Sweet Reading with

TheBookJeanie

If only I could be magically miniaturized and live in this delicious reading room. Gumdrop lamps, a library ladder made of cinnamon sticks, each book a tiny cake - a librarian's fantasy . . .

 Man Booker Prize 2014

The Man Booker Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best original novel written in the English language and published in the U.K.  Previously limited to U.K. authors, this year the short list included novelists from around the English-speaking world including the American writer Karen Joy Fowler.  We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves was reviewed in these pages last November and was described as "an exploration of a family, before and after a devastating loss: a time when decisions were made, rationalizations created, and relationships shattered." Congratulations to Karen Joy Fowler for being the first American writer to be nominated for the most prestigeous British literary prize. This year the finalist for the Man Book Prize was Richard Flanagan for his novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a brutal tale of life on the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II, wrapped within a love story that keeps a young British doctor from total despair in his attempt to keep himself and his men alive. 

Hibiscus by Susan Stonestreet

New and Notable

The Arsonist - by Sue Miller. After 15 years in Africa, Frankie Rowley has returned to her family summer home in Pomeroy, New Hampshire. The stresses of being a health worker in an impoverished developing country, along with dissatisfaction with her fleeting personal relationships, has driven her to seek the solace of the farmhouse where her parents now live in comfortable retirement. Or so she thought -  it appears that her father Alfie is rapidly slipping into dementia and her mother has not yet come to terms with her role as caregiver. Her mother Sylvia has a long history in the small town of Pomeroy, spending every childhood summer with her grandparents as well as her last year of high school while her scientist parents were abroad. But she is still an outsider despite her close personal connections and when an arsonist strikes, methodically setting fire to summer homes, she senses distrust and resentment as undisguised blame is directed at the locals by the frightened seasonal residents. Frankie herself is feeling an outsider as well, not only from this small community that she remembers nostalgically from her childhood, but also from her own family and the values that bind them together. She finds herself surprisingly drawn to another newcomer to Pomeroy, Bud Jacobs, who has just taken over the local newspaper after a busy career in Washington, D.C. Their relationship moves quickly from intellectual sparring to a passionate affair that eventually develops into a tender trusting bond. Together they become immersed in the pursuit of an arsonist who is threatening more than just buildings in this small town. Personal struggles, family ties, community ties - all these complexities are explored by Miller's characters while a destructive force threatens all of them.  

The Secret of the Gondola - by David Alan Brown. What could be more delicious than a mystery set in Venice, a city of secret water ways and passages, an elegant but stern-faced city revealing little behind the imposing facades? This  mystery began in 18th century Venice when a young Englishman disappeared after being seen in the company of the lovely wife of elderly Count Andrea Malipiero, never to be seen again. Jeremy Allyn, an American graduate student in art history, has stumbled on this story as he attempts to make the case in his dissertation that the numerous detailed characters in Caneletto's panoramic scenes of Venice are not an afterthought but rather a depiction of "an elaborate choreography in which every movement had meaning." It is widely believed that Caneletto employed the camera obscura, a portable box in which "an image projected through a lens onto a mirror was reflected on a glass screen, where it was traced by the artist." Allyn makes a startling discovery when he uses various apps on his smarthphone while examining the details of Caneletto's "Columbia Bacino": perhaps Caneletto had observed a murder and included it as another faithful detail in his view of life in 18th century Venice? Allyn not only wants to impress his advisor and secure his future as a scholar but is desperate to win the admiration of his former girlfriend Amy. For all his careful, patient research, Allyn now rushes to share his creative thesis and makes a mistake that may make all his work meaningless.  This short novella is an amazing little gem of intrigue and suspense as well as an introduction to the art of the Italian master, Arturo Canaletto.

Family Life -  by Akmil Sharma. After reading this powerful novel, the events that are described keep rattling away in my head, compelling me to reflect upon the ways that a family can be so irreparably changed by only three minutes in the life of one member. The Misra family has left New Delhi, moving to Brooklyn when Ajay is eight and his brother, Birju, three years older. They settle into the middle-class Indian immigrant community and Birju excels academically, earning admission to the prestigious Bronx School of Science. Ajay lingers in his brother's shadow, never feeling a part of this new life in America, confused and anguished about his relationship with his parents who seem so focused on Birju and his accomplishments. All things seem to change in three minutes, those minutes that Birju spends at the bottom of a public pool after hitting his head following an awkward dive. From that moment grief and guilt drive the Misra family, spinning them apart emotionally as they are all drawn together to care for the son and brother who was once the brilliant center of their lives. Ajay's astute and quirky observations as narrator provide a welcome lightness to this tale but also reflect the loneliness that he feels as his exhausted parents have little to offer him in terms of encouragement or recognition. As Ajay moves into adolescence and adulthood he carries with him the responsibilities and family obligations for both himself and Birju, never ceasing to love his brother and his parents but as he excels academically and as an investment banker, he reflects upon a new relationship: "Happiness was almost heavy - that is when I knew I had a problem." Sharma spent fourteen years writing this very personal novel that explores so deeply and sensitively the dynamics of a family in crisis.

What I am reading now:

Broken Verses - by Kamila Shamsie.  A political mystery and personal journey set in modern-day Pakistan.                                                            The Sewing Circles of Herat - Christina Lamb. Returning to Afghanistan after 9/11, journalist Lamb tries to understand what has happened to the friends and colleagues that she knew in her first years as a reporter covering the Russian occupation of this country.                                      Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art - Carl Hoffman.  What more is needed than the title to describe this book? Hoffman, a noted journalist for National Geographic, Smithsonian, and other publications,  conducted extensive research and interviews to produce an amazing account of an isolated society of hunter-gathers in the coastal jungle of southern New Guinea and compelling evidence of what occurred in 1961 when a wealthy young man driven by personal ambition naively enters this strange world.  

Happy Reading!