Review: Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin

Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin
Published by: Harcourt, Inc. on April 1, 2008
Genre: Ancient Historical Fiction, Mythology
Rating: ★★★★★
Synopsis: In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life. Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

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A single daughter, now ripe for a man,
now of full marriageable age, kept the great household.

There’s something so fascinating about books that tackle the most ancient, iconic stories that are embedded deeply into the very fabric of Western literature, and breath new life into them.  Perhaps that’s why I loved Circe (by Madeleine Miller) and why I felt so drawn to this book — a reimagining of Virgil’s Aeneid through the eyes of Lavinia.

In the poem itself, Lavinia is an odd character. It’s as if — as LeGuin points out in Lavinia — Virgil only had room for one fleshed out romance: The tragic story of Dido, queen of Carthage. Lavinia, meanwhile, is the cause of the war that consumes the last part of the Aeneid, the impetus behind the bloodshed that the entire epic builds up to. Yet as a character, she is little more than a shadow, lingering in the background with barely any presence. The poem doesn’t even end with her marriage to Aeneas; it ends abruptly on the famous murder of Turnus (Aeneas’s rival for her hand in marriage). From a Homeric perspective, she is the Aeneid‘s Helen, yet she is a fraction of the character that Helen was; she doesn’t speak at all in the entire epic.

That’s why it’s so impressive that LeGuin centers her entire book around Lavinia, breathing life into her character and truly bringing the Aeneid to life. She builds up the Bronze-Age world of Laurentum and Latium with vivid imagery and a strong sense of place and time. From the first few chapters, it’s easy to fall into the rhythm of the book, the routines of prayer, piety, and salt-gathering the consume Lavinia’s life amongst a peaceful, rough kingdom of farmers.

LeGuin draws out Lavinia in fine detail, including her tumultuous relationship with her mother, the expectations placed on her as the daughter of a king, her deep connection to religion, and a sense of duty. Much of it comes, of course, from LeGuin’s imagination, but it doesn’t feel at odds with Virgil’s rougher sketch of Latium and its royal family.

One unique aspect of the book that was maybe more controversial — but that I liked — was Lavinia’s self-awareness as a literary creation. She meets several times with “her poet” — a ghost of Virgil, on his deathbed and regretting that his epic must be left unfinished — learning of the world he created, and reflecting how little life he gave her. This kind of character self-awareness is tricky to pull off but it works here. There’s a lot of complexity and shades to this device; Lavinia knows she owes her tenuous existence to Virgil but also operates as a character outside of the confines of his lines (at one point she points out he got the color of her hair very wrong).

Is this LeGuin’s own reflection on how literary characters start as creations of the author but ultimately take on varied shades from the readers that further color them?

I also really appreciated how knowledgeable and respectful LeGuin was of Virgil’s work. There are many references to prophecies of the glory of Rome to come culminating in Emperor Augustus — and that’s important because ultimately the Aeneid is a piece of Augustan poetry (meaning it was commissioned by the Emperor Augustus, intended to reflect the glory of his reign), and that context is absolutely vital, woven into its fabric. And though Lavinia is the main character, she also takes time to make sense of Aeneas — the contradictions between the humble, pious, rational warrior and the vengeful murderer presented in the famous closing scene of the Aeneid.

A final note is that I think it’s a lot easier to follow this novel and really understand the beats of the story if you’re familiar with the Aeneid. If you want to read it, I’d recommend this translation, but if you just want a quick overview you can find summaries here, here, and here.

Verdict: The Lavinia of this novel is very different from the silent, blushing maiden that sits in the background of Virgil’s work. LeGuin gives her a more modern spirit, presenting her as a full, intelligent, compassionate character, but one that rings true with the ancient setting and context.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

Review: Hulu’s ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ (Episodes 1-2)

When I first finished Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (check out my review of the book here), there was nothing that I wanted more than for Reese Witherspoon’s production company to scoop it up and make a dramatic, Big Little Lies style miniseries out of it.

As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

Since the world is collapsing around us, there’s something comforting about getting to kick back and immerse myself in a juicy drama starring two powerhouses, Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, going head-to-head. Set against a backdrop of racial and class divides, Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere promises to be the enticing, complex mystery that we all need to escape into right now.

Review of Episodes 1-2

Little Fires Everywhere is set in Shaker Heights — a “planned community” whose welcome packet includes warnings about the regulated height of grass (six inches) and which colors are allowed on which types of houses. Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) fits in perfectly, with her love of rules, and planning out every detail of her household, from her four children’s lives to strictly scheduled sex (no, I’m not kidding, and yes it’s weird as hell). She’s a classic upper-middle-class suburban mom who works part-time as a journalist but devotes most of her energy to running the household.

