Book Reviews

I wanted so badly to love this book, but it was not meant to be. The biggest problem I had was that I'd put it down and not care if I picked it up again. At first, I attributed this to the fact that I'd started it just before Christmas. By mid-January, however, I realized it was the book. After thinking about why that was so, I realized this book is 99% telling and 1% showing. Grunwald broke the cardinal rule for writers -- Show, don't tell!!

Clearly, based on other reviews, there are people who don't mind a telling book. If it were shorter, I might not have minded it, myself. Grunwald writes well and I enjoyed her descriptive scenes, particularly in California and London. What the telling does for me, however, is make me not care about any of the characters. The main characters are particularly annoying. By the end of the book, the only character I liked was Mary Jane. It had no intimacy for me. I didn't get to 'know' these characters, and learn about them that way. It was Lisa Grunwald telling me about these characters she knew. She was always telling me how they felt and what they thought. I never got the chance to learn these things myself. They became, for the most part, characters I didn't want to hear about.

Beyond my not getting to know the characters, I also got the feeling they were too 'scripted.' I don't get the feeling that Henry or Martha or Betty told Grunwald how (s)he felt about anything. Grunwald had a story to tell and made her characters fit the story. The fact that Peace was so much like Henry, even though she had been adopted, reinforced this 'make the character fit the story' sense. The biggest flaw I saw here was Henry's attitude to Martha. It didn't make sense to me at all. She was the one constant he'd had. Yes, he would be angry at her for lying to him. Yes, he'd want to run away with Betty. Yes, he'd likely want to leave home ASAP (or else become a 'mama's boy'). But, I think part of all of that, once he got over the initial anger at Martha for lying, would be, not because he had no feeling for her, but because he did have feelings and needed to get away from her smothering.

As I write this, I think maybe, possibly, Grunwald expected the reader to realize he actually did have feelings for Martha. I still believe that the telling manner of writing makes this much more difficult for the reader to see. If one gets to see Henry's emotions, rather than be told about them, one can then determine that he thinks he feels nothing for Martha, but actually really does.

Kudos to Grunwald for the ending. I tend to doubt that Henry would have made the realization about Mary Jane as young as he did, but her reaction was absolutely right. It is this ending, Henry's realization, that makes me wonder if everything we are told about how he feels about things is accurate, though it's all too vague. I sort of suspected that was how it would end for Henry and was really concerned that it would be a sappy ending. I was delighted it wasn't. It is this ending (along with the Disney and London settings, so well described) that made the book worth reading, for me.

If you like a literary style (I do) and don't mind telling (I do), go ahead and read this book. If you prefer action stories or at least a feeling of actually getting to know the characters, you probably won't care for this book.

L'Amour is a wonderful storyteller. Westerns aren't what I'd normally choose to read, but I picked this up out of curiosity and I was happily surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

This is the story of Pronto Pike's turning point in life. Pike's a cowhand drifting from job to job, enjoying a few fights between jobs. He and a new friend take a job in Eastern Montana and the story deals with rustlers, vigilantes, ranchers and homesteaders. Pike turns out to be a hero the reader totally likes - not perfect, but definitely not an anti-hero, either. He's intelligent and thoughtful, but also just a normal guy. There's nothing special about him except that maybe he's a bit more intelligent and thoughtful than average.

The best thing about L'Amour's writing is that just when you think you know where the story's going, he throws in a curve. He makes it totally natural (it's not just thrown in), and in many cases, it seemed, to me, to be more realistic than the average story would be.

This was my first Louis L'Amour book, but it won't be my last.

Everyone seems to be comparing The Last Day to The Shack, but I find that to be apples and oranges. The Shack is a story of faith. The Last Day is a love story. It is not a study of the nature of God. Jesus is a character in the story, but the story is not about him. It's about Warren Harlan Pease's last day and return home at the end of his tour of duty in Iraq. It's about his love for the people in his life, their relationships and interactions with one another. It's about his personal relationship with Jesus (not Jesus's relationship with the whole world).

I found Warren to be a very real character. I like him a lot. Everyone was likeable, probably because we were seeing them through Warren's eyes. They were also very human. They are presented with their frailties along with their good points.

The Lat Day is a sad book. It brought tears to my eyes. At the same time, it's a joyful book because it celebrates love and life. It has hope woven throughout with love.

This was one of my favorite books of 2009.

By the time I finished reading this novel, I didn't particularly care for any of the characters. I didn't dislike them all, but I found them annoying. I was looking for a noble character -- not necessarily bigger than life. Ordinary is fine, but even those characters who showed potential to be bigger than life, in the end, were just very ordinary, interesting only in the way observing strangers is interesting.

Unfinished Desires is the story of a pivotal year in the life of Mother Ravenel. The story goes back and forth between 2001 and 1952. Suzanne Ravenel is writing her memoir of the school and we jump back to the memories she apparently is having a difficult time writing.

