Book Reviews Archive - Page 38 of 79

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker: Book Review

Truly Plaice has been larger than life since her conception. The town men wagered on how big she would be when she was born. They all guessed too low. In contrast to her petite, doll-like older sister, Truly looks even bigger. Needless to say, the small town is not kind to Truly as she grows up. The other children are merciless and even adults want her safely out of the way. When she and Serena Jane are orphaned, Truly is shipped off to a farm on the outskirts of town while her sister lives in town with the vicar's wife. Truly does eventually make a few friends, children who are just as much outcasts as she is. She has their support as they grow older and the lives of the golden children of the town slowly fall apart. This really didn't do anything for me and I feel like it should have. I listened to it, so maybe my attention span just wasn't up to par. But I really didn't care what happened to anybody, even Truly. At first, I did love the way that Truly has made her birth and early years a personal mythology. The story is in a sort of omniscient first person. Truly shares her mother's dying thoughts and things she couldn't possibly know. I liked it. But as Truly grew, I cared less and less. The town is full of horrible people. The only ones who are kind to Truly are the ones who don't fit in for various reasons. She does find a place with them, but she's never fully content with it. She adores her sister and always wants to find a way to spend more time with her. That's admirable, but Serena Jane has no interest in Truly. None. She's a self-absorbed…

The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons: Book Review

Elise Landau is a Jew living in Vienna before World War II. Her parents realize the danger they are facing and make plans for the family to leave the country. They must all go separate ways and Elise ends up working as a housemaid on an estate in England. Being from an artistic family in the upper middle class, Elise finds it hard to adapt to life as a housemaid. It doesn't help that she desperately misses her family and barely speaks English. But things start to change when the master's son, Kit, comes home from college and starts tutoring her. The book was charming and delightful but there were some things that just weren't perfect for me. I felt that there was a bit too much of an influence from Rebecca and Jane Eyre. I love both books, but I don't want new books to feel like them; the new books will only suffer in the comparison. "When I close my eyes I see Tyneford House." Compare that to, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." It wasn't just language, it was faint echoes in the scenes as well. It's hard to explain but it's there. I also saw exactly where the book was going from very early on. I had moments where I thought I might be wrong but I wasn't. I wish it had been more of a surprise. Otherwise, I did like this story of a house in World War II. I enjoyed seeing Elise go from an immature nineteen-year-old to a formidable woman. Her growth felt very natural. As she grew into her potential, I liked her more and more. Tyneford is loosely based on a real village called Tyneham. The things that happen to Tyneford closely shadow events at Tyneham. I had…

The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman: Book Review

Gustine is a dress lodger (lower class prostitute in an upper class dress) in Sunderland, England in the 1830s. One night she meets Dr. Henry Chiver, a surgeon in disgrace who has promised his small group of students that he will find a human body for them to dissect and study. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of superstition about medicine and doctors and finding a body isn’t so easy. Gustine and Henry enter into an agreement to help each other get what they so desperately want. I tend to be a character-driven reader, and I found that I didn’t really like any of the characters in this book. There were probably one or two that I could have liked, Gustine being one, but that didn’t really seem to be what the author was going for. I think Holman was trying to paint a picture of what life would have been like for the lower classes in that time frame in England, and she truly succeeded with that. She put me inside the story, and I read her well-written, picture-perfect descriptions of the working conditions, living conditions, ignorance, fear, hostility, brutality, and just general misery that described the lives of the working poor of this town and shuddered in revulsion and felt a little lot more grateful for what I have, where I live and when I live. She also succeeded in turning my expectations for the novel and where my sympathies would lie upside-down. I have a bachelor’s degree in biology and work in a hospital: I should have been rooting for Dr. Chiver and the triumph of science all the way through. But slowly, insidiously, I found myself being led in another direction without really even realizing it. Let’s just say that I have a greater appreciation for…

