Ami McKay’s second novel is sure to be a bestseller just like the first.

Quote: I am Moth, a girl from the lowest part of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic and the man who broke her heart.

So begins The Virgin Cure, a story about a street girl named Moth who is lured by the street savvy Mae into Miss Everett’s brothel for girls. Set in the 1800s in New York, girls as young as 12 are preyed upon by those wishing to make a buck or to pay a large sum to be a girl’s first. Sadly there are many gentlemen willing to sleep with young girls and, more depressing, there are many who believe virgins will cure syphillus.

Moth is 12, and like many girls from poor families, is sold. Money changes hands and she goes first to Mrs. Wentworth as a ladies maid. But Mrs. Wentworth likes to beat pretty girls so Moth runs away only to find that her mother is no longer living in their apartment. With no where to go, she’s left to her own devices until she is “saved” by Miss Everett, who trains young girls in the art of seduction and then sells their first trick for a lovely sum to well-to-do gentlemen including the Chief of Dectectives, bankers, and politicians. Thankfully Mr. Dink (no pun apparently intended) and Dr. Sadie (a lady physician dedicated to serving the needs of women and children) provide Moth a means to live beyond the street or the whorehouse. The question is whether she’ll take these offers.

The Virgin Cure is a novel about friendship and betrayal, and it’s a ficitionalized account of McKay’s great, great- grandmother who was a lady physician in NYC during this time.

The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay
published by Knopf in hardcover and ebook
Canadian author

Visit Ami McKay’s website

Terroryaki! by Jennifer K. Chung is the perfect book for Halloween, or any time that you want a spooky food truck on your radar.

Quote: It’s three months to the wedding, and Daisy’s Taiwanese parents are still shunning her sister’s hopelessly white fiance. To escape the prenuptial drama, food-obsessed Daisy goes on the hunt for a mysterious take-out truck whose dishes are to die for. Literally.

Terroryaki! is a playfully appetizing first bite. This is Jennifer K. Chung’s first novel and it’s the winner of the 33rd Annual 3-Day Novel Contest, which runs every Labour Day Weekend. The writing is gritty and fast paced, exactly what you’d expect from a novel crafted in 3 days, but it’s also quite accomplished. The novel opens as follows:

Quote: Samantha was getting married, and Mom didn’t like it. She thought Sam’s fiance was a bad match for her and predicted that Sam would be divorced within a year. I kinda liked the guy, Patrick often joined me on weekly expeditions to new restaurants, but Mom didn’t care about my opinion. Patrick wasn’t Asian enough for her, probably because he wasn’t Asian at all. Besides, Mom and Sam have had a rocky relationship ever since Sam went away to college, and Mom was always bugging me about Sam, asking if I’d talked to her or if she’d posted on Facebook. I always shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

This is a funny, spicy and slightly creepy tale of food, family, love, Seattle, and the best, if slightly cursed, teriyaki food truck in Seattle. Daisy is a teriyaki connaisseur and blogger. Samantha is a lawyer and the bride to be. Patrick is the dumbfounded fiance. Mom and Dad are keen on their Taiwanese soap operas and overly dramatic. Plus there’s the curse, piratesque teriyaki food truck driver, and the Nordic, slightly insane, terrifying wedding planner. Poor Daisy needs to do more than just save the wedding day.

100% worth a read.

Order Terroryaki! from the 3-Day Novel Contest website.

The Night Circus is as magical as it sounds.

Quote: The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque de Reves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate enough to receive letters with such information, to have reveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper.
We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.

These two passages are miles apart in in the novel. The first is the opening lines and the second is from Friedrick Thiessen, the first of the reveurs.

Le Cirque de Reves is a magical, travelling circus that appears and disappears at the will of Celia Bowen, the Illusionist. Yes, a female illusionist. And what is even more captivating is that she is bound to another illusionist as part of a challenge instigated by her father. The challenge is a duel of sorts and her opponent happens to be a young man besotted with her. He too is an illusionist and together they create the magic of the circus. There are some mechanical items, such as Friedrick Thiessen’s master clock, and Mr. Barris’ carousel, but many of the mechanical aspects are altered magically, and many of the magical aspects are altered mechanically in order to mask their true nature. The entire circus is fashioned in black, white and shades of grey. To honour the circus, its super fans, reveurs, wear black, white or grey with a splash of red. They religiously follow the circus around the world, reporting to each other its location and writing articles for each other. (A bit like my Harry Potter fandom friends.)

Those who loved The Time Traveller’s Wife will be as thrilled with this novel. It has magic, romance, nasty parenting, loss, joy and everything you need to run a magical circus. (There is also a reference to Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab in the acknowledgements and an assortment of perfumery references, all very much of interest to me.)

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Published by Doubleday Canada
National Post Review of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

The Paris Wife is a fictionalized account of the marriage between Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway. It was a rocky marriage that lasted only 7 years, but it started with a great romance in Chicago and ended in an affair in Paris. Hadley was the first wife, and although Ernest married several more times, his account of his marriage to Hadley is beautifully treated in his work A Moveable Feast. Perhaps because he was such a louse when he was married to her?

Hadley is often referred to as the Paris Wife as the Hemingway couple spent most of their time together in Paris in the early days of Hemingway’s career. Hadley raised their son, practiced piano and patiently waited upon and tended to Ernest, who in turn ran amok with the European and American literati that included the likes of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although a fictional account, I enjoyed Paula McLain’s rendition of those crazy years in Paris post-WWII when everyone was running about and artists and writers were trying to make a name for themselves.

