“Iris Dunleavy?” asked Mary. “Is she the plantation wife? She dresses so well for a lunatic. She had the most colorful flounces on her skirt the other night.”

Book Review:

Review by Judi Clark  (FEB 9, 2014)

This is Kathy Hepinstall’s fourth novel… and I’ve read all four, so obviously I like this author. She writes a different book each time and thus one never knows what will be found upon picking up her latest, although one can be sure it will be both literary and lyrical, no matter the tone and subject.

Blue Asylum takes place during the Civil War years on Sanibel Island on the west coast of Florida.

A judge finds the main character, Iris Dunleavy, insane essentially for hating and embarrassing her husband, “Wives were not supposed to hate their husbands. It was not in the proper order of things.” Her rich husband pays extra for her to be cured at the institution with the best reputation, the SANIBEL ASYLUM FOR LUNATICS which is managed by British born psychiatrist Dr. Cowell, who stubbornly believes that Iris is insane because a judge declared it. But Iris insists that she is not insane, that she was merely escaping from a hateful husband and cruel man. As she reveals her horrific story bit by bit, we can see that while she may not be clinically insane, she may have been crazy mad considering the decisions/actions she undertook (and continues to undertake).

She befriends the doctor’s 14-year-old son Wendell and another patient, Ambrose, who is suffering from something that happened during the civil war. She longs to escape and eventually does but with devastating effects.

I liked many things about this book, but I didn’t “love it,” at least not as much as I did The Absence of Nectar and Prince of Lost Places. But I did enjoy it immensely even though it is a little heavy handed on the message, not unlike her debut (and Oprah book club choice)  The House of Gentle Men.  Then again, given headlines such as Todd Akin’s comment on legitimate rape, it may be that heavy handed feminist historical literature is still necessary.

Hepinstall captures the historical detail of well and it is very visual as she sets a mood and imagery that plays out well both as metaphor and setting:

“Dawn broke soft and clean on the island of shell and marl and current. It was a day like any other, one more day in a season when marking the days was difficult, since the balminess was resolute and the birds were attuned to the tides, the tides to the moon, and the moon to the lunatics, under their crazy spell, waxing and waning in the accordance with the fluctuations of their madness and the depth of passions. A group of terns had gathered at the edge of a calm sea, and a single raccoon, caught after a daylight, skittered out of the dune vegetation and into the forest, leaving behind a loggerhead nest full of ruined eggs, shells broken and half-formed turtles spilling out in the sand.”

Hepinstall considers this a love story… and it is, but not the happy kind. This novel is an excellent choice for book clubs.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 139 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mariner Books; Reprint edition (April 9, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Judi Clark
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Kathy Hepinstall really humorous blog
EXTRAS:	Website for Blue Asylum Reading Guide Interview with Kathy Hepinstall
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Prince of Lost Places  The Absence of Nectar The House of Gentle Men

Bibliography:

• The House of Gentle Men (2000)
• The Absence of Nectar (2001)
• Prince of Lost Places (2003)
• Blue Asylum (2012)

“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)

“She just stood there and saw his face merge into the darkness as he lowered his hand and threw the burning match.  The flames burst into life.  It was like an avalanche of fire.  At once everywhere around them was lit up. It was a restless yellow light that made all the shadows tremble.  He staggered backwards a couple of paces while she remained motionless.  The flames were already licking high up the wall.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (JAN 29, 2014)

Gaute Heivoll has written both a compelling novel and a historical and fact-driven book that examines a series of fires that occurred during two months in 1978 Norway. It is told from the perspective of the author who was born during the year that the arson occurred, as well as from the perspective of the arsonist who was in his twenties when the author was born.

The character Heivoll has returned to his hometown of Finsland, Norway to research this book and try to become a writer. He interviews those who knew the arsonist and he also gleans information from newspaper clippings and his grandmother’s diaries.

The arsonist, Dag, is the son of the fire chief. He was a most wanted child, an only child and very much loved – good at everything he put effort into. During his early adulthood he goes into the military and returns home after some sort of rejection that is never made clear. He lolls around the house and follows his father on fire calls that, because Dag is setting the fires, become more frequent and horrific. At one point, there are eight fires set over a period of three days.

Between May 6, 1978 through early June, 1978, ten fires are set, mostly to abandoned buildings and out buildings in Finsland. Towards the end of the pyromaniac’s rampage, however, buildings are burned with people or pets in them. They come just a hair’s breadth from losing their lives.

