Time and Again by Jack Finney/ The Dutch House by Anne Patchett Audiobook

Leif Enger (Virgil Wander) and David Abrams (Brave Deeds) were talking on Instagram about the 1970 novel Time and Again by Jack Finney. I knew I had it on Kindle (along with hundreds of other ebooks still unread) and so took a look at it.

And I kept on reading. 

I missed this when it came out because I was graduating from high school and going to college at the time of its publication. And for years, my reading was mostly 'looking backwards' to the 19th c.--The century in which this novel is set!

Si Morely is a vet and bored commercial artist when he is recruited into a top secret government experiment--traveling back in time. He is an excellent student and becomes the best at time travel. 

He sets out to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's grandfather's death and strange headstone, with a half burnt letter her only clue. 

The story becomes a mystery, and a romance, and a study of what civilization has given us and what it has taken away. 

Finney excels at description. Every costume, every horse drawn vehicle, every building, and every activity is recreated in such detail, it's like seeing a movie play in one's head. The streets filled with their cacophony of noise and smells, congested with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. The city at play in the snow. A devastating fire and daring rescues. An escape from police. 

And, the book is filled with Si's drawings and photographs, illustrating what he has seen.

Enger said if he had a book club, this would be his first choice.

My husband and I so enjoyed listening to News of the World together that I borrowed the audiobook of The Dutch House by Ann Patchett from the library. I had heard so much praise about Tom Hanks' narration--and it was justified.

We absolutely loved Hanks interpretation of the text. He brought the story alive. When I read the novel I did not catch the humor as strongly as Hanks delivers it. I will listen to anything read by Hanks.

The characters love or hate the Dutch House. Ownership is coveted by a second wife who steals it from her step-kids and then kicks them out. They can never quite get over its loss; they spend hours remembering their childhood there. Their inability to move on curtails their growth and harms their relationships.

I recalled my own lost childhood home. I fantasized about growing up and buying it back. When it was torn down while I was still a teenager, I was broken-hearted. 

This is a story of family and brokenness and loving the wrong things and regret and forgiveness. In the end, our family becomes the people who we choose and who choose us to be family.

Read my review of the novel here.

The Memory Collectors by Kim Neville

My home is filled with heirlooms and mementos, each associated with a person or time from my past. Wherever we moved, settling these things into the house transformed it into a home.

Some of these things make me a little sad, but most make me happy. I have good memories of the student lamp from Great-Grandma's house, the 1842 ogee clock we bought at our first auction, the cracked glass miniature vases Mom set on her knick-knack self, the fourth generation back heirloom Blue Flow soup bowls, the embroidery mom made for me, the Japan figures gifted to my husband on his birth. 

Very few people look at these things and feel the things I feel when I see them.

But...what if the emotions people feel could attach to their things and be sensed by others? What if these emotions changed those who encounter the objects? What if some people could sense this emotional baggage and use it for harm or health?

Kim Neville's debut novel The Memory Collectors imagines people with the special ability to sense the emotions that cling to things. 

Ev tries to control it, suppressing the effects of the 'stains' on things. She saw how her father fell victim to dark stains. She was unable to save her parents from the evil that overtook him. She has tried to protect her younger sister, Noemi, who flits in and out of her life. 

Harriet has hoarded these stained things. They are overwhelming her and affecting her neighbors, too. Perhaps she could make a museum filled with good feelings, a place of healing? When she mets Ev, she knows she has found the person who can help her.

We can hide from the past, suppress it, reject it. We can become enslaved to the past so it inhibits our growth. We can shape the past into works of art. And we can rise above the past to become changed and whole people.

The Memory Collectors is a fantastic story that uses fantasy to explore our common human struggle with the past and the lingering emotions that inhibit our growth. 

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Memory Collectors

Kim Neville

Expected publication: March 16, 2021
Atria Books
ISBN: 1982157585 (ISBN13: 9781982157586)
Paperback $17.00

from the publisher

Ev has a mysterious ability, one that she feels is more a curse than a gift. She can feel the emotions people leave behind on objects and believes that most of them need to be handled extremely carefully, and—if at all possible—destroyed. The harmless ones she sells at Vancouver’s Chinatown Night Market to scrape together a living, but even that fills her with trepidation. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Harriet hoards thousands of these treasures and is starting to make her neighbors sick as the overabundance of heightened emotions start seeping through her apartment walls.

When the two women meet, Harriet knows that Ev is the only person who can help her make something truly spectacular of her collection. A museum of memory that not only feels warm and inviting but can heal the emotional wounds many people unknowingly carry around. They only know of one other person like them, and they fear the dark effects these objects had on him. Together, they help each other to develop and control their gift, so that what happened to him never happens again. But unbeknownst to them, the same darkness is wrapping itself around another, dragging them down a path that already destroyed Ev’s family once, and threatens to annihilate what little she has left.

The Memory Collectors casts the everyday in a new light, speaking volumes to the hold that our past has over us—contained, at times, in seemingly innocuous objects—and uncovering a truth that both women have tried hard to bury with their pasts: not all magpies collect shiny things—sometimes they gather darkness. 

