Whenever somebody that I know offline would ask me what my favorite read of 2010 was (surprisingly a question I hear more offline than online), I without any hesitation or doubt would say Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.  “Really?” and a blank stare is what I would almost always get back. People, this book was AMAZING.  Every 945 pages of it. When it ended, I wished there was another 945 pages. I was not ready to let these characters go!  Lonesome Dove has deservedly been called epic. But what makes a book epic?  I think it’s just one of those things that you know it when you read it. And oh, was this book epic.

Larry McMurtry is a master storyteller.  I was a tad daunted opening that very first page and I do admit that even 200 pages into the book I wondered if anything was ever going to happen.  And even though it was off to a slow start, I wouldn’t wish it any other way. The background characterization that McMurtry gives his essential to the story.

The inside cover of my copy of the book lists the key characters with a short description of each. I loved the summary it gave so am taking the liberty of copying it here for  you.

Augustus McCrae: ex-Texas  Ranger. A fierce fighter, loyal friend, gentle lover, a boisterous spinner of colorful yarns. Gus years for adventure, and is drawn into Woodrow Call’s dream – a cattle drive to Montana, to the free and wild frontier . . .
Woodrow F. Call: Gus’s partner and friend, a driven, demanding man, a leader with no patience for weakness – and a secret sorrow of his own . . .

Jake Spoon: dashing gambler, former comrade-in-arms of Gus and Call, his passions plunge him into a terrifying fate . . .

Clara Allen: the woman of Gus’s young dreams. Out of the frontier’s cruelty and death, she forgers a life as generous, brave and unyielding as the land she learns to love . . .

Blue Duck: a renegade Indian with cunning heart of a vulture. He tortures and ills across the Plains, and savors his victim’s agony . . .

Newt: the brave, bewildered young cowboy who discovers his manhood, and his past, on the hazardous journey into Montana . . .

The Hat Creek Outfit: Jake, Deets, Pea Eye and the Boys . . .  wranglers, tracers and scouts, they follow Gus and Call into the heart of the adventure, through sandstorms, stampedes, bandits, floods and snow . . . living on in the undying legends of the great American frontier.

If you don’t know who these characters are from having read Lonesome Dove yourself, I dare you to love them.  I dare you to hate them.

I picked up this book in every spare moment of my day when I was reading it. And when I wasn’t reading it, I wanted to be reading it. I thought about it constantly.  I know I haven’t gone into all the intricacies of why Lonesome Dove is so amazing but let me tell you simply-  the characters! the story! the love! the friendships! the fighting! the determination! the devotion! the heroes! the outlaws! the whores! the Indians! the frontier! the forging ahead! the friendships again!  And it’s also laugh out loud funny with some great one-liners and some beautiful passages.  Definitely need those lighthearted and thoughtful moments between the gun slinging, the scalping, and the hangings.

Yes, my favorite book of 2010 was unabashedly a Western.  A genre I didn’t really think I read.  But did I tell you I loved this book?  Oh, how I loved Lonesome Dove. Officially one of my most favorite books.  Ever. Do you need more recommendation then that?

(I remember when the mini-series came on TV when I was little and we all watched it together as a family. MUST re-watch it now! )

Links of interest: More book  blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, Western
Publisher: Pocket Books. 1985.
Paperback, 945 pages. ISBN 067168390X
Lonesome Dove is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Did he fake his death?  It could be possible.  After all, he died in a freak flash flood and his body was never found.  Was it his way out of their marriage?  Or is she simply going crazy and imagining all of their encounters and conversations.  Has her grief become so consuming that she no longer can tell reality from vision?

I was so anxious to get to the end of this book.  No, not for it to be over. This is a haunting beautiful book.  It could easily be called a ghost story but it’s so much more than a simple ghost story.  It’s a story of marriage, of grief, of love, resolution, discontentment, starting over, loyalty, and the questioning of one’s sanity and reality.

