Sarah Butler's "Ten Things I've Learnt About Love"

Alice is a bit of a mess. She’s a chronic runner—restless in school as a child, flitting from job to job, escaping to far off places when things get tough— Alice isn’t one to face life’s problems head on, or even in the same country.

Daniel is a wanderer. Some might call him a tramp, a vagabond, others a bum or vagrant, but Daniel is searching; walking the streets searching the faces of Londoners for a glimpse of the daughter he’s never met.

When Alice’s father’s health takes a turn for the worst she must return to the home she fled. Thrown back into the midst of family and relationship problems; seeking answers to her mother’s death over two decades before, her father’s seeming distance, and the complicated lives of her older sisters, Alice must find the strength to face not only the issues of her life, but her future.

An encounter between Daniel and Alice has the possibility of opening both of their eyes to a world that’s
beyond their private fears and lives.

Told in first person, with chapters alternating between the perspectives of both Daniel and Alice, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is a beautifully inventive story. Unfolding slowly, with only snippets of the past being revealed through both the narrative and top ten lists that appear at the beginning of each chapter, author Sarah Butler is able to take a small piece of a much larger story and make it seem whole and perfect. Her two main characters are infinitely flawed, but they are also endearing in their total humanness—failings and triumphs—as they meander their ways through life, both running in some way from the hurts that life can dole out. I loved how this novel is really just a glimpse into their life stories. The reader only gets pieces of the larger past, and to an extent, not everything is tied up neatly at the story’s conclusion, but nonetheless there is still a sense of satisfaction in what the reader does get from the narrators, and the eventual end, which signifies that while this part of the story has concluded, it is in fact not the end. As in reality; life goes on when a chapter closes, and anything is possible.

Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love is a wonderful glimpse at two lives. It shows how all of our choices have an impact somewhere and on someone, but that in the end they are our choices to make. It’s about love and its many incarnations; familial, paternal, romantic, friendly, and how it can change our lives in an infinite number of ways. A layered, well-written debut, I can’t recommend it enough for book clubs or those who enjoy an intimate look into the age old question “where do I belong”. If you read carefully, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love just might give you a lesson or two.


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The Never List

It’s eerie when you read a fictional book and then see the events pan out in real life, especially when the book you are reading is a thriller that involves the abduction, captivity and torture (physical and psychological) of young women, but that is exactly what happened not long after I finished Koethi Zan’s debut The Never List (out 7/16/13). By now everyone is well aware of the three women found in Cleveland, kidnapped as teens and held for ten years by a trio of brothers; a frightening and horrific thing no matter how you look at it*; which made the events that happen in The Never List, although fictional, that much more disturbing for the casual reader.

The basic plot of The Never List follows a young woman, who a decade ago escaped a man who held her and three other young women captive for several years. Sarah and Jennifer were college freshmen, hyper-aware of the dangers the world can offer—having survived a near fatal accident that took the life of Jennifer’s mother—and always prepared for any possible outcome; yet despite their manic preparedness the girls are kidnapped on a cab ride home from a college party. Held chained and naked in a basement, Sarah, along with two other girls, Tracy and Christine endure psychological and physical torture on par with the psychosis seen in Saw films, from a sadist of the highest ilk who also happens to be a professor of
Psychology at an Oregon University. All the while Jennifer is nowhere to be seen, stuffed in a coffin-like box, unable to communicate with the others. When Jennifer is presumed dead Sarah makes a daring escape, but ten years on, with the chance of their frighteningly brilliant captor facing the possibility of parole, Sarah and Tracy go on a quest to find answers and face their demons once and for all.