Enter Mia Warren, a bohemian artist and single mom who moves in nearby with her daughter, Pearl. Mia is THE foil for Elena. She is constantly in motion, uprooting Pearl and moving every few months, overall preferring to just “wing it”.

Elena tries to be helpful, renting to Mia despite lack of references and employing her as a “household manager” (read: maid) but does so with a liberal dose of condescension that Mia feels sharply. She immediately takes Pearl — who quickly bonds with her children — under her wing. Mia, meanwhile, constantly maintains a careful distance, reminding her daughter that “we’re not like them”. Even the few unguarded moments between Mia and Elena inevitably ignite into a simmering tension.

So far, these first 2 episodes get Elena and Mia’s relationship right. And that’s crucial because it’s the core of the story. From the beginning, every scene with Elena and Mia crackles with tension. It’s the little details that top it off — Witherspoon pasting a bright smile over an awful remark, Washington gritting her teeth, her face muscles twitching.

I’m especially impressed with Reese Witherspoon because on paper, Elena is kind of a psycho. But Witherspoon humanizes her to some extent, making her relationship with Mia seem far muddier and more complex than it might appear at first glance. Through her performance, we see that Elena isn’t immune to regrets. She sees Mia recoiling, mourns that her relationship with her daughter is beyond broken, but lacks the self-introspection or empathy to understand how to fix it.

One important change is that Mia and Pearl are black in the show (this was not implied in the book). This adds a fascinating new dimension to the show, including an uncomfortable white-savior dynamic between Elena and Pearl. It definitely amplifies the show’s complicated racial and class dynamics. The show does not hold back at all in this respect. From interactions with cops, to Pearl’s guidance counselor preventing her from taking advanced classes, to simple interactions Mia has with the community, we are constantly reminded of the racial divide.

Honestly, the right way to sum up these two episodes is probably not holding back. The show lacks the subtlety of the book, and that’s okay because it’s a different medium. It picks up the main themes of the book and hammers the viewers with them. Izzie is utterly tragic in these two episodes — maligned, bullied, misunderstood. Her relationship with her mom is simply awful. They don’t understand each other, cannot connect with each other, and every interaction erupts into conflict. The mirroring of Elena and Izzie’s interactions with Mia and Pearl’s loving relationship is especially effective.

The show started a lot of different plot threads in just two episodes. Mia and Elena’s tension, Elena’s mothering of Pearl, the introduction of Bebe (Mia’s immigrant coworker who gave up her infant), Izzie bonding with Mia, Pearl and Moody’s friendship. All are very…complicated.

Hopefully it stays that way. Complicated is the reason that the book was so good in the first place.

Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller
Published by: Little, Brown and Company on April 10, 2018
Genre: Ancient Historical Fiction
Rating:
Synopsis: In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love

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In general, women in Greek myths tend to play one of four roles:

• Good mother/wife
• Damsel in distress
• Evil Sorceress
• Angry goddess

There’s never an in between. Women are constantly depicted as two-dimensional, lurking at the periphery of men’s stories. And the powerful women are always cruel.

Circe is, above all, a feminist book that gives a voice to the women of Greek mythology. It is a retelling that positions complex, multi-faceted women at the center. Not just Circe but also Penelope, Medea, Pasiphae (the mother of the Minotaur). It asks, what would we learn about these characters if we considered their whole stories?

It’s satisfying on many levels. First, as far as I can tell, Circe stays true to not just the fundamental bones of Greek mythology, but also the core motifs — heroism, fate, sacrifice, vengeance. It weaves in so many different myths and Greek epics:

• Jason and the Argonauts
• Medea
• Theseus and the Minotaur
• The war between the Gods and the Titans
• Daedalus and Icarus
• Prometheus
• The Trojan War

Even Aeneas gets a shout-out!

The character development is fantastic. Traditional tellings of myths have always cast Circe as an evil sorceress. Yet Miller dives into her past. She does not whitewash Circe’s cruelty but rather forces the reader to confront the very real character behind it. She turns Circe’s story from a simple legend about a cruel witch, into a story about an outcast, tossed aside by her family, abused time after time, and who finally discovers her own power and voice. Over hundreds of years we watch her evolve from a meek child, to an abused outcast, to a powerful witch unafraid of cruelty as a tool of revenge, to a patient and loving mother, to a wiser woman who understands her own strength and has found her own voice. Through it all, she never loses her fundamental tenacity, endurance, dignity, and empathy for humans.

Another aspect that fascinated me was the perspective that Miller sheds on the Odyssey. It’s not a spoiler to note that Odysseus plays a significant role in this book — Circe’s main role in Greek mythology is of the witch that he encounters on his journey. Having been forced to read the Odyssey in high school, I was fascinated by Miller’s very specific interpretation of the character and of the ending. It forced me to rethink how I read these myths of heroes seeking glory, and how foolish it is for everyone to assume that they all find peace and happiness in the end.

