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Friday Book Whimsy: White Collar Girl

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I graduated from Journalism School in 1977 and immediately got a job as a reporter on a small-town newspaper. Even in 1977, journalism was largely a man’s world. Though my editor was a woman, she was likely editor because her father owned the newspaper. She and I were the only two women in the entire organization.

Given all of this, I was interested in reading White Collar Girl, a novel by Renee Rosen. Rosen is the author of three other books, all of which take place in Chicago, as did White Collar Girl. This novel takes on the world of journalism in the 1950s, when being a woman reporter was nearly unheard of except for the society pages.

The novel’s protagonist, Jordan Walsh, is the child of two reporters-cum-authors, both of whom were quite successful in their own right back in the day. Jordan’s brother had also been a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, but died mysteriously in a hit-and-run accident that didn’t seem to be very well-investigated by the Chicago Police Department. The Walsh family has never quite come to grips with his death.

So Jordan is proud and pleased to be offered a job with the Chicago Tribune, thinking this, finally, would bring her family out of their depression. She is ambitious, and while she is hired to work on the so-called women’s pages, she is optimistic that she will be able to become an ace general news reporter through hard work and great writing.

Things aren’t going along very well until Jordan finds a confidential source who is feeding her such good information that she finally captures the attention of the editors. Through grit and tenacity, she begins to build her own success. However, the source quickly helps her realize that her brother’s death was certainly no accident, and she might be next.

I wanted to like this book. I mean, look at the cover. It’s beautiful. I loved the period feel to the novel. I think the author totally captured the way life was in the 1950s, particularly for women. I loved her descriptions of the clothes and the city and the cars and the attitudes and the frustrations Jordan met along the way.

I just didn’t love the book. I can’t say it was awful, mostly for the reasons stated above. But the writing was so slow. It seemed as though I would read and read and read and only get through a few pages. The mystery of her brother’s death was fairly predictable, and the ending was abrupt and weird, almost like the author got just as tired of writing the book as I did reading it and just wrapped it up quickly.

Much as I would like, I simply can’t overwhelmingly recommend this novel.

Here is a link to the book.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Tumbling Turner Sisters

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searchHow can you not want to read a book with a title like The Tumbling Turner Sisters? I fully admit that I was drawn to Juliette Fay’s historical novel simply by its title, alliteration included. The book didn’t disappoint. It was a sweet story from beginning to end.

I know little about vaudeville, and frankly, never really considered it at all. After reading this book, however, I know a bit more and found that I learned about history and how people lived during vaudeville’s heyday via the novel.

The story, which commences in 1919, begins when Mr. Turner gets in a bar fight and loses the use of his hand, and therefore, his job. The family was going to be destitute until Mrs. Turner decides that vaudeville would be the perfect way to bring in income and make her life more interesting to boot. At her urging, her four daughters – three teenagers and her eldest whose husband dies of Spanish flu on his way home from serving in World War I — begin teaching themselves to become acrobats – tumblers, really. Once they have trained themselves sufficiently, they find a manager and begin to tour in the vaudeville circuit, primarily in the New York area.

The story is told in two voices – Gert’s and Winnie’s, two of the teenagers. Gert is independent and restless, happy to be an entertainer. Winnie tumbles because it’s what she must do for the family, but would rather have stayed in high school and then attended college. What I really liked about the author is that even if the reader didn’t know who was narrating by the chapter title, we would be able to tell. The voices are that unique.

The story is sweet and entertaining. Fictional characters mix with real-life characters (such as Archie Leach, who was an acrobat in vaudeville before becoming Cary Grant). Each chapter begins with an actual quote from someone who had begun his or her career in vaudeville. Some of the quotes made me laugh out loud.

The characters are likable and the plot is interesting. Lessons are taught without being preachy. The book was fun and entertaining. I will definitely read more by the author, of whom I had never heard prior to stumbling onto the novel.

It would be a great book club read.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Kitchens of the Great Midwest

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searchI really had no idea what to expect when I started author J. Ryan Stradal’s debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest. Would it be a story about cooking? Would there be recipes? Would it be restaurant reviews for Midwest eateries? What I didn’t actually expect, however, was that it would be such a charming and wonderful story that yes, involves cooking, but mostly involved family dynamics. I absolutely LOVED this book.

