Book Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Trish put me up to buying this book in Kindle format when it went on sale for $3.99. I've gotta say she scared me a bit when she said the book was getting too intense and she might need to put it in the freezer. :-) But it ended up being a great read.

Book Review: Flesh by Khanh Ha

Publication: 2012, Black Heron Press

Genre: Literary Fiction

FTC Info: I received a copy of this book from the author as part of a promotion through Virtual Author Book Tours.

Rating: 5/5 stars

Please visit tomorrow for my interview with Khanh Ha.

Excerpt from The Siren of Paris by David LeRoy

This is an except from David LeRoy's self published novel, The Siren of Paris, which I previously reviewed. I also posted an interview with the author here.

The Siren of Paris is currently on tour with Nikki Leigh of Promo 101.

Marc, a French born American student, never suspected that he would become trapped in German occupied France when he came to Paris in the summer of 1939 to study art. While smuggling a downed airman out of the American Hospital, through the Paris resistance underground, his life is plunged into total darkness when someone he trusts becomes a collaborator agent for the Gestapo. Marc then must fight to save his soul when he is banished to the “Fog and the Night” of Buchenwald, where he struggles with guilt over the consequences of having his trust betrayed.

      Marc lay in the back of the truck with the others from the YMCA, along with some British soldiers and a few employees of a Belgian aircraft company. It was about 1 a.m. and though they had been traveling for hours, they were not yet ready to bed for the night. And they were not alone. All along the valley road were others still on the move. Everyone seemed to be going someplace, anyplace, wherever they could get in a hurry, with a great determination. “I am really looking forward to getting out of France. When I get home, I am going to go straight to Elizabeth’s house and spend the night. I have not been able to write her for two weeks. She probably thinks I am dead,” Allen said to Marc. Marc stirred from his self-loathing mood. He played over and over in his head the number of times he could’ve left France. He resented himself for staying too long, just for Marie. He even doubted the sincerity of the promise of engagement.

David LeRoy on The Siren of Paris, a "Screenplay in Drag"

For our first author interview at On Page and Screen, I'm happy to welcome debut author David LeRoy, discussing his self published novel, The Siren of Paris, which I previously reviewed.  We discussed his writing style and purpose, his hopes of seeing his novel become a screenplay, why this novel might appeal to young adult readers, movies, Jungian archetypes, rabbits, and whatever else came up in conversation. ;-) 

The Siren of Paris is currently on tour with Nikki Leigh of Promo 101.

A native of California, David received a BA in Philosophy and Religion at Point Loma Nazarene College in San Diego. The degree served him well while selling women’s shoes, waiting tables, or working odd jobs after college until settling in the field of telecommunications, where he has worked for the past 18 years.

Early on, he demonstrated artistic abilities. For many years, David marketed a line of fine art photographic prints through various galleries and retail outlets. In the past few years, his focus has shifted to painting and drawing, which included the development of a children’s e-book in the Apple Itunes store under “David Tribble” title “Lord of the Scribes.”

After returning from a European arts study program, he became interested in the history behind the French Resistance during World War Two. Writing fiction has become his latest way to explore philosophical, moral and emotional issues of life. The Siren of Paris is his first novel.

Steph: David, The Siren of Paris is starting to get a lot of attention with plenty of balanced, thoughtful reviews. In my review, I mentioned that this book worked for me, although it was very different from the novels I usually enjoy. I am generally drawn to more character-driven stories, which often include lyrical prose and particular attention to depth in character development.

While there are many interesting characters in The Siren of Paris, it strikes me as much more plot-driven, with coverage of many historical events, including some that aren't commonly known. It also includes exceptionally vivid scenes depicting some events from history with attention to accuracy in historical detail. Like many novel characters, these events will stick with me for a very long time, and I'll continue to think about them. This is a real gift for a history lover like me. ;-)

One example that comes to mind is the depiction of a train being stopped during a German bombing. It's a vivid scene, and the presence of a traveling circus, which was apparently an actual historical detail, makes it especially unforgettable. The depiction of the sinking of the Lancastria also seemed to fit here. It seems that some readers enjoy the plot-driven style and vivid scenes while others would like to have seen more prose, different kinds of historical details, and greater character development.

Dave: The book could have easily exploded in word count. If you take what Toby Osborne has to say in The Future of Books, less is more. I recommend his book, and specifically the chapter “A New Way to Write.” What worked in the past will not always work in the future, and I believe Toby is on to something about how readers are changing due to technology.  The first e-book I ever read was on my iPhone on my trip to Europe.

The resurgence of the novella is due, in large part, to this new breed of readers who expect less writing and more story. This is counter to the trend of large character driven novels heavy in exposition and description that have been in vogue the past thirty years.

Me: That's an interesting point. While many of us will continue to enjoy the longer, more literary and character driven novels, a plot-driven novella will have greater appeal for many readers. And both these things will appeal to the same readers at different times. In many ways, I appreciate both equally.

So did you have this particular approach to writing in mind as you wrote The Siren of Paris?

Dave: Absolutely.  I focused upon dialog, action, and some description.  Exposition is very light in the book.  Some may believe I have missed opportunities by not going too deeply into historical conversations. However, I specifically choose to omit details and allow the reader’s imagination to project its own story.

One of the most consistent complaints of many reviewers of historical fiction is that the author will drown the reader with every historical detail. I choose only details that were relevant to the story of Marc’s experience during the war.

It has been interesting to see who enjoys reading the book.  Generally speaking, multi-taskers, who may have a shorter attention span, appear to enjoy the book the most. 

Me: Hmm ... that sounds somewhat like me. I'm a poster child for adult ADD ... ten tabs open on my browser, kids in the room wanting to talk, and I'm doing something else altogether. ;-) However, I do still enjoy long, literary books with a great deal of exposition and character development, although not exclusively. Is there a particular kind of multi-tasking reader you have in mind?

Dave: Oh, just about everyone following our modern day pace of life, but specifically, teenagers, texters, tweeters and bloggers.  People who think in very short bursts of information or smaller bites.  

Steph: Teenagers? But you don't feature teenaged characters. And there are definitely no vampires or werewolves. ;-)

Dave: Marc was 19 when he decided to leave, and turns 20 on the first day of the voyage to France.  And just like teenagers, the loss of his first relationship is dramatically devastating to his ego. In one sense the book is a story of coming of age or innocence lost through the first full relationship away from home.

For many young adults, turning 20 is a threshold birth date, leaving the teens behind, and facing adulthood.  However, I am not just thinking of teenagers, but also many of the parents of teenagers, a class of human under unusual levels of stress.

Steph: You're preaching to the choir, here. ;-) But go on ...

Dave: They like to read a few chapters, which does not take long, and then drop the book for a few days.  They don’t read in long blocks of time. I know a few who took about a month to complete the book, one beach at a time.

Steph: That makes sense. Sometimes I prefer books that lend themselves to reading in short spurts and setting aside. At other times, I want to be absorbed in a literary work for a while. Sometimes I have one of each going. ;-)

One thing that worked for me, with the style and substance of The Siren of the Paris, is that I have always been drawn to factual historical accounts. I tend to read historical novels as much for information as for a good story and compelling characters.

