Book Review: Dickinson In Her Own Time

Product DetailsDickinson in Her Own Times provides a fascinating, unique perspective into the life and work of Emily Dickinson. This book is a compilation of personal letters, interviews, and memoirs by those who knew Dickinson and her work including her family, friends and acquaintances, and her reviewers. These sources provide an almost eyewitness account of the transformation of Dickinson as the brilliant eccentric who broke poetic convention to her status as an almost mythic, literary legend. Beautifully organized, this book begins with documents elucidating Dickinson’s life from girlhood.

On arriving at her death notices, the book turns to the documents addressing her poems published posthumously, as they take on a life of their own. Finally, the volume concludes with the centennial celebration of Dickinson’s birth.

For those truly interested in the study of Emily Dickinson’s life and work, this volume is not to be missed. However, even those who are not passionate about Dickinson’s work may find value here because this book bears witness to the world’s treatment of genius and contains lessons for those who would break with convention and pursue creativity.

(Reviewed in exchange for copy of book in Manhattan Book Review.)

Book Review: Boar Island: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries)

Product DetailsWhen the young daughter of Anna Pigeon’s friend, Heath, becomes the target of a vicious cyber stalker bent on destroying the young girl’s life, all three escape to Boar Island off of the Maine coast, where Anna fills in for an absent chief park ranger. Not long after they arrive, however, they realize the stalker has followed them. At the same time, Anna accidentally becomes the target of an exceedingly disturbed ranger named Denise, who murders the abusive husband of her newly discovered twin.

Boar Island is exactly the kind of mystery readers have come to expect from Nevada Barr. The protagonists are fierce women who do not take anything lying down. Heath, in particular, has a biting sense of humor that is a delight to read. The antagonists are deeply twisted. Furthermore, Barr uses a rotating point of view to let her readers fully understand her major characters. Finally, she knows how to pace a story to build the greatest amount of tension possible. For those new to this series and for veteran fans, Boar Island will not disappoint.

(Reviewed in exchange for copy of book in Manhattan Book Review.)

Book Review: The Summer Guest

Product DetailsThe Summer Guest is a beautiful novel which interweaves the stories of three women. In the summer of 1888, Zinaida Lintvaryova, a young doctor recently blinded by a terminal illness, begins a journal which records her new friendship with a summer guest on her family’s property in the Ukraine–Anton Chekhov. In London in 2014, Katya, a young Russian immigrant, places great hope in the publication of Zinaida’s journal as she struggles with mysterious marital difficulties and the impending failure of her publishing business. Finally a translator in a small French village becomes enthralled by the possibility of an undiscovered novel by Chekhov that she might translate.

This novel has been termed “evocative” and “atmospheric,” and it is difficult to find better words to describe it. In particular, Zinaida and Anton’s discussions about life, death, immortality and art haunt the reader. Furthermore, Alison Anderson masterfully closes the novel by tying the three story lines together with a delightfully unexpected twist. Finally, it may further intrigue readers to know that Anderson based the Lintvaryovas and the Chekhovs on historical people, further blurring the line between reality and fiction. The Summer Guest is a delightful novel to savor this summer.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of book in San Francisco Book Review.)

The Book Review: The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life

Product Details

In The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Daily Life, Brother David Steindl-Rast has written a manual for living a meaningful, contemplative life outside of a religious community. Given Steindl-Rast’s age and his reliance on his earlier works, the reader may suspect that this book is a culmination of a lifetime wisdom derived from study and practice. In any case, this small tome contains a powerful message that looks beyond the surface of the major spiritual traditions and even organized religion as a whole to find eternal truths that resonant deeply with the reader. Covering such immense topics as finding God through the senses, cultivating grateful joy, and our quest for ultimate meaning, this is not a book that is readily summarized. Instead, for those seeking answers and possibly solace, this is a book to be read, pondered, and annotated over and over again. While those who align themselves with a particular tradition will have no issue with this book, those who seek a way to live in and find meaning in this world outside of an organized religion may have found all the answers they seek.

(Reviewed in exchange for copy of book for San Francisco Book Review.)

Book Review: Devil’s Paintbrush

Product DetailsDesiree Alvarez is a poet who imbues reality with the mythic and mystical to create striking imagery. Alvarez, who created the cover art for Devil’s Paintbrush with a flamethrower, is also an artist, which may partly explain her strong visual images. For example in Yours, In Snow, she writes, “Your eyes, smoked blue, are full of mountains / and something beyond that keep me.” In Chorus of Snow Quartz, “Lichen glows as if a place could be a lover.” In Indian Elephant, the speaker slips out at night to “watch the pearls of gulls string the abandoned pier.” In Familiar where the speaker mourns her dog, “the wind blew a hole right through me in the shape of a dog running on my first night without you.” Given the beauty of her words, it comes as no surprise that Alvarez has won numerous awards, fellowships and residences, including the 2015 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for Devil’s Paintbrush. For those who seek a haunting line, Devil’s Paintbrush provides ample material to savor.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of the book for .)

