June Line Up

Okay, they say better late than never, right? Apologies for getting this post up after June has already begun but this month kind of crept up on me. When June comes around I usually start anticipating what I’m going to be reading over the summer. This year, I had a really hard time settling into what kind of books I felt like reading so I picked up a few with the idea that I would read a chapter or two and then make up my mind. It resulted it me reading five books at once, which is something I never do. Because I am rotating between books, the theme for this month is In No Particular Order. As I finish each book, I will post about it.

gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson: This is the first audio book in my reading challenge (which is why it’s not in the picture). It’s another novel set in the South. The story follows the main character, Lena as she returns to her hometown in Alabama for the first time since she left it ten years before. The novel is contemporary fiction and mixes mystery with family drama. Listening to it adds an extra element of fun because the narrator has an Alabama accent so it really helps to capture the sense of place in a way that reading it in my head probably wouldn’t.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza: If you are keeping score at home, I was supposed to have read this book in May, that didn’t quite work out but I am enjoying it so far. It’s a fairly long novel and I don’t want to rush through it. Some books are page turners and some are meant to be savoured. I promise though – I will finish it this month.

The Wonderling by Mira Bartok: This is a middle grade novel. I confess to reading young adult and middle grade fiction on a fairly regular basis. There are a lot of great books written in these genres that I think adults pass over because they are marketed as being for younger audiences. The Wonderling is set in a world where there are humans and groundlings – characters that are hybrids of humans and animals or animals and animals. The story begins with Number 13, a groundling who has lived his whole life at the Home for Wayward and Misbegotten Creatures. Number 13 manages to escape, and then sets off to find what happened to his real family. And so far, it’s good.

Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan: I just learned about Kelly Corrigan recently. She writes memoirs but this is a collection of essays based on the twelve hardest things that Corrigan has learned to say. Things like, onward, and I was wrong, and I don’t know. She approaches each phrase with the stories from her own life that taught her the importance of having to say things even when you struggle for the words. She writes about her experiences in ways that are funny and heart-breaking on the same page. The essays are short enough that you can easily read one in a single sitting. Between Corrigan and Sedaris, I may be a convert to essays as a genre.

Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: I recently learned that compared to other parts of the world, North Americans read very few translated works. It made me wonder what kinds of things people were writing in other languages, and then I had a crippling case of FOMO (fear of missing out). I’ve started to look for more works in translation lately and this one caught my eye because of the title. It’s originally written in Polish and the main character, Janina, is an elderly woman living in a remote Polish village. When bodies start turning up, Janina is sure she knows who did it but no one will listen to her because of her reputation as cranky and maybe a little crazy. This is the first Tokarczuk novel I have ever read, but according to Google, she is a very big deal on the international writing scene.

So this is me for the month of June. If you have any recommendations for some great summer reads, I’d love to hear them! Until next time, happy reading!

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson: A Review

“‘Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space … You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias'” – Joshilyn Jackson, The Almost Sisters

I have never been to the South (unless you count Florida, and I’m pretty sure Southerners don’t) but I have always loved stories set there. Like in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe or The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the South feels more like a character than a setting in Jackson’s novel; it’s hard to imagine the events unfolding as they do anyplace else. The Almost Sisters takes place mainly in the tiny town of Birchville, Alabama – named after the Birch family. The last remaining Birch in Birchville is Leia’s beloved grandmother. When the novel opens, Leia is confronted with several family crises all at once: she finds out she is pregnant and the father is an anonymous Batman she slept with after a drunken encounter at a Comicon, her step-sister Rachel’s marriage has just fallen apart, and then she gets the call to go to Alabama to look after her grandmother, Birchie. Birchie has been hiding her progressing dementia from Leia and it has just outed itself in a very public – and scandalous – way at the local Baptist church’s Summer Fish Fry.

