A Gentleman in Moscow is the story of Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat, who is under house arrest in a luxury hotel. Count Rostov spends over 30 years in the grand hotel Metropol. His opulent rooms are swapped for a tight attic room. Most of his treasures are taken. But although his material circumstances are greatly reduced, he is rich with his knowledge of literature and culture, his friendships, and his understanding of Russian history.
The Count has some love affairs, he befriends a young girl who also lives in the hotel, he keeps regular appointments with the hotel’s barber, and he uses his ingenuity with seating charts to help the hotel’s maitre d’ manage the various Bolshevik leaders and foreign travellers who come to dine. The Count is someone the Bolsheviks want to discard but he becomes indispensable to the hotel and its staff.
The book is quiet, but that helps convey Count Rostov’s old-fashioned nature. It’s elegant and eloquent, as is the Count. And I’d say it is a novel about survival. So many things get toss out by new regimes. But Alexander Rostov represents the things best kept.
Blue Sisters is the story of four dysfunctional sisters who are struggling to bond after the death of their beloved sister Nicky. Avery is the eldest (a recovering heroin addict, now high-paid London lawyer), who took over as mother to the girls when their own mother checked out. Bonnie is the next sister (superstar boxer, now low-paid bouncer in LA), who is the peace maker of the sisters. And Lucky is the youngest (a supermodel living in Paris, addicted to partying, alcohol and drugs), who is not sure who she is or what she actually wants to do. All three are lost without Nicky.
This is a story about coping with grief and coming to terms with the disappointments they each faced in childhood and young adulthood. Avery took on a mother role then escaped the family home as soon as she could. She lets her unexplored feelings destroy the life she’s built in London. Bonnie was the fighter and had the attention of their alcoholic father until she escaped into the ring but her unvoiced affections for her trainer and her loyalty to her sisters means that she drops her opportunities in favour of saving her sisters from themselves. And Lucky is still a child. Her modelling started when she was just a teen and she’s never had to grow up. She looks sophisticated in photos but really doesn’t want to be in the spotlight and distances herself from relationships as a protective strategy. Nicky connected the sisters. She was the best-loved by their parents and had a special bond with each sister. The linch pin was pulled with Nicky’s death and the three remaining sisters are left to figure out if they fit back together as a threesome and if there’s any room for a mother figure.
Overall I liked this book. There’s a good bit of humour and head scratching. Each sister is unlikeable in their own way, which can make this read a slog. But I enjoyed how the chapters alternate between their perspectives and I liked that the ending was not what I expected.
If you like the tv series Bad Sisters, this isn’t as crazy but it has all the wild dynamics of sisterhood.
What a lark! Butler and former Buddhist nun Helen Thorpe is yet again forced to play detective. This time she is compelled by her philanthropic employer Mr. Levine to join him as a participant in a group called Close Encounters for Global Healing. The group is run by Mr. Levine’s son David, who is in a bit of a bind. The group is meant to bring together a diverse set of participants who go through a series of exercises that help them find common ground. The “wealthy” person has bowed out and David needs a stand in, but nobody can know that the stand in is his father. Helen goes along for reassurance and security, since Mr. Levine is actually ultra-rich and needs a butler—that said, he is ultra kind, but still should not really be unattended in public settings. But Benedict Levine wants to see what his son loves about facilitating this workshop.
Turns out that the participants are unlikely to find common ground. There’s a burnt-out environmental activist who is down about everything, an internet troll who is a vile teen, a clued-out shopaholic, a white nationalist who claims he was just trying to get his girlfriend’s approval, and a dude arrested for his participation in the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. The warring and bickering starts immediately and doesn’t end until two people go missing. Now poor Helen is left to figure out a plan. Thankfully her handy butler friends, Gavin, Murray and Nigel, are on hand to lend a hand.
Susan Juby’s writing is so masterful and funny. This is book #3 in the series and the quirks of Helen Thorpe are as delightful as book #1 and book #2. I hope there’s another Helen Thorpe mystery in her pocket.
Shane Parrish’s book Clear Thinking is my best nonfiction read so far, well for personal development. He outlines the four default responses that lead to poor decision making and how to create safeguards and routines to ensure intentional, deliberate choices are made instead. The four, instinctual, defaults are emotion, ego, social and inertia.
When we have an emotional response, it is to feelings vs. facts. Stress, fatigue, hungry, anger can all trigger an impulsive reaction.
When we have an ego response, it is a reaction to threats to our self-worth or status.
When we have a social response, it is to conform to group norms. That need to belong can block independent thought.
When we have an inertia response, it is about resisting change by doing nothing. Maintaining the status quo.
The next part of the book deals with the ways you can overcome those defaults with self-accountability (taking responsibility for your actions, no more “it’s not my fault”), self-knowledge (knowing your strengths and weaknesses and adjusting for your biases), self-control (mastering emotions and taking a pause before reacting), and self-confidence (trusting your abilities and taking action).
