Review of Baking Cakes in Kigali, by Gaile Parkin

Cross Cultural, Fiction Review, General, Literary, Starred Review 0

Baking Cakes in Kigali

by Gaile Parkin

Atlantic Books, London, 2009. 361 pages.
Starred Review

This enjoyable yet surprisingly deep book reminded me of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. Both books are set in Africa, though this one in war-torn Rwanda instead of peaceful Botswana. But in both books, the main character’s profession lets her get to know people from a wide variety of backgrounds and help solve their problems and bring people together. Precious Ramotswe is a detective, but the protagonist of this book, Angel Tungaraza, bakes cakes.

We learn quickly that baking cakes in Kigali is a much more artistic endeavor than baking cakes in America:

“In the same way that a bucket of water reduces a cooking fire to ashes — a few splutters of shocked disbelief, a hiss of anger, and then a chill all the more penetrating for having so abruptly supplanted intense heat — in just that way, the photograph that she now surveyed extinguished all her excitement.

“‘Exactly like this?’ she asked her guest, trying to keep any hint of regret or condemnation out of her voice.

“‘Exactly like that,’ came the reply, and the damp chill of disappointment seeped into her heart….

“‘As you know, Angel,’ the ambassador’s wife was saying, ‘it’s traditional to celebrate a silver wedding anniversary with a cake just like the original wedding cake. Amos and I feel it’s so important to follow our traditions, especially when we’re away from home.’

“‘That is true, Mrs Ambassador,’ agreed Angel, who was herself away from home. But as she examined the photograph, she was doubtful of the couple’s claim to the traditions that they had embraced when choosing this cake twenty-five years ago. It was not like any traditional wedding cake she had seen in her home town of Bukoba in the west of Tanzania or in Dar es Salaam in the east. No, this cake was traditional to Wazungu, white people. It was completely white: white with white patterns decorating the white. Small white flowers with white leaves encircled the outer edges of the upper surface, and three white pillars on top of the cake held aloft another white cake that was a smaller replica of the one below. It was, quite simply, the most unattractive cake that she had ever seen. Of course, Mr and Mrs Wanyika had married at a time when the style of Wazungu was still thought to be fashionable — prestigious, even. But by now, in the year 2000, surely everybody had come to recognize that Wazungu were not the authorities on style and taste that they were once thought to be? Perhaps if she showed Mrs Wanyika the pictures of the wedding cakes that she had made for other people, she would be able to convince her of the beauty that colours could bring to a cake.”

Angel and her husband are from Tanzania. They lost both their adult children to AIDS, and now must take care of their five grandchildren.

“It’s only that we won’t be able to provide for these children as well as we did for our first children. But we must try by all means to give them a good life. That’s why we decided to leave Tanzania and come here to Rwanda. There’s aid money for the university and they’re paying Pius so much more as a Special Consultant than he was getting at the university in Dar. Okay, Rwanda has suffered a terrible thing. Terrible, Mrs Ambassador; bad, bad, bad. Many of hearts here are filled with pain. Many of the eyes here have seen terrible things. Terrible! But many of those same hearts are now brave enough to hope, and many of those same eyes have begun to look towards the future instead of the past. Life is going on, everyday. And for us the pluses of coming here are many more than the minuses. And my cake business is doing well because there are almost no shops here that sell cakes. A cake business doesn’t do well in a place where people have nothing to celebrate.”

Although Angel herself is dealing with some heavy losses, and so are the people around her, she is able to touch people’s lives — from convincing a mother to give her daughter a better name than Goodenough to providing family for a couple getting married who have lost all of their own families. This is an uplifting book and provides enjoyable and interesting reading.

One fun note: I was watching the DVD series of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which is filmed in Africa, and the first episode happened to have someone selling cakes. I noticed happily that those cakes were indeed far fancier and more colorful than cakes I’d see in America. So apparently I’ve learned something true about baking cakes in Kigali.

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Casting Spells, by Barbara Bretton

Chick Lit, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Mystery, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Casting Spells

by Barbara Bretton

Berkley Books, New York, 2008. 308 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #6 Fiction

Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m appropriately posting the review of a romance, but this one is a paranormal knitting mystery romance! The combination is delightfully original and a whole lot of fun.