Dave: The Siren of Paris is full of such historical accounts, and many have never appeared in any other work of fiction.  No other work of fiction has addressed the sinking of the Lancastria.  There are non-fiction accounts, but nothing fictional.  This is one of the few books that provides a panoramic view of the fall of France.  The torture scenes to classical piano are real. Even the Buchenwald concert is historically accurate.    

Steph: In your best fantasies, what do you see ahead for The Siren of Paris? ;-)

Dave: What every author secretly dreams of, and that is I'd love to option the rights for the movie.

Steph: Do you think it lends itself to a movie adaptation?

Dave: Funny you should ask about that.  The dirty little secret is that underneath the 48 Chapters and 101,891 words of The Siren is the classic screenplay structure. Think of this novel as a "screenplay in drag."

Steph: Could you explain this? What is the classic screenplay structure? And how does The Siren fit this structure?

Dave: Screenplay structure is typically in three parts.  Part one focuses upon the plot, which in the case of The Siren of Paris, is the war and the fall of France.  Part two focuses upon the key emotional relationship of the protagonist, and this is usually broken into a Part A, and Part B.  The third part is the final act where you find resolution.  

Steph: Why did you choose this structure? Why not just write a screenplay instead of a novel?

Dave: Chicken and egg.  If you write the screenplay, well, someone will question why there is no novel.  If the novel has no potential as a screenplay, then there is a problem if the story becomes so popular that people want a movie.  If an agent attempts to option the movie rights, they will complain that novel does not lend itself to a screenplay. Many readers want it both ways.  They want the novel to follow the movie. Many novels are written in such a way that they do not lend themselves to motion picture adaptation, and I chose to avoid this problem while writing The Siren of Paris.  Another point to consider is that, in our fast paced, visually rich world, the structure of a screenplay has become the way that most of the public comes to expect a story to flow.

Steph: Are you a movie buff? What are some movies with interesting historical settings, particularly World War II movies, that have a special place in your heart?

 

Dave: Au Revoir Les Enfants and Schindler's List are my favorites. I am typically drawn to stories about civilians during the war.   I have not seen it yet, but I would like to see Paris Underground, which is based upon a true story.

Steph: I'm glad you mentioned those. I love Schindler's List, and my daughter and I have wanted to see Au Revoir Les Enfants for a long time -- it's next on my Netflix queue. ;-)

Is it a problem that you chose to self publish?  Normally a publisher, or your agent, would be able to sell those rights.

Dave:  I reached out to Sharon at Writer’s Pitch, and The Siren will be listed in the fall edition of The Writer's Pitch book. It is a paid subscription that goes out to directors, agents and producers. Sharon developed a method of matching up writers with agents, publishers and studios.  For a modest fee, I was able to place a pitch for the movie rights to the book that goes out to multiple studios who have paid for the information.  It is target marketing with laser precision.  I could never pull off what Sharon is able to offer through The Writers Pitch.

Steph: That is very cool ... I am impressed.  If this book makes it to film, what do you think will be the best scenes? Did you think about this as you wrote the book?

Dave: For one, the first chapter. As a written passage, it is strange, and some find it difficult to follow.  However, visually, the dead that rise from the land and sea do so in exact proportion to a vortex -- or eye -- of a hurricane with a perfect eye. The imagery is straight out of the Book of Revelations. This is a metaphor for World War II.

In the next chapter, when Marc sets out for Paris, I decided to have him cross the Atlantic in the S.S. Normandie instead of the RMS Queen Mary.  I decided to choose the Normandie over the Queen Mary when I was watching the movie Skyline.

Have you seen it?  The blue light “gets” people and they get sucked up into the alien spaceship. All of L.A. is absorbed into the group on the spaceship, and giant monsters roam the streets.

Steph: I've never heard of it. It sounds truly ... umm ... campy. :-)

Dave: It is hysterically campy and financially successful.

Well, if you look at that movie and see how real the special effects are, you get a good idea of what studios are capable of today.  I decided that re-creating the Normandie dining room, which is the most opulent room ever put to sea, is well within reach of these studios.  And the Normandie, visually, makes the Queen Mary look modest.  Marc walking down to his table, underneath the statue of peace, amongst the columns of frosted crystal Lalique would be a magnificent scene.  The room full of magnificent light offers a dramatic contrast with the horrible darkness that over takes Marc’s life.  

Steph:  Earlier I mentioned some of the memorable historical scenes in the novel. The war scenes are haunting.  As I said before, the scene at the train station -- when people are climbing on top of the last remaining trains leaving Paris -- particularly stuck with me.

Dave: As you mentioned, the traveling circus is not fictional. There was a traveling circus making its way down the Loire Valley with the Germans right behind them. It is mystifying as well as horrifying at the same time.

Steph: I can imagine that scenes like this would adapt well to the screen. You also mentioned the novel being fast-paced. That might make it easy to translate the story into a feature length movie. Though sometimes, in the narrative of the book, it feels a little too fast, with abrupt transitions.

Dave:  I was well aware, when I wrote the book, that the pacing might to be fast for some and I was going light in many areas.  However, the problem in The Siren was how do I get the reader through World War II, which has been written to death, without stalling?  There were hundreds of ways I could have gotten lost on some historical tangent such as the specifics of the Sumner Wells trip or long descriptions of the city. The book shows the war from a completely different perspective than most other books. In the end, I feel that the overwhelming pace of the narrative is exactly like experiencing the war, which is what the story is all about.    

Steph:  So, in what way do you feel your novel shows the war from a different perspective that most novels and films?

Dave:  There are several areas where the book differs with most.  First, instead of opening with the war, I open just before the phony war period.  This allows me to show the reader the terrifying predicament that many civilians in France found themselves in as transportation options disappeared.  Second, the Lancastria affects Marc in such a way that I can show the war’s effects through the post traumatic stress disorder and fears of the protagonist.  Third, I could not find any other novel that deals specifically with the point of view of a French collaborator, looking at his or her motivations, reasons, and tactics.  By choosing to incorporate that into the story, I could show the reader this shadow side of the French during the war.   

However, the biggest difference is in the choice of the protagonist.  We have a bias towards seeing the hero in war novels as “Victor,” ”Spy,” or “Soldier.” The hero of this story is wounded.  His journey to France starts out with an emotional wound in America, and the journey ends with him facing even greater wounds from the war.  His transformation does not come from heroic victories but from the wounds he receives from simply trusting, in love and friendship, the wrong people.  Although the Nazis are present in the book, the focus of the story is not overcoming the evil of the Nazis, but Marc's guilt and shame over his own failures the false sense of sin which haunts him in the story.

This last difference is what makes the book so disturbing to many readers, because Marc is a little too human for our comfort.   

Steph: Earlier, you mentioned the opening chapter of The Siren of Paris, which has a surreal quality. What about the dream sequences in the novel?

Dave: Exactly.  Those are all visual stories within this story.  I actually drew upon the common mythological image language that Jungian Psychology maps out for dreams.