It is the story of Eva Thorvald, abandoned as an infant by a mother who preferred devoting her life to being a sommelier rather than a wife and parent. Eva’s doting father, who was himself a chef, began developing Eva’s palate shortly after her birth. Unfortunately, he died soon after Eva’s mother left, leaving her to be reared by kind and loving relatives.

Eva has a gifted palate, beginning at a young age when she began growing and then selling chocolate habanero peppers. Eventually, Eva grows to become a gifted chef with a very unusual way of offering her food.

The storyline seems mundane; however, the way the author chose to tell the story was, in my opinion, ever so creative and clever.

The book consists of 8 chapters, each which could nearly stand as a short story in itself. The main character of each chapter is not Eva, but someone who has a tie to Eva in some way. Via those vignettes, the reader learns about Eva and how she becomes who she is, a good and kind person and an amazing and creative chef.

The entire story takes place in – you guessed it – the Midwest. The story begins in Minnesota, but parts of it take place in South Dakota and Iowa. As such, the reader becomes familiar with a lot of the peculiarities of Midwest cooking. And Midwest people. I’m not from Minnesota, but I would imagine that Minnesotans would be greatly amused by this description of Eva’s grandparents: Theirs was a mixed-race marriage – between a Norwegian and a Dane – and thus all things culturally important to one but not the other were given a free pass and critiqued only in unmixed company. Like lutefisk, which, according to the novel, is whitefish that is bounded, dried, soaked in lye, resoaked in cold water, and ends up looking like jellied smog and smelling like boiled aquarium water.

The book does contain some recipes, but not regularly, such as at the end of each chapter. When it comes to food, the book shines in its descriptions of the art of simple cooking using fresh ingredients. But I will tell you right now that thoughI am someone who likes to cook, and therefore enjoyed the recipes and descriptions of food, mostly I loved the clever story-telling, and the main character, Eva.

The book, my friends, is currently selling for a mere $3.99 on Kindle, and I encourage you to buy it!

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: To Capture What We Cannot Keep

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searchBeatrice Colin’s novel To Capture What We Cannot Keep could have been complete drivel, and I would still have read it front to back simply to learn about the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the novel’s focus.

Thankfully, it wasn’t drivel. It was, in fact, a passably readable love story, love between two people, but more importantly, love for a creation that turned sheets of metal into one of the most, oh heck, THE most recognizable structure in the world.

I found Colin’s novel, though about a difficult love affair, interesting mostly in its portrayal of 19th Century Paris and the incredible changes that were taking place at this time and in this place. Impressionist art was becoming more palatable to more people. Women were becoming increasingly independent. The city was abuzz in preparation for the 1889 World’s Fair, for which Gustave Eiffel’s tower was going to be the entrance.

Cait lost her husband to a weird accident when still a young woman. Left nearly penniless, she becomes the paid companion for the two teenaged children of a wealthy Scotsman. As part of her duties, she accompanies them to Paris, where preparations are underway for the upcoming World’s Fair. There she meets and falls in love with Emile, the engineer in charge of the tower’s construction. The seemingly-doomed love affair comes to a head at the end of the book in an amazing scene in which Cait climbs to the top of the tower despite a fear of heights to seek out Emile.

Aside from Cait, Emile, and Eiffel, the characters are insipid and self-absorbed and quite unlikable, just as I suspect the author crafted them. But as I mentioned before, the main character is the Eiffel Tower itself.

I have been lucky enough to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower and have my breath taken away by its beauty. Colin’s novel made me think for the first time just how NUTS people must have thought Eiffel was to think that a tower made out of metal was going to be anything but hideous. Metal and bolts and nothing else.

And I had also never thought about the difficulty involved in building such a structure, especially given the times and the lack of computers to measure the wind and the air pressure and the seismic activity. Lots of best guesses and fingers crossed.

I was actually quite surprised at how much I enjoyed this novel. As with The Last Days of Night from which I learned about the invention of the light bulb, Capture What We Cannot Keep taught me a great deal about architecture, engineering, and the construction of one of our most endearing landmarks.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Vinegar Girl

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41l0bsfq7yl-_sy344_bo1204203200_Bestselling author Anne Tyler is known for her quirky characters and her clever story lines, but in her most recent novel, Vinegar Girl, Tyler has some help from someone fairly reknown himself – William Shakespeare.

