan: beautiful, but caught in suffering. Violence, poverty, and death pervade the lives of all of the Afghans in this book. At only eleven Fawad has lost three siblings and his father. No one is a stranger to suffering. But violence does not overshadow the fact that this is a novel about family, friends, and relationships, and how these are formed across cultural and geographic distance. Busfield does a surprisingly good job of capturing the voice of an Afghan boy, and Fawad is charming and believable. I would certainly be interested in reading other things by this author.

Andrea Busfield, Born under a Million Shadows (Holt, 2010) ISBN: 0805090614

Review: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Major Ernest Pettigrew and Mrs. Jasmina Ali have much in common: a love of reading, both widowed, both resident in the small Sussex town of Edgecome St. Mary. Both are trying to deal with the machinations of troublesome family members who have become more so in the wake of the deaths of their respective spouses. Edgecombe St. Mary is a provincial community in more ways than one. As Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali move towards a romantic relationship the village makes its gossip more explicit, and it becomes obvious that the public is not willing to accept the Anglo-Pakistani Mrs. Ali as part of its establishment. This is a delightful book in so many ways. Part pastoral novel, part comedy of manners, this work is like a vintage English novel mixed with some very modern themes. The characters are richly drawn, and the book retains the feel of the old English countryside.

Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Random House, 2010) ISBN: 1400068932

Ireland Challenge

I need a new reading challenge about as much as I need a kick in the teeth, but I have so many Irish fiction books awaiting me on my shelves that I decided to join up with this one. The rules are as follows:

~ Join anytime. The challenge runs from February 1, 2010 to November 30, 2010.
~ Any books read for this challenge can also apply to other challenges you are working on.
~ Re-reads are allowed.
~ Any book written by an Irish author, set in Ireland, or involving Irish history or Irish characters, counts for the challenge – fiction, non-fiction, poetry, audiobooks, children’s books – all of these apply.
~ Choose your commitment level:

Shamrock level: 2 books
Luck o’ the Irish level: 4 books
Kiss the Blarney Stone level: 6 books

I'm going in at Shamrock level, but will leave myself room to move up if I complete more than anticipated.

Review: Another Life Altogether

Set in the English provinces in the 1970s, this novel tells the story of Jesse Bennett, a troubled teenager trying to hide her mother's mental illness from the cruelty of her classmates. Deep in the throes of manic depression, Jesse's mother alternates among the local mental hospital, her bed, and tearing apart the family. Jesse's father copes by ignoring the issue, and leaves Jesse home to manage the house and her mother. A move to the countryside has vaulted Jesse into the popular clique at her new school, but her new friends are profoundly cruel to outsiders, especially Malcolm, an openly gay student. To complicate Jesse's life she develops a tremendous crush on her best friend's sister, and begins to realize that she might be a lesbian. Family, sexuality, and basic human decency wreak havoc on Jesse's conscience, as she tries to rationalize her relationship with her cruel but powerful new clique. This novel brings into stark relief the rigid social hierarchies and cruelty of high school. Jesse's story makes clear how easy it is for children to get lost. It also reminds the reader that for all of the problems and injustices that remain, we have made some real progress in educating children about sexuality. The ending was abrupt and unbelievable, but I enjoyed the reading.

Elaine Beale, Another Life Altogether (Spiegel and Grau, 2010) ISBN: 0385530048

Review: Even the Dogs

This was a very difficult book to read. McGregor is raw, graphic, and unrelenting in his portrayal of the horrors of drug addiction. The story follows a group of heroin addicts in an unnamed English town. In the days following Christmas each of them dies from drug-related causes, and the book follows in particular the authorities' investigation of the death of one of them, a man named Robert, who lost all of the normalcy in his life, including his wife and daughter, as he fell into the arms of addiction. The story is narrated by the various characters, some during their lives, and others in death. They follow the investigation of Robert's death in all of its horrors. As the book unfolds we learn how Robert and his friends became drug addicts, and how each met their end. This book is nothing, if not hard-hitting. McGregor writes in the voice of drug addicts in a stream-of-consciousness style. The prose is sometimes difficult to get through: there's plenty of slang and jargon. Even more so, the book itself is hard to get through because it is so graphic and so tragic. Certainly McGregor captures the incessant search for drugs that defines the addict's life. Indeed, the book is itself is unrelenting in illustrating this, as the characters' lives have become entirely defined by the search for the next hit. For all that is remarkable about this book, I was left with little at the end aside from a sense of depression. Many of the finest works of literature are written about extreme human misery, but they leave the reader with larger lessons, things to consider, and that was missing here. At the end there was little left but sadness.

Jon McGregor, Even the Dogs (Bloomsbury, 2010) ISBN: 1596913487

Review: The Last Will of Moira Leahy

I should start by mentioning that this is quite a different book from the sorts I usually read. Normally I read mainstream literary fiction. This book is mostly mainstream literary fiction, but with a distinct twist. In writing style and character development this book certainly fits the bill, but Walsh adds distinct threads of the fantastic and supernatural as she weaves the story of Maeve Leahy and her departed twin, Moira. Maeve Leahy lost her twin at sixteen. Nine years later she finds herself drawn to an antique Javanese knife, a keris, which seems,s somehow, to embody her sister's spirit. After purchase of the keris at auction strange elements of the past reappear in Maeve's life. It's difficult to explain the progression of the plot or what is so different about it without giving away important parts of the story, except to say that Maeve travels to Rome to try and unlock the mystery of the keris, and there finds danger and surprise she hadn't anticipated. Walsh does an excellent job building suspense as Maeve travels to Rome in search of an expert who can explain the keris to her. She has written what is certainly a gripping mystery. The writing is good and the characters are well developed. I do, however, generally prefer more concrete explanations in my fiction, obviously other readers' mileage may vary depending on their tastes, and even for someone such as myself who doesn't generally venture into the realms of fantasy or supernatural, what Leahy has done seems well-done, at least to my untrained mind. What I did find difficult, or perhaps distracting, was that Maeve was never very believable as a foreign language professor. Her character appeared to have minimal research skills, and little ability to track down information or experts. Also, it's nearly impossible that a foreign language professor with an academic appointment could have never left the country, or have cloistered herself at home in the ways that Maeve apparently does-- research and conferences would have commanded that. I will fully admit this is a bit nick-picking, and likely will not affect the majority of readers, but if you live in what is Maeve's academic world, you'll likely find it implausible. I also disliked the discussion of Maeve's relationship with her friend/maybe-boyfriend Noel. I've read a number of books lately where the female protagonists treat their maybe-boyfriends poorly, and this seemed to fall into the same trap.

Therese Walsh, The Last Will of Moira Leahy (Shaye Areheart, 2009) ISBN: 0307461572