fiction

BOOK REVIEW: The Wages of Sin, by Kaite Welsh

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: The Wages of Sin, by Kaite WelshTitle: The Wages of Sin by Kaite Welsh
Series: Sarah Gilchrist #1
Published by Pegasus Books
Published: March 7th 2017
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Pages: 400
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

 I knew how the world worked; I knew it could be cruel, and I was not content to let it remain so.

Give me all of the historical fiction about flawed women doing things that society says they shouldn’t do!!! Kaite Welsh’s The Wages of Sin is about a woman named Sarah Gilchrist who “ruined” herself with the involvement with a man who took advantage of her. She moves in with her aunt and uncle to start anew, and she enrolls at the University of Edinburgh in the first year it allows female students. The plot goes back and forth between her past and her present and it’s a little slow moving, but I enjoyed that. I felt like Welsh easily incorporated the day-to-day life of this first class of female medical students to show the reader the kind of resistance those students felt in their everyday experiences. It also explores the victim-blaming and -shaming rhetoric that women still face regarding their sexuality and their choices and how it can be damning to assume anything about anyone without knowing the other person’s full story.

While reading this, I felt like this story also highlights the injustices and prejudices women face today in all sorts of sciences and male-dominated fields across the board. Sometimes it was troubling to read because I’ve even experienced similar things. However, that’s what I like most about good historical fiction. It illuminates the problems of the past and present. I like reading historical fiction for an escape from the present like so many others, but I also like reading historical fiction because of the explorations and struggles people have faced throughout history. It’s reflective and contemplative, and it’s always a joy to have a relatable heroine telling us her story.

I’m going to be thinking about The Wages of Sin for a while, and I’m pleased to know that there will be more of Sarah’s story, because most of this novel felt like a set up for so much more. I think I’d be disappointed to know that was the end, because it ended with so much hope and promise. I can’t wait for the next one! If you’re a fan of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series or enjoy reading feminist historical fiction, I think you’ll like Sarah Gilchrist and her adventures.

Thank you to Pegasus Books and Netgalley for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: Swimming Lessons, by Claire Fuller

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: Swimming Lessons, by Claire FullerTitle: Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
Published by Tin House Books
Published: February 7th 2017
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 350
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

Ingrid Coleman writes letters to her husband, Gil, about the truth of their marriage, but instead of giving them to him, she hides them in the thousands of books he has collected over the years. When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan.
Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage. 

 Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.

After finishing Swimming Lessons, I’m a little sad I don’t have any more novels to read by Claire Fuller. I read Our Endless Numbered Days earlier this year and loved the fairy tale-like quality to the story, and Swimming Lessons evokes a similar response from me. Swimming Lessons is about a woman named Ingrid who writes letters to her husband Gil. Instead of delivering the letters to him directly, Ingrid leaves the letters in topically relevant books that Gil has scattered all over his house. After leaving her final letter, Ingrid leaves and disappears from a beach in Dorset, leaving behind her husband and two daughters with unanswered questions. Twelve years after her disappearance, Gil – older and suffering from the effects of age – thinks he sees Ingrid in a bookshop and falls, hurting himself. Flora, his daughter, returns home to care for her father. Flora doesn’t believe that her mother died, only disappeared. While caring for her father, Flora begins to discover the answers to her questions about her mother’s life and disappearance in the books quite literally stacked all through her father’s home.

I was hesitant to start this one because I wanted to read Our Endless Numbered Days first. I’m weird and sometimes like to read an author’s work in publication order. After completely devouring Fuller’s first novel in just a few days, I started reading this one almost immediately after. Fuller has a gift in transforming family tragedies and terrors into a story of mythical allure. I also have a soft spot for epistolary novels or books that incorporate letters and other forms of text communication, and Swimming Lessons does just that. I loved reading Ingrid’s thoughts throughout the years of her marriage, of her family, of herself, and seeing how the present day family reacts and responds to Ingrid’s letters.

I’ve already talked about this book a lot to some of my customers at work and a few of my acquaintances, and I tell them, if you enjoy books about books and reading and letter writing with a family mystery tied into it all, you’ll really like this one. My favorite bits had to be the letters because Ingrid’s voice just felt so immediate and emotional. However, if you don’t like ambiguous endings, beware. You don’t get all of the questions answered, and you’ll be left thinking about the possibilities of hope and the reminders of grief once you’re through. I read it during some warm February days, and it’s the perfect kind of novel to read with the soft warmth of the day wafting through the windows.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tin House Books for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine ArdenTitle: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Published by Del Rey
Published: January 10th 2017
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 322
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.
After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.
And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.
As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

 Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale is a superbly magical fairy tale inspired by Russian folklore. The story is lyrical and engaging, and even though I’m not a reader who is familiar with Russian fairy tales and folklore, so much of it seems both familiar and strange that I felt like this story has both been part of that fairy tale lexicon of sorts and wholly new all at the same time. I love it when a writer weaves together the old and the new to make a new effortless-feeling tale that lingers in the mind long after the book ends.

Vasya, the main character, is lively and complicated, as fairy tale heroines often tend to be. Arden’s villains are nuanced and complex, making you think that perhaps villainy is only a construct of our perspectives rather than a factual thing. The atmosphere feels like a chilly Russian wilderness, and its distant enough in time and distance to be all the more enchanting.