Vinegar Girl is part of the Hogart Shakespeare project sponsored by Hogart Press. The Shakespeare project provides readers with a variety of Shakespeare works retold as contemporary stories by a variety of well-known authors. Vinegar Girl is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew.

I would love to tell you all the ways in which Vinegar Girl is better or worse than the original Shakespeare play; however, I’m somewhat embarrassed to tell you that I have never read it or seen it performed. Okay. I got that off of my chest.

Following her mother’s death, Kate Battista took over the care for her discombobulated scientist father and her pretty and conceited younger sister Bunny. She gave up her dreams of college and instead, cooks and cleans their home, tries to steer Bunny towards good decisions, and works as a preschool teacher.

Dr. Battista learns that his Russian research assistant is about to be deported, meaning they will have to give up on the research project they have been working on for many years unless they can find a way to keep him in the United States. Dr. Battista comes up with the idea of his daughter Kate – who seems unmarriageable anyway – marrying Pyotr to keep him in the US.

The storyline plays out in a way that is humorous and frustrating, delightful and infuriating, poignant and playful. The plot allows Tyler to write in her usual clever style, and while the Shakespeare play apparently ends with the main character explaining to her sister that she made her decision because men are sovereign, Tyler’s ending is absolutely perfect. Flawless. Charming.

I admit that though Tyler has always been one of my favorite authors, I haven’t liked her more recent novels quite as much as her earlier works. But Vinegar Girl left me feeling the way I always have felt – satisfied and wishing that I could spend time with the characters in real life.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: The Tea Rose

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51gej6fmykl-_sy344_bo1204203200_I like tea. I like roses. I like London. I like epic novels. I like the Victorian Age. The Tea Rose, first in a trilogy by Jennifer Donnelly, was right up my alley.

And, it was, indeed, a meaty look at the life of the Finnegan family, a hardworking Irish immigrant family living in the very poor Whitechapel area of east London during the days when factory owners held all of the power and a serial killer named Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the people of the area.

Young Fiona Finnegan works in a tea factory, and knows so much about tea that she can identify the type of tea simply by smelling and feeling the leaf. Since she was a small girl, she has known that she would marry the man she loves, Joe Bristow, whose family sells produce from carts in the East End. Fiona’s father works in the tea factory for extremely long hours and is paid a pittance while the owner brings home the big bucks. Her mother stays at home and keeps a house for Fiona, her two brothers and a baby sister. Mr. Finnegan, in an effort to earn a living wage for the tea workers, becomes involved in the creation of a union. He is killed one night by the owner for his efforts. That same night, Fiona’s family crumbles in a variety of ways, and eventually she and her young brother Seamus barely escape with their lives on a ship to New York City. There, she hopes to find her Uncle Michael who is the proprietor of a grocery store in the Big Apple.

In the way of most huge, epic novels, Fiona’s story is complicated and complex and interesting and scary and romantic. The novel is in the neighborhood of 600 pages long, so it’s impossible to tell you everything that happens, nor would it be fair to take the fun out of it. I will admit that if the author had allowed me to edit her novel, it would have been considerably shorter. I found the author to be such a great storyteller that I often couldn’t put the book down in my desire to see what happens next. Still, she went into a lot of detail when it came to the stories of what happens to Fiona and her friends and family. Many, many words. A lot of story lines. And many more coincidences than are even vaguely realistic. Just how often can Fiona and Joe pass within a block of one another or just miss one another by seconds?

Still, I really enjoyed the book, and loved the characters I was supposed to love and hated the characters I was supposed to hate. The romantic element was just as unrealistic as most romance novels, and yet I couldn’t help rooting for Fiona and Joe to find their way back to one another. I liked the descriptions of both London and New York City, and enjoyed seeing Fiona make her way from a poor tea seller to one of the richest women in the world. And heck, they even solve the mystery of who was Jack the Ripper!

The second in the trilogy is The Winter Rose, and I will be interested in seeing what happens next.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Settle for More

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imgresWhile I’m a fan of an interesting biography, I’m not particularly a fan of memoirs, unless the writer has an exceptionally unique story to tell about themselves, which most don’t. Simply by definition, memoirs are bound to purvey a somewhat self-absorbed point of view. Still, I read Megyn Kelly’s memoir, Settle for More, because I always liked her when I would watch her on Fox News. She seems confident and very smart.