The last part of the book is about the decision-making process. Much of this section is similar to an online workshop Shane Parrish ran through his Farnam Street blog. It’s a 5-step process for making better decisions. The first step is actually defining the problem in a clear and specific way to ensure you are solving for the right issue. He has lots of tips for exploring solutions and avoiding binary (do it, don’t do it) options. Then evaluating the options gets full treatment in the book with clear steps on how to gather info (not too much, and from diverse sources but ideally as close to the source of expertise). The execute stage is about when decisions are either reversible or irreversible, consequential or inconsequential and how knowing what type of decision it is can then impact the speed of your decision. And last is learning from your decisions–documenting your process vs. “resulting” or assuming if it worked out that it was more than chance.
Clear Thinking is a great book to read if you are in the early stages of a big decision: do I seek out a higher position, do I invest a chunk of money into something, do I move cities. If you’re in the middle of a big change, then this might be too much, too late in the process. But if you’re interested overall in how you react to the world around you—everything from retorts at work to major decisions—then this is a self-help book mascarading as a business book in the best possible way.
The Maid’s Secret—the last book in the Molly the Maid series—features a wedding, a heist, and long-held family secrets. It’s a wonderful goodbye to our favourite maid and an excellent cast of supporting characters: Mr. Snow the hotel manager, Cheryl the delinquent maid, Mr. Preston the former doorman and Molly’s grandfather, Angela the bartender and friend to Molly, Detective Stark, and sweet Juan the fiancé.
Molly and Juan are quietly planning their city hall wedding when they are derailed by the filming of an Antique’s-Roadshow style tv show called Hidden Treasures. The Regency Grand Hotel is hosting the event and staff are invited to bring in their treasures for review. Turns out one of the trinkets Molly brings from her Gran’s collection is worth millions. Before Molly can wave a duster, her rags-to-riches story becomes a media sensation and she’s the target of an art heist and death threats. Poor Molly. Luckily, Gran’s diary comes to the rescue in more ways that one.
There are 4 books in the series and they are all heart-warming whodunnits. Check out NitaProse.com for the scoop.
The Break is a heart-breaking debut novel about the trauma of missing and murdered women. The story is set in Winnipeg’s North End and begins with Stella, a young Métis mother, witnessing a rape from her baby’s bedroom window. It’s winter, she is shaken, she has two young kids asleep (then crying), and she does call the police but is otherwise too frozen to take action.
The police take their time to respond and by the time they do, Stella feels ignored and dismissed by them and her white husband, who’d prefer to believe it was gang related and not their business. That said, one of the policemen, Officer Scott, is a Métis. He works to understand what is happening with this crime but never truly learns the full story.
Told through a series of shifting narratives, Vermette introduces the reader to Stella’s Kukum (grandmother) and her aunties (Lou, a social worker, and Cheryl, an artist). We are also introduced to Phoenix, a teenager who has slipped away from a young detention centre, and her uncle, a local drug dealer/gang member, both of whom are known to Lou and Cheryl’s children. Then through a series of connections we come to understand the true scope of this tragedy, the number of women who’ve died, and the intergenerational grief that continues to haunt this family.
This is a sad and shocking book to read but it also offers insights into the non-fiction stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women, the landfill search for the remains of First Nations women in Winnipeg, and “Every Child Matters.”
Tana French is masterful. Faithful Place (first published in 2010) feels like it should be a Netflix crime series because the dialogue and characters are so vivid. Frank Mackey is a Dublin cop who is called home by his sister Jackie because a neighbourhood builder has dislodged a suitcase from the chimney of a derelict building. The suitcase belonged to Frank’s long-lost girlfriend Rosie. Twenty years ago Rosie went missing. The pair were to meet and run away to London together to work as roadies. Rosie never showed and everyone has always assumed she skipped town, just not with Frank.
Frank’s homecoming to Faithful Place is not celebrated. Yes, the suitcase is a bad omen, but Frank is estranged from his family, and on top of that he has become a cop. There’s hardly a more despised profession in Faithful Place.
Faithful Place is a fictionalized neighbourhood in Dublin near the Liberties. It’s a poor neighbourhood where everyone is suspicious of the cops and prone to gossip. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s meant small, cramped flats, basic meals, a hardy dose of Catholicism and no shortage of alcoholism and childhood violence.
Frank’s scrappy and shrewd older brother questions Frank’s motives for returning. Frank’s younger brother Kevin is keen to fall in as Frank’s sidekick again, and the sisters Carmel and Jackie are all about keeping the peace. This is a novel about long-brewing resentments, sibling rivalries, class conflicts, adolescent flirtations and grudges, and all the ways we misjudge those closest to us. Faithful Place is a captivating read. It’s dark, tragic, and there’s little redemption for any of the characters but it’s also funny, poetic, and full of genius storytelling.
Ione Skye is a British-born, American actress who made her film debut in River’s Edge then hit fame by starring in Cameron Crow’s Say Anything. She was in Wayne’s World, Arrested Development, and a ton of other film and tv productions. Say Everything is her second book.