Here’s how we meet Chloe Hobbs:

“By the way, I’m Chloe Hobbs, owner of Sticks & Strings, voted the number one knit shop in New England two years running. I don’t know exactly who did the voting, but I owe each of those wonderful knitters some quiviut and a margarita. Blog posts about the magical store in northern Vermont where your yarn never tangles, your sleeves always come out the same length, and you always, always get gauge were popping up on a daily basis, raising both my profile and my bottom line.”

Chloe’s store seems magical because it is. She’s the daughter of a sorceress who fell in love with a human. But her father died in a car crash when she was six years old, and her mother chose to leave this world to be with the man she loved. Chloe inherited several things from her mother including a basket of roving that remained full to overflowing no matter how many hours she spends spinning it into yarn. But she also inherited a responsibility to the town.

“Over three hundred years ago one of my sorcerer ancestors cast a protective charm over the town designed to shield Sugar Maple from harm for as long as one of her line walked the earth and — well, you guessed it. I’m the last descendant of Aerynn, and if you thought your family was on your case to marry and produce offspring, try having an entire town mixing potions, casting runes, and weaving spells designed to hook you up with Mr. Right.”

Unfortunately, the protective spell seems to be weakening. And there’s more than just protection from accidents and crime at stake. Because Sugar Maple “wasn’t the picture-postcard New England town our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe, but a village of vampires, werewolves, elves, faeries, and everything else your parents told you didn’t really exist.” However, Chloe’s mother really came into her powers when she fell in love, so maybe that’s all that Chloe needs.

But then a visiting beautiful stranger dies. The first tourist or nonvillager ever to die within town limits. Aerynn’s spell is definitely waning, because that’s not supposed to happen.

Sugar Maple doesn’t have any police force, since it doesn’t have any crime. So a policeman from Boston, who knew the deceased, goes up to the scene of the crime to investigate.

What follows is funny and quirky and full of surprises. Can the whole town hide the truth from him? And what will happen to the town if the spell fails? What will happen to Chloe?

I must admit, the romance is not exactly subtle. As Chloe begins to have magick, it basically throws her into the guy’s arms. But it is humorous to read about her trying to explain it!

This book is a light-hearted romp through a most imaginative situation. Definitely the best paranormal-romance-knitting-mystery I’ve ever read! And there are knitting tips at the back! How can you go wrong?

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Coronets and Steel, by Sherwood Smith

Adventure, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Romance, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Suspense 0

Coronets and Steel

by Sherwood Smith

DAW Books, 2010. 420 pages.
Starred Review
2010 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Fiction

I love Sherwood Smith’s books, and this was my favorite novel for adults I read in 2010. It’s got a touch of fantasy, with grad student Aurelia seeing ghosts during her European adventure, but mostly it’s swashbuckling action, intrigue, and romance in modern-day Europe, in the style of Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda.

Aurelia is in Vienna trying to track down her grandparents’ families. Her mother was only two when she and Aurelia’s grandmother left Paris during the war, and her grandmother never talks about her life before Paris. Then she starts meeting people who act like they know her. A handsome young man, who looks like Mr. Darcy, sits next to her at the opera, and the next day runs into her again.

She thinks he’s quite charming, until he drugs her drink, abducts her, and sticks her on a train.

This book has mistaken identity, family secrets, hidden treasure, and royal plots to take over a small country. It’s tremendous fun, and I was delighted to read that Sherwood Smith has planned more books in this series.

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Source: This review is based on a book I ordered from Amazon.com

Review of The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey

Audiobooks, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Daughter of Time

by Josephine Tey
Narrated by Derek Jacobi

BBC Audiobooks America, 2002. Book originally written in 1951. Complete and Unabridged. 6 compact discs, 5 hours, 19 minutes.
Starred Review

I read about this book in a list of Ten Classic Mysteries. (I think it was a posting by Booklist.) Later, it came up with my son, and he said that he had really liked it a lot. He said this rather defensively, and it turned out that it had been assigned reading in his 10th grade English class, covering World Literature. They had also studied the Shakespeare play Richard III. It turned out that not everyone in his class liked it, but the fact that Tim did was recommendation enough for me.