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

My library book club's choice this month was Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, a novel that had been sitting on my TBR shelf for some time. I was happy to finally read it, especially as I had read and reviewed her second novel, To The Bright Edge of the World through NetGalley.

It turns out that The Snow Child interrupted Ivey's writing of that novel. She caught a story and couldn't let it go.

I had heard so much positive buzz about this book! Then, it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in literature!

The book clubbers all enjoyed reading The Snow Child, one saying she didn't expect to like it but was 'hooked'. Several enjoyed it, but thought it would be a 'one time read.' Another labeled the novel as a 'historical romance fantasy.'

The readers loved the descriptive writing of the Alaskan landscape, one saying nature itself became a character in the book. A reader was impressed by the realistic exploration of childlessness and the challenges of marriage.

Of course, there was great debate over the tension between realism and fantasy in the novel, the question of the nature of Faina, the 'Snow Child' who appears out of the snow and is adopted by the childless, middle-aged homesteaders, Mabel and Jack. Is she real? Is she a magical being? Is she human? We wondered about Faina's killing of a swan and her use of the feathers on her wedding dress. Was she the swan? Was the swan her burgeoning sexuality or attachment to the wild and free life? 

Faina is at home in the wild where she is free and independent. Jack and Mabel lure her into their lives, but she disappears over the summers. She seems trapped between two worlds. When her need for companionship results in circumstances that will keep her from her wild and free world, she fails.

We talked about this being a feminist novel. The childless homesteader wife Mabel had lost her her one baby. She thought that by leaving the East for Alaska, she and her husband would be equal partners. It takes her husband's incapacitation to allow her to become a full partner. 

Mabel begins in isolation, alienated from her back-home sister and family, and alone in Alaska. When the neighboring family barge into her life with their good-natured willingness to help out and socialize, being in community literally is a life saver. The neighboring wife wears men's pants and displaying a competent, almost joyous, attitude in her ability to wrest success from the inhospitable wilderness. We talked about the importance of community in the book and during this pandemic when everyone is isolated at home.

Later, I realized we had not even touched on the homesteader husband, Jack. At first, he tried to protect Mabel from the hard work he endured, not asking for her help resulting in alienating her. He follows Faina and discovers her secret home and history. It is Jack who protects Faina's companion fox and later fiercely defends her innocence.

There is hardship and sorrow, personal growth and joy, realism and magic to be found in these pages.

The Snow Child was a lovely book club selection. 

The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey 
Reagan Arthur Book/Little, Brown and Company

from the publisher

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them. (

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

You have a choice. We all have a choice. We can give in to the darkness, or we can fight it, and elect to try and make the world a slightly less terrible place than it is. from The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar is one of those out-of-my-genre reads that I indulge in regularly. Tidhar imagines an alternate reality in which humans with special powers--superheroes--are conscripted for use by the Axis and Allies during WWII.

I was not a superhero comic book reader as a girl, was mildly interested in the Superman movie and television shows, saw some X-Men and Spiderman movies when my son was growing up. Early, I wasn't really in the flow with the novel. But there came a point in the book when the tide shifted, and instead of reading because I had committed to reading it, I was reading because I was truly intrigued and driven to read.

Tidhar imagines the creation of a machine that transforms humans, giving them superpowers, preventing them from aging but not from being killed. In Britain, The Old Man brought these misfits to a special school. Friendship circles formed. There is Oblivion who can evaporate objects and Fogg who produces a visual shield, and Tank, Mr. Blur, Mrs. Tinkle.

I'm here to take you to a special school. For special people. People like you. Where you will be happy, the Old Man says. from The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

During WWII, these Übermenschen were tracked down by spotters working for the Germans and Russians to be used in the war effort. Oblivion and Fogg are sent to 'observe' what is going on in Berlin.

Berlin in '46 was an insane asylum. from The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

They encounter others with superpowers, The Green Gunman, Frogman, Girl Surfer, The Electric Twins, Whirlwind, and Tigerman dressed in a bright costume, the Russians Red Sickle and the wolf man, and others who wreak havoc on behalf of the Nazis, including Schneestrum.

Fogg meets Sommertag--Klara--the daughter of Vomacht who created the transformer device; he realizes her power is unaltered pureness and innocence. Fogg falls under her spell. The novel centers around Fogg being called to account for a series of events after the end of WWII involving Summertag.

The history and atrocities of Nazi Germany and actual events inform the novel. Fogg's and Oblivion's school friend Tank is captured and used in Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz. Nazi scientists are repatriated to the United States, and war criminals tried and justice meted out.

The story leaps back and forth in time, revealing the back story of the men's boyhood in 1926 and school days in 1936, the war years, and later 20th c wars and events. Then, it leaps into the future, to the Berlin Wall, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and 9-11.

It is too fantastical, this world, with its marching armies and its rockets and its death camps. It's just the world of a cheap novel, surely. from The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

The superhero myth appeals in times of crisis; the first superhero comics came onto the scene in 1938. Hitler banned American comic books; he thought the heroes were Jewish. Superman's creators were Jewish. Superhero movies took off after 9-11, a time when America again needed heroes.

