10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

November 3, 2019

10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Tequila Leila, a sex worker in Istanbul, has been murdered and her body thrown into a dumpster near the waterfront.  Although her heart has stopped, her brain continues to work for 10 minutes and 38 seconds.  During that time, she recalls her life, mostly through memories of taste and smell.  She remembers her dysfunctional family and the uncle who molested her repeatedly as a child, and how her family disowned her when she ran away to Istanbul.  But mostly, she recalls her five close friends who would do anything for her.  When they learn of her death, the five friends resolve to give Leila a decent burial.

Shafak’s descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of Istanbul make the city just as much a character as Leila and her friends.  I quickly became absorbed in Leila’s story in the first section of the novel.  The second part focuses on Leila’s friends, with a much-needed injection of dark humor.  The last section winds in the final threads and lets the reader know that Leila will never be forgotten by her friends.

Highly atmospheric with wonderfully drawn characters and expressive writing, this novel was shortlisted for the 2019 Man-Booker Prize, and rightly so.  Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist who is an advocate of freedom, equality and free speech for women.  I highly recommend this for readers of literary fiction.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

September 14, 2019

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

After their father’s sudden death, siblings Maeve and Danny Conroy are quickly evicted from the Dutch House, their family mansion, by their vindictive stepmother.  They aren’t even allowed to take the things that had belonged to their own mother who had abandoned the family when they were young children.  Periodically, Maeve and Danny park across the street from the house and just watch, trying to catch sight of their stepmother or stepsisters.  They are not sure why, since neither wants to enter the house or speak with the inhabitants.  The obsession with the Dutch House continues throughout their lives, as does the mystery of their mother.

With its meaning for each family member, the house itself is actually the main character, the common thread in the book, the thing that keeps pulling them back.  It’s like the house has some kind of magic, with glass walls (it’s noted several times that an outsider can see right through the house), a third floor ballroom, and a (hideous) dining room with a starry ceiling.  When their father purchased it, the house came complete with the furnishings, down to the artwork on the walls and clothing in the closets.  Another reviewer mentioned they were creeped out by the cover art, but the painting on the cover is actually part of the story.

The younger sibling Danny is the narrator, and Maeve is the center of the story of Danny’s life, since she stepped in to fill the role of their missing mother.  Danny has a rather juvenile world view in that he has never questioned or considered many of the things about his life (household help Sandy and Jocelyn being sisters, why his mother deserted the family, his impact on Maeve’s life), long after he should have been mature enough to figure things out.  There is a fairy tale aspect as well, with Maeve and Danny being a modern-day Hansel and Gretel, thrown out of their home by their wicked stepmother, spending their lives longing to find their way home, even having three fairy godmothers who look after them in the form of Sandy, Jocelyn, and Fluffy.

I loved this book, and I think it’s of my best reads for 2019.  Patchett does such a great job with characters and big family sagas.  The Dutch House reminded me a lot of Commonwealth, Patchett’s previous novel, switching back and forth between time periods and locations, and also of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt in the wide scope of the story.  In addition to the fairy tale theme, there is a lot of history repeating itself and things coming full circle.  I think this would be a great book club selection, since there is so much to discuss.  The only thing to be aware of is that the story is not told chronologically, so if your book group doesn’t like stories that jump around, this title is not for you.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in return for a review.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

August 29, 2019

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

The year is 1932.  The Lincoln Indian Training School in Lincoln, Minnesota, is a school where hundreds of Native American children who had been taken away from their families are sent to forget their Native American languages and customs and learn to be “white.”  Children who spoke their own languages were beaten and put into solitary confinement until they learned to conform.  Thelma Brickman is the school superintendent and runs the school strictly for her own gain, stealing money, food, and gifts intended for the students.  She is cruel to all the children, but especially to the two orphaned O’Banion brothers, the only white children in the school.  After an evil groundskeeper at the school is killed, the brothers are forced to flee down the river, along with two of their friends.

I was hesitant at first to read this at first due to the subject matter (child abuse, cruelty to children, mistreatment of Native Americans), but it is so INCREDIBLY good!  It's almost 500 pages long, and I read it in three days.  I could not put it down since I had to find out what happened to Odie and his friends (one of my bad habits is reading when I should be cleaning or paying attention to the dogs).  The characters are all wonderful, even Faria the rat who lives in the school's solitary confinement cell.  Easily one of the best books that I'll read in 2019, and I cried when it ended partly because the whole story is so beautiful, and partly because it was over.  IMHO, much better than Where the Crawdads Sing.

This Tender Land will be published on September 3, 2019.  Go pre-order it from Amazon or get on the hold list at your local library.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in return for a review.

Chase Darkness With Me by Billy Jensen

August 8, 2019

Chase Darkness With Me by Billy Jensen

They call themselves citizen detectives.  Some are journalists; others are librarians or scientists or researchers; still others are retired or former law enforcement officers.  Their goal is to investigate criminal cases that have gone cold, to get justice for the victims and bring peace to the families. Some work on unsolved murder cases, others look for missing persons and what happened to them.  Some work alone and others form "murder clubs" where they work together using their various skills.  They wade through clues and conflicting reports, trying to establish a chronology for each case.  They use crowdsourcing and geo-targeted social media campaigns, spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars of their own money.

For decades, Billy Jensen had been a true crime writer, writing about unsolved murder and missing person cases.  But he found his writing to be unsatisfying, since the stories didn't have an ending or a solution.  So he began to research and study unsolved cases himself, solving ten cold cases and generating leads on dozens more.  When his close friend Michelle McNamara passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, her husband and Jensen were determined to bring Michelle's unfinished book about the Golden State Killer, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, to publication.  Although her book didn't solve the case, it kept the Golden State Killer in the public's eye so that police were able to identify and arrest the serial killer.

I have always been interested in true crime, especially missing persons cases.  When I retire, this is something I would like to do, join a crime solving group to try to bring closure to the families and friends of missing loved ones.  There are about 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains in the U.S. - I want to restore the names to those missing loved ones.