The book goes into the lives of the people who live in Finsland, mostly farmers, who have known each other their whole lives. It is inconceivable to them that one of their own is starting these fires. How could this possibly be? They only know that the arsonist comes at night and they have been driven to ignore sleep and are forced to stand guard all night to protect their homes and belongings from the crazy person who is burning down the village home by home.

Gaute Heivoll remembers clearly a time in school when one of his teachers told him he’d be a writer. He had gone to Oslo to study law but when it came time to take his exams, he turned in empty papers. He is afraid to be a writer yet drawn to a writing life and compelled to write at the same time. He is drawn in completely by the subject matter of this book.

Mr. Heivoll is a child being Christened at the time that the fires start and he imagines what his life as an infant is like when those around him are so frightened and paranoid about the fires. The town is a quiet one and no one would ever suspects Dag, the perfect boy, of doing anything wrong. When his parents figure out it is Dag, the bottom falls out of their world.

The book is poetically written and highly charged. It brings to life Mr. Heivoll’s own development as an author while examining the life of an arsonist who can not stop himself from his heinous actions. This book will appeal to those who like true crime and memoirs, along with literary fiction. I recommend it to anyone who treasures good writing and poetic use of language. (Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett.)

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 5 readers
PUBLISHER:	Graywolf Press (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Gaute Heivoll
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More from Norway: Child Wonder by Roy Jacobsen

Bibliography:

• Before I Burn (January 2014)

“The story of Oda Sotatsu begins with a confession that he signed.

He had fallen in with a man named Kakuzo and a girl named Jito Joo. These were somewhat wild characters, particularly Sato Kakuzo. He was in trouble, or had been. People knew it.

Now this is what happened: somehow Kakuzo met Oda Sotatsu, and somehow he convinced him to sign a confession for a crime that he had not committed.

That he should sign a confession for a crime that he did not commit is strange. It is hard to believe. Yet, he did in fact sign it. When I learned of these events, and when I researched them, I found that there was a reason he did so, and that reason is—he was compelled to by a wager.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JAN 22, 2014)

I have never quite read anything like Silence Once Begun. It’s disturbing, lyrical, original, provocative, and experimental in the best of ways. Yet it stands on the shoulders of giants that came before it: Sartre comes to mind, as does Camus.

The premise is instantly (pardon the pun) arresting. A thread salesman named Oda Sotatsu signs a confession for a crime that has baffled the Japanese authorities – eight older individuals disappear without a trace in what becomes known as the Narito Disappearances. Yet once jailed, he utters barely a word….even though we, the readers, know he is not guilty from the first pages.

A man who refers to himself as the Interviewer – named Jesse Ball – meets with Sotatsu’s parents, brother and sister, jailers, and a woman perceived as a love interest. Written in the conceit of notes drawn from interviews via tape-device, the story takes on an immediacy and fascination – particularly as we realize that the character Jesse Ball is in search of existential answers in his own life.

“One can’t say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards.”

And so it is here. Each person whom Jesse Ball encounters provides a credible part of the puzzle, yet each urges him not to trust anyone else. From one character: “You have to be very careful whom you trust. Everyone has a version, and most of them are wrong.” Who is telling the truth and who is lying – and in the grand scheme of things, does it even matter? As Sotatsu’s brother says about their father: “He said I had a liar’s respect for the truth, which is too much respect.”

The author Jesse Ball (through the character of Jesse Ball) raises the most elemental and universal issues. Among them: it is impossible to see things while we’re still searching; we can only find things by seeing what is there. Reason alone is not the answer; we go to absurd lengths to prove ourselves reasonable.

Interwoven with fables and poetic language (it is no surprise that Jesse Ball has published several works of verse), this story is also grounded strongly in reality. For literary readers, this book is sheer genius and has put Jesse Ball firmly on my radar for his past and future books.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 11 readers
PUBLISHER:	Pantheon (January 28, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Jesse Ball
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Way Through Doors

Bibliography:

• Samedi The Deafness (2007)
• The Way Through Doors (2009)
• The Curfew (2011)
• Silence One Begun (January 2014)

“The screen creaked behind her as Elspeth pushed open the front door. The house, usually heated to bursting on an early winter’s night, offered no respite from the cold. The kerosene lamp stood unlit in the middle of the kitchen table, the matches beside it. She removed her pack, and shook the snow from her hat and shoulders, stalling. She didn’t want to see what the light would offer.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn (JAN 18, 2014)

From the opening line of this striking debut novel, the mood and voice are both haunting and laced with shame.