I was anxious to get to the end of this book because Brodie perfectly convinced me, just like Sarah, that one can not be so sure about the realities they are experiencing.  Was Sarah’s husband David really dead or was he really alive?  As a reader, I honestly no longer knew.  I wanted to believe that yes, he was really dead – a figment of Sarah’s imagination.  But then the next chapter Brodie would easily convince me that he was really alive. A great depth and complexity of the characters and their relationships with each other.  I love character driven novels and this one certainly is that.

I remember reading the ending of the book sitting on the couch with my husband, closing the book and then saying, “Ah!  I can’t believe this book! “  And that was in a total good way.

I loved the widow’s support group that Sarah attended:

She had almost come to accept David’s appearances as a sign of mental breakdown, a delusion sparked by her isolation.  But here were these women insisting that she wasn’t crazy, she was normal.  Somehow the idea didn’t soothe her; a touch of insanity was preferable to the status quo.
She glanced over at Margaret, who was leaning against the kitchen doorway.  “What do you think?”

Margaret hesitated, apparently choosing her words more carefully than usual.

“I think it’s going to be hard for you to have any closure until David’s body is found.”"

“Which means you think this is all in my head?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you don’t believe in ghosts?”

Again Margaret hesitated.

“I believe there is a lot more going on in this world than we can comprehend.  Whether or not that includes ghosts, I don’t know.  But I’ll say this much – if you are really seeing David, there must be a reason.  Either he is somehow trying to reach you, or you are trying to reach him.  Most likely the latter.  There’s probably something unresolved in your mind.”

I really liked The Widow’s Season.  Feels like the perfect book for the fall.  I’d highly suggest reading this one curled up on the couch with a quilt on hand.  And if you’re like me you won’t be able to put it down.  I read the second-half of the book in one sitting.

Links of interest: Laura Brodie website, more book blogger reviews,
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Berkley Trade.  June 2, 2009.
Paperback, 320 pages. ISBN 0425227650
Copy source: Review copy sent from the author
The Widow’s Season is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Laura, a devoted wife, mother and nurse has always been trying to get her mother’s attention.  But Helen, her estranged mother, seems uninterested in anything to do with her daughter.  Instead, she spends all day reminiscing and reading old love letters that her deceased husband wrote while serving in the Korean War and later as a war correspondent during the Vietnam War.

Helen seems only interested in the past and not what’s right in front of her nor the future.  When Helen suffers a debilitating stroke, Laura believes that she can not only make her mother happy again but also close the gap that has grown between them through the years.  Laura has never been privy to her father’s letters but with her mother unable to speak, Laura dives deep into the letters hoping that she’ll finally understand her mother.  In doing so, she discovers buried family secrets and that her own buried secret is shocking similar to that of her own mother.

The story alternates between the present with Laura haggardly trying to maintain a sense of normalcy with her two young children while spending each day at the hospital taking care of with her ailing mother and in the past with Helen’s love story to Joseph, their marriage, and attempts at creating a family despite his constant overseas absences.  I do enjoy books with alternate storytelling and time lines – giving us bits and pieces, slowly revealing key plot points and character insight.

Laura’s husband, Christian is a landscape designer and I loved the references to his beautiful gardens.  Sea Escape, Helen’s home on the beach, felt very real to me.  The book has a very strong sense of place and I appreciate that.  Time as well.  Helen’s role as a mother and housewife in the fifties is strikingly different from that of Laura’s.  It’s easy to see why they so often misunderstood each other.

Ultimately, the novel didn’t live up to it’s potential.  I was bogged down with my disbelief of Helen’s and Laura’s relationship.  As this relationship is the entire basis of the book, everything else just fell for me.

Laura keeps telling herself over and over how much she loves her mother and she desperately wants to make her happy, but nothing is given to show me why she should love her mother.  While her father was alive, her mother only seemed to live for his infrequent coming homes and after he died, Helen pretty much ignores Laura for the rest of her childhood.  Although Laura is the child that Helen took years to conceive, I needed at least one moment of a good solid connection between the two to understand why it was that Laura could continue to give so much when she received so little in return.

