Cynthia Sally Haggard's Blog: Cynthia Sally's Blog, page 41

The LIONS OF AL-RASSAN by Guy Gavriel Kay

This is author Guy Gavriel Kay’s sixth novel, coming after the FIONAVAR TAPESTRY (a trilogy), TIGANA (which I absolutely loved) and A SONG FOR ARBONNE (which I didn’t much care for.)

My feelings about this novel, THE LIONS OF AL-RASSAN are similar to my feelings about A SONG FOR ARBONNE. I find them both disappointing, perhaps because they have similar problems. In a previous blog post, I complained that the female character in SONG (Lissot) was not that interesting. I have the same problem with Jehane in LIONS.  It doesn’t help that she is often rude, prickly and just downright unattractive.

Like Lissot in SONG, Jehane in LIONS is also in the middle of a love-triangle with two powerful men. So the fact that neither woman is compelling makes each love-triangle seem contrived. After all, why would such intriguing & powerful characters as Bertran de Talaire & Blaise de Gohault be so interested in shallow flirtatious Lissot in SONG? Why would such brilliant & accomplished men as Rodrigo Belmonte and Ammar ibn Kairan be so besotted by tart-tongued Jehane in LIONS?

What a pity that Guy Gavriel Kay took a formula from A SONG FOR ARBONNE and reused it in THE LIONS OF AL RASSAN.  It didn’t work his fifth novel; it certainly doesn’t work in his sixth. Three stars. #guygavrielkay #thelionsofalrasson

Reading Sundays: THE WAYWARD DAUGHTER (Part 9), a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

“Mary, dear.” Laura Mollington’s voice jolted me from my reverie. “I was wondering if you would mind helping us to settle a dispute. Lucy’s daughter is to marry an American and he says he’s from Boston. I think Boston is in New Hampshire, but Lucy says it’s in Massachusetts.”

“It is in Massachusetts,” I replied automatically. “I was born there.”

“Really? How interesting. Perhaps you could tell us about the city.”

I forced a smile, making my skirling thoughts focus on what she was saying. The truth is, I wasn’t born in Boston, even though I usually said so on official forms. Canaan New Hampshire was the place of my birth, but Boston was the nearest big city. I scarcely knew Boston, having only spent a few days there before boarding the ship that took us to Europe.

“It’s been years since I’ve been there,”I remarked.

“What was your maiden name?” asked Lucy Alvanley.

“Davis.”

“Davis.” She ran that name over her lips. “Isn’t that a Welsh name?”

“It’s Irish.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Letitia Capenhurst make a moue of disapproval. My, oh my, I shouldn’t have been so honest. I told so many half-truths or even outright lies about my past, pretending to a respectability and wealth my family never had. On the rare occasion I told the truth, I was slapped down for it. I turned to Lucy Alvanley.

“My family has been in Massachusetts for a long time. We’re Quakers.” That, at least was true, and something to be proud of.

“How interesting.”

“Was your husband from Boston too?”

“Spencer is from Cornwall,” I replied, trying not to think of Stephanie in a dance hall surrounded by groping laborers.

“Oh, I don’t mean him,” said Letita Capenhurst. “I meant your other husband.”

I started. Somehow, all this business over Stephanie had upset me so much I’d actually forgotten about these rumors. I lifted my head and stared at her. “What other husband? I don’t have one.”

She averted her eyes. “Well, perhaps he’s not around now. Dear me, he must have passed on.”

Lucy Alvanley leaned towards her. “My dear, don’t you remember what Stephanie said? She was quite positive about it.”

“Stephanie?” My voice rose. “You mean my daughter Stephanie?”

“Why, of course I mean Stephanie,” retorted Lucy. “That’s why it’s true isn’t it? After all, your own daughter couldn’t be wrong about a family matter.”

*     *     *     *     *

Somehow I managed to gather myself together, leave quietly and walk back to my home. I unbuttoned my coat, unpinned my hat and hung both in the vestibule. Then I collapsed into my favorite chair in the parlor.

Why?

Why would Stephanie hurt me like that? Why would she tell damaging lies about her own mother? I couldn’t understand it. What had I ever done to deserve this?

You didn’t pay attention to her, a voice murmured.

I grabbed a cushion and held it to my face while I sobbed. I sobbed for our family, for my other daughters, Jessica, Beryl and Sylvia whose reputations would be ruined by Stephanie’s wild behavior. I sobbed for Spencer, having to bear the shame of it all with me. I sobbed for our dead darling boy Philip. I sobbed for myself and lastly I even sobbed for Stephanie, who had not gotten what she needed.

The front door banged open, and suddenly I’d had enough. Spencer wouldn’t be around for the next few days, so now was time to act. In two strides I was in the vestibule. I seized her wrist and pulled Stephanie into the parlor with me. [To be continued.]

