A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones January 21, 2007

I really enjoyed Nicole Mones’ previous book, Lost in Translation, so I eagerly picked up this one, hoping it would be just as good. I didn’t like it quite as much as I liked the previous book, though it was well written and had very interesting characters.

The main character of the novel was an appraiser of porcelain, and traveled to China to look at a collection, and uncover a sort of mystery. I really don’t have an interest in porcelain, so the descriptions of it had a tendency to seem endless, making me want to skim through them to get to the main story. The main character made the book much more interesting, as she had a hearing loss that she used to her advantage, something that improved her memory and made her more vulnerable to the world around her.

I didn’t find the mystery of the novel very compelling, but the love story certainly was. Nicole Mones is a very talented author and I will certainly read her again, even if she writes about porcelain.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn January 21, 2007

I bought this book because I’d heard so many good things about it, even though the words “dark” and “creepy” were used many, many times in the descriptions that I read. In fact, that’s what kept me from reading it right away. I have to say, now that I’ve finished the book, that it was a dark and creepy story, and not one that I would want to revisit anytime soon.

The author is an extremely talented writer, and the main character of the novel, Camille, was flawed and interesting. Camille was a reporter who traveled from Chicago to her home town in Missouri to cover a story about two young girls who went missing. And it was easy to understand why she never went back to her hometown—that was one screwed-up place. And the story of her family just got worse and worse. At first, it was hard to understand why she would stay so far away from her family, and then it was hard to understand why she didn’t stay further away.

I thought the author had a lot of interesting things to say about family and beauty and love. But the book was so relentlessly dark that I was just glad to be done with it. It really kept my interest, though after I finished it I didn’t even want it in my house anymore.

Household Words by Joan Silber January 21, 2007

I was about a third of the way through this book when I realized it didn’t really have a plot. And I didn’t mind at all. This novel was a very in-depth character study of a woman named Rhoda, who, at the beginning of the novel, was expecting her first child. The story began in 1940 and continued over an almost 20-year period, all taking place from Rhoda’s point of view. She didn’t narrate the novel, but the story was told from her point of view.

Rhoda was not always the most likeable character, but she was certainly fascinating, mostly in the relationships that she had with her daughters. You could clearly see how she was driving her daughters away from her with her behavior towards them, so that even though their actions were continually a surprise to Rhoda, they were less of a surprise to the reader.

Rhoda led a seemingly ordinary life, but the author turned it into something extraordinary. Even though I didn’t always like Rhoda, I felt like I understood her motives and her behavior.

Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman January 9, 2007

I don’t think Alice Hoffman can write a bad book. This one grabbed me from the start and I finished it in a day. The story begins with Arlyn, who has just lost her father, her only family, and who decides that the next man she sees walking down the street will be the one she is fated to be with. After a few hours of waiting, she meets a student from Yale who has stopped to ask for directions. She is so convinced that he is her fate that she ignores the fact that they don’t really seem all that compatible, and by the time she realizes this, she has a son whom she adores and cannot figure out how she can leave the life she created.

So many lives are changed and created by the decision that Arlyn makes, and this story is about all of them. And, because it is an Alice Hoffman book, there are ghosts and elements of magic throughout which makes for a very compelling story.

Speak Softly, She Can Hear by Pam Lewis January 9, 2007

Carole, a high school student who lives a comfortable and overprotected life, makes a pact with her best friend to lose their virginity before they graduate high school. The two girls decide that an attractive and mysterious boy named Eddie will be the one to help them accomplish this goal. But what starts out as a kind of game between friends turns into something much more sinister, and changes Carole’s life completely.

I don’t want to reveal too much of the story, since it’s a really good one with a lot of twists and turns and unexpected revelations. Carole is a very sympathetic character whose life goes in directions that she never could have expected, and every choice she makes is cringe-worthy and at the same time perfectly understandable. This is the kind of book you just can’t stop reading because you have to know how it ends.

Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones January 9, 2007

Two Americans—one a translator who lives in China and the other an archaeologist—begin a search for the long-missing bones of Peking Man, which the archaeologist believes he can find. Alice, the translator, lives in China as a means of escaping her father, a well-known racist politician in the U.S. Her part in the search for the bones of Peking Man takes her in directions that they never could have imagined.

I thought the story of the search for the bones of Peking Man was a really interesting one, and I was completely hooked by it. At the same time, the descriptions of the culture in China was equally fascinating as seen through the eyes of Alice. She had chosen to live in a country in which she would never be truly accepted or thought of as an equal, and her love for the country nonetheless made her a really interesting character.