“Elspeth Howell was a sinner.”

It is three years shy of the turn of the twentieth century, upstate New York, bitterly cold and snowy with grey, smudgy skies. Elspeth is trudging miles from the train station to her family’s isolated home, and she is carrying gifts for her five children and pious, Bible-quoting husband. She’s been gone for four months, not unusual for her midwifery practice. As she rises up the crest of the last hill, she sees her house:

“The small plateau seemed made for them, chiseled by God for their security, to hold them like a perfect secret.  She held her breath, hoping for some hint of life, and heard nothing but the far-off snap of a branch. Everything stood still. She could not make out the smoke from the chimney, and despite the late hour, no lamps shone in the windows. Elspeth began to run. She tripped, and her pack shoved her into the snow. Clawing with her hands, digging with her feet, she pushed herself upright and rushed toward home.”

Although the novel, stark and lean and elegantly written, progresses with a measured, lingering pace for most of the novel, it goes for the jugular at the outset. After a shocking tragedy that sets the premise for the rest of the story, the narrative continues languidly, but with terse prose, weaving in background information with current concerns. The momentum slows considerably, yet the writing keeps you absorbed, as the author delves into the deep-seated corners of character. Elspeth has morally wretched obsessions and impulses that underlie the events of this bleak and troubled tale. Guilt, shame, retribution, sacrifice, and the lengths we go to protect our family are mined with lyrical and somber mercy. Or is it merciless?

I’d rather not go further in describing this searing, harrowing story. As Elspeth and her twelve-year-old son, Caleb, journey by foot to search and avenge, the reader is immersed in the sense that the hunters are also the hunted. Scott’s descriptions are masterful, his extended metaphors gnawing and scorching. This is fine literature; if you don’t mind a slower-paced story, but one saturated in full characterizations, you will ride the suspense till the final, melancholy pages. I continue to contemplate this enigmatic story, its sense of deliverance like a ghost that trembles through the pages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 74 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper (January 7, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Scott
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Bibliography:

• The Kept (January 2014)

“I don’t think I saw the way he was threatened by his own desires, or how jealousy and desire ran so close in him he had to demean a little the thing he wanted. For example, me.

Or not me. It was hard to tell.“

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 21, 2011)

Anne Enright, author of the 2007 Booker Prize winner, The Gathering, has written a new novel called The Forgotten Waltz. It is told from the point of view of Gina Moynihan who has a lust-filled affair with a married man, Sean Vallely. They first meet at a garden party hosted by Anne’s sister Fiona, and progresses from there. At first there are innocent (and not so innocent) looks, and then on a business trip in Switzerland, the affair begins in earnest.

When Gina first sees Sean at Fiona’s garden party, she is happily married to Conor. There are no outward signs that there is trouble in the marriage and, as I read this book, I did not see the marriage and any shortcomings as a reason for the affair. Gina saw Sean, felt lust, and let her impulses prevail. Sean is married and has a child named Evie who, at the time that Gina first meets Sean, is four years old.

The novel is not told in any particular linear order. It is related to the reader in fragments of memory that Gina recalls. “So don’t ask me when this happened or that happened. Before or after seems beside the point. As far as I was concerned, they were happening all along.”

Always playing a key role is Evie, Sean’s daughter. When she is five she begins to have childhood seizures that continue for many years. Annette, Sean’s wife, is vigilant about Evie’s medical care and appears not to notice that Sean is otherwise preoccupied with Gina. Evie, however, has the sense that something is happening in her home that is not quite normal. At one point, she even sees Sean and Gina kissing on the stairs of her home.

The novel takes place at the start of Ireland’s economic boom in the nineties and progresses to the depressions that hits later on. As the novel starts, people are making more money than they know what to do with, buying second homes with ocean views and dropping hints about all the money that they have. By the time the novel ends, people are lucky just to have jobs. Their houses have been on the market for a very long time and no one is buying. The market has seen a real depression.

