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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Yannick Murphy's Signed, Mata Hari


Signed, Mata Hari by Yannick Murphy
This historical novel delves into the mind of a much maligned historical figure, Mata Hari.  Yanick’s Mata Hari is an extremely sympathethic woman who danced and spied in order to have the means to fight for custody of her child, Non.  While it’s hard to believe that she was entirely blameless, it is possible that she was entrapped by the Germans to look like agent H21, as she claimed.  Yannick’s Mata Hari is completely different from the film version.  To date, two films have been made about Mata Hari.
What I liked best about this novel was the way in which Yannick experiments with point of view so that we see Mata Hari through three points of view – 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  In the first person point of view, Mata Hari constantly repeats the mantra, “I have walked across the sea” because she walked to Ameland island at low tide as a child.  She loves Java, where her cruel husband is stationed for a time, and seems most at home there.  In the 2nd person point of view, she ironically advises readers how to become a spy.  In the 3rd person point of view, we see her in her final days in prison where she befriends a nun.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel

 
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Ned, the teenaged son of a famous photographer, unwittingly disturbs the past when he enters the cloister of the St. Saveur cathedral in Aix en Provence. What is supposed to be a lark turns into a nightmare when one of the photographer’s crew goes missing.  Ned and exchange student, Kate, become involved in a 2,500 year-old mystery that involves a love triangle and characters from France’s celtic past. Kay presents more than one twist in this thrilling fantasy.

Liesel Litzenburger's The Widower


The Widower by Liesel Litzenburger
A baby left in an orchard, a gun won in a pool game, a car wreck on an icy day, and snapshots taken in a hotel room are isolated incidents that fatefully converge in this beautifully written literary novel. In one sense, the stories of the people who live in this small town in Michigan’s upper peninsula are in the words of one of the characters “unbelievably sad.” Ray who says he’s in the “life saving business” can save everyone but himself. The widower of the title, Swan Robey, just wants to be left alone after a tragic incident on an icy road. A young Canadian woman becomes involved with an abusive boyfriend. A convict returns to his hometown after spending the last twenty years in jail.

Like the Wislawa Szymborska poem, “There But for the Grace,” chance encounters cause these characters to meet and find reprieve from their sorrows.

 What I liked best about the novel is the beautiful language Litzenburger uses throughout. Here’s one of many beautiful descriptions of the lake: “Soon the big lake is visible, silver, flickering through the trees. Then the whole of it bottomless, forever. It is his map, his secret. It holds his life. He can follow the shore road, the water, all the way home.”

Litzenburger's latest work is Now You Love Me, a collection of short stories. 

Chris Wooding's Storm Thief

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Storm Thief by Chris Wooding
Two teenagers steal an artifact that is of valuable importance in this futuristic coming-of-age novel. Rail and Moa are restricted to a ghetto–they are tattooed and are not allowed to leave without a pass–yet their stolen artifact literally opens doors for them. With assassins and the secret police on their trail, the pair cannot afford to attract attention. Against Rail’s wishes, good-hearted Moa decides to protect an enormous, deformed golem with surprising consequences. Wooding’s novel travels at breakneck speed as the teenagers face further dangers–probability storms and ghost-like vampires called revenants–in this wonderful YA novel about risking everything for freedom.

Eva Hoffman's The Secret


The Secret by Eva Hoffman
In the near future a young girl, Iris Surrey, has always been plagued by a feeling that she is not normal.  Battling the Wierdness, as she calls it, has left Iris bitter, confused, and alienated.  These feelings are only exacerbated when she learns the painful truth: that she is a clone.  The truth sets you free, but in Iris’ case it compounds her misery.  She runs away to New York where she tries to establish a separate identity from her mother who created her by cloning her cells in a laboratory.  Iris frequently refers to herself as a “monster” and “facsimile,” even stating that whe is not sure she has a soul:  “Did my mother steal my soul, my very self?”

Breaking into her Aunt’s electronic mailbox, Iris tracks down her grandparents, only to face their rejection.  She tries to reunite with her stepfather who treats her as a sexual object – as the living embodiment of his ex-lover, Iris’ mother.  Iris feels condemned to walk the earth as a “mimetic being” until she falls in love with Robert who accepts her condition.  Even so, in the end, Iris is still not convinced she has a soul.
Written by a Holocaust historian, this book will resonate with anyone who has ever felt betrayed or marginalized.  It raises questions about self-determination, identity, and medical ethics.

Karen Armstrong's Through the Narrow Gate

 


Through The Narrow Gate is an intriguing memoir by a woman who spent seven years in a convent and who later became a pre-eminent writer and speaker on religous topics. Determined to find God, Armstrong leaves a comfortable life in Birmingham, England for an austere convent at 17.  She struggles with homesickness, the weekly baths, the sewing, the "rule of silence" and other strict rules. She is also not allowed, for instance, to read for pleasure, leave the convent, or write freely to her family.