The prose was beautiful; Miller is clearly a skilled writer. My only nitpick was that the plot sagged a bit in the middle, but overall I appreciated the wide narrative scope of the book.

Verdict: Circe is a beautifully-written, engaging book that gives a voice to the women of Greek Mythology, and brings the well-worn motifs of fate, cruelty, and sacrifice to life.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads

 

 

Review: Pines by – actually, this is a discussion of How Not to Use Sentence Fragments in a Book

I recently read Pines, a science-fiction-mystery-thriller by Blake Crouch (author of Dark Matter), and was disappointed, to say the least. The plot was intriguing and bubbling over with so much suspense that I read it in a single sitting, but I really disliked the writing style.

Part of the problem was that the characters are thin and whispy; many of them might as well be walking paper cutouts. The main character — Ethan — is pretty well fleshed out (which should be a given, considering the book is from his point of view) but the same cannot be said about any other character. Pope, the town sheriff, is a stereotypical mustache-twirling, gun-toting, head-bashing evil moron. Jenkins is the stereotypical cold billionaire who plays God without regard for human life. Therasa, Ethan’s wife, is…well, a stereotypical wife, who loves him no matter what he does and that’s pretty much all I know about her.

But the other, more pressing issue is that reading Pines was a little like being presented a wooden frame and told that it’s a move-in ready house. The bare bones are there, yes, but there’s also so much missing. And the biggest reason for this was the random sentence fragments littered over every single page.

I’m only gonna say this once, Mr. Crouch: A PREDICATE IS NOT A FULL SENTENCE!

I honestly have no clue why he kept randomly dropping the subject of every other sentence. Was it supposed to increase suspense? Deliver emotional impact? Because this habit usually did the opposite. Take this passage, for example —

Every few feet, he glanced down, his view now obscured by the rock surrounding him, but he could still see that thing out in front, moving effortlessly between the second and third ledges up a section of the wall where Ethan had struggled.

Twenty feet up the crack, seventy above the canyon floor, his thighs burning.

Reading a passage like this, I’m breathlessly engaged in Ethan’s thrilling climb. Then I come across that last sentence and I’m abruptly jerked out of the moment because what is that even doing there. It interrupts the flow and doesn’t add any value. There’s just no point to it.

Not to mention, this is a terrible place to have a sentence fragment. Usually, sentence fragments have clear implied subjects so that the reader can tell what the heck they’re talking about. But here, the previous sentence was talking about the creature chasing Ethan (“that thing out in front”), which makes the subject of the fragment confusing. Is it talking about the creature being twenty feet up the crack, or Ethan? It’s probably Ethan because of the “his thighs burning” part, but that whole train of thought/guesswork took me out of the suspenseful moment entirely.

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Here’s the thing about sentence fragments: Like chocolate, ice-cream cakes, and any writing device, they’re fine in moderation, but too many are just unhealthy.

I don’t exactly mind them in and of themselves. I use them, you probably use them, everyone uses them. Just not all the time, because when they’re overused in a narrative passage it ends up sounding strange and disjointed.

Sometimes it makes sense, like with lists —

He touched the wires together again, and the engine turned over.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.

or when it’s supposed to convey some intense emotion —

He couldn’t explain why, but they filled him with fear. A dread he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

The sudden g-force as the helicoptor spins.
Alarms going mad.
The impossible rigidity of the power stick.
Consciousness only lost for half a minute.

In these cases, the fragments add real value. They help to craft a flow that works with the subject and emotions being portrayed. I think they’re especially useful in writing high-stress situations from a first-person perspective, because who thinks in full sentences while under gunfire? They’re also useful in mixing up the sentence structure in descriptions.

However, Pines is littered with odd fragments in completely illogical places. The worst cases were like the example I discussed way above, where it actually confuses the reader. However, I took issue with these as well —

He’d always kept it in his bedside table drawer. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn it. Didn’t think he’d brought it along on this trip, and certainly didn’t remember packing it or making the decision to wear it.

Ok, so here there are clear implied subjects. Fine. Whoop-de-doo. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s no clear purpose to include those two fragments. Once again, they interrupt the flow, making the paragraph sound disjointed and incomplete without adding anything. It feels like lazy writing.

It may seem like I’m overreacting, but this is a real pet peeve of mine. I deeply appreciate sentence fragments that are used effectively, but when they’re needlessly scattered everywhere, I get irritated.

(Oh, and by the way, I rated this book 2.5/5 stars. Find it on Amazon and Goodreads).

Review: Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Published by: St. Martin’s Press on February 5, 2008
Genre: Women’s fiction, Saga
RATING: 
Synopsis: In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable.

