Romance, Mystery, and, Perhaps, the Best Book of the Year

 

    Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld is a sparkly, clever, funny book. It subverts the idea of the average guy ending up with a hot woman (think Colin Jost/Scarlett Johansson) by introducing the average woman/hot guy twist. The protagonist writes for a weekly live comedy show, not Saturday Night Live, modeled after SNL. Even though, like most romance novels, there is a predictable ending, the interest is in how the author gets from meet-cute to happy-ending. Sittenfeld does it well. 

❤️💖💞📺💞💖❤️

    Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear is my book club's choice for May. I appreciate many things: a strong female protagonist, a historical setting, a hint of romance, and an award winner; however, I found it tedious. As I've analyzed why, I think the characters are too black and white. Maise is a brilliant female from the working class. She works as a maid and is discovered reading in the library late one night. This leads to her receiving a private education and going to Oxford. World War I intervenes, and she becomes a nurse at the front. All these events contribute to her becoming a psychiatrist and private investigator. It is the first book in a series, so there is a lot of backstory to upload. In the book, Maisie's history feels more interesting than the mystery she is hired to solve. 

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I know Dani Shapiro from her memoir, Inheritance, about discovering through genetic tests that her father was not her birth father. Signal Fires is the first of her fiction that I've read. It was one of the best books I've read this year. It is a tender, insightful story of neighbors in Avalon, New York. The central family is Ben, a surgeon, and his wife, Mimi. One hot summer night, their two teenagers and a friend make a poor choice. It changes them forever. It moves them apart and binds them together. I'm not describing this book well, but it knocked my socks off, made me weep, and left me hopeful. 

🌳✨🌌✨🌳

I Start Another Good Trilogy--Mistake

    Of the many personalities that inhabit my brain, today I'm angry at the one that started me reading this captivating fantasy, The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. I've had this best-selling book reserved for a while, but I was intimidated by its length: 532 pages or 20 hours on audio. Finally, I succumbed, and I'm glad I did. A scrappy woman, Nahri, from the streets of Cairo, navigates a complex, hostile world. However, she's more than what she seems. Using her previously unknown magical ability, she accidentally summons a fierce Djinn, who takes her to a magical city of brass where she is hailed as a fabled healer. I'm hooked! About two-thirds of the way through the story, I wondered how Chakraborty could resolve all the story threads in the time she had left? The intricate plot is told from various points of view, each voicing its own problems and insights. Answer: she can't; it's part of a trilogy. I put the second book on hold, and it might become available in the next six to ten weeks.

 

    I need a break from trilogies or switch to only reading uninteresting ones, making me not want to continue. Hmmm.

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    I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy kept popping up in my recommendations. The title is provocative, but it didn't look like a trilogy, so I read it. It is a memoir by a child actor about her toxic, narcissistic mom. If you are triggered by abuse, this book is not for you. McCurdy showed that personal growth is not linear and takes time and support, especially in her struggle with eating disorders. McCurdy writes believably in the voice of her younger self. Depictions of her insights, moments where she sees things realistically, are earned and moving. McCurdy shares explicitly about her life. I could have been satisfied with fewer descriptions of destructive sex. However, McCurdy's memoir was ultimately hopeful. I wish better things for her. 

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    I read Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson in a day. One reason it's short, under two hundred pages; another reason is it's so stinking good, and lastly, it's about being a teen in the 1970s. I was a teen in the 70s, and the music she references, and the emotions it stirred felt familiar. In the present day, August returns to Brooklyn for her father's funeral and accidentally sees a former teenage friend on the subway. She's pulled back into her life growing up in Brooklyn with her four girlfriends. It was rough with White Flight, prostitutes, drug users, and poverty. There are many adjectives to describe Another Brooklyn: complex, dense, poetic, and tragic. August is fighting grief and loss with denial. She is caught between being sexually exploited and also having sexual desire. There is a lot packed into this verbally economical, powerful book.

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Revisiting The Paris Apartment

 

    This is a strange reading week because I only read one book, and it was a reread. I'm not big on rereading: too many books, too little time! 

