Review: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Helen Simonson)

I loved this book!!! Well written and with a heartwarming story (that's right, I wrote heartwarming) this book made my commute a joy.

It's the story of Major Ernest Pettigrew, retired, and Mrs. Jasmina Ali, grocer. Both have lost their spouses and still feel a little lost. They strike up a friendship after Mrs. Ali helps Major Pettigrew on the day of his brother's death. They discover they share a love of books (they had me at hello!) and an appreciation for long walks.

Major Pettigrew enjoys these simple pleasures and assumes there was a time when everyone did. Of course, times weren't really simpler, and Mrs. Ali shows him this. The story isn't preachy, but it does highlight race relations in a small English town. Simonson manages to do this while writing a witty, and funny book.

Secondary characters highlight the pair's differences, and that adds a bittersweet tone to the story. You cheer for the Major and Mrs. Ali, especially as they maneuver how people in town see them. Neither one is used to the attention or the gossip. Still, I was glad that the story still led to a satisfying conclusion. Usually books that are written this well have tragic endings. It almost seems like those authors do that because they take themselves too seriously. Glad this book didn't do that!

I can't recommend this book enough. A real treat!

Next up: The Scarlett Contessa, by Jeanne Kalogridis.

Review: The Confessions of Catherine De Medici (C.W. Gortner)

Portrayals of Catherine de Medici usually go the way of the evil-witch. I first heard of her during a discussion on religious persecution in Europe. So, of course, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre came up.


Usually Catherine de Medici is described as a religious fanatic that dabbled in black magic and murdered a whole lot of people. After first hearing about her in high school, I'd forgotten about her, really, until I rented La Reine Margot. The French film, starring a very beautiful Isabelle Adjani and the also quite beautiful Vincent Perez, shows Catherine as evil and as having a borderline incestuous relationship with her favorite son (future Henri III). I later read the book on which this movie is based. Alexander Dumas really, really didn't like Queen Catherine.

Times, they are a-changing. Jeanne Kalogridis' The Devil's Queen, in which the author portrays Catherine in a much more sympathetic light. This book, although taking a different path, also portrays Catherine more positively. C.W. Gortner writes her character as a strong woman, but one whose actions are defined by her circumstances more than her will.


Gortner surprised me when he included an affair between Admiral Coligny and Catherine after her widowhood. He also brought Diane de Poitiers into Catherine and Henry's bedroom, and I'm not talking about it in a metaphorical sense. Granted, the relationship between Catherine and Henry must have been extremely complicated. She had no real power while he lived, but she clearly learned a thing or two before the became regent for her sons. Gortner shows her resilience and intelligence, although he has a lot of ground to  cover. She lived a long time and served as an advisor to three of her sons.


The story moves well, although it could get a little boring at times. I enjoyed The Devil's Queen more, but enjoyed this one anyway.

Next up: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. Waited for this one for months to come in at the library. Woo!

Review: The Hand That First Held Mine (Maggie O'Farrell)

First off, this book isn't as entertaining at The Vanishing Life of Esme Lennox. Also, it worked as a form of birth control for a few days. One of the main characters, Elina, has a horrible delivery. Absolutely. Horrible. So, if you're looking for a story that makes motherhood sounds romantic, skip this.

It took me a while to get into this book. Not that Maggie O'Farrell presented a poorly written story. Indeed, she wrote something real and startling. She interwove two story lines that converge towards the end of the book. Supposedly, you don't know how until the crucial moment. I knew after a few pages in what was going to happen, more or less. And I don't say this in a snooty way. Really, usually I'm the last person to know what's going on in a story. I'm one of those that would read R.L. Stein and not know who the bad guy was until the author made the reveal. This story just wasn't a mystery.

Ok, so that bothered me a little. Still, Maggie O'Farrell's representations of motherhood made for a beautiful story at times. Her other main character, Lexie, epitomizes the woman of the 60s. She's a free spirit in a way, but ambitious and willing to put in more than hard work to build a name for herself. Lexie starts working as a journalist after leaving her family and moving to London. She hooks up with Innes Kent, the editor of the magazine. Now, it may look like Lexie gets the job just because she's sleeping with Innes. But, that's not why Innes hires her. Has has had many lovers and he hasn't employed them. He knows his connection with Lexie isn't just physical. And he recognizes her talent even before she does.

Elina, on the other hand, works as a successful artist. She lives with Ted, the father of her newborn baby. Save for the gory delivery, they go through all the strains of a couple that has become parents for the first time. Ted, however, starts to go through a major identity crisis. He starts remembering flashes of his past that don't mesh with his image of reality.

