The Witches by Brenda Lozano - #BookReview

 

It was six at night when Guadalupe came to tell me they had killed Paloma. I don't remember times or dates, I don't know when I was born because I was born like the mountain was, go ask the mountain when it was born, but I know it was six at night when Guadalupe came to say they killed Paloma as she was getting ready to go out, it was six at night when I saw her there in her room, when I saw her body on the floor and the shine for her eyes on her fingers and I saw her hands they were two in the mirror and the shine was on both like she had just put it on her eyes, like she could get up to put some on mine.

***

This is the story of who Feliciana is, and of who Paloma was.

I had wanted to get to know them, but I realised right away that the people I needed to know better were my sister Leandra and my mother. Myself. I came to understand that you can't really know another woman until you know yourself...

Weaving together two parallel narratives, Witches tells the story of Feliciana, an indigenous curandera or healer, and Zoe, a journalist: two women who meet through the murder of Feliciana's cousin Paloma.

In the tiny village of San Felipe in Jalisco province, where traditional ways and traditional beliefs are a present reality, Feliciana tells the story of her life, her community's acceptance of her as a genuine curandera and the difficult choices faced by her joyful and spirited cousin Paloma who is both a healer and a Muxe - a trans woman.

Growing up in Mexico City, Zoe attempts to find her way in a society straitjacketed by its hostile macho culture. But it is Feliciana's and Paloma's stories that draw her own story out of her, taking her on a journey to understanding her place in the world and the power of her voice.

This captivating novel of two Mexicos envisions the writer as a healer and offers a generous and distinctly female way of understanding the complex world we all inhabit.

***

This is a very special book. It was a captivating novel to read, illustrating the complexity of the world in which women live.

It is a dual narrative, alternating between the voices of Feliciana and Zoe. The voices are distinct and the narrative moves seamlessly between the two characters.

Set in a small Mexican village, where being a healer is passed down through the male line, Feliciana learns her art from her cousin, Paloma, who was born a male but becomes a female. The author skilfully tackles the blurring of the genders, presenting the male character of Gasper, who later becomes the female Paloma.

It is not a spoiler to tell you that Paloma is murdered, and this is what brings Zoe, a journalist, to Feliciana's door, to investigate and report on the murder. However, meeting Feliciana leads Zoe to consider her own life and her relationship with her sister.

Overall, the book is about the relationships that women have with one another; Feliciana and Paloma, and also Zoe and her sister, Leandra.

Translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary, the book is original and like no other that I can recall reading. I adored the lyricism of the prose and recommend this unusual novel.

ISBN: 978 1529412277

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Format: Hardback and e-book

No. of pages: 272 (hardback)

About the Author:

Brenda Lozano is a fiction writer, essayist and editor. Born in Mexico City, she studied literature in Mexico and the United States. She has participated in literary residencies in the US, Europe and Latin America, and her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Mexico20 and Bogotá39. She edits the literary journal Make in Chicago and is part of Ugly Duckling Presse in New York. She is the author of two earlier novels, Todo nada (2009), which is currently being adapted for the screen, and Cuaderno Ideal (2015), recently published by Charco Press in an English translation by Annie McDermott as Loop, and a book of short stories, Cómo piensan las piedras (2017). In 2015, she was recognised by Conaculta, the Hay Festival and the British Council as one of the most important authors under forty years of age from Mexico, and in 2017 she was selected by the Hay Festival for Bogotá 39, a list of the most outstanding new authors from Latin America. She currently lives in Mexico City.

(author bio & photo courtesy of Hachette Publishing)

(ARC courtesy of the publisher)

The Village Feasts by Izzy Abrahmson - #BookReview

 

Welcome to Chelm! Welcome to the village of fools. Eighty households and farms, a few dirt roads, more chickens than people, and a wealth of love, lore, misadventures and often silliness.

You may wonder, where exactly is Chelm? It's not that no one knows, it's just hard to explain. On the edge of the Black Forest, somewhere between Russia and Poland, and occasionally Germany. If you travel through Smyrna chances are good you'll get lost, and maybe end up in the village of Chelm.

There, you will rub elbows with Reb Stein the baker, the Gold family, Doodle the orphan, Rabbi Kibbitz and Mrs. Chaipul, and of course, the Schlemiels...

***

Ten tasty Passover tales adults and children of all ages will enjoy again and again. Delightful and amusing. Who’s knocking at the door? What is cabbage matzah? Where was Rabbi Kibbitz? Why are they always arguing? When will we eat? And how will Mrs. Chaipul save The Village?