As Laura reads her father’s letters she comes to know that both her mother and her father have kept family secrets hidden away from her.  We know that Laura has a secret of her own as well, that she wants to tell her mother before it’s too late.  Because Laura didn’t feel an immediacy to uncover these secrets, reveal her own secrets,  nor read all of her father’s letters, the book didn’t feel very tight.

Truths were revealed without the packing punch that I would expect to accompany them.  Everything was set up really well, and I imagine a second reading would show how carefully crafted Griffin’s story really is, but it lacked the emotional aspect that I would think a book like this would give.  I needed to be shown rather than told how characters felt.  I didn’t believe in the mother-daughter reconciliation (nor that of her brother’s as well) nor the emotions that they were feeling.

For example, one line from Laura: “After years of longing for her presence full and whole, I’d found her laugh, her touch, and her love.  They were hidden behind my lie.”  What laugh, what touch, what love?  I still felt as though this hadn’t quite happened yet.  Plus, I don’t think they were hidden behind Laura’s lie.  Helen emotionally abandoned Laura as a small child, years before Laura’s lie would present itself at age 17.  It wasn’t Laura’s fault, it was Helen’s fault.  Not believing how the characters felt, made it difficult to empathize with them.

I enjoyed the plot line, sense of time and place, the alternate storytelling, and the struggle to attend to an ailing family member but the characters fell flat for me.  Not a perfect read.  It was simply okay when I was hoping for fantastic. Readers who enjoy women’s fiction on the exploration of mothers and daughters may very well give this one a try. Perhaps you’ll feel differently than I.

Links of interest: Lynne Griffin website, Facebook and on Twitter. Visit TLC Book Tours for additional stops on the Sea Escape blog tour.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster. July 6, 2010
Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 1439180601
Sea Escape is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

But what can I tell you about this novel besides the “Go read this book.  I really liked it!” spill?  Apparently not much because I’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes just reminiscing over Russo’s characters and the introspective storyline only to discover that I’m not actually typing anything out.  I don’t often resort to the publisher’s synopsis’s but in this case, it’s a fine one indeed:

Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents’ respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that’s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He’d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they’d moved into an old house full of character; and they’d started a family. Check, check and check.

But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura’s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin’s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?

Griffen is a character that I didn’t easily forget as Russo dived deep into his thoughts and character habits.  What looks seemingly like a fantastic life, Griffen is very much discontented.  As a child, the only time he saw his parents happy was when they vacationed on the Cape. But those moments weren’t often enough and the disintegration of his parents marriage has Griffen continually questioning his.  Griffen is facing a classic mid-life crisis.  And if that’s not enough, it’s a mid-life crisis where he can not keep his mother’s voice out of his head. It’s this moment in his life where the culmination of his past will intersect with his future which will take him on a journey far different than he had originally planned.

That Old Cape Magic is a beautiful story of family, marriage, self-discovery, reflection, and intimacy.  The characters are extremely flawed and Russo portrays them with compassion.  This is a character study novel that Russo has pulled off brilliantly.  I loved it and Russo continues to be a favorite author.  Must get a move on and read his entire backlist.

Links of interest:  More book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Fiction
Publisher: Knopf.  August 4, 2009.
Hardcover, 272 pages. ISBN 0375414967
Source copy: Review Copy
That Old Cape Magic is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.
Keep in mind that this book does have more language in it than I normally read for those who appreciate knowing this.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

This is a story of a man who battles his body on a daily basis.  And it’s a battle that he seemingly can’t win.  Not only is his body succumbing to the ravages of the elements and the sheer stress of the actual walkings but his family is being tested to their limit.  Can a family survive a disease that they don’t understand?  One that doctors can’t diagnosis?  One that could possibly be all in his head?