You can see where this is going. Not a bad book, but I just didn't get that into it.

Next up: The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, by C.W. Gortner. Hope I can finish this one before it's due back at the library.

Review: The Stormchasers (Jenna Blum)

I read Jenna Blum's first novel, Those Who Save Us, a little while ago. Absolutely fantastic. This doesn't mean I expected the same level of great writing for her sophomore effort. Indeed, I try not to have super high expectations for those. Although it didn't come as a surprise, the fact that this book turned out just as well as her first efforts came as a welcome reprieve during my long commutes this week.


The story centers around Karena, a reporter in her late 30s that hasn't see her twin brother in 20 years. Charles, her twin, is a stormchaser. The incident that marked both of them forever happened during a chase. Karena frequents chaser forums trying to find Charles. She gets her break when she receives a call from a hospital that Charles checked into after having what the doctor diagnosed as a panic attack. Karena knows better. Charles is bipolar, and he hallucinates and had tried to kill himself at least once before.


Karena decides to join a tour group for people that want to chase storms. I'm sure the people in this book got to see a lot more action than most, but it made for a great story. Karena and one of the tour guides, Kevin, hit it off. And they have more in common than they could imagine at first.


Now, everyone has unbalanced people in their families. But having a twin with the kind of disorder Charles has is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. But, in the end, Charles gives Karena the opportunity to help herself as they help each other. You want this story to have a happy ending, even if not a storybook one.


Jenna Blum's descriptions of the Plains, the power and beauty of these storms as well as the immeasurable damage that they cause, really stuck with me. Did I feel the urge to Google my way into a trip on a stormchasing tour? No freaking way. But I have more respect for the people who do it and I feel less cold terror at the thought of being caught in one of these storms.


Great effort from Jenna Blum! Looking forward to reading her next book.


Next up: The Hand That First Held Mine, by Maggie O'Farrell. I'm about 80 pages in and I'm not enjoying it as much as I did her previous book, The Vanishing Life of Esme Lenox. Both books tell the story from a split perspective, but I just found she did it better before. I'll see if I change my mind as the book progresses.


After that, I'm afraid I'm going to have to pick between four books that are all due in 8 days. I'm off for a four-day weekend, which actually means I'll get less reading done. I'll just have to put some books on hold again, which totally sucks because I waited for some of these for months!

Review: The Last Time I Saw You (Elizabeth Berg)

Elizabeth Berg delivers yet again in this story about a group of people that go to their 40th--and last--high schools reunion. A little appropriate, as my ten-year reunion just took place. I didn't go. Indeed, I didn't even consider the possibility. As soon as I saw the tickets would be $50 each, I knew I wouldn't bother. Besides, who wants to go to Houston in July? And, to boot, I hated high school. I loved my friends, and it wasn't like people went out of their way to pick on me. Still, it's just not a time in my life that I remember with nostalgia.

This story made me stop to think about how, in fact, the world turns out to be a big high school and that it may not be as awful as expected. Now, it didn't make me regret skipping the reunion. Still, Elizabeth Berg manages to make even the most basic stories come alive. I love her work. This is the fourth book of hers that I have read and I look forward to picking up more.

So The Last Time I Saw You starts from Dorothy Shauman's perspective. Dorothy is a 58 year-old- woman, but Berg sets the tone for the story by showing that Dorothy hasn't really changed all that much since high school. Indeed, most of us tend to revert to old patterns under pressure. Dorothy exemplifies this. The reader also gets to know Candy Sullivan, the school beauty who hasn't had the charmed life everyone expected for her. Lester Hessenpfeffer, a nerd throughout high school, now a successful vet, finally starts to consider ending his self-imposed solitude. Pete Decker, the jock and prom king that finds out that trying charming your way through life doesn't always work--especially if you've hurt the people you love.

And then there is Mary Alice Mayhew. I loved Mary Alice from the beginning. She is a super sweet woman who has played the hand life gave her to the best of her ability. High school was particularly bad to her, but she never let it tear her up. You end up desprately hoping that she finds someone who really appreciates her. I wanted to give her a hug the entire time.

Berg, like always, creates a wonderful story out of simple things. She specializes in describing everyday sights and smells in a way that makes me stop to look around and acknowledge the wonders around me. Even if it is just inhaling the scent of laundry. And she creates a fantasy that seems quite attainable to the former high school nerds (now just nerds) like myself. All of her characters are painfully human and she makes them sympathetic even when they behave badly.

Next up: The Stormchasers, by Jenna Blum. I read her first book, Those Who Save Us. I really liked it, so I'm hoping this one meets expectations as well.

