Her Book Self

First comes the apology for my unexpected blogging hiatus.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I was a bit under the weather last week.  Once I was feeling more human, I was busy playing catch-up at work and trying to get ready for the holidays (service projects, card writing, shopping, party planning).  But as a very special return post, I'm happy to share a review of a book that impressed my socks off - happy Christmas socks, that is, featuring little puppies and kitties in Santa hats... the socks, not the book.

Ambitious in scope and epic in execution, Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides is an amazing story not just for its sweeping family saga but for its remarkable narrator. Calliope "Cal" Stephanides is a hermaphrodite - genetically male but raised as a female - and the genetic mutation that led to his condition is rooted in the history of his family. Though Cal is introduced immediately, the majority of the story is told in the past - from Cal's grandparents, Greek immigrants Lefty and Desdemona; to his parents Milton and Tessie.

The unique relationships between the two couples is almost as captivating as their surroundings. Settling in Detroit, Michigan, Lefty and Desdemona's tale corresponds to the city's glory days of Ford. As the next generation takes the focus of the narration, the landscape shifts as well and Cal's parents witness the race riots of the sixties and follow the white exodus to suburban Grosse Pointe, where Cal and his brother are raised.

Eugenides succeeds not only in revealing the complex history of Detroit, but in telling the book with an amazing flair for detail. Some of the characters are painted so richly with personalities that jump off the page while others are classified precisely by their lack thereof. Cal's parents were complete with their own back-stories, hobbies, quirks, and talents; meanwhile Cal's brother is only ever referred to cleverly as "Chapter Eleven". Everything about the story feels real and more than once I found myself running an internet search on a business, neighborhood, or event to distinguish facts from Eugenides's fiction.

I must admit that I had this book on my "To Read" list for a long time and was unfairly prejudiced against the story - which I assumed would revolve primarily around gender identity issues. What I found was a book that did deal with gender and sexuality, but through the eyes of a witty and unique narrator that I came to love, because I was first introduced to his captivating family saga. I was swept up by the Stephanides's history and as Cal interspersed his own struggles into the tale - complete with a decent dose of science and genetics - I felt like a member of the family. I'm also not normally swayed by awards and accolades on book covers, but Middlesex deserves all the praise and attention it has received. I was thoroughly amazed by this book and can easily say it's one of the best I have read this year.

Many know the story of the fall of the Romanovs, the splendor of the imperial court toppled by revolutionaries, but author Adrienne Sharp tells the somewhat familiar history in a brand new way. The True Memoirs of Little K begins in Paris in 1971 with the blunt and rather boastful introduction, "My name is Mathilde Kschessinska, and I was the greatest Russian ballerina on the imperial stages." The tale which is unraveled from the memories of an old woman is that of Russia - before, during, and after the upheaval of its royalty - told through one of its most famous artists.

Mathilde Kschessinska, known to her loved ones as Mala or Little K, rose to fame in the tsar's Russian Imperial Ballet. She gained the coveted position of prima ballerina assoluta - more from her charm and cunning than talent at dance. She found herself mingling in the inner circles of several grand dukes and eventually finding the favor, and the bed, of Tsar Nicholas II himself. Throughout the story of the changing political climate in Russia, from the Romanovs and Rasputin to the revolutionaries and royal executions, Mala is a fair narrator. She constructs the history piece by piece - at times close to the action and in other scenes as confused by the tumultuous world around her as any of the Russian citizens.

Adrienne Sharp draws heavily on true events to create this book, weaving in some fiction and speculation only as a garnish for the facts. I greatly enjoyed learning more about the time period of the last Russian tsars, the culture of the ballet, and the atmosphere of the Russian revolution. Though Kschessinska lends a human perspective to the events, I never really connected with her as a character. I found her rather unlikeable, but in a way that did make her more realistic as a flawed historical figure. The way that the story was told, as memoirs from a flashback point of view, was also a bit distracting. The narration would occasionally jump between different past occurrences and although the non-linear trajectory served to remind the reader of the elderly Kschessinska, I would have preferred to fully embrace the historical setting.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but it took me a little while to warm up to the narrator and the storytelling style. It wasn't a very quick read, but I would definitely recommend it to those interested in the subject matter and time period.

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay tells the alternating story of modern day journalist Julia Jarmond and a young French girl Sarah Starzynski who lived in Paris in 1942.  Julia is researching the events surrounding the Vélodrome d’Hiver, more commonly known as the Vel' d' Hiv, when Jewish citizens were rounded up by the French police to be sent to concentration camps.  Sarah belonged to one of the many families taken from their homes, but thinking she would only be gone a few hours, she secreted her younger brother in a hidden room before leaving her home. Clinging to the key with which she locked him in, Sarah's story unfolds between Julia's as the journalist finds a tie between her own family and the Jewish people that were pulled from their homes. 

I don't want to give away too much of this story so I will keep this review rather brief.  Though I liked it, I didn't love the book as much as I wanted to.  Perhaps I had some over hyped expectations from people that told me I would adore it, or perhaps I wasn't mentally prepared for a tear-jerker.  I found myself extremely ensconced in Sarah's story but less so in Julia's narrative.  Nevertheless, what I most appreciated in this book was the information about the Vel' d'Hiv and the atrocities committed by the French police.  Though I like to think I learned a lot in school about World War II, this was entirely new and shocking information for me to read.  For that reason alone, I do find myself recommending Sarah's Key to others. 

And it also leads me to ask, what fiction book(s) do you consider a must-read for educational content alone?  Even if you weren't thrilled with the story, is there a title that you consider important because of what you learned from it? 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is an urban fantasy alternate version of US history in which the sixteenth president of the United States embarked upon a hidden career as a slayer of bloodsucking fiends. Seth Grahame-Smith - creator of the instant cult-classic Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - returns to his form of incorporating humorous yet violent warfare against the undead into an otherwise well-known story. In this case, the book still represents a fairly accurate biography of Lincoln, granted the addition of vampires as a primary cause of the US civil war keeps the book in the fiction section, despite Grahame-Smith's prologue relating why the book is true and should be taken seriously.

I suppose I would have enjoyed this work more had it not tried for the pretense of conspiracy theory. I was highly entertained by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and was expecting a similar lighthearted spirit to this book. The opening of the story, in which Abe as a young boy discovers that the same axe he splits logs with can be used to decapitate vamps, maintained the classic-meets-paranormal feel. However, once the book progressed and Lincoln's political career began, the mash-up did not work as well. As much as I enjoy suspension of disbelief in alternate history, to suppose that Lincoln supported the abolishing of slavery to remove a vampire food source rather than because it was an abhorrent institution didn't sit well with me.

There was still plenty in this book that was entertaining, and the Photoshopped images were well done and captioned perfectly. For fans of Seth Grahame-Smith and those who want a based-in-truth but quite twisted biography of Lincoln, it is a worthwhile read, but I still find myself wishing it hadn't taken itself quite so seriously. Rather than paint a darker portrait of not-so-honest Abe I think the book could have succeeded even more by creating an exaggerated hero out of the sixteenth president.

When I set the challenge for myself to get through Jane Eyre in a Week, I didn't think it would take over my blog for the past seven days, but I also didn't realize what a blog-worthy book I was embarking on. Also, I can think of no better book with which to conclude Jane Eyre Week than Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë.  I read this book last month - yes, before reading Jane Eyre - and I was captivated by the story.

Though the title would suggest a fanciful romance, Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael is a mostly somber historical fiction about the life - and eventual love interest - of Charlotte Brontë. The book opens on the younger life of Charlotte, with sisters Emily and Anne and brother Branwell, and their father the Reverend Patrick Brontë.

Assuming the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, the three sisters encourage each other in literary pursuits and all succeed in publishing novels but keep their endeavors hidden from family and friends. As tragedy repeatedly strikes the family, the novel takes a tearful turn but is slightly brightened by the courtship between Charlotte and her father's curate Arthur Bell Nichols.

I really enjoyed this book. Though I previously knew very little about the lives of the Brontë sisters, Gael stayed close to fact. The everyday scenes and conversations that she wove for the now-famous authors were entirely believable and worked to transpose the reader into Charlotte's life. I certainly would have preferred a happier story, but the true joy of Brontë's life was in the legacy of literature that she left for future generations.

I suppose it's a slightly off-kilter order of operations to read a novel about Charlotte Brontë before reading her most famous work, but I think knowing a little about the author's life and family gave me an added appreciation of the story created in Jane Eyre.  It was delightful to realize the parallels between Charlotte and her fictional heroine, and I think the correlations are intriguing regardless of whether Gael's work is encountered before or after Brontë's.  I'd definitely recommend this book to fans of Jane Eyre as well as those looking to learn more about the Brontë family or anyone who enjoys stories set in the 1800's. 

With my new-found love of the work of Currer Bell, I couldn't resist sharing the following video with all the fellow bibliophiles out there. Hilarious and historically accurate! (Okay...maybe not the dinosaur part...)

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, relates another gripping and emotional biography in her latest book Unbroken. Subtitled A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Hillenbrand's work is exactly that.

Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini. With humble beginnings as a neighborhood troublemaker in Torrance, California, Louis rose to the national spotlight as a runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Barely missing a medal, he set his sights on the next Games, but like many, he delayed his dreams in order to serve his country and enlisted in the Armed Forces as a bombardier. His duty turned nightmare when his plane went down and survival on a raft drifting through the Pacific was only a sliver of torment compared to life as a POW in Japan.

Despite horrid and dehumanizing conditions, Zamperini survived, and his story is chronicled along with details of his family and fellow servicemen. Hillenbrand relies on primary sources and unfolds the story with an expert pen. Powerful, amazing, dramatic and inspiring barely scratch the surface of describing Zamperini's journey. I was captivated throughout the book and really enjoyed delving into this biography of an American hero of whom I was previously unfamiliar. This is a story of history and survival, but even more so it is a testimony to the power of the human spirit which in Zamperini's case, through the darkest times, remained Unbroken.

Corrag, the titular character of Susan Fletcher's work, has been haunted by the word "witch" her entire life. The moniker has often been accompanied by scowling glances and thrown stones. It is the word that took her mother from her and sent Corrag fleeing to Scotland from the English town where she was born. Small but hardy, young Corrag survived and made a life for herself among the MacDonald clan but when politics, oaths, and kingship debates bring a bloody massacre to Glencoe, the word witch places Corrag behind bars sentenced to death.

The Old Grave-Stone by Hans Christian Andersen is not a story with which I was familiar, but seeing as how the title evokes a plethora of Halloween images, I happily read through it for this week's edition of Fairy Tale Fridays!  (FTF is a weekly meme hosted by Tif of Tif Talks Books.)  The fable is a relatively short one and recounts the story of a house in a provincial town with a large stone in front of it.  The rock has become a fixture of the landscape and children play on it, but the tale goes on to reveal that it is actually a grave marker relocated from an old cemetery.


The story proceeds with an old-man recalling some details of the lives of the man and woman - Preben and Martha Schwane - whose graves the stone was on.  Sadly, the repeated sentiment is, "Forgotten! Ah, yes, everything will be forgotten!" but in the midst of this, the very act of talking about the lives of the Schwanes passes their story on to younger generations.  At the end of the story, a young boy who has been listening to the old man hears the following words in his heart:

“Preserve carefully the seed that has been entrusted to thee, that it may grow and thrive. Guard it well. Through thee, my child, shall the obliterated inscription on the old, weather-beaten grave-stone go forth to future generations in clear, golden characters. The old pair shall again wander through the streets arm-in-arm, or sit with their fresh, healthy cheeks on the bench under the lime-tree, and smile and nod at rich and poor. The seed of this hour shall ripen in the course of years into a beautiful poem. The beautiful and the good are never forgotten, they live always in story or in song.” 

This is a beautiful way to end the story as it brings the hopeful and beautiful to light the sadness of  forgotten life.  It extols the virtue of oral traditions as the way to honor and remember those that have come before us.  I love the line, "they live always in story or in song."  Interestingly, this ending brought to mind a trip I took in high school to Salem, Massachusetts.  One of our stops was the church and graveyard that was the site and burial ground of many people involved with the Salem Witch Trials.  I remember how several of the crooked, dilapidated grave markers had barely legible inscriptions, and yet because of the history passed down - and likely because of Arthur Miller's The Crucible - family names such as Williams, Corey, and Proctor had a much greater significance to our group of travelers seeing them hundreds of years after they were inscribed. 

What are your thoughts on this story?  Have you ever traced a family genealogy or a lineage of a historical figure through tombstones?  Have you ever shared stories of friends or relatives no longer living with a younger generation?

With the USA celebrating Independence Day this weekend, I want to spotlight one of my favorite nonfiction books.  A true master of dramatic nonfiction, David McCullough recounts climactic events of the Revolutionary War through varying perspectives in the book 1776.  Relying heavily on primary sources such as letters and council notes, history unfolds humanistically under McCullough's artful pen.  American heroes such as Washington, Knox, and Greene - as well their British rivals - come alive as never before. 

And since I'm always striving to learn more through reading, does anyone have good recommendations for other interesting and engaging books about history?  I've heard McCullough's John Adams is also a great work, but I'm all for branching out to other eras of history.  (And not just US history, I love to learn about other countries, too!)

Happy Fourth of July!  Wishing everyone a safe and wonderful holiday!