The narrative, while primarily in the now, does bounce around in time, with snippets of the girls’ abduction, captivity, and escape dribbled out through the text; giving just enough to whet the appetite and fill in the holes, but not enough to completely tell the reader all that happened during the girls imprisonment. The violence is surprisingly slim, but the hints and possibilities that are leaked through words and images are enough to have even the bravest of women white knuckled. In some ways The Never List is a form of psychological manipulation; exposing the horrors, highlighting the monsters, but not quite giving all the details, which leads to imagination, which leads readers to visualize horrors that no one wants dancing around their heads. In that way, the book and writing are brilliant, what better way to get the true impact of a psychological thriller than to leave the worst of it to the readers’ own bit of psychosis? Unfortunately, the plot itself suffers a bit from an overabundance of foreshadowing and clue leaving; which makes it a bit too easy to figure out. In writing suspense it’s good to leave a clue here and there, a reader should be able to reach the novel’s conclusion and then be able to look back and find the bits and pieces that were left like little breadcrumbs leading to the eventual outcome. The writer should not spell out the conclusion—it makes for a poor twist and a groan from the readers. Debut writer Zan does the latter, the twists and outcome are a little too predictable. Fortunately, the predictability of the plot and resolution does not detract from the well-developed tension of the heroine, and ultimate horror of the acts and lifestyle perpetrated by the villains of the novel. The sheer terror evoked by their deeds is enough to have readers gripping the edge of the book in a weird amalgamation of discomfort and curiosity, both repelled by the concepts and addicted to the possible outcomes. Because the author wisely leaves out the more ghastly details the reader is not subjected to an outright description of the atrocities, making the tension one of the mind, and not of the eyes—meaning it’s not like watching a film like Saw or Hostel that leaves nothing to the imagination, showing torture for the sake of showing gratuitous violence and nothing more—the book is not apt to make one squeamish, or deeply disturbed, if anything it makes readers subtly more aware of their surroundings and the people within them.

In all, The Never List is a worthy read for psychological suspense and thriller fans. It is well constructed, frightening, and at times close enough to reality to make a reader want to check the doors and avoid cab rides. Despite the plot loopholes and predictability, the book creates a wonderful sort of edge-of-the-seat tension that can consume a reader, and lurk about long after the last pages of text are a distant memory. For a first book Koethi Zan has proved herself adept at handling a very real and scary subject, she can only get better from here, and I for one am eager to see what she does next. A good book for fans of Gillian Flynn and Chevy Stevens.

*Please note that I am in no way trying to compare the real life atrocities faced by these kidnapped victims to fictional characters. I’m using this sad story as a point of reference, sadly truth is always much stranger and darker than fiction could ever be, and yet sometimes when they collide, on however small a scale, it reminds us what a frightening world our society can be.


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The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, now there’s a mouthful. I predict that this book title will be the most butchered title of the summer. It just might be up there with the like of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. That being said, this book has already been named a most anticipated book for Summer 2013 by The Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly, and it’s only fair to say that booksellers should get used to the different interpretations of this title that will be bandied about as the word spreads and book clubs tromp through the doors to get their hands on the new hot read.

Here’s the plot in brief:
It’s 1930; America is in the midst of the Great Depression, families are losing money, homes, and their lives. In the midst of the country’s turmoil sits 15-year-old Thea Atwell, the only daughter of a Florida doctor and his beautiful wife. Thea’s family is wealthy thanks to her mother’s citrus groves, and has led a sheltered, unstructured life, roaming her family’s fields on the back of her pony Sasi with her twin brother Sam at her side. When we meet Thea she is in the midst of familial banishment, shunted out to the mountains of North Carolina, so far and so drastically different than Florida, to The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, an elite boarding school for the daughters of the upper echelons. It is here, that Thea, banished from her family due to mysterious circumstances, must fit into the complicated social order that is an all-girls school, while dealing with her own issues of guilt, resentment, and abandonment toward her family.

