Snowflake by Louise Nealon is great craic. It’s the story of eighteen-year-old Debbie who has grown up on her family’s dairy farm about 40 min outside of Dublin. She’s a country girl. Everyone knows her uncle, who is frequently at the pub, and her mam, who’s shacked up with a younger man. Debbie’s uncle Billy lives in a caravan on the family property and, despite how transient that sounds, he’s a source of stability for Debbie. Her mom Maeve believes that she has other people’s dreams, she dances naked in the sea, and spends a lot of time in her bed or writing in her dream journals.
Being a special snowflake is a putdown, but each of these characters is unique and has their own quirks. Debbie feels like a country bumkin every time she’s in the city, but she figures out commuting, her coursework, making friends, and how to drive. There are a ton of Irish expressions and I feel like I met many of these people during my own time in Dublin teaching at the university. But I don’t think you need to have lived (or even visited) Ireland to appreciate this novel about growing up and accepting your crazy family.
Set in 1947, The Alice Network is the story of Charlotte (or Charlie) an American woman desperately seeking her French cousin (Rose) who disappeared during the war. Her one clue is the names Eve Gardiner, Rene, and Le Lethe.
Well Eve turns out to be an old drunk with damaged hands, a poor temper, and the owner of a Luger, which she aims square between Charlotte’s eyes.
Rene is a profiteering monster who ran Le Lethe, a restaurant in Lille frequented by the Germans during the Great War.
Eve worked as a spy for England and had perfect French and German. She infiltrated the restaurant as a stuttering French waitress and managed to pass a number of excellent secrets to the head of the Alice Network, Louise de Bettignies (alias Alice Dubois).
The novel is historical fictional, with Eve, Charlotte and Rene being the imagined characters. But the Alice Network was real, as was Louise de Bettignies, the Queen of Spies, who ran a WWI network of spies in an area of France near Lille. She was formidable.
The novel is great, as is the author’s note pointing out the many stories in the novel that are based on real stories of female spies during the Great War, their trial records, and personal accounts.
The audiobook of Carrie Soto Is Back is super. Carrie Soto is an incredible, record-breaking tennis player. She retired after an injury but is spurred into coming out of retirement to defend her title against young upstart Nicki Chan.
There’s excellent drama in the sports world and it comes through in this novel. Plus the author includes all sorts of subtle mentions of characters from her other novels. Plus the main reader is great, and then there are several others who narrate as the sports commentators. It adds an extra layer of audio delight.
Carrie Soto Is Back is a really fun summer listen.
If you love poetry, philosophy, art history, and personal memoir then this book is for you. It’s a quiet, gentle reflection on what it means to engage with art, why art has the capacity to enchant and haunt us through centuries, and where Renaissance religious art can find relevance in today’s busy, modern world.
I had the pleasure of listening to a conversation between Jeannie Marshall and The Tyee’s culture editor Dorothy Woodend on May 4, 2023 at Upstart & Crow. Jeannie struck me as a gentle yet powerful writer. Full of curiosity but also caution.
Jeannie lives in Rome and for a long time avoided visiting the Sistine Chapel, and yet Michelangelo’s famed ceiling was something her grandmother in Canada wished to see, it’s a place 5 million people a year visit. Her first visit, after the death of her mother, was as frustrating as she imagined. The ceiling is busy, the place is busy, it’s overwhelming. But something kept drawing her back time and again.
This book is really a masterful unfolding of layers of art history, the impact of religious wars and intolerance, and the power the Catholic church had over her family. All Things Move is a remarkable personal journey but also a wonderfully thoughtful, philosophical look at the role of art in our lives.
I find my thoughts returning to Jeannie’s musings and meditations on what it means to create a work of art that transcends time, and what it means to view and engage in that art.
Her publisher Biblioasis has crafted a fine book. It’s glossy pages show off different images of Michelangelo’s frescoes, along with gritty street photos of Rome taken by fellow Canadian and author Douglas Anthony Cooper.
I’d say this is a book about learning to look, taking time to relish small details in order to—over time—see the full picture.
So I was primed for a book on loss, celebration, language, art, philosophy, undertaking intellectual pursuits for the pleasure of it, joy, inner life and cultural constructs for how we should live or what should act as the moral compass. I’m not done with this book. Thank you Jeannie Marshall.
Berry Pickers is a heartbreaking novel about a young 4-year-old Mi’kmaw girl who is stolen from her family by a heart-broken woman. It’s July 1962 and little Ruthie is sitting on a rock while her family picks blueberries at a farm in Maine. The woman who takes her raises her as Norma. It’s an emotionally fraught childhood that doesn’t quite make sense until Norma learns the truth.
This novel is a great debut by Amanda Peters. It’s raw, emotional, riveting and full of trauma on all sides. What makes someone think they can take another woman’s baby? What makes someone carry on the lie? What grief does the family go through?
