“It’s not every day that you attend the funeral of your husband as organized by his other wife. Or, rather, the funeral of the man you’ve been calling husband for six months. Who was John Taylor? I no longer have a clue.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (MAR 4, 2014)

John Taylor does not fit the stereotype of a polygamist. Although he is handsome, charming, and charismatic, he is not selfish and arrogant, nor does he seem obviously abnormal or deviant. On the contrary, Taylor is a doctor who uses his impressive skills to perform reconstructive surgery on children who have facial deformities. His partners are unhappy that Taylor insists on doing pro bono work, since the big money is in cosmetic procedures for the affluent. Still, Taylor is a complex individual who, for reasons of his own, married three women who live in Palo Alto, Los Gatos, and Los Angeles; he somehow managed to juggle his myriad professional and personal responsibilities. It is only after Taylor dies in his hotel room of an apparent heart attack that his trio of wives become fodder for the tabloids.

Twenty-eight year old Samantha Adams is a detective in the Palo Alto Police Department in California. She has been living for ten years with her boyfriend, Peter, an anthropologist whom she dubs “an academic wannabe.” Sam is ambivalent about her feelings for Peter, a fact that is driving a wedge between them. When she is assigned to the John Taylor case, Sam has little time to devote to Peter, since there is evidence that the doctor may have been murdered. Did one of his wives do him in? If so, which one?

In lesser hands,  A Circle of Wives might have been little more than a cliché-ridden mystery with sensational overtones. Fortunately, Alice LaPlante is a talented and intelligent author who creates spellbinding and well-rounded characters; writes witty and realistic dialogue; and constructs plots that are clever and surprising. In addition, her prose is straightforward and effortless; it is refreshing to read a novel devoid of heavy-handed similes and metaphors. LaPlante gives voice to the aforementioned Sam Adams (who is eager to prove that she can solve her first major murder case) as well as the three Taylor wives, Dorothy (a poised and elegant woman to whom John was married for 34 years); MJ Taylor, an accountant (John’s wife for six years); and Helen Richter, a pediatric oncologist who was married to John for six months.

Among the memorable scenes in this book is the funeral mass for Dr. Taylor. All three wives are present, each lost in thought, remembering the man they loved. Dorothy, MJ, and Helen could not be more different from one another, but they all cared deeply for John, and each provided him with something special that he needed. Alas, A Circle of Wives is marred by an over-the-top ending with too many twists and turns. Still, most readers will enjoy this generally well-crafted and entertaining page-turner that proves once again how little we know about the people who are closest to us.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 90 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alice LaPlante
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Turn of Mind The Making of a Story

Bibliography:

• Turn of Mind (2011)
• A Circle of Wives (March 2014)

Other:

• The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing (2007)
• Method and Madness: The Making of a Story: A Guide to Writing Fiction (2008)

“They talked about it afterward, at the end of summer, after the summer folks had left and there was room to breathe again on the island. They talked slowly, hesitantly, in that drawn-out way you hear less and less down east, with long pauses between short utterances, as if, in the end, most things were best left unsaid.

Down at the boatyard where young Floyd was attending to some hitch in the electrics, resuscitating a bilge pump, adjusting a prop shaft that was shaking the engine something awful; down at the town dock where they tied up at the end of a long day, after hosing down their boats, shedding foul-weather jackets, high boots, oilskin overalls, rubber gloves, like lobsters shedding their skins; down at Elliot’s Paralyzo too—the only watering hole on the island—they sipped the froth off their beers and talked of Jim.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JAN 31, 2014)

For any reader who revels in confident, lyrical prose – rich in detail with meticulously chosen words – Alice Greenway’s book will enchant.

The storyline focuses on the elderly and irascible ornithologist Jim Kennoway, who, at the end of his career, retreats to a Maine island after his leg is amputated. There, tortured by past memories and fortified by alcohol and solitude, he eschews the company of others. Yet early on, he receives an unwanted visitor: Cadillac, the daughter of Tosca, who teamed with him as a scout to spy on the Japanese army in the Solomon Islands.