So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

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This was the fourth Kristin Hannah book that I’ve picked up over the past year. After speeding through Firefly Lane, I think I’ve finally nailed down what exactly to expect from the Typical Kristin Hannah book:

• Female protagonist
• Family drama
• Focus on the evolution of a sister/best-friend/husband/boyfriend relationship (often all four)
• Main character hits rock bottom or falls into a state of total depression at some point.
• LOTS OF SADNESS (particularly at the end). Be warned: Kristin Hannah books leave you feeling just a little (read: a lot) emptier inside.

Firefly Lane follows this template to the letter. It focuses on two teenage best friends — Katie and Tully — and chronicles the evolution (and occasionally devolution) of their lives, careers, and relationship over the course of three decades.

First of all, I loved the way that Hannah captures each decade, especially the seventies and eighties. This was unsurprising; her books typically maintain a strong focus on setting. They always have a definitive sense of place. The pop culture, clothes, major world news events, and general public attitudes are beautifully interwoven, transporting me back in time.

In typical Hannah fashion, this book is fully character-driven and extremely engaging. Quite simply, she is an incredibly effective storyteller. There were several points where I felt like the story and characters might just fly off the rails in the hand of a less-skilled writer.

No matter what happened, how frustrated I got with the characters or skeptical of the choices they made, I kept turning the pages. I just couldn’t help feeling emotionally invested. I read most of it in a single sitting, though I’m not sure this was the best idea; the last 20% was so utterly dismal that reading it all in one go felt borderline masochistic.

(me at 3am after finishing this book)

I also need to discuss the characters. I love reading character-focused books, following their journeys, growth, and relationships. At the start of Firefly Lane, Hannah establishes Tully and Kate as fully-formed, flawed-yet-likable teens, and the growth of their close friendship feels both natural and inevitable. I could perfectly imagine them riding their bikes down Summer Hill, or lying in the grass of the UW quad.

Around the half-way point, however, it feels like their characters stop growing and settle into static caricatures of the complex women they could be: weak, insecure Kate and selfish, insensitive Tully. Their characters seem to stagnate over the three decades that the novel covers. Personalities that felt fully-formed in teenage girls feel flat in forty-year-old women.

I felt similarly about the evolution of their friendship. On one level, I could completely relate to how Katie and Tully grow into completely different personalities, yet remain best friends. Some of my best friendships have mirrored that same trajectory. I enjoyed reading about how their lives keep separating and entwining; I understood how Tully’s loveless childhood largely drives her constant need for Katie’s love.

Yet, on the other hand, I spent many chapters in the second half of the book mentally begging Katie to grow a backbone and give Tully a piece of her mind. Frankly, I’m not sure that this friendship would survive all three decades in real life.

Besides the character-focus, Hannah also devotes a lot of time towards some key themes and ideas:

• The classic money-and-fame-can’t-replace-love message.
• Feelings of depression and being overwhelmed that stay-at-home moms often face.
• Katie and Tully’s generation of girls raised in the seventies were often told that they could “have it all”. Yet Hannah uses Katie and Tully’s drastically different life paths and regrets as a rebuttal. The book presents Katie at one end of the family-career spectrum and Tully at the other, and questions whether it’s really possible to find a truly fulfilling middle ground. The Amazon summary sums it up as “the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices”.

Verdict: This book has some issues with character development and plot, but ultimately it was a compelling, engaging read that left me near tears by the end.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

 

 

2018 Recap: 6-Word Book Reviews

We are officially half-way through 2018! And that means that it’s now time for me to look back and recap all of the books that I’ve read over the past six months.

I’m trying something new here: Lightning reviews! For every book that I’ve read in 2018 (so far), I’ve written a 7-word summary and 6-word review. For books that I have already reviewed on this blog, I’ve added links to the full-length critiques.

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These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Summary: 1890s: Rich girl investigates her Dad’s murder.
Review: Gripping mystery; surprisingly mature for YA novel.

Artemis by Andy Weir

Summary: Smuggler attempts massive crime in moon city.
Review: Cool science and tech, weaker plot
(Check out my full review here)

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Summary: Kidnapped man wakes up in alternate reality.
Review: Mind-bending and twisty; crosses many genres.
(Check out my full review here)

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen

Summary: Jewish girl infiltrates school for Nazis’ daughters.
Review: High-pressure spy thriller; fully fleshed-out characters.
(Check out my full review here)

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Summary: Stark family in trouble; winter is coming.
Review #1: Lots of moral ambiguity, death, sex.
Review #2: Everyone goes crazy at some point.
Review #3: Expected to love it and didn’t.
Review #4: Ned Stark is such an idiot.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Summary: Type-A, rules-loving mom clashes with artsy non-conformist.
Review: Thought-provoking family drama; a little preachy.
(Check out my full review here)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Summary: Wife goes missing; husband is prime suspect.
Review: Intense, freaky thriller with massive twists
(Check out my full review here)

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Summary: Suburban moms deal with lies, trauma, abuse.
Review: Funny read; darker than it seems.

