Virginia Kress

Darling Jim
Christian Moerk
Henry Holt & Co.
Publish date: 2009-03-31
$25.00
9780805089479
Hardcover
Available
Review date: 8/5/2009

Darling Jim is a dark, seductive book where the lines between reality and Irish folklore blur.

The story begins with a quirky little postman, Desmond, finding the diary of Fiona Walsh in the dead letter bin in a small town post office in County Kildare, Ireland. The year 2000.   Were Desmond not naively willing to trade his sanity to unravel events surrounding the demise of the Walsh sisters the real of events of darling Jim's descent upon their town may never have come to light.

After losing their parents in a bizarre explosion during their young teen years, the Walsh sisters were sent to live with Aunt Miora.  This seems to have continued in relative peace, that is until the appearance of the seductive, itinerant story teller Darling Jim.  He spoke of men and wolves, of hunters becoming the hunted, of kings and persecution, of murder.  He traveled town to town and  pub to pub, imparting his Irish mythology to transfixed audiences, leaving in his wake confused and delusional women.  When Darling Jim descends upon the Walsh sister's hometown of castletownberre, enchanting audiences as well as the reader with his macabre sagas, it is the beginning of the end.  It is here where his long trail of evil deeds begins to unravel.  The cost is the sanity of several and death of many...

Darling Jim is an original, dangerous tale with an ending that feels like a knife being wrenched in your gut. Absolutely fascinating!

Greetings From Somewhere Else
Monica McInerney
Ballantine Books
Publish date: 2003-06-06
$14.00
paper back
Review date: 08/05/09

What a sweet little book!  McInerney, author of 'The Faraday Girls' and 'Upside Down Inside Out', has created yet another perfect little beach read.  Set in both Australia and Ireland, Greetings from Somewhere Else   is a humorous, romantic  tale of self discovery.  Upon the death of her aunt, Lainey Byrne finds her perfectly orchestrated Australian life spinning out of control.  With a highly successful marketing  career and an accomplished chef steady boyfriend,  Lainey finds herself facing difficult decisions.  The most difficult condition of her aunt's will is that a member of the Byrne family must return to Ireland and run her dilapidated B & B for a period of one year.   To be blunt her family needs the money for medical bills after her father suffers a serious accident and of course the insurance company is fighting them all the way.  From the sounds of these 'family' members it is quite clear Lainey is the only one with a snowball's chance in hell of pulling this off.

Completely lacking in any domestic skills and not well suited to rural living, you can't help but chuckle as Lainey struggles to reinvent not only the Inn but herself as well.  Fate has its own path for her familial and romantic relationships.  Lainey soon discovers that life is much simpler and less stressful if you just allow nature to occasionally take its natural course. All told with wry humor, sprinkled with  sibling rivalry and family secrets, 'Greetings'  is quite the entertaining novel and simply good, clean fun!

Reading Group Guide included.

Michele Farnsworth

God Never Blinks
Regina Brett
Hachette Book Group
Publish date: 2010-04-13
$21.99
978-0-446-5652-1
Hardcover
Review date: 03/05/10

“Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.”

In her first book, God Never Blinks, newspaper columnist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Regina Brett gives us a compilation of 50 truisms, observations if you will, about life and love and the common experiences that shape our lives.

Born into a family of 11 children, Regina Brett felt that at the moment she was born, God must have blinked. “He missed the occasion and didn’t know I had arrived,” she stated. Many days, she felt “lost in the litter” and as her life progressed, she experienced a series of events that to her, reaffirmed her feeling of being left without guidance.

When she turned 50, Brett wrote a newspaper column on the 50 lessons life had taught her. She reflected on all she had learned through being a single parent, looking for love, trying to build a relationship with God, battling breast cancer and making peace with a difficult childhood. While her editors hated the column, Brett convinced them to publish it anyway and it became one of the most popular pieces ever published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Brett has now taken the 50 lessons and expands upon them in essays that are deeply personal. From “life is too short to waste time hating anyone” to “no matter how good or bad a situation is, it will change”, Regina Brett’s observations will strike a chord with anyone who has gone through tough times—and really, who among us hasn’t?

Lest I leave you thinking this book is overtly religious in theme, allow me a moment to set things straight. While Regina Brett is a spiritual woman, her essays come from experience, observation and heart. She is faithful, and in one chapter, encourages us all to “read the Psalms” because “no matter what your faith, they cover every human emotion”. However, she also advises us to pay off our credit cards every month and shares that “the most important sex organ is the brain”.

