Books Set in North America: New York City

The Hidden Palace, by Helene Wecker (2021)

 

The Hidden Palace picks up the characters from The Golem and the Jenni, but the reader need not have read the first book to enjoy this one.  This novel takes place eight years after the first novel has ended and begins around 1900.  There are several threads plots in this novel.  Chava, the Jewish golem, and Ahmad, the Arabian jinni, have gone their separate ways haven’t seen each other in years.  Sophia Winston, who became chilled following her affair with the jinni, has traveled to a desert Middle East to find a cure.  Anne is working as a laundress and raising her young son.  Interwoven into the lives of the characters, is a fair amount of history, as the world is on the brink of World War I.

 

Cheva realizes that as a golem, she never ages, while the people around her do.  She realized that she could no longer work in the bakery, so attends a nearby college and gets a degree in that allows her to teach cooking.  She reinvented herself as Charlotte Levy and landed a job at an orphanage academy.  After the jinni’s partner died, he holed up in the building and cut himself off from the rest of the community and spent his time constructing with steel.  Anne’s son landed a job as a Western Union messenger, which takes him around New York City.

 

While searching for a cure to her illness, Sophia encounteres a female jinni, whom she calls Dima.  Dima has been banished from her tribe and is searching for the jinni who can touch steel (Ahmad).  She promises Sophia a cure if she can bring her to Ahmad.  Meanwhile, back in New York, the reader meets Kreindel, a young girl who studies Hebrew with her rabbi and assists him in making Yessele, another golem to be her protector.

 

In addition to a beautiful story, the author also gives us a glimpse of life in the New York tenements at the turn of the last century.  I loved this book and look forward to other writings from this author.

 

Read:  May 3, 2023

 

4 Stars

 

 

Books Set in North America; United States

The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles (2021)

 

The Lincoln Highway was one of the earliest transcontinental highway routes in the United States.  It was formally dedicated in 1913 and ran from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

 

The novel, The Lincoln Highway, begins in June 1954 in Nebraska, roughly the half-way point of the Highway.  Beginning a story in the middle is a subtle theme of this novel, thus it is no coincidence that a trek along this transcontinental highway has its starting point in the middle of the country..

 

The novel follows four boys, three teenagers who met at a reform school and one of the boy’s 8-year-old brother.  The novel begins when the warden of the reform school brings Emmett Watson to his home following the death of his father.  Emmett is now responsible for his young brother, Billy.  He plans to depart for San Francisco to find his mother who had abandoned the family several years earlier.

 

His plans are derailed, however, when, Duchess and Woolly, his pals from the reform school appear.  They had escaped from the reformatory by hiding in the trunk of the warden’s car.  Woolly, who comes from a monied family in New York City, has a trust fund of $150,000 in New York.  Trouble-maker Duchess convinces Woolly and Emmett to travel to New York where they can get the money and divide it in thirds.  The night before Emmett and Billy are to leave for California, Duchess and Woolly “borrow” Emmett’s blue Studebaker and take off for New York.

 

So, instead of heading towards California, Emmett and Billy must get the car back.  They hop on a boxcar and travel to New York to find Duchess and the car.  The novel is told through the perspective of each of characters, thus giving the reader insight into the actions that take place in the novel.  We learn of the adventures that Emmett and Billy have on their train ride as well as the car travel of Duchess and Woolly.

 

I enjoyed the novel, but I found some parts to strain one’s credibility.  There is no denying, however, that the four boys are in for an adventure of a lifetime.

 

Read:  January 20, 2022

 

4 Stars

 

 

Books Set in Europe: England

The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig (2020)

 

Nothing is going right for Nora Seed.  She is 35 years old, she just lost her job, her brother is upset with her, her best friend moved to Australia, and her cat is dead.  She is depressed and just wants to end it all.  So she does.  She takes an overdose of antidepressants and goes to sleep.

 

Then, just a midnight, she awakens in the Midnight Library.  It’s that place where some people go that is between life and death, but still have a choice to live or die.  The library is huge and is filled with endless books.  The librarian is Mrs. Elm, the school librarian of Nora’s childhood.  Mrs. Elm explains to her that the books are filled with alternative choices that Nora could have taken.

 

Nora is first given a book entitled The Book of Regrets, which is filled with regrets, large and small, in Nora’s life.  As she ponders over some of the regrets, they fade away as they become meaningless.  As she selects other books in the library, she gets a glimpse of what her life could have been had she not made some of her choices.  For a brief time, she gets to sample the lives she might have experienced had she made different choices.  What would have happened if she hadn’t gotten cold feet two days before her wedding to Dan?  In the first book she selects, she finds herself outside a pub and is married to Dan.  After she quickly sees that she was living in Dan’s dream life, she fades away and is back in the Library.  So, she makes other book selections and tries on different lives.

 

Nora can remember events from her past “choices” so sometimes the people she meets in one “life” come back in another.

 

This was a quiet and gentle story as Nora sees what could have been and has to make the ultimate decision.  Does she want to live or die?  Will she be granted that choice, or will the decision be made for her if the library time passes midnight?

 

I loved this book.

 

Read:  July 18, 2021

 

5 Stars

 

 

 

Books Set in Asia: Japan: Tokyo

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (2015)

 

In a tiny obscure basement café in a small alley in Tokyo, you can get a cup of coffee and maybe some food.  Legend has it that you can order a cup of coffee and travel in time.  The café is small and can serve only a few customers at a time.  At the table in the corner, you will find a woman in a white dress who is drinking coffee and reading a book.  

 

One summer, four customers seek to try their luck with the legend.  Time travel, however, has very strict rules.  Travel in time cannot change the present.  One can only go back in time to meet someone who had previously been a customer at the café; one must sit in a specific chair during the entire journey; and one must drink a cup of coffee before it gets cold.  The woman in the white dress is the ghost of the person who allowed her coffee to get cold.

 

As we meet the four “time travelers”, we learn their stories and the reasons for wanting to take this magical journey.  Their stories are intertwined.  Hirai left her family’s business to find freedom in Tokyo.  She has been avoiding her sister for years, but suddenly finds herself needing to have an urgent conversation with her.  Kohtake wants one more conversation with her husband before Alzheimer’s takes his memory of her.

 

This is a delightful little novel.

 

Read:  February 3, 2021

4.5 Stars

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