Despite being called "useless" by the Novice Mistress, Armstrong or "Sister Martha" (as she has been renamed), soldiers on. Unfortunately for her, Armstrong has entered the convent before Vatican II. Her illness, epilepsy, is seen as a failure to discipline her emotions. Armstrong also find that her active mind is constantly at odds with religious life. After she enters Oxford so that she can become a teaching nun, she faces even greater turmoil. Her desire to obey the order is constantly at odds with her desire to study literature.

Surprisingly honest in her willingness to examine her mistakes, Armstrong also never shies away from asking hard questions about her religous vocation. After leaving the convent, Armstrong then went on to write about the commonalities she sees among various faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. She won the $100,000 TED prize in 2008 and drew up a Charter for Compassion that was signed by dignataries from around the world. Those who are interested in Karen Armstrong's memoir may also be interested in her second memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness.

Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy

Thursday, October 28, 2010


There's must be something in the cold Swedish air that produces great spine-chilling mysteries. Two Swedish mysteries have recently been dramatized and released to audiences worldwide. The Girl Who Played With Fire is a sequel to Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The film version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, that stars Noomi Rapace as the punk sleuth/avenger, was released to American audiences in 2010.

Book Review of The Girl Who Played With Fire.

Lisabeth Salander continues to be meticulous, ruthless, and self-reliant to a fault in the next book in Larsson's series. Some reviewers have called her an anti-social punk and have compared her (as far as her self-reliance goes) to Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. According to Blomkvist, Salander has her own sense of morality though it’s far from the traditional view. Salander has no problem exacting revenge as long as it’s directed at those who have harmed the most vulnerable members of society.

As far as Salander goes, we lose track of her short after she visits the couple intent on exposing Sweden’s involvement in sex trafficking. For then on, Salander appears in absentia, in negative space, as hearsay. Readers, as well as most of the characters, doubt Salander is innocent of the crime the tabloids accuse her of committing—a triple murder. Blomkvist remains incommunicado with his former researcher and love interest, until he finds a series of cryptic messages left on his hard drive.

What’s enjoyable about this novel is the pace, particularly the second half where the action moves at lightning speed. Larsson manages to enter and exit the characters consciousness seamlessly; just as we learn the motives of one, we’re plunged into the consciousness of another and a new mystery emerges.

Several of the scenes and situations in the Millennium series, however, are not for the faint-hearted. Larsson’s Girl Who Played with Fire explores the dark underbelly of Sweden, its sex trade and drug trafficking operations, the SAPO (Sweden’s secret police) and its cover-up of a key ex-Soviet defector.

The denouement in the Swedish countryside is particularly shocking and contains several gruesome scenes. The conclusion does, however, leave readers eager for the next installment.

Another Swedish book-to-movie not to be missed is Let the Right In.
Let the Right One In. John Ajvide Lindqvist. A bullied boy learns that his only friend is a vampire.

Movie tie-in: Let the Right One In.


by Chantal Walvoord

Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. Review by Chantal Walvoord


For a delightful break from reality, read Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. This coming-of-age fantasy will interest young adults and adults alike. Marillier captures all of the wonder and horror that abounds in the original fey stories, yet she gives her heroines problems that anyone could identify with. Is it better to be safe or to take a risk? Is it better to control or to let go and trust your instincts? In chasing monsters (and seeking revenge) do we become what we chase?

Wildwood Dancing opens with a line that piques the reader’s interest, “I heard it said that girls can’t keep secrets. That’s wrong: we’ve proved it.” Every full moon four sisters, who live in a Transylvanian castle, lock their bedroom door and pretend to fall asleep. Then, they step into a portal that takes them into the Other Kingdom--the fairy realm of Wildwood forest—where they enjoy a night of dancing on the green.

After their father’s health deteriorates, the girls must deal with their ambitious, narrow-minded cousin, Cezar, who takes away their home and family business. The girls’ father, a textiles merchant, has left Jena in charge of the business, yet Cezar seizes it. Cezar also threatens to fell the woods surrounding the castle and promises to destroy the fairy realm that offends his sense of propriety.

Loosely based on Grimm’s “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Frog Prince,” Marillier breaks new ground with this young adult novel. More than anything this is a novel about consequences. “Nothing comes without a price,” the old crone tells Jena and her two cousins when they, as children, make the mistake of playing “King of the Lake” in the Dead Wash. The consequences of that forbidden game will have far-reaching effects—altering Cezar, Costi, and Jena’s lives while also binding them together.

Wildwood Dancing is also about impossible love, betrayal, and forgiveness. Fans of the Twilight series may enjoy the “doomed love” plot involving Tatiana and Sorrow. Sorrow is one of the Night People, who finds temporary refuge in Ileana’s glade. In addition to dealing with the supernatural elements from the Other Kingdom--an otherworldly frog, a witch who rides a white fox, the strange Night people--Jena must also deal with the desire to find love, independence, and self-fulfillment in her own world.

Wildwood Dancing won an Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel (2006) and is a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults (2007).

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