Meeting one's hero is always such a disappointment, Schneestrum says. from The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

And throughout the book, the questions are raised. What makes a man? What makes a hero?

We expect a hero to rescue us. In real life, sometimes no one comes.

The publisher gave me access to a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

I previously reviewed Tidhar's sci-fi novel Central Station, my review found here, and alternate reality sci-fi novel Unholy Land, my review found here.

from the publisher:

A bold experiment has mutated a small fraction of humanity. Nations race to harness the gifted, putting them to increasingly dark ends. At the dawn of global war, flashy American superheroes square off against sinister Germans and dissolute Russians. Increasingly depraved scientists conduct despicable research in the name of victory

British agents Fogg and Oblivion, recalled to the Retirement Bureau, have kept a treacherous secret for over forty years. But all heroes must choose when to join the fray, and to whom their allegiance is owed—even for just one perfect summer’s day.

From the World Fantasy and Campbell award-winning author of Central Station comes a sweeping novel of history, adventure, and what it means to be a hero.

The Violent Century
by Lavie Tidhar
Tachyon Publications
Pub Date 02 Aug 2019
ISBN 9781616963163
PRICE $25.50 (CAD)

The Bird King by G. WIllow Wilson

I spend through G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King in a few days, enchanted by its exotic setting and well-drawn characters.

Fatima was one of the least powerful in the Sultan's household, a slave whose beauty made her a favorite concubine. Fatima lived a life of luxury, dining on sweetmeats and dressing in the finest clothes, always indoors and barefoot, even while outside the palace walls the Moorish Empire was falling to the Catholic Spanish army. What she lacked was self-determination and the power to say no to authority.

Her childhood friend is the slave Hassam whose red hair spoke of his Breton ancestry. The royal mapmaker, Hassam has the ability to create maps that alter reality. And while devote, Hassam's sexual preference is against religious law. They have shared secret trists, embroidering the story of the Bird King, whose story they learned from a partial manuscript.

The once great Moorish empire on the Iberian Penninsula is vanquished. The victor Spain is willing to be magnanimous, as long as the Sultan agrees to its terms: hand over the sorcerer Hassam to be made an example. Convert to Catholicism. And the Moors will be allowed to live, subjects of Spain.

The love Fatima holds for her only friend emboldens her; she will not lose the one person who loves her and not her beauty. She insists that Hassam flees for his life. With the help of a jinn, pursued by the army of the Holy Order, these naive and unprepared refugees discover that freedom has its costs.

Fatima's love and faith, and her willingness to lose what had once been her one power--beauty--supports this unlikely heroine as she seeks to find the Bird King's realm, where she hopes to find a refuge for her and Hassam.

Themes touched on are relevant: the nature and responsibility of power, the cost of freedom, true faith versus religious power, refugees seeking their place in the world.

I received an ARC from through Bookist First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Bird King
by G. Willow Wilson
Grove Atlantic
Pub: March 12, 2019
$26
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2903-1

from the publisher:
Set in 1491 during the reign of the last sultanate in the Iberian peninsula, The Bird King is the story of Fatima, the only remaining Circassian concubine to the sultan, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret—he can make maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality with his pen and paper. His magical gift has proven useful to the sultan’s armies in wartime and entertained a bored Fatima who has never stepped foot outside the palace walls.

When a party representing the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrives to negotiate the terms of the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, little realizing that her new friend Luz represents the Inquisition, and will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery, and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With everything on the line, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan, and taste the freedom she has never known?

Fatima and Hassan traverse Iberia to the port, helped along the way by a jinn who has taken a liking to them—Vikram the Vampire, who readers may remember from Alif the Unseen. Pursued all the while by Luz, who somehow always seems to know where they will end up, they narrowly escape from her generals by commandeering a ship, and accidentally also the snoozing Breton monk belowdecks. Though they are unsure whether to trust him, because he is a member of the very same faith they are running from, they nevertheless set about learning from him how to crew a ship. And as it becomes clearer both that there is no place on the mainland that they will be safe, and that the three of them are destined to stay together, they set out to do something they never thought possible—to find the mysterious, possibly mythic island of The Bird King, whose shifting boundaries will hopefully keep them safe.

An epic adventure to find safety in a mythical realm, The Bird King challenges us to consider what true love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.

The Cassandra by Sharma Shields

Sharma Shield's novel The Cassandra was a very dark read. The protagonist Mildred Groves' gift of prophecy alienates her from her family and the larger society. She struggles with a desire to fit in while visions reveal horrifying inevitabilities and men's true natures.

Mildred ceases the chance to escape her suffocating home and needy mother, thrilled to find work at a WWII government research facility in a remote part of Washington on the Columbia River. The "project" will shorten the war, she is told. Mildred becomes an esteemed worker, makes her first best friend, and even gains an admirer. She revels in the freedom.

But night finds her sleepwalking and experiencing gruesome dreams of the project's dire consequences for humanity.

Shields vividly describes the historical Hanford Project research facility, part of the Manhatten Project--the wind and dust, the subjugation of minorities and women, the ignorance of the workers and the willingness of the researchers to risk environmental degradation to win the arms race.

