Peace Lily by Alex Martin

The Katherine Wheel #2 series

REVIEW

The aftermath of World War I is evident everywhere, the heartbreak is still fresh, when the two young women return to Cheadle Manor. Cassandra Smythe returns as the sole heir, after her brother Charles lost his life in the war. She has to take over the role of executive manager of the estate from her grieving and ageing father, but her mother is not ready to accept the new role of women in society. 

Kathy Phipps returns to her husband, Jem, and her family who all work for Lord Robert and Lady Amelia on their vast estate. The camaraderie of the war is soon forgotten when the old order returns between working class and gentry.

A new reality awaits them in which life throws them several new curve balls. Jem lost an arm in the war, and is no longer able to continue his work as a gardener. Like all the disabled veterans, he is dumped on the trash heaps of history and must fend for himself. Kathy, who was trained as a mechanic in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, is no longer wanted in the army. The jobless couple must face an uncertain future, while life at the manor, with class conscious Lady Amelia in the lead, slowly picks up speed again.

Jem Phipps:  "Both sets of parents - Bert and Agnes; George and Mary - they still had to scratch about to put enough food on the table for their families. The manor was unchanged. Sir Robert and Lady Amelia were still lording it over the rest of them. What right had they to live in that fucking great mansion when he and Katy - and God knows she'd worked as hard as any man during that Godforsaken war - were bunked up with the Beagles in the tiny lodge house that guarded their posh, locked gate?"

Lady Amelia's bitterness over her only son's death leads to the dismantling of relationships, even Cassandra's American fiance Douglas Flintock, leaves for Boston in a fury. It would lead to new paths for both girls when they sail over the Atlantic to rescue love, but run into trouble in the country for the brave and the free, where class differences are defined differently but just as cruel.

The young people have to battle and adjust to an environment where the part of the population who did not participate in the war, do not understand the trauma and its aftermath for those who are trying to overcome their memories and nightmares of the battle front. The peace lilies deceptively grace the halls and homes. There is a cruel irony in their beauty.

This is a light read, in comparison with the outstanding first book 'Daffodils'. The spirit of hope is the the main ingredient in the story. Family relationships, love, and social prejudice throws obstacles on the road to recovery for the four young people: Kathy and Jem, Cassandra and Douglas. 

Loyalty between husband and wife, between friends, between family, determine the outcome of Kathy's difficult journey. She is the main character, who has to overcome the one obstacle after the other to survive the past and future. She becomes the victim of circumstances and must find her way back to self-respect and hope. Like an old-fashioned corset, she could hardly breath or move easily without feeling crushed.

Cassandra's hardship will be on a different level, where money is no object, job security is not an issue, and prejudice is not a threat. In the end, their friendship will be tested in ways they have never seen coming.

A very relaxing read.

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BLURB
After the appalling losses suffered during World War One, three of its survivors long for peace, unaware that its aftermath will bring different, but still daunting, challenges.
Katy trained as a mechanic during the war and cannot bear to return to the life of drudgery she left behind. A trip to America provides the dream ticket she has always craved and an opportunity to escape the strait-jacket of her working class roots. She jumps at the chance, little realising that it will change her life forever, but not in the way she’d hoped.
 
Jem lost not only an arm in the war, but also his livelihood, and with it, his self esteem. How can he keep restless Katy at home and provide for his wife? He puts his life at risk a second time, attempting to secure their future and prove his love for her.
Cassandra has fallen deeply in love with Douglas Flintock, an American officer she met while driving ambulances at the Front. How can she persuade this modern American to adapt to her English country way of life, and all the duties that come with inheriting Cheadle Manor? When Douglas returns to Boston, unsure of his feelings, Cassandra crosses the ocean, determined to lure him back.

As they each try to carve out new lives, their struggles impact on each other in unforeseen ways.__________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Life has been full to date. Now I have a window, a pause, in which to explore my first passion - writing. I have a shed in the garden where I can be found bashing both brain and keyboard. I'm attempting to express those thoughts and ideas that have been cooking since I was seven, and learned to read. 

