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BETWEEN SISTERS by Kristin Hannah narrated by Laural Merlington

Despite many negative reviews, I found BETWEEN SISTERS compelling. And I found Laural Merlington’s narration superb.

I think many of us who have sisters (or siblings) know how fragile those relationships can be, especially when you leave home and start your adult life. This is partly because when siblings are growing up together, the one thing they do NOT want is to be like each other. And so siblings will often carve out their niches in their family of origin in opposition to each other. The result is that siblings, even those close in age, have very different personalities. When they grow up and leave home it is hardly surprising that such different people end up leading very different lives, and I think the problem of “having nothing in common” with your sibling is quite a common one.

Such is true in Kristin Hannah’s BETWEEN SISTERS. Elder sister Meghann is the best divorce attorney in Seattle. Not surprisingly, her personal life is a wreck because she doesn’t trust anybody. Being a hot-shot lawyer means that Meghann has learned to act like a man. She complains like a man, she demands attention like a man, and she is blunt about her displeasure – like a man.

Younger sister Claire is a much softer personality. She is uncomfortable with the way sister Meghann dresses down anyone who displeases her. Claire likes to keep things quiet, pleasant, and is comfortable taking the blame on herself and not complaining (like too many women.)

The Past casts a long shadow over these sisters who haven’t had a relationship in decades, not since Meghann at the age of 13 ran away from Claire’s father who was trying to make a home for both girls. But Meghann was brilliant, and had enough sense (even at the age of 13) to call a teacher who believed in her. From then on, her life was set as she aced every test, got into college and then went to law school.

Meanwhile, sister Claire lived in the country, helping her father run a “resort” in a country town.

The closeness between the sisters begins when Claire announces she’s getting married. Of course, Meghann immediately thinks of prenups, but Claire makes clear that is NOT what she wants.

Then tragedy strikes.

What makes this novel so well-written IMHO is the way in which Kristin Hannah never gives you an info dump about The Past. Instead, she cuts up the various events into pieces and sprinkles it throughout the novel, until you have that ah-ha moment that makes the reading of this piece so pleasurable. Five stars.

FOR ME FATE WOVE THIS (Ceridwen #8) by Octavia Randolph narrated by Nano Nagle

This novel is the third of three about the younger generation, the sons and daughters of Ceridwen, Sidroc, Gyric, Godwin and Aelfwin.

The first of these three (SILVER HAMMER, GOLDEN CROSS) ends with the Siege of Four Stones, home of Hrald, son of Sidroc & Aelfwin, and Ashild, daughter of Yrling & Aelfwin. Just as things are building to a climax, with the nun Sparrow/Bova holding the door against the invading Danish marauders, the novel stops.

WILDSWEPT picks up a day or so later, when the victorious young Jarl of Four Stones, Hrald and his sister Ashild (who killed a Dane with a spear) are recovering. This volume doesn’t end, just pauses.

Now we have FOR ME FATE WOVE THIS, which takes up where WILDSWEPT left off, but this time we are in for a much rougher ride.

It occurs to me as I type this review that WILDSWEPT would have been a much better title for Volume 8 of the Ceridwen Circle, while FOR ME FATE WOVE THIS might have been better for Volume 7, as Volume 7 is a quiet interlude before the storms that await us in Volume 8.

To be frank, I don’t know what FOR ME FATE WOVE THIS refers to. It could be Ceridwen, who continues her charmed life with Sidroc (the love of her life) whose peaceful tranquillity in Gotland is about to be shattered. It seems to me (reading between the lines) that these three volumes HAMMER, WILDSWEPT and FATE are setting up the eventual return of Ceridwen to Anglia (England), which presumably we will witness in Volume 9.

But the “me” of the title could refer to other characters. It could refer to Hrald, or Aelfwin, or Cedric who each suffer unspeakable loss & tragedy. Or it could refer to Ashild.

Whoever it was, I would have preferred to have been given a clue!

The reason why so many love this volume is because the tension is ratcheted up several notches, making the emotions of the characters more intense. As I have said previously, author  Octavia Randolph is superlative when it comes to depicting the world of the 9th Century, and she also allows emotions to unspool on the page, hooking the reader in. But as with WILDSWEPT, I felt the pacing was lacking. It didn’t help that this volume didn’t really begin, just slid into place where WILDSWEPT broke off.  Four stars.