This book is contemporary fiction and I want to say it would make a great summer read, but not in a way that implies it is a marshmallow book by any means. Leia’s return to Birchville unearths family secrets and explores family dynamics in ways that keep the plot moving. It is alternately funny and moving by turns. One of the most poignant moments is when Leia comes face-to-face with the racism that she equates with what she calls ‘the Second South’ – one that white Southerners are aware of, but can never truly experience. Leia’s unborn child is biracial and she has to come to terms with the idea that he could never grow up in Birchville the same way she did as a child because his skin colour would make it impossible.

There are several plot lines that weave together in this novel. Birchie and her best friend Wattie are fighting to maintain their independence, Rachel is trying to pick up the pieces after her husband betrays her and Leia is trying to construct a future for her baby while meeting the deadline for the comic book she has been commissioned to write. Through these women, Jackson is exploring how we create families and how those families shape our own identities, but she does it in a way that is really accessible and keeps you turning the pages. The novel isn’t heavy-handed but Leia is a smart, interesting character and Jackson’s writing keeps the story from becoming sappy or sentimental.

If anyone has read gods in Alabama, another of Jackson’s novels, I would love to hear what you think. And if you are an audio book lover, Jackson is a former actor, and reads her novels herself on audio. I haven’t listened myself but I’ve heard she does a great job.

That wraps it up for this week. Until next time, happy reading!

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: A Review

“Besides, what would be left of love without truth stretched beyond its limits, without those better versions of ourselves that we present as the only ones that exist?”
― Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Stay With Me

Adébáyọ̀’s novel opens with a premise few North Americans could imagine: Yejide’s family has come to present her with her husband’s second wife – a woman and a marriage that Yejide knew nothing about until this woman showed up in her living room.

Yejide and her husband, Akin, married for love. They were professionally successful and happy in their relationship. But four years into their marriage, Yejide has not borne any children. Presuming her barren (despite medical tests to the contrary) Yejide and Akin’s families conspire to marry him to another woman. In Nigeria in the 1980s, where the novel is set, polygamy was no longer the norm but it was also not unheard of. It is amid this cultural context that Adébáyọ̀ begins a story that will go back and forth over the decades of Yejide and Akin’s relationship to examine the price that people will pay for love.

Before I started this novel, I assumed it would center around the introduction of a second wife and how that impacted Yejide and Akin’s marriage, but the book is about so much more than that. (If you are looking for a novelization of Big Love or Sister Wives, you have come to the wrong place.) The couple is committed to saving their marriage but the pressures put on them by their families and their society drive them to increasingly desperate acts that eventually warp and twist their relationship out of all recognition. Most affected is Yejide, who is blamed for the couple’s barrenness and manipulated by people she believed cared about her and her well-being. Neither spouse is blameless in the events that unfold and Adébáyọ̀ is careful to make their reasoning understandable, even as they make choices that are difficult to defend. It’s an emotionally powerful novel that could be compared to An American Marriage in the sense that the corruption of marriage in both books is used as a vehicle to critique society’s prejudices.

Ultimately, the Stay With Me asks difficult questions about how far we are willing to go for love. Often the characters make choices that they tell themselves out of love for another but are actually self-serving and at times cruel. It examines the role of the individual within family and asks how far an individual should be willing to reshape themselves for the sake of duty. Adébáyọ̀ also takes aim at particular aspects of Nigerian culture – especially as they apply to women and expectations of motherhood.

If you like Chimamanda Ngoza Adiche or Tayari Jones, Adébáyọ̀’s writing has a similar quality and her subject matter evokes that same unblinking intimacy between the reader and the characters.

Next week, we are off to Alabama! Until then, happy reading!

May Line Up

This month, the theme is Family Matters. I think family dynamics make for great reading and it’s interesting to read about situations that can be similar enough to your own to feel familiar yet different enough to make you feel like you’ve stepped into another life for a while. Regardless of how you define your family, it is often through these relationships that we learn to navigate our world and understand ourselves in relation to others. For May I have tried to choose works that explore notions of family in unexpected ways.