The book is incredibly introspective and one shouldn’t go into it hoping for a fast paced plot.  The beauty of a novel such as this is the intricacies of character, their dynamics and relationships.  Unfortunately unlike other enthusiastic book bloggers, I won’t be filing it under one of the best books I’ve read this year.  It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why this is.   It is incredibly written and Joshua Ferris has pulled off that which could be potentially incredibly boring  – 320 pages about a man who walks around a lot.

But I found myself putting the book down easily, picking it back up reluctantly.  I didn’t find that it consumed my thoughts when I wasn’t reading it.  I wanted to be more enthralled and engrossed and I just wasn’t feeling it.  In fact, I found myself thumbing ahead to see how many pages were left in a chapter so I could put the book down.  And well, that’s never a good sign.  I never considered abandoning it though.  I was fully invested in the story and it’s characters.  I had no idea how it would end and I really wanted to find out. But it felt so slow in getting there.  I could see the beauty of the story and the carefully selected writing yet I didn’t find myself lost inside the book.  I always felt aware that I was reading the book.  I don’t know if that makes sense or not.

As far as character studies go, I would recommend this one.  But ultimately, I don’t think you need to rush out and read it immediately.  It will still be there when, and if, you are ready for it.

Links of interest:  Joshua Ferris website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books.  January 18, 2010
Hardcover, 320 pages. ISBN 0316034010
Source:  Review copy from BEA
The Unnamed is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

I must share with you the opening paragraphs* of the book which drew me in completely:

Love was the one thing Lily always thought she did better than her mother.  She believed that she knew exactly what love took, what it cost, and what it meant, and she though of her long marriage to Tom as proof of it.  But in the short period of time between Christmas and the start of fire season, everything she understood about love unraveled, the way jeans do at the hem, the way tweed does so that it reveals the intricate relationship of the warp and the weft, and she realized how very little she knew about the way love worked.  People naturally assumed, after everything that happened, that it was a bitter revelation, but they were wrong.

“Would you do it all again, knowing what you know now?”  her mother Eleanor, asked. Eleanor was, at that moment, seventy-five years old, about to be married again herself, and hoping that this time she might get it right.

“In a heartbeat,” Lily said – not only because she believed it, but because she knew it was what her mother needed to hear.

I’m not going to share too much of the plot with you today.  Suffice to say that I think the back cover synopsis spoils the book completely.  Thank goodness I NEVER read back cover synopsis until after the fact.  Something happened in the book which I’m glad I didn’t know was going to happen because it made it just that much more powerful.  So if you see this one in the store, don’t pick it up to read what it says on the back.  Just go to the cash register and take it home with you.

Suffice it to say that this is a story of Lily and her longstanding marriage to Tom.  It’s a story of Lily’s mother who is about to be married for the fourth time.   It’s a story of Lily’s two sons, one who is wondering himself if he’d be one to take after his mother or his grandmother.  I know that that description is about the most basic I could give but it’s a story with such incredible depth.  Jennie Nash writes with such beauty.  The emotions that she’s able to bring out in her characters is one that will have you crying right alongside them.

A gorgeous novel.

I am THRILLED to offer you an opportunity to win a signed copy of The Threadbare Heart and ten signed copies, a call-in from Jennie Nash, and a rum cake to one lucky grand prize winner (chosen from all participating blogs in this awesome promotion).  There is a PDF document embedded here.  If you can not view it, than click here. 

It’s simple. Leave me a comment and in just 250 words explain your favorite fictional mother-daughter pair. I will post the entry I like best on my blog the day after Mother’s Day (other blogs will post theirs Mother’s Day but I will be offline and unable to do so). Then Jennie Nash will pick the grand prize entry from those.

Seriously folks, you NEED this book.  I loved it so much.

