Tara Chevrestt's Blog, page 11

The Muse by Jesse Burton--The Uncovering of a Lost Artist

I hadn't read The Miniaturist by Jesse Burton because  a couple of my Goodreads friends had negative comments in their reviews that made it sound like a book that I wouldn't enjoy.  Yet I will give an author more of a chance when the novel sounds like it will be of special interest to me.  I received a free print format ARC of Burton's second novel, The Muse, from the publisher in return for this honest review.   The ARC's cover is very different, but I have to say that the official release cover below is beautifully designed and more intriguing.

                                   


                                   
The Muse is a dual period historical fiction novel dealing with artists and art galleries, but I was particularly drawn to it by the fact that the 1960's POV character, Odelle Bastien, was an Afro-Caribbean woman who worked in a London art gallery.   I thought this was an unusual choice, and that Jessie Burton should be applauded for her inclusiveness. I was also interested in the fact that the other period was Spain in the 1930's, and that it dealt with a family of Jews who had fled German occupied Austria.  The 1930's POV character is 19 year old Olive Schloss, a young painter with great potential, who very unfortunately has an art dealer father that doesn't take women seriously.

Olive's story resonated for me tremendously.   The family circumstances were familiar.   I remembered reading and reviewing a novel about the real 19th century Viennese Jewish feminist Bertha Pappenheim some time ago on this blog.  The book was Guises of Desire by Hilda Reilly.  You can find the review here.  The extremely constrictive Victorian attitudes toward women had a much more destructive impact on Bertha Pappenheim.   Yet Olive's father's refusal to recognize that his daughter had a gift might have crushed her spirit if a very supportive influence hadn't entered her life, a half-Romany Spanish woman by the name of Teresa Robles.  Since Olive didn't believe in her work, Teresa makes a fateful decision that changes the lives of everyone in the Schloss family as well as the life of her half-brother, Isaac Robles.

Odelle Bastien in the sixties has a parallel relationship.   She has no confidence in her ability as a writer until she meets Quick, the mystery woman who hires Odelle as a typist at the gallery.   Quick supports and encourages Odelle as a writer just as Teresa supported and encouraged Olive as an artist.   So I feel that The Muse is very centrally concerned with why women don't pursue their dreams, and how they can overcome their barriers to success with the help of other women.  This makes it a very feminist narrative.

I have to say that I had a problem with the resolution of the 1930's Spain storyline.   I thought I knew how it all ended and I turned out to be wrong.  I realized how emotionally invested I'd become in my theory about what happened to these characters when I became upset about the final twist in the plot.  This means that the author did her job very well.  I wouldn't have been so broken up if Jesse Burton hadn't made me care about these fictional creations caught up in the savagery of the Spanish Civil War.

Other reviews have compared this book to The Last Painting of Sara de Vos which I recently reviewed on this blog here.   They do have a number of commonalities. Both books have dual plot threads taking place in different periods, focus on the causes for the lack of recognition for woman artists and on the tremendous gulf between the rich and poor.  Both books also led me to reflect on whether the entire truth about anyone can ever be known, or only the truth as filtered through one perspective or another.   On the other hand, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos left me feeling that a kind of justice had been achieved, but The Muse just made me feel sad.   Another reader who identified more with Odelle than I did might have felt uplifted.

I have to conclude that any book, like The Muse that has the power to move people and cause them to think, is definitely worth reading.   
  



    

@jabrockmole is a Master with Character Banter and Romantic Development in At the Edge of Summer

I didn't jump on the Letters from Skye bandwagon. Thus, I didn't realize that Jessica Brockmole was such an excellent writer until I read her short story Something Worth Landing For in Fall of Poppies. In that same anthology, I learned of the Red Cross clinic that made life-like masks for soldiers with destroyed faces. After reading those tales, I wanted to read this one. I've also ordered Letters from Skye because Ms. Brockmole is a master with romance and character banter. The connection she forms between her heroes and heroines is amazing.

The summer these two spend together--the teenage boy who loves tennis and the young orphan girl just entering the confused stages of adulthood--is magical. The telling of it is magical. We are planted right there in the scenes. We feel their love, hope, confusion, dream their dreams. Then they are split. And this is where the story loses something. It felt to me that the magic was only there when the characters were together. Apart, living separate lives that really have nothing to do with each other, the story lost its interest somewhat. This could be due to Ms. Brockmole's excellent writing of character dialogue and connection and banter. I believe the readers enjoy those bits so much that we feel deprived of them when the characters are apart.