If you look at the list and it seems like I’ve added an extra weekend to May (I wish), I am trying to make up for lost time. There have been two weeks since I started this challenge that I didn’t make my reading goal, so I am going to add a book this month and next to get back on track (32 down … 20 more to go). Wish me luck.

May 4, 2019: Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Since discovering Chimamanda Adiche, I feel like my eyes have been opened to all this great fiction coming out of Nigeria. Recommended by one of my colleagues, Adebayo is a new author to me. The novel is set in Ilesa, Nigeria and follows the relationship of a couple who seem like they should be happy and secure in their marriage. Despite being deeply in love, Yejide and Akin are unable to have a child. The increasing pressure put on the couple to have a family begins to test the strength of the marriage. When Akin is coerced into taking a second wife, Yejide knows that she must get pregnant at any cost in order to save her marriage. Before picking up this book I hadn’t realized that polygamy used to be common practice in Nigeria; although it doesn’t seem to have had the same religious connection that it has in other cultures and I will admit that I am very curious about how it plays out on the page.

May 11, 2019: The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

Leia Birch Briggs is a comic book artist. She is also 38 and pregnant for the first time. The father is an anonymous Batman she met at a comi-con. Before Leia can tell her traditional Alabama family about her impending single-motherhood, her stepsister Rachel’s marriage falls apart. To add to the chaos, Leia’s beloved grandmother begins suffering from dementia and Leia must return home to help her put her affairs in order. Jackson’s writing sounds witty and has that wry sense of humour that I like with the added bonus of inter-generational family drama.

May 18, 2019: The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

Ona is 104 years old. Every Saturday morning, an eleven year old boy comes to help her out. As he goes about his chores, Ona finds herself telling him the story of her life including secrets she’s held on to for years. One morning, the boy doesn’t show up and Ona thinks perhaps he wasn’t the person she believed him to be. But then the boy’s father arrives, determined to finish his son’s work, and his mother isn’t far behind. I have a feeling this one is going to be a bit of a heart breaker…

May 25, 2019: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Despite hearing his name probably dozens of times, I’ve never read anything by David Sedaris. He’s a regular contributor to NPR’s This American Life (again, heard great things but I’ve never listened myself). In this collection of essays, he recounts stories from his own family that show the absurdity in the everyday. Sedaris is one of the most renowned humour writers in America today so if you love to laugh, you might want to read along with this one.

May 31, 2019: A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza

A wedding is often a time for families to come together and it serves as the linchpin for Mirza’s debut novel. Hadia, the daughter of an Indian Muslim family, is getting married but as everyone gathers for the wedding, the focus is not on Hadia so much as her estranged younger brother, Amar, who is returning to the family fold for the first time in three years. The novel delves into the family’s tensions and secrets that drove a wedge between them as they struggle to try to find their way back to each other.

One of my favourite things about blogging about books is the conversations I get to have with other readers. I love hearing what others are reading. So now that you know what I’ll be reading for May, it’s your turn – what’s next in your TBR pile? Let me know if there is anything you think I should add to my summer reading list!

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: A Review

“How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”
― Stuart Turton, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

First of all I have to say, the whole time I was reading The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I was thinking, ‘Stuart Turton is so much smarter than me.’ In this novel, Turton surprised me again and again with the ways he was able to weave a very intricate and intelligent story line into compulsively readable fiction. I love books with interesting narrative structures and I’ve never really read a book like this before. I will try very hard not to reveal anything about the plot that you couldn’t glean from the dust jacket but this book is so page-turning that I just want to shove it into everyone’s hands and say: “read this next!” Turton is able to take genres that feel really familiar and combine them in ways that make his novel fresh and unique. There are big twists in the plot but they never feel gimmicky or unnecessary. There are a lot of lose threads in the story and when they are brought together at the end it just made me sit back and marvel at how Turton was able to do that.