At the end of the day – or the book, as it were – I found her to be a good writer. Because of that, the book was easy to read. Unfortunately, I simply didn’t find her life that interesting. Certainly not interesting enough to warrant a memoir, at least not at this point in her life.

For the record, I am not one of the block of conservatives who are currently mad at Megyn Kelly for a series of questions she asked then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the first debate. On the contrary, as a journalist by education, I think the questions Ms. Kelly asked a presidential candidate were fair. So my dislike for Settle for More has nothing to do with my feelings about the author.

Kelly was part of a family who encouraged hard work, and encouraged getting your own reward from a job well done. She made it a point, again and again, of saying that her family wasn’t one who believed in getting “participant” trophies, but instead, felt if you earned first place, you should get first place. I frankly find that admirable, but not terribly unique for that time.

She worked hard for her success, but so did (and do) a lot of other people. She came from a middle-class family, and so it isn’t even like she had to struggle to make ends meet in order to become educated. It’s true her father died when she was in high school, which is very sad, but unfortunately, lots of people lose one or both of their parents at a young age.

She worked her bottom off as lawyer before realizing that she had to give up too much of her life to be as successful as she wanted. Many people reach the same conclusion. It is clear that she worked hard for the success she currently experiences, and good for her. But her life seems to have been pretty ordinary, not really warranting the need for a memoir. For that reason, I can’t really recommend the book.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Eligible

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searchJane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a THING with a lot of people. You can find a whole section on Etsy for items relating to what is probably Jane Austen’s most well-known novel out of the six that were published. There are big-screen movies and made-for-television series and literary spin-offs and Facebook pages and annual gatherings of P & P fans. There is even a zombie movie version of Pride and Prejudice.

All of this for a book written by a young woman about whom shockingly little is known and who, despite the romantic themes of her books, not only didn’t marry, but likely died a virgin. And not a zombie virgin.

I downloaded the book Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld sometime late last year because it was on sale from Amazon. I wasn’t even entirely sure what the book was about, and I had certainly not heard of the author. But $2.99? How bad could it be?

And then I didn’t read it for the longest time, partly because I discovered that it was a contemporary take on Pride and Prejudice. And while I have nothing particularly against that novel (which I haven’t read since high school), I also sort of took a stand against it in that way that I sometimes do because I hate being like everyone else and I get stubborn. It’s why I didn’t read Harry Potter books for a long time – everyone else was, and I wasn’t everyone else. But frankly, part of the reason why I didn’t read the book was because of the name of the author. How could a MALE AUTHOR think they could tackle such an endeavor as a contemporary version of Pride and Prejudice?

Dumb, for several reasons, not the least of which is that Curtis Sittenfeld happens to be a woman.

The plot is familiar. Liz and Jane Bennet have returned home from their lives in NYC to take care of their father who has had a heart attack. Their sisters Kitty and Lydia are too flighty to trust, and their sister Mary rarely emerges from her bedroom where she endlessly pursues master’s degrees via computer.

The Bennets have been high society in Cincinnati, but unbeknownst to Mrs. Bennet – who is much more concerned with finding husbands for her five unmarried daughters – they are flat broke.

Mrs. Bennet has ensured that Jane meets Chip Bingley, a doctor best known for his appearance on a television show Eligible, modeled after real-life The Bachelor.

Liz, in the meantime, has met and started knocking heads with Chip’s friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a renowned doctor and peculiar fellow. Love and then complications ensue, just as in Pride and Prejudice. And if you are a fan of the original novel, you can imagine how it ends.

Still, after finally giving in and reading the book, I must admit that I really enjoyed it. It was a fun take on the original book, and interesting to see how the author handled the familiar situations. Like the original novel, Mr. Bennet was a dear, and it was impossible to not want to strangle Mrs. Bennet and the younger sisters.

I think this is a must-read for fans of P & P, but honestly, I think it is a cleverly-written novel that will be enjoyed by anyone who likes a great romantic romp. Don’t be crabby like me.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Go Set a Watchman

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urlIf you are a reader, and unless you have been living on Mars for the past couple of years, you know that Go Set a Watchman is a novel written by Harper Lee, best known for her amazing To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy surrounding the book almost erases the value of this novel. While the publisher advertises it as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, the reality is that it was the first novel submitted by Harper Lee long before Mockingbird. The publisher to whom she submitted the novel apparently told her it wasn’t ready for prime time and sent her back to the drawing board.