I listened to the audiobook version, with an absolutely brilliant narrator. (His American accent wasn’t great, but that was only one character. Everything else was superb.) The amazing thing is that in this book there is absolutely no action. The main character is lying in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling. Yet the book was so engrossing, I hated to get out of the car when I reached my destination, and kept thinking about the story all day.

Alan Grant, Scotland Yard inspector, had an accident while on duty that has put him in a hospital bed. People are bringing him annoyingly cheerful popular books to read, and he’s not interested. So when a friend, knowing his interest in faces, brings in several portraits of historical figures who have mysteries associated with them, he is intrigued in spite of himself.

The face that he can’t stop thinking about is the portrait of Richard III. Yet there was no mystery associated with him, was there? He was the embodiment of the wicked uncle — having his two nephews in the tower killed. Doesn’t everyone know that? Yet, before he knew whose face that was, why did Grant think it was the face of a judge? He usually wasn’t so far wrong about people’s faces.

Grant begins investigating — getting some books about Richard III and then some primary sources and the help of an American researcher. He draws a very different conclusion about the murderer of the princes in the tower — and builds an extremely convincing case. (Assuming that all the sources he refers to are actually as described — and I see no reason to think they wouldn’t be.)

I love it that Josephine Tey wrote this as a detective story featuring her own detective. As a book of history, it would probably get dry and boring, and I’d never pick it up — as a detective story, you share with the detective the thrill of discovering the truth. And the writing had me on the edge of my seat. It’s the sort of book, if I hadn’t been listening to it in the car, I’m sure I would have read in one sitting. Yet how she pulled that off with her detective flat in bed, is beyond me!

Absolutely brilliant!

The title is from this quotation by Francis Bacon: “Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.” There is much exploration in the book of how “history” is made.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith

Fiction Review, Light Reading, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Double Comfort Safari Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

Pantheon Books, New York, 2010. 211 pages.
Starred Review

This is now the eleventh installment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Though I think it would be an enjoyable book as a stand-alone, I still recommend that people start at the beginning, and they will be all the more touched by these developments in the lives of old friends.

In The Double Comfort Safari Club, we again have a nice tangle of cases for Mma Ramotswe, Botswana’s premiere detective, to solve. One of them necessitates that she and Mma Makutsi take a business trip to a safari camp, which is where the book gets its name. (I love the titles in this series!)
As usual, the solutions to the mysteries don’t really involve intellectual puzzles, as in traditional detective tales. These are more a chance for Mma Ramotswe and her friends to reflect on human nature and draw wise conclusions about life.

In this book, a terrible accident happens to Phuti Radiphuti, and his aunt tries to use it as an opportunity to keep him from Mma Makutsi. The reader’s heart will be touched, but be glad that she has friends like Precious Ramotswe to find a way to help in a bad situation.

As always, reading this book is like spending time with wise and kind friends. And the variety of cases keep things interesting. Always fun.

“Mma Ramotswe thought about this. Having the right approach to life was a great gift in this life. Her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had always had the right approach to life — she was sure of that. And for a moment, as she sat there with her friend, with the late-afternoon sun slanting in through the window, she thought about how she owed her father so much. He had taught her almost everything she knew about how to lead a good life, and the lessons she had learned from him were as fresh today as they had ever been. Do not complain about your life. Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself. Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.

“She closed her eyes. You can do that in the company of an old friend — you can close your eyes and think of the land that gave you life and breath, and of all the reasons why you are glad that you are there, with the people you know, with the people you love.”

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

Fiction Review, Literary, Starred Review 0

The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein

Harper, 2008. 321 pages.
Starred Review

I fully meant to read this book when it first came out, and I’m sure I had it checked out, but somehow it never made it to the top of the pile. So when the Fairfax County Public Library chose it for the 2010 All Fairfax Reads book, I decided it was high time to read it, and to make sure it was on the top of the pile, since with plenty of holds, I wouldn’t be able to renew it. I ended up reading it in two nights, and just loved it. I wish I’d read it sooner.

