Review of Horse, by Geraldine Brooks

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical, Starred Review 0

Horse

by Geraldine Brooks
read by James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, Katherine Littrell, and Michael Oblora

Penguin Audio, 2022. 14 hours, 6 minutes.
Review written March 18, 2023, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

A big thank you to my friend Keith, who persistently recommended this book to me. When he first recommended it, I was reading for the Cybils and didn’t get to it. Then at the start of the year when he said it was the best book he’d read in 2022, I put the audiobook on hold again, and this time when it came in a couple months later, I made a point of listening, and was glad I did.

This book is a rich tapestry. It’s set in 2019 and also in the 1850s. The two viewpoint characters in 2019 are working behind the scenes at the Smithsonian. One of those is an African American grad student writing an article for Smithsonian magazine on restoring a painting he found when his neighbor put it out in the trash. And his dissertation is about the depiction of African Americans in 19th century American equestrian art. Those two things come together.

And along the way he meets Jess, who works behind the scenes at the Smithsonian with animal skeletons. A British researcher has come to examine a particular skeleton, and Jess has to do some research to find it. The label just says “Horse,” but records show it’s the skeleton of Lexington, one of the greatest thoroughbreds of all time.

This book is the story of Lexington. The main viewpoint character from the past is Jarret, an enslaved boy who was present when Lexington was foaled. He manages to stay with Lexington for the horse’s whole life, and this book tells that story, mixed in with the story of restoring the painting and the skeleton in 2019.

The story is wonderfully told. And this audio production, using different readers for all the different viewpoint characters, makes it all the more immersive.

I was very surprised at the end to learn that Lexington was a real horse with an actual stellar career as a racer and as a sire. I had assumed she’d have to make up a fictional horse. His skeleton actually did spend time in the Smithsonian labeled as “Horse.” Most of the historical characters were real people, but the author brought them to life through the eyes of Jarret, the African American groom who loved him and knew him best. Jarret’s life is the fictional part, though with enough plausibility, you can tell yourself this is what really happened.

As she says in the afterword, because African Americans were so crucial to American racing in the nineteenth century, her story of a racehorse had to become a story of race. I have to say that I completely hated some things that happened toward the end of the book, though I see why she put them in. But I sure would have liked the story to go a different way. However, even with that reservation, this was an amazing book that I won’t forget any time soon.

geraldinebrooks.com

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Review of Chef’s Kiss, written by Jarrett Melendez, illustrated by Danica Brine

Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

Chef’s Kiss

written by Jarrett Melendez
illustrated by Danica Brine
colored by Hank Jones
lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Oni Press, 2022. 160 pages.
Review written February 26, 2022, from a library book
Starred Review
2023 Alex Award Winner

The Alex Award is given each year to ten books published for adults that will be of interest to teens. The committee picked a fun one with this rom-com graphic novel.

The characters in this book are new adults. We meet four of them on the first panel, moving into a new apartment together after college. Two have jobs already, which they’re ready to begin. One is staying in school with a new major (theater), and the other, Ben, has job interviews lined up.

We follow Ben to the interviews, and in each one, the interviewer loses interest when Ben admits he doesn’t have professional experience. He decides to lower his sights, but even the trash collectors want professional experience!

It’s at that point that Ben sees a Help Wanted sign at a restaurant, with “No Experience Necessary” at the bottom. And the cook who talks with him is heart-throbbingly handsome. Ben does have some ideas about cooking and something of a knack for it. But it’s a three-week training process before he can be permanently hired, and he has to please the owner’s pig!

The training is full of ups and downs, as he gets to know his handsome coworker. But then on the last day, his parents learn that he didn’t get the writing job he’d told them about. They pressure him instead to take an internship with a literary magazine, with their support, rather than continuing with “this nonsense” of working in a restaurant.

The whole thing is super fun, with adorable characters trying to set out into adult life. Since it’s a graphic novel, it didn’t take me long to read, and left me smiling.

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Review of The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Golden Enclaves

Lesson Three of the Scholomance

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey (Penguin Random House), 2022. 407 pages.
Review written October 2, 2022, from my own copy, preordered from Amazon.com
Starred review

Okay, this book is SO GOOD!!!!