THE GODDESS INHERITANCE by Aimée Carter (GODDESS TEST #3)

At the beginning of this volume, Kate Winters finally gives birth to her son Milo. The problem? Calliope wants to use this baby as her pawn in her machinations to torture and destroy Kate and Henry. Were it not for Ava’s assistance, the baby would be dead. Probably in the most horrible way that author Aimée Carter could dream up.

And so begins the last volume of this trilogy. Like volume 2, it is an over-the-top high-stakes game about the destruction of the world. Either Kate can have Henry or Cronos.  If Kate chooses Henry, Cronos (the Titan behind the threatened destruction) will obliterate her in a jealous rage, as he wants her for himself. Meanwhile, Henry has taken up with Calliope, who is holding Milo hostage…

And so it goes on. But volume 3 has its positives. I loved the character of Cronos who often appears as smoke, and can shape-shift so that he looks like Henry (who is one of his sons.) And I continue to enjoy Henry’s eloquent silences.

But Kate? I couldn’t stand her. I hated being inside her head going round and around as she repeatedly (and very foolishly) plays martyr and makes several attempts to get herself murdered.

I also HATED the Valley-Girl dialogue, because it provides too-perfect a vehicle for teenaged entitled brattiness. IMHO, if you are a Goddess, you should act the part with dignity, fortitude & grace (at least some of the time.) You should save your rage for something that really counts.

Lastly, I hated the fact that Calliope (who I enjoyed so much in Volume 1) was irredeemably EVIL in this volume (and volume 2.) It made her SO BORING.  Three stars.

 

GODDESS INTERRUPTED by Aimée Carter (GODDESS TEST #2)

Hmmm. This novel was not as successful as her first (THE GODDESS TEST.) Instead of spending time with Henry/Hades and Kate and seeing their relationship unfold, we are immediately yanked into an over-the-top drama in which Henry, his brothers and sisters are (mostly) kidnapped by their father Cronos.

Anyone who knows Greek mythology knows that the Gods make one sprawling dysfunctional family. As my husband likes to put it: “You think you’ve got problems? It’s because they’ve problems.”

And so in this installment, the hatred brewing beneath the surface in Calliope/Hera explodes into the open as she tries to unleash the force that is Cronos. Cronos, a Titan, is the son of Uranus (the sky) and Gaia (the earth.) Once he came of age, he overthrew his father Uranus, castrated him (I am not joking) and ruled in his stead. He is the father of Zeus, Hera, Demeter, Poseidon, Hades & Hestia. When Walter/Zeus came of age, he overthrew his father, and the six siblings imprisoned him in Tartarus for the rest of his days.

There he sleeps, unable to do harm. Until, Calliope/Hera in a fit of jealous rage, wakes him up. The whole of this volume (just about) is what happens when you unbox a huge amount of energy that is trying to escape. It ends on a cliffhanger, with Kate on her way to find Rhea (Cronos’ wife). Unfortunately, Calliope/Hera coshes her on the back of the head…Four stars.

#aimeecarter #goddessinterrupted

THE GODDESS TEST by Aimée Carter (GODDESS TEST #1)

In the upper peninsula of Michigan lies a mysterious estate, Eden Manor. Kate’s dying mother insists on her daughter driving off piste down a dirt road so that she can see it one last time. A cow appears, and a man in an old-fashioned fluttering black jacket. Then they disappear. Kate gets back onto the highway, and drives her mother to their new home in Eden, Michigan. It has taken them two days to get there from New York City.

As Kate settles into life at the high school, strange things happen. Ava, a classmate, invites her out to a party, which turns into a spiteful prank. Which is how she meets Henry, the man in the fluttering black jacket. As this engrossing read introduces us to its various well-drawn and compelling characters, none of whom are who they appear to be, we are taken on a ride into the Underworld, into the story of Persephone & Hades, a story where this time, the girl chooses to be kidnapped, and stays because of the true love she finds in the Land of the Dead. Five Stars. #aimeecarter #thegoddesstest

Reading Sundays: THE WAYWARD DAUGHTER (Part 8), a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

I turned to her. “Jessie, dear, you did what you could. Now, I think you should go upstairs, change your clothes and try to get warm. We’ll be having supper presently.”

I stared at the fire after she left. I needed to speak to Spencer about this, but he was away, on some business to do with his bank. I didn’t expect him back for a week.