Gina tells the whole story in the first person and we go along with her as she does her best to remember what happened between her and Sean. She strongly believes that Evie is responsible for her and Sean’s love. Evie’s watchful eyes, times of poor health, and perspicacious study of her father and his lover mark an ever-present omen for Gina.

As the affair progresses, Gina finds out that she is not the first person Sean has been unfaithful with. There was a young woman in his office, many years ago, that Sean had courted and loved. Gina is careful not to ask Sean too many questions about this as she wants to see their relationship as special and romantic, which it is, but as life goes, it is not that unique. “Every normal thing he said reminded me that we were not normal. That we were only normal for the twelve foot by fourteen foot of a hotel room. Outside, in the open air, we would evaporate.”

During the course of the affair, Gina deals with the death of her beloved mother, Joan, her estrangement from her sister, Fiona, and the breakdown of her marriage to Conor. She tries to see these events in relationship to the affair but they all have a full life separate from her love for Sean.

It takes Sean a long time to leave his wife, time that Gina waits for him in agony and pain. She had hoped they’d be together by Christmas but as April comes around, Sean is just beginning to move into Gina’s home. “It was delicate business, being the Not Wife.”

The affair takes on a triangular pattern – Sean, Gina and Evie. “I said it to Sean once – I said, if it had not been for Evie, we would not be together – and he looked at me as if I had blasphemed.” “As far as he is concerned, there is no cause; he arrived in my life as though lifted and pushed by a swell of the sea.”

The book is filled with musical metaphors and reads poetically. Enright is a master of the inner mind and our deepest thoughts. She not only tells a story but she captures lives, sparing no moment, no movement and no detail. Nothing is too small for her to notice and reflect on. In fact, it is the small things that make up the big deeds that change our lives from one second to the next.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 27 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company (October 3, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Anne Enright
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Gathering

Bibliography:

• The Portable Virgin : Stories (1991)
• The Wig My Father Wore (1995)
• What Are You Like? (2000)
• The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002)
• The Gathering (2007) 
• Yesterday’s Weather : Stories (2008)
• The Forgotten Waltz (October 2011)

Nonfiction:

• Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004)

“We’re never gonna escape this,” Paps said. “Never.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte  (SEP 22, 2011)

We The Animals in this wonderful debut novel refers to three brothers, close in age, growing up in upstate New York. They are the Three Musketeers bound strongly together not just because of geographical isolation but because of cultural separateness too. The brothers are born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father—they are half-breeds confused about their identity and constrained by desperate and mind-numbing poverty.

This wild and ferocious debut is narrated by the youngest of the three, now grown, looking back on his childhood. It’s a coming-of-age story told in lyrical sentences that are exquisitely crafted. And while there are many moments of beauty in here, there are also ones of searing violence.

The boys can do nothing but stand back and watch as the intensely abusive relationship between the parents plays out everyday and it’s almost worse because the evidence creeps up after the fact. One day, Mom’s eyes are swollen shut and cheeks turned purple “He told us the dentist had been punching on her after she went under; he said that’s how they loosen up the teeth before they rip them out,” the narrator, barely aged seven, recalls. The severe abuse is compounded and made even more heartbreaking by the boys’ innocence and gullibility—they buy this lie and many others, whole.

The daily struggle for survival is heart wrenching yet without melodrama. “We stayed at the table for another forty-five minutes, running our fingers around our empty bowls, pressing our thumb tips into the cracker plate and licking the crumbs off,” Torres writes about one of the many evenings when one can of soup and a few crackers would have to make do for all of them. The boys don’t quite understand why their parents are seemingly happy one moment and why their mother slips into deep bouts of depression the next.

One of the many beautiful chapters in the book is one called “Night Watch” (each short chapter in this slim volume has a name). In it, the boys accompany Dad to work when he finds work at a night job. They have to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags in front of the vending machines, out of plain sight. They are here (and not home) because Mom is at her job working the night shift at a local brewery. The next morning, when a white man comes to relieve Dad of his duties, he spots the three musketeers and can guess at the situation. From the argument that follows, the boys already know that Dad has probably lost this job too. The family’s otherness, especially as perceived by the boys, is just beautifully rendered here.

As the boys enter adolescence, the narrator immediately knows he is separate and apart from his brothers. “They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent,” Torres writes. It wouldn’t be a reveal to say that the difference lies in the narrator’s sexuality, which can be glimpsed early on, if one pays close attention.

