January Books

Turns out, I've been doing a lot of reading. I can think of no better way to spend a cold winter month.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

Irina Galina illustrates children’s books and lives with Lawrence in happy, if not remarkable, domesticity. They go out to dinner with an author and her husband, Ramsey, and the two are immediately attracted to each other. It delves into what if...what if Irina had acted on the attraction to this man? Would she leave Lawrence? Would she and Ramsey be compatible? What if she didn’t?

The premise is that this woman, at a crossroads, lives both lives - she made a decision and the book follows her through the results of both in alternating chapters. Sounds confusing but it's really interesting. Who hasn't wanted to do that? Who hasn't wondered what might have been?


Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

I have a new favorite author and she is Sarah Addison Allen. Garden Spells is enchanting (In my first draft of this review, I used the word "enchanting" three times). Set in a small town in North Carolina, Garden Spells has liberal doses of magical realism. It’s about the Waverlys, who are outsiders in their small town. Their gardens have mystical powers and townspeople hire Claire to cater parties and order special wines and vinegars from her, albeit a bit grudgingly.


Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I read this book last year and really liked it. A lot. A whole, whole lot. I liked it slightly less this time but I’d still recommend and may well re-read it yet again.


The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen.

“Like the most decadently addictive bonbons, once started, Allen’s magically entrancing novel is impossible to put down.” —Booklist, starred review

Ditto.


Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore


This book had been on my to-be-read list for months. I came across it at the local bookstore, on sale, so I picked it up. It takes place in the early to mid 70s in a small southern town. The time period piqued my interest, as that’s when I was born, and the setting, of course, that was a keeper.

It was a pleasant little book. I read it quickly – in a day – so it must have been a good read.


The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry has a sort of dream like quality. Time goes this way and that and memories overlap AND THEN we come to the end. That’s all I can tell you about the ending without giving everything away but I didn’t even see it coming. I’ll be reading it again.

From Amazon.com: Brunonia Barry dreamt she saw a prophecy in a piece of lace, a vision so potent she spun it into a novel. The Lace Reader retains the strange magic of a vivid dream, though Barry's portrayal of modern-day Salem, Massachusetts--with its fascinating cast of eccentrics--is reportedly spot-on.

Some of its stranger residents include generations of Whitney women, with a gift for seeing the future in the lace they make. Towner Whitney, back to Salem from self-imposed exile on the West Coast, has plans for recuperation that evaporate with her great-aunt Eva's mysterious drowning. Fighting fear from a traumatic adolescence she can barely remember, Towner digs in for answers. But questions compound with the disappearance of a young woman under the thrall of a local fire-and-brimstone preacher, whose history of violence against Whitney women makes the situation personal for Towner. Her role in cop John Rafferty's investigation sparks a tentative romance. And as they scramble to avert disaster, the past that had slipped through the gaps in Towner's memory explodes into the present with a violence that capsizes her concept of truth. Readers will look back at the story in a new light, picking out the clues in this complex, lovely piece of work. -- Mari Malcolm


The Savage Garden by Mark Mills

An enigma inside a conundrum, or some sort. The last book I read by Mark Mills, Amgansett, I really, really liked, even if I can’t pronounce it.

Publishers Weekly says: “Two murders committed 400 years apart form the core of British author Mills's outstanding second novel (after Amagansett, which won a CWA Dagger Award). In 1958, Cambridge undergraduate Adam Strickland, who's studying a curious Tuscan Renaissance garden for his art history thesis, is equally intrigued by both the garden of the Villa Docci estate and its elderly owner, Signora Francesca Docci. Built by the villa's first owner, Federico Docci, in 1577, the garden was intended as a memorial to his wife, Flora, who died when she was only 25. In the course of his research, Adam begins to sense that events, both past and present, are not as clear-cut as they appear. In particular, he discovers that there are several versions of the death of Signora Docci's oldest son, Emilio, who was shot by the villa's German occupiers at the end of WWII. Adam is hailed by all when he comes up with a novel theory explaining Flora's death in 1548, but when he begins to speculate on Emilio's demise, he finds himself in serious danger. This engrossing literary novel, like Amagansett, deserves to be a bestseller.”

I found it a bit slow going in the beginning. It picked up speed and I really enjoyed it. I'll definitely read it again.


I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

You know how every once in a while you read a book that you hate coming to the end because you want to keep reading it? That's how this book. I don't know where I heard of it, I'm thinking from one of Nick Hornby's collections of book reviews, but I'm so glad it was on my to be read list. I loved it.

Amazon reviews: Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain wants to become a writer. Trouble is, she's the daughter of a once-famous author with a severe case of writer's block. Her family--beautiful sister Rose, brooding father James, ethereal stepmother Topaz--is barely scraping by in a crumbling English castle they leased when times were good. Now there's very little furniture, hardly any food, and just a few pages of notebook paper left to write on. Bravely making the best of things, Cassandra gets hold of a journal and begins her literary apprenticeship by refusing to face the facts. She writes, "I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic, two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud."

Rose longs for suitors and new tea dresses while Cassandra scorns romance: "I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them." But romantic isolation comes to an end both for the family and for Cassandra's heart when the wealthy, adventurous Cotton family takes over the nearby estate. Cassandra is a witty, pensive, observant heroine, just the right voice for chronicling the perilous cusp of adulthood. Some people have compared I Capture the Castle to the novels of Jane Austen, and it's just as well-plotted and witty. But the Mortmains are more bohemian--as much like the Addams Family as like any of Austen's characters. Dodie Smith, author of 101 Dalmations, wrote this novel in 1948. And though the story is set in the 1930s, it still feels fresh, and well deserves its reputation as a modern classic.

I marked several passages in the book so I could show you how great it is and then went off and left the book.


Favorite book of January: What a happy indecision - I don't know. Garden Spells was my first thought but then again, I Capture the Castle was outstanding, so much fun. Then, too, Post-Birthday World was excellent. I think I Capture the Castle by a nose.