A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland

A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland

When traveling I enjoy stopping into a local bookstore and looking around.  I found A Mad and Wonderful Thing in the Irish fiction section while shopping in a mall in Derry, Northern Ireland.   Captivated by the title first and the topic of "The Troubles" second,  I bought it even knowing that a book would be a rather heavy souvenir to cart home.

The story grabbed me on the first page.  The prose is beautiful, emotional and scenic, all things critical to tell the story of love and war.  You might say that Johnny Donnelly is a mixed up boy on the verge of manhood.  On the other hand, you might say he's got it all together and his life choices are smooth and calculated.  And then enters Cora Flannery, a beautiful girl wearing red boots with green laces, who steals his heart.

I didn't know much about the conflict in Ireland so visiting the country taught me a lot.  I learned about potatoes, clogging and gingers, as the redheads are called.  Politics however, as we well know here in the States, shine a whole different light on the inner workings of a society. War forces people to do things and think in a way that is often difficult to understand.  I wished for Johnny to rise above the fray but in the end was left unsatisfied.  I have to accept that because the strategy of war is something I will never personally be able to understand.

A Mad and Wonderful Thing was exactly that, mad and wonderful. I loved Johnny Donnelly and Cora Flannery but I hated the life they were forced to live in the midst of war.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel rides the train each day into London to her non existent job.  She lost it long ago but admits that fact to no one.  She watches out the window of the train as it passes her old neighborhood and the home she once shared with her ex-husband.  He still lives there with his new wife and new baby daughter.  Rachel pines for the life she once had with Tom while she tries to peer behind the blinds in the instant the train passes each day.

When a woman from the neighborhood goes missing, Rachel's vivid imagination kicks in.  I need to mention that Rachel is an alcoholic.  Her life revolves around a careful manipulation of events she can't recall.  She has a habit of doing her best thinking while drinking a wine on the train.

The Girl on the Train is a psychological thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.  But beware, the story is intense from start to finish.  The reader never gets a chance to even take a breath, relax, gather some thoughts.  The tension makes for a really good, fast paced novel, but I was exhausted half way though.  I couldn't stop.

Every twist and turn lead to a new and unexpected surprise.  I had no idea what was coming in the end.  The Girl on the Train is exactly the kind of emotional train ride I love to take.  

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

We meet Lucy Takeda and her daughter, Patty when a police officer arrives on their doorstep to question Lucy about a murder of a local man.  On the eve of Patty's wedding, Lucy is forced to reveal the story of her time in a Japanese internment camp as a teenager.

Lucy's parents seem to have it all.  Her father owns a business, her mother is a stunning beauty, they live in a nice house in Los Angeles.  Soon after her father dies, Pearl Harbor happens.  Everyone of Japanese decent is forced into camps.  Lucy's life turns from happy and comfortable into a game of survival.

Garden of Stones paints a very dark yet realistic picture of life in these camps.  Lucy was forced to grow up in a hurry.  She begins to share her life story with Patty but still feels she has to hold some things back to protect Patty.  But Patty is desperate to find the truth in order to get her mother released from police custody.

I loved the historical aspects of this book but struggled with the holes in the story.  For me the Garden of Stones had a small and inconsequential role to the story yet it was chosen for the title. The reader is led down a very specific path about Patty's birth only to have that yanked out from under them.  I'm all for twists and turns to make a story interesting, but these ended up being unrealistic.  Needless to say I was disappointed in the outcome.

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

Finders Keepers by Stephen King

It does seem odd to me that I wanted to read this second installment of the Bill Hodges Trilogy.  Mr. Mercedes was so gruesome but so good I couldn't put it down.  This time I prepared myself for the horror to come because the writing is just so damn good.

The opening scene introduces us to Morris while engaged in a robbery of the home of his favorite author.  Morris knows the guy is hiding notebooks filled with the manuscripts of sequels to his favorite books of all time.  He has to have them.  Robbery leads to murder and he hides the cherished notebooks until the coast is cleared.  He ends up in prison for another crime for several unexpected decades leaving his treasure unattended.

Enter Pete, a teenage boy who discovers Morris' stash.  Pete is also a young literary connoisseur who becomes consumed by the contents of the trunk.  Let the action unfold.  And Stephen King is a master at doing just that.