Steph: That's intriguing, especially since I've always enjoyed Jungian psychology. Do you mean that there are images in the dream sequences that are actually archetypes? Could you please explain this more fully and give a few specific examples?

Dave: In the first dream, I chose a butterfly to land on Marc’s head to hint at a coming transformation.  The circles of the two wheels of the bicycle stand for total comprehension of two worlds, both seen and the unseen.

Steph: So, those dreams actually do have a meaning.  They are not just arbitrary examples of Marc breaking under stress.

Dave: Many seemingly mundane facts in the novel have underlying meaning.  See, there are two books in one.  On the literal verbal level, I am telling this war story of survival and betrayal, with the transcendence of survivor's guilt.  But, underneath that story, there is a second way to read this book.

Steph:  Everything? Even Sigmund Freud admitted "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." ;-) Seriously, could you give a few examples?

Dave: I did not waste many words on meaningless chance facts.  For instance, engine 81 is the one Marc leaves on, and in numerology that is a 9, which is the highest frequency number and denotes crisis.

Steph: I'm not familiar with numerology. But because 8 + 1 = 9 (or 81 is nine squared), the number 81 is an example of symbolism and it provides foreshadowing? But few people would pick up on that. I definitely wouldn't. :-)

Dave: Well, the subconscious does get it.  And that is the funny thing about the reader.  Humans are always looking for patterns, and when they see them, we want to impose a meaning upon those patterns.  We are not as rational as we pretend to be.  Underneath our modern façade, we are superstitious creatures.

Steph: So, you intentionally embedded patterns in your book, which the reader would pick up upon subconsciously?

Dave: Bingo. I know it sounds crazy, but advertisers do it all the time.  I saw no reason why I could not do it to show the reader another story. People love finding the hidden meaning, but if there is no greater hidden meaning, well, there is less fun.

Steph: "Show the reader another story?" What story is that?

Dave:  It hinges upon what is most real.  Is Marc’s eternal existence and soul most real, or the transitory world of his experiences, which is World War II? One reading gives you a story of betrayal during the war and a character who is deeply wounded psychologically by the sinking of a ship.  However, the second reading offers the story of a soul transcending the shame and guilt of the war, and learning to rise above his guilt to find freedom and release, even if it is 100 years later.  This second reading makes the assumption that what is most real is Marc’s eternal soul's existence, above and beyond temporal time.  In the opening, Marc is outside of that time, standing opposed to the clock on the staff.  As temporal time approaches, his fear rises.

Steph: That's definitely intriguing, but it might seem a bit far-fetched. ;-)

Dave: My degree is in Philosophy and Religion.  I am completely at home with the far-fetched.

Steph: Agreed. I'm speaking as the daughter of a philosophy professor here. So the cigar is not just a cigar. ;-) And the poor rabbit on the Lancastria -- the rabbit is not just a rabbit, is it?

Dave:  Of course not!  And, that rabbit is historically real as Adolf Hitler.  I did not make up that rabbit, but found it in research just like all the other animals.

Steph:  At least the rabbit is not as creepy as Donnie Darko.  This would be a very strange movie.

Dave:  It is in our nature to like the strange and mysterious.  In some ways, the pure innocence of the rabbit in The Siren has far more power than the creepy rabbit in Donnie Darko.  Even though it is the same animal, they appeal to different sympathies in our minds.  The rabbit in Donnie Darko is the bearer of bad news and a dark trickster, while the rabbit in The Siren of Paris is the innocent victim of senseless violence in a chaotic war, and it haunts Marc in dreams and visions, often as a image of good luck.     

Steph: So getting back to more mundane matters, what happens with The Writers Pitch?

Dave: It goes out to the studios and agents along with all the other pitches.  If they like it and are interested in the pitch, they request the manuscript.  They could also just Google the book first, or even just buy it on Amazon.  Nothing happens overnight.  However, the important point is that The Writers Pitch gives me access to a platform to make an effective pitch, which was off limits in the past to the common self published author.  

Steph: I can see this being a memorable and compelling movie! Good luck with the pitch.

Dave: Thank you, and I will be sure to let you know what comes of that adventure.

Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall

Publication Date: April 10, 2012

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Genre: Historical/Literary Fiction

Why I Chose It: Random library find; because of my love of historical fiction, my interest in the U.S. Civil War era, and my fascination with how psychological issues were diagnosed and "treated" throughout history. I am also particularly interested in how attitudes toward women influence beliefs about and treatment of mental illness.

Rating: (4.5/5 Stars)


I'm curious about what readers think of the new format of my book reviews. I thought this would include a bit more relevant information. Also, since I tend to write relatively long reviews, with excerpts to offer examples of the author's writing, I thought the synopsis might be a good option for readers who prefer reading reviews that are more concise. Opinions?? :)

Synopsis of My Review:
 
When Iris Dunleavy becomes a plantation wife, her life quickly deteriorates. As the South disintegrates in the wake of the brutal War Between the States, Iris is tried and convicted of madness. She has defied and humiliated her husband in a spectacular way, and the relatively expensive and luxurious Sanibel Asylum, on a remote Florida island, has promised to return Iris to him as a good, compliant wife.  

Gradually, throughout the novel, Iris's story unfolds, and we learn why she is incarcerated in the asylum. Meanwhile she befriends Ambrose Weller, a young Confederate soldier whose spirit has been shattered by the war. As with Iris, we gradually learn his story throughout the course of the book.

This story is told from multiple perspectives. This author writes in a lyrical style with great attention to detail. The novel also has elements of magical realism, reflected in the writing style and the odd, quirky collection of inmates at the insane asylum. This quality, along with the lyrical prose, make Blue Asylum different from most other historical novels I have read.

This novel skillfully blends artful prose, vivid descriptions, and memorable characters with a well-crafted plot and well-chosen historical details. The events in the story are dramatic, often heart-wrenching, but wholly believable. Blue Asylum also explores powerful themes, including the struggle for justice, guilt, grief, and love. It also delves into the use of mental health "treatment" as a tool for subjugating women, an important topic I don't often see explored in literature.

Full Review: 

Like many young women coming of age, Iris Dunleavy is eager to experience the new and unfamiliar. None of her suitors, local boys with whom she grew up, interest her. So when she is courted by a plantation owner from Winchester, despite her opposition to slavery, she is captivated. After exchanging letters for a while, they decide to marry.

And so it was that Iris fell in love, not so much with a man as with an exceedingly proper and literary courtship, one that left behind a stack of letters her father carefully bound with a length of cord and kept in the bottom drawer of his desk. (p. 18)

When Iris becomes a plantation wife, her life quickly deteriorates. As the South disintegrates in the wake of the brutal War Between the States, Iris is tried and convicted of madness. She has defied and humiliated her husband in a spectacular way, and the relatively expensive and luxurious Sanibel Asylum, on a remote Florida island, has promised to return Iris to him as a good, compliant wife.  

Iris continually maintains that she is sane and her husband is a cruel and evil man. However, she doesn't find a sympathetic ear in Dr. Cowell, who has built his career on research about how women's liberation contributes to mental illness among females. The doctor is both attracted to and repelled by Iris's intelligence and inner strength.