I’ll start by saying that I was immediately immersed in this book. Told from an adult Thea’s perspective as she looks back at her life, is it easy to empathize with her teenage self; separated from her idyllic home and thrust into the competitive environment of other teen girls, mourning the lost connection with her twin with whom she has been inseparable, and suffering the shunning from her mother. As the story progresses and the reader learns more about Thea’s life and the probable reasons of her banishment that involve the only other teen she had contact with—her cousin George, the sympathy remains, along with a twinge of contempt for the naivety of her mother, and the willful blindness she displayed to the goings on. Author Anton DiSclafani know just how to pull the heart strings, with the right amount of angst and resentment and that cleverness perfectly sucks the reader into the story and firmly implants Thea as a solid, yet tragic hero. The brilliance of this writer is truly displayed in how she slowly and subtlety adds more to Thea’s character and backstory, throwing in little tastes of Thea’s less than perfect traits, stacking them up slowly, so that when the reasons behind the banishment are learned, the reader is so enmeshed in the world through seen through Thea’s eyes, that it becomes nearly impossible to condemn her actions. I say brilliance because the actions of Thea are really reprehensible when removed from the context of the narrative (actually, in my mind they are reprehensible period), and when the shameful reason behind her exile comes to the forefront the reader is still on her side. It’s like being caught up in the gaze of a hypnotist, difficult to breakaway, and in the case of Thea, even harder to condemn.

Having finished, and been given time to digest the plot and motives of its main character, I have come to a far different conclusion; Thea is not a victim—she made her choices willfully and defiantly, but she can be sympathized with to some extent as being a product of her time. Instead of being villains, the Atwell parents bring on their own destruction, both because of the era and the hardships of the Depression, but also because in separating their family from the world at large, they in a sense engineer their own demise. Yet, in the end, when looking back at all that Thea has wrought by her actions, it is clear how much of a path of destruction she left behind her. She is a product of the time—a girl, naïve in her approach to worldly things like sex, politics, money, and society in general, yet because of her isolated upbringing both she and her twin Sam were unable to blossom into fully formed moral human beings capable of becoming healthy members of the world. I’m philosophizing here, but Thea is an almost sociopathic blend of naivety and selfishness, it is her actions that set the ball rolling in a downward spiral, she needs to be punished, and yet in reality it is not Thea who is ultimately punished, it is the family that turned her away, incapable of moving on. Thea is hero and villain, her family the tragic remnants of a battle they didn’t even know had started, and it is they, not Thea who suffer the price. Thea is the champion in this narrative, winning the reader to her side, but upon further contemplation, she is a harbinger of destruction, both contemptible in her actions, but oddly amazing in her resilience, something her parents lack.

I’m torn. This book was phenomenally good. I really felt for Thea, I hoped her parents suffered for their abandonment, for choosing Sam over her. Ultimately, their eventual suffering, even though it stemmed from their own blindness and bad judgment, was so shattering that I can’t help but be frustrated. You love a character, skim over her sins, but when everything else is destroyed by her choices how can you enjoy the aftermath? I was enthralled by the first three quarters of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, and irritated by the last quarter because of Thea’s blasé attitude and seeming lack of awareness that she was the catalyst of all the misery. Maybe these feelings speak to the talent of the author and her compelling narrative. Perhaps they are a more accurate depiction of what happens when a child is denied socialization and accountability. Maybe if Thea’s parents dealt with the issue instead of just removing the elephant in the room, the outcome would have been different. Life is a series of what ifs; postulating on the parents mistakes, the role of society in that era, and Thea’s choices isn’t going to give me anything, but a headache, and it is this that speaks to Anton DiSclafani’s talent as a storyteller, she is making me think, there might even be a catharsis somewhere in there. A good storyteller charms you with the lore, a great one makes you deconstruct it and feel emotion, positive and negative, question it, revel in it. I might be ethically frustrated by the outcomes of this novel, but while reading it I was invested, and it is that investment, created by the mesmeric narrative, which makes it a book worth reading and discussing.


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"The River of No Return"

Fans of Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches rejoice—The River of No Return is here!

No, it’s not another book in the Witches series, and no it is not another book from Harkness herself. Instead, it is a debut novel written by another professor (Harkness is at USC); this time by a professor of English literature at Bryn Mawr College, Bee Ridgeway, and her story is 100% sure to grab your attention and devotion if you are a fan of Harkness.