Book Review: Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart

Charlotte Brontë by Claire HarmanIn Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart, Claire Harman tackles the life of one of the most famous women writers in British history. In just under four-hundred pages, Harman relates Bronte’s life from birth until her untimely death from what Harman believes was hyperemesis gravidarum resulting from a pregnancy during her brief, but happy marriage to Arthur Nicholls. Along the way, Harman details Bronte’s isolated childhood, her difficult years as a teacher and governess, her yearning to return to her family, her unrequited passion for two men, her and her sisters’ struggles to become published, the death of her siblings, and the celebrity her work eventually engendered. Through this biography, Harman establishes Bronte as a surprisingly strong, at times difficult, but passionate woman who relied deeply on her own experiences to create her work. As a result of Bronte’s close ties to her sisters, Harman also provides interesting insights into Emily and Anne Bronte’s lives. For those intrigued by the woman behind Jane Eyre and Villette, this meticulously researched and detailed biography is sure to please.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of book in San Francisco Book Review.)

Book Review: Death of an Alchemist

Product DetailsIn Death of an Alchemist, an old man—with a macaw and a cat as his only companions—is on the verge of publishing a recipe for immortality when he suddenly dies in his sleep. Given the year is 1543, fast-acting pestilence of many types abounds. Nevertheless, Bianca Goddard, daughter of an alchemist and maker of medicines, suspects he was murdered. Was it the physician whose daughter is gravely ill, the fellow alchemist, the usurer owed money, or the alchemist’s rogue son-in-law? As people begin dropping like flies, can Goddard, with the help of her old friend Meddybemps, solve the mystery? Can she understand the recipe in time to save her own husband imperiled by the sweat?

This is not a mystery for those seeking strict historical accuracy, as Lawrence states at the end of this book. Indeed, the author created an aspect of the mystery’s solution, making it difficult for the reader to puzzle out the solution before the ending. If, however, the reader is willing to suspend disbelief, Death of an Alchemist is an entertaining, Renaissance mystery with a strong, female protagonist.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of book in Manhattan Book Review.)

Book Review: The Restoration of Otto Laird

Product DetailsThis novel is the story of Otto Laird, an elderly, physically- and mentally-failing architect who returns after a long absence to London to save one of his buildings marked for demolition. The once brilliant, now dilapidated building mirrors Laird’s own life. As a crew films Laird returning to and living in the building for several days, Laird reviews his life: his childhood hidden in a cellar during World War II, his early joy in meeting his first wife as a student in London and designing the building in question, their later troubled marriage and his troubled fatherhood as his career soared, his reconciliation with his wife, and finally his devastation by her death.

The Restoration of Otto Laird can best be described as compelling. The reader must keep reading to discover what happened in Otto’s life to cause his presently fractured state and to discover if he will live long enough to mend those fractures and save his building. The extended metaphor of the building fits beautifully in this psychologically complex, wonderfully written story. Truly, Nigel Packer has written a novel that should not be missed.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of the book in Manhattan Book Review.)

Book Review: In Other Words

Product DetailsIn Other Words is the story of Jhumpa Lahiri’s passion to learn Italian. On one level, this book addresses the mundane: Lahiri’s experience with tutors, living in Italy, writing in Italian, and grappling with the intricacies and nuances of a different language. Lahiri, however, plumbs the depths of these experiences to reveal deeper insights. For example, Lahiri writes of her alienation from both the language of her birth, Bengali, and her first adopted language, English, and the independence she finds in choosing her third language. She discusses the different assumptions she cannot escape as a Bengali-American when she speaks Bengali, English and Italian. Lahiri describes both the constriction and freedom she feels as a writer in struggling to write in Italian. Most interestingly, Lahiri wrote In Other Words in Italian but refused to translate it to English to protect her limited Italian and to prevent Lahiri from changing her work in her stronger language.

Lahiri, who has won numerous prestigious literary awards, has written a thoughtful book that provides the reader with new and surprising insights that transcend the mechanics of learning a foreign syntax.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of book in Manhattan Book Review.)

Book Review: The Sunlit Night

Product DetailsIn The Sunlit Night, two lost souls meet by chance ninety-five miles north of the Arctic Circle on an archipelago of tiny islands in the Norwegian Sea. Twenty-one-year-old Frances has come to intern with an artist who is painting a barn in shades of yellow. Just before she arrives, Frances broke up with her boyfriend, who bluntly informed her that what she does doesn’t help anyone, and discovered her family is on the verge of disintegrating. Seventeen-year-old Yasha arrives to carry out his father’s unusual final wishes, while his long-absent mother makes a sudden reappearance in his life.

In this rather surreal environment of endless light and foreign culture, Frances and Yasha piece their lives together as they fumble toward unexpected love and an ability to accept and let go of the past. A poet, Dinerstein’s words and images are fresh, evocative, and, at times, thoroughly humorous. (It is almost impossible to forget Yasha’s mother moving through scenes, dressed as a Valkyrie, complete with huge wings). Dinerstein’s well-chosen literary allusions further deepen the reader’s enjoyment. In sum, The Sunlit Night is a well-written, original novel that is a pleasure to read.

(Reviewed in exchange for a copy of the book for San Francisco Book Review.)