The Breach by Patrick Lee

Summary: Ex-convict investigates a mysterious rip in reality.
Review: Crazy plot, weird ending, very gory.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Summary: Elizabeth Bennett meets Charles Darcy; sparks fly.
Review #1: Hilarious story and characters, beautiful writing.
Review #2: Didn’t expect to love it so much.
Review #3: It is a truth universally acknowledged…
Review #4: I’m converted to the Austen cult.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Summary: 1970s African-American woman thrown back to Antebellum era.
Review: Perfectly blends sci-fi and historical fiction.
(Check out my full review here)

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Summary: Suburban mom loses ten years of memories.
Review: Starts slow; both light-hearted and thought-provoking.
(Check out my full review here)

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Summary: Broken family moves out to Alaskan wilderness.
Review: Heart-breaking, gorgeous writing; tackles serious themes.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Summary: Post-WWII American socialite meets former WWI spy.
Review: Complex, badass characters; awesome dual chronology.
(Check out my full review here)

Home Front by Kristin Hannah

Summary: Helicoptor pilot’s Iraq deployment strains her marriage.
Review #1: Raw examination of the cost of war.
Review #2: Only book that made me cry.

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

Summary: Polish rebel sent to all-female concentration camp.
Review: Incredible story, but gruesome and brutal.

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In total, I’ve read 15 books over the past six months — 2 and a half books per month. Not bad!

Breakdown by genre:

• 4 science-fiction books
• 5 historical fiction books
• 4 family-drama type books,
• 1 classic/romance
• 1 fantasy

This is interesting. Usually, I read way more science-fiction, and before this year I’d never really read family-drama/contemporary fiction before. It just goes to show how quickly reading interests/tastes can evolve or change. I think in recent months I’ve become more drawn to books that focus primarily on the relationships between characters (not necessarily romantic). Besides, who doesn’t love a juicy story of a dysfunctional family?

Nevertheless, in the second half of 2018, I plan to shift back to reading more science-fiction, and maybe some more YA too.

So that’s it for me — I really enjoyed writing these lightning reviews! It was a fun challenge, and hopefully for anyone reading this, gave a small taste of these books.

Review: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Published by: William Morrow Paperbacks on June 6, 2017
Genre: Historical fiction
RATING: 
Synopsis: 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.

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This is one of those books that practically screamed READ ME from the library shelf. The summary alone checks off many of the boxes for my ideal historical fiction book. Dual chronology, badass female spies, and wartime friendships? Yes, please!

Suffice it to say I started this book with high expectations, and it fully exceeded them, leaving me utterly breathless by the end.

Let me break down what really worked for this book:

1. The dual chronology and perspectives

This is one of those historical fiction books that follows two women in different time periods, with the chapters alternating in perspective. In practice, I think this kind of story is very tricky to pull off. The two plots cannot just run parallel to each other, entirely separate. In order to maintain the cohesiveness of a single book, they must interweave, connecting over decades and building to their climax at the same point in the book to amplify the intensity.

In this case, Kate Quinn made things even more difficult for herself by choosing to write Charlie’s chapters in first person, and Eve’s in the third person. As a result, transitions between perspectives included shifts both in storyline and point of view. If this book had been written by a lesser writer, those shifts would have been extremely jarring. Yet Quinn makes the transition feel perfectly fluid, and when the two storylines ultimately merge, it feels completely natural.

I do wonder why Quinn felt the need to shift point of view, though. Part of it is probably practical: To establish a firmer divide between Charlie and Eve’s perspectives. Yet I wonder if the larger reason is to maintain more of a mystery around Eve’s character?

From the beginning of the novel, Charlie is more of an open book to the reader. We begin inside her head, experiencing every thought and feeling. Eve, on the other hand, is seen for the first time from an outside perspective (Charlie’s). The reader’s first impression is of a mysterious, out-of-control drunk. Then later, in her point-of-view chapters, the third person point-of-view means that the reader is just a bit farther removed from her than from Charlie, maintaining some of that mystery.

That’s my theory, anyway.

2. Eve’s World War I narrative

Charlie’s perspective is interesting (I was surprised by how invested I became in her search for her cousin, Rose) and she was an entertaining narrator, but Eve’s World War I story was more captivating. Eve is one of the most fierce, complex characters that I have ever read about. Her will and mental strength is simply unbreakable, and her journey and transformation over the course of the book are equal parts breathtaking and heartbreaking.

The story of the Alice Network is an incredible piece of forgotten history. I had never heard of this World War I network of female spies, but these women were simply remarkable. I can barely imagine the courage required to throw themselves into danger with such little chance of success. If you like books about unsung heroes, this is certainly one of them.

