DCL Book Chat

In a mere 144 pages Julie Otsuka manages to cover over one hundred years in the lives of Japanese picture brides and their families. Picture brides were the young women that came to America as mail-order brides, to be wed sight-unseen to Japanese men already established in their new country. Award-winning author Otsuka accomplishes this in an unusual style, using repetitive lists of events in an all-encompassing third person plural voice. Instead of focusing on the life story of a single character we learn of the cumulative events of many nameless characters: One of us . . . Some of us . . . None of us . . . It’s a bold and controversial style that would make for great discussion in a book group, as some will love the retrained power and dynamic of this style and others will feel the lack of a centralized characterization. There’s a haunting beauty to the story presented in this step-back style, and a distinctive way to tell a powerful story.

Laura

The setting for this novel begins during the mid-1960’s in riot torn Detroit and then moves to rural Rooks County, Kansas. Arthur Scott left a small Kansas town 20 years ago but is forced to return with his family to the farm life to escape the violence and racial strife in Detroit.

The family’s return to Kansas reopens several family and community secrets which includes the mysterious death of Arthur’s sister Eve, two missing little girls and the fact that Arthur’s sister Ruth is being beaten bloody by her husband.

The story is told mainly through the eyes of Arthur’s younger daughter, Eve-ee and son Daniel. Eve-ee becomes obsessed with her dead namesake and begins to ask uncomfortable questions. Daniel, the city boy, is trying to fit in with the rough and tumble farm boys and hopes that Kansas will make a man of him.

The author creates a haunting picture of the isolation and harshness of life on a Kansas farm. It is also an insightful look at the passion and violence that simmer just below the surface of a small town. There are elements of mystery, romance and coming of age with dark implications. One review called this story “Midwestern noir with gothic undertones.”

Susan

In Zanesville is a pitch-perfect coming-of-age story that fully captures the aching agony of teen angst, focusing on the alluring pull of peer pressure among the in-crowd and loyalty to the old guard. Author Jo Ann Beard’s fourteen-year-old narrator (whose name, Jo, is only hinted at) considers herself a sidekick, a role she’s happy to play until life begins to force her and her best friend, Flea (Felicia) outside their insular cocoon. “I’d like to be the kind of person who can do something weird and not become weird because of it, but that’s out of reach for me . . .” Beard’s details of life in the 1970’s are fantastic, from the plaid culottes and two-tone Capezio’s to the image of a toaster with a Wonder Bread wrapper melted to its flank. The gripping, comedic and horrific opening scene sets the tone for the remainder of the book as the story flies through a pivotal season of teen-dom with sharp, wry dialog and emotional punch. (Suitable for older teens)

Laura

Once again Colorado’s Sandra Dallas has written a wonderful historical novel. The Bride’s House is set in Georgetown, Colorado. It’s the story of three generations of women who live there. It starts out during the 1880s mining boom and bust and continues past WWII. Three strong-willed women are the main characters: Nealie, the red-headed runaway; her daughter Pearl, the intelligent, business-minded, lonely one and Nealie’s granddaughter, Susan, who is the first one who attends a university. The other main character is The Bride’s House. It’s more than three love stories. It is a history of the area, of women, and it’s about secrets and how secrets harm families, loves and friendships. Sandra does excellent research on all her books. It was a joy to read. The Bride’s House is really located in Georgetown, but it isn’t open to the public.

Lisa

I listened to the audio version of this suspenseful noir thriller with elements of the paranormal. The story takes place in 1935 during the Great Depression. A group of CCC workers are on a train headed to the Florida Keys to build a bridge when Arlen Wagner sees impending doom. He tries to get the workers to get off the train when it stops at a station. Only one of the men, young Paul Brickhill, hears the warning in Arlen’s voice and gets off the train. When the immense Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroys the Keys Paul and Arlen are alive, but find themselves in great danger when they arrive at the Cypress House. This is a gritty story of good and evil and Koryta does a great job describing the suffocating atmosphere at the lodge, caused not only by the weather but by raw human emotions.

Allison

Covering a span of roughly 100 years Galore tells the many stories of two sparring families in fictional Paradise Deep, (a purposefully ironic name), as they literally weather the abundance and deprivations, both physical and emotional, that life in 19th century Newfoundland affords. This wonderfully cyclical story begins with the emergence of a man from the belly of a beached whale and proceeds through six generations of equally quirky characters.