Hadley was Ernest’s sounding board and credited with making the space available for Hemingway to focus on making it big. The novel portrays this time as volatile. Post war, everyone was finding their place, including women. While many of the Hemingways’ female friends were working on their own careers, Hadley appeared keen to stay in the background in a supporting role to her husband, happily raising their baby boy. But although she is the doting wife, she’s sound of mind and body and a charmer in her own right. McLain certainly doesn’t portray all the females in the novel as so likeable.

Overall, a charming rendition of a heartbreaking relationship.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Published by Bond Street Books (Doubleday Canada)

I mentioned earlier how much I enjoyed reading Louise Penny’s latest Inspector Gamache mystery.

This Canadian author is certainly making the rounds on bestseller lists across North America:

#4 – New York Times bestseller list
#5 – Publishers Weekly
#5 – Chicago Tribune
#6 – Washington Post
#9 – National Independent Bookstores
#7 – Toronto Globe and Mail
#2 – Canadian Bookseller’s Association
#3 – Vancouver sun
#10- Maclean’s
#5 – Entertainment Weekly

Go Louise Penny!

Such success deserves some more attention and I am lucky enough to share an audio clip of A Trick of Light. The audiobook is available from Macmillan Audio and they’ve kindly given me permission to share the clip with you.

Have a listen to this audio clip of A Trick of Light.

The English Patient was one of my favourite novels by Ondaatje. It helped that I studied it in English Lit because the movie adaption is really only one part of the many stories interwoven in that tale. It’s a masterpiece. But I suspect that it’s one of those books that people bought but never read. In the case of The Cat’s Table, we have a novel that is a much more accessible to read and definitely worth picking up.

In the early 1950s, 11-year-old Mynah (or Michael) boards a ship in Colombo bound for England. The Cat’s Table is his adventure on board, the characters who he meets, and later his adult understanding of that childhood time. Ondaatje has crafted a wonderful tale.

Quote: As I got into the car, it was explained to me that after I’d crossed the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, and gone through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, I would arrive one morning on a small pier in England and my mother would meet me there. It was to the magic or the scale of the journey that was of concern to me, but that detail of how my mother could know when exactly I would arrive in that other country.

And if she would be there.

What he doesn’t know is that he’ll befriend the heart-troubled Ramadhin or the exuberant Cassius. Nor does he know upon boarding about the shackled prisoner, the deaf girl or the circus.

Quote: It was not even eight o’clock when we crossed the border from First Class back to Tourist Class. We pretended to stagger with the roll of the ship. I had by now come to love the slow waltz of our vessel from side to side. And the fact that I was on my own, save for the distant Flavia Prins and Emily, was itself an adventure. I had no family responsibilities. I could go anywhere, do anything. And Ramadhin, Cassius, and I had already established one rule. Each day we had to do at least one thing that was forbidden. The day had barely begun, and we still had hours ahead of us to perform this task.

Whether it’s sneaking down to the boiler rooms, slipping into the life rafts, nabbing treats, or brazenly standing out in a storm, these three boys wreck havoc in the way only boys can. But this story is not just about discovering what they can get into, it’s about discovering who they are and what they mean to each other.

In many ways, it’s a story we all know. It’s one of going to camp for the summer and making friends, meeting people on a trip with whom you promise to stay in touch, or missing classmates who’ve come and gone. It’s about friendships made in a confined space or time. It’s about growing up and moving from childhood to adulthood. That’s what I mean by accessible. We share Mynah’s memories, even if they are not of the exact same space and time.

Watch for Michael Ondaatje at the Writers Festivals happening this fall. He’s worth seeing and the book is worth reading.

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
Published by M&S
Available in hardcover, unabridged audio CD, unabridged audiobook download and eBook.
Canadian author

I recommend all sorts of books to my mom. Most she likes and some that I think she’ll really like, she ends up hating. I was a bit worried recommending A Trick of Light by Louise Penny because I really enjoyed it and I wasn’t sure if it would make the cut for my mom.

Well, I can report that she has since purchased all of Louise Penny’s books and is a huge fan of Inspector Gamache.

Author Louise Penny lives outside of a small village south of Montreal, but she hasn’t always been a Quebecer. Penny was born in Toronto and became a journalist and radio host for CBC. She moved to Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, eventually settling in Quebec.

Quote:
Within weeks I’d called Quebecers ‘good pumpkins’, ordered flaming mice in a restaurant, for dessert naturally, and asked a taxi driver to ‘take me to the war, please.’ He turned around and asked ‘Which war exactly, Madame?’ Fortunately elegant and venerable Quebec City has a very tolerant and gentle nature and simply smiled at me. (…more)

Full of courtesy and dignity is our main character, the Inspector. No wonder my mom has a bit of a heart throb for him. Even investigating the murder of Lillian Dyson, he is charming yet firm, worldly yet not pretentious.

Now don’t go worrying about dear Lillian, because she wasn’t much of a dear. Lillian, more times than not, played the stream roller, taking down the careers of many artists and presumed friends in the art world. She was a harsh and caustic critic, in particular of Clara Morrow, in whose garden she found herself murdered.

Now why was she in Clara’s garden the night of Clara’s first solo show at the famed Musee in Montreal? Lillian certainly wasn’t invited to the after-party in the garden. And what was she planning to do in that shocking, red cocktail dress?

A modern-day Agatha Christie, Louise Penny can hold her readers attention. Even the secondary characters have fully realized personas and backstories, which certainly makes it harder to guess the conclusion of this who-dunnit.

If you have never heard of Louise Penny, A Trick of Light is worth the read.

Published by St. Martin’s Press
Hardcover edition
Canadian author

UPDATE:
Audiobook by Macmillan Audio (Listen to a clip.)