Book Review: Longbourn by Jo Baker

As I was approaching the end of Pride and Prejudice, I remembered that this book was on my library shelf, and it seemed a natural choice to follow that one. It follows the story of Pride and Prejudice, but that story is mainly in the background, occasionally affecting the arc of this novel, sometimes more than others. Here, Sarah works with Mrs. Hill and young Polly (and Mr. Hill, the butler, but he is so old he isn't much help) as servants in the Bennet household. It is grueling, endless work, and every party or social event just means more of it. For the servants, the entail is also a looming threat, as it brings the possibility that they will lose their positions and be sent away, parted from each other.
Still, they keep working hard, hoping that their work will be rewarded with security.
When a young man, James Smith, joins them in their work as footman, this all changes. Without being asked and without expecting thanks, he takes on some of Sarah's work, like starting the kitchen fires in the morning and filling the water tank with buckets from the well in the yard. And of course, he takes care of the horses and all of the other heavy work that never seemed to get done before he came.
He will not often meet her eye or talk to her, and she is unwillingly intrigued. He hides secrets, she knows, and he is always so silent. And then she is distracted: Ptolemy Bingley, footman to Mr. Bingley, flirts outrageously with her, and even though Mrs. Hill disapproves, Sarah is just drawn to him, sneaking glances and conversations.
But he leaves when Mr. Bingley goes to London, perhaps never to return. And James remains. As Sarah begins to unravel his secrets, Wickham begins to spend more time with the Bennet family, and he shows up everywhere, in the kitchen and hallways, and it seems he is most drawn to young Polly. Sarah and James both do their best to draw her away, but she is almost like a moth to a flame, flattered by his attention, the pennies he presses into her hand, the promise of sweets.
You can see where the trouble lies: too many secrets, too much hidden, too much to lose. This novel continues several months after the close of Pride and Prejudice, and in its end, there is also joy, but I think it may be the joy in this book is even sweeter than the joy at the end of Pride and Prejudice because it is won through greater hardship and against much greater odds.
Is is a story of faithfulness, of love for the family we have through blood and the family we have because we have chosen them, a story of hardship and courage and desperate strength. Read it if you love Pride and Prejudice; it shines an interesting light on the characters and their story. But also read it if you have never read Pride and Prejudice; it is simply a starkly beautiful book.

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice

I recently ordered a t-shirt for myself (read: shamelessly falling prey to the advertising on Instagram) that features a reference to Pride and Prejudice. I figured that since I had spent the money (and convinced a fair number of my friends to order matching shirts), it was only right that I read the book another time.
For those of you who have never read Pride and Prejudice, I will offer this summary:
Elizabeth Bennet is the second of five daughters. Her mother claims that it is her only aim to see each of her daughters married and married well, and then she can happily withdraw into the background, spending the rest of her days quietly at home. The reader safely assumes that while she does certainly want to see her daughters married, she will spend the rest of her days neither in quiet nor at home, for she craves attention and merriment as much as her flighty, vain youngest daughter, Lydia. Elizabeth's father does nothing to check the willfulness of his younger daughters or the imprudence of his wife, preferring instead to stay isolated in his library or watch their mishaps with a chuckle and shake of his head. Elizabeth's older sister, Jane, is lovely and gentle and sees only the good in everyone. She is Lizzy's only consolation.
The book begins with Mrs Bennet excitedly announcing to her husband that a rich young man has taken tenancy of a grand house nearby, and he is unmarried, so this can only mean that he is hoping to find a wife, and she wants one of her daughters to be that lucky one. She pressures her husband to meet him so that they can begin regular visits, and she pushes her daughters on him, focusing most of her praise on her lovely oldest, Jane.
Mr Bingley is kind and polite, and of course he is interested in Jane, but his sisters are condescending, and his friend, the even richer Mr Darcy, is even more so. Mr Darcy is assumed by most of the people at the first party to be proud, rude, and unfriendly. Even though he is much richer than Mr Bingley, they cannot like him because he is so aloof. Even Lizzy, the heroine, dislikes him after he snubs her.
Events continue, relationships grow and wane, and Lizzy realizes that she was mistaken about many things, including Mr Darcy's true character and her own feelings. It ends happily and everyone gets what they deserve, for the most part, so that is rewarding.
But the rewarding thing about the novel, in my opinion, is the sneaky humor found in the words and actions so many of the characters. The pompous ones are the best source for humor, in my opinion, characters like Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Burgh. In one memorable scene, Lady Catherine talks about music at length while watching Lizzy play the piano. She claims that she is one of the most talented musicians in all of England...or she would have been, if she had ever learned to play. Seriously? How could Lizzy keep a straight face and keep playing? I couldn't.
Also, although they can be annoying, Mr and Mrs Bennet have their moments. She is just so, so clueless and he is so, so gently cruel to her--and she doesn't ever know. Ever. She just lets it slide past.
And of course, there is the romance of Lizzy and Mr. Darcy. All of us who shelter a romantic heart love to watch as they slide further into love without realizing it, we agonize over their mistakes and hasty words, and we rejoice when they finally get to voice their true feelings.
I enjoyed reading the book again and finding the "headstrong, obstinate girl" line that is featured on my new shirt. I have to say I don't love this Austen novel as much as I love Emma. I can't articulate quite why at this point. I think it has something to do with the sensitivity behind the humor in Emma and the more harmonious family relationships there. I have come to really have problems with Mr and Mrs Bennet, even though they make me laugh sometimes. I just can't enjoy reading about the trouble they create by not doing anything.
Anyway, read this book if you haven't...or haven't in awhile. Watch one of the film adaptations when you finish and see what the director got right.