Review: The Last Rendezvous (Anne Plantagenet)

Ok, so this is another book that took me a little bit to get into. I just wasn't sure I could enjoy the story of a woman that loved two men--her husband and her lover reflections of her own complexities. It can get just a little too complicated.

However, Anne Plantagenet managed to bring Marceline Desbordes-Valmore to life. Shamefully, I had no idea who this poet was. Born just a few years before the French Revolution. She not only wrote, but also acted. Her parents really had no clue how to take care of themselves, much less how to take care of Marceline and her siblings. Her mother eventually leave her drunkard father for another man. That guy doesn't really measure up either, but by now Marceline's mother won't leave him. Her mother is the one that sends her to the theater to act. They live off of Marceline's earnings. One thing leads to another, and Marceline and her mother end up in the French Caribbean. Her mother dies there.

Marceline doesn't have a better time once she manages to get back to France. Her sister popped out babies here and there. Few survive, and no father sticks around anyway. Marceline really has a hard time of it until she meets Prosper Valmore, the man that became her husband. A good man, but she still couldn't help falling in love with Henri Latouche. Quite jarring, since Valmore is handsome and youthful while Latouche is unattractive and moody. It doesn't matter. Marceline never leaves her husband, but she loved Latouche passionately and the feeling never really left her.

This story, told from Marceline's perspective, isn't for an unforgiving person to read. Marceline is complicated to a fault (a huge fault). I couldn't identify with her, but at least at the end, I didn't judge her that harshly. She knows her failings and makes no excuses for them. Her vacillations do get a little tiresome. And though her love for her children redeems her, she manages to be a little annoying with that, too.

Anne Plantagenet doesn't judge her character either. This makes the story palatable. I'm sure the story is much more beautiful in its original French. Still, it's worth picking up if you're looking for drama.

Next up: The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg. I loved, loved, loved Open House, The Year of Pleasures, and Home Safe. Hope it doesn't disappoint! 

Review: By Fire, By Water (Mitchell James Kaplan)

Columbus Before the Queen, by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

First off, I had wanted to include an image with this post that wasn't the cover. Not because it wasn't a good cover--it is. But, I figured I'd include something horribly gruesome. It does cover the period of the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition. try doing a Google search for that. You'll get a lot of images, but unless you're terrified of Monty Python, then you are SOL.

Anyway, by luck I found the painting that the cover comes from. It was a total accident, but anyway, it's a cool painting.

So, OK, the whole point is reviewing the book, not the cover art. I can't say I enjoyed it. Not because of the writing. It's good and it moves at a faster pace than I had expected. Actually, during the first 50 pages I wasn't sure I would bother finishing it. I'm glad I did, but I still can't say I enjoyed it.

Our story follows the lives of several characters, but mainly that of Luis de Santangel and Judith Migdal. He is chancellor of Aragon, so he has a close relationship with Fernando V (or one half of the Catholic Monarchs). She is a Jew struggling to make a living in Granada during its last days as a Muslim possession. She takes up the family business as a silversmith after her brother and his wife are murdered. Luis de Santangel is of Jewish decent, although he makes a point of emphasizing that he is a third generation Christian. This doesn't keep his family away from the torments of the Inquisition.

Chapters in the book go from one character to another. Mitchell James Kaplan used the third person perspective quite effectively. It allows him to take the reader through the story using a bunch of different characters. Some chapters focus on Tomas de Torquemada, the dreaded head of the Inquisition in Spain. Kaplan doesn't judge him, which is great, but I still can't stand this historical figure. I really hope he got his comeuppance.

You also get to see the story through what happens to King Fernando, Queen Ysabel (it's old spelling), Luis de Santangel's brother and son, Christopher Columbus and through Judith. It provides a complex tapestry life in Spain during the Reconquista. With this technique, Kaplan made this sad story much easier to endure.

Now, you don't pick up a book about this time period without expecting bad things to happen to the main characters. Unless it's a romance novel, although I can't think of a more inappropriate time period to set a trashy novel in than medieval Spain. Kaplan gives a well written story with minimal glitches. (I can't imagine that Fernando of Aragon knew in the late 1480s that his daughter Juana would be the one to take the throne.)

Worth checking out, but not if you are depressed.

Next up: The Last Rendezvous, by Anne Plantagenet. Started this one this morning. Not sure if I'll finish it, but I'll give it one more commute before I make up my mind. If I can't get into it, I'll start The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg. I've read three of her books and have loved them all, so I have high hopes for this one.