There was an old black and gold typewriter knocking about my childhood home. When I wasn't skinning my knees climbing trees or wandering aimlessly in the countryside with my dog and my dreams, I could be found, as now, typing away with imaginary friends whispering in my ear.

My first novel, The Twisted Vine, is based on a happy time picking grapes in France in the 1980s. I met some amazing people there but none as outrageous as those that sprang to life on my screen. The next one, Daffodils, is now published on KDP and in paperback with www.feedaread.com is based in Wiltshire, where I grew up. It attempts to portray how ordinary lives, and the rigid social order, were radically altered by the catalyst of the First World War.

The next one, as yet un-named, is a ghost story. I'm just listening to the whispers from the other side to get the full picture....

You can keep up to date with my progress on alexxx8586.blogspot.com 

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BOOK INFORMATION

Genres: Historical fiction, Britain, WWI, Family, Relationships
Number of pages: 336
Formats: Kindle, Paperback
Publishers:Alex Martin
Publication date: October 3, 2014
ISBN13: B00O694ET4
Edition language: English
Purchase links: Amazon USA | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble

Other People's Houses by Lore Segal

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REVIEW
I really feel humble to write this review for an autobiographical memoir by an award-winning author who was nominated for the Pullitzer Prize in 2008. Then I console myself with the idea that I am an ordinary reader with limited knowledge of literature and creative writing. It is kind of a relief, since it allows me to use a creative freedom in my review for which I do not have to apologize!

Other People's Houses deals with a ten-year old Jewish girl's life after Hitler came into power and Jewish people were removed from society in Europe. Jewish children were ostracized, isolated, threatened, bullied and assaulted. No more non-Jewish friends. They were barred from parks, theaters and schools. Teachers refused to teach them. Parents were stripped from their citizenship and jobs.

From the foreword by Cynthia Ozick:

" In 1938 a particular noisy special train from Vienna--it carried the frenetic atmosphere of a school bus--was stopped in Germany to be checked for contraband. The passengers fell silent with fear, as if each one secretly suspected herself of being a smuggler. Then the signal was given to pass on, and all at once the cars began to vibrate with singing and cheers, just as though school holiday had suddenly been declared. And, in a macabre way, so it had, since all the passengers were Jewish schoolchildren, and all of them had been expelled--from school, from home, from country. Their excursion was names the Children's Transport (the parents were to follow later), but it might more accurately have been called Children's Pilgrimage. For some--those who embarked in Holland--it was a delayed pilgrimage to the death camps. For the rest--among them Lore Groszmann Segal, the author of these memoirs, then ten years old--it was a pilgrimage towards joyless England and the disabilities of exile, and, more poignantly, toward a permanent sense of being human contraband."

Lore Groszmann remembered the first ten years of her life in Austria, the following ten years in England, three years as a young woman in the Dominican Republic and then New York. From a bitterly cold December night, 1938 to the 1st of May 1951 was the period she had to survive until their permit to enter the USA was granted.

The memoir is written with an honesty and humbleness, commemorating the life of an only child who had to be sent off on the Children's Train from Austria to England, not knowing if she will ever see her family again. 

In the preface of the book, the author explains the tone of her memoir:

" I am at pains to draw no facile conclusions--and all conclusions seem facile to me. If I want to trace the present from the occurrences of the past I must do it in the manner of the novelist. I posit myself as protagonist in the autobiographical action. Who emerges?
A tough enough old bird, of the species survivor, naturilized not in North America so much as in Manhattan, on Riverside Drive. Leaving home and parents gave strength at a cost. I remember knowing I should be crying like the little girl in the train across from me, but I kept thinking, "Wow! I'm off to England"-- a survival trick with a price tag. Cut yourself off, at ten years, from feelings that can't otherwise be mastered, and it takes decades to become reattached. My father died in 1945, but tears did not come until 1968, when David, my American husband, insisted I owed myself a return to my childhood. I cried the whole week in Vienna, and all over the Austrian Alps."