The River of No Return (not to be confused with the Robert Mitchum/Marilyn Monroe film) follows the story of Nick Davenant, nee Lord Nicholas Falcott, a young man thrust through time during the heat of battle in 1813, landing in 2003 to discover he has a unique gift, one that allows for the manipulation of time. It is there that he is taken under the wing of the Guild, a group of powerful men and women with the same abilities as Nick. Ten years later, Nick is plunged through time once again, this time by the Guild, in order to investigate a terrible hole (called “the Pale”) that is threatening the future. Back in his own time Nick is reacquainted with his young love Julia Percy, a Lady with mysterious ties to time, the Guild, and the Guild’s enemies, and who may have the answer to everything.

There is obviously much more to the plot, it’s a fantasy that weaves between time and characters, building itself a rich history and background, laying the groundwork for future sequels. Much like it’s counterparts in fiction, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander and the Deborah Harkness books, The River of No Return has a plot that is intricately drawn and difficult to describe in detail without divulging too much of the plot (something that drives me crazy in reviews). Yet, unlike the books by Harkness, Ridgeway’s book is much more tightly edited, without the pages of droll description or meandering conversation about subjects that have no real bearing on the plot (wine and yoga in the case of Witches). The pacing is good, and only slows to a squeaking (not quite screeching) halt when the concept of “the River” and time are philosophized upon. The book is of course not without fault. Its characters are interesting, although with a few of them it is clear that the author is trying desperately to give them depth and mysterious undercurrents, but instead reduces them to over-dramatic and somewhat farcical creatures. The writing at times loses its crispness, not the plot mind you, but the writing—something that is more common with debuts, and is sure to be honed by the time the sequel arrives. Also, it does leave readers hanging; a plot device that, in this series driven world of entertainment, is something that seems as unavoidable as death, and yet is done in such a way that readers will not be prone to throwing their books across the room in frustration (yes, I’ve done this) because nothing has been resolved.

In all, The River of No Return is a wonderful read. It is fantasy, it is historical, it is romance, and it is intrigue— all those things that help to create a rich and entertaining narrative. If you love those genres, or are a fan of A Discovery of Witches, you will thoroughly enjoy Bee Ridgeway’s debut, and like me, be eagerly waiting on the next installment.
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Wonder

It’s like people you see sometimes, and you can’t imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it’s somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can’t talk. Only I know that I’m that person to other people, maybe to every single person in that whole auditorium.

To me, though, I’m just me. An ordinary kid. (Wonder, pg. 306)

Wonder is one of those remarkable books that manages to utterly captivate; it makes you grin, it makes you cry, and it, at times makes you a little angry (righteous anger to be sure, but anger none the less). A simple story about a boy with an extraordinary face, getting through his first year in a real school, Wonder is anything but ordinary.

Told in multiple narratives, readers get a glimpse into the life of a ten-year-old Auggie, disfigured from birth with extreme facial abnormalities, as he tries to maneuver his way through the harsh world that is middle school. Readers hear from Auggie, his family, and friends as they all struggle to deal with the everyday ups and downs of existence, while also dealing with the sometimes cruel realities of life for someone who is anything, but ordinary. In a time where more and more of the novels for kids and teens deal with dysfunctional families, teen angst, and substance abuse, Wonder is a breath a fresh air. The family, despite dealing with such a heart wrenching issue, is shockingly ordinary. The parents are married (to each other), they care about their children and actually spend quality time with them. The kids have the same issues as most kids do—fighting with friends, struggling through homework and school, dealing with the changes of getting older. This is an average family just doing their best to be happy. I love that for once, I can pick up a book that features a group of people put into one of the most extraordinary circumstances, and instead of imploding and turning on one another, they actually support each other and work together. It sounds sappy and Walton-esq, but it isn’t. They still have their problems, serious ones at that, it’s just the handling of it is a bit more real and relatable to the average reader.