In one sense, the theme is how we evolve and own our memories. In the past, Jim examined how the tongues of different bird species evolved to adapt to different flowers of particular islands. Now he finds himself evolving to circumstances beyond his control: the lack of mobility, the inevitable encroachment of memories and of significant others.

As the book travels back and forth in time – to his youth in the early 1900s, to his stint in Naval Intelligence in the Solomon Islands, to his respected career collecting for the Museum of Natural History, the one constant in his life has always been birding. “Birding, he realizes, offered him both a way to engage with the world and a means to escape it.” Indeed, skinning birds reduces them to their very essence.

So it’s no surprise that even as the book opens, Jim has taken upon himself a quixotic task: to evaluate whether Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island was really one of the Solomon Islands. And herein lies another theme: the dastardly pirate Long John Silver, in Treasure Island, remarks how alike he is with the novel’s young hero, Jim Hawkins. Good and evil can exist simultaneously in nature and in life…or can it? Can both co-exist in Jim himself?

The book blurb implies that Tosca’s daughter Cadillac will play an integral role of capturing “his heart and that of everyone she meets.” I believe that sets up false expectations. Cadillac is indeed a catalyst to help Jim arrive at some clarity but for this reader, the center focus of the story is always Jim. It’s an intelligent and beautifully written book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 9 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alice Greenway
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: In Hovering Flight by Joyce Hinnefeld Solomon Time by Will Randall

Bibliography:

• White Ghost Girls (2006)
• The Bird Skinner (January 2014)

“During the final days of the occupation, there was an American woman in Haiti, a photojournalist — blonde, young, infuriating — and she became Thomas Harrington’s obsession.“

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shultman (JAN 3, 2014)

You don’t need to know much about Haitian, Croatian or Turkish politics to fully appreciate The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, but it helps. It also helps to surrender to the journey – a journey that spans over 700 pages – because immediate answers will not be forthcoming.

This is a big book in every sense of the word: big in breadth, in ideas, in audacity. You will lose your heart to it and end up shaking your head in awe and admiration. And along the way, you will learn something about the shadowy world of politics and espionage, the hypocrisy of religion, and the lengths that the players go to keep their sense of identity – their very soul – from fragmenting.

So what IS it about? That’s not an easy question to tackle. The eponymous woman of the title is Dottie Chambers, the hypnotic and damaged daughter of the elite spy Steven Chambers – surely one of the most screwed up characters in contemporary literature. As a young boy, Steven witnessed the atrocities of Tito’s Muslim partisans against his own father, and he came to age with a zeal to right the wrongs…eventually pulling Dottie into his malignant orbit.

That is all I intend to say about the plot, which spans five decades, many countries, and a wide range of themes. The novel consists of five separate books, some short, some long, a catalog-of-sorts of 20th century atrocities and the loss of not only the individual soul, but our collective soul as well. Mr. Shacochis has choreographed a spellbinder, with hints (depending on where you are in the book) of David Mitchell, John Le Carre, Ernest Hemingway, and others…while keeping the narrative distinctly his.

The themes this author tackles go right to the heart of identity and destiny. “We choose the lies in which we participate and in choosing, define ourselves and our actions for a very long time,” he writes at one point. In other passage, we are first introduced to Steven with these words: {Steven would be} “introduced in the most indelible fashion to his destiny, the spiritual map that guides each person finally to the door of the cage that contains his soul, and in his hand a key that will turn the lock, or the wrong key, or no key at all.”

The questions he asks are universal: how do you change back if your former self no longer interlocks cleanly with the shape you have assumed? What happens when you become an actor in a theater without walls or boundaries or audiences? Where is the thin wall of separation between “patriotism and hatred, love and violence, ideology and facts, judgment and passion, intellect and emotion, duty and zealotry, hope and certainty, confidence and hubris, power and fury…” And when do we have the right to challenge and to reclaim our own souls before it’s too late?