The engaging tale described the mental tools she had to develop to survive on her own being moved from one foster home to the next. She became accustomed to the class system in England, by being moved from the wealthy family of a Jewish furniture manufacturer in Liverpool - an Orthodox family who spoke Yiddish, which she couldn't understand or identify with at all, to a railroad stoker and his family, a milkman's family and the upper class of Guilford where her mother later would work as a maid. She would be living with five different families: There were the Levines, the Willoughbys, The Grinsleys, and finally Miss Douglas and Mrs. Dillon.

Her mainstay was the contact she maintained with her parents through letters. Each letter had an uncertain destination in Austria. Making friends was a challenge. She was overbearing and demanding, often spiteful, but mostly misunderstood by grown-ups who did not realize the urgency and scope of the horror of Eugenics and the Holocaust playing itself out in Europe. While she tried to assimilate into a new country, new language, new culture, she relentlessly campaigned for exit visas for her parents. Her father, formerly a senior accountant at a bank, and her mother, a qualified music teacher and housewife, eventually acquired work visas as domestic workers. It was the only option available to them. 

Her experiences and thoughts, as a foster child, which she wrote down in a purple notebook at the time, would become Other People's Houses. It was first published in 1964. These valuable notes and memories enabled the author to remain true to the young girl's emotional intelligence in that period of her life. The honesty in the book validates the experience. For instance, as a young girl, unable to fully comprehend the minds of adults, she pushed her seriously ill dad to fall, subconsciously expressing her feelings of anger and hopelessness against him for being unable to take care of her and her hardworking mother in England. Her cruelty towards her grandmother when she destroyed the latter's illusions and admiration of Liberace on the black and white television set in their two-room apartment in New York, takes some courage to admit! Even her cruelty towards a fellow Kinder Transport friend is explained in detail. 

This is a story of immigration and assimilation. Of finding new social bonds within challenging circumstances. It is the story of a lonely little girl who translated pain, guilt, grief, agony, stress and constant fear into suppressed anger, arrogance, ungratefulness, often rudeness and stubbornness. It made her unlikable. Although her parents were able to escape to England, they were not allowed, as domestics, to accommodate her into their lives. Domestics were not allowed to have their children living with them. 

It is unsure why this book is called a semiautobiographical novel. It just doesn't fit a factual memoir, written in the first person (the author does explain in the preface why she wrote it this way, though). Her relationships with her family, their journeys to safety, and their new lives in England, the Dominican Republic and eventually America, was very well written. She had to live with a grandma who had one aim in life and that was to insult the entire world, beginning in the family, rippling out to neighbors and strangers. Grandma targeted the individual members of humanity one by one, everywhere she landed up. 

Lore had to face the disappointment in her hero, uncle Paul, who never could find his groove. She had to discover love in unexpected places, often misconstrued and misunderstood. It would take her many years of experiences, to finally figure it out. Through circumstances, she herself had to close up, was forced to become emotionally arrested, to protect herself against the hurt of strangers. She learnt as a young girl not to trust. 

The picturesque prose kept me riveted to the book. I did not expect a story with a beginning, a middle and an end with drama worming through the tale. But the author's narrative skill painted a perfect landscape of displaced people who had to re-align themselves into humanity. She told the story so well, that it became one of the best memoirs I have ever read. 

The documentary film "Into The Arms Of Strangers" , winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2000, visually enhances this book. Both Lore and her mother Franzi, who lived to the ripe old age of 100, was interviewed for this documentary. It is recommended to everyone interested in this story! In fact, when I closed the book and thought about the review, I sat for long while thinking about this little girl. It encouraged me to read more about the Kindertransport. Watching the documentary had the tears rolling down my face. Everybody simply need to watch it!

An estimated sixty million people died in the deadliest military conflict in history. Which means that 54 million people died during the Second World War, trying to stop Hitler's expansionism and his continuing killing of more than the already 6 million Jewish people. In the same period spanning between 1934 to well into the 1950s, another thirty million Chinese people lost their lives due to starvation under the Mau regime. How can you not cry, thinking about the horror of it all? I was thinking about the parents who have sent their children into battle, including millions of non-Jewish people, who ultimately paid the price for freedom for all. My dad went to the same war, fighting on the British side, and came home a totally different, almost unrecognizable person. I was born many years later and was told his story when I was a young woman.

