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Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Book Review

June 13, 2021 / Monique

From the author of Daisy Jones & the Six comes a rock & roll novel about Malibu in the 80s.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is a master at the documentary, Rolling Stone style novel. The characters feel so real. It’s like taking a deep dive into a Rolling Stone cover piece or a feature in Vanity Fair or Seventeen.

Basically an amazing summer read. A bit of trashy gossip with a lot of spirit.

Former fan of Sweet Valley High? This is the adult version.

Welcome to Malibu, August 1983. The novel starts with some stats about raging wildfires in this part of the world. So throughout the novel, you’re waiting for the place to burn to the ground.

The setup is that it’s the day of Nina Riva’s infamous end-of-summer party. The novel is in two parts. 7 am to 7 pm; then 7 pm to 7 am. Nina is the eldest of 4 siblings, maybe more. Her dad is the rockstar Mick Riva, who left their mom early on in his career. He had a lot of affairs. The kids have been raised by their mom and are incredibly close to each other. Nina is a model. Jay is a superstar surfer. Hub is a renowned surf photographer. Kit is the baby, at 20, who is probably the best surfer of them all, if anyone would pay attention.

The novel reveals the various family secrets and culminates in the wild, out of control party. By the time you’re reading about the party, you can feel the slight sun burn, the sand between your toes, the spray from the surf.

This is 24 hours in the life of the Riva family, and it will give you the most amazing buzz.

How to Order the Universe by Maria Jose Ferrada | Book Review

June 13, 2021 / Monique

Absolutely charming novel about a young girl who joins her father on his sales trips. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road meets Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies.

For 7-year-old M, the world has a clear set of guiding principles to which her father D prescribes. D is a travelling salesman and M convinces him to take her along on his routes, selling various hardware supplies and meeting other salesman who specialize in hats or perfumes. The novel is set in Chile during the Pinochet era, but this is not immediately clear to the reader as the story is told, with innocence, from M’s perspective.

Maria Jose Ferrada captures this time through a child’s eyes. She takes the reader through the charming stages of a father-daughter relationship on the road, and then the experiences that shatter their trust and safety. It’s a simple novel about the complex ways our world can fall apart. It’s about the certainty of how things are, which we latch onto as children yet have to give up as adults.

I loved this little book.

Perfect for fans of Kerouac, who don’t mind a softer touch to the road-trip story. Fans of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time will like the quiet innocence and quirky thoughts of this 7-year-old protagonist. And fans of Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Julia Alvarez will like the familiar feel of Latin American storytelling.

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

May 31, 2021 / Monique

A sharp and cutting collection of short stories

Souvankham Thammavongsa is an amazing writer! This is her fiction debut and each story is a small gem, a rough-cut gem, that is worth attention.

Each story presents a character struggling in some way to setting in Canada. Some are children, some adults, and they all face disappointments, emotional power struggles, and sparks of joy. These are immigrants from Lao and as forgettable as they may be to others—they are bus drivers, nail salon workers, worm pickers—they are unforgettable in these stories.

These are stories about finding your way, and standing your ground.

…At school the next day, my brother and I took out our candies at lunch and displayed them on a table like we were street vendors, telling our friends we went Chick-A-Chee where the houses were gigantic. Our friends had kept to their buildings or to the houses next door or hadn’t gone out at all, so they had only little gum balls or one or two tiny chocolate bars. We had bags and bags of chips, whole chocolate bars, and packs of gum—and there was more waiting for us at home.
page 82, Chick-a-chee!

There is so much praise for this book. All I can say is, yes, yes, yes. Look at who blurbed the book. If you like these authors, you’ll like this collection:

Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood

Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing (one of my Vancouver Sun Book Club reads)

Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People (also on my to-read list)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett | Book Review

May 29, 2021 / Monique

Super compelling read about identity and social constructs

The Vignes sisters are the talk of the town: good family, attractive. Stella is a helper. She’s smart, quiet, and going places. Desiree is cheeky and sure of herself. They are dedicated to each other, and one day disappear.

The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened by his own effort.
first line, chapter one, The Vanishing Half

Mallard (fictional but based on real places) is a strange town that’s not on any maps. It was founded by Alphonse Decuir in 1848 with the sole purpose of being a place “for men like him, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes. ” It’s a town that values lightness. And the Vignes twins are Decuir’s great-great-great-granddaughters. Creamy skinned, hazel eyes, wavy hair. He’d be very proud.