Claire's parts COULD have been intriguing. She was off traveling the world, learning many things, but her life away from him is summed up so quickly, in a few memories, conversations with her grandfather, and letters to Luc. Luc's war parts were gritty and sad, as to be expected. He learns lessons the hard way--through traumatic life experiences.

I especially enjoyed the making of the mask and how Claire helps him heal inside from what has happened to him. There was a moment there I doubted they'd have their HEA. I was kept in suspense. I appreciate this about the novel too--that it wasn't overly predictable. I also love that a physically "flawed" character finds love just the way he is. He doesn't have to be "healed" or "fixed" first as so many authors tend to do when writing about disabled or disfigured characters. They "fix" them (not emotionally but make the deaf hear again, blind see again, or get them new faces somehow) before they find love.

A solid read. I can't wait to read more by this author.

Karolina's Twins-- The Secret of a Holocaust Survivor

Novels dealing with WWII have been extremely popular.  I think they have replaced Tudor themed books as the most published type of historical fiction.  When they focus on Holocaust themes, they are very emotionally intense.  Unfortunately, because of their intensity readers tend to burn out on them eventually.  So I predict that there will be another shift in the historical fiction market in the near future.

As someone whose family was severely impacted by the  WWII Holocaust, I actually avoided Holocaust themed novels for a long time.   I felt that they would be too painful for me to read.   I'm not sure what changed for me, but I started to read Holocaust fiction a few years ago.   At this point, I have begun to burn out.  I don't think that it's a good thing for anyone to read too much about genocide because it blunts the feelings of horror and outrage that should be the normal response to these events.  Yet I am still open to reading Holocaust novels that are unusual in their focus, or which educate me about an aspect of the WWII Holocaust that was previously unknown to me.

Karolina's Twins by Ronald Balson is a different sort of Holocaust novel. It is a contemporary/historical legal thriller.  It is also the third in a series dealing with the cases of private investigator Liam Taggart and lawyer Catherine Lockhart.  It centers on locating a pair of twins who have been missing since WWII.  I received a request to review this book through the publisher and downloaded it from Net Galley in return for this honest review.

                                 


I knew that the Jewish community in pre-WWII Poland located in the cities and larger towns was very different from that of my own shtetl ancestors.  A shtetl is a small insular village composed entirely of Jews.  They were isolated from the outside world, and had very little knowledge of Polish society.  Their way of life was eradicated by the Nazis.  The contemporary Haredi, who are more commonly known as Hasidim, have done their best to preserve it. Yet it's difficult to duplicate the culture of a rural village in an urban environment.

Lena Woodward, the fictional client in Karolina's Twins, came from a Polish town that still exists.  Her father was a tailor who was also a WWI hero. Due to his military background, he was highly regarded by local Poles.  The family was Polish speaking rather than Yiddish speaking, and was very much integrated into Polish society.  I had actually never read about Polish Jews who were so identified with Poland.  They reminded me of what I've read about German Jews.  So it didn't surprise me to learn that Lena's father had business and family ties in Berlin.  Through research I discovered a Jewish memorial website which stated that Jewish tailors who emigrated to Germany from Lena's town of  Chrzanow were an important factor in the establishment of the German clothing industry in the early 20th century.

Lena's story was told to Catherine Lockhart as part of the investigation in the present.  Normally, I would be very critical of a novel whose structure was so expository because it usually lacks immediacy.   Yet Lena's narrative contained dialogue and other characteristics of flashbacks that made it more engaging, and lent it dramatic power.  It allowed me to visualize events.  This is a key difference that made expository storytelling more successful in Karolina's Twins.
Ronald Balson also handled suspense very well.   The plot was organized so that both the investigation and Lena's account reached a climax at the same time.

Lena was a courageous woman who was willing to take risks that most people would consider unthinkable, but her circumstances called for bold action.   In the present, this Holocaust survivor retained her mental acuity and vitality.  Yet she had regrets which caused her to conceal a crucial aspect of her past.  It's  this secret that brings her into a painfully distressing legal conflict with her son.  It lies at the heart of the narrative. Catherine's empathy and consistent supportive attitude toward Lena eventually allows the truth to surface.

Catherine impressed me with her willingness to place her career in jeopardy out of loyalty to her client.  Although the danger to Catherine in the contemporary storyline wasn't equivalent to Lena's traumatic experiences, there were suspenseful elements.  Catherine had the mental toughness to rise to the occasion.   So this book had two strong female protagonists.  This makes Karolina's Twins a novel that I can recommend to the audience for this blog.