I really can’t recommend this book enough. A book for all ages, Wonder is astonishing in its ability to capture so much in such a simple way. For such an unpretentious book is packs a lasting punch. It’s charming, funny, moving, and everything else you could ask for in a novel. A truly worthy read.


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Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea

In a departure from my current list of mysteries, dystopics, and paranormal fantasies, I took a breather and picked up Morgan Callan Rogers’ Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea, a smartly told coming of age story set in 1960’s Maine. The story follows young Florine Gilham as she comes to terms with the sudden disappearance of her mother and her own burgeoning womanhood. Told in Florine’s crisp Yankee dialect, the reader is given an intimate look at Florine’s internal struggles—from coping with the mysterious loss of her mother, to her father’s sudden relationship with another woman, to her efforts to understand the changes in her own body as she moves from a playful eleven-year-old girl to a headstrong eighteen-year-old woman.

This was one of those books that really captivates. It’s not so much the story, as there are many holes that are left unfilled and some scattered MacGuffins that almost detract from the ultimate point of the novel (Florine’s coming-of-age), but the character of Florine whose voice is so remarkably honest and fresh, that draws readers in. Florine is brilliant, flaws and all, as she maneuvers her way through the unexpected emotional hardships of her teen years. She’s blunt, yet also prone to sentimental and beautiful imaginings of her lost mother, as she tries to make sense of her changing world. In some ways Florine reminds me of characters from Southern fiction writers like Rebecca Welles, Beth Hoffman, and Fannie Flagg, in that while the voice maintains its Yankee-ness, the language of place and character takes on the spin and beauty similar to that of what is thought of as Southern Fiction. The small town feel and quirky characters almost feel as though they are hushed away in a small Georgia town just slightly on the wrong side of the tracks. Of course, that image lasts only in snippets as the lobster fisherman and dialect take you right back to Coastal Maine. It’s this sense of place and character that really wins readers over more so than the plot itself.

Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is a good novel, a nice snippet of life in a small northern coastal town, and a candidly told narrative of growing up and moving on. It was an enchanting rainy day read and a delight to sink into.





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The Night Circus

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 There has been much talk around my office on the proper way to describe Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus.Morgenstern herself has commented on her blog about the misrepresentations regarding her novel (someone, please tell the WSJ that it’s NOT Harry Potter). With reviewers glomming onto this stellar debut like booksellers to free books, I questioned my own attempts to discuss it in writing. Yet, despite the fact that I know I just cannot do it justice, I have found that I must make some effort to mention this novel, if only to get its title into the minds of my readers, so that they too can be transported by this magical tale.

I use the word magical, not because, as was mentioned previously, this novel is full of people performing magical tasks, although manipulation and illusion are a basis to the plot, but because the storytelling itself is magical in that it utterly bewitches the reader. It is easy to become enchanted by the characters and their stories, but easier so, to become enchanted by the writing itself. It’s quite simply compelling. Unfurling itself layer by layer, a labyrinth of a tale that one must wander through, much like the characters must wander through the circus discovering new tents and delights with every turn—never fully capable of exploring every crook and cranny no matter how many times they visit.

I hesitate to describe the plot, I can’t do it justice, I can only say that at this base of this novel are a man and women, bound together in a competition. The circus, Le Cirque des Rêves, is the venue. The rules are unclear, the outcome unknown, but their actions will set the course for the impossible to happen. The circus is not just a location or thing; it is a full-blown character, wholly fleshed, a living breathing intricate part of this novel. All things are possible in the world of Le Cirque des Rêves and thus, for the reader of the The Night Circus, the possibilities of this novel and the places it can transport are limitless. The human characters are just as gripping, their stories intricately entwined with the circus and the battle in which they have been caught. These people live and breath for the reader, their actions mysterious, yet oddly familiar by the novel’s close. Morgenstern creates them so that in the end the possibilities for their futures are infinite.