WILDSWEPT (Ceridwen #7) by Octavia Spencer narrated by Nano Nagle

Instead of being in the foreground of WILDSWEPT, as one might expect, the war formed a slightly edgy backdrop to a story about the relationships that the heirs to Ceridwen, Sidroc, Godwin and Gyric  – 16-year-old Edwin, Jarl of Kilton, his elder (half) brother) Ceric (in his early twenties) and 18-year-old Hrald (Harald), Jarl of Four Stones,  – are forging amongst themselves and their young women.

Hrald’s elder sister, Ashild, is the protagonist of this volume. At 20 years old, she has beauty, presence and more importantly ambition. It is her ambition that drives this story. Instead of meekly going to her destiny of being peace-weaver-wife to Ceric of Kilton (who rather desperately wants her to marry him), Ashild insists on staying at her girlhood home of Four Stones. Why? Because she (not-so-secretly) wishes to be Jarl of Four Stones herself.  This decision is even more surprising given that she is expecting Ceric’s child.

At this point, I wondered about the reactions of those around her. Ashild tells her family about her condition, and they are so nice to her. I understand why her mother, a gentle woman, would be supporting and loving.

But her brother? Her uncle?

No way. Not in 1891, not in 1791, not in 1691, or 1591, or 1491, and certainly not in 891. Women were treated with the greatest contempt and if they didn’t like the future chosen for them by their men, were forced (physically abused) to make them obey. After all, Book 1 of the Circle of Cerdiwen opens with Ashild’s mother Elfwyn being sold against her will in marriage as part of a peace treaty with a marauding Viking war chief.

No-one had much sympathy for Elfwyn, who was wed to a violent thug at age 16, despite her gentle nature.  Her wedding night must have been traumatic and terrifying. Ashild is made of much tougher material and her intended already adores her. So why aren’t the men of her family demanding that she go to Kilton immediately, as it will benefit everyone?

And this is where the story lost me, because it seems perfectly obvious that of course Ashild will go to Kilton and wed Ceric, and this whole thing about her shilly-shallying about her destiny is way too modern for ninth-century England, and not that interesting.

And then there is Dagmar, daughter of a Viking King, and suitable in every way to be bride to Hrald of Four Stones. Except that her father left her nothing. Which is a problem as the whole point of these dynastic marriages are the gold and treasure that the brides bring to enrich their new husband’s family. Attractive and poised as she is, can Hrald really afford to marry someone who has literally nothing?

But Hrald is such a pleasant young man, and so besotted with Dagmar (as we are told repeatedly.) His mother (Elfwyn) is so gentle, his men are respectful. Only his uncle has misgivings, but even he doesn’t carry on. In short, there is no doubt that Hrald will marry Dagmar.

But we have to wait until the next volume to find out what really happens. Five stars for the sensuous prose, wonderful characters and marvelous descriptions. One star for plot, storyline and pacing.

DISTANT SHORES by Kristin Hannah

How I loved this atmospheric novel that exuded such quiet power!

Elizabeth and Jack Shore married when very young in their early twenties, and quickly had two children. Of course, they adore each other and their girls, but Elizabeth finds herself sublimating her needs to her children and to her young husband who is selfish in a way typical of young men.  He is a football player. He wants what those type of men want: fast cars, fast money, fast girls. He doesn’t stop to think enough about his young family and the effect those choices have on them.

Then Jack fails big-time, unfairly prevented from getting the positions he wants in sports radio due to a drug problem he acquired while recovering from knee surgery.

Now in their mid-forties and parents to two young women in their late teens/early twenties, Jack and his wife find they have little in common. After years of struggle, Jack finally lands his dream job in New York as a radio host. Elizabeth, yet again, wraps her life around his ambitions. But this time, it doesn’t work. The death of a beloved father brings Elizabeth up short, and instead of returning to her husband in New York, she takes off for another shore, this one on the Oregon coast where she owns a much-beloved beach house.

And so we see Elizabeth, the dutiful doormat of a wife, begin to claim back her talent as an artist. The question becomes, has husband Jack grown up enough to support her in her new life? Five stars.

REVELATIONS by Mary Sharratt narrated by Polly Lee

How I loved this book! How refreshing to read about a Saint who was a continual source of irritation to everyone around her! From her sharp tongue to her noisy weeping (which had the effect of instantly emptying churches), People couldn’t flee from her swiftly enough.