Sidenote – A few of the most prominent Alice Network characters in this book were real people. So pro tip: Don’t read the Wikipedia page first, because it will spoil some important parts of the book.

3. The villains

Rene Bordelou. Just typing out the name makes me cringe. When I began the book, I could not imagine what made Eve hate him as intensely as she did. Yet by the time I reached the ending, I too loathed every inch and aspect of him, from his unblinking eyes to his weird, pretentious obsession with Baudelaire.

The worst part is that he is not only a horrible snake of a human being but is also completely believable. I have no trouble believing that men like Rene – opportunistic, disloyal, power-hungry, greedy, and abusive – truly existed and did similarly awful things during World Wars I and II.

The second villain of the book, I think, is war itself. There is a great deal of subtle commentary about the cost war extorts from everyone involved. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but many characters – including Finn (Eve’s Scottish hand-for-hire and Charlie’s love interest), Eve, and Charlie’s brother – are left with deep post-war mental scars. Quinn does not hold back in detailing the impact of war, and the way its tendrils reach out years and years into the future.

What didn’t work for me: The romance (Charlie and Finn)

Honestly, I saw it coming from a mile away. This is one of those rather contrived romances that made me roll my eyes a bit.

To me, Finn as a character is just kind of meh. In comparison to the wonderfully fleshed out, incredible characters and relationships of Eve, Lilli, Charlie, and Violette, he faded into the background a bit. Throughout Charlie’s road trip through France, I was far more interested in the evolving friendship between Charlie and Eve than in Charlie and Finn’s budding love affair. Even right after finishing the book, I don’t remember much about his character besides his temper and his Scottish accent.

Verdict: Kate Quinn delivers with an incredible book spanning decades, filled with rich, complex characters, a fascinating historical story, and a fast-paced plot.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

Review: What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
Published by: Berkley on June 2, 2011
Genre: Women’s fiction, contemporary
RATING: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Alice Love is twenty-nine, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. So imagine Alice’s surprise when she comes to on the floor of a gym and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over — she’s getting divorced, she has three kids and she’s actually 39 years old. Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how is it that she’s become one of those super skinny moms with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over.

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This book made me ask a question that I’ve never really pondered before: How would I look at my life differently if I lost the last ten years worth of memories?

I’ll admit this is a pretty odd question, but it’s one that this book got me to seriously consider. I have a habit of inserting myself into the stories that I read — yes, even when they’re about forty-year-old moms going through a divorce — so naturally when I read this book, I starting imagining myself in the weird scenario of waking up with a bad case of amnesia.

How would my outlook shift if I looked at my current life and relationships through the eyes of my seven-year-old self rather than my current seventeen-year-old perspective? Would I be happy with how my life has turned out so far? Or dissatisfied? Shocked?

Well, to begin with, seven-year-old me would be devastated to learn that seventeen-year-old me is not attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I would be mortified to find that I broke my pixie-cut vow and let my hair grow past my shoulders, and disappointed that I am no longer planning to become a children’s author.

I’ve changed a lot over the last ten years. It often feels like at the core I’ve remained fundamentally the same person, yet little bits of my personality have shifted and changed, piece by piece, until I’ve grown into a different skin. I imagine that seven-year-old me would feel the same sense of mingled shock and alienation if confronted with my current world, that Alice feels in What Alice Forgot upon waking up without the last decade of memories. And maybe that’s why this book still resonated with me to some extent, despite focusing on issues like divorce, motherhood, and infertility that I have absolutely no experience with.

I suspect that I’m not exactly the target audience for this book, but nevertheless I still enjoyed it.

I’ve read one of Moriarty’s books before (Big Little Lies), and loved the dichotomy between the satirical, irreverently comedic writing, and the darker topics that lined the underbelly of the story. In some ways, the same applies to What Alice Forgot. Moriarty seems to have a knack for writing novels that are simultaneously light-hearted and thought-provoking.

The plot isn’t very fast paced (in fact, it drags a bit in the first third of the book) and there aren’t any major twists. But the way that the relationships develop, as well as Alice’s unfolding backstory and memories, keep the plot engaging. In many ways, this book fully hinges on its characters. The story is laser-focused on building up a web of interconnected characters and relationships — Alice and her oldest daughter Madison, Elisabeth and Alice, Nick and Alice — and the plot is driven by Alice desperately trying to discern what happened in the ten years that she forgot to change these relationships so drastically from what she remembers.