***

In this lighthearted and humorous selection of stories lies some real gems of Jewish folklore. They are all based around the Passover festival and would be wonderful and timely to share during the week of pesach.

My favourite story of the ten was Chiri Bim / Chiri Bom. I laughed all the way through this particular story, and I think both adults and children alike would enjoy it. 

The remaining nine stories are similarly laced with cultural humour with multiple references to food, language and tradition. There is a useful glossary at the back of the book for readers who are unfamiliar with some of the terminology surrounding the festival.

Although the stories are based around the Jewish festival of Passover, these stories would appeal to everyone for their funny fairy tale quality.

ISBN: 978 1940060453

Publisher: Light Publications

Format: paperback and e-book

No. of pages: 104 (paperback)

(book courtesy of NetGalley)

About the Author:

Izzy Abrahmson is an old soul with modern sensibilities. His stories of The Village Life have been published in books, newspapers and magazines around the world.

Although shy by nature, Izzy loves to tell stories and play improvised klezmer harmonica.

His performances of tales  have been enjoyed by adults, children and families of all ages at festivals and celebrations in the United States, Ireland, England, The Netherlands, Austria and France. 

Izzy Abrahmson is also a pen name for author and storyteller Mark Binder, who  lives in Providence and tours the world… virtually and in-person.

(photo and bio info from the author's website?)

Research by Philip Kerr - #TuesdayTeaser

Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at a book that has caught my eye.

This week we are looking at Research by Philip Kerr.

Philip is a renowned author, having published 14 books in his Bernie Gunther series, and three titles in his Scot Manson series. Research is a stand alone novel which I am looking forward to reading.

He has also published a series of children's novels, The Children of the Lamp, under the name P.B. Kerr.

Sadly, Philip passed away in 2018 at the age of 62, leaving a considerable body of work. He is a real loss to literature.

The Blurb

If you want to write a murder mystery, you have to do some research... or pay someone else to do it for you.

In a luxury flat in Monaco, John Houston's supermodel wife lies in bed, a bullet in her skull.

Houston is the world's most successful thriller writer, the playboy head of a literary empire that produces far more books than he could ever actually write. Now the man who has invented hundreds of bestselling killings is wanted for a real murder and on the run from the police, his life transformed into something out of one of his books.

And in London, the ghostwriter who is really behind those books has some questions for him too...

In the Beginning...

Part One - Don Irvine's Story

It was the American novelist William Faulkner who once said that in writing you must kill all your darlings; it was Mike Munns - another writer but, like me, not half as good as Faulkner - who made a joke out of this quote when he telephoned my flat in Putney early that Tuesday morning.

"It's me, Mike. I've heard of kill your darlings but this is ridiculous."

"Mike. What the hell? It's not even eight o'clock."

"Don, listen, switch on Sky News and then call me at home. John's only gone and killed Orla. Not to mention both of her pet dogs."

I don't watch much television any more than I read much Faulkner but I got out of bed and went into the kitchen, made a pot of tea, switched on the telly, and after a few seconds was reading a rolling strip of news across the bottom of the screen: 

BESTSELLING NOVELIST JOHN HOUSTON'S WIFE FOUND MURDERED AT THEIR LUXURY APARTMENT IN MONACO. 

About ten minutes later the twinkly-eyed Irish news anchor was announcing the bare facts of the story before asking a local reporter positioned outside the distinctive glass fan entrance way to the Tour Odeon, "What more can you tell us about this, Riva?"

Riva, a fit-looking blonde wearing a black pencil skirt and a beige pussy-cat-bow blouse, explained what was known...

Well, that was an exciting beginning. Has it made you want to read on?

A Train to Moscow by Elena Gorokhova - #BookReview

 

She immediately knows something is wrong. The door to Marik's house is ajar, and there is a black car blocking the street just a few meters away. Not really a car - there aren't many cars in Ivanovo. It looks more like a wagon that plucks drunks off the sidewalks on holidays and deposits them at the sobering station in the towns centre.

Who is this wagon waiting for? Not for her friend Marik, for sure. Marik is seven, like Sasha, and no driver would waste time plowing through snow all the way to the edge of Ivanovo to stand by while a first grader pulls on his itchy uniform and tosses his books into a schoolbag.

***

In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.

In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.

Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

***

This is Ms Korokhova's first foray into fiction and she has made a excellent job of it. She has previously written two non-fiction books, A Mountain of Crumbs and Russian Tattoo, about her own life in Russia.

The main character, Sasha, leaves her village which is still reeling from it's past, to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. This is in opposition to the opinion of her mother and grandfather, who expect her to pursue a more useful role in Soviet society. 

However, what the author skilfully does, through Sasha's rebellion, is to use theatre as a metaphor for that which was happening in post war Russia. It was an interesting book to read during the current situation involving Russia and Ukraine. I am not making any political point here as I do not think this is the place for it, but it was interesting to see how Russia was reacting during it's post war period.

What the reader quickly realises is that Sasha is not only leaving behind her family and village, but family secrets that neither she, nor the reader can fathom at this point. She takes with her diaries which were written by her uncle who went missing during the war. The diaries were subsequently hidden away until being discovered by Sasha. We can read the diary entries alongside Sasha, and understand what life was like during Stalin's regime. 

This book has been intelligently created by an author who is insightful and astute. I think it will appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction. I would love to hear you thoughts on this book.

ISBN: 978 1542033879

Publisher: Lake Union

Formats: Hardback, audio and e-book

No. of Pages: 316 (hardback)

About the Author:

Elena Gorokhova grew up in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in a courtyard that became a more accurate emblem for the Soviet life than the ubiquitous hammer and sickle: a crumbling façade with locked doors and stinking garbage bins behind them.  Like everyone else, when she was nine, Elena joined the Young Pioneers and had a red kerchief tied around her neck.  A tiny cell in the body of a Leningrad school collective, she promised to live, study, and work as the great Lenin bequeathed every citizen to do.

But she harboured a passion that grew into an un-Soviet failing: at age ten she was seduced by the beauty of the English language and spent the next eight years deciphering its secrets at Leningrad English school # 238, to her mother’s bewilderment.  Her mother – born three years before the Soviet state – became a mirror image of her Motherland: overbearing, protective, difficult to leave.  A front-line surgeon during WWII, she wanted her daughter to be a doctor and a builder of communism, but Elena, in her mother’s words, was “stubborn as a goat.”  What followed was the English Department of Leningrad University, a marriage to a visiting American student, and a scandal, both public and private.  After six months of official hurdles and family turmoil, Elena left for America, a ravaged suitcase on the KGB inspector’s table with twenty kilograms of what used to be her life.  What followed was unknown, and frightening, and filled with mystery.

In the United States, Elena received  a Doctorate in Language Education and has taught English as a Second Language, Linguistics and Russian at various colleges and universities. She has also written three books. She is married and has a daughter, who is beautiful, talented and smart. And stubborn as a goat.

(photo courtesy of Goodreads/bio info courtesy of the authors website/ARC courtesy of NetGalley)

Faithful by Alice Hoffman - #BookReview

 

In February when the snow comes down hard, little globes of light are left along route 110, on the side of the road that slopes off when a driver least expects it. The lights are candles set inside paper bags, surrounded by sand, and they burn past midnight. They shouldn't last for that amount of time, but that's part of the miracle. On the second anniversary of the accident, a gang of boys creep out their windows and gather at two in the morning to see if Helen's mother, Diana Boyd, drives along the road replacing each melting pool of wax with a fresh candle. They're hoping to reveal a con in process and dispel the myth of a miracle, but after keeping watch for a while the boys all flee. In the early morning hours, safe in their beds, they wonder how much of the world can never be understood or explained.

***

Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl growing up on Long Island until one night a terrible road accident brings her life to a halt. While her best friend Helene suffers life-changing injuries, Shelby becomes overwhelmed with guilt and is suddenly unable to see the possibility of a future she’d once taken for granted.

But as time passes, and Helene becomes an almost otherworldly figure within the town, seen by its inhabitants as a source of healing, Shelby finds herself attended to by her own guardian angel. A mysterious figure she half-glimpsed the night of the car crash, he now sends Shelby brief but beautiful messages imploring her to take charge of her life once more . . .

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When you lose all hope and sense of worth? Shelby, a fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookshops, and men she should stay away from, captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding oneself at last. From the bestselling author of The Dovekeepers comes this spellbinding, poignant and life-affirming story of one woman’s journey towards happiness – and the power of love, family and fate.

***

It is not often I award a book with a five star review on my Good Reads page, and this is the first time I have done so this year. It wholeheartedly deserved it and is the best book that I have read in quite a while, and it earned it's five bright and shiny stars.