A friend of mine said she didn’t want to read it because she heard the dog dies in the end. That’s true, but you know that’s what he wants from the very first few pages, so it didn’t make me sad.

Here’s how Enzo, the dog telling the story, puts it, right at the beginning:

“I’m old. And while I’m very capable of getting older, that’s not the way I want to go out…. I don’t want to be kept alive. Because I know what’s next. I’ve seen it on TV. A documentary I saw about Mongolia, of all places. It was the best thing I’ve ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain. After the 1993 Grand Prix, the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV is a documentary that explained everything to me, made it all clear, told the whole truth: when a dog is finished living his lifetimes as a dog, his next incarnation will be as a man.

“I’ve always felt almost human. I’ve always known that there’s something about me that’s different than other dogs. Sure, I’m stuffed into a dog’s body, but that’s just the shell. It’s what’s inside that’s important. The soul. And my soul is very human.

“I am ready to become a man now, though I realize I will lose all that I have been. All of my memories, all of my experiences. I would like to take them with me into my next life — there is so much I have gone through with the Swift family — but I have little say in the matter. What can I do but force myself to remember?”

Enzo then tells us the story of his life with the Swift family. Denny Swift, a race car driver, particularly good at racing in the rain, picked Enzo out from a pile of puppies at a farm.

Enzo was Denny’s companion. They studied racing videos together. Enzo was there when Denny fell in love, got married, and had a daughter. Then he was there when Denny’s wife got sick. He saw all that Denny went through, and wished he could tell what he’d seen and make things right.

The story is beautifully told and so touching. Enzo loves these people and does all he can to help them through an extremely difficult time.

The unusual perspective of the dog narrator never seems like a gimmick. Instead, it’s all the more poignant because Enzo sees injustice, but suffers from the lack of a tongue made for speaking and opposable thumbs.

I got to hear Garth Stein speak at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University on September 19th. He was a very entertaining speaker, and fun to look at, too!

When he talked about how he got the idea for this book, he revealed that he actually saw a video where it explained that in Mongolia, there is a belief that dogs are on their way to reincarnating as humans. He also told about how much trouble he had getting the book published. His agent said that he couldn’t possibly sell a book narrated by a dog, so he fired his agent. But then he couldn’t find anyone who thought differently — until he met an author who had written a book narrated by a crow! That author’s agent loved the book!

And I have to admit, if you just say it’s a book narrated by a dog, it sounds like a gimmick. But this is pulled off beautifully. Garth Stein treated Enzo as a human soul with limitations — He could only speak with gestures, and he couldn’t manipulate things with his paws. But he had a great heart and saw Denny going through the fire but emerging victorious.

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, by Alan Bradley

Fiction Review, Historical, Mystery, Starred Review 0

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, New York, 2010. 364 pages.
Starred Review

Flavia de Luce, appearing in her second adventure, has got to be one of the most memorable and captivating fictional sleuths ever created. Flavia is eleven years old, living at Buckshaw, outside the village of Bishop’s Lacey, having the run of the place on her bicycle named Gladys. She lives with her distracted father, an avid stamp collector, and her two sisters, who torment and are tormented by her.

Flavia has a passion for poisons. She inherited her great uncle’s chemistry lab, and has an exhaustive knowledge of chemicals. Because she’s eleven years old, people don’t realize how much she knows and deduces.

In The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, a BBC puppeteer show has his van break down in Bishop’s Lacey. When the puppeteer is electrocuted during his performance for the village, Flavia does some digging and discovers a connection with a long-ago hanging of a little boy from the village.

The fun of this book, like the earlier The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, is the irrepressible character of Flavia. Add to that a fairly intricate and interesting mystery, with chemical details thrown in (I took Flavia’s word for the truth of those parts.), and you’ve got an enchanting book that makes for captivating reading.

“There’s something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind. When the slightest slip of the hand could prove fatal, one’s attention is forced to focus like a burning-glass upon the experiment, and it is then that the answers to half-formed questions so often come swarming to mind as readily as bees coming home to the hive.”

