Archives - December 2009 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

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• Sharon Kay Penman, Devil's Brood: I liked this much more than Time and Chance, thankfully; I think it's easily the best of this sequence so far, carrying the story from the various rebellions of Henry II's sons and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine through Henry's death and the accession of Richard I. Penman gives her characters lots more opportunity to speak for themselves, and their confrontations and relations are much more tense and compelling as a result. I especially liked her characterization of Geoffrey, who might have been Henry's most intelligent and able son. (And okay, it helps that I always picture Geoffrey as looking like John Castle in The Lion in Winter.) I was pleased to find at the end of the author's note that she'll be continuing the story after Henry's death.
  
  
• Randa Abdel-Fattah, Ten Things I Hate About Me, Does My Head Look Big in This?: Both books deal with Australian Muslim girls who are trying to figure out how to reconcile their religion with their lives, in different ways. In Ten Things I Hate About Me, Jamie dyes her hair blond and wears blue contacts at school in order to hide her Muslim self, Jamilah, and avoid being stereotyped. But she can't keep her secrets forever; eventually, she'll have to decide: Jamie or Jamilah? I thought the resolution a little too easy, but Abdel-Fattah provides an excellent, complex examination of passing. I especially liked her portrayal of Jamie's relationship with her traditional (what Jamie calls "Stone Age") father and her two siblings.
  
  In Does My Head Look Big in This?, Amal decides to wear the hijab full time, in spite of worries about how others (especially the students at her school) will see her choice. I rather wish I'd read this before Ten Things I Hate About Me, because I didn't like it quite as much. It's very funny, and I liked clever Amal and her steadfast sense of herself, but I thought Abdel-Fattah tried too hard to make her points and erred on the side of preachiness. (Ten Things I Hate About Me, written afterward, was better.) Truthfully, I was rather more interested in the plight of Amal's friend Leila, who faces much more opposition from her parents as she tries to reconcile her religion and her gender, and the parts of the book dealing with her problems were my favorites.
  
  
• Ying Chang Compestine, Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party: As Ling grows from nine to thirteen in Wuhan, China, her happy life she shares with her adored father and stern mother changes to a grim existence of survival during the last years of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. I admired this very much, especially the historical background, the elegant writing, and the beautifully handled child's point-of-view. I do wonder, though, whether it's one of those YA books that might work better for adults than kids; it's awfully grim, and I would imagine it would be confusing to a reader who knew nothing of the historical background. (Reading the afterword first might help with this, though.)
  
  
• Jen Lin-Liu, Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China: After graduating from journalism school in the U.S., Lin-Liu moved to China to freelance for American newspapers and magazines. She became obsessed (her word) with Chinese food and decided to sign up for Chinese cooking school...and that's only the beginning of her journey, which takes her through cooking school, one-on-one lessons, apprenticeships in noodle stalls and dumpling houses, and finally an internship in a gourmet Shanghai restaurant.
  
  The book is mostly (and deliciously) about food, but Lin-Liu also talks about the people she meets along her journey, providing a fascinating slice of contemporary Chinese life and of China's recent history. She writes humorously and honestly, and oh, the food descriptions just made me drool! And she even includes recipes -- I may not try many (though I marked a few), but I loved reading them.
  
  
• Hannah Crafts, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Bondwoman's Narrative: In 2001, scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. bought a previously unpublished manuscript from the 1850s, which he believed and it appears now is the first novel written by a fugitive slave. Gates provides a long and detailed introduction explaining the research he did into the manuscript's history, trying to find its author, and the introduction and notes are every bit as interesting as the novel itself.
  
  The novel is told, in the first person, by a young slave who flees with her mistress when her mistress's terrible secret is discovered and who experiences a whole host of terrors before reaching safety in the North. Considered purely as a novel, it does leave something to be desired; it's structurally disorganized, and the plot is contrived and, like many Gothic novels, overly dependent on coincidence. Crafts borrows freely from a wide variety of sources, most notably Dickens' Bleak House, and it's interesting to see (using the extensive and useful notes) how she changes her borrowings in order to fit them in to her narrative. The Gothic bits (especially the cursed tree) are often very effective, and more than that, the viewpoint and opinions are fascinating. I found the book as a whole reasonably enjoyable on a narrative level and very interesting indeed as a historical document.
  