Mildred's abuse and violent acts in response to her inability to change events around her are disturbing. More disturbing is humanity's blind determination in believing that the ultimate weapon will save the world.

I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing.

The Cassandra
Shama Shields
Henry Holt and Co.
Publication 02/12/2019
$28 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250197412

Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar

I closed the book--or rather swiped to the last page on my iPad--and my first thought was, I want to read this again. Now.

Because  Unholy Land by Lavie Tidhar took me on a crazy ride across genres and space and time and I want to do it all over again.

I read Tidhar's Central Station last year after my son raved about it. So I was expecting Science Fiction. But Unholy Land transcends genre, encompassing alternative history, noir mystery, and time-travel sci-fi, with social and political commentary (not so unusual in sci-fi, of course), so in the end, it transports the reader into an imagined alternative reality AND reflects on contemporary world politics. Add the "wink wink" self-referential nods and existential discussions on the nature of reality, we also get humor and philosophy.

In one work of fiction. And I think I missed some things.

So, yes, I want to read it AGAIN.

Tidhar was inspired by a true story of forgotten history. In 1904, the Zionist movement leader Theodor Herzl was offered land in Uganda as a Jewish homeland. Three men went on an expedition to survey the territory. One became separated and at journey's end, reported fertile land and while the other a saw desert. The idea was abandoned. Tidhar's novel considers the implications of establishing a Jewish homeland predating the Nazi regime.

The main character Lior Tirosh (note the character's name, so like Lavie Tidhar) slips through to an alternative reality. He doesn't realize what has happened, but he is tracked by two people who have been through the portal and lived in other worlds. He becomes embroiled in a battle to control the portal and prevent overlaps in realities.

Tirosh questions, what is history if not an attempt to impose order on a series of meaningless events, just as a detective must piece together a story from conflicting tales.

Don't expect escapist genre fiction, readers, for in Unholy Land we learn in all the worlds possible walls will be built and some will be cast into the outer darkness.

"Lavie Tidhar is a clever bastard, and this book is a box of little miracles." Warren Ellis, Afterword Unholy Land

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Here is what the publisher offers on the plot:

When pulp-fiction writer Lior Tirosh* returns to his homeland in East Africa, much has changed. Palestina—a Jewish state established in the early 20th century—is constructing a massive border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in the capital, Ararat, is at fever pitch.

While searching for his missing niece, Tirosh begins to believe he is a detective from one of his own novels. He is pursued by ruthless members of the state’s security apparatus while unearthing deadly conspiracies and impossible realities.

For if it is possible for more than one Palestina to exist, the barriers between worlds are beginning to break.

Unholy Land
by Lavie Tidhar
Tachyon Publications
Pub Date 06 Nov 2018
ISBN 9781616963040
PRICE $15.95 (USD)

Revisiting Flowers for Algernon--Fifty Years Later

Daniel Keye's novella Flowers for Algernon was published in 1959 and in 1966 was expanded into the novel because of its popularity. I read the novel as a teenager in high school, and enjoyed it enough to read it several times. I also saw the 1968 movie Charly, based on the book. I had not read the book since then.

A little sniffing around the 'Net brought the information that Keyes was inspired when teaching special needs students and that characters in the novel were based on people he knew.

The story is presented through a series of journal entries by Charlie, who is

mentally impaired and working in a menial job with friends whom he likes, although they take advantage of him and make him the brunt of jokes. 

Charlie takes classes and sincerely wants to improve himself, to be normal. He agrees to become a test subject in hopes of gaining normal intelligence. Algernon, a mouse, showed amazing intellectual powers after receiving an operation. 

As Charlie's capacity for understanding grows, he outpaces everyone around him, including the scientists.

Charlie's parents had abandoned him to a home when his mother became concerned that Charlie might harm or abuse his little sister. He struggles with the demons of his now understood past, particularly the mistreatment he suffered from his mother, which left him unable to have normal sexual relationships. The psychology is very Freudian.

Algernon the mouse shows the effects of the experiment is short-lived and Charlie grapples with this knowledge, becoming manic in his obsession to find a cure. He also tries to reconnect with his family.

It seemed to me that the novel was informed by the sci-fi trope of the highly intelligent scientist who loses his humanity. And yet in the real world, I can think of a multitude of brilliant people whose compassion and humanity was amplified by their intelligence.

...I was an arrogant, self-centered bastard...incapable of making friends or thinking about other people and their problems." Charlie

In the end, Charlies is as isolated as a super-genius as he was with an IQ of 68. He calls for the need to respect all humans, regardless of their intelligence.

"But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.(...)Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love.(...)Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis." Charlie

My local book club read the novel this month, to great acclaim by all. Everyone thought the epistolary format offered great insight into Charlie's developing and declining intelligence. 

One member noted that in a few months Charlie went from a childish innocence through all the stages of development before regressing again--a coming of age story. Another mentioned he connected to the book because of a family member. And one woman's health crisis involved a loss and regaining of mental acuity. They all related to the story.

Several aspects of the book felt very dated to me: the Freudian psychology and the characterization and function of women. 

Charlie adores his teacher Alice, and when he reaches normal intelligence, he finds he is in love with her. She is responsive, but Charlie can't deal with sex with her. 