This is a really well-written and interesting book that has everything—a mystery, political intrigue, and a love story. I couldn’t put it down.

Eve Green by Susan Fletcher December 23, 2006

Eve, who is 29 and about to give birth to her first child, spends this novel reminiscing about her childhood, when she was eight-years-old and sent to live with her grandparents in Wales after the death of her mother.

The young Evie set out to discover more about the lives of her parents, the father she never knew and the mother she lost at such a young age. The small town she moved to was full of secrets, from the identity of her father to the disappearance of 12-year-old Rosie Hughes. But it was also a place of great beauty and kindness, and a place that even 29-year-old Eve is reluctant to leave.

I never really felt involved in this story, though it seemed like it would be a good one. I think the problem for me was that too much was revealed from the start. Knowing right away who Eve ends up with, and knowing that the biggest mystery of the novel is never really going to be solved didn’t keep me turning the pages. The book was a great character study, but I never found myself dying to sit down and read just one more chapter.

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos December 23, 2006

Cornelia, a coffee shop manager, finds her life changing completely on the day that she meets Martin. A Cary Grant look-alike, Martin almost—but not quite—sweeps Cornelia off her feet. The beginning of this book makes it seem like it’s going to be a more traditional girl-meets-boy love story, but that’s not what it is at all. Cornelia’s love of old movies makes her try to live as if she is in one, but she can’t ignore her own feelings and doubts. Instead, the story takes a different turn as Cornelia meets Clare, an 11-year-old girl who has been abandoned by her mother. The relationship between Cornelia and Clare is the true love story of this novel.

I’m not a fan of old movies, so all the discussion of them throughout this novel didn’t really interest me too much, though it was easy to see how they influenced Cornelia’s life and I can grudgingly see their importance to the story.

I loved how small decisions in this novel led to life-changing events. Cornelia’s decision to let Clare stay with her changes her life in every way, all for the better. Clare’s decision to look for her father brings her a whole new family, so that she no longer has to worry about losing her one-family-member support system.

I found the ending of the book to be a little abrupt, as if everything was heading one way and suddenly veered off in a whole new direction. But it was a likable love story and I enjoyed reading it.

Blind Submission by Debra Ginsberg December 9, 2006

This is one of those books that you just devour, not even realizing that hours have passed since you sat down to read. It tells the story of Angel, who goes to work as an assistant in a literary agent’s office. Lucy, the agent, is an incredibly difficult and downright mean boss who expects her employees to work almost 24 hours a day. She’s horrible to her employees, but Angel, a voracious reader, finds that she has a real talent for working with authors, and is determined to keep her job.

One of the submissions Angel begins to read is called Blind Submission, and it is the story of a literary agency like Lucy’s. As Angel begins to work with the anonymous author and reads more of the story, she finds that it is beginning to parallel her own life. The submission takes on a sinister tone as Angel’s secrets begin to be revealed. Angel is sure that it is someone around her who is writing the manuscript, but she can’t figure out exactly who it could be.

This novel grabs you from the start and never lets go. I really loved it. It was so well-written and interesting from start to finish.

The Scroll of Seduction by Gioconda Belli December 9, 2006

This novel tells two different stories. One is the story of “Juana the Mad,” a Spanish queen who was considered crazy and locked away for most of her life. Though history paints her as a schizophrenic who had her husband’s coffin open long after his death so that she could kiss him, the author of this book maintains that she was a strong, passionate woman who was betrayed by the power-hungry men in her life.

The other story in this novel is that of Lucia, a teenage orphan who lives at a boarding school in Spain. Seventeen-year-old Lucia meets Manuel, who is a 40-year-old professor obsessed with the story of Queen Juana. He senses in her a similar spirit to the queen’s, so he begins to tell her the story of Juana, hoping that she will be able to feel what Juana felt and then explain it to him. He has her dress up as the queen when he tells her story, and as the story progresses, he almost begins to believe that she is the queen.

Certainly Lucia has a passionate spirit, but even as she becomes Manuel’s lover, it’s clear that she hasn’t fallen in love with him. She is in love with her own sensuality, and she expresses it, and herself, in a way that makes her seem much older. In a sense, she feels more passionate towards the queen’s husband than she does towards Manuel, and she becomes as caught up in the story as he does.

I think the author has an interesting take on Queen Juana, and I enjoyed learning about it. She was betrayed so often, by her husband, her father, her mother, and even her son. It’s hard to imagine anyone even wanting to be a ruler in that time, but interesting to read the lengths that some would go to have power.