                                  

Oklahoma Dust Storms Will Blow You Away in I Will Send Rain @RaeMeadows

I've read many a novel about the Oklahoma dust bowl and I thought there was nothing new to take in about it. Reading this book, I discovered how people dynamited the sky in hopes it would bring rain. There is a jackrabbit hunt. My point is, I learned a few new things.

All the while I became absorbed in this family's tale of confusion and survival...shame and pride. Each person in the family is facing their own dilemmas and tests of faith. The father grows deluded and the only thing keeping him facing each day is the belief that he is following God's plan by making an ark in the middle of a drought. The mother grows antsy, embarrassed, seeks comfort elsewhere. The daughter thinks she's in love and makes bad choices that don't suit her future plans. The son begins to struggle with asthma and yet refuses to wear his mask. Each person is stubborn and thinks they know best...and in the end nobody does.

I feel like there are tons of morals here and food for thought and though I can't pinpoint or explain it all I can honestly say I was impacted by this tale and drawn into it. The writing is superb. The characters are revealed in such a manner that even if you think what they're doing is crazy or wrong, you understand their reasonings. It artfully goes back and forth without jarring the reader, at times even taking us to the life and mind of a character not of the family, showing us all the different dilemmas folks are facing. 

I think this is a great novel vividly portraying Oklahoma farm life in the thirties.

I received this via Amazon Vine.

Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War

This is an anthology about love and war, just as the title suggests, but it's not the sappy, tear-your-clothes-away kind of love. It's all kinds of love. Not just the man-woman love but also the mother-son love.

The first story, The Daughter of Belgium, focuses on a young woman in occupied Belgium who has been hiding her daughter from the invading soldiers. Her life has been pretty much destroyed. When charged with caring for a German soldier, she's rather conflicted.

I didn't like this story. I gave it two stars on Goodreads. The love was instant, came out of nowhere, and the story seemed pointless. I took nothing away from it.

The Record Set Right by Lauren Willig was terrific. It's about love...gone wrong...when misunderstandings get in the way. What I liked about this tale is that in the end, the woman ended up on top. She dodged a bullet, perhaps. She's not bitter or even remorseful, but a bit self satisfied. She did well for herself and success is the sweetest revenge. I felt this had a strong feminist tone.

All for the Love of You was unique as it showed us the intricacies of facial masks for those wounded. I loved this, the story of the shop, the people running it, the way the soldiers are respectfully treated. Interesting things came up, such as training your face not to react in a manner that makes these men feel worse than they already do. I enjoyed this. Can't say I cared for the romance though. I wasn't "feeling" it.

I enjoyed Something Worth Landing For by Jessica Brockmole so much I immediately set out to obtain her novel. The hero tells the tale, and he's such a likable guy. And the woman involved is so sassy even in her grief. They made me chuckle and root for them. This was a unique and very quick romance yet I "felt" it along with them.

An American Airman in Paris...did not do much for me. It felt weird--both the hero's obsession with the girl who'd lived in his house and his sexual stuff. I didn't finish it. After You've Gone...I found the narrative unengaging and did not finish that one either.

The Photograph was also a good tale. I could feel the love between the characters, however fleeting. The story was probably the most unique as it involved a British soldier not on the frontlines but in Ireland fighting in a conflict the rest of the book doesn't explore and also touching on the hostilities between the Irish and British. It's a tale of forbidden love.

In both Hour of Bells and Hush, the love of a mother for her children is explored. I enjoyed the former as the mother sought revenge and instead received a surprise.

Overall, the book is worth the time and read. You may find an author you've never read before and as a result, get more books on your to read, as was the case with myself and Jessica Brockmole. I can't wait to get my hands on her novel now.

I received this through LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

Flying High Reviews: Book Babe Gets A Banner Overhaul

If you saw Flying High Reviews and thought you were in the wrong place, I'm here to reassure you that this is the blog that was formerly Book Babe.  When Tara posted recently, she decided to change the banner because the old one no longer reflected her current life or outlook.  I (Shomeret) agreed with the change. 

I am happy to see a banner that centers on women in aviation because that theme has always been important to this blog.  Tara and I both have an abiding interest in it.  I also feel that women flying is a good metaphor for feminism.  So that unites the most important focuses for both of us.

Tara will continue to post occasionally and I will do my best to keep the torch burning with reviews dealing with books that have strong female protagonists.

                      Shomeret

The Steep and Thorny Way: Something Was Rotten in the State of Oregon

I liked the last two Cat Winters books, The Cure For Dreaming and The Uninvited.  When I discovered that she had written a new YA novel with a bi-racial protagonist, I was intrigued and wanted to find out if she could pull it off.