This is an amazing book, a true Magnus opus, a story of who we are and how we came to be that way. Yet at its epicenter, Dottie and the two men who love her – her unhealthy father and the book’s moral core, Green Beret Evelle Burnette – who, in their own way, battle for her very soul.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 63 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (September 3, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shultman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Bob Shacochis
EXTRAS:	Interview and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob Zoet by David Mitchell

Bibliography:

• Easy in the Islands (1985)
• The Next New World (1990)
• Swimming in the Volcano (1993)
• The Woman Who Lost Her Soul (September 2013)

Nonfiction:

• Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times (1994)
• Domesticity: A Gastronomic Interpretation of Love (1994;2013)
• The Immaculate Invasion (1999)

“What has been lost? Your poor, poor mind. Your life.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JUL 6, 2011)

Dr. Jennifer White has early onset Alzheimer’s disease at 64 years old. Once an esteemed orthopedic surgeon specializing in surgery of the hands, she is now unable to remember things from minute to minute, unable to recognize her son Mark or her daughter Fiona most of the time. Her mind goes in and out from fog to lucidity but the lucidity, for the most part, are memories of her early life. In Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante, the reader gets deeply into the mind of a woman with dementia. It is very realistic and fascinating. Having a mother with dementia and being a clinical social worker myself, I can say without reservation that Alice LaPlante really gets it.

The novel is primarily about Jennifer’s life, before and after the onset of her dementia. We go backwards with her as she remembers her marriage, her family of origin, her childbirths and her education. Complicating matters is the fact that Amanda, her best friend, has been murdered and four digits of Amanda’s hand have been removed. Jennifer has gone from being a “person of interest”  to becoming a primary suspect. The question remains, however, whether she did it and why would she do such a thing. The digits were removed in a professional manner, in the way an orthopedist might do such a thing.

We go back with Jennifer to her relationship with Amanda. Both are very strong women. Amanda is one tough cookie, honest to the point of disregarding feelings and willing to betray a friend’s confidence if she does not agree with their ethics. At one point Jennifer calls Amanda both “the inflictor and healer of my pain. Both.” Jennifer has narcissistic tendencies, sees herself as better than others, more deserving. “People who take this to an extreme are called sociopaths, Amanda tells me. You have certain tendencies. You should watch them.”

Mark and Fiona are both portrayed as loving their mother but not being entirely honest in their interactions with her. Mark describes himself as “Tall, dark, handsome twenty-nine-year-old lawyer, with a bit of a substance abuse problem, looking for love and money in what are apparently all the wrong places.”  One of the places he goes to for money is to Jennifer. Fiona, however, is Jennifer’s financial executor and she and Mark are estranged. The family dynamics play out very interestingly.

As the novel starts, Jennifer is living at home with a caretaker. She calls her disease “a death sentence. The death of the mind. I’ve already given notice at the hospital, announced my retirement. I have started keeping a journal so I have some continuity in my life. But I won’t be able to live on my own for very much longer.” After she begins to degenerate drastically, Mark and Fiona put her in an assisted care facility where she is often restrained because of her drastic changes of mood and aggression. She has reached a point where she is not cognizant of her visitors’ names, even people she’s known all her life. When things get hardest for her, she takes herself to a zone in the past where she guides herself through imagery and memories.

The detective on the case frequently visits Jennifer, hoping to find her lucid enough to remember something, anything about Amanda’s death. Her children want Jennifer to be left alone but the detective is tenacious. If Jennifer is convicted of this crime, even though she is incompetent mentally, she will have to be moved to a state facility. There is a lot at stake here.

Alice LaPlante writes like a pro. I’d never guess this is a debut novel. It reads fluidly and builds up cadence and tension. I hated to put it down and, thankfully, was able to finish it in two days. I look forward to LaPlante’s books down the road. She has a great gift.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 210 readers
PUBLISHER:	Atlantic Monthly Press (July 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Alice LaPlante
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: A Circle of Wives The Making of a Story

Bibliography:

• Turn of Mind (2011)
• A Circle of Wives (March 2014)

Other:

• The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing (2007)
• Method and Madness: The Making of a Story: A Guide to Writing Fiction (2008)