Women, he decided, became unhappier the better they were treated. He pitied her husband and wondered what tricks of perception, what prayers, what gin had got him through daily life with her. (p. 48)

Gradually, throughout the novel, Iris's story unfolds, and we learn why she is incarcerated in the asylum. Meanwhile she befriends Ambrose Weller, a young Confederate soldier whose spirit has been shattered by the war. As with Iris, we gradually learn his story throughout the course of the book.

Having given up on finding legal justice, Iris hopes to find a way to escape the asylum. She dreams of freedom, and being with the people she truly loves, back in Virginia. At the same time, she hopes to help Ambrose, which may prove a Sisyphean task.

This novel is told from multiple perspectives. While most of the story is seen through Iris's eyes, it we also get the perspectives of Ambrose, Dr. Cowell, and the doctor's wife and son. This author writes with a lyrical style with great attention to detail. Her descriptive passages, particularly those that explore the natural world, are gorgeous. I savored her descriptions of the island, including the sea turtles who drag themselves onto shore to lay their eggs, the birds who swoop down to capture fish, and the myriad colors of the sky. What captivated me even more were the vivid descriptions of Ambrose's experiences in the war, from images of battle to scenes of quotidian life in forest encampments.

This novel also has a quality of magical realism:

The world was cruel and  sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl, or a haunted-faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you'll find flies. Follow the flies and you'll find death. (p. 58)

This magical realism is reflected in the variations of "madness" found among the asylum's inmates. For example, we meet a blind man bombarded with smells reminding him of the woman who rejected him, a woman who lives blissfully with the dead husband she believes is still alive, and a lady who grieves every creature's pain. The vein of magical realism running through the book reminds me a bit of the work of Alice Hoffman. This quality, along with the lyrical prose, make Blue Asylum different from most other historical novels I have read.

This novel skillfully blends artful prose, vivid descriptions, and memorable characters with a well-crafted plot and well-chosen historical details. The events in the story are dramatic, often heart-wrenching, but wholly believable. Blue Asylum also explores powerful themes, including the struggle for justice, guilt, grief, and love. It also delves into the use of mental health "treatment" as a tool for subjugating women, an important topic I don't often see explored in literature.

Other Reviews: Kristen at BookNAround; Wisteria Leigh at Bookworm's Dinner; Kate at Ex Libris; Briana at Pages Unbound; Amy at The House of the Seven Tails; Annette's Book Spot

If This Interests You, You Might Also Enjoy: 

• Other excellent literary novels about the Civil War -- The Black Flower by Howard Bahr; Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier; March by Geraldine Brooks
• Other novels that explore the use of institutions for the insane as a way for husbands to deal with "willful and disobedient" wives or dispose of unwanted spouses: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; Dracula in Love by Karen Essex
  
• Does Anyone Have Other Recommendations???

I Served The King of England -- Novel and Film

Set in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the period surrounding World War II, this satirical novel follows Ditie from a teenager to an aging man. He begins his career working as a busboy and peddling hot dogs at the train station. He often filches money from his train station customers, and he becomes obsessed with money and everything it can buy. Watching the wealthy patrons in the restaurant where he buses tables, he comes to believe that wealth can buy respect, companionship and a place in society. After saving his tips for some memorable visits to a brothel, he concludes that it can also buy love.

Ditie works his way up and eventually waits tables in several elegant hotels. He is drawn to Zdenek, the head waiter in one of these restaurants, a fun-loving man who recklessly strews money wherever he goes. Another head waiter, Skrivanek, becomes his mentor. Skrivanek, who once waited on the king of England, has an uncanny ability to tell, just by looking at a customer, where he's from and what he will order. When asked how he knows these things, he simply responds "I served the king of England." In that restaurant, Ditie serves the emperor of Ethiopia. Later, when asked how he knew things ("How did you know Germany would end up at war with Russia after all?"), he'd reply "I served the emperor of Ethiopia."

Ditie's thirst for material success continues to grow. After the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia, he meets a young German woman named Lise, a passionate follower of Hitler. They decide to get married. After some digging into Ditie's family history, to reveal that he has Aryan roots, Ditie submits to medical tests to prove that his sperm is "first-class and worthy of inseminating an Aryan vagina with dignity." While he's offering a sperm sample, fellow Czechs are being lined up and shot by Nazi soldiers. This reflects the tone and style of the whole novel -- ridiculous, darkly funny things are tangled with moments that are purely tragic.

After Ditie and Lise marry, they set to work conceiving an Aryan child for the new Germany. They make their fortune as war profiteers, and after the war, Ditie eventually realizes his dream of being wealthy and owning a hotel. However when Communists seize control of the country, private property is confiscated. After a sentence in a hilariously relaxed minimum security prison, Ditie ends his life humbly working on rural roads.

I Served the King of England is written in a straightforward narrative style, without dialogue. At moments I thought the prose was beautiful, and at other times it felt tedious. The plot and characters, which ranged from quirky to insanely bizarre, held my interest from beginning to end. There is little sentiment in this novel. For example, while there are a few tender moments with Lise, Ditie never seems to connect with his wife or his developmentally disabled son. He talks about them in a detached way. And he is somewhat disconnected from the horrendous events he lives through, focused on his own life and his quest for wealth.

Later in the story, Ditie realizes the absurdity of his quest for wealth and prestige and enters an introspective stage of his life. As an old man, working on rural roads, he is finally sought out by local villagers for who he is, not what he has -- they enjoy his knowledge and unusual outlook on life. I found his change in perspective interesting. For example, he remembers his old friend Zdenek, the head waiter who drew people to him by strewing his money. Now he remembers a different story: Zdenek was loved for his kindness and generosity, not for his material worth. Readers see the same story from a different angle, which gives us a sense of his metamorphosis.

On the other hand, at the end of his life, Ditie remains self absorbed and his awareness of the events he's survived, the Nazi occupation and the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, seems shallow. I completely understand why Publisher's Weekly wrote "Ditie's moral transformation is not entirely persuasive." Maybe this is intentional, reflecting Hrabal's gift for edgy satire. People's obliviousness to what is happening around them is an important theme here. For instance, in an absurd scene that stands out in my mind, a knife fight among gypsies suddenly breaks out in the hotel where Ditie is working. At a nearby table, a patron happily reads a book while he is splattered with blood and body parts are strewn around.

I Served the King of England is well-crafted, disturbing, darkly funny, and unique. Though I didn't fall in love with it, I recommend it to other readers. The author has a unique approach, blending Ditie's memories, which change shape over time, with fun, racy hilarious scenes, and horrific moments which seem to strike abruptly.

Although I usually prefer to read a novel before seeing the film adaptation, in this case, I'm glad I saw the movie first. The film's vivid imagery stayed with me throughout the book, and helped guide me through the narrative.



The movie, by Czech director Jiri Menzel, followed most of the novel closely, though it omitted or radically changed some important parts. It was true to Ditie's character and the colorful, odd, darkly comic quality of the movie. The cinematography was lovely, making the film visually striking.. And if you happen to like images of food and naked or scantily clad women, you will be richly rewarded. :-P

The movie also didn't lose Hrabal's satirical edge. I agree with Roger Ebert:

Menzel doesn't pound home his points. He skips gracefully through them, like his hero. He takes the velvet-glove approach. Here is a film with a hatred of Nazis and a crafty condemnation of communist bureaucracy and cronyism.

