Books Set in Europe: England

Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins (2017)

Into the Water is a very confusing suspense thriller.  The novel it told through numerous voices.  Each chapter moves the novel forward through a different voice, however, sometimes that voice is in first person and sometimes in third person.  This causes a bumpy read.

The novel begins with the death of Nel Abbott, a single mother.  Nel was found in the Drowning Pool, where many “troublesome” women had been found dead over the centuries.  Nel, however, was the second death in the drowning pool in just a few short months.  Did Nel commit suicide by diving into the pool, or was she pushed.  And if she was pushed, who would have motive?

Nel’s daughter, Lena, is a typical 15-year old with all the angst that goes with it.  She is suddenly found under the care of Jules, her aunt.  Jules and her sister, Nel, were estranged, which creates a complicated relationship between Jules and Lena.

Lena’s best friend was Katie Whittaker, who had died in the drowning pool only a few months before Nel.  In the months before her death, Katie and Lena had a falling out.  Is there a link between her death and Lena?

The novel delves into the past life of Nel and Katie Whittaker, the young teenaged girl who died earlier in the year.  The plot involves some very dark issues, including rape.

There are also many plot strings that are not satisfactorily resolved.  This novel didn’t live up to Hawkins’s previous novel, The Girl on the Train.

Read:  May 31, 2018

3 Stars

Books Set in the United States: American South: Tennessee

Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate (2017)

Beginning in the 1920s, Georgia Tann (1891 ~ 1959) ran a fraudulent adoption agency using
the Tennessee Children’s Home Society as a front for her business in child trafficking.  Tann
would steal children from poor families and sold them to affluent families all over the country.  

Before We Were Yoursis a fictional account of four children who were taken from their
loving parents and placed under the care of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society.

The novel alternates between the present and 1939.  In the present, the protagonist is
Avery Stafford.  She is from a prominent South Carolina family and her father is a politician
and is involved in a re-election campaign.  While assisting with her father’s campaign, she
meets May Crandall, an elderly woman in a nursing home.  She sees a photograph in May’s
room that looks amazingly like Avery’s grandmother, Judy.  Judy has dementia and hints at
some scandal and a mysterious link to May Crandall. Judy, however, is unable to elaborate
further.  This causes Avery to search for the story behind the photograph.

In 1939, Rill Foss and her sibling lived with their loving parents on a boat on the Mississippi
River.  Rill and her sibling are stolen and sent to the Tennessee Children’s Home
Society orphanage.  Life in the orphanage is harsh ~ rules must be followed and
punishment is severe. Rill hopes that her parents will come and rescue her and her sibling.
She tries to keep her family together despite the danger and uncertainty of life in the orphanage.

The two stories are told side-by-side.  As Avery seeks to learn about her family’s history, May
seeks to find her sibling.

There is a side story of a romance, which didn’t quite mesh well with the narratives of Avery
and Rill.  That said, however, this is a wonderful novel that exposes a piece of history.

Read: May 25, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in Asia, Kharbin, Manchuria

The Winter Station, by Jody Shields (2018)

The Winter Station is based on an actual event of a deadly plague epidemic that occurred in Kharbin, Manchuria in 1910.

Kharbin was a railroad hub in Manchuria that was under the control of both Czarist Russia and the Chinese empire.  The citizens of Kharbin are both Russian and Chinese and there is also a “foreign” section of the city.  The novel follows the Baron, the chief Russian medical officer of the city.  The Baron is of Russian aristocracy with a Manchurian wife, something that would be frown upon had he been living in Western Russia.

Bodies begin to be found near the rail station, but then mysteriously disappear. The cause of death is unknown. Soon people begin to run high fevers, begin coughing blood and are dead within days.  The mortality rate of the disease was virtually 100%.

Doctors from Russia and Europe descend upon Kharbin to determine the cause of the epidemic.  Also on the scene is Dr. Wu Lien-Teh, a Malayan-born Chinese doctor.  (He is an actual historical figure.)  Medical examination of patients must be sensitive to both Western and Chinese medical techniques.

Because Dr. Wu was born in Malaysia, his mastery of Russian and Chinese is shaky. This creates some initial mistrust among the other doctors.  Dr. Wu received his medical degree at Oxford University, so his ideas were very radical to the Russian and Chinese doctors. His ultimate solution for handling the plague was a turning point preventing further spread of the disease.

Unfortunately, the novel does not provide more insight into Dr. Wu.  I researched Dr. Wu and the 1910 plague epidemic.  He was a significant figure in modern Chinese medicine.  The plague is believed to have killed between 50,000 and 60,000 during the winter of 1910.

Jody Shields wrote The Fig Eater, which I read in 2003.

Read: May 20, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in the United States

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin (2018)

Would you want to know the date of your death, and if you did know when you would die, would that impact your life?  That’s the premise of The Immortalists.

In 1969, the four Gold children, Simon, Klara, Daniel and Varya, aged 7, 9, 11, and 13, respectively, visit a mysterious woman said to tell fortunes.  As the children individually enter the woman’s apartment, she tells them the exact date of their death.  Some of the children share that date, the others keep it a secret.  But the children are just that ~ should they take the woman seriously?