All right, enough gushing, now for a serious review. First, I’m so happy that my preordered copy arrived just before Cybils season started, so I could read it before I need to start madly reading Young Adult Speculative Fiction books, which is the category I’m judging this year. Although this book is speculative fiction and features a young woman freshly out of school, it’s published for adults and isn’t eligible for the Cybils Awards.

First, let me say that this is a trilogy where you absolutely must read the books in order to understand what’s going on. So I’m going to speak about the trilogy in general terms in this review so as to not give anything away. If you haven’t read the earlier books yet, you are in luck! You won’t have to wait a year in between books to find out what happens after huge dramatic reversals at the ends of books one and two. But be prepared — once you start, you’re going to want to finish. I stayed up awfully late last night because of this book. (And I suspect I’ll want to reread the entire trilogy after my Cybils reading is done.)

The story is amazing how it pulls you in. I couldn’t stop thinking about it this morning. My shorthand way of talking about it is that it’s a story about a Wizard School that wants to kill you.

But I love the way Naomi Novik does the world-building, gradually telling us more and more about the world and the magic they use. This is why you really need to start at the beginning.

The trilogy follows El (short for Galadriel) whom the universe – and the Scholomance – seems to want to make a frightfully powerful death sorceress. This is in balance with her mother, who only works healing magic with sweetness and light. The first book starts with her junior year in the Scholomance.

We learn about the magic in that universe – parallel to ours – which always has a price. Wizards can get mana by doing work and helping others, which gives them power to do magic. But they can also use malia, which gets power from taking from the life force of others. The things that want to kill you in the Scholomance are malificaria, and they are drawn to magic, and especially to young and powerful wizards, so they flock to the Scholomance like a magnet. In the earlier books, we learn that El has a grudge against the kids from enclaves, where wizards band together to share magic. But it’s hard to get into enclaves, and there’s a prophecy about El destroying enclaves. And then there’s Orion, that annoying hero from the New York enclave who won El’s heart. He wound up in a bad place in the last book. Has she seen the end of him?

So in this book, El is out of the Scholomance and figuring out what she’s going to do with her life and what she’s going to do about Orion. She came out of the school with the Golden Sutras — powerful spell books about building Golden Enclaves without using malia.

And then a mawmouth is attacking the London enclave. A mawmouth is the most horrible kind of malificaria of all. It devours all in its path — and they don’t die, but remain suffering inside it forever after. Before El, there was only one living wizard who’d ever defeated a mawmouth. El, however, fought and destroyed more than one in the Scholomance. Her classmates know this, and call her to London. And that has consequences….

Another thing I love about this book is the way El, who started out friendless, now has a whole community who care about her and help her.

Okay, I’d love to say more, but I should stop. If you enjoy reading fantasy at all, tackle this brilliant trilogy. It’s outstanding.

TheScholomance.com
naominovik.com
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Review of How to Raise an Elephant, by Alexander McCall Smith, narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery 0

How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith
narrated by Adjoa Andoh

Recorded Books, 2020. 8.5 hours on 8 compact discs.
Review written October 7, 2021, from a library audiobook

Here’s the latest installment of the adventures of Mma Ramotswe and her associates with the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana. This audiobook has a new narrator, and I wasn’t crazy about some of her character voices, but I did love the way she rolls all her Rs and of course her delightful accent.

If you haven’t read any other books in this series, I do recommend beginning with the first book, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. That one is better written as a detective story, but the main point of these stories are not the cases the agency must deal with, but the relationships between the delightful characters and their observations on life and human nature.

In this one, there are three main cases to be considered: a distant cousin of Mma Ramotswe’s asking for money, new neighbors moving in next door who seem to be having marital troubles, and Charlie borrowing Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van for a mysterious purpose.

The cases aren’t solved by figuring out puzzles, but as we see the ins and outs revealed, we gain insights on relationships and approaching life with compassion. Though Charlie’s story – which is not too surprising because of the title – ends up involving an orphaned baby elephant.

I’ve taken to listening to these books on my commute because I don’t quite have patience for the rambling and meditative observations on human nature when reading an actual book. But stuck in traffic, they never fail to make me smile. The books are anchored in Botswana, and I’m starting to feel like the country itself is a beloved friend.