I heard Brit Bennett on CBC talking about the novel, and race, identity, and the re-invention of self. It was a super interesting conversation. In the novel, the Vignes twins run away. Desiree because she’s always wanted to get out of small town Mallard. And Stella because her mother has pulled her out of school to clean houses and help with the family’s finances. For both girls, Mallard becomes an unacceptable place to be. The split between the twins happens in New Orleans when Stella goes to work, passing as white, and then marries her boss. She leaves Desiree in the dark for decades. Meanwhile Desiree has a daughter Jude, is forced to flee an abusive marriage, and settles back in Mallard, with her daughter is shunned for her skin colour.

I recently read an article “So What’s the Difference Between Race and Ethnicity?” with Jennifer DeVere Brody, Stanford University’s Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. To understand the terms, you need to understand how they were historically used, and that these concepts have changed over time, but that both terms are about people’s relationship to power. Brit Bennett exposes all sorts of power struggles in this novel.

There are so many layers to this story, and to the stories of Stella and Desiree’s daughters. What it’s like to grow up white and privileged vs. black and in a town that values lightness. What it’s like to be a woman in the 60s, 70s, 80s. What beliefs we inherit and what acceptance or denial does to our identity.

Brit Bennett is an amazing writer crafting a novel about racism, politics, and all the ways we corrupt our society. The Vanishing Half is a worthwhile read.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

April 24, 2021 / Monique

One of the staff at Vancouver Kidsbooks mentioned they had signed copies and I decided on a whim to buy the book. I have heard of Kazuo Ishiguro and know he’s a great writer. But I hadn’t read any of his books. I haven’t even seen the acclaimed film versions of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Obviously I need to get with the program.

Description: This is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), who is waiting in a store window to be purchased by her forever family. Klara, although a second-generation model, is incredibly observant and quickly comes to understand empathy, love, and the basics of other human emotions and drivers of behaviour.

Klara is eventually purchased by Josie, a 13-year-old girl who absolutely adores her. But like all teen crushes, there’s some waxing and waving.

What I absolutely LOVED about this book was that very little is explained. As a reader, you are dropped into a modern, futuristic world and have to read between the lines about what’s happening culturally and politically, how AFs fit into the picture, where the cognitive biases lie. The book asks you to stretch, but not too far beyond comfort.

Klara is a fabulous narrator. Can you call an artificial being genuine? I found her so charming. And I found many aspects of this modern world alarming.

Do you believe in the human heart? I don’t mean simply the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense. The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual?
Josie’s father to klara, on whether klara could truly learn Josie, not just her mannerisms, but her heart, page 215

This is the perfect read for someone who likes technology yet remains wary. The Matrix meets The Shallows. I feel like this is an iconic read, a true culture trip, that I will go back to in order to unravel the layers.

Empire of Wild by Cherie Demaline

April 23, 2021 / Monique

A fantastic read, bit of magic realism—you know—werewolves, Indigenous magic.

Description: Joan has been searching for her missing husband for 11 months and 6 days when she stumbles upon a church revival tent and the preacher turns out to be her husband Victor. Well, Victor is not Victor, but Reverend Eugene Wolff. And his manager Mr. Heiser swears to the police that Wolff has been with them for 3 years. This is not true.

Joan and nephew Zeus set out to rescue Victor, along with the help of an elder named Ajean. Along the way they learn to beware of the Rogarou (a werewolf-like creature that haunts the Métis).

There are so many great monsters in this novel. And Dimaline weaves in traditional stories of the Rogarou with European tales of the Big Bad Wolf and other wolf lore.

No matter which community claimed them, rogarous were known for some specific things. They smelled odd, like wet fur and human sweat. They were men turned into beasts for any number of reasons—each one unique to the storyteller. They were as notoriously bad at math as they were obsessive. A rogarou, try as he might, could only count to twelve. Put thirteen things by your door and he would be inclined to stop and count them. But since he could only get to twelve, he could never count the entire pile, so he was doomed to start again and again, stopping at twelve and returning to one. Eventually, he’d give up and go away, forgetting he’d ever intended to enter. At least that was the theory.
Chapter 13, Hide and seek, page 190

Perfect read for anyone who loved Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster, or Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals.

Get the paperback from the publisher.

View the author site.

The Searcher by Tana French | Book Review

April 20, 2021 / Monique

Description: A quiet and unnerving book about an American ex-cop who moves to rural Ireland and finds himself wary of the neighbours.