The movie actually offers a stronger indictment of the Czech communist government than the book, as Ditie's treatment by them is much less benign in the film.

I liked both the novel and the movie adaptation of I Serve the King of England, but I enjoyed the movie more. The movie's imagery more than compensated for the interesting details in the story that were left out of the film.

This movie is rated R for nudity and general naughtiness.  

Read More Book Reviews: Novel Insights, Book Snob

Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

The Siren of Paris by David LeRoy

Born in Paris and raised in the United States, 21-year-old Marc Tolbert enjoys the advantages of being born to a wealthy, well-connected family.. Reaching a turning point in his life, he decides to abandon his plans of going to medical school and study art in Paris. In 1939, he boards a ship and heads to France, blissfully unaware that Europe -- along with the rest of the world -- is on the brink of an especially devastating war.

However the story begins at the close of Marc's life. In the opening lines of this novel, we find ourselves at a graveside, in 1967, as Marc's spirit watches the living pay their final respects. Surrounded by the ghosts of men lost in the war, Marc sees snippets of his life flash before him. Before he can leave this world in peace, he must reconcile the sadness and guilt that burden him.

Soon we meet Marc on his carefree voyage to Paris, a place that seems far removed from the looming Nazi threat to Eastern Europe. When he arrives at l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, more ominous signs surface. There are windows covered with tape, sandbags shielding the fronts of important buildings, whispers of Parisian children leaving the city, and gas masks being distributed. Distracted by a blossoming love affair, Marc isn't too worried about his future, and he certainly doesn't expect a Nazi invasion of France.

Marc has a long journey ahead of him. He witnesses, first-hand, the fall of Paris and the departure of the French government. Employed by an ambassador, he visits heads of state, including the horribly obese gray-haired Mussolini and the charismatic Hitler. He witnesses the effects of the tightening vise of occupation, first-hand, as he tries to escape the country. He also participates in the French resistance, spends time in prison camps, and sees the liberation of the concentration camps. During his struggles, he is reunited with the woman he loves, Marie, who speaks passionately of working with the resistance. Is she working for freedom, or is she not to be trusted?

I've read many kinds of historical fiction. In some historical novels, the setting and events unfolding are merely a backdrop for the characters and story the author has created. In The Siren of Paris, the historical setting and events are the story. While the characters and their lives are important, the exciting and horrific events of this period drive this novel. Carefully researched, well chosen details bring these events -- from pre-World War II France through the liberation -- to life. While I generally gravitate toward more character driven novels, I was absorbed and fascinated by the book.

The author's meticulous historical research really shines. Events are described in incredibly vivid detail and in a very personal and human way. For example, we see detailed news footage of the German invasion of France. We see people cramming themselves into and piling on top of train cars, trying to escape the country. We experience the destruction of an ocean liner, are drawn into the intrigue of the French resistance, and feel a character's psychological deterioration in a prison camp. The novel also touches on the post traumatic stress the protagonist suffers after the war.

I also liked the spirituality that runs through the novel. We see a priest who is well versed in dogma and without compassion contrasted with a loving, spiritual man of God. This story explores themes of faith, despair, betrayal, guilt, forgiveness, redemption, and the pivotal choices that make us who we become. There are also lightly rendered paranormal elements and interesting dream/hallucination sequences as well as a wise, thoughtful moment, at the end, where Marc's spirit realizes what he needs to achieve peace.

While it is packed with information, The Siren of Paris is readable and entertaining. This is an excellent living history book for adults and mature teens, and it might be a valuable resource for homeschooling families. Parents may want to know that while the violence is not very graphic, there are very disturbing elements along with some strong language and very mild sexuality.

I received this e-book, with no expectation of anything other than an honest opinion, as part of a virtual book tour through Promo 101 Book Promotion Services. For more information about this virtual book tour, please visit -- http://bookpromotionservices.com/2012/05/22/siren-of-paris-tour. For more information about this novel and author, see http://www.thesirenofparis.com/. You can also follow David on Twitter @studioleroy or on Facebook.

Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Seventeen-year-old Susan Trinder has been raised in a house full of "fingersmiths," thieves and con artists, in Victorian London. Her foster mother, Mrs. Sucksby, is a "baby farmer," fostering children for money. The house is full of babies who are quieted with doses of gin, a brazier who melts down stolen goods, and young girls work the streets, begging and swindling. In the midst of this, a bond forms between Susan and Mrs. Sucksby, who singles her out for special attention and care, treating her like her own daughter.

Nevertheless Mrs. Sucksby colludes with a swindler called Gentleman to involve Susan in a scheme to rob an heiress of her inheritance. The target of this plot is Maud Lilly, a girl about Susan's age. Maud, who works as an assistant to her scholarly uncle, is harboring dark secrets of her own. Susan and Maud come to care for each other in ways they'd never expected, but their feelings are likely to be tossed aside as they fight for their own survival in a world of dark schemes, cruelty, and narrowly proscribed roles for young women.

This novel is written in Victorian style, with elegant language and careful, detailed descriptions. Like Dickens, the author takes us into the poverty and desperation of the London streets, and like the Brontes, she leads us to a dim, drafty Gothic mansion with dark secrets.

However, Sarah Waters also brings modern sensibilities to this novel. The result is an intriguing period piece that offers a glimpse at the dark underside of upper class Victorian England, beneath its careful manners and puritanical mores, as well as a vivid picture of lower class life in the London streets. It also explores the unlikely ways we find love and intimacy and the conflict between affection and compassion for others and the desperate struggle to survive at all costs. And as Kristen eloquently put it, this book offers so many plot twists, it resembles nothing so much as a DNA double helix.

This well researched historical novel also offers many layers of fodder for discussion, especially about women's issues. We were transported to a time when marriage -- in the words of one character -- was legalized rape and robbery. This is a cynical view but not far from the truth. Women were not allowed to own property -- everything they had legally belonged to their husbands. And there were no laws against marital rape.

In this era, mental hospitals were used by husbands as a way of disposing of wayward or unwanted wives. Physical intimacy between two women was grounds for being committed to a "lunatic asylum." And, if one scene in this book is to be believed, allowing a young woman to overindulge in literature was thought to cause insanity. Apparently it causes the "organ of fancy" to become inflamed, provoking psychosis. :-)

The breadth of the social issues Sarah Waters explored amazed me. The most compelling part of this novel, however, is the characters. The heroines are not paragons of virtue; they have been misshapen by destructive circumstances and are often selfish and cruel. However they are intelligent, thoughtful, and thoroughly human. And there are luminous moments when courage and love win over everything else. These women -- and this story -- will be difficult to forget.

Read More Reviews: S. Krishna's Books; Eclectic/Eccentric; Zen Leaf; Things Mean a Lot; BookNAround

Rating: 5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Mudbound by Hilary Jordan

Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep . Any shallower and the corpse was liable to come rising up during the next big flood: Howdy boys! Remember me?