The book is so well-written, however, it is a pity that there were so many gaps left in it. Some experiences never made a full circle. It was just left hanging. It is neither acceptable in a memoir, nor a novel, IMHO.
For instance: the little girl, who became a strong survivor, had one wish, and that was to make friends, be accepted, understood and loved. Although she did not express love in any form in the book, it is evident in her treatment of the people she cared about. She found it difficult to connect to young men, although she wanted to get married and have children. Some of her colorful, notorious romantic experiences are described in the book. But the man she would ultimately marry just fleetingly graced the tale, without any explanation of how they met, or how the relationship culminated into marriage. Her quest for romance is a sub plot in the story, and creates an expectation with the reader. It was just left hanging sterile out to dry in this particular instance. I haven't read the author's other books, but from reading a biography of her life, it seems as though all her books, written for adults, must be read to get the full picture. Her writing is also influenced by the magic realism which was started by Garcia Marquez. It became the axle of her writing adventures. 

The book ends where she is financially barely surviving as a some sort of painter of graphic designs, after working as a receptionist and a filing clerk before that. In a sense there is little evidence of any joie de vivre displayed in the book. A cold, emotionally devoid cynism, intentional or unintentional, winds its way through the entire story. Readers who do not appreciate direct,frank, almost blatant, honesty, will find some of the protagonist's actions offensive. For others, it might be refreshing. I loved it. 

The story concludes with a young woman disappearing into mediocrity. It doesn't make sense for a girl who had too much shutzpah to let it happen! But then again, it is based on reality. Personally, I would have preferred the inclusion of her later accomplishments as a teacher at various universities. She won several literary awards. The book could have celebrated the spirit of a survivor and a fighter. It would have validated the little girl who had to survive on her own and made it. The book could have been so much more. However, the title says it all. It was the first phase of a displaced person's life who were forced to become part of the furniture in other people's cultures, beliefs, homes and lives. Therefore, the tale concludes where she ends this period of her life. 

The story was well-focused and the economical use of words eliminated any possibility of word-dumping. I still would have loved to know if Lore loved flowers, or became enchanted by a rainbow, or ever bonded with a pet. Was there anything that balanced out the challenges she had to endure? Which positive factors, impressions or experiences completed her persona? Was there just not room for it in the book, or was it absent in her life? Which part of her young life inspired her positively; which memories did she left behind. Did she ever experienced happiness? Which elements of her new adopted country was embraced or appreciated? Was there anything she appreciated in other cultures? 

Nevertheless, this was still a magical literary experience. A wonderful, endearing, excellent piece of writing. What a joy!

RECOMMENDED!

This was Lore Segal's first novel and brought her international acclaim.

The book was provided by Open Road Media through Netgalley for review. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience.

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BOOK BLURP (Goodreads)

With a foreword by Cynthia Ozick, this semiautobiographical novel of a Jewish girl forced away from home in the face of Nazi persecution is an extraordinary tale of fortitude and survival

On a December night in 1938, a ten-year-old girl named Lore is put on the Kindertransport, a train carrying hundreds of Jewish children out of Austria to safety from Hitler’s increasingly alarming oppression. Temporarily housed at the Dover Court Camp on England’s east coast, Lore will find herself living in other people’s houses for the next seven years: the Orthodox Levines, the Hoopers, the working-class Grimsleys, and the wealthy Miss Douglas and Mrs. Dillon.

Charged with the task of asking “the English people” to get her parents out of Austria, Lore discovers in herself an impassioned writer. In letters to potential sponsors, she details the horrors happening back at home; in those to her parents, she notes the mannerisms and reactions of the new families around her as she valiantly tries to master their language. And the closer the world comes to a new war, the more resolute Lore becomes to survive.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lore Segal was born in Vienna in 1928. In 1938, she arrived in England as one of the thousands of Jewish children brought out of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia by the Kindertransport and lived with several foster families in succession. She graduated from the University of London and, after a sojourn in Trujillo's Dominican Republic, came to New York City. She married the editor David Segal with whom she has two children. David Segal died in 1970. She has taught at a number of colleges and universities, currently at the Ninety-Second Street Y. Her four works of fiction are Other People's Houses (1964), Lucinella (1976), Her First American (1985), and Shakespeare's Kitchen (2007). She has also published translations and numerous books for children. She is working on a new book, And If They Have Not Died.