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley

Award Winners, Fiction Review, Mystery, Starred Review 1

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

Delacorte Press, 2009. 373 pages.
2007 Debut Dagger Award
2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel
Starred Review

This wonderfully clever and intriguing mystery published for adults stars an 11-year-old sleuth, Flavia DeLuce. It makes me wonder why the book was not published for children or teens. Though I am sure of this: Parents would not want their children emulating Flavia! Although this qualifies as a “cozy” mystery, which made it eligible for the Agatha Award it won, it is not watered-down or tame, and there’s nothing to keep adults from liking it.

Flavia is one of those brilliant children with a special passion for one subject. Her interest is in chemistry, with a particular focus on poisons. Flavia and her two older sisters have a turbulent relationship — the book begins with Flavia escaping from being tied up in a closet, and we learn that it was her sisters who put her there. Her reprisal is quite brilliant, but not very nice.

The mystery begins when a dead bird appears on their doorstep at Buckshaw with a postage stamp impaled on its beak. Then later, she hears her father arguing with someone, talking about a death, and what sounds like blackmail from the other person. She’s pulled away from listening at the keyhole, but that night she gets up in the early hours of the morning, notices a piece of Mrs. Mullet’s awful custard pie missing, and goes out into the garden.

There she finds a stranger lying in the cucumber patch. He says something mysterious and promptly dies. Flavia reflects:

“I wish I could say my heart was stricken, but it wasn’t. I wish I could say my instinct was to run away, but that would not be true. Instead, I watched in awe, savoring every detail: the fluttering fingers, the almost imperceptible bronze metallic cloudiness that appeared on the skin, as if, before my very eyes, it were being breathed upon by death.

“And then the utter stillness.

“I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”

That all happens in the first two chapters. When, before long, Flavia’s father is taken into custody for the murder, Flavia decides to confess herself. For some reason, the authorities don’t take her seriously. So she feels compelled to find out more about the man who died in their garden, his history with her father, and the death of a teacher so many years ago.

Armed with her bike, which she’s named Gladys, Flavia is a resourceful and persistent sleuth. Definitely not an obedient and retiring young lady. Definitely not someone I’d want as my younger sister.

The “About the Author” section at the end of the book says that this is the first of a planned series about Flavia DeLuce. Hooray! If he can keep later books half as inventive and keep Flavia’s spark of mischief a fraction as fiery, that series will be one I’ll snap up just as soon as each volume is published. I can’t wait for more!

Hooray! As soon as I wrote that, I checked Amazon, and the next book is already out! — The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. I think I’ll be making a purchase….

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of The Boy Next Door, by Meg Cabot

Chick Lit, Fiction Review, Light Reading, Romance 0

The Boy Next Door

by Meg Cabot

Avon Books (HarperCollins), 2002. 379 pages.

I’m a little embarrassed that when I was shelving books in the Romance section, I actually picked one up, checked it out, read it in one sitting, and thoroughly enjoyed it. To be fair, at least it doesn’t have a picture of anyone’s bare chest on the cover. I was in the mood for something light and fluffy and fun after reading some heavier books, and light and fluffy and fun was exactly what I got.

The story is told through e-mails, and that’s actually carried off well. Fortunately, they don’t use the annoying text message shorthand and it comes out as a fun and believable way people would talk about the madcap adventures of a slightly ditzy but good-hearted co-worker like Mel.

We first meet Mel Fuller in a series of e-mails from her co-workers wondering why she is so late to work. Especially amusing is the one from Human Resources urging counseling if she has serious personal problems causing her excessive tardiness.

It turns out that Mel was late because she found her elderly neighbor had been attacked in her apartment. So she didn’t think to call her employer. In fact, she took care of feeding her neighbor’s cats and walking her Great Dane before she came to work. Isn’t that what anyone would do?

So begins some time where caring and thoughtful Mel takes care of the enormous dog Paco while Mrs. Friedlander is in a coma. Her work does not appreciate her continued tardiness. When Mel finally manages to track down Mrs. Friedlander’s nephew, a notorious womanizer, photographer Max Friedlander, and sends him an e-mail, he’s off at an island with a celebrity model, and doesn’t want to be bothered by a little thing like his aunt’s attack. But neither does he want his aunt to cut him out of her will.