And, like many traditional, “original,” fairy tales, The Bear and the Nightingale is beautiful and terrifying in a very Neil Gaiman-esque sort of way, and I love the sort of terror that sneaks up on you and faces you full-on, making you come to terms with the terror of your own reality in contrast to this fairy tale one.

If you are a fan of Erin Morgenstern and Neil Gaiman and enjoy reading terrifically beautiful fairy tales, this is one you need to add to your TBRs immediately!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: Human Acts, by Han Kang

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: Human Acts, by Han KangTitle: Human Acts by Han Kang, Deborah Smith
Published by Hogarth Press
Published: January 17th 2017
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 218
Format: Hardcover
Source: Blogging for Books
Goodreads

From the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, a rare and astonishing (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.
In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.
The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho's best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.
An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.

 How long do souls linger by the side of their bodies?
Do they really flutter away like some kind of bird? Is that what trembles the edges of the candle flame?

In such a small volume and through interconnected chapters, Human Acts recounts the violent Gwangju Uprising in South Korea in the 1980s. Each of the chapters has a different voice telling his or her version of the events, and the effect is haunting. Human Acts is just over 200 pages long, but it seemed so much more than that. I had to set it aside sometimes because the emotions and events told by the very human voices was too much to bear. I’m not usually emotionally overwhelmed by books, but Human Acts illustrates some of the very worst acts a human being could do to another being.

Each chapter follows the perspective of someone involved in the uprising from the time it happened in 1980 to the present time in 2013. I think what I liked most about it is Han Kang’s own perspective of the events in the epilogue. Compared to her previous novel, Han Kang’s Human Acts seems more real, visceral, and grounded, and somehow that made everything about the lengths humanity will go to prove their point that much more terrifying.

I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a necessary read. Han Kang has a way with words that digs at your very core and I’ve not stopped thinking about this book since I’ve finished it. It’s a timely read, especially in today’s political climate.

Thanks to Crown Publishing/Blogging for Books for a review copy!

Little List of Reviews #3

- Meg

Little List of Reviews #3Title: Martians Abroad by Carrie Vaughn
Published by Tor Books
Published: January 17th 2017
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 288
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

A great new stand-alone science fiction novel from the author of the Kitty Norville series.
Polly Newton has one single-minded dream, to be a starship pilot and travel the galaxy. Her mother, the director of the Mars Colony, derails Polly's plans when she sends Polly and her genius twin brother, Charles, to Galileo Academy on Earth—the one planet Polly has no desire to visit. Ever.
Homesick and cut off from her desired future, Polly cannot seem to fit into the constraints of life on Earth, unlike Charles, who deftly maneuvers around people and sees through their behavior to their true motives. Strange, unexplained, dangerous coincidences centered on their high-profile classmates begin piling up. Charles may be right—there's more going on than would appear, and the stakes are high. With the help of Charles, Polly is determined to find the truth, no matter the cost.

 Carrie Vaughn’s Martians Abroad reads like a science fictional school story in which two Martian-human kids are sent to Earth to a prestigious school and things go amok. It’s a well-written, yet straightforwardly simple story following Polly’s mishaps as she attempts to integrate into Earth’s way of things at this boarding school. A set of orchestrated, predictable events prove Polly’s worth to herself, her mother, and the other students as she risks her life to save a handful of the other students. While I was expecting more depth as it was marketed as an “adult” science fiction novel, I think this is a great introduction to science fiction for the younger YA set and a great bridge from children’s fiction to “older” science fiction. The story reads easily, doesn’t feature sex or explicit language, and the violence is on par with most violence found in books marketed to the middle grade and young adult crowd.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Books for a review copy!

Little List of Reviews #3Title: Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature by Jacob Weisman
Published by Tachyon Publications
Published: July 12th 2016
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 384
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

Invaders is a collection of stories written by “literary” writers exploring the concept of invasion in science fictional settings. While some of the stories didn’t grab my attention (and that can probably be attributed to timing and my state of mind more than anything else), it’s a solid effort to show that writers bleed through genre lines more often that we realize. I did, however, really enjoy the following stories: “Portal” – J. Robert Lennon, “The Inner City” – Karen Heuler, “Topics in Advanced Rocketry” – Chris Tarry, “A Precursor of the Cinema” – Steven Millhauser, “Monstros” – Junot Díaz, and “Near-Flesh” – Katherine Dunn. These explore the weirdness of human psyche and will linger in my mind for a long time.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tachyon Pub for a review copy!

Little List of Reviews #3Title: The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham
Published by Bloomsbury Paperbacks
Published: January 24th 2017
Genres: Mystery
Pages: 176
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

 The White Cottage Mystery, initially published in 1927, is a straightforward, classic mystery following the murder of a man who lives in a white cottage. The characterizations are simple, the story is simple, but the writing compels one to keep reading to figure out what happened. It’s shorter than I expected, and I finished it in a sitting and a half. While I was reading it, I was hoping for more depth in characterization, but it’s a solid, traditional mystery with all of those conventional twists, turns, and red herrings. Margery Allingham is part of those writers from the Golden Age of mystery writers and is one to whom Agatha Christie admired. If you’re a fan of Christie’s mysteries, you may be interested in this one!

Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for a review copy!