The main character, Shelby, is a multi-faceted and complex figure. We glimpse her life through flashbacks to a time when she had her whole life ahead of her before the car accident. Survival came at a huge cost for her and she sets out on a journey of self destruction and punishment. Never have I so empathised with a character and felt her pain. I rooted her on from the very beginning and it was sometimes difficult to witness her pain.

My heart went out not only to Shelby but to her mother also. I can only imagine what it must have been like to watch your child on the journey of self-destruction that Shelby was on. It demonstrates the authors skill in that she is able to elicit such a response from her reader regarding a minor character.

I sincerely hope that I have not made this sound a dark and depressing book because it is so much more. Whilst it does deal with the topics of grief and self-loathing, it is ultimately a story of hope, love and self-acceptance.

I borrowed this book from the library but I think I will be purchasing a copy. I am certain that I will want to re-read this at some point. Not only to re-visit Shelby's story but to be enveloped within the great storytelling skill that Ms Hoffman has in abundance.

About the Author:

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including Magic Lessons: The Prequel to Practical Magic, The World That We Knew, The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Book of Magic, The Red Garden, the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. 

She was born in New York City on March 16, 1952, and grew up on Long Island. She now lives near Boston.

(author photo and bio info from the author's own website:  https://alicehoffman.com/about/)

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay - #BookReview

 

In 2010, after six years of training and a further six years on the wards, I resigned from my job as a junior doctor. My parents still haven't forgiven me.

Last year, the General Medical Council wrote to me to say they were taking my name off the medical register. It wasn't exactly a huge shock, as I hadn't practised medicine in half a decade, but I found it a big deal on an emotional level to permanently close this chapter of my life.

It was, however, excellent news for my spare room, as I cleared out box after box of old paperwork, shredding files faster than Jimmy Carr's accountant.

***

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward.

***

I am a bit late to the party with this book as it was published in 2017. However, whilst recently watching the television adaptation with my husband, he mentioned that he did not remember the book being as depressing as it was being depicted. So, having rummaged through his book shelves (he has no alphabetical or other organisational system to his shelves tut, tut) I successfully retrieved his copy and set about reading it.

He was correct. The book is written with more humour, whilst at the same time portraying difficult situations, attributing many of the problems with the NHS to management and senior levels. It is clear that the author understood that the shortcomings do not lie with the nurses and doctors, who work extremely hard, but with the management who are focused on targets and statistics.

In contrast to the television series, the book portrays Kay's years of practising medicine across several different hospitals. Consequently, he met a number of medical staff during this time. The series placed him in one hospital, and I suspect the cast members were a composite of different medical practitioners he encountered across his years in medicine.

I am glad that I read the book which was published prior to the covid pandemic when, as a nation, we witnessed how dedicated NHS staff really are. Kay is a considerable loss to medicine.

ISBN: 978 1509858637

Publisher: Picador

Formats: paperback, e-book and audio

No. of Pages: 304

About the Author:

Adam Kay is an award-winning comedian and writer. He previously worked for many years as a junior doctor. His first book, This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, was a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year and has sold over two million copies. It has been translated into 37 languages and is winner of four National Book Awards, including Book of the Year, and is now a major new comedy drama for the BBC.

His second book, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, was an instant Sunday Times number one bestseller and sold over 500,000 copies in its first few weeks.

Dear NHS, edited by Adam Kay, was an instant Sunday Times number one with all profits donated to charity. His first children's book, Kay's Anatomy, was released in October 2020. 

(author photo & bio info courtesy of Good Reads)

Books to Read in April 2022

 

In my humble opinion, there is no season nicer than the spring, which has truly sprung here in my little corner of the UK. The birds are singing joyfully, there is the distant (and not so distant) hum of lawn mowers and the banks of daffodils are at the peak of their yellowy glory.

For me, spring is a time for looking forward and not back, and perhaps we can look hopefully towards our gardens, parks and open spaces to soak up a little of the spring sunshine.

I am looking forward to perhaps venturing out with a book or two and here are some of the books that I would like to read in April.

The Drinker by Hans Fallada

Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century by Ramona Wray

What Eden Did Next by Sheila O'Flanagan

The Midnight House by Amanda Geard

Witches by Brenda Lozano

The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Last Reunion by Katye Nunn

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

(header photo courtesy of Daniela Curly/Unsplash)