I can say no more, I don’t have the skill, not for such a complex, yet dream-like feat of imagination. I can only praise an author who has made me want to revel in the depths of her pages, visiting them again and again, never tiring of the familiar or ceasing to be amazed by newly revealed treasures. This is a novel whose secrets and hidden depths will never run out. I leave readers then with this quote from the novel; it far better explains the spellbinding qualities and enormity of The Night Circus, as Friedrick Thiessen, describes the captivating allure of Le Cirque des Rêves.

“I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless if time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will. 
“When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn’t it?”

            (The Night Circus, Part V, Divination)

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Before I Go to Sleep: A Review

Before I Go to Sleep
By S.J. Watson

The subject of memory, or the lack there of, is the premise of this debut psychological suspense. Christine wakes up every morning shocked by her surroundings. Sometimes she is a small child, at others a twenty-something university student, but never is she the middle-aged woman that appears in the mirror. Christine suffers from a form of amnesia slightly similar to that made famous in the film Memento; every time she falls asleep she loses her memories; an affliction that has haunted her (although she does not know it) for twenty years. Her life and memories rest within the hands of her husband Ben, a man she has no memory of.

We are all liars. We change the past in our minds to save ourselves the pain and humiliation of past deeds and events. We alter the good and make it better to heighten our sense of euphoria. We dampen the bad on occasion, but sometimes we blow it up, making it far worse than it was in reality. We are the masters of our own minds, memories, and thoughts—at least we think we are, but sometimes we are fooled by our own psyches, tricked into believing the fantasies we’ve created, and never able to draw the truth from beneath the layers of deceits and half truths we have fed ourselves. This concept is one, which makes the premise of Before I Go to Sleep so compelling. Christine cannot discern what her truths are, she has no memory, only brief snippets from her life, rarely the same each day, to guide her. When she begins, at the behest of her doctor, to record her thoughts and snippets of remembrance in a journal, the question for both her and the reader becomes, “how much can you trust yourself not to manipulate the truth”.

As Christine, with the aid of her journal, begins to “remember” more she must choose who she can trust—herself, her friend, husband, or doctor—because she has remembered something and someone is willing to kill her to ensure her memory never awakens again.

The thrill of this novel is that the reader only ever knows as much as the narrator. Christine’s life unfolds for us as the pages of her journal, Watson keeps us just as much in the dark confusing world of Christine’s memories as he does with Christine herself. I do have to say that I figured a few elements out rather early, but Watson did enough misleading, to lead me on a few different paths, none of which were remotely close to the final outcome. Watson weaves an interesting tale, he deftly handles the horror of Christine’s situation, sucking the reader into her fears, and the panic and utter terror that we would all feel in her situation. An impressive debut, one sure to hook readers quickly and successfully.





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Bent Road

While I would hesitate to call Bent Road by Lori Roy a psychological suspense or even a dedicated mystery, I can say that it is an engrossing read. This new novel brilliantly captures the small town aura of 1960’s Kansas. Flitting between the 3^rd person narratives of four characters; Celia, her two youngest children Daniel and Eve-ee, and her sister-in-law Ruth, the novel manages to be both literary in its encapsulation of small town life and prejudice and intriguing in it’s presentation of two mystery subplots, the unexplained death of Eve (Celia’s sister-in-law) decades before, and the sudden disappearance of a young girl. I say subplots because while both are essentially the blood in the veins of this story, their strength in terms of plot falls in comparison to the infinitely more interesting character study that this novel becomes. It is easy to become sucked into the world of these characters, to feel sorrow with them, fear for them, and to be angered by their actions. One becomes far more concerned with the thoughts and actions of these individuals than the (to my mind) less interesting mystery-plot. The ability of Roy to elicit this response from a reader as a first time novelist says a lot about her writing prowess. I would highly recommend this new novel to lovers of solid character-driven fiction.

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Gothic Mystery Meets CSI

Instruments of Darkness
by Imogen Robertson

Set in late 18th century England, Instruments of Darkness is a wonderfully intriguing novel. Robertson successfully manages to intertwine gothic suspense with period forensics, a concept that has never before been so charmingly presented.