 A finalist for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Segal has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, two PENO/O. Henry Awards, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, and a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Segal has also written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, and Harper's Magazine, among others. She lives in New York City.

Information sources: Wikipedia | Bookslut | Book "Other's Peoples Houses"(This summarized biography was also added to Lore Segal's profile on Goodreads, by me)

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BOOK INFORMATION
Genres: Holocaust, Second World War, Lore Segal, family, relationships, KinderTransport, ChildrensTransport, Britain, Dominican Republic, Austria, Vienna
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Nook
Edition language: English
Number of pages: 320
Publishers: Open Road Media
Publication date: September 09, 2014

• ASIN: B00MU9QIG4

 Purchase links: Amazon USA | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble
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The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai

Read from September 21 to 23, 2014

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REVIEW

My dearest Laurelfield,

Your tale started out as a short story about male anorexia. The author have no idea what the hell happened next, and neither do I, sorry to say !

The first woman, Violet Saville Devohr, to step over your threshold, understood the meaning of doors when she said to her husband: “You may shut me in, but I can shut you out. There are two sides to every door, Augustus.” And then she proceeded to commit suicide by her own rules. She defined the rest of your story as a painting hanging over your mantelpiece, being a constant reminder of what you had to witness and endure.

[First paragraph of the book: "FOR A GHOST story, the tale of Violet Saville Devohr was vague and underwhelming. She had lived, she was unhappy, and she died by her own hand somewhere in that vast house. If the house hadn’t been a mansion, if the death hadn’t been a suicide, if Violet Devohr’s dark, refined beauty hadn’t smoldered down from that massive oil portrait, it wouldn’t have been a ghost story at all. Beauty and wealth, it seems, get you as far in the afterlife as they do here on earth. We can’t all afford to be ghosts. ]

Built in 1900, you experienced some tumultuous moments through four significant time periods: 1999, 1955, 1929, 1900 - and lived to tell the tale of pride, vanity, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth and covetousness. A side-tale of opportunism, violence, abuse, extortion, and scavenging completed your sad tale.

You were firstly a house with a name - Laurelfield. Secondly,you were a mansions with a gatehouse and infamous wealth providing the status behind you. But oh dear, thirdly, the inhabitants, not you, were infested with insanity, greed, bad blood and bad luck. You had so many doors: some wide open, some formidably closed. Your windows were big and welcoming. Anyone could enjoy a view, from the inside out, or outside in.

Like our pets, you reflected the personalities of the artists gracing your rooms for twenty-five years, and they had the audacity to blame you for everything happening to them. Yes, they even blamed the ghost of Violet for their misdemeanors, mishaps and bad blood.

["Violet, Violet, dragged here against her will. Was that the magnetic force behind her haunting? She was pulled, and so she pulled others. Toward ruin, toward redemption, toward love, away from it. Why? Because she could. ]

Some people blame God for their louzy lives, but these lot were either agnostic or atheistic, or too self-absorbed for that. They call themselves artists, I beg you! A character in the movie As Good As It Gets accused another of "being a disgrace to depression" Really, they were that and even more. They were a disgrace to art!

If I were you, I would have spooked these conniving, plotting moochers and high-class squatters out. Got Violet to move the furniture around in broad daylight, when ghosts were not suppose to be active and have them running away by the speed of lightning!

But you endured. Even when your tale was told backwards, too many characters killed the story, and cliffhanger moments threw your history into confusing chaos. Goodness me, Laurelfield, were you ever able to figure our who was whom in the end? Who sired Grace, and who was Zee really? Who really died, and who is really alive?

For crying out loud, I couldn't. I almost succumbed to some of the characters' insanity!

They were all con-artists! Yes, thinly veneered and slightly educated: you know, academically distinguished, mentally challenged, but emotionally arrested!