Charlie finds his 'need for human contact' filled by his free-spirited neighbor Faye, whom he does not love. She is fun and exciting and an extrovert who loves to dance and has little modesty. 

One line that will pull a few strings in today's female readers is when Charlie says, "you can't have everything you want in one woman. One more argument for polygamy."

I was surprised by the 'sex talk' in the book, perhaps one reason why it has been banned in schools over the years.

The club members gave the novel five stars, a few four, and considered it to be required reading along with 1984.

I was cajoled for rating it 3.75. I appreciate what Keyes was saying, but am not sure the novel has stayed fresh or that the messages are profound enough to be considered 'great' literature. I do think it is a good book for a young adult reader. And I expect younger readers will still find it a tear-jerker as I did fifty years ago.

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

I read this slender volume in an evening while my spouse was watching a Hallmark Christmas movie.

Really.

While he was vegging out to a feel-good wish fulfillment movie, I was reading a feel good wish fulfillment novel about a housewife estranged from her husband after the loss of two kids and a dog and his series of affairs, which housewife meets a frog man named Larry who escaped from a science lab where he underwent cruel tests and learned English with the help of electric shocks, so that Larry killed the scientists to escape, and the sad wife and Larry commence an affair that includes her hiding him in the guest room and serving him avocado salad and their enjoying night time swims and walks in other people's gardens, then some punks attack Larry and he has to defend himself and, well, the kids don't make it...

Really.

And the housewife's best friend is dating two men and her kids are troubled and the ending is very convoluted with the philandering husband meeting an appropriate end.

Did I wish I had watched the Hallmark movie instead of reading about a frogman creature learning about human experience and a housewife telling her story of alienation and loss and loneliness?

Heck, no.

Mrs. Caliban was first published in 1982, which explains the use of the phrase "pontificating" because I remember people did that back then, and author Rachel Ingalls had a flash of fame before people forgot her novel. But it was noticed by some very important writers such as Ursula la Guin and Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike and Eleanor Cotton (The Luminaries) and New Directions said it knocked their socks off and so they republished it this year and I am sure it will make connections with readers today.

Is Larry real or an alienated housewife's fantasy? Who cares. Just read it.

I received a free book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Mrs. Caliban
Rachel Ingalls
New Directions
ISBN 0811226697 (ISBN13: 9780811226691)

The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

In a time long ago and a world far away, one girl dares to claim the right to make her own fate. Against her family's desires, the demands of society and church, she resists the life laid out for her. Even the pagan gods, whose power is slowly fading, tries to harness her for their good but she will not be chattel to anyone. Vasilisa, the wild child of the woods, who can talk to horses and the household spirits, only seeks one thing: the freedom of self determination.

All my Goodreads friends had raved about The Bear and the Nightingale. I felt like I had badly missed out. I purchased a Kindle copy but had not read it...then I won a copy of the second volume in the Winternight Trilogy, The Girl in the Tower, through Bookish. I immediately started reading the first book before the ARC of the second volume arrived.

I am not a huge fantasy fan. So take that into consideration when I say I loved this book. I loved the setting in old Rus', a time when paganism had not yet been driven out by Christianity. I loved the Russian fairy tales that inform the novel. Vasilisa, with her wide mouth and large green eyes, is a manifestation of a traditional Russian folk tale of a frog who turns into a princess.

The story opens on a late winter night in Rus', with children demanding a story. And they hear about the frost-demon, the winter king Morozko, also known as the death-god who froze bad children in the night. In the fairy tale, a step-mother sends her step-daughter into the winter forest to marry Morozko. The girl was nonplussed by the demon and he sent her home with dowry gifts. The step-mother was jealous of her good fortune and sends her own daughter to the Frost-King, expecting her to return with riches. But her spoiled daughter was ungrateful and complained. Morozko did not save her.

One of the children listening, Vasilisa, has inherited her mother's and grandmother's gift of recognizing the spirit world. Vasya is happier in the stable or the woods than she is in the house, and bristles against the limited life laid out for a girl child. She understands that the spirits are languishing, which means they cannot protect the hearth, home, or stable, and she befriends them in secret. Else, she would be called a witch or a mad woman.

In an interview with Book Page, Arden describes these household spirits of protection:

There is a guardian spirit for everything in Russian folklore. The domovoi guards the house; the dvorovoi guards the dooryard. The bannik guards the bathhouse, the ovinnik, the threshing-­house. Their areas of influence are almost absurdly specific. And each creature has a certain appearance and personality, and people must do certain things to placate them.

Vasya's father goes to Moscow to seek a bride, and a bridegroom for his eldest daughter. His son Sasha stays to study for the priesthood. The Rus' ruler takes advantage, offering his 'mad' daughter as wife-- Anna, a pious Christian who sees the spirits and, believing they are demons, shrieks in despair.

Also sent back to the deep woods is the priest Konstantin, a man who seeks holy glory and preaches against the old ways. When voices talk to him he believes it is God who directs him to instill fear to drive the people to God. Vasya disturbs him, in more ways than one.