Book Review: The Shadow of the Wind

This atmospheric book is set in dark days in Barcelona, primarily in the years during the Civil War (1936-1939) World War II (1939-1945) and the decade following. It begins with young Daniel Sempere, who on his eleventh birthday is taken by his widowed father to a very special place, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where the elderly caretaker, Isaac Montfort, unlocks complicated locks and opens a heavy door to admit the two into a labyrinth of hallways, spiraling staircases, and thousands of shelves full of books. Isaac tells young Daniel he may choose one book to take from the library, and it will be his life's responsibility to care for it and tell others about it, for this place is the place where books the world has forgotten are left to wait for the right reader to bring them back to life by reading them and talking about them.

Both Daniel's father, the owner of a secondhand bookshop, and Isaac are taken aback when they read the dusty spine of the book Daniel chooses: The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. They trade a glance and nod without speaking as he hugs the book to his chest and leaves. 

This book and the mystery surrounding its author takes Daniel on a dangerous journey into the past, where he learns that some secrets need to be buried and, in the words of Nuria Montfort, "there are worse prisons than words." While Daniel grows up and learns the truth about love and friendship, he digs more deeply into Carax's past, uncovering long-buried secrets about his family, his love and friendships, and his passions. Characters drift in and out of the narrative, offering Daniel clues and further mysteries. Sometimes, one of the characters he meets will launch into a narrative, drawing the focus for the story back into the dusty past with such clarity that there were times I forgot whose story I was following, and it was a very satisfying sort of forgetting.

This novel is beautiful and dark and sad. There are some flashes of bright humor, mostly due to the preposterous character Fermin Romero de Torres, a con man, a ladies' man, a smooth talker, and a man wanted by the notoriously cruel and diabolical Chief Inspector Javier Fumero, who stalks in and out of the story, variously hunting Daniel, his friends, and Carax himself. We find that Daniel's life has some interesting parallels to Carax's life, and that they are both haunted in similar ways. 

There are some moments that are sad, some gruesome, some hopeful, some despairing, some frightening. If you want a window into these desperate days in mid-twentieth century Barcelona, if you like a mystery, if you appreciate beautiful character development, if you are not afraid of some darkness, read this book. Also, note that Zafon has written a handful of other books, each of which features the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and there is some slight overlap of characters as well, which I always appreciate.

I will leave you with these lines from one of the last pages of the book: "Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."
Let us pray that Bea is wrong in her prediction...and prove her wrong by continuing to read good books and read them well. 

Book Review: Two Books by Julia Stuart

Sometimes I enjoy reading multiple books by an author back to back to immerse myself in his or her style. It makes me feel like an insider to recognize syntax patterns, common themes and tropes, commonalities when it comes to figurative language. This week, I read two books by Julia Stuart, a journalist who has--sadly for the book-loving world--only published three novels so far. (Oh wait! I just checked...four! Time for another online book purchase, honey!) I have read these novels (the three I knew about, that is) many times and enjoyed them for their wit, their phenomenal character development, and their celebration of the beautiful value of life in both its high and low moments. 

Review: The Matchmaker of Perigord

Guillaume Ladoucette has been a barber in his home village of Amour-sur-Belle in southwestern France for all of his life. Even as a toddler, he showed a genius for trimming, pulling his mother's scissors from her mending basket and snipping away at the living room curtains, fashioning the fabric into an exact replica of the elaborate limbs and branches of walnut tree in the front yard. He loves barbering, finding delight in the art of making the hair on his neighbors' heads perfectly suit their personalities and head shapes. 