*     *     *     *     *

A few days passed, then it was time for the weekly meeting of the gardening committee. But I couldn’t concentrate. The thought of my wayward daughter, unchaperoned, in a dance-hall surrounded by leering workmen and their…women, dancing with an unknown young man made my cheeks burn with shame. I gazed at the middle-aged women around me, all of whom had daughters of Stephanie’s age. I thought of them, Alice Alvanley, Mabel Bretton, Caroline Capenhurst, Mollie Mollington and Catherine Helsby. Despite their youthful high spirits I couldn’t think of one of these girls who would defy her mother and put the family to shame, not a one. What had I done to deserve such a daughter?

I thought back over Stephanie’s life, remembering the day she was born. I called her my Thanksgiving Gift, because her birthday, November 23, sometimes fell on the fourth Thursday of the month. She’d been a darling baby, blue-eyed, golden-haired and such a beauty even then. She’d seemed perfectly content as a baby, but as she grew older she would sometimes pull away from my hugs. The warning sign always came when she turned down the corners of her mouth.

Then something happened that is so painful, I can hardly bear to think about it. About 15 months after Stephanie’s birth, I gave Spencer a son, whom we named Philip Spencer Treffry. That day, 24 February 1896, was the happiest day of my life. I could hardly bear to be parted from my son and as a consequence had very little time for Stephanie. I can see now how hard this must have been for Stephanie was only fifteen months older than her brother. She still needed me and she’d been knocked off her perch as our family’s little princess. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to give her special attention. As Spring grew into Summer, little Philip thrived. Then one morning, in July, just after I got up, I found him dead in his crib. He was five months old.

Stephanie (left) and Jessica (right) posed as fishermen in front of a painted screen of the sea. The Treffrys were a well-known family from Fowey, Cornwall.

I don’t remember much after that. Days, weeks, months passed in a thick fog. I could barely get out of bed. I couldn’t sleep. I would spend all night pacing around downstairs having crying jags. Eventually, the one-year anniversary of Philip’s death came around and I came out of mourning, determined to give Spencer another son. The year after, in August 1898, I presented him with a second daughter, our Jessie. Her birth was followed by Beryl’s in 1901 and Sylvia’s in 1903. Finally on 25th July 1905, I was able to give Spencer his son, Bevil Courtenay Treffry.

During those years, I had scant time for Stephanie. We could only afford one servant, so we hired a nurse to look after the children when they were little. That meant I had to cook, clean and run the house. When Stephanie turned fourteen and became a woman, Spencer and I dismissed the nursemaid and hired a maid-of-all-work so that I could spend more time with my daughters. Little Bevil was three years old at that point, but his sisters were growing old enough to take care of him.

I was so busy, I didn’t notice the gradual deterioration in Stephanie’s behavior, or if I noticed, I followed Spencer’s lead in putting it down to natural high spirits. Now that I think about it, if Stephanie didn’t get attention, she misbehaved. Spencer tried, but his way of making it up to Stephanie was to spoil her dreadfully.

“Mary, dear.” Laura Mollington’s voice jolted me from my reverie. “I was wondering if you would mind helping us to settle a dispute. Lucy’s daughter is to marry an American and he says he’s from Boston. I think Boston is in New Hampshire, but Lucy says it’s in Massachusetts.”

“It is in Massachusetts,” I replied automatically. “I was born there.”

“Really? How interesting. Perhaps you could tell us about the city.”

I forced a smile, making my skirling thoughts focus on what she was saying. The truth is, I wasn’t born in Boston, even though I usually said so on official forms. Canaan New Hampshire was the place of my birth, but Boston was the nearest big city. I scarcely knew Boston, having only spent a few days there before boarding the ship that took us to Europe. [To be continued.]

Jodi Picoult’s CHANGE OF HEART narrated by Jim Frangione (Lucius), Stafford Clark-Price (Michael), Nicole Poole (June), Danielle Ferland (Maggie), Jennifer Ikeda (Clare)

Jodi Picoult’s fifteenth novel CHANGE OF HEART is leisurely, and perhaps overlong, but that didn’t matter to me, as the slow unspooling of tragedy, loss, courage and kindness kept me enthralled.

Shay Bourne is a convicted murderer on death row. Lucius is his best friend who inhabits the cell next to his. Michael is a priest trying to become Shay’s spiritual advisor, when he spoils things by admitting that eleven years before, he was on the jury that sentenced Shay to death. Maggie is Shay’s self-appointed lawyer (she works for the ACLU.) Clare is a young girl, in desperate need of a heart. And June is Clare’s mother, and also the mother of Elizabeth who was shot dead by Shay Bourne.

But, as in other Jodi Picoult novels, things are rarely what they seem. From the beginning, Shay is not your typical prisoner. Nor does he seem the type of person who would murder a little girl in cold blood. So what actually happened? If you love Jodi Picoult, you will adore this novel. Five stars. #jodipicoult #changeofheart

“Farewell My Life” has been nominated for 2021 Readers Choice Awards!