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Review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Historical 0

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid
read by Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan, and Robin Miles

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2017. 12 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written August 19, 2022, from a library eaudiobook

I heard about this book on Book Tok and thought I’d give it a try. I’m not completely sure why, because I’ve never been a fan of celebrity tell-alls, and this is essentially a fictional celebrity tell-all, telling the life of a glamorous Hollywood icon, the most beautiful woman in the world.

But once I started, the book pulled me in quickly. Instead of starting with the glamorous Evelyn Hugo, the book begins with Monique, a struggling biracial writer who works for an upscale magazine. Her new husband recently decided to move to the west coast, and she didn’t go with him, because this magazine is her chance and she needs to be in New York. So she’s thinking about her empty apartment and short failed marriage.

But then her magazine tells her to go interview the now-reclusive Evelyn Hugo for a feature article. When she tries to figure out why, it turns out that Evelyn Hugo requested her specifically. And when she begins the interviews, she learns that Evelyn doesn’t actually want to do a feature article. She wants to give her story to Monique to publish in a book after Evelyn’s death — but she won’t give Monique any idea if she has a reason to anticipate that will happen soon. The book will be worth millions, but meanwhile, what does Monique tell her employers?

And as we hear Evelyn’s life story, we get more and more pulled in. Despite the seven husbands, she’s no King Henry VIII. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Evelyn is bisexual and the love of her life was a woman. But in Hollywood beginning in the 40s and 50s, that wasn’t something she could let people know and still have a career.

The book does have some raunchy moments. But mostly, you’re pulled into the life of the “most beautiful woman in the world” and come to understand her choices, even the questionable ones. In the middle of the book, I wondered why I’d been pulled into a fake celebrity tell-all, but by the end, I felt like something deeper and more important was going on. Monique gains perspective from hearing Evelyn’s story, and the reader will, too.

Oh, and if you start out by liking celebrity tell-alls, you should enjoy this book all the more!

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Review of Black Cake, by Charmaine Wilkerson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson
read by Lynnette R. Freeman and Simone McIntyre

Random House Audio, 2022. 12 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 2, 2022, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This audiobook had me fully drawn in right from the start. It’s a richly textured story, rooted in the present with a brother and his estranged sister shortly after their mother’s death. Byron and Benny think they knew their parents. They think they lived boring lives, both of them orphans from a Caribbean island who met in London and then built a family in California, where they prospered.

But their mother’s lawyer has a recording for them. And a Black Cake sitting in the freezer which they are to eat when the time is right. In the recording, their mother tells her actual story – how she changed identities three times in her decidedly not boring youth. And they have a sister they knew nothing about.

They also learn where their mother learned to make Black Cake — a traditional cake from the island using dried fruit soaked in rum and port and served at weddings and special events. Black Cake has long been an important part of their lives, and now they learn there was Black Cake at a huge turning point in their mother’s life.

The stories of the past and the present are layered together beautifully. When Byron and Benny need a break from the revelations, the reader gets a break, too. The story is dramatic and heart-wrenching and had me transfixed. The narrators use beautiful accents for characters from the many different parts of the world represented.

This book appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list. I felt like a winner because my hold on the eaudiobook had just come in — I’m sure then the list got longer.

As a debut novel, this book is amazingly rich and layered, kind of like cake. I highly recommend it, and especially the audio version enhanced by the beautiful accents.

charmspen.com

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Review of State of Terror, by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny, read by Joan Allen

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Mystery 0

State of Terror

by Hillary Rodham Clinton
and Louise Penny
read by Joan Allen

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2021. 15 hours, 41 minutes on 13 CDs.
Review written May 27, 2022, from a library audiobook

Normally I would never check out a novel written by a celebrity, but the pairing with Louise Penny, a distinguished mystery writer, was enough to intrigue me. Surely a former Secretary of State can write very convincingly about plausible terrorist threats.

Actually, it’s a little too convincing. The story begins with a female secretary of state recently appointed by her political rival. The new president appointed Ellen Adams essentially to ruin her political power, and they don’t like each other very well. The narrator sounded a lot like Hillary Clinton, and the set-up got me wondering if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had disliked each other as much as the two characters do.