[Zilla, yes, one of the multitude of personalities got it right though: "Zilla realizes something, and it takes her a minute to wrap herself around the idea. She’s always thought of Laurelfield as a magnet, drawing her back again and again. But that’s just it: A magnet pulls you toward the future. Objects are normally products of their pasts, their composition and inertia. But near a magnet, they are moved by where they’ll be in the next instant. And this, this, is the core of the strange vertigo she feels near Laurelfield. This is a place where people aren’t so much haunted by their pasts as they are unknowingly hurtled toward specific and inexorable destinations. And perhaps it feels like haunting. But it’s a pull, not a push." ]

And this is where I love and leave you, dear Laurelfield. You are the only thing I fell in love with in the end! You were so worth it!

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BOOK BLURB FROM THE BOOK:
In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer.

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COMMENTS:
There is an expression in Netherlands 'Met de deur in huis vallen', in German 'mit der Tür ins Haus fallen', in Afrikaans'met die deur in die huis val' - which, translated directly, means 'falling into the house with the door'. And that is what I want to do with this house ... mmm... review: getting directly to the point. No beating around the bush.

So here it is: This book annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But wait! Before your heart drops to the floor, catch it for a second, and if you later feel like dropping it anyway, be my (as well as Laurelfield's) guest! But not now. Not yet!

Narrative: Brilliant!
Language: Brilliant!
Characterization: Brilliant! Sadly, way too many characters and none of them lovable.
Theme: Mmmmm......messy but a great idea;
Plot: Confusing - too many sub plots;
How the plot, characters and setting relate to reality: Excellent.
Entertaining Outstanding!
Detail: Outstanding!

HOWEVER: I did feel the last two periods, 1929, 1900 - messy and chaotic, were more a form of information-dumping, to enhance the plot. It was as though the story lacked validation and needed this information to make sense, but it did not initially fitted into the main story in the first period, 1999. It was therefore added as an urgent, yet messy, after-thought. Did not work for me. The inverted chronology might define this book, as is evident from all the attention it receives, but I did not like it. Neither did I appreciate the end landing in the middle of the book.

Conclusion By golly! What a captivating unbelievably suspenseful read! The story caught me from the get-go and had me reading non-stop until the end. I did want to end it all into the second half, though but kept going. Optimism and hope it is called.

I won't pursue another book written in this style, though. It was just too confusing. For a club read: excellent! I do consider reading the book again to understand its deeper nuances and hidden plots better. I want to.

Was it worth my time? Yes. The prose was outstanding. I will read the author again. She's good with words.

The book was provided by Viking Press through Netgalley. Thank you for this great opportunity.

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BOOK BLURB (Goodreads)

Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents' wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there's Violet Devohr, Zee's great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room.

Violet's portrait was known to terrify the artists who resided at the house from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony - and this is exactly the period Zee's husband, Doug, is interested in. An out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal, Doug is stalled on his biography of the poet Edwin Parfitt, once in residence at the colony. All he needs to get the book back on track - besides some motivation and self-esteem - is access to the colony records, rotting away in the attic for decades. But when Doug begins to poke around where he shouldn't, he finds Gracie guards the files with a strange ferocity, raising questions about what she might be hiding. The secrets of the hundred-year house would turn everything Doug and Zee think they know about her family on its head - that is, if they were to ever uncover them.

In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author's Website

Rebecca Makkai is a Chicago-based writer whose second novel, The Hundred-Year House, will be available from Viking/Penguin in summer, 2014. Her first novel, The Borrower, is a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, an O Magazine selection, and one of Chicago Magazine's choices for best fiction of 2011. Her short fiction has been chosen for The Best American Short Stories for four consecutive years (2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008), and appears regularly in journals like Harper's, Tin House, Ploughshares, Ecotone, and New England Review. and on public radio's This American Life and Selected Shorts. The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, Rebecca teaches at Lake Forest College, Sierra Nevada College and StoryStudio Chicago.
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BOOK INFORMATION
Genres: american-novel, drama, family, fiction, relationships, reviewed, suspense 
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, NookNumber of pages: 352
Publishers:  Viking Press | Cornerstone Digital
Publishing date: July 31st, 2014
Edition Language: EnglishISBN: 052542668X
Purchase Links: Amazon USA | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble

The Parrots by Filippo Bologna, Howard Curtis (Translator)

REVIEW
The Beginner, The Writer and The Master compete for a prestigious book award. To win the award they have to ensure enough votes for their books. All three desperately wants the accolades and will do anything required to gather enough support. Even if it meant that “If you’re not capable of creating a work of art, you have to become a work of art.”