This is a great literary suspense novel, and the subtle Irish humour reminded me a lot of my time living in Ireland.

Cal Hooper has purchased a fixer-upper outside a small village on the west coast Ireland called Ardnakelty. (It’s a fictional location but goodness it feels real.) He’s enjoying retirement, likes his neighbour who chews the fat, and is otherwise enjoying himself until he gets caught up in the disappearance of a village teen. Cal’s cop instincts kick in and he starts investigating, and ignoring the advice of his neighbour to let it be. No good comes of it, but I don’t want to spoil the story.

The Searcher is lacking great thriller/suspense action but it makes you uneasy. I think that’s an even greater feat of suspense writing.

Favourite Moment: Trey is a nearby neighbour kid who’s taken to hanging around Cal’s. Cal’s fire arm license comes through and he teaches the kid how to shoot a rabbit. They make a stew and bond.

The perfect read for those who like Night Boat to Tangier, The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn, or some of the quieter Stephen King novels.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig | Book Review

April 7, 2021 / Monique

This book is so much fun. A crazy “*what if” novel.*

There’s something about The Midnight Library that reminded me of Daisy Jones and the Six and The Glass Hotel.

The Midnight Library is the story of Nora Seed. She’s feeling down and out. Nora loses her job, loses her piano student, loses her cat. It’s a bad day in a line of bad days. Nora decides to end her life but instead of a straight line to heaven or hell, she ends up at the midnight library where the librarian Mrs. Elm (who she hasn’t seen since elementary school) helps her find a better life. The library is full of books, all of which are the outcome of different life decisions.

Nora can see what life is like if she’d followed her swimming dreams to the Olympics, if she’d stayed in the band with her brother, if she’d gone to Norway to study glaciers.

Each life offers a lesson. Each life offers the opportunity for Nora to live out her life in a different reality. Of course there’s a lesson here, but the novel does not come across as schmultzy. It’s a fun, fast-moving read about regrets and the choices we make.

The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams | Book Review

April 7, 2021 / Monique

A quirky novel about a woman who works for a dictionary publisher.

Description: Mallory is a young woman who is a bit lost in her professional career. She’s taken an internship with the publisher of an encyclopedic dictionary that is being digitized. Through some happenstance the publisher discovers that there are a number of fake words throughout the dictionary and Mallory must uncover them. The fun twist is that her story is interspersed with that of Peter Winceworth, the 19th-century man who added the fake words.

This book was an Amazon recommendation. I’ve never bothered with the recommendations before but I loved the cover of this book and ordered it on a whim. So much of the novel is about people who follow a whim. It’s quaint, slightly absurd, and overall a fun read.

Favourite Moment: Peter Winceworth is invited to an office party and feels ill at ease. He works out a plan to circulate the room with intent so as to not have to chat to anyone. Eventually he decides to hide behind a large potted plant, but he sidles straight into a young woman already hiding there.

The woman was crouching slighting and caught in the act of eating a slice of birthday cake. They stared at one another—both of their eyebrows went up at the same time and tilted into identical angles of surprise. Their expressions changed simultaneously: their eyebrows were at once a grave accent, then acute, then circumflex ò ó ô signifying shock then furtiveness and then an attempt at nonchalance. She deposited her cake into a beaded purse without breaking eye contact and then set her shoulders, and Winceworth, drunk enough to interpret this as an invitation to dictate proceedings, cleared his throat.
H is for humbug (n.), page 101

The Liar’s Dictionary is the perfect read for anyone who likes books, libraries, publishing, slightly absurd storylines, wordplay and puns, and cats.

Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less, blurbs the book, and so does CS Richardson, author of The End of the Alphabet. Both are good comps.

Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith

January 30, 2021 / Monique

Edith’s Diary was published in 1977 and is billed a psychological thriller. You may be familiar with the author Patricia Highsmith, who published 22 novels, including The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train.

There is no crime that occurs, well maybe but it’s hard to prove and there’s no real evidence. The true crime is that Edith has to raise a selfish, drip of a son on her own because her husband runs off with his secretary. Not only does he leave Edith to the parenting, he also leaves his bedridden uncle in her care. What a guy.

Overall I kept expecting more. I thought there would be some psychological twist at the end, or that the crimes would be bigger (not the small slights and misdemeanours). This is a sad story about a woman who doesn’t give up but doesn’t give herself a chance either.

If you enjoyed The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn, then give this one a go.

So Misguided