My very favorite though, and the one I’ve been quoting to friends and family all week is captured in the essay “When in doubt, just take the next right step”.  After Brett became pregnant and dropped out of college, she spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about her long term future. What would she major in if she went back? What kind of career did she want? Could she still be a good mother? A friend in recovery suggested to Brett that she just do the next right thing. Unsure of what that would be, Brett still struggled. That is until her mother gave her the very simple answer. Go pick up a course catalog. That’s it. Just get the darn catalog.

Sometimes, we’re so focused on the BIG DEAL that we neglect to see the often simple next step that’s right in front of us. Brett’s analogy, the one I’ve been repeating all week, is this:

 “The headlights on my car shine350 feet, but even with that much light, I can travel all the way to California. I need to see only enough light to get going.”

I have to share that I stumbled across the advance reading copy of this book quite by accident just this week, and it happened at a time I desperately needed some affirmation and comfort. I read God Never Blinks in four days and then read it again…dog-earing the pages and highlighting passages I wanted to remember. I’ve written myself notes like “get up, dress up, show up” and taped them to my bedside lamp.

Now, I understand that ideas like “life is too short to waste time hating anyone” or “when it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer” are concepts that I should know. It’s just common sense, right? Right.

But when life gets tough, it’s easy to forget. We need to be reminded of things we may already know in our hearts, but have forgotten. And I thank Regina Brett for doing that for me this week.

The Things That Keep Us Here
Carla Buckley
Random House
Publish date: 2010-02-15
$25.00
0440245095
Hardcover
Review date: 03/01/10

In her frighteningly relevant debut novel The Things That Keep Us Here, Carla Buckley asks us all, “how far would you go to protect your family”? 

Ann and Peter Brooks are just another unhappily married couple, struggling to keep their marriage together, but completely invested in the raising of their daughters. Peter is a university researcher who has discovered that the avian flu – H1N5 – has reached pandemic status and it is killing 50 out of every 100 people it touches.  Ann, his wife (until she signs the divorce papers) is faced with holding together the home she and Peter once shared and keeping her girls safe. Suburbia is not what it once was, as food becomes scarce and neighbor turns against neighbor in grocery stores and at gas pumps. A winter storm strikes and the entire community of Columbus, Ohio is left barricaded in their homes in the cold and dark. Complicating the struggle even further,   Peter has moved back to the house with one of his female graduate students when the University is evacuated.

The inevitable comparisons to H1N1, today’s swine flu, are not accidental. The change that comes to this family, to their home, to their community and the Nation is the subject of this novel. Carla Buckley raises important questions for us all, and there are no easy answers.

What scares me more than anything in a book is when the topic of fright is something that actually has potential to happen, and the possibility of a swine flu pandemic is something we’ve all been forced to consider in the last year. For this reason alone, I couldn’t put The Things That Keep Us Here down once I began. Carla Buckley may be a “first-timer”, but the depth of her characters and her realistic descriptions of a how a 13-year old girl might act in this situation engaged me with this family. It didn’t take long for me to care about what would ultimately happen to Peter, Anna, their daughters and yes, even Peter’s “beautiful graduate assistant”. When Anna’s neighbor and best friend Libby, contracts H1N1 and walks to Anna’s front door, her infant son in tow, begging for help in saving the little boy, Anna refuses to open the door. I had to ask myself if I would have done the same thing. Buckley’s novel is filled with these types of “look yourself in the mirror hard” types of scenarios.

Craig Jones

A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice
Malalai Joya with Derrick O'Keefe
Scribner Book Company
Publish date: 2009-09-20
$25.00
143910946X
Hardcover

A native of Afghanistan's Farah Province, Joya was raised in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan, returning to her home after the fall of the Taliban. She became an outspoken critic of the warlords who seized power with the help of US and coalition forces, and at 27 was the youngest person to be elected to the initial Parliament in 2005. Two years later, having refused to relent in her quest to name the offenses and duplicities of those in power, she was illegally suspended from participating in government. Malalai Joya is a nom de guerre she uses to protect her relatives; she has survived numerous assassination attempts by having no fixed residence but traveling almost daily to a new safe house surrounded by loyal bodyguards.

Joya tells the story of her path to this commitment, the plight of women under the fundamentalist regime, and the aspirations of ordinary people in Afghanistan, with an earnestness which is sometimes painful. But she documents in detail those she believes to be guilty of atrocities, naming among them even some with which Mortenson had to negotiate. Hers is a passionate view of an on-the-ground side of Afghan life which is seldom, if ever, seen in the news.