As this story opens, in 1946, Henry and Jamie McAllan are burying their father in the flat, muddy fertile land of Henry's farm. Henry's city-bred wife Laura, trapped in a grueling life she didn't choose, stands by with their two girls. As they dig, the brothers realize they've accidentally unearthed the grave of a runaway slave.

"We can't bury our father in a nigger's grave," Henry said. "There's nothing he'd have hated more."

No one seems to be grieving the death of "Pappy," an old man who was defined by his hatred and died under suspicious circumstances. Why did this happen? To answer that question, the story loops around, delving into the characters' history and how they came to this farm in the Mississippi Delta. It moves seamlessly among different points of view, each with a distinctive voice and personality.

The story revolves around two families: the McAllans and the Jacksons, a family of "colored" sharecroppers living and working on their land. Under the feudal system of sharecropping, the Jacksons and others like them farm the McAllans' land, barely earning a subsistence wage.
Their lives are shared by Henry's kind-hearted, charismatic brother Jamie, fighting a losing battle against the demons that followed him home from World War II.

The Jacksons' oldest son Ronsel also returns from the war. After serving his country in the 761st "Black Panther" Tank Battalion, and expanding the boundaries of his world through his tour of duty in Europe, Ronsel is no longer content to keep his eyes down and go through the back door. In Mississippi, where racial discrimination is enforced through vigilante violence, this is likely to lead to disaster. Ronsel's mother Florence, who loves him passionately and has prayed continually for his return home, knows he can't stay. It is only a question of whether he'll leave Mississippi before it's too late.

It's incredibly difficult to tell the truth about racism. Often stories written in a setting like this, exploring these themes, offer us characters who seem color blind and are willing to fight the injustices they see. This makes the topic palatable for us. But it also presents us with characters who seem out of their own time, and it often doesn't ring true.

In Mudbound,  racism controls the lives of people in the community, while in a hole in the muddy earth, the skeleton of a runaway slave takes us back to a time of even more vicious racial inequality. This powerful image reflects the themes in this novel, which explores the many strata of racism. Racial hatred rules "Pappy," who seems to thirst for the blood of black people. He is almost a caricature of a bigot, yet chillingly, he is wholly believable. But it also encompasses seemingly decent white folks who have a paternalistic sense of superiority over blacks, which they view as a simpler, almost feral race. And it includes those who are kind to "colored" folk, but never let them forget their place, and never consider their needs as equal to their own.

I admire this author for telling the truth, without hiding its complexity. Today, when racism seems invisible to many people, the picture she painted reflects what I've seen throughout my life. "Jim Crow" laws and lynchings are a thing of the past, thank God, buried like the bones of the old slave. Yet so many levels of racism do exist in my lifetime -- sometimes glaring and sometimes so subtle you just see glimmers of it, yet you feel its destructive energy.

I grew up in a university town in Eastern North Carolina. The street I lived on ran through my little neighborhood, which clustered around the university. It was populated with many faculty families like my own. We lived modestly, but quite comfortably. If I rode my bike up my street, and through downtown, it took me through what the locals shamelessly called "Nigger Town," a neighborhood made up of neglected roads and tiny, ramshackle houses. I met few middle class African American families in my town. People didn't talk about it, but my parents wisely made sure my eyes were open.

In my school, desegregation was probably only about a decade old. Black and white children rarely sat together in the cafeteria. it just wasn't done, and no one commented on it. Many students, like me, had what I'd consider privileged childhoods. My parents were always on a tight budget, but we never lacked for anything we really wanted or needed, and they always managed to scrape together money for ballet or music lessons. Other students -- many of them black -- wrapped up part of their lunches, because there might not be a meal at home later. It surprises me, and saddens me a little, that I never said anything or tried to help. But I certainly never forgot it or stopped being grateful for the tremendous changes I've seen in my lifetime.

Mudbound is a beautiful novel but not a comfortable one. I found myself liking characters who had decidedly unenlightened views about racial equality. I saw the complexities of marriage in a time when a relationship was shaped by the man's need for dominance and control. I felt angry, hopeful, compassionate, horrified, and sad. The people and events in this book stuck in me like thorns, and they're still with me.

And damn -- this book was a page-turner! I kept finding excuses to pick it up, no matter what I needed to do, eager to find out what would happen next. It was heart-wrenching, but I loved it. It is one of those books I will never forget.

This novel won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, which was founded by Barbara Kingsolver and recognizes outstanding literature of social change.

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Bookdwarf
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Rating: 5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Last Friday (9/11/09) was a day of mourning for our nation and also the anniversary of my mom's death. I still miss her every day, and my feeling of loss is triggered in myriad little ways -- like hearing something she would have thought was funny or pondering an idea and knowing she would have "gotten" it in a way no one else could. Often it's my wanting to share a book with her. The Help by Kathryn Stockett was a novel I desperately wanted to discuss with Mom.

The story takes place in the early 1960s and is told through the voices of three women, all natives of Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen has been working for white families all her life and has lovingly reared 17 white children. Minny has also been "the help" for white folks all her life, though her incorrigibly sassy mouth has gotten her fired from several positions. 24-year-old Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a white girl and a recent graduate of Ole Miss. She dreams of becoming a writer, and she needs to find something she's passionate enough to write about.

Unlike her white, middle-class parents and nearly everyone around her, Skeeter isn't overtly racist, though she is naiive and rather patronizing toward the "help." When a long-time friend rallies support for not allowing black maids to use the toilets in their employers' houses (they have different diseases, you know), Skeeter decides to write a book in which a dozen of Jackson's maids, with their names disguised, talk about their experiences. It is a tremendously risky project, but one that, for the first time ever, gives these twelve women a voice.

In The Help, the author explores several layers of racism in the Deep South in the early '60s. These black women spent their lives serving white families, and often loved the people for whom they worked and were loved by them in return. Yet they were considered too unclean to use the families' toilets, and they had to remain silent, acquiesce to all their employers demands, and avoid drawing attention to themselves.

At the end of a grueling day of cooking, cleaning, ironing, and childcare, these women went home to do all their own housework and cooking and care for their own children. At the same time, they were going home to men who were sometimes treated them much worse than their employers did.

I didn't find this exploration of the subject as powerful as that in Mudbound by Hilary Jordan. And since this was primarily Skeeter's story -- a tale of a young white woman beginning to open her eyes to some of the injustices around her -- it only skimmed the surface of the racial issues that existed in this time and place. However, I found The Help to be a compelling story.

I was moved by this book, and as I said, I longed to discuss it with Mom. It is hard to fathom the level of bigotry that was virtually unquestioned in that time and place, where a black person's life could be ruined simply to protect a white woman's pride. Yet my mother grew up there. She was born in a small town near Greenwood, Mississippi in 1940. She worked hard in her parents cafe, which opened before dawn to serve coffee and biscuits to white farmers before they went out to toil in the fields.

