Books Set in the United States: New Orleans, Louisiana

Madam: A Novel of New Orleans, by Cari Lynn and Kellie Martin (2014)

This novel takes place just before the turn of last century with the creation of Storyville in New Orleans.  The characters in this novel are real, although some liberties were taken with the timeline of the events.

The novel follows the life of Mary Deubler, a young prostitute working in a rough area of the city called Venus Alley.  She was forced to follow her mother's footsteps into prostitution to support her young brother and his even younger wife.

Sidney Story, a puritanical alderman in the city was the author of an ordinance that created district of the city to be set aside for "vices of the flesh."  This area became known as Storyville, and was where the prostitutes and their johns would not be arrested.

Mary meets up with certain people and transformed herself into the notorious Madam Josie Arlington.  Along the telling of this story we meet other historical figures such as Jelly Roll Morton and the famous Storyville photographer, E.J. Bellocq.

The novel focused primarily on Mary's life before she became the infamous Madam Arlington.

I enjoyed this historical view of New Orleans.

Read:  August 21, 2016

Books Set in Europe

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, by Fredrik Backman (2015)

The author of this book is Swedish.  Maybe something was lost in translation, but I didn't much care for this novel.  The novel follows a young girl named Elsa.  She is 7 years old and has a very vivid imagination.  Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother and step-father.  Her mother is pregnant with "Halfie."

Elsa was very close to her maternal mother.  Her grandmother is an eccentric old woman in her late 70s.  Her grandmother assisted when the devastating tsunami struck in the Indian Ocean in 2004.  Elsa and her grandmother also are wrapped up in a fantasy world of stories in the Land-of-Almost Awake.

After the grandmother dies, Elsa decides to take the letters that grandmother wrote apologizing to people who had encountered and hurt during her lifetime.  This leads a young girl running about town meeting up with an odd assortment of people.

  

I wanted to like this book, but it just was too much fantasy for me.

2 Stars

Read:  August 19, 2016