The school girls of 1952 are probably not unlike schoolgirls of today, though less sophisticated. In this private Catholic school, they are typically smart and self important, but no wiser than girls of the same age anywhere, any time. Unfortunately, Mother Ravenel, headmistress and former student at the school, was only slightly ahead of her students in 1952, concerning self importance and snobbishness. This is apparent as everything leads to the fateful play at the end of the school year. We see it not as Mother Ravenel would have written it, but as it happened, without the one sided emotional content.

This is a marvelously titled book. As I think on what happened in the story, it becomes clear that, the letdown and disappointment are possibly intentional. Learning about the characters at the end of the novel, in 2001, was a lot like finding old school friends on Facebook. Some turned out to be very different than expected and other were just more like they were in school. We all imagine we will end up the remarkable one, but we are lucky to live up to the modest expectations of us. Learning what happened with the play and seeing the older women in 2001 made me ask what the point was. It's something to think about. Godwin's writing is lovely and I enjoyed reading, but over all, the book was a bit disappointing to me.

The Trial of Robert Mugabe by Chielo Zonz Eze

This is an elegantly simple story. However, don't let its simplicity hide its depth. It's a beautiful tale, but an ugly story. The tale is told in what seems to me to be an oral history tradition. It is a true story told fictionally. It has a rhythm to it and it creates a definite aura. It connects to both literature and history.

Robert Mugabe is a dictator, chosen by his people, but who then followed what he wanted despite what his people wanted. As a result, as often happens in such cases, whole peoples were nearly or completely wiped out. This is history. Mugabe still rules today, though still opposed.

Eze has found a way to try him for his crimes. He has found a voice for the dead and he has made them real, believable personalities. These are people we can care about rather than the unknown, voiceless, faceless victims of Mugabe's power. I cannot say who among the witnesses are actual people given voice by Eze and who are "Everyman," since my knowledge of African life is vague and mainly uninformed. However the writers he refers to, Yvonne Vera and Alexander Kanengoni, and their books, are real.

The Trial of Robert Mugabe is a cautionary tale -- specifically for Mugabe, himself, but I can also see it being read or told when Mugabe is buried so far in the past that people aren't sure if he was real or just a creation of Eze's to warn against blind dictatorship. It also serves to make the current reader aware of and care about what is happening in Zimbabwe.

Good, light read. No unnecessary romantic element and lots of humor (very good!). No mystery, but it was good suspense. Over all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Not bad. I thought the romance was contrived, but the mystery was good. I suspected the guilty party, but Clark kept me guessing right up until it was revealed in the story. The story felt more dated than it actually was, which I suspect is due to Clark being an older writer.

The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank

I liked this book. As far as I was able to discern, the story has no plot. That's not to say it's not entertaining. Once I started it, I did not want to put it down. Bank has a wonderful way with words and it got so I was almost looking for lovely or clever phrases. More than that, her characters are real. They may be a bit too real for some, in that their lives simply are and do not seem to have a point. I liked them, however.

Sophie, the narrator, seems so much like so many women I have known, taking life as it comes, trying to make sense of it and not having any really profound revelations. We watch her grow and come into her own sense of being. Her brothers aren't a whole lot unlike my own. It isn't the specific actions or events, or even the personalities, but the interaction between the siblings that I related to. Ultimately, I found myself considering how different events in my own life are from Sophie's and wondering how other women relate to to her. In a way it's a literary equivalent of a '50s-'60's coffee klatch, where women share their everyday lives.

If you're not fond of "literary" books, if you need fast paced action, you probably won't like this book. If you appreciate writing style, like getting to know characters, even though nothing remarkable happens to them, you will definitely enjoy this book.

This is my first Temperance Brennan story. Once I got used to her being older than the Tempe in the TV series (less than a chapter), I totally enjoyed it. I look forward to getting to know this Temperance Brennan.

Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall is a richly told tale. We meet the narrator/main character, Olivia, when she's a woman in her forties. She's a woman who has lived and is living a hard life. She backtracks and tells the reader how she got where she is and then the story continues in present tense.

For the most part, all of Walls characters are three dimensional. Olivia is a very likable character. It's easy to sympathize with her even though, at times, I felt that she was doing the wrong thing or being too stubborn. We see all the characters through Olivia's eyes. The depth of what we learn about them is proportional to her acquaintance and association with them. Because of this, the antagonists at times seemed to do things for no reason. We learn with Olivia, however.

There are some mysteries in the story. We want to know who is shooting the wolves and why. Olivia's pap is buried by the outhouse and we want to understand why and how that happened. There are other mysteries, all woven deftly through the story. The end has an unexpected twist, and yet, it is logical and not out of place in the story. I thought the romance was a bit too contrived at the end, but just a little. It was not totally out of the realm of possibility.

It could have been depressing, Olivia's life has been quite difficult, but Wall makes the tale real, neither overwhelming us with the negative turns life can take, nor making it a fairy tale that ends with an unrealistic 'happily ever after.'

Over all, this was a wonderful book. I was totally absorbed as I read. I would recommend this to anyone.