The story follows Harriet Westerman, the strong-minded wife of a sea captain and Gabriel Crowther, a crusty and secretive anatomist. The two are drawn into an unlikely team after Harriet finds a dead man on her property with ties to Thornleigh Hall, the rather menacing home of the invalid Earl of Sussex. As Harriet and Crowther begin their partnership a man is murdered in front of his children in his London music shop. While it is no great leap to see that the two events are thoroughly connected, or who it is that set the events in motion the story unfolds compellingly.

Roberton’s characters each have their own hidden depths and secrets, many of which are not answered within this first novel (it will become a series), these multi-layered beings entice readers to stay with the plot, despite the rather obvious conclusion. Yet, don’t let the ease of the plot throw you off, the book is well-written and entertaining, it’s enough of a mystery to keep you hooked, if only to see how the characters will react to the outcome. It is these characters that will bring readers back for future sequels.

In all, this is a good period mystery, sure to entertain fans of writers like Alan Bradley and Anne Perry.



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"I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters..."

The Weird Sisters
By Eleanor Brown

Told in the collective ‘ala the original “weird sisters” of Macbeth fame, The Weird Sisters is a wonderful new novel which follows the three Andreas sisters, young women brought up by their Shakespearean Professor father to speak in verse and find life’s answers between the pages of a book. When their mother’s breast cancer draws them all home the three sisters are inexplicably forced to deal with each other’s disappointments and face their own personal failures and fears.

“See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much.”

What I loved about this book is the wonderful contradiction between the feelings of the sisters, who live by the concept of loving each other because they must, but are unable to find joy within the bitterness that they feel toward each other, and the fact that these three women who are so separate are telling their story as one being. I is never used in this novel, it is always we, or our, or us. This is a group of women, who although they strive to be separate from each other (to the point of alienation), cannot stop being a group, they are literally not whole unless together. This contradiction between plot and the narrative is inventive and compelling, a rather original use of storytelling by the author.

Also, Brown’s depiction of the strange and often bitter relationship between sisters is so smoothly and heart-wrenchingly drawn that I found myself nodding along recognizing if not actual events, but themes from my own life as a sister and my observations of sisters over the years. She does not hold back in creating a picture of the brutality of words and actions that only a sister can use to cut apart her sibling, and also the comfort and insight that only a sister can bring to a painful situation. No one can quite hurt you or comfort you like a sister and Brown captures that feeling intelligently and emotionally.

The Weird Sisters is deceptive in that at first glance it appears light, almost chick-lit, but after close reading is far more insightful than one would ever think. This is a touching and creative novel sure to bring laughter, tears, happiness, and at times, anger to even the most casual of readers.


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The Poison Tree

Fans of Tana French rejoice! No, she doesn’t have a new novel out yet, but debut author Erin Kelly will most assuredly captivate fans of French’s fluid prose and suspenseful plots. The Poison Tree is a winding road of intrigue and psychological drama. Kelly’s prose unfolds in brilliantly, smoothly interweaving past and present as the narrator, Karen tells of her mystifying, obsessive relationship with the Capel siblings and the murder which took place one hot, drug-filled summer.

This book was mesmerizing in that the reader is never quite sure who in this shady cast of characters was murdered. The story journeys through the events of that summer, occasionally flicking into the a present 10 years on where Karen is raising a daughter and Rex Capel has been released from prison, where he had spent ten years for manslaughter. This is a first person narrative filled with secrets and lies where the narrator successfully manipulates the reader with red herrings and partial truths.

A thoroughly enjoyable psychological suspense, well-written, with a twist of an ending sure to jolt readers from any sense of complacency, The Poison Tree is a must read for any lover of the genre.

Just to shamelessly promote Warwick’s in La Jolla, California; Erin Kelly will be appearing there on Wednesday, January 19th at 7:30pm. It’s free to attend, there will be refreshments, and the book will be on sale for 20% off. This is a great opportunity to meet a promising new author and of course visit a top-notch independent bookstore.



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