But the characters are in a very different situation. The previous president was “Eric Dunn,” and they go on about what an incompetent buffoon he was. There’s another scene that includes the president of Russia, I guy named Ivanov, who is portrayed as pure evil. Mind you, the secretary of state gets the better of both of them! How much is that wish fulfillment fantasy and how much is it just rational commentary on what the world could be like after our last president?

I didn’t think the writing was stellar, and the plot had things about it that I can nitpick and also that I did see coming, but it certainly held my interest and kept me awake on my commute.

Shortly after the book starts, a large bomb goes off in Europe, followed by another. And then they get evidence there will be a third bomb, and it’s going to happen on the same bus in Frankfurt where Ellen Adams’ reporter son has been following a lead.

But that’s only the beginning. Who is responsible for the bombs? And what are their plans now?

It was probably a little self-indulgent of the author to make it the female secretary of state who figures out the answers and deals with tyrants and saves the day. I mean, why not write a book where the hero reminds everyone of you?

I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I reveal that some of the villains are right-wing idealists in the United States, even in positions of power. They’re willing to work with Al Qaida and bring terror to American soil if it will put a liberal president out of power and start things fresh, back to “real” America.

This was published in October 2021, and would have been written well before that. I thought it was interesting that even in this scenario, the authors didn’t think of having the right-wing talking about election fraud. And they talked about the danger that the Taliban would take over Afghanistan when they had to pull out troops based on the deal made by “Eric Dunn.”

So it was all rather disturbing. And probably a touch too realistic.

I don’t think there’s any danger that people who are politically conservative will want to read this book. If you pretty much agree with Hillary Clinton’s assessment of Donald Trump, I mean “Eric Dunn,” then this book emphasizes how many bad results could still come to pass from his presidency.

But try to listen to it as a realistic thriller of what could have happened, but is not happening in real life.

simonandschuster.com

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Review of The 100 Years of Lenni and Margot, by Marianne Cronin

Audiobooks, Award Winners, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The 100 Years of Lenni and Margot

by Marianne Cronin
read by Sheila Reid and Rebecca Benson

HarperAudio, 2021. 10 hours, 54 minutes.
Review written July 9, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review
2022 Alex Award Winner (books published for adults of interest to teens)

Oh, this book touched my heart!

You’re warned right from the start. Lenni is a Swedish girl living in the terminal ward of the Princess Royal Hospital in Glasgow. She’s 17 years old, and she doesn’t want to die.

As the book begins, she can still go on adventures around the hospital. She goes to the chapel and meets Father Arthur. She asks him some uncomfortable questions about why she’s going to die, and ends up making friends with him. She helps a temp name the new room for hospital patients to do art. They call it the Rose Room — and that’s where Lenni meets Margot.

Margot is 83 years old and also dying — and Lenni notices that between the two of them, they’ve lived 100 years.

They begin a project together in the Rose Room — 100 paintings, one for each year of their lives. And along with the paintings, they started telling stories, stories from different years of their lives.

I love the two narrators for this audiobook. The narrator reading Lenni’s part sounds 17, and the narrator reading Margot’s stories sounds 83. And they both have wonderful accents, so the whole thing is a delight to read.

We know from the start that Lenni and Margot are dying. So you can simply expect some heartbreak at the end. But that’s going to come because this unlikely pair will have completely wound their way into your heart before you’re done with their stories and their enthusiasm for living.

Oh, and there’s a Swedish man in the book named Mr. Eklund, so that’s proof it’s a great book!

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Review of The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray

Austenalia, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Murder of Mr. Wickham

by Claudia Gray

Vintage Books (Penguin Random House), 2022. 386 pages.
Review written June 30, 2022, from my own copy.
Starred Review

A huge thank you to my sister Becky, who sent me this book for my birthday — such a perfect gift!

The Murder of Mr. Wickham is about a house party that brings together characters from all of Jane Austen’s novels. Emma and George Knightley are hosting the party, and they’ve invited Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy, along with their oldest son Jonathan. From Sense and Sensibility, we’ve got newly married Marianne and Colonel Brandon, who it turns out is Emma’s cousin. Much to my delight, it turns out that Catherine Tilney has become a novelist, and her daughter Juliet has been invited to provide another young person. And Hartfield was being rented to tenants Captain Frederick and Anne Wentworth — but a staircase collapsed, so they’ve been invited to join the party. On top of everything, Knightley’s clerical relative Edward Bertram is coming with his wife Fanny.