So, no spoilers but how is this for an opening: you suddenly find yourself in the woods with no idea how you got there or who you are. The only thing you think you know for sure is that there are two other people in the forest – a woman named Anna and someone who is trying to kill her. You are terrified and lost. And then the murderer gives you the means to find your way out of the woods and back to the manor house where you are staying. That night, the daughter of the house, Evelyn Hardcastle, will be killed during a lavish party. You have to figure out who her killer is. And you will wake up every day and live the events leading up to Evelyn’s murder over and over until you know who did it.

What made The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle so interesting is that Turton moves it beyond a genre-bending murder mystery. As the main character, Aiden, is forced to live the same day again and again, the novel really makes the reader start to question the forces that shape our lives and actions: how much is down to our nature? Can we change or are we following prescribed paths laid out by fate? How far can we trust other people and to what extent should we rely only on ourselves?

I love when a novel can manage to feel suspenseful and smart all at once. Seven Deaths is certainly one I would recommend, especially if like me, you love mysteries and old manor houses and books that take you by surprise. Until next week, happy reading everybody!

The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick: A Review

“Sometimes there’s no right decision. Just the one you make at the time.” – Phaedra Patrick, The Library of Lost and Found

Martha Storm, the lead character in The Library of Lost and Found, is a bit lost herself. She gave up a life of her own to look after her ailing parents and after their deaths, she fills her time by helping out others in any way she can. Her house has become overcrowded with projects she has taken on for others and she is repeatedly overlooked at the one thing she loves – her volunteer position at the local library. One night, someone leaves a mysterious book for Martha outside the library. It appears to be written by her beloved grandmother, but was published years after her grandmother supposedly died. Martha sets out to unravel the mystery of the book’s publication and along the way makes unexpected friends and uncovers many family secrets.

Moving between Martha’s present and her childhood, the story reveals the ways that her life has been shaped by her sense of duty to her family. Discovering her grandmother’s book serves as an awakening to Martha who has become a doormat to almost everyone in her life. Her attempts to understand what happened to her grandmother bring her face-to-face with aspects of her family she was completely unaware of and force her to question her relationships and her sense of self. This novel would likely make a good summer read because it’s not too heavy and it has a sense of charm about it but it follows a lot of the tropes of so many contemporary novels where the quirky main character experiences a series of unlikely events and makes equally quirky friends. It’s a pleasant story but not particularly original. I would have liked Patrick to develop the backstories of her secondary characters further to develop more depth and interest. I think I was hoping for a story that was either more laugh-out-loud funny or heart-wrenching but in the end, the novel doesn’t really deliver either. It’s cozy and sweet but not the kind of book that will stick with you years from now.

If you’ve read anything by Phaedra Patrick, drop me a line and let me know what you thought. Until next time, happy reading!

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny: A Review

“Not everything needed to be brought into the light, he knew. Not every truth needed to be told. And he knew she was right. He’d seen their faces as she’d fled. She’d said too much. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t see it, but he knew something foul had just come to light, come to life.” – Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder

When I referred to Penny’s novels as ‘cozy’ mysteries back in the April Line Up post, I didn’t realize that was an actual thing. Cozy mysteries are apparently mystery stories that are not too graphic or too dark, which is an apt description for this series. The main character is Inspector Gamache; head of the homicide team for the Surete du Quebec, Gamache is intelligent and a refined. The novels are set primarily in Quebec, usually alternating between Montreal and the tiny village of Three Pines. While Penny certainly creates intricate plots, her writing does not embrace many tropes of typical mystery series: there are lots of references to art and poetry and music in her books. The female characters are strong and savvy. But what I love most about Penny’s writing is the sense of atmosphere she is able to develop. There is a strong sense of place in her novels and she contextualizes the setting with smatterings of Quebec’s (and Canada’s) culture, history and politics without it overshadowing the story. These are the novels I come back to when I need a break and just want to settle in with characters who feel as familiar as friends.