Heresey
S.J. Parris
Doubleday
Publish date: 2010-02-23
$25.95
0385531281
Hardcover

Giordano Bruno was one of the most brilliant and original thinkers of his generation, agreeing with Copernicus that the earth was not the center of the universe but further asserting that the universe was infinite. For this latter belief, along with a lengthy list of other heresies, he was burned at the stake in February of 1600.

S.J. Parris (the pen name of Stephanie Merritt) puts this complex and fascinating historical figure at the center of a series of murders that take place while he is a visiting scholar at Oxford in 1583. In an environment of religious upheaval, someone is re-enacting the fates of the Catholic martyrs in a string of bloody murders that threatens to destroy Lincoln College. Bruno sets out to find the murderer, at the same time spying for Elizabeth's inquisitor Walsingham. Suspect for his Italian origins and his Dominican training, he walks a fine line between conflicting ideologies among jealous academics, Parris has done her homework, delivering a convincing view of medieval life, both town and gown.

Amy Mazzariello

But Not for Long
Michelle Wildgen
Thomas Dunne Books
Publish date: 2009-09-13
$24.99
0312571410
Hardcover

Michelle Wildgen is a native of Wisconsin living in Madison. 

She is a senior Editor at Tin House Magazine. This is her second novel.

Set in Madison, But Not for Long follows the lives of three people. The story takes place in the spring over the course of three days during a mysterious blackout. Hal, Karin, and Greta share a healthy living co-op residence on the city’s east side. All three of the characters in this novel live very separate and private lives, with Greta being the newest member to the home. Hal is a 30 something fellow who seems to be floundering at a local nonprofit food share program, while Karin is a young woman trying to make a career out of journalism in the food production industry. Greta, in her late 30s, is married and working for a private college on the finance board when she realizes she can no longer share her life with her alcoholic husband. This is a very quiet novel driven by its elusive characters, the mysterious blackout and its unforeseeable effects on the future of the city. But Not for Long is a crafty novel; a literary portrait of the moral predicaments of our times.

Wheeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter
Michael White
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Publish date: 2010-02-04
$24.95
0399155902
Hardcover

In this coming of age novel, the narrator is unable to forget his first love and the series of events that led up to the day that changed his life forever.  A low-key high school senior, George and his family move from Davenport to Des Moines, Iowa. On the first day at his new school George finds himself overcome with a curious desire for the lead actress of the school’s drama club. Never had he thought of himself an enthusiast of the arts, but after watching Emily portray a blind person in the school play he learned something new about himself. As the friendship blossoms between Emily and George, so does the depth of his character and the complexities of their new world. Katie, Emily’s middle school aged, disabled younger sister is a genius in comparison to her peers. With a brainy opinion about everything, she too succeeds at stealing George’s heart. Life is easy and ideas and concepts run wild within the boundaries of the trio, until one day, in the midst of a summer filled with Iowa state fair pickles and laughter, their relationship is changed forever. This is a novel of first love and the blinding reality of unexpected loss. Weeping Underwater Looks a lot Like Laughter is Michael White’s first novel and hopefully not his last.

(Adult Fiction)

Morgan Tuff

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessel
Viking Press
Publish date: 2006-01-01
$15.00
paperback

           “‘All worthwhile tales possess some element of violence,’ Dad said.” From the very beginning of Marisha Pessel’s novel, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Blue Van Meer, a senior in high school, depicts the growing feeling of a coming disaster as she comes in contact with Hannah Schneider and a clique of students at the elite St. Galloway High School. Blue had spent the majority of her life on an odyssey with her father Gareth after the death of her mother.  He attempted to keep their lives interesting, telling Blue repeatedly that, “everyone is responsible for the page-turning tempo of his or her own Life Story.” They traveled around the country from university to university reading biographies, quoting Emerson, studying Shakespeare, and analyzing everything and everyone around them.

            The first time Hannah Schneider sees Blue in the frozen meat section of the local grocery store, she sees “a lonely person.” Driven by an obsession with reaching out to those she categorizes as missing, hurting, or incomplete in society she does everything possible to intertwine Blue into the group of students she spends every Sunday with. They include Jade, Milton, Nigel, Lu, and Charles. The students are charismatically drawn to Hannah as they try to determine what makes her tick. Whenever Hannah is involved in something, strange things happen: a mysterious drowning, an empty bedroom, irrational haircuts, boxes full of missing person articles, snappy monologues, and endless questions.

            The novel is centered on the compulsion of human beings to explain the unexplainable and the search for one’s identity. Pessel organizes the novel like a college literature course, with chapters named Deliverance, Wuthering Heights, etc.  With witty pros, hilarious allusions, and captivatingly developed relationships Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a thought provoking, entertaining, and worthwhile read.