Page Forty-Five

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

It is 1984 in Dahanu, India and Kavita Merchant gives birth to a girl, Usha. Kavita will do anything to save her second daughter from a culture who favours sons, so she and her sister leave the child at Shanti Orphanage in Bombay. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Somer and her Indian-born husband Krishnan realize that Somer will never be able to bear a child of her own. Somer allows herself to be convinced to adopt a child in India, and eventually the two adopt Kavita's child, now almost one years old and mistakenly named Asha. The author takes the reader through the next 25 years, alternating between the voices of Somer, Krishnan, Asha, Kavita, and Jasu. The adoption affects each person differently and distinctly, and the author explores topics such as motherhood, marriage, family, and identity.

This was a good read, but for some reason I found the book dragged on at times.

Page Forty-Four

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Two children, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12-18 must be selected from each District in this futuristic country of Panem, which used to be North America, to participate in the annual Hunger Games. There can only be one winner. The tributes must hunt and forage to stay alive, and try to survive the elements, illness, injury, and each other. The Games are televised to the entire country, and bets are placed as to who will win.

Katniss Everdeen has volunteered to take the place of the only person she loves: her 12-year old sister, Prim. Coming from District 12, an area that is poor and ill-equipped, there is not much hope for her success, but her early heroism in saving her sister, her stylist team that pegs her as someone to watch out for during the Games, and her fellow Tribute from the District, Peeta Mellark, who convinces the audience and the Gamemakers that they are in love, quickly increases her status and lines up a number of sponsers.

Once the Games begin, Katniss must rely on her knowledge of hunting and her instincts in order to survive the brutal conditions that surround her, as well as manage to evade those who want her dead. For much of the book she struggles as to whether or not she can trust Peeta, and ultimately learns much about love and sacrifice.

This young-adult book was a very quick read, compelling, though annoying in how ignorant Katniss is to Peeta's obvious love for her. It ended in a way that almost forces you to read the next book in the trilogy, and I'm sure the second book would do the same.

Page Forty-Three

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

In this post-apocalyptic novel, a man and his young son are traveling across burned America in order to find the coast. What they will find there is uncertain. Their priority is to keep alive amid starvation, the "bad guys," cannibalism, freezing temperatures, sickness, waning hope and faith, and the temptation of suicide, symbolized by the ever-present pistol the man carries. Everything is reduced to its most basic form, including the dialogue between the two and the stylistic elements the author uses. Page after page they travel the road, with only eachother and the love they have for one another, and the "fire" they carry. The reader is kept interested by waiting to see if perhaps some Godly intervention will occur when they are finally able to get to the coast, but the anti-climactic event simply reinforces the wasteland that surrounds them.

At times touching, particularly the boy whose concern for goodness is heartwrenching, at other times harrowing, with its description of what people have been reduced to, the book overall was a typical dystopian novel: depressing. However, it does leave readers with a glimmer of hope in the form of the boy who must carry on, carry the fire, and fight to find a reason to continue amid a bleak and destroyed world.

Page Forty-Two

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another book where I saw the movie first. While I think that was definately a mistake, it did help make sense of the book for me. However, I kept comparing it to the movie, which I loved, and felt I could have appreciated the book more had I not seen the film first.

The concept is very intriguing. A number of children are growing up at Hailsham, a seeming boarding-school in England. The children are told yet not told, know yet don't know, what their purpose in life is: to become donors until eventually they "complete." Cut off from society, fed half-truths, and raised to eliminate death in the world, none of these children fully understand how their lives have been one big lie.

Kathy H. narrates the story and looks back on her life at Hailsham, her complex relationship with friends and schoolmates Ruth and Tommy, and brings us into her current life of being a carer. She and Tommy eventually find the romance that had been hinted at throughout the novel, even during Tommy and Ruth's lengthy relationship, but realize their quest for a "deferral" in order to live as 'normal' human beings for a few years before returning as donors, is ultimately futile. Upon finding Miss Emily, the headmistress at Hailsham, she informs them deferrals do no exist and to think of themselves lucky to have been raised at Hailsham -many other 'institutions' of its kind were not as humane. Kathy H. has spent the whole book revealing the humanity and emotions of herself and others who grew up at Hailsham, and at the end we realize society has rejected this group of people and simply uses them as a means to an end.

A very engaging read, and an excellent and emotional film version.

Page Forty-One

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

I both liked this book and did not like this book. The story is fairly intriguing: a 4-year girl found after a boat docks in Australia is taken in by a loving couple and raised as their own, until she is told in her late teens that she is not their biological child. The girl, now named Nell, attempts to piece together her past, which leads her to the mysterious Blackhurst Manor in England. Contributing to the search after her death is her granddaughter, Cassandra.