In Go Set a Watchman, a grown-up Scout, who goes by her given name Jean Louise, returns home to Maycomb, AL, from her current residence in New York City, to visit her aging father Atticus. Losing her mother at a young age, she has long hero-worshiped her father, and has tried to model her life after him.

Not long after arriving in Maycomb, after she finds an anti-Negro pamphlet among his things, she follows her father and a young man who she may – or may not – marry named Hank to a citizen’s council meeting where the speaker – who is introduced by Atticus – is a blatant racist who calls for the crowd to stop the rise of Negroes. Jean Louise is horrified, and spends the rest of the novel trying to make sense of what she has learned about her father.

According to what I’ve read, the publishers to whom the author originally submitted the story advised her to work further on the story, telling her that the most interesting parts of the book are the flashback scenes in which Jean Louise remembers growing up in Maycomb. Thus, you have To Kill a Mockingbird.

I had to remind myself throughout the book that it was written BEFORE To Kill a Mockingbird, as Jean Marie’s memories include things that are actually integral to her subsequent classic. For example, she recalls Atticus handling the legal case for a black man wrongly and unjustly accused of raping a white girl. Sound familiar?

The book really is more a series of vignettes up to the point in which Jean Louise confronts her father. That scene, along with a couple scenes featuring Atticus’ brother, make up the bulk of the novel, and really are the only parts of the book that make one think.

It’s difficult to imagine the world in the south back in the 1950s and before. Being so far removed, both in time and geographically, it was a wake-up call to be reminded that the Civil War had taken place less than a hundred years previous to the days around the Dred Scott decision. It was fresh in many people’s memory. Another point made by Jean Louise’s uncle that is remarkable is that only about 5 percent of the southerners who lived and fought and died in the Civil War actually owned slaves. For them, it really was a fight for states’ rights.

Sure, it was confusing and disappointing to see Atticus, but all-in-all, it wasn’t shocking.

The book would create fabulous discussion for a book group. I’m certain it already has.

Here is a link to the book.

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Friday Book Whimsy: Fiercombe Manor

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searchI’ve mentioned  before that I love manor mysteries; you know, mysteries that take place in mysterious old houses with creepy caretakers or daunting housekeepers. So when a come across a book with the word manor right in its title, I am definitely going to give it a read.

Fiercombe Manor, a debut mystery novel by Kate Riordan, despite a few minor flaws, met, yes, even exceeded, my expectations. It was suitably creepy in the manner of Rebecca, the similarities a reader can’t fail to notice.

It’s 1933, and young and naïve Alice finds herself in a precarious position – pregnant by a married man who has no intention of leaving his wife after all. She confesses her situation to her horrified mother, herself a cold and unloving parent. The mother contacts her old friend Mrs. Jelphs, who is a housekeeper at Fiercombe Manor in Gloustershire, far away from London. The plan is for Alice to have her baby (which Mrs. Jelphs is told is the result of a brief marriage that ended when her husband was killed), then return to London and immediately give the baby up for adoption.

But when Alice arrives at Fiercombe Manor, (which is not occupied by the Stanton family who live abroad, but instead is lived in and managed by Mrs. Jelphs and a groundskeeper) she immediately begins to get creeped out by some of the noises she hears at night and stories she is told. Bit by bit, she learns of the homes’ former occupants. From that point forward, the story is told in the familiar back-and-forth style – Alice’s story and the story of Elizabeth Stanton. Sometimes I wish authors could be a bit more clever; nevertheless, both storylines are creative and compelling.

The book’s readers and reviewers draw a comparison between Mrs. Jelphs and Mrs. Danvers (the housekeeper in Rebecca). I don’t believe the comparison is justified. While Mrs. Jelphs clearly knows more than she is saying, she is ultimately kind and cares for Alice. Still, the whole notion of a young woman alone in a creepy mansion with only a suspicious-seeming housekeeper and a groundskeeper who keeps showing up in unexpected place clearly begs the reader to compare it to Rebecca.

There is a romantic element, as one of the Stanton heirs is a young man who has issues of his own. The romance doesn’t get in the way of the story, however.

I enjoyed the book very much, and found Riordan’s writing to be beautiful. I am looking forward to the author’s next book, which apparently will be a ghost story.

Here is a link to the book.

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