  
• Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column, Phoenix Fled: Sunlight on a Broken Column tells the story of Laila, an orphaned girl growing up first in the orthodox home of her grandfather and her aunts, who keep purdah, and then in the less traditional home of her uncle and aunt. As her friends and cousins fight for their country's independence, Laila struggles for her own, especially when she falls in love with a man not approved by her family. Phoenix Fled is a collection of stories, each a short but vivid and rich bit of writing, with striking images and characters.
  
  These are beautifully written, sensitive looks at Muslim life in India before and just after the 1947 partition of the country into Pakistan and India. Both books are deeply understanding of the conflict between Muslims and Hindus and between the old and new ways of life in India, and they made me wish Hosain had written more: as far as I can discover, these were her only two books.

• children's and young adult:
  • Megan Crewe, Give Up the Ghost: I loved this: great mix of teen loner angst and the paranormal.
  • E. Lockhart, The Treasure Map of Boys
• drama:
• fantasy and science fiction:
  • Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn, The Line Between (rereads)
• general fiction:
  • Robertson Davies, The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks: laugh-out-loud funny, though I found it went better in smaller bits than read straight through. Also, I occasionally cringed at racial and gender attitudes.
  • Robertson Davies, The Salterton Trilogy (reread): Oh, good, this held up well to rereading. It's extremely funny and has more sympathetic characters than, say, the Deptford books, and I especially love the backstage shenanigans of the first book and the musical career theme of the third.
  • E.M. Delafield, Late and Soon (reread)
  • E.M. Delafield, The War Workers: an especially tart and enjoyable account of a group of women war workers during WWI.
  • W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge
  • Naomi Mitchison, To The Chapel Perilous: I've been wanting to read this for ages, and it was totally worth the wait: loved the clever way (by inserting modern-day-type reporters) she shows how the Arthurian legends have grown into so many different versions. And her reporters aren't just types; they feel just as real as the legendary characters.
  • Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings, The Sweet Dove Died: I liked the former a lot and the latter less, both for reasons of character. I think A Glass of Blessings will end up being one of my favorite Pyms. I particularly liked the main character, Wilmet, who's terribly self-centered (though not in a nasty way) but very sympathetic at the same time. The Sweet Dove Died's characterization is especially sharp, but I just didn't sympathize with any of them and so didn't care a lot what happened to them. I did like both books' casual acceptance of homosexuality.
  • Mary Stewart, The Moon-Spinners, My Brother Michael (rereads): Mary Stewart's Greece books are some of my favorites of her thrillers, maybe because she blends in the classical references so adroitly (especially in My Brother Michael, which is set mostly in and around Delphi). I especially love My Brother Michael; though I find the heroine somewhat wishy-washy, she's interestingly aware of that part of her character, which makes it less irritating to read, and I adore the sardonic, ultra-capable hero.
• historical fiction:
  • Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• mystery:
  • John Dunning, The Bookwoman's Last Fling (reread)
  • Ruth Rendell, A Sight for Sore Eyes
• romance:
  • Jo Beverley, The Dragon's Bride: I think if I hadn't found the years-earlier relationship between the hero and the heroine convincing, this wouldn't have worked for me very well. But it did, and I loved the Gothic elements (former owner of castle with very strange tastes in décor). (I bounced right off of Dangerous Joy afterward, though.)
  • Georgette Heyer, Cotillion (reread, and still one of my top five Heyers)
• non-fiction:
  • Peter S. Beagle, I See By My Outfit: the only Beagle I hadn't read, and as enjoyable as I'd hoped; his gift for description is just as evident here in describing his real travels as in his fantasy worlds.
  • Philip Davis, The Oxford English Literary History #8: The Victorians
  • Jeff Kurtti, Walt Disney's Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park
  • Susan Ottaway, Violette Szabo: "The Life That I Have": Ottaway clearly did a lot of research, but she doesn't manage to turn the facts and details that she turned up into a compelling narrative. Having first encountered Violette Szabo in the pages of Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide (a much better book than this and one I should reread), I would never have thought a book about her could be so regrettably dull.
  • Suzanne Rodriguez, Wild Heart: A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons: I found this quite a good biography of a fascinating woman. It's perhaps not quite as unbiased as one could wish, as Rodriguez's deep admiration for Barney is very apparent, but she does make every effort to examine fairly Barney's faults (such as her unfaithfulness and occasional anti-Semitism) as well as her strengths.

Total books read this month: 35
Total books read this year: 403

Last updated 20 January 2010. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.