She once told me a story about a man named Exxo Bassey who had come into the cafe for breakfast. He left, pulled his truck away from the curb without looking behind him, and crashed into a car driven by a black man. Exxo was entirely at fault, but all the black man could do was stare at the street mumbling, "I am sorry sir, I'm sorry .... I'm very sorry ..." and pray there would be no retaliation. The good folks in the cafe were unequivocal in their opinion. Obviously, that "nigger" had no business being there in the first place. (Driving on a public street on his way to work? The audacity of it!)

This moment, and many others like it, made a deep, painful impression on my mom. She once told me she had no one to teach her racism was wrong -- as far as she knew, that idea didn't even exist in that time and place. But she always knew. She couldn't wait to finish college and get the heck out of the butt crack of Mississippi.

She once explained to me that it was nearly impossible to really get just how deep this racial hatred ran. Two of our relatives had been complaining that the newspaper published pictures of African-American brides in the wedding section. This was in the 1990's. "They don't comprehend that black people think, feel, and breathe as we do," Mom said. It's deeply, bone-jarringly chilling.


Again, while this novel lacked the depth and power of some other accounts of this time period, it was a rich, engaging novel that told an important story. I also enjoyed the history reflected in this book. We see the murders of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. We see glimmers of changes coming. Dr. King has drawn thousands of white and black activists to march from Selma, Alabama. There is an unknown new singer named Bob Dylan, a few girls are wearing their hair long and straight, and one even dresses in tie dyed t-shirts. They've even gone and invented a pill that keeps women from getting pregnant. In the words of the aforementioned musician, The Times They are a' Changin'!

Another thing I loved about the book was the colorful and richly developed characters, including Aibileen, Minny, Skeeter, and Celia, a good-hearted, insecure white hillbilly who married a wealthy Jackson man. I felt as if I was sitting in these women's kitchens, talking to them about their lives.

On several different levels, The Help touches lightly on the brutality of racial injustice in 1960s Mississippi and explores the assumptions people make about each other. It also reflects the courage of people -- like Skeeter and my mom -- who can begin to see through the smoke and think independently, and -- above all -- the human traits and experiences that bind us all together.

Read more reviews of this book at The Book Lady's Blog, A Novel Menagerie, and at Chaotic Compendiums


Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

March by Geraldine Brooks

March re-imagines the absent father in Little Women, who went to war and returned to his wife and daughters in a memorable Christmas scene. Although Geraldine Brooks adopted the elegant, rather formal language of the period, in a novel reflecting many of the moral values in Louisa May Alcott's most famous classic, March is not a children's story. It is a war story, gorgeous and eloquent but also raw and brutal.

"At the end of the novel, a year later, Mr. March returns to his family, in the delightful story-book fashion," Brooks wrote in the afterword to her novel, "to celebrate the wonderful transformation of his girls. But what war has done to March himself is left unstated. It is in this void that I have let my imagination work."

March takes us back to 1861. Mr. March, a character inspired by Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson Alcott, is a non-denominational minister, Unitarian in his beliefs. He is an idealist, a man of uncompromising ideals, and an ardent abolitionist. Inspired by the charismatic preaching of John Brown, he has spent his fortune trying to aid the abolitionist cause and finally enlisted as a Union army chaplain in The War Between the States.

As the story opens, he is with troops in Virginia, writing home to Marmee and his "little women" in a way that artfully cloaks the truth about what he's experiencing.

He privately remembers the last time he was in Virginia, twenty years ago, as a young man earning his fortune through peddling. It was then that he came face to face with slavery for the first time. As March remembers that time, the author explores the evil of slavery in a way that is unflinchingly honest, yet multi-layered.

Now, two decades later, March has left his beloved family behind to serve the Union, seeing war as a necessary evil to emancipate the slaves. This is a comforting view that we still learn from textbooks. But the reality he sees is starkly different. Few of his comrades in the Northern army share his abolitionist convictions, and they are often just as cruel in their treatment of "Negroes" as their Southern counterparts. Furthermore the violence and suffering around him strip away March's moral certainty, layer by layer.

The truth: I was angry at myself, for not having had the courage to stand aside from the crying up of this war and say, No. Not this way. You cannot right injustice by injustice. You must not defame God by preaching that he wills young men to kill one another. For what manner of God could possibly will what I see here? There are Confederates lying in this hospital, they say; so there is union at last, a united states of pain. Did God will the mill-town lad in the next ward to be shot or run a steel blade through the bowels of the farmhand who now lies next to him? -- a poor youth, maybe, who never kept a slave?

He serves as chaplain as best he can, and he is later thrust into an opportunity to teach "contraband" slaves seized by the Union army. He has a passion for teaching, and this calling creates meaning for him. However, he is unable to reclaim his moral compass. And in time, though he longs to reconnect with his wife and daughters, his brutal memories and deep guilt create a wall that seems impenetrable.

Geraldine Brooks did a tremendous amount of research on Bronson Alcott, an odd and fascinating historical figure, to help her create Mr. March, an man who is eloquent and wise, yet at the same time naive and often ineffectual. This is a beautiful book, one in which you savor the author's eloquence, vivid images and richly imagined, complex characters. At the same time, while it offers glimmers of hope, it is painful and disturbing.

Geraldine Brooks has effectively recreated the time and places in which it is set, ranging from March's native New England, which we visit through generous flashbacks, to the war-torn South. We meet actual historical figures, including John Brown, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. We also see the unfinished United States capital in Washington, D.C., drenched in mud and overrun by wartime mercenaries of various types -- I found these scenes particularly vivid. I also loved March's mindful attention to the natural world, inspired by Thoreau, that nourishes vivid, gorgeous imagery in this novel.

This is an unforgettable book about love, suffering, and the fate of idealists in the real world. I found it hard to put down, and I will find it even more difficult to forget.

Read More Reviews:
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Rating: 5

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

In 12th century Cambridge, England, pilgrims are returning from Canterbury. Knights have been coming back from the Crusades, and the power struggle between King Henry II and the Catholic Church recently culminated in the murder of Thomas a Becket. In the midst of this turmoil, someone is luring children away from the village and brutally murdering them. Christian villagers scapegoat the local Jewish population, and violence erupts. This increases pressure on King Henry to expel the Jews from England; this is unacceptable to him -- it would lower his tax base. He appeals to the King of Sicily for help, and he is sent an investigator and a female doctor, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a mistress of the art of death.

Adelia was an orphan, raised by an atheist Jew in Salerno. Recognizing a mind rivaling his own, her foster father trained her as a physician, in one of the few parts of the world where female doctors were allowed to practice, and taught her to examine corpses to determine the cause of death. Now Adelia arrives in England, a backward country where she must hide her profession because of her gender, and where medical practitioners are viewed with suspicion. She begins her increasingly dangerous pursuit of "Raksasha," the devil who has been torturing and murdering children and may bring down death on all of Cambridge's Jews.

Mistress of the Art of Death is crafted like a modern murder mystery, with the plots twists and intense, violent climax we've come to expect in today's thrillers. It also includes a wealth of fascinating historical detail. Some reviewers have criticized this novel for glaring historical inaccuracies. Several anachronisms are explained in the author's afterward, but some are not. I am no scholar of medieval history, but I noticed that some characters suffered from cholera, although it wasn't identified until the 19th century. However, I thought the wealth of believable period detail and the thoughtful exploration of important historical events and social changes of the time more than compensated for a few anachronisms.