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Book Review

Calliope Stephanides is born to a family of Greek immigrants living in Detroit. She tells the story of how she came to be by starting with her grandparents in their isolated village. As the Turks and Greeks were fighting, they managed to flee to America and start a new life there. Calliope then moves on to her parents' courtship and then her own life, up into her teen years. What makes Calliope's story so different though, is that she's a hermaphrodite. Thanks to a less-than-thorough family doctor and parents with a bit of a "hands off" policy, no one realizes that Calliope is different for years and years. For her part, she's pretty happy as a girl until she hits her teens. Then her hormones start raging and her life changes forever. I wish I had reviewed this immediately after I read it. I really liked it, but I've forgotten a lot of details. For the purposes of simplicity, I'm mostly going to refer to Calliope as she throughout my review because she's living as a girl for the vast majority of the book. This is not a spoiler; the first sentence spells this out. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michgan, in August of 1974." I liked Calliope and her eccentric family. She's a great narrator, being almost painfully honest. She's never very judgmental of the choices her parents and grandparents made along the way. She just tells her story the best way that she knows how. I'm sure other people rattle on about gender identity, race relations, the callousness of medicine and serious stuff like that. All of that is definitely present…

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale: Book Review

Miri is a small teenage girl from the mountains. She feels inadequate in her village because she isn't allowed to help in the quarry, the lifeblood of trade. She tries her best to help every way she can, but she just knows that everyone must think she's a burden. One day, with the spring traders, a delegate from the faraway court arrives. He announces that the priests have divined that the prince will find his princess in their village. All girls between the ages of 12 and 18 must go down the mountain to where a Princess Academy has been set up to teach them all that they must know to be fit to be a princess. This wasn't my favorite of Shannon Hale's books (That would be Goose Girl, followed closely by Book of a Thousand Days), but I still liked it. I felt that it had a good message for young girls about learning what you can, speaking up for yourself and others, helping others, and being happy with your own talents instead of focusing on what you can't do. It did all this without being preachy in the least. I liked the girls. Miri was by far the most well-developed, but they all had their little (or big) dreams. They are of course changed by their lessons but they still remain true to who they were before. Miri was a plucky little thing and I admired her courage. I suspected how everything would end up from really early on, but I still enjoyed the journey to get there. I highly recommend this for tween girls. Read an excerpt. Find author Shannon Hale on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Buy Princess Academy at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my…

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray: Book Review

Gemma Doyle is living in India, but she desperately wants to move back to England. As 16-year-old girls will do, she's bickering constantly with her mother over it. One day, in the midst of an Indian market, tragedy strikes and Gemma gets sent back to England. But she also starts having strange visions. Can the mysterious young man who has followed her from India help explain anything to her? At the right age, I would probably have given it more. But from where I am now, the basic premise of girl-fighting-to-fit-in-with-the-popular-crowd has been done too often. I give the author props for giving it some fantastical overtones that caught my attention, but that doesn't hide the fact that this has sort of been done before. I think part of my problem with the book also comes from the fact that I don't know a whole lot more about these visions now that I've finished the book than I did when I started. This was obviously written to be a part of a series because very little is actually explained. I'm definitely curious enough to keep reading, but I'm a little irritated that so little was revealed. I hope the rest of the series clarifies more. Reviewed March 30, 2009 If you're wondering, I still haven't read any further in the series and don't think I'm going to. Read an excerpt. Find author Libba Bray on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Buy A Great and Terrible Beauty at Malaprop’s | Better World Books Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her Retro Friday Reviews for the inspiration and encouragement! I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in…

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle: Book Review

Synopsis from GoodReads: In 1887, a young Arthur Conan Doyle published A Study in Scarlet, creating an international icon in the quick-witted sleuth Sherlock Holmes. In this very first Holmes mystery, the detective introduces himself to Dr. John H. Watson with the puzzling line “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive,” and so begins Watson’s, and the world’s, fascination with this enigmatic character. In A Study in Scarlet, Doyle presents two equally perplexing mysteries for Holmes to solve: one a murder that takes place in the shadowy outskirts of London, in a locked room where the haunting word Rache is written upon the wall, the other a kidnapping set in the American West. Picking up the “scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life,” Holmes demonstrates his uncanny knack for finding the truth, tapping into powers of deduction that still captivate readers today. I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes way back in high school one summer. When I ran out of library books, I occasionally delved into my parents' shelves and that's how I was first introduced to Mr. Holmes. I have a collection on my nook now and I decided to re-read this first--novella, I'll call it--for old times' sake. I really didn't like it. I enjoyed the setup with Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Watson and their meeting and all that. But the actual mystery? Improbable is not even the word for it. It just defied belief. Why wouldn't a British detective know all about the American West? Please. The whole murder and everything is just overly melodramatic. And then there was the way that the Mormons were portrayed. Unflattering to say the least. I am not Mormon and know shamefully little about the faith, but my goodness--I was offended on their behalf! I'm sure…