Margery Kempe seems to have been one of those unfortunate people who bring bad luck on themselves. This volume reads as a catalogue of disaster, from the unrelenting contempt & ridicule heaped upon her by the people of Bishop’s Lynn in Norfolk (Margery’s home town, now called King’s Lynn), to the way successive landlords evicted her from their properties because her personality had the effect of riling everyone up, to the coldness with which her children greeted her when she returned from Jerusalem, to their glee & relief when she decided to leave on another pilgrimage (to Santiage de Compostela.)

Poor Margery rarely caught a break. The only people who ever supported her were fellow Saint & Mystic Julian of Norwich, and the various strangers she met on her travels. (She made friends easily due to her kind heart.)

Of course, it didn’t help that she was a woman who lived between circa 1373 and 1440. In those days, men treated any woman with the utmost contempt, so a noisily weeping middle-aged woman was not going to play on their sympathies. Things got dangerous for Margery towards the end of this volume when, in 1417, she was accused of Lollardy (an early form of Protestantism.)

Mary Sharratt does wonders with this material, making vivid the dangers a woman faced under Male Rule, when Men could literally do as they liked, including rape their wives. Five stars.

BRIGID OF KILDARE by Marie Benedict writing as Heather Terrell, narrated by Terry Donnelly

BRIGID OF KILDARE is a skillfully-written well-paced novel by author Marie Benedict, writing under the name Heather Terrell. Like many such novels, it is a braided narrative. However, the present day (which flits back & forth between Dublin and Rome), is strong, mainly because the three characters – Sister Mary, Alexandria Patterson and Declan – are so compelling.

The past (of course), is the heart of the novel, and I enjoyed the fact that Ms. Benedict spent most of her time there, so that we could experience the spaciousness of life in the ancient past.

I said that this novel was skillfully written, and let me explain why. There are two critical points in the story arc of the relationship between Abbess Brigid and a Roman monk called Decius who is sent to spy on her. The first is when they first meet. This meeting is first told to us via Decius’ point of view, but much later in the novel, we hear it from Brigid’s point of view. Then there is the early morning encounter, when Brigid finds out that Decius has been reading banned texts in her scriptorium. Again, the first time we are told of this encounter is from Decius’ point and view, filtered through all the weight of his guilty conscience, because although he has been sent to spy on Brigid and send a report back to Rome damning her for her heresies, he finds this task more and more distasteful. The second time, we again hear it from Brigid’s point of view, and learn (of course) that she is perfectly well-aware that he is a spy for Rome.

And so these two  characters – Brigid and Decius – come together to foil Rome’s plan to destroy Brigid’s abbey, and Ireland.  Five stars.

SUMMER ISLAND by Kristin Hannah narrated by Joyce Bean

Lopez Island, San Juan Islands, Washington State, the “Summer Island” of Kristin Hannah’s novel

It is always fascinating to read earlier works by authors who have now become well-known. Kristin Hannah’s magnificent novel THE NIGHTINGALE gave her well-deserved fame, but prior to writing that novel, she had already written 21 other novels, mostly set in Washington State, mostly involving family dynamics. Unlike her breakthrough novel THE NIGHTINGALE, none of these are historical novels, but involve the recent past.

So it is very interesting to see how she handles her material. The greatest strength of Ms. Hannah’s writing is her ability to let emotions unspool on the page. I have now read four of her early novels (HOME AGAIN, ON MYSTIC LAKE, ANGEL FALLS and now SUMMER ISLAND) and this facility with emotional writing is evident in all of them. Which means they are definitely a cut above the usual feel-good literature told (mainly) from a woman’s point of view.

However, there are flaws. In SUMMER ISLAND, there was never any doubt that the heroine, Ruby Bridge (a 30-something failed comedian with a chip on her shoulder) and the leading man, Dean Sloane, would finally get together.  IMHO, the novel would have been so much better if that relationship had been developed and milked for tension. Like other readers, I thought it lacked depth and that everything happened too quickly.

Then there is the problem of the ending. As everyone knows, endings are hard to do well. This is particularly true if we have to have a happy ending. It is no surprise therefore that this novel ends with a wedding, but it would have been so much better if the text had been edited to remove clichés and banalities. Four stars.

HOUSE OF VERSACE by Deborah Ball, narrated by Jo Anna Perrin

After reading HOUSE OF GUCCI I was dying to find out more about the Versace family, and this book didn’t disappoint. My favorite part was the beginning, which described what it was like to be struggling in Calabria, a poor and provincial backwater in the toe of Italy’s boot. It was fascinating to see how Gianni Versace, a high-school dropout (which would have condemned him to a life of poverty and hard labor) nevertheless was gradually introduced into the life of fashion by his mother Francesca (a talented seamstress).