So Max e-mails an old college friend, John Trent, calls in an old favor, and asks John to go to his aunt’s apartment, pretending to be Max Friedlander. John can take care of the dog until Mrs. Friedlander gets out of the coma, and Max’s aunt will never know that her nephew couldn’t be bothered to come to her bedside.

It all might have gone well, if Mel hadn’t found “Max Friedlander” so different from what his reputation suggested. And if John hadn’t had a thing for redheads, combined with never before having known a girl who wasn’t more interested in his money than in him. But you know there’s going to be trouble with a relationship that began with lies.

Reading the flirting, the gossipy e-mails, and the funny misunderstandings is a lot of fun if you’re in the mood for fluff, and this book hit me right when that’s exactly the mood I was in. There are a couple of sex scenes, but they are also kept pretty light, and at least it doesn’t have a steamy cover! There’s even a mystery along the way: Who attacked old Mrs. Friedlander? Is their apartment building safe?

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/boy_next_door.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.

Review of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson

Fiction Review, General, Literary, Romance, Starred Review 0

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

by Helen Simonson

Random House, New York, 2010. 358 pages.
Starred Review

Here’s a gentle love story, which reminded me of Alexander McCall Smith’s books like La’s Orchestra Saves the World, or maybe The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Though the story is completely different, the tone is similar, with nice, calm people going about their everyday lives while confronted with problems, and quietly falling in love along the way.

The book opens on the morning when the retired Major Pettigrew has learned that his younger brother is dead:

“Major Pettigrew was still upset about the phone call from his brother’s wife and so he answered the doorbell without thinking. On the damp bricks of the path stood Mrs. Ali from the village shop. She gave only the faintest of starts, the merest arch of an eyebrow. A quick rush of embarrassment flooded to the Major’s cheeks and he smoothed helplessly at the lap of his crimson, clematis-covered housecoat with hands that felt like spades.”

Major Pettigrew’s wife died only six years before, and Mrs. Ali’s husband died the previous year, so they understand each other’s grief and little rituals, like occasionally wearing his wife’s favorite housecoat. They gradually discover they have some other interests in common, including a shared love of books.

Mrs. Ali’s Pakistani family does not approve that her husband left the shop to her and that she is continuing to run it. They are pressuring her to live with her husband’s family now that he is gone.

Meanwhile, Major Pettigrew goes to his brother’s funeral. He is appalled when he learns that his brother did not leave him the second of his father’s fine guns, a gift from an Indian maharajah. Their father had given them each one gun to remember him by, asking that the pair be reunited eventually to pass on further in the family. Major Pettigrew left explicit directions in his will to leave his gun to his brother, if he died first, but it appears that his brother did not return the favor. And his brother’s wife, their daughter, and even the Major’s own son all want him to sell the pair, more valuable together, and they each have plans for what to do with the money.

There was a point toward the beginning of this book when I got annoyed by how no one in Major Pettigrew’s life was very nice at all, except Mrs. Ali. His son is a social climber with a new American fiance, and he seems to think his father is there to fulfill his whims. The local village ladies have their own ideas on who the major should marry. They are planning an elaborate party at his club and rope him in to getting involved, while coming across as interfering busybodies.

But the people did grow on me. Major Pettigrew moves through the uproar of circumstances with dignity and humor. I began to see even glimmers of humanity in his ungrateful son.

Of course, the ladies of the village really get upset when they begin to realize how Major Pettigrew’s feelings for Mrs. Ali are blossoming. And her own family keeps pressuring her to leave the village. Can Major Pettigrew go against generations of tradition and find love with a Pakistani woman who is actually (shudder) in trade?

Here is an exchange I enjoyed between the Major and Mrs. Ali’s nephew about the nephew’s love life:

“I’m only joking,” said Abdul Wahid. “You are a wise man, Major, and I will consider your advice with great care — and humility.” He finished his tea and rose from the table to go to his room. “But I must ask you, do you really understand what it means to be in love with an unsuitable woman?”

“My dear boy,” said the Major. “Is there really any other kind?”

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Source: This review is based on a library book from the Fairfax County Public Library.