A Rule Against Murder is set at a remote country manoir where Gamache and his wife are staying. The other guests are members of the Morrow family – wealthy, English and Québécois – all there for a reunion. The Morrows are a family fraught with malice and secrets and when one of them is murdered, it brings to the surface things that have been hidden for years. The murder and subsequent investigation play out in ways that keep you guessing. One of Penny’s strengths is her ability to create characters that have depth and she uses this depth to add the intrigue in the plot.

I think that her writing really takes off after this book. While this is a good novel, the ones that come later in the series are stronger, in my opinion. I particularly like the later ones set in the village of Three Pines. If you like mysteries and haven’t picked up one of her novels, her fifth, The Brutal Telling might be a good place to start.

If you are reading something you love this spring, drop me a line and let me know. I love hearing other people talk about books they are passionate about. Until next week, happy reading!

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid: A Review

“No matter who you choose to go down the road with, you’re gonna get hurt. That’s just the nature of caring about someone. No matter who you love, they will break your heart along the way.” – Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six

Do I like 70s rock? No.

Do I really care about behind-the-band stories? No.

To be honest, I don’t even really like sex, drugs and rock’n’roll stories (and yes, I am aware of how square that sounds). So I wasn’t very confident that a novel about a 1970s stadium rock band would really be very appealing to me. But here is what surprised me:

Did I like Daisy Jones and the Six? Yes. Yes. Yes.

I read it in a day. Now granted, on this particular day I didn’t have to go to work but once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. The premise behind the novel follows two stories that eventually converge: Daisy Jones is the daughter of an artist and a model who are more interested in their work than they are in their daughter. She is stunningly beautiful, a natural talent and by her early teens, she is sneaking out to bars. She could have ended up a groupie, but her talent and desire to be a song-writer push her to take control of her own life. The Six is a rock band just starting out at the beginning of the book. They write and perform rock and dream of being the biggest band in the country. Eventually Daisy opens for them on tour, and then joins the band. At the height of their success, the band splits and no one ever knows why.

The book is written like an oral history where the band mates and others associated with Daisy and The Six are telling the story years later. Jenkins Reid’s writing style makes this a fast read but what I really like about it was how it allows for so much perspective. Each character is alone when they are being interviewed and then their stories are pieced together into more or less a chronology of the band’s rise and sudden end. Depending on which character is speaking, you get very different – and sometimes conflicting – takes on what happened. The feeling of a tell-all was so well developed that despite the fact that it clearly says, ‘a novel’ on the cover, I Googled it just to make sure that it wasn’t a real band.

Jenkin Reid includes a lot of details that will appeal to actual fans of 70s rock (like a all the lyrics of the band’s hit album Aurora at the back) but it is such a compelling story that you could know nothing about the music scene at the time and still really enjoy it. Jenkins Reid’s writing is so convincing of place and time and the story changes course in unexpected ways. The novel explores the nature of music and fame, the price of addiction and the power of relationships while still setting the story firmly in the 1970s music scene. It’s fun and smart which is a combination that I love. And while I won’t reveal the secret of why the band broke up – which Jenkins Reid makes you wait for until the very end – I will admit that I didn’t see it coming but found very satisfying.

Next week, a very different kind of mystery. Until then, happy reading!

April Line Up

This month’s theme is, ‘can you keep a secret?’ Each of the novels for April center around secrets. One of them is a mystery in the conventional sense, but the rest are novels where secrets drive the story in other ways. There is something delicious about a good secret and as a reader, I find it so compelling to try to unravel them. I hope some of these secrets appeal to you and you find something in this month’s line up to read along with me.

April 6, 2019: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’ve never read any novels by Taylor Jenkins Reid and I wasn’t too sure about this one – it’s set in the 1970s and follows a rock band as they make music and go on tour. No one knows why the group split after their last show in Chicago in 1979 at the height of their popularity but the secret is revealed over the course of the novel. I was on the fence about reading this one, but a new friend gave it the thumbs up so I decided to put it on the list for this month and happily borrowed her copy.