They soon will discover that self-indulgence can only be successful if the social architecture of their environment allows them to succeed. Death, illness, women, workers and pets become Dionysiac metaphors for their personal ambitions and soon prove to be the factors they should have considered important enough, in the first place, in their quest for fame and fortune. 

One of them demanded to win, one expected to win and one hoped to win. Not that all three of them acted out of free will. On the other hand, some temptations simply had to be yielded to, with unimaginable consequences. The morphology of the book industry is such that their choices of agents, publishers and editors played a major role in the sinister outcome of the event. All three formed part of formidable teams, either acting as instigator or victim in their own plots. 

Whatever they envisioned for their destiny made them aware that the hardest part of any life, even a glamorous one, is to find one's feet and stay standing. Some of them won't find their feet in their quest to seek self-justice. One of the contestants had to address a complex dilemma for which there was no easy solution, only a dramatic outcome. The surprising twist in the end almost make this book a thriller. Almost, but not quite!

All three of them established some fundamental truths to feed their egos, such as: ..." suffering is a leper who walks with bells on his feet..."

"Life is too short to be devoted to suffering, people who suffer want to suffer, suffering is an invention of man: above the clouds the sun is always shining".

"The day of his divorce? A liberation. His father’s death? The deposition of a weary king. The end of a friendship? Social cleansing. 

Everything that happens can become an opportunity. In all these years, The Writer has been the personal gardener of his own success. He has carefully mowed, watered and fenced off the evergreen lawn of his well-being. And now? Now he won’t allow anyone to get close, and fires off a volley if he so much as sees anyone lurking around the fence of his life. The obvious threat comes from outside, because inside his garden
there is nothing and nobody that can harm him, he can run free without fear of tripping up: there are no obstacles or rusty tools in his garden."

Pathos, empathy, a little whiff of love, and even compassion define the authentic narrative playing itself out in a modern Rome. A tinge of surrealism creeps into the tale with the black parrot becoming some sort of unwanted, as well as feared totem.

The narrative skill used in the book, makes it an informative, often poetic, as well as entertaining read. Numerous phrases caught my imagination, such as: " His thoughts were watered by wine, fermented by the first sunshine of spring. "(paraphrased)

and

"When we are old we may say wise things, but when we are young we say true things."

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

"The Parrots " was provided by Pushkin Press through Netgalley for review. Thank you for the opportunity. I also bought the book, and I am happy with that. There will be quite a few people whom I know, would love to read it. I cannot wait to share it!

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BOOK BLURB
A searing satire of the literary world, in which three men fight - to the death? - for a coveted literary prize

Three men are preparing to do battle. Their goal is a prestigious literary prize. And each man will do anything to win it. For the young Beginner, loved by critics more than readers, it means fame. For The Master, old, exhausted, preoccupied with his prostate, it means money. And for The Writer-successful, vain and in his prime-it is a matter of life and death. As the rivals lie, cheat and plot their way to victory, their paths crossing with ex-wives, angry girlfriends, preening publishers and a strange black parrot, the day of the Prize Ceremony takes on a far darker significance than they could have imagined.