This author provides an interesting and fairly balanced perspective on Henry II, looking at his struggles with the church from a different angle. She focused on England's movement toward religious freedom more than his role in Thomas a Becket's brutal murder. This was a different perspective from others I've read, and while it didn't deny the King's tendency toward rage and cruelty, I found it thought-provoking.

This author is also gifted at descriptive writing. She recreated medieval Cambridge, which was a vibrant river port, with rich detail and vivid color. She recreated the blending of a simple feudal village and a port where travelers from all over the world converged.

My favorite part of the novel, however, was the character development, particularly Adelia. She was a woman who was out of place in her own time, and this was made believable by her unusual upbringing. She was intelligent, freethinking, courageous, and compassionate, and I loved being in her mind and seeing the world through her eyes.

The only thing that didn't appeal to me was the romance, which I found a bit predictable and not wholly convincing. However, Adelia's relationship with her love interest did have a few interesting twists.

I recommend this novel for mystery lovers and historical fiction fans. In addition to a suspenseful yarn, which highlights Ariana Franklin's glorious storytelling skills, it provides an vivid glimpse of life in Medieval Britain along with a stimulating look at a fascinating period in English history. It does have disturbing material, including a Poe-esque twist near the end, so it might not be a good pick for everyone. However readers who connect with the book will savor the accomplished storytelling, vividly painted characters, and the twists and turns in the plot, which kept me turning pages long after I should have been asleep.

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Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

The Boy In the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Nine-year-old Bruno enjoys his life in 1940's Berlin with his school and his three Best Friends for Life, despite the fact that his father is always busy with work and his bossy 12-year-old sister, Gretel, is A Hopeless Case. However, after a visit from The Fury, with his tiny mustache and blond girlfriend Eva, his life changes. Bruno's father has received an important work assignment far from Berlin. Bruno comes home from school to find the family's maid, Maria, packing everything in his wardrobe, even the things he'd hidden at the back that belonged to him and were nobody else's business.

The family's new home at Out With is swarming with soldiers, who call Bruno's father Commandant, and new servants who seem angry and frightened. Then there are the people who live behind the fence, surprisingly thin, identically dressed in striped pajamas. Bruno's father doesn't talk much about those people; he simply tells him that they're not really human.

Lonely for his friends, Bruno meets Schmuel, one of the children behind the fence. The boys share a birthday and even look a bit alike. They have both recently been displaced from their homes. Day after day, they sit on opposite sides of a barbed wire fence, talking and sharing snippets of their lives, without Bruno ever grasping what life is like on the other side.

John Boyne has written a short, deceptively simple story in which Bruno's extreme innocence and naivety is deliberately contrasted with the extreme cruelty and evil that we know is the backdrop for the story. Written in a simple, somewhat formal style, this novel is stripped down to bare bones. When an atrocity occurs, all the details are omitted; in a sense, this makes them even more disturbing.
Boyne ends the story with the ironic lines: "Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

In his afterward, he takes us back to the image of the two boys sitting on opposite sides of the fence, a picture that came to him and compelled him to write this story. "Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one."

This story has been described as a parable. We see Bruno, sitting at the fence day after day, clearly glimpsing Schmuel's humanity, but not really understanding what's on the other side. He is surrounded by adults who know what's happening on the other side but deny the humanity of the people there.
This does seem like a particularly apt metaphor for our world, doesn't it? In a world plagued with wars, and with the overarching evil of genocide still alive and well, I identify with the child outside the fence, kind-hearted but shockingly oblivious to what's in front of him. As I got pulled into this simple story, I realized how powerful that image is, and I found myself looking at my reflection. It prodded me to ask the question: "How can I live in this world comfortably, not really looking at what's right in front of me?"

I recommend this thought-provoking book to all readers. And while I don't think it was written for children, it might be a good choice for middle grade or pre-teen readers who are ready for an introduction to The Holocaust. I'd preview it first, because while it leaves out all the gruesome details, it provokes disturbing questions. You might try pairing it with The Diary of Anne Frank or Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. For mature teens who are ready for gruesome details, you might couple it with The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen. If there are excellent young adult novels about the Bosnian conflict, the Rwandan genocide, and similar topics, these might also be a good fit.

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Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me

Black Angels by Linda Beatrice Brown

On a warm, moonlit North Carolina night, twelve-year-old Luke escapes from the Higsaw plantation, where he has been a slave all his life. It is September, 1864, near the end of the Civil War. The social fabric of the South is unraveling quickly, and although President Abraham Lincoln has emancipated the slaves, his decree is not being obeyed by the Confederacy.

Left behind by the group of adults with whom he planned to escape, Luke is forced to survive on his own. He heads North, hoping to join Union forces. He meets nine-year-old Daylily, another former slave, who has just witnessed the murder of her loved ones, and seven-year-old Caswell, son of a slave owner, whose home and family were destroyed by invading Yankee troops. Terrified and facing starvation, the three children cling together to survive. They learn to fish, hunt and care for each other, and when illness threatens Daylily's life, they meet a courageous Black Indian woman who saves their life. At myriad painful moments, they sustain each other with stories and games.

This novel is beautifully written, with a wealth of sensory details -- sights, sounds, smells, tastes and sensations -- that drew me deeply in each scene. The time and place seemed remarkably real, and I had a strong sense of each character's emotions and spirit.

Black Angels also offered a thoughtful look of some aspects of the end of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, including the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. It stays above simplistic moral judgments. We get glimpses of both the courage and brutality of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. This story also touches on the stories and spiritual beliefs of several ethnic groups.

Parents should know that this novel touches on some brutally realistic aspects of slavery and war. This includes depictions of slaves being beaten or killed and female slaves being sexually exploited by their masters, who later sell the children who are the fruits of these unions. While these incidents are not portrayed graphically, they could still be quite disturbing for someone not thoroughly familiar with these aspects of history. There is also a fairly intense, bloody battle scene. I admire the author's courage in telling children the truth about slavery and war, and it certainly could have much more brutal than it was, considering the subject matter. But I suggest that parents and teachers consider a child's readiness for this material before steering them toward this book.

I strongly recommend this outstanding historical novel to adults as well as mature pre-teens and adolescents. Students and autodidacts will find a wealth of opportunities for discussing the Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, and literature.  

Black Angels is beautiful, and at times brutally honest. Above all, it is a tribute to human courage, loyalty and love and the potential young people have to rise above their suffering and go on to make meaningful changes in the world. This story, and these characters, are richly developed, hopeful, honest and unforgettable.

Black Angels was released in September. Many thanks to editor Stacey Barney at Putnam for giving me the opportunity to review this galley. See the author's site for more information. Also see this interview with Linda Beatrice Brown at The Brown Bookshelf
Don't miss Susan's review at Bloggin' 'bout Books, which is exquisitely well-written, and thank you, Susan, for recommending me as a reviewer for this novel. :-)


Rating: 4

5- Cherished Favorite	4 - Keep in My Library	3 - Good Read	2 - Meh	1 - Definitely Not For Me