Award-winning author Michael Crummey wanted to infuse the book with folklore and was even drawn to the title Galore, because of “lore” being in the word. There are stories galore, characters galore and folktales in abundance–a term, the book reminds us, that can be both positive and negative. As the characters scrabble to eke out an existence and fight against the tide of inevitability, they both glory in and suffer from abundances both good and bad. While the story mostly makes a forward progression, the unpredictable jumps in time can be challenging, but also add to the spontaneous and quirky feel of the narrative.

The story does not rely on a central protagonist, so our allegiance is blown from one family member to another like the gale-force winds that come driving in from the sea, but that also means that we have the opportunity to attach ourselves to several powerful characters throughout this family saga.

Crummey says he admires both Jane Smiley’s novel, Greenlanders and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and he has done a marvelous job of creating a new work that simultaneously captures a culture and unfurls a history of family feuds.

Like the rugged and rocky landscape of Newfoundland, Galore isn’t easy to navigate (thank goodness for the family tree), but the rewards for persistence are breathtaking.

Laura

In a small Pennsylvania town in 1968, Lynnie, a developmentally disabled young woman, and Homan, a deaf African-American man, fall in love at The Pennsylvania State School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. Determined to escape the horrific conditions at the Home, they run away and seek refuge at the home of Martha, a retired schoolteacher.

When the school officials catch up with them, Homan escapes into the woods; just before Lynnie is captured and returned to the school she gives her newborn daughter into Martha’s keeping with the words, “Hide her.”

So begins the forty year journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha and baby Julia as each has to overcome incredible challenges.

Readers who loved The Help will find the same rich and well defined characters plus insight into the deplorable conditions at some institutions in the 1960s. Rachel Simon is the author of the book Riding the Bus With My Sister that was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. It was based on her own story of her life with her developmentally disabled sister so this topic is very near to her heart.

This is one of those books you can give to anyone who says, “I just want a good book to read.” Your book club will want to read this one!

Dedra

Mary Doria Russell is a fine writer and I would recommend anything she has written. Doc is a novel based on the life of Doc John Henry Holliday. I’ve always had a fascination with Doc Holliday – maybe because he spent the end of his days in Glenwood Springs, maybe because he was ill with TB for so long and still a larger than life character.

Russell brings readers the story of Doc as a boy in Georgia, who probably should have never survived birth, but did thanks to the efforts of his mother – a woman who faced life’s problems head on with courage. Thanks to his surgeon uncle and his mother’s care, tutoring and love, John Henry had a sense of who he was and where he came from, and he did become a dentist. He had TB by the time he was 21 and moved West for the drier climate. He met a prostitute, Kate, who was also a survivor and feisty. This is about their time in Dodge, with the Earps, Bat Masterson and many you’ll recognize from the films about the Wyatt Earp.

Russell’s careful research and beautiful writing will help readers know and understand a more realistic Doc Holliday and not the one we all know from dime store novels and movies. It is out in early May. She’ll be at the Tattered Cover Book Store in mid-May.

Lisa

Mr. Chartwell is on assignment. In fact, he’s got two. He’s lingering in the corner of Winston Churchill’s bedroom and he’s come to rent a room from the still grieving young widow, Esther Hammerhans.

Mr. Chartwell, a hulking, shaggy presence is fierce yet attractive, threatening yet alluring, disgusting in his personal habits yet smoothly seductive. He likes to be called Black Pat and he’s not a welcome guest. He’s come to lure his charges into depression. It’s a battle Churchill has been fighting his whole life but is new and highly attractive to lonely Esther.

The sophisticated (when he’s not gnawing bones and chewing the furniture) Mr. Chartwell can, and will, wage a relentless psychological battle to win over his victims. His black presence will infuse their lives and coax them, literally, into bed with him. It’s been two years since Esther’s husband died and she’s made it so far with the support of her zany friends, but as the two year anniversary approaches and Esther allows Mr. Chartwell to rent a room, it takes more energy than she might have to prevent Black Pat from draping himself across her lap. Enter bumbling Mr. Corkbowl and a chance encounter with Churchill himself, to give Esther the strength she’ll need to make Mr. Chartwell heel.

Debut novelist Rebecca Hunt presents this highly original story in a spare, staccato style with subtle humor that beautifully suits the quirky storyline.

Laura

The Paris Wife is Hadley Richardson, a twenty-eight year old spinster who falls in love with a handsome, magnetic, passionate young man full of dreams named Ernest Hemingway. The Paris Wife is a fictional account of their short, turbulent marriage spent mostly in 1920s Paris. Through Hadley’s eyes we see Jazz Age Paris and the many larger than life artists who frequent their cafes. We also see her brilliant, self-absorbed, egocentric husband through her eyes, the woman who loved him before he was famous.

Dedra