Vasya strives to maintain the old ways, fighting the evil spirits that threaten her family, and finding protection from Morozko. When the spirit of Death in the form of a monstrous bear attacks their community, Vasya is blamed. Rather than being forced to marry or enter a convent, or be killed as a witch, Vasya dresses as a boy and goes out into the world with a horse from Morozko, the unworldly stead Solovey, or Nightingale.

The novel is otherworldly and enchanting. It is a delight to read a female hero's journey.

*****

In the early 1970s I audited a course in which I read Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Morphology of the Folktale by V. Propp. Reading Arden's story brought back things I had learned at that time.

The Hero's Journey as set out in Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces is found universally in folk lore, fairy tales, religions, and in literature. The journey includes separation, or leaving home and childhood; initiation and trials; symbolic death, a journey to the underworld or being 'in the belly of a whale'; meeting with a god; apotheosis; return, rescue, and freedom. There are magical agents or helpers along the way to ad the hero.

Propp breaks down the structure of folk tales. The villain threatening harm to the family, an object is sought to solve a problem, the hero is pursued and rescued, the hero is given difficult task, the false hero or villain is exposed,the villain is punished, and the hero is married.

The journey of a female hero is slightly different. First, the female hero must escape domestic imprisonment as a child. She is called to adventure, refusing supernatural aid. She may have to chose between a light and a dark man, searches for a father, and encounters an alternative mother figure.The female hero rejects her inferiority as a woman, and after trials and tests, succeeds in her quest.

Vasya is truly a female hero on a journey, born of the traditional Russian folk tale.

*****

The Girl in the Tower continues Vasya's story from The Bear and the Nightingale.

In the cruel winter, Vasya flees her home where she was driven out as a witch. Alone in the frozen winter woods with Solovey, Morozko must save her life once again. She will not heed his advice to take on the life of a wife and mother. She will not be constrained to such a limited world.

Vasya encounters burned villages and hears of raiders who take girl children. She follows the marauders and, using trickery, saves the the girls. But the leader of the marauders sees her and pursues them. Vasya comes to walled village and they are taken in. There she meets her brother Sasha, the valiant priest and childhood friend of the ruling prince. Her exploits impress the prince, and she leads his band to track down the marauders. Vasya accompanies the retinue to Moscow and is reunited with her sister. Also in Moscow is the tormented Konstintine, the priest whose misguided faith drove him to persecute Vasya in her hometown.

Vasya's identity as a boy forces her siblings to collude in her lie, a risky venture since they must deceive the prince. Also in Moscow is a foreign ruler who has a special interest in Vasya, and who also has a magical horse even more powerful than Solovey.

Morozko, the Frost King, reappears several times warning Vasya or saving her life. He needs her faith to live, but also is drawn to the girl. But to love her he must give up immortality. In any case, Vasya disdains his help and alienates him.

The story includes a twisted plot of false identities, a heritage of women who can communicate with the spirit world, and a riveting epic battle.

I can't wait for the third volume!

I received a free ARC through Bookish First in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

*****

In the story, Christianity vies with pagan beliefs. Konstantine represents the aggressive element which warns of witches and false worship, calling the spirits demons. Sasha has studied for the priesthood, but can not leave the world for the cloister. He is fights at the prince's side while also blessing the dying. He must reconcile his Christian belief with Vasya's shared wisdom of otherworldly forces.

In an interview with Book Page, Arden addresses this conflict:

BP: The conflict between Christianity and the old traditions is a big part of this book. What do readers need to know about this period in Russian history? 

KA: I think it’s important to realize that this period of Russian history doesn’t have a lot of primary sources...But what we do know: at this time period (mid fourteenth century) Muscovy was rising rapidly, buoyed by a long collaboration with the Golden Horde, which had taken power in Russia about two hundred years prior. At the time, the Horde was preoccupied by succession problems (Genghis Khan had a really absurd number of descendants), and the Grand Princes of Moscow were quietly expanding their territory and bringing lesser princes into the fold. 

During this period, much of Muscovy’s conflict was with other Russian city-­states (notably Tver), but Dmitrii Ivanovich (who is still a boy in The Bear and the Nightingale) is the first prince who will successfully oppose the Golden Horde and Mongol dominance in Russia.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

"Human kind can not stand very much reality." T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

I finished Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane the day after the 2016 presidential election. As I read about a man's memories of his childhood friend Lettie and how she saved him from evil and death it seemed a fitting choice. For all the book's magical, alternate universe it is wise in ways deeply rooted in our universal experience.

There is in the real world, as in magical fictions, evil and threats and suffering-- and, sometimes, saviors and redemption.

The book's nameless main character is only seven years old when he follows a path to a neighboring farm inhabited by three women, seemingly three Hempstock generations. The girl Lettie befriends him, and warning him not to let go of her hand, takes him on a journey to a pond---the ocean, she calls it--through her magical world. He does let go, and he becomes a portal into reality for a creature whose goal is to fulfill need, to make people 'happy.' Manifesting as a beautiful woman, Ursula, she seduces his father. The boy is her gate and must be controlled; the more he rebells, the tighter her grip.

He finally escapes and is found by Lettie who takes him to her home. The Hempstocks help him by releasing magical entities to attack Ursula, only to discover they also desire to destroy the boy.

