Books Set in Asia, India

The Daughters of Madurai, by Rajasree Variyar (2023)

This novel is about a mother and daughter relationship, but mostly focuses on the mother’s life growing up poor in Madurai, India.  The story takes place in the present (daughter’s story) and in the 1990s (mother’s life).

Janani, the mother was born into a poor family in a lower caste.  After being married young in an arranged marriage, Janani was sent away from her family to live with her husband and his family.  As a new wife, she was basically her new family’s servant.  She lives in a culture that does not value girls.  Her first baby is a girl, which Janani is “allowed” to keep, but her subsequent daughters are taken from her and killed.  Janani struggles with her loss, as well as being trapped in a loveless marriage with a cruel mother-in-law.  It sounds cliché, but as written, Janani’s life comes alive.

Jump to present day, and Janani is married and living in Australia with her husband and children, including Nila, her now-adult daughter.  Janani has never shared her past with her children.  When her father-in-law- is dying, Janani and the family return to India to see him.  The trip sparks memories of the past, which slowly reveals itself.

I found this book somewhat difficult to read due to the names and nicknames of the characters.

Read:  April 1, 2024

3 Stars

Books Set in North America, New England

Something Wild, by Hanna Halperin (2021)

This novel is about domestic violence.

Sisters Tanya and Nessa Bloom are horrified to discover that their mother is in an abusive relationship with their stepfather.  Although their mother, Lorraine, has been with Jesse for over 16 years, the sisters haven’t lived at home for years.  When their mother and stepfather decide to move from Boston to rural New Hampshire, the sisters go to help with the move.

Almost as soon as the sisters arrive to help their mother, Jesse attempts to strangle Lorraine.  He is so violent that Lorraine is left with two bloodshot eyes.  Tanya, who works in the District Attorney’s Office in Boston, encourages her mother to file a restraining order against Jesse.  She does but fails to provide sufficient information in the form to give the judge cause to sign an order.  Jesse promises to reform, and even go to couple’s therapy with Lorraine.  Although Tanya fears the worst, Lorraine agrees to take Jesse back, because she loves him and believes that he can reform.

It was very well written, although a subplot involving the sisters as teenages seems a bit misplaced.

Read:  March 10, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe, England

The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe, by Angela Kelley (2019)

This book was written by the dresser to Queen Elizabeth II.  Kelley describes various outfits she designed for the Queen, as well as how outfits are chosen for the various occasions and duties of the Queen.  It was mildly interesting.

Read: February 2, 2024

Books Set in Europe, Poland

A Meal in Winter, by Hubert, Mingarelli (2012), translated from the French by Sam Taylor

Read: January 26, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in North America, Baton Rouge and Breaux Bridge, Louisiana

A Flicker in the Dark, by Stacy Willingham (2022)

A Flicker in the Dark is a thriller narrated by Chloe Davis, a psychologist from the small bayou town of Breaux Bridge, but now living and working in Baton Rouge.  When she was a young girl, her life was shattered when her father, Dick Davis, convicted of the murder of several teenaged girls.  Chloe was the one who turned her father into the police, an act that follows her where ever she goes.

Now as the twentieth anniversary of her father’s conviction and incarceration, more teenaged girls go missing.  Chloe is haunted by memories of the past with the news of more missing girls.  She is further troubled when Aaron Jansen, a reporter for the New York Times, approaches her for an interview for an anniversary story about the original murders.

Due to her past, Chloe has had a hard maintaining long-term relationships, so when she meets Daniel Briggs, he seems to be her savior.  She withholds telling him the full story of her childhood and her infamous father, however.  Daniel’s sister also vanished twenty years earlier and Chloe wonders if there may be a link to the earlier murders.

I picked up this book solely because it takes place in Baton Rouge and Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.  The author description of the bayous and marshes of Louisiana in a way that the reader feels the humidity and moss covered trees.  It was a very quick read and was filled with twists and turns.

Read:  January 25, 2024

4.5 Stars

Books Set in North America; Manhattan, New York

The Real Mrs. Tobias, by Sally Koslow (2022)

 

Meet Veronika Tobias, the matriarch.  She is a psychologist.  Meet Mel, her daughter-in-law, a psychotherapist.  Meet Birdie, Mel’s daughter-in-law.  Birdie is a mid-westerner and an aspiring writer who gave up her dreams to follow her husband to live in New York City.  Three women, all known as Mrs. Tobias.

 

Birdie and Micah married young and now have a young daughter, Alice.  Micah has yet to grow up and become a responsible adult.  Instead of joining his grandfather’s and father’s thriving clothing store, he operates a operates a food truck that sells, of all things, mashed potatoes.  Driving home after an evening of drinking, Mel accidently hit something, but didn’t know whether it was a person, animal, or object.  He didn’t see anyone, so continued home and never reported the incident to the police.  At the family’s weekly Shabbat dinner, he reports the incident, who urge him to own up to his actions.  

 

This sets up the scene for exploring family relationships.  Veronika and Mel can assist other people with their problems in their professional life, but struggle with their own family problems.  As the meddling mothers-in-law try to help Micah and Birdie, the younger Tobias’ must come to their own solution to their troubles.

 

This was a delightful novel, told through the eyes of each of the three women.  I would have rated this book a 5, but for Alice.  I found the dialogue with the three-year-old Alice to be totally unbelievable in an otherwise lovely book about family and love.

 

Read: January 8, 2024

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe: Lisbon, Portugal and Lyon, France

The Librarian Spy, by Madeline Martin (2022)

During World War II, Portugal was ostensibly neutral country.  Interestingly, the country’s newsstands sold newspapers and magazines from various European countries, including Germany.  Warring countries sent their intelligence officers to Portugal to scour magazines and newspapers to glean information on the enemy.  The Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC) was created in the United States for gathering such documentations.  The United States Library of Congress sent a contingency of its librarians to Lisbon to gather publications to collect and copy foreign publications.  

 

This has all the making of an interesting angle on stories about World War II.  Sadly, The Librarian Spy, by Madeline Martin is not that book.  I know I am in the minority on this, but this book just didn’t live up to its hype.

 

The novel follows two women: Ava Harper, an American librarian working in the Library of Congress, and Elaine, a French woman in Lyon, hoping to join the Resistance.  Elaine is the more interesting of the two.  After her husband joined the Resistance, she began working as a printing apprentice and distributes an underground newspaper that contains information about the War.

 

Ava was recruited by the United States military to go to Portugal to gather information newspapers then microfilm them to send to intelligence officers.  She is supposedly intellectual and an avid reader.  To emphasize this point, the author has Ava make numerous references to pieces of literature, and notes that she carries her copy of Little Women everywhere she goes.  She apparently received little training for this job, and her naivety is annoying.

 

This book did not depict the actual horrors and fears of living in Europe during Nazi-occupation.  I would classify this novel as being for young adults.  It is probably something I would have enjoyed in 7^th grade.

 

Read: January 5, 2024

2.5 Stars