Another key aspect is that the point-of-view chapters are shared by multiple characters. There are three main perspectives/stories:

1. Alice’s narrative chapters, detailing her recollections, memories, and journey through her new present.
2. Her sister Elisabeth’s journal entries for her therapist, exploring her heart-breaking struggle to conceive. I loved these because they added so much complexity to the relationship between Alice and Elisabeth, while also providing a fresh perspective of the plot. Alice feels somewhat dissociated from her present because she’s viewing her new life with the old lens; it just doesn’t make sense to her. Elisabeth gives the reader a different perspective because she perfectly remembers the last ten years, and has seen (to some extent) the sequence of events that shaped Alice into her present self. To Alice it feels like something is wrong with everyone else; to Elisabeth, Alice is the one acting out of character.
3. A blog written by Alice’s grandmother (sort of). To be honest, I didn’t really like these parts. Franny’s story of finding love again as an old woman was cute, but it felt so disconnected from the main plot that I often ended up skimming/skipping these chapters.

Verdict: What Alice Forgot is that book that manages to be equal parts comical, lighthearted, thought-provoking, and heart-breaking. Some parts are a bit slow — the five hundred page count definitely could have been cut down — but the plot is both intriguing and compelling, and by the final third I was hard-pressed to set this book down.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

4 Genre-Bending Books that Will Blow Your Mind

There’s this idea often voiced in the world of writing that “everything good has already been written”. It’s the depressing notion that good book ideas are so hard to find because they simply don’t exist anymore. It’s also totally false.

Maybe many of the core ideas that genres are built upon have been exhausted. Maybe it’s hard to dream up a classic epic fantasy that wasn’t written to death by J.R.R Tolkein or George R.R Martin. But all that means is that the future of innovative writing ideas lies in the spaces between genres. Nowadays the books that are truly, refreshingly original are those that cross, bend, and blur genre boundaries. The deepest, most creative stories are told by books that straddle genres and defy convention.

So if you’re like me, and you love dabbling in all manner of different genres and ideas, here are 4 of my favorite books that cross genre lines:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This enduringly incredible book has often been shoe-horned into science-fiction. On one level that may seem right because dystopia is one of the biggest subgenres of sci-fi, and The Handmaid’s Tale is about as dystopic as it gets.

The problem is, that’s a gross oversimplification.

Without spoiling too much, this book is set in a future totalitarian, Christian theocracy that has violently overthrown the US government. Women are completely subjugated, stripped of all rights, and the eponymous ‘handmaids’ are women who exist to bear children for their masters. If much of the premise revolves around a future society totally abandoning science and technology, can it truly be called science-fiction?

Margaret Atwood herself has argued that this book really belongs in the category of speculative fiction, which isn’t as much a genre as a collective of dystopian dramas that don’t follow sci-fi conventions and lack clear genre boundaries and definitions.

In fact, the book is rooted in history; Atwood has said that, “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened… nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities.” In short, everything about the horrifying future society in The Handmaid’s Tale is taken directly from the past.

2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Though often overshadowed by its famous predecessor Ender’s Game, in my opinion this sequel is the better book. Speaker for the Dead takes place 3,000 years after the events of Ender’s Game, focusing on the far-off planet Lusitania.

What makes Lusitania so special? It’s the first planet where humans have encountered intelligent life-forms, dubbed the “piggies”. It harbors a deadly disease, the descolada. Oh, and the piggies have an unfortunate habit of brutally murdering researchers that get too close to them.

Ender arrives to Lusitania for the funeral of a recently dead researcher, and quickly becomes embroiled in the rising tensions between the piggies and humans, the mystery of the piggies’ strange ways, and a dysfunctional family.

Unlike Ender’s Game, this book lacks the exciting space-fights and action sequences. It may center around futuristic space travel and sentient aliens, but it’s far, far more than just science-fiction. It’s a philosophical contemplation on sin, redemption, and the visceral human fear of the unknown. Above all, this book asks whether humans can truly, peacefully coexist with another species. It also draws upon history, paralleling the human-piggie dynamics with the interactions between Portuguese conquistadors and Native Americans. As if to punctuate that point, Card makes the human society on Lusitania both Spanish speaking and very Catholic.

It’s a mystery, a family drama, a space opera, and a musing on humanity’s most strongly held fears, all rolled in one amazing novel.

3. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred was born out of a unique fusion of science-fiction and historical-fiction. It’s the story of Dana, a modern African-American woman who is thrown back in time to the Antebellum South. The main events of the book take place in the early-1800s era history. It’s full of rich, incredibly immersive descriptions of everyday plantation life, interspersed with brutally sharp accounts of everyday brutalities. It’s fascinating to read about how Dana somehow settles into her new life posing as a slave, and the uncomfortable ease with which she eventually adapts to her dire situation and accepts the institution of slavery as a reality.

Most books treat the past and present as two solidly separate entities, yet Kindred blurs their lines to the point where Dana starts to lose her grip on which reality she truly belongs in. It also doesn’t demand concrete explanations of the mechanics behind time travel (as most sci-fi books do). Instead, Kindred is content to simply speculate.