The saving of the boy comes at a dear cost; has his life justified the price?

Gaiman's story is wonderful on so many levels, from his imagination to his writing style.

I loved the insights into childhood:

• I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.
• Books were safer than other people anyway.
• Adults follow paths. Children explore.

And even more the insights into the human experience:

• Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside...People are more complicated than that.
• Nothing's ever the same...Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.
• You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.

I especially loved the quote, "Oh, monsters are scared...That's why they're monsters." 

*****

Last evening I had searched for something to sum up how I felt about the election, from start to finish, and found this quote:

"Of all the passions, fear weakens judgment most."-Cardinal de Retz 

We were sold fear as a campaign platform and we were sold fear as the result of the election going 'the other way,' and were sold the fear that whichever person wins, America is coming to ruin.

It's not the first time America's judgment has been amiss. Native American genocide, rounding up Japanese Americans into concentration camps, lynching African Americans without due process are just a few examples of our errors in judgment, brought on by fear.

Nothing causes fear more than change. And nothing is as sure as change. Fear of change has made monsters, and they now reside with us.

I can only hope and trust that, as we have in the past, America will survive these monsters of fear, and burnished from the fire, become a more refined metal.

It's a Dark Night Inside: The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

Caring for a dying parent is a universal and timeless experience. Some children hover, an administering angel, while others stay in distant denial; some vent their anger at the gods or fate that they are being left, or being left to care, while others eagerly await the freedom that parental death can sometimes bring to a child. It is a time when we face the past and the future, forgive or hold on to resentment, become the child our parent always wished for, or being cut loose can finally become ourself.

The Language of Dying is an honest and moving journey into the soul and heart of a daughter caring for her father's last days. Her dysfunctional family, which has "so much colour that the brightness is damaging", comes together briefly to the family home.

There is the older sister Penny, a 'glowing' woman who hides behind a 'Gucci persona', full of excuses why she did not take on their father's care.

Older brother Paul is a dominating and charming man addicted to excesses. and who disappears for months at a time.

The twin boys are the youngest, beset with demons. Davey, dually addicted, tenuously holding onto sanity and sobriety, and lost Simon whose self-destructive dive began when abused by a trusted older man.

And our heroine, victim of an abusive marriage, struggling to repair her life, who cares for her dying father day and night.

Their shared past is their parent's alcoholism and break-up, but our heroine alone sees the wild, red eyed creature, wonderful and waiting for her.

"Love is hard to kill," she thinks, like life, and the family bounds hold tenuously.

Pingborough's insightful writing captures the emotional life of her narrator. It is also beautiful and memorable writing.

My father died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and spent over two months in the hospital and one day in the hospital Hospice. Every day I went to the hospital at 9 am and left when my brother arrived at 5 pm. My brother and I were with dad his last days. The language of dying, the special lingo of death, the practices of caring for the terminally ill and the strange rituals that become everyday is captured in this moving novel.

But there is another level to the story, the wild creature that comes in the night to lure our heroine to another world.

"Well, now that we have seen each other', said the Unicorn,/'If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.' Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There

She first saw the vision the night her mother left the family. It haunts her at pivotal moments in her life, a summons to come away. Call it fantasy, magic, or projection, in this novella the unicorn represents a place of belonging and the freedom of new life. "This creature and I belong together. I know it and so does he," she thinks. He is nothing like the archetypal unicorn, he is black not white, his horn is twisted and deformed. He brings her "joy, pure and bright" before disappearing into the night. She knows it waits for her. When will she be ready to follow?

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Language of Dying
Sarah Pinborough
Quercus
Publication August 2, 2016
$9.99 ebook
ISBN: 9781681444345

How Many Lives Does It Take To Appreciate What You Have?

Repeat by Neal Pollack employs the stock plot devise of a man who gets to relive his life (think Ground Hog Day) until he gets it 'right.'


Brad Cohen is feeling pretty down on the eve of his 40th birthday. Life did not turn out the way he expected. He was a bright kid, went to the right schools, got the job of his dreams...then tanked. An agent contacts him; she thinks that his one book is Hollywood material. He uproots his 'witch' herbalist wife and their two girls for the Coast, only to end up writing scripts for a lame cartoon show. After ten years he is still hawking TV show scripts to unreceptive ears and living in a hellhole of an apartment while his wife supports them with her concoctions.

Cohen's wife brews up something special for him. He wakes up in-utero, with the mind of a 40 year old man, unprepared to relive his life from the beginning.

Cohen endeavors to make better choices this life round, and for the next hundred or so lives, for he has been stuck in a perpetual time loop that runs from 1970 to 2010. Yoga is the only thing that brings him peace during his last lives.

The ending recalled to mind A Christmas Carol: he wakes with an attitude adjustment, and it was accomplished in one night!

Satirist Pollack is often funny. Sometimes the joke goes on too long---such as Brad's 40 year old interest in sex being stymied in a prepubescent body. I am not sure if this treatment of the repeated life has much new to say, but I did enjoy it and it was a light, quick read. It left me with a positive attitude, an affirmation of life. And that is priceless in these complicated and bewildering days.

