Untold Story

For my parents' generation, their "where were you" moments include the first man on the moon and JFK being assassinated.  For our generation, it includes many landmark events, but two will be forever linked in my mind: Princess Diana of Wales on her wedding day, and again on that horrific night in Paris when she died.  She was such a beautiful, loving mother and an incredible advocate for AIDS, particularly in children, and to have that life cut short was simply devastating.

Untold Story imagines another ending to Princess Diana's life: one that involves a yaht, a lazy security staff, and a rowboat.  In Monica Ali's new novel,  she has invisioned a world where Princess Diana appears to the world as drown, but in fact, has faked her death, left everyone but her closest confidante behind, and started a new life in the United States.

As part of her new life,"Lydia" has no children, few good friends, and no meaningful relationships.  Her need to escape life under worldwide scrutiny has come at a tremendous cost - the loss of her children, her family, and everything she knows. But in return, she can shop, eat at restaurants, swim in her pool, and volunteer at an animal shelter, all without worrying about what photo or ugly comments will emerge next.  At least, until the Princess' most obsessed paparazzi stumbles upon her living in a tiny Midwest town.

Ali's book is a wonderful glimpse into the world that Princess Diana might have had, under very unusual circumstances.  Ali is very careful never to refer to the Princess by name, but her identity is obvious, from the cover of the book to the intimate details she includes of the Royal Family. Ali did a tremendous amount of research about Diana's life, and the fruits of that research makes the story even more delicious.

As a teenager, I watched in awe as Diana walked down the aisle at St. Paul's Cathedral.  Many years later, as a mother myself, I stood in shock and cried as I watched coverage of the wreckage that would end her life.  The best part of Untold Story was getting to meet Princess Diana again, even if it was only a woman created out of talented Ms. Ali's imagination.

An Embarrassment of Riches

I've had something of a reading drought this summer.  It's not that there hasn't been plenty to choose from, just that nothing is appealing.  Kind of like when you go out to eat, and nothing on the menu looks good.  Maybe it's been my mood, but with a few exceptions, nothing's really stuck with me.

So you can imagine my delight when I hit the mother lode at my public library this week.  Our library is small but mighty, and has a good selection of new titles.  I have learned over the years to make the most of the library's reservation system, but since none of my books on holds were available yet, I took a spin through the new fiction shelves.

I was like a kid in a candy store when I found not one, but four (yes, four!!) books that I had been hoping to read.  I started with Untold Story by Monica Ali, then quickly moved on to South of Superior, by Ellen Airgood.  Filling out my stack were Jennifer Haigh's newest, Faith, and the creepy Robopocolypse, by Daniel H. Wilson.

Reviews will be coming soon on Untold Story and a few others, but in the meantime, I've been reading like a woman on a mission.  It has been a true delight getting to know some new characters, a few new authors, and most of all, some stories I could really sink my teeth into. My wonderful husband purchased a lovely, bright red hammock for me this summer, but up until now, it's been too hot to use it.  Now I have both the cooler weather and a stack of delicious books.  Heaven!

A Visit From the Goon Squad

I  finished A Visit From the Goon Squad this week, and I am left with conflicting emotions.  It was my good friend's choice for our book club, and it took me by surprise, in part because I expected to love it, and I just didn't.   Goon Squad won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year and has garnered plenty of attention; I had read the first short story on my Kindle and I was excited to dive into it.  I quickly realized that A Visit From the Goon Squad is not an easy read.  In fact, it's not even a book I would recommend to many people, because it's a lot like work.   

Goon Squad inserts us into the lives of several characters, all of whom are connected, with the theme of the music industry running through the novel. The interconnected stories are told by different people, over a 50-year span of time, but none of the book is in chronological order. Fifty pages into it, I was muddling my way through the second big story, and not really enjoying it.  Thirty pages after that, I was intrigued - certainly enough to read the entire book.  The characters had not become any more likable, but I was finally getting the hang of it.  Egen's constant shifts in time and point of view made following the plot challenging.  Keep in mind that I read a lot - an average of two books a week, more during winter and vacation.  So to have a book still making me struggle after 100 pages is saying something.