The story is indeed a mystery, but there are so many voices in the text at times it became a bit frustrating: Nell, Cassandra, and Eliza are the three main narrators, but thrown in are also Rose, Adeline, Eliza, Luis (whose role in the story was oddly developed), Nathaniel ... and I am likely missing one or two characters. The ending was fairly predicatable and Morton's playing off of well known fairytales and children's stories, such as The Secret Garden - even including Frances Hodgson Burnett as a character where it is implied she used the garden at Blackhurst Manor to inspire what would become The Secret Garden - was almost annoying, though I could see this would appeal to many readers.

Overall, however, a good escapist read for the summer.

Page Forty

Small Wars by Sadie Jones

"The outrage of the collective frees the individual to commit terrible acts" (141).

It is 1956 and British soldier Hal Treherne is defending the British colony of Cyprus. His wife, Clara, and two twin girls join him. Hal has built his life around his love for his country and the army. A respected Major, Hal is impatient to see "action." However, like many soldiers, Hal soon becomes disallusioned with the army and the role he plays when things in Cyprus begin to heat up. Hal becomes increasingly emotionally disturbed by the events around him and thus increasingly emotionally distant from his wife and family, while Clara attempts to maintain the 1950s wife persona - accomodating, supportive, pleasant - even when Hal's internal struggle begins to change him in ways they never thought possible.

Jones captures the futility of war, the disallusionment of fighting for something that becomes difficult to believe in, the effects of war on family and marriage, and the struggle to remain human in an inhuman world. Her characters are believable and multi-dimensional, her writing descriptive, and her story powerful. This was a great book.

Page Thirty-Nine

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

"It gets you thinking about all the parts in a story we never see . . . the parts around the edges" (157).

"It's about the lies we tell others to protect them, and about the lies we tell ourselves in order not to acknowledge what we can't bear: that we are alive, for instance, and eating lunch, while bombs are falling, and refugees are crammed into camps, and the news comes toward us every hour of the day. And what, in the end, do we do?" (Author's note).

I had been waiting a long time to read this novel. Historical fiction. World War II. Beautiful cover. Right up my alley. But I think my anticipation surrounding this book ruined it a bit for me, for I feel a bit underwhelmed having just finished it.

The story focuses on three different women during the early years of World War II. In Franklin, Mass., there is Emma - the new, young bride of the town doctor, and Iris, the town's unmarried postmistress. Both women listen to Frankie Bard's broadcasts from London about the Blitz, and then her stories of Jewish refugees, as she tries to use the world's main medium to rally Americans to war: the radio. At the end of the novel, the three women's lives intersect.

I really enjoyed when Blake pursued Frankie's voice. She was a fairly strong female character whose insights on the war and her need to wake people into action were compelling. When the author moved back to America I wasn't as captivated with the story, though the premise and the "story behind the story" was interesting enough (though the whole drama of "what would happen when a postmaster would not deliver a letter" held no real drama for me as I didn't find it made up that much of the book and when it came my response was "Is this it?"). Inevitably, I just didn't really care all that much about the characters, which is what I need from a book to love it. In the end, an okay book, but for me not a great book.

Page Thirty-Eight

Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay

"Such hate, thought the girl. Why such hate? She had never hated anyone in her life, except perhaps a teacher, once . . . Had she ever wished that woman dead? She pondered. Yes, she had. So maybe that's how it worked. That's how all this had happened. Hating people so much that you wanted to kill them. Hating them because they wore a yellow star" (88).

"You're playing with Pandora's box. Sometimes, it's better not to open it. Sometimes, it's better not to know" (127).

The first half of this book was difficult to stop reading. It began on that fateful day, July 16 1942, when thousands of Jewish children and their parents were rounded up in Paris and taken to the Velodrome d'Hiver, the day known as the Vel' d'Hiv'. After waiting for days in deplorable conditions, they were taken to two camps in the French countryside, and from there, after the children were brutally separated from their parents, deported to Auschwitz where they were immediately assassinated. No one survived - unless they managed to escape. The book begins with one 10-year old girl's account of hearing the French police knock on her door late at night. Sarah is taken with her parents but tries to save her little brother by locking him in a cupboard they played hide and seek in, certain she would return and get him out, certain she was saving him from whatever she and her parents were about to face. She leaves, gripping the key to the cupboard in her pocket. As the days go on, Sarah becomes tormented by her decision, knowing that if no one came to save Michel he would certainly have died. Her torment exists alongside the disgusting conditions at the stadium and the inhuman treatment at the camp. Sarah's story seesaws back and forth with the story of Julia Jarmond, a mid-40s American who has lived in Paris half her life and has been asked to research the Vel' d'Hiv' for a journalism assignment. Julia becomes caught up in Sarah's story and soon comes to realize Sarah's history is tangled up with her own.