His perfect contentment, though, is attacked on two fronts: First, his neighbor's chicken (known as the infernal Violetta) keeps sneaking into his house and leaving feathers, droppings, peck marks, tracks, and eggs in the most obscene places, such as his butter dish, his clean laundry, and the seat of his favorite chair. He is both repulsed and terrified of her uncanny ability to break into his carefully chicken-proofed home. Secondly, he has noticed that his customers have begun to frequent scissor-wielding hands that are not his, sporting hairstyles that offend his sense of dignity and rightness. That, and many of his other customers have grown completely bald. 

Faced with what will soon be an empty barbershop, Guillaume decides to close that business and open up a new one: He will be the village matchmaker, even though he has never told the woman he loves that he loves her, quietly continuing to read the letter she sent him 26 years before and carefully oiling the hunting knife she left in his possession--but unable to communicate his own feelings.

The book follows Guillaume's earnest but unsuccessful attempts to match up the wildly odd inhabitants of his village: a fastidious dentist, a soulful baker, an ambulant fishmonger, a greedy grocer, a beautiful midwife, a postman who can't hold his bladder, and many others. 

It is just pure fun, and I love love love reading it and chuckling about the antics of the characters. Also, Stuart mentions their food and drink often, detailing the dishes of the French countryside in a way that makes me start hunting up my passport and packing my bags while I think I'm still reading. If you enjoy humor, wit, good food and drink, and fantastic character development--along with a tale of steadfast true love, you will enjoy this book.

Review: The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise
In this novel, Balthazar Jones, Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London, is given the task of preparing the Tower to accept a menagerie of animals that have been given to the queen by various foreign governments. Apparently, the Tower was once the royal menagerie, but then the animals were moved to the London Zoo when it opened. But the zoo had become too crowded, and the queen thought animals at the Tower would draw more visitors there.
Balthazar is skeptical of this plan, especially when the agent informs him that the main reason he has been chosen to prepare for the animals' arrival is that he is the owner of the world's oldest tortoise, Mrs. Cook, who is 108 years old and is, according to the stories, the daughter of a tortoise captured by the famous Captain Cook himself. Balthazar recognizes that this is a doubtful qualification, but he is not one to shirk the command of his monarch.
Balthazar sighs, shrugs, and does what he is asked, but his heart is not in this job, and it hasn't been since the terrible day four years before when his beloved son, Milo, died. Balthazar and his wife, Hebe, have been living as strangers since that day, neither able to talk about it or grieve together, both still wrapped in their shock and the emptiness of loneliness. She goes to her job each day at the London Underground's Lost and Found counter, where she and her co-worker, Valerie Jennings, accept and safeguard lost items, hoping the owners will turn up asking for them. They also spend their time trying to hunt down the owners of the more important, interesting items. Balthazar goes about his job, keeping tiny glass bottles in his pockets, in which he collects rainwater, having learned to identify by smell each different type of rain.
The animals do come to the zoo, eventually. (That is, most of them do: The penguins get lost along the way and have an adventure of their own.) And many of the tower's Yeoman Warders and other residents develop attachments to various animals, delighting in watching them eat and sleep and interact. But while Balthazar grows attached to the animals in his care, he loses his connection to Hebe, for she cannot understand why he hasn't yet wept for Milo.
This book is just beautiful. Even though it is so, so sad to witness the devastation of Balthazar and Hebe's loss, there still beauty in the way they remember their son and the love they had--and still have--for each other. Along the way, the book is also jammed with other delights, with history about the tower and--more memorably--excellent characters, like the priest who designs and builds elaborate devices to rid the chapel of the devious rats that nibble the vestments (and who also has secretly written award-winning erotic novels under a pseudonym, even though he cannot find the courage to tell the woman he loves how he feels) and Valerie Jennings, who works with Hebe and loves to try on the costumes and hats left on the subway, quietly falling in love with the tattooed former sailor who brings far too many things to the lost and found counter.
Read this book if you like to smile around a lump in your throat, if you like English history and natural history, if you love reading about characters who are quirky and full of life, with stories to tell and hearts that yearn for love.