I enjoyed the East Coast pacing of these families’ lives and celebrated the resolution at the end. Totally worth the read.
This is a story about knowing who you are and not abandoning hope and love.
I love Taylor Jenkins Reid novels. They are the best summer fun. In this case the protagonist is also named Monique so that’s extra fun.
Monique is a journalist struggling to make a name for herself when suddenly the famous, and reclusive, Evelyn Hugo requests her time for an interview. How can this be? Why would Oscar-winning Evelyn Hugo even know her name? Could it be that she was wow’d by the one piece of amazing journalism Monique produced on assisted dying? That would be a stretch. But this is the interview of a lifetime. And despite the reluctance of Monique’s boss to give this cover story and the scoop to a little-known writer, she can’t refuse. Evelyn wants Monique or nothing. The story is massive.
The drama of Hollywood in the 50s, straight through to the 80s, is on full display. Evelyn is drama. She jumps from one husband to the next. She’s a bit of Liz Taylor meets Ava Gardiner. And the big question Monique seeks to answer is “who was the love of her life.”
Set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, this is the story of Cushla, an elementary school teacher/barmaid/Catholic who falls in love with an older, married man/barrister/Protestant. There are many things wrong with their relationship and, given the political climate, their affair can be fatal. Cushla could lose her job, her family’s reputation could suffer along with their pub, she could be shot just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or nobody will notice the affair because they are busying questioning the extra attention she’s paying to a Catholic pupil whose father has been brutally attacked, in which case she could lose her job, her family’s reputation could suffer along with their pub, she could be shot just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Life in this small town outside of Belfast in the 70s is full of precarious tensions.
Trespasses is a heartbreaking story about living in a time when it matters who you are, not what you do. Cushlas class of 7 year olds start the day with recapping The News. They know an awful lot about bombs and checkpoints, unemployment, and beatings.
This is a novel that made me feel very melancholic. Although it’s backdrop is bleak, there are some lovely moments throughout.
The Thursday Night Murder Club and No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency would meet their match with The Bandit Queens. Where the former titles involve affable do-gooders with the common sense needed to solve their community’s problems, here we have gossipy housewives who watch too many crime dramas and are keen to off their husbands. That said, these women are charming.
Five years ago, Geeta’s good-for-nothing drunk of a husband ran off. The village believes she killed him, and the rumour persists, to the point where Geeta is ostracized from friends and others in the small community. She’s a member of a micro-loan club and when one of the members doesn’t show up with her weekly repayment, it’s left to Geeta—widowed and childless—to foot the bill so the whole loan group doesn’t go under. Instead of that endearing her amongst the women, one of whom is her former best friend, Geeta finds herself being blackmailed by the woman she help.
Turns out that Geeta’s reputation for getting rid of a n’er-do-well husband has the attention of the other wives who would also like to be widows. Geeta has some tricky cards to play, and she does not have a good poker face.
Parini Shroff’s debut novel is a wonderfully funny, a macabre, look at life in an Indian village. There’s witty women, sneaky husbands, minor criminals, unwitting accomplices, terrible dark crimes, caste hierarchies, sexism, and all manor of distractions and disruptions in this small village. This is one hell of a debut.
April 21, 2023 marked seven years since Prince’s death and June 7 would have been his 65th birthday. Oh, Prince. Talk about Great Expectations.
Nick Hornby has crafted a wonderful extended essay that looks at two prolific geniuses. I listened to the audiobook hoping for some musical accompaniment, alas no. Thankfully the narrator provides all the quirks and liveliness of Hornby’s turns of phrase. An enjoyable listen.
Hornby draws connections between the two artists. He delves into their trying childhoods, their business acumen, and the excessive amount of content they both created (before age 25 and after).
My friend DaveO gifted me this amazing book about an island that is near to where he lives in Japan. In celebration of Asian Heritage month, I have been eagerly reading about septuagenarian and octogenarians (even nonagenarians) on the tiny island of Shiraishi (population 500 — and dwindling) .
Shiraishi Island is in the Inland Sea of Japan and part of Okayama Prefecture. Author Amy Chavez moved there in 1997 and is charmed by the seclusion and way that the aging population is holding on to its traditions and ways of life. The books offers vignettes of the island’s many charming characters, who each share with Amy their stories of growing up on Shiraishi, the island’s culture, their fishing practices and sacred rituals.
I love being introduced to different people in each chapter. Memorable stories include that of Eiko, the elderly woman whose house Amy rents, Hiro, one of the last two octopus hunters on the island, the four Chinese brides who come to Shiraishi to marry, and Mimiko who runs a little beach shack.
The stories are interspersed with Amy’s observations from her window looking out on the port, her participation in island rituals, and her American perspective as an outsider looking to fit into the community.