 I know that one of the reasons why African Americans object to POC characters as protagonists in novels written by Caucasian writers like Cat Winters is that it leads to books by African American writers being ignored.  The more visible and successful Caucasian writers get to dominate the market with their portrayals of African American life.  Although some African American authors do get contracts from traditional publishers, there aren't as many as there should be.  I really do recognize that as a problem.

I want readers to be aware that I do read and review African American writers.  Maybe not as often as I should.   Yet I can say that in 2015 I read and reviewed Hurricane and Bayou Magic by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Jam on the Vine by LaShonda Katrice Barnett and Balm by Dolen Perkins-Valdez on this blog.  I don't feel that I'm privileging books about African Americans written by Caucasians.   In fact, The Steep and Thorny Way is one of the few that  I've read in this category.

                             


So I saw that someone on Goodreads was asking whether this book is racist.   Please note that I saw no one asking if the YA novel Soundless by Richelle Mead is racist or anti-deaf because she writes about a Chinese deaf village when she is neither Chinese nor deaf.   While I can't vouch for the cultural authenticity of either this novel or Richelle Mead's, I can speak about the impact they had on me.  I felt that that Richelle Mead's book strongly condemns prejudice against the deaf, and I felt that Cat Winters was strongly condemning racism.

In fact, it seems to me that framing a narrative about a bi-racial girl trying to get justice for the death of her African American father as a Hamlet re-telling implies that her story is just as significant as the one that Shakespeare was telling in Hamlet.   It's saying that her readers should sit up and take notice because something having been rotten in the state of Oregon is as important as something having been rotten in the state of Denmark.   And the rot in Oregon in 1923 was that prejudice was king. 

Is this a good Hamlet re-telling?  Well, re-tellings come in a variety of flavors.   Some are closer to the original version than others.   Some are very creative in their approach to re-telling.  The Steep and Thorny Way is an example of a creative re-telling.  For one thing, it appeared to me that there were two Hamlets with each fighting for the justice of their separate causes.   Hanalee was one, but  I thought that Joe Adder was also a Hamlet. He too was struggling against prejudice.   So Hanalee doesn't need to fulfill all the aspects of the Hamlet role.  It's divided between her and Joe Adder.   I felt that there was similar doubling or even tripling of other roles in Hamlet among the characters in this novel. For example,  I think there were actually three Ophelias.  They were recognizable by what they did or what happened to them that paralleled the characters and events in Shakespeare's play.   The re-telling aspect is complex.  Most people will conclude that it doesn't work as a re-telling.  I disagree.  I think it's a very good re-telling.

Finally, Hanalee is a strong female protagonist.  She is very independent.  She refuses to be confined by conventional expectations.    She wants to marry anyone she chooses regardless of race which she couldn't do legally in Oregon at that point.  She wants a good education so that she could become a lawyer.  She carries a pistol and is a very good shot.  This is why The Steep and Thorny Way qualifies for this blog.



 



                                 

  


 

@FionaJDavis Delivers Scandal, Secrets, Heartache, and a Strong Feminine Lesson

I've come to a point in my life in which I've read it all and everything is beginning to seem like a retelling of another story I read. So it's not often anymore that I pick up a novel and devour it in a day, find myself just dying to know what happens next, getting completely engrossed in another life and time.

This book did it.

It's fantabulous, a fantabulous, well written blend of scandal, secrets, heartache, and missed opportunities revisited, with a strong feminine lesson. You don't NEED a man. You only need gumption, girl. And courage. If you WANT a man, then by all means, have one, but don't feel you should/must have one.

The story goes back and forth between a modern-day journalist living in the old Barbazon hotel for women turned condos and a small-town girl from the midwest in 1952, also residing in the Barazon. Each woman is facing similar problems in different scenarios, be it their careers or love lives, also family obligations.

I liked both stories. My favorite part about the past story was experiencing life at the Barbazon during that time, the fashion shows on the 18th floor, the girls sneaking their fellows in the stairways, etc. And the clothing descriptions, as I'm a vintage clothing fan. The modern story, I appreciated how the heroine very slowly learned that being without a man was okay, that there was no need to destroy herself and bypass what she wanted in order to have one.  I loved watching this heroine evolve with each new revelation she discovered about the past heroine.

I also appreciated that I couldn't and didn't figure everything out by page ten. Far from it. I was just as surprised by the conclusion as the heroine herself.

And this book has it all: troublesome family, questionable friends, romance, scary moments, drugs, jazz singing, mean girls, fashion....

I highly recommend it.

I received an ARC via Amazon Vine.