My friend summarized it perfectly - she said that Goon Squad was not a book that you would enjoy while you were reading it, but that you would want to talk to someone about it after you finished.  As our book club chatted in the sultry July night, we each brought something different to the discussion.  But as we began to peel back the layers of Goon Squad, our discussion revealed far more than any of us had thought possible.

Therein lies the magic in such a unique book. I might not have enjoyed the journey, but I was very glad once I reached my destination.

Dreams of Joy

In a post from several months ago, I mentioned one of my favorite "Asian-themed" books, Lisa See's Shanghai Girls.  I enjoyed See's perspectives on World War 2 and the struggles for Asian immigrants, and like many people, I was left wanting more when the book ended.

Shanghai Girls' sequel, Dreams of Joy, picks up right where we left off, in the late 1950s.  Joy, Pearl's daughter from the first novel, has recently learned a deep, dark secret about her family.  Hurt by both her mother and her Aunt May, and still reeling from her father's suicide, Joy decides to go to China to discover her roots and to meet the man who she has learned is her biological father, Z.G. Li.  When Pearl learns where Joy has gone, she has no choice but to go to China herself to bring her daughter home.

What neither Joy nor Pearl could predict was the chaos that was beginning in China.  Under Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward program, China has undergone tremendous changes since Pearl and May fled the country years before.  The Communist regime is in full force and Joy's father, famous Chinese artist Z.G.Li, is being sent to the countryside to teach the peasants how to paint in the "Red" way.  The story follows Joy, as she moves to a commune, falls in love, and  marries, and Pearl, as she fights her way back to Joy and the family she cherishes.

Fans of Lisa See's earlier works will enjoy reading Dreams of Joy, if for no other reason than closure for Shanghai Girls.  Dreams of Joy, however, is a novel unlike those See has written before.  Her past novels, no matter what time period, show both the beauty and the less pleasant side of Chinese life.  In Dreams of Joy, See only shows the ugly side.  This is fitting, because the Great Leap Forward was one of the darkest times in Chinese history.  With individual farms turned into communes, Mao's government sought to maximize the amount of crops produced each year.  What follows is an unmitigated disaster: a combination of droughts, floods and farming requirements from city officials who had no experience with the land leaves China in a state of famine.  By some accounts, as many as 40 million people died of starvation during the three-year period before Mao admitted failure.

See portrays this famine in vivid detail, so much so that it was difficult to read at times.  While her earlier novels have had shocking and painful scenes, it cannot compare to the ravages of famine that See describes in Dreams of Joy.  Lisa See traveled with author Amy Tan to research this novel, and it is clear that her trip to China and what she learned about this time period affected See deeply.

Dreams of Joy is a worthy read, especially if you have read See's earlier works.  There is a happy ending, with a nice big bow.  But a word of warning: beware the title, for "dreams" of joy are the best you can expect this in novel.

In Search of the Perfect Summer Read

Many people believe that winter is the best time for reading.  Curling up on the couch with a blanket and spending the afternoon savoring a book is a fabulous way to spend those dark winter months.  But for me, the perfect season for reading is summer.  Memories of being stretched out on my bed as a girl, reading book after book; as a teen, discovering a new author just in time for days at the pool or a week at the beach; and long afternoons in the public library: that's what summer meant to me.

That hasn't changed.  With the slower pace of life that summer provides, my stack of books is calling to me. There is a lot on my virtual bookshelf right now, but what I want right now is not just any book - I want the elusive "perfect summer read."

There's a lot that goes into the criteria for the perfect book, and each person's list is different.  On my list of criteria is that the book must be enjoyable but not necessarily deep, preferably fiction, long enough to sink my teeth into, and most of all, "unputdownable."  You know what I mean - the kind of book where you look up and two hours have gone by, the kids are tugging at you asking "where's lunch?" and you find yourself daydreaming about it when you're NOT reading.  That kind of book.

My search continues.  There is a new Lisa See book due out (a sequel to Shanghai Girls, which I really enjoyed), a new Ann Patchett, and a few books which have just come into paperback, including The Passage by Joseph Cronin.  When I find that perfect book I will let you know, but I hope you will be looking too - because everyone has their very own summer read just waiting to be devoured.