April 13, 2019: A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

Penny is a Canadian novelist and A Rule Against Murder is part of her Three Pines series (I think there are fourteen of them now). All of the novels are set in Quebec and I love them for the sense of atmosphere Penny creates and the cast of quirky characters that populate her fictional world of Three Pines. You don’t need to read the series in order, each mystery can stand alone although there are over-arching plots. In this one, family secrets lead to murder at a isolated Manior and Chief Inspector Gamache must solve the case.

April 20, 2019: The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick

I’m a sucker for a book about books, which is what first led me to pick up Patrick’s latest novel. If you are a book nerd like me, how is this for a story line? The main character is Martha Storm, an awkward but kindhearted librarian. One day, a mysterious book of fairy tales arrives on her doorstep and the dedication is written by her grandmother, Zelda, who died mysteriously years before. Martha comes to believe her grandmother may still be alive and starts to follow the clues that ultimately reveal family secrets.

April 27, 2019: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

At the end of the ball, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. But it doesn’t look like a murder, so the murderer doesn’t get caught. Until Aiden, one of the guests at the party, can solve the murder the day will repeat itself, over and over again and Evelyn will be killed each night. I really like it when authors take a genre you think you know and push its boundaries. This is Turton’s debut and I am really excited to see how this story unfolds.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite: A Review

“Ayoola summons me with these words—Korede, I killed him.”
― Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer

I think I suffer from a kind of genre fatigue. I can never read too much of the same kind of book without itching for something different. This doesn’t seem to affect me with fiction in general (which I read way more than non-fiction) but I can’t read a whole lot of mysteries, or a whole lot of historical fiction or whatever in a row without feeling like I need a break. To cleanse my palette, so to speak, with something different. So after several weeks of reading novels that involved a lot of heavy lifting thematically and emotionally, I was ready for something lighter. If it seems odd that I am describing a novel about a serial killer as “light”, let me explain…

My Sister, the Serial Killer is the debut novel of Nigerian writer Oyinkan Braithwaite. The main character is Korede, a practical, no-nonsense nurse who lives at home with her mother and younger sister, Ayoola. Ayoola is beautiful and talented. She works as a clothing designer, and because of her beauty, everything in life comes easily to her. Korede is in love with a doctor who works at her hospital and she has hopes that their friendship might turn into something more – until he meets Ayoola. You could be excused for thinking what I’ve described so far sounds like a classic love triangle with a healthy dose of sibling rivalry on the side. But there is one critical difference. Ayoola murders her boyfriends. This is not a spoiler because the novel opens with Korede helping her seemingly “perfect” sister dispose of a body … for the third time. And according to Korede’s research, three murders is what defines a serial killer. From the beginning of the book, Korede seems resigned to the fact that there is no help for Ayoola and ultimately has to ask herself how far she is willing to go to protect her little sister, even when she knows her sister is entirely in the wrong.

Ayoola’s stunning levels of self-interest mean that she is largely unconcerned with the greater moral implications of what she has done and Korede is left to wrestle with the guilt and worry in the wake of their actions. While Korede is trying to comes to terms with her decision to help Ayoola cover up her crimes, her sister is posting selfies on Instagram and lining up her next date. Korede’s frustrations with Ayoola and her jealousy of her have a darkly comic effect in the novel. Braithwaite plays with many conventions of so-called “chick lit” novels but then adds in this completely unexpected element of making Ayoola a serial killer. It doesn’t seem like it should be funny and yet it is.

This novel is a very fast read and I found it pretty entertaining. The best way I can describe it is to say, think Bridget Jones meets Dexter. If that makes any kind of sense to you and sounds appealing, it’s worth picking up. Korede is a really good character and while her sister’s actions are extreme, in many ways Braithwaite juxtaposes this with completely relatable family dynamics that make you feel like you know this family. Except, you know, the bits where the younger sister stabs her ex-boyfriends.

Tomorrow I will post April’s Line Up. Until then, happy reading!