It’s a book that blurs borders often assumed to be concrete, and in doing so, effortlessly interweaves both sci-fi elements (like the causal time loops) and the main historical narrative.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

4. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter threads so many genres together that it’s nearly impossible to identify them all, and that’s probably why it’s such an original, innovative book.

The plot is simple: Jason Dessen is captured by a masked abductor, wakes up in an alternative-universe world that he does not recognize, and struggles to find his way back home.

At its core it’s an action-packed thriller that sprints to the finish line at a breathless pace, and practically brims with suspense. Sci-fi elements drive the plot, yet they’re presented in a simple, easy-to-understand way that melts in with the quickly-moving story. The science is worked into the book, but it’s not the most significant part by any reasonable measure. In fact, romance is perhaps the most crucial element that drives the main characters and defines their relationships. Yet it’s also written with the feel of a mystery as Jason strives to uncover the reality of his situation.

The best part of Dark Matter is that because it blends so many genre hallmarks together, it’s able to be totally original while also appealing to an incredibly wide audience. It cherry-picks the best of suspense, thrillers, mysteries, romance novels, and speculative sci-fi, and mashes them up into a book that’s equal parts engaging and thought-provoking.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

Review: Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Published by: Doubleday in June 1979
Genre: Science-fiction, Historical-fiction, African-American literature
RATING: ★★★★★
Synopsis: Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

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This novel has a simple, yet intriguing premise: A young, modern (1970s-era) African-American woman is transported back in time to the Antebellum South.

I always enjoy discussing the origins of a novel of this kind – how did the author come up with such a unique idea? – and this particular book has a very interesting background. Octavia Butler was inspired by a Black Power Movement from her college days, in which she heard a young man blaming the older African-American generations for their “humility and their acceptance of disgusting behavior.” He even declared that “I’d like to kill all these old people who have been holding us back for so long.” (A little extreme, no?)

In writing Kindred, Butler sought to counter his argument by asking a simple question: If a modern person had to deal with the challenges of their ancestors, could they survive? What kind of context would they gain, experiencing firsthand the kind of courage required simply to endure?

I think this is part of what makes Kindred feel so authentic and meaningful: It comes straight from Butler’s heart and experiences. Through Dana, she draws upon her own past working odd blue-collar jobs while struggling to launch a writing career. Tiny details – like having to heat up potatoes for meals – add so much because Butler experienced them. In Alice and Sarah, two slaves that Dana befriends, Butler channels her mother, and the sacrifices made to provide for her family.

In many ways, it’s representative of the larger truth that authors are often at their best when they use their own experiences as springboards to explore deeper, more extended ideas and insights. By drawing upon her own life and ideals Butler reaches out and connects with the past, with long-dead ancestors, on a profound level. Every detail – from the descriptions of the plantation, to the everyday brutalities suffered, to the dynamics and relationships between slaves – is so sharp and realistic, I can almost believe she experienced it all herself.

Another unique aspect is the way that Kindred straddles both science-fiction and historical-fiction, practically fusing the two genres. It combines the time-travel element with the totally immersive journeys back to the Antebellum era.

Part of the reason that this unusual genre-defying plot works is that Butler doesn’t spend too much time fleshing out the mechanics of how/why Dana is repeatedly transported into the past (and let’s face it, she would have to work really hard to come up with a half-way plausible explanation anyways). Dana reaches the conclusion that Rufus is her ancestor, and that she and he share a connection where she’s repeatedly called back to the past to ensure that he lives long enough to father the next in her familial line. And that’s that.

The book is a little vague on the finer points of the time travel, but I’ve concluded that ultimately it’s a closed/causal time loop (which you can read about here if you’re interested). This, in my opinion, is way more neat and elegant than the crazy Back-to-the-Future style time travel with alternate universes and whatnot.

In many ways, the lack of focus on the time travel itself allows the book to focus more on Dana’s actual experiences in the past, and the deeper relationships that she forges. Some of the most emotional parts of the book are where she realizes how quickly she is able to accept and internalize the institution of slavery when she is forced to live with it. It gets to the point where she has spent so much time in the past, she starts to feel out of place in her present. Which is incredibly scary.

A final thought – one of the best parts is the complexity of the relationship between Dana and Rufus. Rufus is ultimately a product of his time. Perhaps he’s not an innately evil person, nor is he the caricature monster slave-owner, but as he grows up and adopts his father’s brutal tendencies his bond with Dana grows more and more fragile. There’s an added dynamic that it’s technically his fault that Dana is chained to the past, yet she keeps feeling compelled to help him.

Verdict: Kindred is a thoughtful, immersive fusion of two seemingly separate genres. Driven by Butler’s own incredible ability to connect with the past, it doesn’t hold back at all. It offers a compelling, often brutal, look at how a modern person would survive facing their ancestors’ challenges.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads