her fearful follow up

i adore audrey niffenegger; my adoration was based upon the time traveler's wife; a book that i could not put down for the life of me, when i read it many years ago. i refuse to see the movie, because i believe the one i have created in my mind is far superior.

so it was with great excitement and anticipation that i picked up her fearful symmetry. and almost immediately, i was in love with the characters, and with the story. ms. niffenegger once again transported me to another head space, and putting down this book proved difficult.

the story is about twins, julia and valentina, who are as close as can me. their aunt, who they have never met (and is their mother's twin), died, and left them her flat in london, with two conditions. they had to live in it for a year before selling it, and their parents could not enter it.

what unfolds is a ghost story, love story, and really, at the end, a tragedy.

there was so much development of this story, and it could of gone in many directions. sadly, it felt as if the author ran out of steam near the end, and so the book ends, and i sat there, wanting it to be so much more.

When in Rome...

So, the last book club read When We Were Romans by Kneale. I was conflicted by this book. It was written from the perspective of a 12 year old boy complete with misspelled words. That part I didn't find as believable as I wanted to. He was dealing with complex issues and sometimes the perspective worked and sometimes it didn't. The story was interesting. The mom is afraid for her life and her childrens' lives because their father is stalking them. She overshares with the son about this and he has to shoulder a lot of fear and responsibility. They decide to pack up all they can and steal away in the night to head from England to Rome, where the mom lived for years and has friends and remembers being happy. Things unfold, the son starts to rebel a little as his role is displaced by other people as support for his mom. And then she starts to see things that make her believe the father has found them in Rome. At first the son doesn't believe her but then he completely enters that scenario and the way the story unfolds is quite dramatic and messed up. Now... I never believed a main premise in the story, so there was no suspense for me until one of the final scenes which was pretty intense. Overall I liked it, except, as I said, the perspective didn't follow through, and I wish I had been fooled for a least a little while regarding that main premise I was talking about. That phrase, "when in Rome do as the Romans do..." was that kid's whole life until the reveal. At the end you hope he finds a path that isn't solely the opposite of that.

Sir Arthur's first Sherlock Holmes Story

When I was a child I was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. I found a volume of his cases in the old shelves of my parent's living room and read them one after another enthralled. The one I never read until now was A Study in Scarlet, the first one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote. In it you see how Holmes and Watson met and you see the first case they ever work. And you see how Holmes' education was completely focused on skills he needed to solve crimes, and technology he was experimenting with to make crime solving easier (fingerprint collecting and the like). I liked it... but Holmes was so smug, almost obnoxious about how great at solving mysteries he was. And then of course he easily solved this one. Also, a large part of the second half was back story for the crime and I really didn't find it that engrossing. So, indifferent really.

A Boy Named Nobody

I read the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaimon, the second of his children's books I've read lately (the other being Coraline). It is about a baby who's family is murdered by a mysterious and evil man (with an excellent sense of smell) but he escapes (crawls) to a graveyard and the ghosts who live there rescue, protect, and raise him. I think that Gaimon is one of a kind. He creates these scary, imaginary worlds for kids and helps them find their way out of that fear themselves, with little adult assistance. I think in a world as scary as this one, there is something to be said for showing children that they can survive within themselves.

birds of america by lorrie moore

her writing is very dark; almost depressingly so. the first story started off fairly well; feeling strong, and engaged. by the end of the book, i wanted to stab out my eyeballs.

Hmmmm.... I dropped the ball for a little while on updating the blog. I'm so sorry! So I have to remember all that I have read. I will start with The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell. As you probably have gathered, I love this author. I love his protagonist. And I love how smart and original and well set these mysteries are. But this one was truly awful. It was as if Mankell was just sitting at his desk staring out the window and every once in a while he would write a sentence or two because he felt like he had to. Very disappointing.

the zookeeper's wife by diane ackerman

I wanted to fall in love with this book from the get go, but Ackerman made it difficult to do so. The Zookeeper's Wife tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews, as well as Polish resisters during the war. Ackerman used Antonina's diaries, as well as other sources, to take us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising. There are so many rich facts and details, that are heartbreaking and astounding, but Ackerman takes on too much. I was confused in some parts; the story was often interrupted to insert facts about the Pole's revolt against Nazi occupiers in 1944, or introducing us to such figures such as Lutz Heck, the head of the Berlin Zoo and Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto. It was a lot to absorb; as if a novel and a history book merged together into one. I wanted to lose myself in the story, and instead I felt I was being lectured to.

Beautifully written, but be prepared as this is not a story for the faint of heart.