In a recent interview, the author Justin Torres has said: “I think that everybody struggles with family in some way and I hope that they can come away realizing that you can go back to those experiences and find something beautiful in everything and that you can make art out of your experiences.” With We The Animals, Torres has crafted just that—a beautiful and memorable work of art. This slender novel packs a powerful punch.

Justin Torres proves you don’t have to pen a giant volume to write precociously about huge themes such as family, race, adolescence and sexuality. Of course Torres writes so beautifully that you almost wish that he did.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 49 readers
PUBLISHER:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (August 30, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	An interview with Justin Torres
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Bibliography:

• We the Animals (August 2011)

“This is the kind of story the Jade Emperor himself enjoys hearing from me, one where the focus, indeed the whole point of the tale, is the grand heroic choice, the cinematic action. He is always telling me to hurry up, to cut out the needless detail, to do some editing and present him with the stripped-down version. But life is not like that. The fight to ensure the survival of love is more likely to find its toughest battles amid small snarls about changing nappies or midnight feedings or plain old boredom; it is more likely to focus on little betrayals or hurtful slips of the tongue, to feature the day-to-day heroism of pretending not to be aware of a thousand little annoying habits. In short, love is hard work, and the fairytale ending of our story is only the beginning of the hard work of keeping love alive.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (DEC 7, 2010)

If this book doesn’t attain the high readership it deserves, there is no justice. It’s quite simply one of the most lavishly imagined, masterfully researched, exquisitely written contemporary novels I’ve read. And if that sounds as if I’m gushing…well, it’s probably because I am.

Under Fishbone Clouds is written by debut author Sam Meekings, who grew up near the south coast of England and currently resides in China. It is absolutely remarkable that the author is under 30; the book is full of gravitas and maturity that is normally the result of decades of living and writing. Interwoven seamlessly within this mesmerizing narrative is Chinese folklore and myths – absorbingly told – in addition to insights into Chinese distant and recent past history.

This novel is narrated by the Kitchen God, a common household deity who is challenged by the more powerful Jade Emperor to fathom the inner workings of the human heart. He chooses to follow a couple who, like him and his own mythical wife, were caught in the whirlwind of history: Jinyi and his wife Yuying. The tale begins in 1942 when the two fall in love, in spite of their different backgrounds and their arranged marriage, and continues to their doddering old age as the new millennium takes hold.

At the onset, Yuying follows her husband across war-torn China to her husband’s rustic and impoverished home. Bad times ensue, and when they eventually make their way back to the city, the Cultural Revolution has begun; everything now belongs to the state and all social strata are forced to undergo hard labor in the factories and the fields.

Although the Mao Cultural Revolution years have been well documented, Under Fishbone Clouds takes you up close and personal to these dehumanizing times; it is a rare reader who will not wince at the no-holds-barred look at a country whose rigid ideology trumps personal relationships and freedoms. Business owners, entrepreneurs, artists, teachers, intellectuals – all are labeled “bourgeois” and re-educated in the harshest possible ways. In a particularly harrowing scene, a man has a heart attack and is ordered to “crawl” to comfort and stop being a slacker. The depths to which Jinyi and Yuying are forced to descend to – separately, without each other’s comfort – is heartbreaking.

Yuying reflects, “Life isn’t meant for perfect things. I knew it when we were told to put making steel above common sense; I knew it when we were told to starve patriotically because the noble peasants had been huddling around homemade furnaces instead of growing food in the fields; I knew it when the whole country began to rise up to cut down the past. I felt in the pit of my stomach all the time; I just never knew what it was until now.”

Yet despite the intensity of the Cultural Revolution years, Under Fishbone Clouds is not a book about tragedy; at its heart (and a big heart it is), it’s a family saga about the universal and enduring power of love. There is sheer magic and lyricism in the love that Jinyi and Yuying share as they navigate answers that are often impenetrable.

And, Meekings suggests, by love we are transfigured. Jinyi realizes toward the end of his life: “Love also changes shape. It is no longer slim, lithe, nervous and sweaty palmed. It was no longer sleepless, heavy, a stone weighing deep within the chest. It was now warm, slow, soft, a tarry old blanket huddled under in the dark. It was the last embers of a promise made decades before, still glowing red though the flames had petered down.”