Clear to Lift: A Novel

I would normally roll my eyes at a review that states, "Heart-pounding, edge-of-seat adventure."  But I'm going to say that. I am aware that is sounds cheesy and cliched, but in this case, it's true. As I read the final rescue scene in this novel, my heart was pounding and I was on the edge of my seat, literally. When I closed the final page and looked at my coworker (I finished reading this on a work break), I actually said, "A woman who saves the day! Exactly my kind of read!" (I was actually more specific in my quote, but to reveal more would be spoilers.)

It's Fallon Navy Base, a woman helicopter pilot doing SARS and bomb clean up and checking into F-18 crashes. It's amazing stuff. I wasn't aware until recently that there was a Navy base in the desert. I was intrigued by life on this base, wish there was more of it, such as the heroine's F-18 ride. More, more, more! I didn't like the casual reveal of that in the middle of the story. I wanted the details.

This woman has more going on than helicopter flying though as she navigates not only the peaks of the Sierra Nevada but the emotions of her heart as she questions her romantic choices and what makes her happy and comes to terms with past abandonment.

The writing is top notch, the story smooth, the action intense. My only quibble is that I felt as though I was thrown into this woman's life all of a sudden. There were lots of things in her past relevant to the tale or that I wanted more of, such as the F18 ride. Basically, I wanted more of this story, this heroine. I would have liked it to have gone a bit more, instead of starting with her at Fallon.

Terrific tale. I cannot wait to see what this author writes next.

Girl power!

I received this from the author, no strings attached.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

I love books that focus on artists, and have always been fascinated with the 17th century Dutch Masters.  Their work always seemed to be telling me stories about people's lives.  When I lived in New York, I felt privileged to be able to look at the Vermeer painting, "Girl Asleep" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I mention this because Dominic Smith, the author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, placed a condition on winning a copy of this book on Authorbuzz.  He wanted readers to e-mail him about a 17th century Dutch painting. So I won my copy  by posting him a message regarding "Girl Asleep" and my experience of the painting.   This means that I must mention that I got the book for free from the author, yet this is still an honest review.

                               


At the time when I was a teen obsessing about this Vermeer work, I didn't know that there were woman painters in 17th century Holland.  Sara de Vos in Smith's novel is a fictional character, but there were real female 17th century Dutch Masters.  The best known is probably Judith Leyster. The Wikipedia article about her that I've linked contained a self portrait of Leyster that I can reproduce below because it's public domain.

                               


I don't imagine that Leyster normally wore a ruff when she was painting because it would have gotten spattered with paint.  The fictional 17th century painter, Sara de Vos,  wouldn't have dressed that way either when she was working.    This self portrait represents how Judith Leyster wanted to be viewed. She dressed formally in order to gain respect.

 The Last Painting of Sara de Vos deals with women in the art world needing to be respected.  There were two female protagonists.   In addition to Sara de Vos, there was the contemporary art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley.   Ellie was hiding a crime that she committed when she was a poor struggling art history student during the 1950's.  Sara de Vos was also impoverished, and violated the regulations of her art guild.   Poor individuals may be forced to earn money in ways that society condemns.   If they become more prosperous, they have the luxury of becoming more circumspect,  but the past still haunts them.

It seems to me that Ellie felt a kinship with Sara de Vos, and that this was why she included Sara in her doctoral dissertation on Dutch woman painters of the 17th century even though this artist had only one authenticated surviving work at the time.  Ellie wanted to be Sara de Vos.  Ellie's advisor  thought Ellie should scrap her chapter on Sara de Vos saying "If Dickens had written a single book none of us would know his name."   I disagree and I'm pretty sure that Ellie did too.  There are some writers who are only known for one work that has echoed down the ages.  For example,  Miguel de Cervantes is only known for Don Quixote.  More recently,  Harper Lee may have written two books, but her reputation was built on only one.  I think that if Dickens had only written A Tale of Two Cities, we would still have remembered him.  The work by Sara de Vos is portrayed memorably in Smith's novel.  When I wish I could see a painting by a fictional artist, I know the author has done an excellent job of ushering the reader into the world of the character's creation.

Marty de Groot, the contemporary owner of the Sara de Vos painting that is the main focus of the narrative, was unsympathetic for a large portion of the novel. Another author would have allowed him to become a caricature, but Dominic Smith develops him so that he has dimension.  I didn't identify with Marty de Groot as I did with Ellie Shipley, but ultimately I felt that he was trying to be a decent human being.

I read a review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos on Goodreads which said that "nothing happened in the end".   That reviewer meant that there wasn't a big dramatic blow up over Ellie Shipley's crime.  Yet I felt that there was satisfying karmic balance even though it wasn't conventional justice.