Please vote for it at https://www.tckpublishing.com/2021-readers-choice-awards/

Farewell My Life has just been nominated for the 2021 Readers Choice Awards contest by TCK Publishing, founded by Tom Corson-Knowles in 2011.

Please vote for it at https://www.tckpublishing.com/2021-readers-choice-awards/

#readerschoiceawards #tckpublishing

NINETEEN MINUTES by Jodi Picoult narrated by Carol Monda

NINETEEN MINUTES is the novel that cemented the reputation of author Jodi Picoult, becoming her first book to debut at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. As everyone knows, NINETEEN MINUTES is about a school shooting, in which 17-year-old Peter Houghton opens fire on his classmates, killing ten, injuring nineteen.

But what makes this book so special is the exploration of Peter’s life, how this “different kid” who was the kind of sweet-natured boy (slow to notice social nuance) who becomes a magnet for teasing, had his lunch-box thrown out of the school bus on the first day of kindergarten, and then had to enjoy daily torture from his classmates for the ensuing eleven years.

The bullying started with his lunchbox. It progressed to slamming to the ground, tripping, beatings.  It escalated to taunts,  callous laughter, ridicule. It climaxed when his private email to a girl he loved was spammed around the school (by a female classmate).

In response to the news that Peter The Loser, Peter “Homo” loved his girlfriend, Jock Matt Royston came up behind un-athletic, slight Peter. To a background of vicious snickers, he hooked his thumbs into the loops of  Peter’s jeans, forcibly removing them and his boxer shorts, exposing Peter’s genitals to the cutting, merciless eyes of his classmates.

Where were the adults? As in other Jodi Picoult novels, the adults in these teenage dramas are largely absent.

In the mistaken belief that they should be their children’s friends, not their parents, in the spirit of Liberty, Freedom & Privacy, the adults abandon their teenaged children. So High School becomes a place – NOT where learning takes place in a safe environment – but rather a breeding ground for intolerance, bigotry, cliques, office politics, and the tortuous navigation of intimacy by people with adult bodies and child minds.

For Peter, that final humiliation was too much. One day, reminded of this humiliating incident, Peter impulsively stuffed his weapons into his backpack and made for school. He never came home again.

If you wish to understand the psychology behind school shootings, or if, like me, you are foreign and just plain don’t get American high schools, this is the book for you. Five Stars. #jodipicoult #nineteenminutes

Jodi Picoult’s THE TENTH CIRCLE narrated by Carol Monda

Hmmm. I feel a bit mixed about this one.

The positives for me were the link to Dante (one of my favorite authors) and how Jodi Picoult’s wonderful imagination created a Tenth Circle of Hell for the self-deceptive, for the people who lied to themselves, who pretended that everything was just fine when it was not, thereby avoiding asking themselves tough questions, and stifling their spiritual growth.

I was also grateful that we were spared yet another series of courtroom scenes with their clunky dialogue and predictable tag-lines (“he moved towards the jury”) which have ruined the endings of too many of Jodi Picoult’s novels (including VANISHING ACTS and PERFECT MATCH.)

So that was on the plus side. The minus side was (again) the pacing. As in VANISHING ACTS, the major crisis of the novel (Trixie’s rape) is presented way too early, squandering the tension of the novel. And, as many readers have remarked, the novel ends too abruptly, making the ending hard to believe.

I read somewhere in an interview with Jodi Picoult, that it takes her NINE MONTHS to write her novels. Wow! I thought at the time. That is truly amazing.

But as the novels have gone on, as their formulas have become clichés, as their pacing has becoming more and more problematic, I think that Ms. Picoult’s many problems with her novels is that she simply doesn’t spend enough time editing them.

If she writes her novels in 9 months, she must write wonderful first drafts, way above the quality of most writers in terms of fluency and content. And presumably it is these first drafts (with a little tweaking) that she puts out there for her readers to buy.

But at a certain point, authors have to put on their editor’s hats:

They have to build the narrative arc.They have to build tension.They have to make the beginning provocative, by cutting up the story up into pieces and feeding it to the reader bit by bit in tantalizing morsels.

People love Jodi Picoult novels because she writes about cops, firemen, teachers, lawyers and others who knit our modern American small towns together. Readers see themselves, their lives, their emotions reflected in a Jodi Picoult novel.

But her lack of editing destroys the pacing . There is little tension in Ms. Picoult’s most recent novels, THE TENTH CIRCLE and VANISHING ACTS, because she does her big reveal (Trixie’s rape,  Delia’s kidnapping by her father) way too early, just as you would if you were writing that first draft. This lack of tension is why so many readers find these novels boring. Which is a great pity. Three stars. #jodipicoult #thetenthcircle