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith: Book Review

Mma Ramotswe has just gotten engaged to Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. But she's not going to let a little thing like that change her life too much. She's still running her business and solving mysteries with her unique blend of luck, insight, persistence, and wisdom. I'm missing something. I know I am. Too many people love these books for it to be a fluke. I just don't love them. I don't dislike them either. I don't really feel much either way. I like Mmma Ramotswe herself. She has a kind heart and I love her solutions to problems. I remember her being a little trickier in the first book, but it has been years since I read it, so maybe I'm wrong. Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni doesn't really know what he's gotten himself into. He has a kind heart as well, so I like him with Mma Ramotswe, but I think he's going to get trampled by her personality. Although I was shocked at one big thing he undertakes without first consulting with Mma Ramotswe! I tried this second book in the series on audio, thinking that the stories have a bit of a "spoken word" feel to them. It worked a bit better for me, but I'm still not left longing to read more. The bonus of the audio was that I wasn't constantly tripping over unfamiliar names. I feel perfectly confident saying them now. I thought Lisette Lecat's soft voice was a perfect accompaniment to these simple-on-the-surface tales. I think I'm going to give up on the series now, but if you're interested in them, definitely give them a try. I seem to be in the minority in not loving them. Read an excerpt. My review of the first book, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency…

The Exile of Sara Stevenson by Darci Hannah: Book Review

Sara Stevenson has shamed her family and has been exiled to a remote Scottish island for months. Along with her lady's maid, Kate; Kate's husband; and the lightkeeper, William, she will have to weather a long winter, unsure of the fate of her lover. I thought this was pretty good. It's not exactly my typical read, but I still enjoyed it. My one real problem was that it was a bit too romance-y. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just not my thing. There are some supernatural elements that just took it over the top for me. Don't get me wrong--I love fantasy, it just felt too "Love transcends all" for me. Sara and her maid both irritated me at times. Sara is determined to do the exact opposite of what she's told, to the point that it's stupid and dangerous. "Don't go out today, Sara, a snowstorm is coming." So what does she do? She rides out. Of course. Because who doesn't want to get caught out on the moors or what have you in a snowstorm? She also jumps to some ridiculous conclusions about William and refuses to change her mind about him for an inordinate amount of time. The maid was a little holier-than-thou tattletale. But at least Sara was independent and spoke her mind. I ended up liking her. I liked William too. He's a tortured soul. He can be charming when he wants to be, but in the right mood, he's scary. I had an idea what his story was going to be from early on, but I still liked reading all about him. But then, I do like me a good Scottish man! I wish I could remember more details, but I don't. Fans of Susanna Kearsley should give this one a try. Read…

Mermaids in the Basement by Michael Lee West: Book Review

Renata DeChavannes is reeling from personal loss. She runs home to her grandmother in Alabama, seeking answers to questions about her mother. I don't have a lot to say except that I can't help but feel like this has been done before. Younger generation, digging in the past, looking for parents' secrets. Sound familiar? I'm thinking of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and this book is nowhere near as good as that one. I liked most of the present-day characters. Renata was pretty funny, but apparently pretty dense, but Honora, Gladys, and Isabella were tons of fun. Unfortunately, they weren't really the focus of the story. The focus is on Renata's mother Shelby and her broken relationship with Renata's father, Louie. Everyone talks about Shelby like the only reason she didn't walk on water was because she didn't want to, but once the past starts coming out, I couldn't stand her. I really don't get what was up with Renata. She's about 30 years old, but you would think that she was five. She seems to know absolutely nothing about family history, even when she's directly involved. An explanation was given, but it was pretty weak. And everyone's supposed to be telling her these old family stories, but when they start talking, it's like Renata's not even there. Instead of, "You weren't a very pretty baby," it's "Renata wasn't a very pretty baby." What's up with that? The chapters float around between several of the present-day characters. Some of them are titled, "Honora says..." and that made it pretty clear who was talking. But sometimes that was left off and I would think Renata was telling a story only to find out that it was her father. Confusing. I'm making this sound bad, and it really wasn't. It was…