Using Jinyi as a catalyst, the Kitchen God comes to the realization that people don’t just carry on with their lives because they must; the secret of life is love, atonement, and retribution. He puzzles out the human heart as he follows this couple through all kinds of trials: deep anguish, death of children, famine and forced labor, class warfare, drastic social and culture changes, isolation and homelessness, the loss of dignity and health.

Under Fishbone Clouds is one of those rare books that I would confidently recommend to anybody: those with an interest in the history of the East, those who are enthralled with mythology and folklore, those who hold out for the best of prose, and those who are simply seeking an old-fashioned story where love prevails. I predict an amazing future for this very talented author.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 23 readers
PUBLISHER:	Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (December 7, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Living Scotsman interview with Sam Meekings
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More novels based on Mao Cultural Revolution: A Dictionary of Maqiao by Han Shaogong Becoming Madam Mao by Anchee Min And a current novel that it can be compared to: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Bibliography:

• Under Fishbone Clouds (2009; December 2010 in US)

“They had fallen in love at sixteen and over the next ten years had, despite distance and difference, never swerved in their determination to reach this day. The faces in the photograph were alight with joy, and for a long time the bride’s mother would not be able to pass the picture hanging in the front parlor of her summer house without feeling a knot in her stomach and a rush of tears. In time the photograph would recede into the general oblivion of furnishings and knickknacks.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (JUL 12, 2010)

Without much ado, let me state that I think this book is brilliant. It took my breath away and grabbed me by my heart from the first page till its stunning coda. Without being maudlin or histrionic, Ayelet Waldman’s Red Hook Road examines the impact of loss and grief on two families, each as different as day and night.

In the first chapter of the book, the reader is spectator to a profound tragedy. A young couple, married for about one hour, die in a car accident on the way to their own wedding reception.

The bride is Becca Copaken and the groom is John Tetherly. Becca comes from a Jewish intellectual family that has summered in Maine all of her life. Her grandfather, Mr. Kimmelbrod, is a holocaust survivor, and had been a concert violinist until recently when he became symptomatic for Parkinson’s Disease. Iris, Becca’s mother, is a holier-than-thou professor of the holocaust who thinks she knows what’s best for everyone. Beccas’s father is an attorney who never made partner and makes his living as an adjunct professor at a second-rate law school. Becca’s sister, Ruthie, goes to Harvard where she is studying English literature and has her eyes set on academe. She is emotionally needy and dependent. Becca had stepped away from her family’s traditions. She gave up her chance to be a concert violinist by giving up the violin completely and dropping out of conservatory.

John is a master boat designer who builds wooden yachts. He comes from a family of sturdy Maine folk who are not college educated and have lived by the generosity of the sea. His mother, Jane, is taciturn and autonomous, not wanting to feel grateful to anyone. She thinks of the Copakens as snooty and part-timers in Maine. Her ex-husband is a ne’er-do-well and Jane has survived by starting a house cleaning business. In fact, she cleans the Copaken’s home. John has a ne’er-do-well sister who is on welfare. He also has a brother, Matt, who is a student at Amherst. Matt is the first person in the Tetherly family to attend college.

The novel is divided into four parts: the first, second, third and fourth year after the tragedy. We watch as the families are forced to interact with one another despite wanting to keep their distance. We watch them in the classic stages of grief as defined by the physician and researcher, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: Denial, Anger, Bargaining/Blame, Depression, and finally Acceptance. The stages are not always linear but they tend to be present in this order as each person works out their personal losses. As the years pass, the families move from denial and anger towards acceptance.

The novel is lyrical and moving at every stage. In fact, there is a lot about music in this book which serves as a wonderful backdrop and metaphor to what is happening to the families. Mr. Kimmelbrod is 92 years old but still teaches a few students in the local conservatory. By chance, the families find out that Jane’s niece, an adopted Cambodian child, has perfect pitch and is a musical prodigy. Mr. Kimmelbrod takes her under his wing and gives her violin lessons. We watch her flourish and we can almost hear the music jump off the pages.

I was especially taken by Mr. Kimmelbrod’s stoicism and very rare display of external emotion despite a sea of feeling residing inside him. Here is a man who has suffered some of life’s most profound losses at Terezin Concentration Camp, yet has been able to find meaning in life and a way to love others. He is not unlike his granddaughter Ruthie who flounders with the spoken word yet has a world of expression just beyond her capacity to verbalize. The two families are actually much more alike than they think. Jane is stoic and unlikely to show feelings yet they resound deeply in her spirit. Both families have a love of wood, one for beautiful boats and the other for violins.