    I read The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley last summer and liked it so much that I included it in my book club's Year of Mystery. Last month we read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. An interview with Foley said that reading Christie influenced her mystery writing. lucy-foley I can see similarities: artful red herrings, multiple suspects, and a locked room, or this case apartment building. Foley keeps the situation tense, and even though I'd already read the book before, I didn't remember exactly how it all turned out. It was a good read a second time as well. Foley has a vibe of nothing is as it seems: the good guys are the bad guys, the loser barmaid is a fierce defender of the weak, and a fancy apartment doesn't mean a good life. It kept me guessing, even the second time. 

Most of what I think about Paris is from romantic movies about falling in love in a Paris springtime. This is the upside-down Paris. I don't think the Eiffel Tower is ever mentioned. 

Here is a link to my previous review:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/06/mystery-firefighters-and-time-travel.html

🔎🕵️🔍

Lots of Villainy Villains

 

    Babel: An Acrcan History by R. F. Kuang is a robust and powerful story of an orphan rescued from poverty in China. Robin is privileged to be brought up in London and has the unprecedented opportunity to attend Babel College in Oxford. Babel is a historical fantasy novel. This book interacts with many big ideas: translation, empire, colonialism, student revolt, assimilation, and alienation. The main character Robin Swift speaks Chinese and English fluently. His guardian formed Robin to discover word pairs between the languages that will generate magic when etched on a silver bar. Kuang has deep knowledge of multiple languages and Chinese/British history. She is sharp in her assessments of the motives of why Empires conquer and how they exploit those under their "protection." Robin's father uses him villainously by refusing to acknowledge his son, cruelly exploiting him, while demanding his fealty. Robin is a living metaphor for British/Chinese relations. He is continually told how grateful he should be for the favor that allowed him to live in England while, at the same time facing abuse and discrimination from those very people. Where does Robin's heart lie? With England or with China? Which side deserves his loyalty? This reminds me a bit of the Galatic Empire series by Isaac Asimov, proving again my theory that science fiction can be a tool to consider hard facts. 

    When I say this book is educational, please don't think dry or dull. It is full of tension and conflict. Kuang fearlessly raises the stakes repeatedly, but she also invests the reader in the characters. I wanted to understand the different forces at work and know Robin's "right" choice. It made for an excellent, but painful read because the oppressors don't always lose, and the underdog isn't always triumphant. 

    Babel might become a literary classic taught in Modern English classes if it isn't already.

    Here is an excellent review: babel-by-rf-kuang-review-an-ingenious-fantasy-about-empire

☕️🫖⾈🚢🜛

     

    Last week I read the first in the Cursebreakers series, A Heart So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. Link here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2023/03/beauty-and-beast-retold-and-ancient.html

This week I read #2, A Heart So Fierce and Broken. Kemmerer did an excellent job with the middle book of the trilogy. It takes a skilled writer to have the second book be satisfying and also set up the final book well. 

    The angriest I've ever been at the middle of a trilogy was Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (the second Star Wars to be released). The movie left too many things unresolved, and it would be years before the final film dropped. It was 1981, and I was on a date with my college boyfriend. I yelled out my betrayal of a gratifying ending in the movie theater's parking lot. I'm not sure what my boyfriend remembers of that night, but we did get married. So, that story ended well.

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    A Heart So Fierce and Broken pivots from Prince Rhen and Harper to his faithful guardsman, Grey. Grey carries the burden of a terrible secret that ruptures his relationship with Prince Rhen. He flees with a small company seeking safety. Among his companions is a rejected princess, Lia Mara, of a rival kingdom ruled by Queen Karis Luran, who we met in book #1. Kemmerer imagines a land ruled by females, instead of males. It is a good twist. Succession is appointed by the queen instead of inherited. Like the first book, it has good characters, and even though it's fantasy, they feel authentic, except for the female villains. The queen, Karis Luran, and Lilith the Enchantress are both abominable evil--viciously enjoying hurting and killing others. I could see one villain like that, but two? And both females? 

    I look forward to book three and wonder how Kemmerer will land this story. Is she a happy-ever-after writer? I hope so!

🦹‍♀️ 👹😈