I received the ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Repeat
by Neal Pollack
Lake Union Publishing
ISBN: 9781477821336
$14.95
Publication March 24, 2015

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Richard Mayhew was not remarkable. He was quite passive about life. His troll collection was made of gifts from people who thought he really liked trolls.  He had found one on the sidewalk and brought it to his cubical. His fiancée believed he could do more, be more. He was grateful to have a beautiful and successful woman take interest in him. Because they had met at the National Gallery, she assumed he liked art. They spent a lot of time walking around galleries.

Richard was to attend his fiancé's grand opening of a new exhibit when he comes across a bleeding girl on the street. He stops to help her in spite of her warnings and protests. He brings her home and his life disappears. His fiancée breaks off their engagement. His job disappears. People no longer recognize, then no longer even see him. He finds himself on the street, bewildered and uncertain. The girl, named Door, takes him along on her journey to another London where adventures and nightmares await.

"You man, understand this: there are two Londons. There's London Above--that's where you lived--and then theres London Below--the Underside--inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world. Now you're one of them."  

Richard's story is a journey quest where he becomes more than the man his fiancée ever imagined he could be. He longs to return to the London Above where things make sense. But he will never be the same person again.

London Under is vividly imagined, a hostile environment full of nightmarish creatures. It is laid out along the London Underground, where Blackfriars has Black Friars and Earl's Court has an earl. There is horror and gruesome tidbits, there is dark humor and satire, and there are people who seek answers and truth.

I loved noticing little clues about this alternate London, like when Door and Richard are going through a gallery with statues of "dead Greek Gods". Were the Greek Gods ever 'alive'? one asks. There is no question; in the alternate world Gaiman imagines the Gods were all alive once. Richard is made fun of by the London Under denizens for wanting to return home, as if he were Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. They know there is no escape. But he finds he had discovered and held the key for his return.

Reviewers mention John Milton, Monty Python Doctor Who, George Lucas, and other precursors. I see Joseph Campbell's Quest of the Hero, Jung's night sea journey, and mythology in Richard's story. The descent into an underworld, the quest, the battling of monsters, the magical helpers, the transfiguration of the hero...it's all here.

My edition of the book includes a book group guide and interview with Gaiman who says,

"I wanted to write a story about someone growing up and changing; and about someone who goes through a book wanting something, and then, when he finally gets that thing finds he isn't the person who wanted it any longer. (The price of getting what you want, I had someone say in Sandman, is getting what once you wanted.)" 

I am not a big reader of genre fiction. But I am glad my genre fiction blooger son has directed my attention to Gaiman. Sometimes I just want to read something different. And Gaiman always delivers.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Books/Neverwhere/

The Literate Reader's Fun Fantasy Series: Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde

"Whoever controls metaphor controls fiction."

The Peace Talks are coming up and Thursday Next is missing. Thursday Next works for Jurisfiction, keeping BookWorld in order for readers everywhere. The peace talks with Racy Novel will prevent an all out genre war. Thursday was to head the talks. Is she dead, or lost in BookWorld, or hiding out in the OutWorld? Even her husband Landen Parke-Laine does not know where she is.

The written Thursday from BookWorld is drafted to take her place. Of course the written Thursday does not know everything the OutWorld Thursday knows, so she will pretend that irritable vowel disease prevents her from talking.

Thursday (written) saves the life of a robot named Sprocket. "We tick, therefore we are," he tells her. He helps her evade the notorious Men in Plaid who are out to kills her.( It's Tartan, they will testily correct.) A car chase to evade the Men in Plaid lands Thursday (written) and Sprocket in a dangerous mime field. Luckily they find a way to evade the Mimes.

We gain an inside understanding of the interaction between readers and characters. "Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of his life looking like Daniel Radcliff."

You would not believe the crimes committed in BookWorld. In "One Of Our Thursdays is Missing" we learn about the met labs turning out illegal metaphor. And cheese smuggling is endemic. The stinkier the cheese the high the street price.

To BookWorld denizens the OutWorld can break a character down in minutes. Thursday (written) is sent there for 12 hours to find the missing Thursday (real).

"Is it as bad as they say it is?"

"I've heard it's worse. Here in the BookWorld we say what needs to be said for the story to proceed. Out there? Well, you can discount at least eighty percent of chat as just meaningless drivel."

Written Thursday Next can't find Thursday Next. She suffers an identity crisis: could she BE the real deal? As she tries to solve the mystery of the missing Next she travels through the far reaches of literature, into Vanity, Fan Fiction, and Racy Novel itself. She discovers a dirty bomb, that is, a loosely bound coil of badly described scenes of a sexual nature. Had it gone off smut would show up higgily-piggily in literature everywhere!

I have been reading Thursday Next novels every since I saw them advertised in my son's Science Fiction Book Club brochure way back when he was a kid. British novelist Jasper Fforde has written five in the series: The Well of Lost Plots; Lost in a Good Book; Something Rotten; Thursday Next: First Among Sequels; and One of Our Thursdays is Missing.

The BookWorld is full of great wisdom.  Such as the Law of Egodynamics: "For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert." That is SO true!