If I have any criticism, it's that the action really doesn't get started until two thirds of the way through.  Once it starts however, hold on to your hat.  The tension builds swiftly like only Stephen King can do it.  The stage is set for the return of Mr. Mercedes villain, Brady Hartsfield, but he plays only a minuscule role in this book.  He seems to have been inserted in Finders Keepers so we'd be sure to come back for book three.

And maybe I'm getting used to all the gruesome stuff.  This book didn't bother me as much in that regard.  I'd hate to think that I'm becoming hardened to violence and I don't think I am.  I'm just mesmerized by one incredible author who has an amazing voice on the page.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer

I've read this book before but decided to read it again.  Why?  Because in 2 weeks time I'm leaving on a cruise around the British Isles.  And the first stop is St Peter Port, Guernsey, The Channel Islands.  This novel seemed like the perfect way to prepare for what I'm going to see there.

Juliet is a writer looking for a topic for her next novel when she receives a letter from a man living on Guernsey.  He's read a book by his favorite author and the book had been inscribed to Juliet.  So begins her correspondence with the post war residents of the island.  Their stories of the German occupation are fascinating and Juliet just may have landed on the perfect new story for publication.  She decides to visit them and falls deeply in love in more ways than one.

The members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society are an eclectic cast of characters who all want to get in on the action to correspond with the well known author.  They each tell their own story in their own words. And what a story they tell about life during the German occupation.  They found joy on even the darkest days.

I love stories that are written as letters.  Modern society has lost the fine art of written correspondence.  An email is simply not the same.  Fine penmanship has also gone by the wayside. Juliet and her new friends were able to convey emotion in a handwritten post that brought them together quickly.  Their bonds sealed by the time they had licked the stamp and dropped the letter into a mailbox.   I can't wait to see this charming place and imagine each of the inhabitants as they went about their daily lives.  And I can't wait to handwrite a postcard, buy a local stamp and mail it home.

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

I read several glowing reviews of Sweetbitter and its portrayal of the inner workings of a restaurant in New York City.  I thought why not?  Something new, young and fresh about a topic I'd like to know more about.

Here's the spoiler.  I never made it past the 20% mark.  I gave up, which for those who know me, is an extremely rare event. The characters were all limp and lifeless.  Probably because all they did was drink, do drugs and have sex before running themselves ragged serving fine food and wine to some very snooty and particular customers.  I had no sense of the setting either other than food was served there.  I didn't smell the cooking of fine cuisine, or hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Flat as a pancake is the best description I can whip up.

To summarize, Sweetbitter is dull and uninteresting and I didn't care what happened to any of the people in it.  In other words, Sweetbitter was as listless as wet bar towel forgotten on the floor overnight.

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

I don't know why I've never read any Pat Conroy.  He's the kind of writer right up my alley.  I listened to The Prince of Tides on a CD in my car.   His prose is rich and lyrical, full and blossoming at each turn of the page or in my case, each new track.

Some of this story seemed familiar to me, but a lot of it wasn't.  I must have seen the movie starring Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand.  In fact it's their faces I imagined as the characters, Tom Wingo and Susan Lowenstein.  And there are just two memorable scenes that I clearly remembered.  The first is when Tom's mother serves up a canned dog food casserole as dinner to his irritable and irrational father.  The second is when Tom holds Lowenstein's husband's Stradivarius over the balcony from the fortieth floor of their New York City apartment.

Both of those are quite memorable parts of the novel as well. But the novel includes so much more pure and raw emotion.  The story of the Wingo family unfolds when Tom leaves his home and family in Charleston, rushing to the bedside of his twin sister, Savannah who has yet again made an attempt to commit suicide.  Her psychiatrist, Lowenstein, seeks clues into Savannah's troubled past through Tom.  He tells the story of his family with precise detail and ends up healing not only Savannah, but himself.  Believe me, everyone in this story needed a boatload of healing, so that was nothing short of miraculous.

When I tell you that The Prince of Tides is a gorgeous read, I mean that it is able to tap into every emotion a reader can have.   I often laughed out loud and other times, I was totally sickened by the action of the characters.  Sometimes I could anticipate what might happen next and other times, I gasped at an event so unexpected it took my breath away.  These kind of feelings can only happen when the characters are fully developed, allowing the reader to envision them as a best friend or hated bully and the setting is described as lush garden completely natural to letting the events of a troubled life unfold.
 
The Prince of Tides is long, but don't let that scare you away.  It's a masterpiece worth every single minute of the time you invest in it.