The only quibble I have is that I really wanted to spend more time Francesca, who in her own way seemed just as talented as her son Gianni. I wanted to know what it was like for a tremendously talented young woman to grow up in a poverty-stricken region, what her family was like, who taught her sewing, what her dreams were, before her inevitable marriage to someone her family considered suitable (in this case Gianni’s father).

After that, the book narrates Gianni’s stupendous rise in the fashion world of Milan, his creativity, his workaholic life-style and his over-the-top extravagance. Alongside him were his siblings; sober elder brother Santo who ran the business side of things, and flamboyant, out-of-control, wild Donatella, his kid sister.

That part of the volume was marvelous as it contained a detailed account of the family ups-and-downs of the Versace clan, always fascinating if you love family dramas with outsize characters.

The book (of course) was not as successful after Gianni’s death.  Apart from this senseless traumatic event, what stood out to me was the infamous impulsively-written will Gianni wrote, in which he left his 50% stake to his 11-year-old niece Allegra. I wish that author Susanna Ball had spent more time on this as it was so important. It is still unclear to me after experiencing the whole volume, why exactly Gianni wrote his will without mentioning his siblings Santo and Donatella. I still don’t know what it was about them that made him so angry that he resorted to such petty revenge. Four stars.

HOUSE OF GUCCI by Sara Gay Forden narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi

From L to R: Maurizio Gucci played by Adam Driver, Patrizia Reggiani played by Lady Gaga, Aldo Gucci played by Al Pacino in the upcoming movie HOUSE OF GUCCI (based upon Ms. Forden’s book) to be released 24 November 2021.

 

What an amazing story! Who could resist a tale about Murder, Madness, Glamour & Greed?

This volume was not solely focused on the murder of Maurizio Gucci. Instead, it provided a sweeping view of the history of the House of Gucci, starting in 1921 when Guccio Gucci founded the original shop in Florence. Author Sara Gay Forden takes us through four generations, starting with Guccio, then his eldest son Aldo Gucci (a marketing genius,) onto Aldo’s nephew Maurizio Gucci (whose total lack of understanding about the value of money brought the company to its knees,) and finally the story of what happened after Maurizio’s murder when outsiders took control, and the various events that led to the House of Gucci becoming the global phenomenon it is today.

The beginning was both amusing and fascinating as we took in the magnificent characters that populated the Gucci family.   But (and there is a but) this story was not handled as well as it could have been. Granted, it gave a perceptive and astute look at the various people who took charge of the company.  But the prose was terrible, cluttered with an over-abundance of adjectives, unnecessary repetitions, and distracting descriptions (“he had piercing blue eyes” we are told of one minor character.) This was not helped by the monotone delivery of the narrator.

As the novel wound on, progressing from the Operatic drama of an Italian family business, to a story of corporate takeovers and hostile bids (not so interesting) the problems grew. Which is a great pity.

I give this volume 5 stars for a truly fascinating story and 1 star for terrible prose.

ANGEL FALLS by Kristin Hannah

It had never occurred to me before that Kristin Hannah’s novels resemble Jodi Picoult’s. Like Jodi Picoult, this novel has a punning title. Like her, the novel takes place in small-town USA where everyone knows one another. Like her, it is filled with the minutiae of parenting two kids in modern-day America, where smart organizational abilities and unflappability are a must.  Unlike Jodi Picoult, this novel doesn’t involve lawyers, nor does it involve courtroom drama.

Instead, it is the story of what happens to a family when one of its members is incapacitated by injury for several weeks. Mikaela Campbell, beloved wife and mother of two, hits her head so hard after falling from her horse that she falls into a coma.

As we gradually uncover her secrets – that she was previously married to a Hollywood star – this novel begins to resemble HOME AGAIN, another of Ms. Hannah’s early novels. Like HOME, we have a three-ring triangle, a woman loved desperately by two men, one of them “ordinary” and decent, the other a Hollywood star. In both, Ms. Hannah moralizes about their lives, instead of letting the reader draw her own conclusions.

This retelling of HOME AGAIN is more compelling, mainly because the writing is more powerful. Unfortunately, the novel fizzles as everything gathers together for the required happy ending. Three stars.