This is as much a book about Maine as it is about grieving families. The reader can feel the pulse of the sea, the solid stoicism of the rocks, and the danger of the granite outcroppings in a place that can be fickle: at times loving and welcoming and at other times dangerous and moody. The weather and elements can cause death in an instant. This is the atmosphere that the book portrays and the reader feels throughout.

Ms. Waldman’s writing is riveting and beautiful. She uses her words like a musician plays an instrument: for beauty, impact, power, melody and mood. It is rare to find such fine writing on such a difficult subject. The only other book I’ve read that portrays grief as beautifully as this is How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall. If this review encourages at least one person to pick up this amazing book, I’ll have achieved my purpose.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 98 readers
PUBLISHER:	Doubleday (July 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ayelet Waldman
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Love and Treasure Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

Bibliography:

• Daughter’s Keeper (2003)
• Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2006)
• Red Hook Road (2010)
• Love and Treasure (April 2014)

Mommmy-Track Mysteries:

• Nursery Crimes (2000)
• The Big Nap (2001)
• A Playdate with Death (2002)
• Death Gets a Time-Out (2003)
• Murder Plays House (2004)
• The Cradle Robbers (2005)
• Bye-Bye Black Sheep (2006)

Also:

• Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race and Themselves (2005)
• Bad Mother: A Chronical of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace (2009)

“Ten minutes later, when Mister regained consciousness on the bank of the river, he learned that Tomas had dived in with a knife in his mouth and cut the sandal free from an entanglement of fishing line. For the most part it was all a blur, but sometimes he thought he remembered rising to the surface in Tomas’s grip – the slam of their hearts against each other and the keening sorrow of love.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill Shtulman (JUL 6, 2010)

Every now and then, a “stealth book” comes along – one that surprises you, captures you in its grip, and doesn’t let go until you turn the last page.

The Ghost of Milagro Creek is such a book.

I expected this book to be something else entirely – a light mystery about two blood brothers who vied for the same gringo girl in the Cain-and-Abel tradition. In reality, the book is lyrical, poignant, and from time to time, electrifying. It depicts the life of the Taos barrio colorfully and – in my mind – authentically.

Milagro Creek is the story of Ignancia Vigil Romero, a Jicarilla (basket weaver) Apache and a curandera (medicine woman, or some might say, witch) and the two sons she raises to adulthood: Mister and Tomas. It is filled with secondary characters who jump off the pages – Raquel O’Brien, the gringo short-story writer, Chief, a bipolar man who establishes a local sweat house, the very fallible priest Manny Petit and a host of others.

The immersion into Taos life is described at one point by Petit’s Right Reverend: “At first, it will jump right out at you – sun gods, saints dressed up like dolls, peyote buttons, nudity. Then you get used to it. You want to be politically correct and all that. Okay, then. After a while, you start to see it how they see it. When that happens, it’s time to leave.”

As readers, we enter this mystical world. We are present for susto—the live burial of the child Mister until “the bud of (his) soul began to swell…pushing outward with mysterious force.” We hear the tales that are the framework for the Jicarilla Apache life. We see the rivalry of the blood brothers becoming more and more potent. And we get into the rhythm of the natural world and all its mysteries and glories.

The denouement is played out in all sorts of ways – through police reports, witness statements, case worker interviews, short-story snippets written by Raquel (Rocky), and a pilgrimage to Chimayo – an actual event that takes place in New Mexico. This is not a linear book; it bounces back and forth in time, switches narrators (a big part is narrated by Ignacia, who is already dead of ALS at the books onset), and saunters back to ancient tales as it bobs and weaves it way to the conclusion. The mystical Taos landscape is every bit as much of a “character” as the humans; as Ignacia says to Mister, “Rock, sky woman…this is your mother.”

Melanie Sumner has created an authentic and heartbreaking book that will stay with me. I urge you to discover it for yourself.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 12 readers
PUBLISHER:	A Shannon Ravenel Book; 1 edition (July 6, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Melanie SumnerWikipedia page on Melanie Sumner
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another good a Native American read: Blue Horse Dreaming by Melanie Wallace

Bibliography:

• Polite Society (1995)
• The School of Beauty and Charm (2001)
• The Ghost of Milagro Creek (2010)