Book Review: The Bird King

Andalusia, 1491. A band of soldiers and a novice nun with Inquisitorial authority come to the court of the sultan to offer terms, for it is the Reconquista and Ferdinand and Isabella want a Spain that is wholly Catholic.
Fatima, the sultan's favorite concubine, soon realizes that if these soldiers--and especially this nun, Luz--fully understand the ability of Hassan, the sultan's mapmaker and her best friend, he will be caught and tortured as a sorcerer. For Hassan does not simply make maps; he can make perfectly accurate maps of places he's never been. And even more interesting, he can make maps of places that don't exist...and then, once he has drawn them, they do. (And if someone destroys the map, the place disappears.)
Of course, Luz finds out about Hassan, and it is partly Fatima's fault, for she trusts Luz, who seems so kind and curious at first. When Fatima learns the sultan has agreed to give up Hassan to guarantee the safety of everyone else, Fa runs to Hassan to warn him--just in time.
Hassan draws a trap door in his room and they flee through it (destroying the map showing the trap door as soon as they're through, of course). They do get away, but not without peril or help. A djinn or two, a queen with mysteries behind her eyes, a fisher-monk, a horse named Stupid--all help the friends in some way.
When they reach the sea, Hassan and Fatima realize they don't know where to go. They only wanted to get away, and now that they have, they are lost. So, Hassan draws a beautiful sea chart, showing an island called Qaf, home of the King of Birds, a mythical place they have told each other stories about for years, a game they have played to keep boredom at bay. But, if Hassan draws the map, the place exists. They hope.
Even thought they don't know how to sail, they steal a boat and set out. The way isn't easy, and their pursuit isn't over till the very last page, but Hassan and Fa do find their Qaf and the King of Birds (kind of, but not exactly as they expected) and a somewhat happy ending.

Book Review: The City of Brass

Streetwise Nahri has used her wits to survive on the streets of early eighteenth-century Cairo for all of her life, wanting nothing more than to save up enough money (which she gains mainly through fleecing rich people out of money she figures they don't really need) to move to Istanbul to study real medicine. She doesn't think too much about her inexplicable abilities--that she can fluently speak and understand any language after hearing it just once, that she can sense another's illness and, often, heal it by laying her hands on the spot and thinking intently--and she dismisses the warnings of her only real friend, a Jewish apothecary, that holding a zar--an exorcism--is just not a good idea.
Nahri does it anyway, and after singing songs in every language she can think of to coax the evil spirit out of the girl, she sings a song in a language she has known all her life--but has never heard anyone speak. As she finishes the song, something feels different, and she hears a very angry voice in her head.
But the voice goes silent, and she's so busy collecting her fees that she ignores her uneasy feelings, successfully squashing them until much later, when she leaves a tea house and takes a shortcut home through a sprawling cemetery on the outskirts of the city. There, the angry voice that spoke in her head takes form...out of smoke and ash. She has summoned a djinn with her song, and he is very, very angry about it.
They don't have much time to argue, though, because other spirits Nahri would have said were just fairy tales and ghost stories begin to arrive, and they seem intent only on killing Nahri and the djinn. An ifrit and a whole host of ghouls launch their attack, and Nahri's djinn sends her to find a carpet in a new-looking mausoleum. She does, not even thinking much about why because she's so frantically worried about evading the claws of the hungry. After finding the carpet and fighting off a few ghouls, she drags the carpet outside, where the djinn stands surrounded by very dead ghouls, and she passes out.
She wakes to realize they are miles from Cairo, for the djinn has magicked the carpet. She learns his name is Dara, and he is taking her to Daevabad, the capital city of the daevas, or djinn. Dara is full of mysteries and secrets (and is also, of course, incredibly handsome and arrogant and a marvelous fighter and pretty prejudiced against humans--which makes sense since he has spent the last 1,400 years enslaved to some very awful human beings). Nahri has secrets of her own, and perhaps the biggest one is a secret she has yet to uncover--her own past and origins. For Dara assumes she must have djinn blood of her own, even though she looks fully human, since she can heal herself and others and speak languages so easily. He believes she might be the only survivor of a race of daevas, the Nahid, that were his people's great healers and his own race's patrons, those he swore his life to serve and protect, but that seems impossible because the last two Nahid were brutally murdered about twenty years before.
So, they head to Daevabad, but there are problems brewing there as well, problems Dara knows nothing about, as he's been essentially "lost" as a slave to humans for 1,400 years. They plunge right into the midst of this trouble, causing ripples and currents that threaten to destroy the whole kingdom. Dara has to confront the demons of his past, coming to grips with the horrible things he once did at the demand of the Nahids, still not sure exactly how he was brought back from his slave state and whether he is even fully alive (he doesn't actually breathe or bleed). Nahri has to come to terms with who she is and who she wants to be, figuring out whether she fits in this world she never imagined existed. And the other daevas, including the royal family, are shaken/delighted/outraged by the return of Dara and the appearance of Nahri, as all of their plans are called into question.

