Books, Winter 2013-2014

One Thousand White Women, by Jim Fergus.   This is a novel about some white women who go to live with and marry Cheyenne Indians in the 1870s.  It tells interesting details about the lives of Indians in that time, and the story is well told using the device of journals written by the main character, May Dodd.  I recommend the book to everyone except my friend Linda Scharf who does not like books with unhappy endings. 

Snow Hunters, by Paul Yoon.  This is an unusual novel which goes back and forth between the past and the present (the 1950s and 1960s).  Sometimes it is difficult to determine where and when the action is taking place.  The book is about a North Korean man who was captured by the Americans during the Korean War and spent a few years in the prison camp.  After the end of the war, rather than being repatriated, he chose to be sent to Brazil to be an apprentice tailor.  It is beautifully written.

We Are Water, by Wally Lamb.  A novel about artists, one a black man who created his art in the 1950s, the other a woman who creates her art in current times.  The two are tied together mostly by place.  The story unfolds through the eyes of the woman artist, her ex-husband, and their grown children.  I enjoyed this book and recommend it.

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters.  This is a mystery, the first in a three-book series.  I don’t usually read mysteries, but I got this one because I had heard the author interviewed on NPR.  The interview was focused on the second book in the series, which had just come out, and I didn’t really understand that it was going to be a mystery.  The underlying story is about the coming end-of-the-world due to an asteroid headed toward earth which will cause the destruction of the earth’s atmosphere after it hits, something like what might have happened to the dinosaurs.  That’s what interested me and caused me to get the book.  If you like mysteries, this might be for you. 

The Eternal Wonder, by Pearl S. Buck.  This novel was written by Pearl Buck before she died, then it disappeared for 40 years.  It has resurfaced and been edited by her son, Edgar Walsh.  It’s too bad she wasn’t able to finish the work on the book, as I think it would have been better had she been able to.  That said, it’s still a pretty good book about a young genius who has a variety of experiences growing into manhood.  There are a number of thought-provoking conversations about the world -- art, science, prejudice, sex.  I enjoyed it, with some reservations. 

The Paradise, by Emile Zola.  Originally, this novel was written in French in the late 1800s.  It was made into a British TV miniseries, which I have not seen.    It is about the building of a huge Paris department store when such emporiums were novelties, and it is also a sort of love story between the owner of the store and a young shopgirl.  I enjoyed it as a period piece, but not as a piece of great writing.  Parts of the book are very tedious with detailed descriptions of displays in the store, The Ladies Paradise, and the narrative about the characters is very choppy and uneven.  It’s probably better as interpreted in the miniseries. 

Honey on Your Mind, by Maria Murnane.  Amazon often advertises $.99 books for the Kindle, and this was one.  It is a light, quick read about the travails of a young woman who does human interest segments on a daytime TV show and is also starting a line of tee shirts and tote bags with witty sayings.  Cute.

The Scavenger’s Daughters, by Kay Bratt.  This is first of a proposed series of books about the scavenger’s daughters.  The scavenger is an old Chinese man (in China) who supports his large family of daughters by finding and recycling trash.  The daughters are girls he has found during his scavenging efforts.  They have been abandoned for various reasons, and he has been reluctant to put them into the “system” – an orphanage.  It is a sweet and poignant story, but I doubt that I will read any of the other books when they are released.  Time to move on.

Brava, Valentine, by Adriana Trigiani.  This is pretty much a love story, but fairly good for that genre.  Kindle keeps recommending romance books for me, which are not my favorites.  This one is about a woman who takes over a custom shoe manufacturing company which is family owned and operated.  There are interesting characters (her Italian family) but not enough depth to make this a great book.  I give it three out of five stars.

Daughter of the Bamboo Forest, by Sheng-Shih Lin.  I liked this story of a young Chinese girl growing up in China during the 1940s.  These were tough times, with the Japanese invasion followed by the Communist revolution.  Added to those external problems, the girl, Little Jade, has a father who is distant with her, a young step-mother who despises her, and a missing mother.  Her only close relationship is with her grandmother, who dies early on in the book.  I found this book while searching books by Amy Tan; this one is similar to Amy Tan.  Recommended. 

Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls.  This book is described as a true-life novel.  It tells the life story of the author’s grandmother.  Jeannette Walls is also the author The Glass Castle, and if you’ve read that one you already know that she comes from a colorful family.  I enjoyed this one more than the first book, and I heartily recommend it. 

Orphan Train, by Christina Baker Kline.  This is a sad story about an orphaned girl from New York City who is sent to Minnesota on an “Orphan Train” with the hope of finding a new family.  These trains were run regularly from the late 1800s through the 1920s.  The side story is of a current-day orphan in the foster care system.  Both girls have some bad experiences, particularly the one from the 1920s.  The book is well-written and draws the reader into both stories and their similarities.  Yes, I recommend this one. 

She Wore Only White, by Dorthe Binkert.   This novel tells the story of a woman who leaves her husband and stows away on a ship going from Antwerp, Belgium, to New York in 1904.  She is wearing a beautiful white evening gown and has no luggage of any kind: hence the title.  There are a number of interesting characters, although at least one of them tends toward melodrama.  I enjoyed the book.

War Brides, by Helen Bryan.  What a good book!  It is about five women who are thrown together in a small village in England during WWII.  They each marry and part after the end of the war.   Then they get together for a reunion 50 years later, with surprising results.  This is a “must-read.” 

Silver Sparrow, by Tayari Jones.  I really liked this book.  It is about two daughters of a male bigamist.  The older daughter (by a few months) was born out-of-wedlock, and then her parents married in another state with full knowledge by her mother of the father’s marriage to the second daughter’s  mother.   Sound complicated?  It is.  A very well-told story of how these things happen to some people. 

Rebekah’s Journey, by Ann Bell.  I have mixed feelings about this book.  It is about a young Quaker girl who emigrates from London to America in the 1700s, coming as an indentured servant.  The historical aspects are interesting and the story isn’t bad, but the style of writing is so simplistic (Quakers go in for simplicity) and so religious that I found myself skipping large parts of it.  There’s nothing to savor here, just straightforward storytelling with doses of theism and Quakerism 101. 

Golden Country, by Jennifer Gilmore.   This novel is about Jewish immigrants finding their way to success in America beginning in the mid-1920s and ending in the early 1960s.  Very well done; I recommend it.

Katharine of Aragon: The Story of a Spanish Princess, by Jean Plaidy.  This is a well-researched novel about Katharine of Aragon, King Henry VIII’s first wife.  Compelling and interesting.  I love long historical novels, and this one fits the bill.

Sycamore Row, by John Grisham.  I have liked most of the Grisham books I have read, and this one is well-crafted.  There was not a lot of suspense, but it held my interest.  It is about a contested will where which a Mississippi man wrote a last-minute will leaving the bulk of his large estate to his black housekeeper and nothing to his grown children and his grandchildren.  

Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian.  A novel about a Vermont midwife who is accused of performing an emergency Cesarean section on a woman she thought was dead but others thought she was still alive.  It’s a good story told from the perspective of the midwife’s teenage daughter.  There’s courtroom drama and suspense about the outcome of the trial.

Bridget Jones:  Mad About the Boy, by Helen Fielding.  Remember the old book and movie, Bridget Jones’ Diary?  This is the second sequel to that one.  It takes place years later, when Bridget is in her early 50s, widowed with two children.  I heard an interview with the author, so thought I’d try it.  I expected Bridget to have grown up, not been so flighty anymore.  Wrong.  It’s a cute book, though, despite her incessant references to farts.  She dates a young man, 29 years old, whom she refers to as “toy boy.”  Try it if you want a light read.

Russian Winter, by Daphne Kalotay.  This is a really good book.  It is a novel about a Russian ballerina during and after World War II, and also currently as an old woman.  She managed to defect from Russia in the early 1950s and moved around Europe before finally ending up in Boston.  There is also a middle-aged man who was born in Russia, adopted, and was told that his birth mother was a ballerina.  He has a pendant which matches some earrings and a bracelet owned by the old woman, and he thinks she may be his mother.  I recommend this one.