Tag: fiction (Page 3 of 16)

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.

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.

If you like Jodi Picoult’s work (see Mad Honey), Kristin Hannah, or Kate Quinn then definitely give this a read.