So we see all these characters we know and love, a varying number of years after their marriages. But then on a dark and stormy night, Mr. Wickham turns up, and it turns out that all the characters gathered there have reasons to hate him, mostly because he’s been investing other people’s money, but for some other dark reasons as well.

So when young Juliet Tilney finds the dead body of Mr. Wickham, it turns out that one of the other guests is probably responsible. Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney are the only ones without a strong motive, and they begin doing a little investigating together. The magistrate, Frank Churchill, seems to be overlooking some evidence, after all.

I found this book completely delightful, and the author even managed to pull off an ending that satisfied me. I loved the look at all these beloved characters as married couples. All of the marriages were having some strain when thrust into this difficult situation — and the specific tension in each marriage was consistent with the characters of the people involved. Claudia Gray really made me believe this is how the futures of these couples might turn out. And it was tremendous fun to read about their interactions.

This is a must-read for all Janeites.

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Review of The Reading List, by Sara Nisha Adams

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Reading List

by Sara Nisha Adams
read by Tara Divina, Sagar Arya, and Paul Panting

HarperAudio, 2021. 12 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written June 8, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
Starred Review

This book is about a handwritten reading list that several people find in different surprising places in Wembley, a suburb of London. And then how reading those books changes people’s lives.

The two central characters who get most of the book’s time are Aleisha, a 17-year-old who’s working at the library as a summer job, and Mukesh, an elderly Indian gentleman who lost his wife two years before. Aleisha has her own pressures as she and her older brother are trying to care for their mother, who keeps the house dark and rarely leaves her bed. Aleisha’s planning to head to university and study to be a lawyer when the summer is over.

The first time Mukesh comes to the library, he encounters Aleisha, who has no recommendations for him and is quite rude. But Aleisha feels guilty, so when she finds the Reading List, she decides to read the books and then pass them on to Mukesh. Both their lives are profoundly touched.

I love the way this book highlights how a good book can affect you so deeply. Books can give you insights into your own life and even help build relationships. Besides Mukesh and Aleisha, Mukesh also gains new ground with his granddaughter through books.

I’ve read and loved all but three of the books on the list. Here are the books:

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier
The Kite Runner, by Kaled Hosseini
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

The book The Time Traveler’s Wife is also featured.

The three I haven’t read are The Kite Runner, Beloved, and A Suitable Boy. Now I want to go out and read those three if they’re anything as good as the others.

I did laugh that my favorite on the list – Pride and Prejudice – was the least favorite of the characters in the book. Oh well! At least it got included.

So it was all a wonderful story. I particularly loved the narrator who read Mukesh’s chapters. I felt like the character was talking with me and this kind elderly widower won my heart.

I did have some things that bothered me a lot about their portrayal of a library. Maybe things are different in the U.K., but I’m not really convinced they are.

First, a student working in the library for the summer is not called a librarian. A librarian is someone with a master’s degree in library science. Although a customer might mistakenly call such a person a librarian, the workers would not perpetuate that mistake.

Next, this poor hardly-occupied library needed library outsiders – Mukesh and Aleisha – to come up with an idea to “save” it – by having a program! A program where the community gets together. That’s all well and good and they had a very nice reason for it. But come on, is the author aware that most libraries have a full schedule of programs to engage their communities? It’s not actually a novel idea.

I did think it was interesting that while they talked about a few regulars, that particular library didn’t have any patrons experiencing homelessness. Maybe that’s not a problem in England? Of course, the library in the book was much, much less frequented than the one where I work. We get more than 800 customers on a typical day. I know there are libraries that don’t get so many, but the portrayal – in a book reminding us how reading can change lives – made me wince a little bit.

I also really wondered how the books on the list were chosen. It was interesting that there was only one children’s book – Little Women – and it’s a very old children’s book, set in 1860s America. But that of course got me thinking: If I were to make a list of my favorite books, books that had power to move people deeply and affect their lives and relationships, which books would I choose?

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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