‘A hoot, written with a shrewd eye for the absurdity of certain literary egos’ - The Times
‘A five-star satire on literary vanity… A wonderful, surprising novel’  - Metro
‘A scathing satire about the murky world of Italy’s prestigious literary awards… Bologna paints a comically grim picture of a culture of back-stabbing and deceit’

A Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year 2014

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Filippo Bologna was born in Tuscany in 1978. He lives in Rome where he works as a writer and screenwriter. His debut novel How I Lost the War is also published by Pushkin Press.
(Information source)












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BOOK INFORMATION

Genres: Drama, Italy, Rome, Filippo Bologna, Howard Curtis (translator), Suspense, Relationships, Book industry, satire,
Formats:  Kindle, Hard cover, Paperback, | Nook
Number of pages: 288
Edition language: English
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publishing date: September 16, 2014  |  May 2014
ISBN-10: 1782270396

ISBN-13: 978-1782270393
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon USA | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | Kalahari.com

The Life of a Banana by PP Wong

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REVIEW
The title of the book made me smile, since a 'banana' was meant to describe a Chines person with a western up bringing. Yellow outside and white inside. In my country we have the 'coconuts'. It seems as though there will always be confusion and bitterness when second generation immigrants have to adapt to their country while the parents expects them to uphold their old cultures and beliefs. In our country's case it is not immigrants, but indigenous groups adopting the western lifestyle. 

Xing Li is a young school kid, born in England from Hong Kong parents, whose mother dies shortly before she is heading for school. Her dad is long gone. She and her brother must move into Grandma's house where she soon discovers a life she is not used to, neither find acceptable. There is her heartless grandmother, her aunt Mei, the sad uncle Ho, the tortoise and her missing cat, Meow Meow. She also has to find her own voice among white racist learners in the prestigious school she is sent to. Her friend Jay, a Chinese Jamaican boy, becomes her mainstay and support when the prejudice and bullying become brutal. She has a lot of growing-up to do, very quickly, while the lack of support from her grandmother drives her more into her own private little world where she has to vent for herself and she is not good at it yet!

However, she learns in the end what love really means and in how many forms it manifest itself. Some are less obvious than others. She also learns that things are not always what it looks like. 

PP Wong is a refreshing new voice in the British literary world. Although I have no problem with racism combined with bullying, being spotlighted, I do believe that too much repetition of the situation, weakens, instead of strengths the message as happened in the book. The same thing happens when a world music hit gets played 24/7 for as long as the listeners can stomach it, until they start contacting the radio stations and plead with them to not play it anymore. Less is always more!

For young people, particularly, this book is a must-read. It is one of those experiences that forces the reader to learn more about the people they never get to know in their communities. What a wonderful new discovery it can be to accept people different from ourselves, into our lives. Of course it counts for both immigrants and old inhabitants alike. 

A great read!

A NetGally read offered for review by Legend Press. I loved the experience. Thank you.

For what it is worth - the book cover should be reconsidered!   Phew!

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BOOK BLURB
Xing Li is what some Chinese people call a banana - yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Although born and raised in London, she never feels like she fits in. When her mother dies, she moves with her older brother to live with venomous Grandma, strange Uncle Ho and Hollywood actress Auntie Mei. Her only friend is Jay - a mixed raced Jamaican boy with a passion for classical music.

Then Xing Li's life takes an even harsher turn: the school bullying escalates and her uncle requests she assist him in an unthinkable favour. Her happy childhood becomes a distant memory as her new life is infiltrated with the harsh reality of being an ethnic minority.

Consumed by secrets, violence and confusing family relations, Xing Li tries to find hope wherever she can. In order to find her own identity, she must first discover what it means to be both Chinese and British.

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BOOK INFORMATION

Genres: Family, drama, British author, racism, bullying, relationships, Young adult.
Formats: Paperback , Kindle
Print Length: 272 pages
Publisher: Legend Press
Publishing date: September 1, 2014
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00HWQ19Z0
ISBN-10: 191005321X
ISBN-13: 978-1910053218
Purchase links: Amazon USA | Amazon UK | 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PP Wong was born in London in 1982. Her parents, both Chinese and originally from Singapore, moved between London and Asia during her childhood. She experienced extreme bullying throughout her schooling in the UK. PP Wong worked as an actress for six years, with her first job aged 15 when she was cast as 'Screaming Vietnamese girl' in a James Bond film. Other work includes performing in lead roles at the Soho Theatre in Moonwalking in Chinatown and BBC Radio 4's play Avenues of Eternal Peace about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. PP Wong is now a writer and is also editor of www.bananawriters.com, a platform to encourage new East Asian and South East Asian writers with thousands of readers from over 30 different countries.