This is a great book with a setting I haven't read much about, so I definitely enjoyed learning more about the mythology, culture, and traditions of this time and place. It's also the first book in a trilogy, so there are two more books to add to the world creation. I have read the second as well (and read this one a couple of times), but the third hasn't yet been published, so I am eager to complete the overall story arc once it comes out at the end of June.
The book alternates between Nahri's chapters and Ali's. Ali is the second son of the king of Daevabad. He is an idealist, a brilliant scholar and highly trained soldier, preparing to serve as the battle commander and chief protector of Muntadhir, his worldly older brother, when he is king. He is even more prejudiced than Dara, if that is possible, and he isn't prepared to like either of them. But he strikes up a close friendship with Nahri, and this friendship leads to all sorts of interesting consequences.
So far, it's a great series, and when I dug around on S.A. Chakraborty's website today, I learned that she's already working on something new that, according to the early review will be a mix of "Sinbad the Sailor and Ocean's 11." What's not to love there?

Book Review: Dune by Frank Herbert

I guess I had always classed Dune as a "boys' book" in my mind. I don't even know why. I wonder if I had heard something about the setting (desert planet and giant, voracious worms) and figured it wasn't for me. I was surprised a few years ago to hear my niece tell me she was reading it in her high school English class--and enjoying it. But I still wasn't ready then to start reading it myself. It wasn't till this time of quarantine--stuck at home with plenty of books (but all of which are books I've read at least once) (and a library closed for who knows how long) but looking for something new to read--that I read a review by a friend who works at a wonderful bookstore that I decided to give it a go. (By the way, that bookstore is Brilliant Books in Traverse City, MI, and it is a gem. For customer service, it gets a very high ten out of ten. Please, if you need to buy a book, contact them. They even ship for free.) Anyway, as I was saying. I ordered the book and waited eagerly for it to arrive. 

It did not disappoint, and I'm glad I followed my friend's recommendation. (Thanks, Jodie!) Here is my review:

After reading it, I can see why Dune has been compared to Lord of the Rings. It has a similar sense of scale in terms of universe creation. Herbert plunges the reader right into a universe where factions have arisen, plotted, and grappled for millennia. Multiple worlds, each rich in culture, myth, and ecosystem, feel fully real.

And in that brew, Paul Atreides, a young boy with emerging powers even he can't fully explain, feels bound to a purpose that terrifies him--a purpose that Herbert hints at but doesn't fully reveal for nearly half of the book. Paul's father, Duke Leto, has been promoted (?) by the emperor to reign over the desert planet of Arrakis, commonly known as Dune. Arrakis is a place where water is so precious, the natives--Fremen--wear stillsuits that capture and recycle ALL of their body's moisture (which is disgusting to imagine, so I tried not to). 

On this planet, spice is mined. Spice: a mind-altering drug, a means for interplanetary travel, and for prolonging life. It is the most precious commodity in their empire, I think, and the one who controls its mining and export controls a vast fortune. The problem: the desert world, already almost inhabitable because there is so little water, is also home to huge sand worms that have many-toothed mouths big enough to swallow a spice mining vessel (with hundreds of men on it) in one gulp. And also, the Fremen can be hostile.

Paul and his mother, Jessica, have heard intimations that Duke Leto is doomed to die, but there are wheels within wheels in this book and plots within plots within many, many more plots, and they cannot stop him from going. 

The inevitable betrayal and attack leave Duke Leto dead, Paul and Jessica alone in the desert, and Leto's other trusted retainers dead or captured or scattered. Paul and his mother end up joining the Fremen, where their Bene Gesserit training and abilities seem to fulfill ancient Fremen prophecies of a savior figure. While lots of other action unfolds, Paul grows, learns, and falls in love, but he is haunted by his premonitions of himself as leader of a coming bloodbath, determined not to bring this future to pass. 

I thought this book was remarkably rich in world-creation, as I mentioned earlier, full of mysticism, philosophy, and politics. I am eager to read more of this series and have found myself in the days since I finished it still rather immersed in Herbert's universe, even after setting the book down and picking up the next one.

It was interesting as well that Herbert was able to maintain suspense so well, even with his heavy use of third person omniscient point of view, with direct insight into the thoughts of most of the key characters, even the "bad guys." My only complaint--and it's a minor one--was the character of Paul himself. It irritated me sometimes that he chose to close himself off from everyone. Everything had to be done on his terms, in his time. Yes, he was brilliant and gifted, but why couldn't he ever unburden himself? Why not trust anyone with his doubts and fears? Even though he is definitely unlike--set above--the other characters, why can't he also see the commonalities they share?

Still, as I said, this is a minor complaint. The novel was very well written, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading this "boys' book." I look forward to reading the rest of the series.