One of the early nepo-babies, before that was a term, Ione Skye is the daughter of folk legend Donovan Leitch and model Enid Karl. Her brother is “Dono” Leitch, a musician and actor, who also modelled in the famous black and white CK ads of the 1990s and later married (then divorced) Kirsty Hume. Ione starred with John Cusack, Matthew Perry, Madonna, and Keanu Reeves, plus she was friends with River Phoenix, Robert Downey Jr., the Zappa family, and Mick Jagger’s daughter Karis—and there are lots of stories and details about hanging out with these fine folks. Ione also dated the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s frontman Anthony Kiedis (there was quite an age gap, and he was on quite a lot of heroine) then later Adam Horowitz of The Beastie Boys. You might think this is a name dropping exercise but the audiobook is narrated by Ione Skye and it’s like hanging out with a celebrity who knows everyone you had a poster of in high school.
This is a memoir about coming-of-age in the 1980s and 90s, surrounded by drugs and music, friends with absent fathers, insecurities, and a lot of money. It also feels kind of lucky that Ione Skye made it to functional adulthood. I had a lot of fun listening to this one.
Gosh I liked this book. Hamnet is a fictional account of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596, most likely from the plague. The story has very little to do with the Shakespeare we know and much more to do with the women in his life: his mother, his wife, his two daughters, and his mother-in-law.
The first part of the story moves between two different times: Shakespeare falling in love with Agnes, an unsettling, free-spirited young woman who keeps a kestrel and wanders the woods. Shakespeare, through the ill-dealings of his father, is sent to tutor Agnes’ step brothers. He is intimidated by her strapping younger brother who acts as her protector from the village and the step-mother. But Agnes has her eye on Shakespeare and the pair devise a way to ensure they get married. The narrative shifts back and forth between this time of optimism and present day 1596 when Hamnet is struggling to help his twin Judith through a fever. She has suddenly fallen ill and nobody is around to help. The grandparents are out, his older sister is off running errands, and his mother is absent (Agnes is at the farm with her brother who has asked her to come manage her swarming bees). The two narratives crash together with Agnes coming home from the fields and discovering Hamnet fraught with worry and Judith on death’s door.
The second part of the novel moves us through the family’s despair at losing Hamnet. Shakespeare retreats to the playhouses of London and Agnes abandons the plan for her and the children to join him there. It’s impossible to hope that Judith will survive the dirt of London, and it’s impossible for Agnes to return to life as usual.
I liked that this book is very much about the women vs. Shakespeare himself. There is darkness, tension, and the intensity of living through plagues set in parallel to the herbology and wisdom of women, the bonding and bickering, plus the love and grief of the women in this novel.
If you like historical fiction, twist on familiar plots, or award-winning literary fiction, then this is for you.
It reminds me of James by Percival Everett in its retelling of a seemingly familiar story. It has the “don’t let the wool be pulled over your eyes,” draw of By Any Other Name of Jodi Picoult, the dark tension of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, and it has the brilliant writing of females characters like The Women by Kristin Hannah.
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult is a fictionalized account of Emilia Bassano’s life from age 13 to 76 (1582-1645). As a young girl, she is a ward of English aristocrats who school her on languages, history, and writing. But at age 13, Emilia is contracted to Lord Chamberlain as his mistress in exchange for her family’s long-term contract as the Queen’s musicians. Emilia is young, an Italian Jew, highly educated, and an aspiring playwright. It’s just not a place and time for women to flourish. Emilia has little say in her life; she is unable to write professionally, or to publish her plays and poetry. She is a dark beauty in contrast to the white, powdered faces fashionable in court. And, she has to hide her Judaism. The thesis of the story is that the Shakespeare we laud today was no playwright. He bought plays from those who wished to remain anonymous and published them in his name. It was a business proposition that suited both parties, but a mistake for modern-day fans to attribute so much praise to him.
The modern-day story interwoven with Emilia’s is that of Melina, a descendant who is also an aspiring playwright. Melina’s challenge is that of being a woman in a field still dominated by white men (playwrights, producers, funders, reviewers). Her attempt to get a play produced is marred by sexism and her own mistakes in how she presents herself.
By Any Other Name is a thought-provoking novel about attribution: false representation, ghostwriting, and allonyms (pen names).
Whether you read it as fiction only, or as an exploration of the mythology that has sprung up around Shakespeare (a man who managed to write 37 plays alone while simultaneously being a full-time actor and producer), Picoult weaves in a lot of doubt about the providence of Shakespeare’s work. Other playwrights and poets of the time reference each other and were lauded publicly at the time of their death or buried in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. They left behind books and manuscripts in their wills. Yet Shakespeare left none. It was a time when writers collaborated and edited and finished each others’ works, whereas Shakespeare is said to have written alone. His plays humanize Jews, at a time when anti-Semitism was the norm. He never spent time in court, in the military, reading law, visiting Italy or Denmark, or playing music, or educating his daughters. Yet his plays and sonnets are ripe with details about music, courts, and law. His female characters are rich, spirited, and educated. Yet he did not educate his own daughters.
There are naysayers. And there are theories that multiple writers collaborated and published under the name Shakespeare. Regardless, novel or not, Picoult reminds us that women writing in Elizabethan times, doing science, crafting medicines, playing music and writing plays for home performances paved the way for women writers today. The main premise of By Any Other Name is that just because there is an absence of evidence (of women writers and playwrights) doesn’t mean there is evidence of absence.