The novel follows each of the four children.  Simon, the youngest, leaves home at age 16 to seek a new start in San Francisco.  Klara focuses on magic and perfects a death-defying trick of hanging by her teeth from a rope.  Daniel becomes a military doctor, and Varya becomes a researcher in aging.  Each child remains haunted by their early prophesy into their death.  This supposed knowledge also affects their relationships with family members and others they encounter.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  The author really made the character’s come alive.

Read:  May 14, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in Europe and the United States: Williamsburg

I am Forbidden, by Anouk Markovits (2012)

I am Forbidden is a look into the life of the ultra-orthodox Satmar community. The novel begins in 1939 in Transylvania and follows the family of Zalman Stern, and his extended family.

Five-year old Josef Lichentenstein sees his family murdered and is raised by the family’s gentile maid, Florina.  When he is 10, he rescues Mila Heller after her family was killed running for the Kasztner train, an historical event, that transported approximately 1,600 Jews from Hungary to safety in Switzerland.  Her parents were running to meet the Rebbe who was to have saved them.

Josef sends Mila to Zalman Stern’s family who adopt her.  Zalman has several children, including Atara, who is about the same age as Mila and the two become very close.

Zalman is a leader in the Satmar community and his family must live by the very strict and rigid rules of that community. Following World War II, the family moved to Paris to escape the communist regime.  They live isolated from the secular aspects of Paris.  The girls attend a religious school where they learn how to observe the tight rules.

Atria is curious about the secular world.  She questions the fundamentalist doctrine and leaves the community to avoid an early arranged marriage.  From then on, she is totally cut off from her family.

Mila, however, remains religious.  She is sent to Williamsburg to marry Josef, the boy who saved her years earlier.  Their marriage is challenged with their struggle with childlessness.  There are strict rules within their community regarding their inability to produce children, which is a constant pain for the couple.  The novel explores a resolution that test the bonds of the couple.

I found this book a bit difficult to get into, but once I did, I found it difficult to put down.

4 Stars

Read:  May 11, 2018

Books Set in the United States: Maine

All the Beautiful Lies, by Peter Swanson (2018)

I picked up this crime thriller from the library solely because the novel is set in Maine.  I’m glad I found this author.  The descriptions of the small coastal Maine towns is spot on.

Harry Ackerson is just about to graduate from college when he gets a call saying that his father, who lived in a small coastal Maine town, had died when he fell off a rocky cliff on his daily walk.  Harry immediately returned home to his young step-mother, Alice, and to attend to funeral arrangements.

Harry’s father had run a rare bookshop in Manhattan, but after his wife died, he moved to Maine and opened a second shop.  After relocating to Maine, Harry’s father married Alice, his realtor.

Alice has a mysterious past.  We slowly learn the details as the chapter alternate between “Now” and “Then”.

After the autopsy is completed, the police begin to suspect that Harry’s father didn’t just fall, but believe he may have been murdered.  Then a mysterious young woman appears at the funeral.  Harry meets her to find out why she has come to town and to find out why she was interested in attending the funeral.

Harry learns that his father’s life was more complicated than he thought.  Who was responsible for his father’s death?  As the relationships between the characters unfolds, the mystery slowly unravels.

I found this book to be a very quick read and very enjoyable.

Read:  May 10, 2018

4 Stars

Books Set in North America: St. Thomas

The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman (2015)

The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman is the fictionalized account of the life of Rachel Monsanto PomiéPetit Pizzarro, the mother of Camille Pissarro, one of the Fathers of Impressionism.  Rachel was born in the Jewish community on the island of St. Thomas in 1795.  Her first husband was a widower many years older the Rachel.  At the time of her marriage, she immediately became step-mother to his three children.  Before she was 30 years old, she was widowed with seven children ~ three step-children and four of her own.  Soon Abraham Gabriel Frédéric Pizzarro (known as Frédéric), a nephew of Rachel’s dead husband, moved to St. Thomas to run the family business.  As a woman, Rachel had no rights to manage the business.

Rachel and Frédéric almost immediately fell in love, but do to religious reasons, were not permitted to marry.  They were ostracized, but lived as husband and wife for years, before the religious community recognized their marriage. Together, Rachel and Frédéric had three children, bringing their household to 12.  Their youngest child was named Jacobo Abraham Camille Pizzarro.  (He changed the spelling of his name when he moved to France.)

The novel describes life in the paradise of St. Thomas during the early 1800s.  Rachel’s best friend, Jestine, was the beautiful mixed-race daughter of the family’s cook.  The novel touches on the life of slavery on the Islands.  Jestine falls in love with Aaron, a distant relative of Rachel’s family. The love is mutual, but any marriage is forbidden for a host of reasons, which ultimately harbor a deep family secret.

The novel also weaves the myths and superstitions of the Islands into the everyday life of the Pizzarro family.

A beautiful read.

Read:  May 8, 2018

5 Stars