As mentioned, the first half of the book is incredibly gripping. The second half of the book, however, once the author leaves Sarah's story and focusses on Julia and present day, becomes less an historical fiction on the Holocaust and more a story about a woman trying to come to terms with a new identity. Still interesting, but it lost some of its lustre for me. I found some of the author's "revelations" in the book were not revelations at all, but too obvious to be considered crafty writing, like a mystery where you knew who the murderer was all along.

That said, this was a very good book that I would recommend. It exposes the French apathy towards their part in this dark period in history, and it sheds light on a part of the Holocaust most readers would not have been made aware of without having read this book.

Page Thirty-Seven

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I picked up this book that seemed to have some cult following after hearing everyone and their hairdresser was reading it. I had only known it was a "mystery." Nothing else. Mystery yes, but not quite what I had anticipated. Blomkvist, a Swedish financial journalist, has just been charged with libel. The book opens with the subplot, a particularly dry chapter explaining part of the story behind this, but I couldn't quite keep my interest in it. The book then moves on to the main plot. Blomkist has been asked by the aging Vanger patriarch to investigate the disappearance of his granddaughter, Harriet, who disappeared in the 60s. Presumed dead, Vanger wants to know who killed her. Initially wanting no involvement, Vanger dangles the bait of information to restore Blomkvist's good name regarding the case he recently lost. Aided by the ingenious yet disturbed Salander, the two uncover a horrifying Vanger family past.

I'm not sure I loved this book so much that I would want to read the second two, but it was a page-turning mystery at the very least.

Page Thirty-Six

The Street by Ann Petry

This is a great book if you have the patience to appreciate it. Petry's imagery through rich description is unlike any book I've read before. Her opening scene alone makes the book worthy of reading. An omniscient perspective allows the reader to understand the motivations of many different characters, but it's Lutie Johnson - the book's protagonist - whose voice is the most captivating. A young, beautiful, black single mother trying desperately to save her young son from a life that has been designated to most of the black population: an endless circle of poverty and the weight of white oppression. Unfortunately, the reader is well aware that Lutie's fight against the street will not end in victory.

Page Thirty-Five

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

I kept hearing about this New York Times Bestseller and finally decided to pick it up and read it. Once I began page 1, I could not put this book down. The book is about a fifty-year old woman, Alice Howland, who is a renowned and respected doctor of psychology at Harvard University, specifically in the study of linguistics. Her research has taken her all over the world to lead seminars, her apptitude for teaching is noted by her students, and she has published much research and co-wrote a novel with her husband, John. She has three grown children who are all established in their careers, a summer home, and is, as she states, in the best physical condition of her life.

Alice's world comes to a crashing halt, however, when she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. What was once second nature to her - teaching, speaking, lecturing, researching, writing - becomes a strenuous effort. Before embarrasing herself and ruining her reputation at Harvard, Alice decides to leave her once beloved position and battle a disease she has no chance in defeating. She must learn who she is after everything that made her who she is is taken away day by day.

This book is terrifying, gripping, emotional, and real. It is a must-read.

Page Thirty-Four

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

This book begins with the death of Elspeth Noblin, estranged sister of Edie, aunt to Valentina and Julia, whom she has never met, and lover of Robert. Robert and Elspeth lived in separate flats which border the famous Highgate Cemetary, a fitting setting for a book that deals primarily with death and ghosts. In Elspeth's will she leaves her flat to her two nieces, provided they live there for one year and their parents do not enter the flat. The two girls, twins themselves, decide to indulge Elspeth's wishes and move to London. Once there, they are aware of a presence among them, which turns out to be the ghost of Elspeth, which hasn't managed to escape the confines of the flat. Valentina, desperate to find her own confidence and self away from the suffocating presence of her twin, establishes a closeness with Elspeth's ghost and with Robert, who has begun to fall for Valentina, much to Elspeth's dismay. Julia, bewildered by Valentina's sudden desire for freedom from her twin, befriends the peculiar upstairs neighbour Martin. Elspeth's desperation to return to Robert and life in general, and Valentina's desperation to relinquish Julia's grip on her life collide in an eerie plan the two concoct with Robert's help. However, just as the book begins with a death, it ends with one as well, as the plan takes a very wrong turn.

Having read and adored Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, I was very eager to read this newest book of hers. And while it was definately different and held my interest, it did not have the same effect as her previous book. It was eerie, and peculiar, and sad - but ultimately did not fully resonate with me.