*quoted from an uncorrected proof
Links of interest: Jennie Nash website, blog, and follow on Twitter. Maw Books reviews of The Only True Genius in the Family, The Last Beach Bungalow book review, Jennie Nash guest post and my interview with Jennie talking about The Last True Genius in the Family.  More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Berkley Trade. May 4, 2010
Paperback, 336 pages. ISBN 042523410X
Source:  Review copy
The Threadbare Heart by Jennie Nash is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

After growing up in Houston, Texas, Sarah Harper finds herself transplanted to Manhattan and is doing well in in her advertising career.  But one stupid decision changes it all, she forwards an inappropriate email to all of her co-workers, and is suddenly out of a job and has a lot of time on her hands.  So what better thing to do than go back home to visit her sister Mackie for Thanksgiving?

But what was going to be a simple vacation turns into something much longer as Sarah learns that Mackie has given up on having a baby due to infertility.  Sarah puts forth a plan that nobody can resist and that will change them all forever, sometimes not always for the better.

But the storyline, of course, isn’t so simple.  Memories of her deceased mother, reconnecting with her father whom announces he’s getting remarried and avoiding the hot ex-boyfriend whom she dumped horribly in high school play a role as she rediscovers who she is.  Add to that a new job at a non-profit which will literally put her on top of a library roof by herself for 102 hours, and there is plenty to keep the reader engaged.

This is a story about relationships.  With sisters, with friends, with parents, with co-workers and most important, with oneself.  Katherine Center has a way of writing that just pulls you into the story and you have to remember to stop and breathe every once in a while.  Or at the very least see if your kids have destroyed your house while you were previously engaged.  She’s just so darn good at what she does!

These characters were real and flawed.  Oh, there were times, when I wanted to say, “Sarah!  Do you have any idea what you’re doing?!”  But the beauty of the story is that Sarah is full of so many good intentions that she acts impulsively.  We, the reader, have the benefit of watching Sarah as she journeys on a very steep learning curve.  And Sarah certainly makes the journey well worth watching.

Those who go into this book expecting a quick, light read full of chuckles will find just that, but ultimately, will be surprised with the depth of emotion, story, and characters that labels Katherine Center has an author who has seemingly created a genre all her own.

And I LOVE the videos that Katherine makes.  Check these three out.  And tell me, how can you not help loving her!

The first ends with these words: “Your time is now. To be fearlessly resilient. To rebound with purpose and power. To lead with intention. To discover what you want – and go get it.” Powerful.

This video makes me want to get up, move around, and features words from Get Lucky:

And last, a video about sisters. A very appropriate celebration of Get Lucky:

Seriously, don’t skip them!  Already waiting anxiously for Katherine’s next book and passing off my copy of Get Lucky to everybody in my book club, who all audibly gasped when I mentioned her new book was out.

Links of interest: Today’s post is in conjugation with Katherine’s TLC blog tour, more blogger reviews, Katherine’s website, my book review of Everyone is Beautiful, The Bright Side of Disaster, my author interview with Katherine, Nikki’sguest post interview with Katherine, and let’s not forget her awesome soup.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Ballantine Books. April 6 2010.
Paperback, 288 pages. ISBN 0345507916
Get Lucky is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

How lucky can an author get?  All three covers would have gotten my attention. Beautiful.

A good synopsis from the book jacket:

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, the first daughter to be born in five generations of the Rare family.  As a child in an isolated village in Nova Scotia, she is drawn to Miss Babineau, an outspoken Acadian midwife with a gift for healing and a kitchen filled with herbs and folk remedies.  During the turbulent first years of World War I, Dora becomes the midwife’s apprentice.  Together they help the women of Scots Bay through infertility, difficult labors, breech births, unwanted pregnancies and even unfulfilling sex lives.

But when Gilbert Thomas, a brash medical doctor, comes to Scots Bay with promises of fast, painless childbirth, some of the women begin to question miss Babineau’s methods – and after Miss Babineau’s death, Dora is left to carry on alone.  In the face of fierce opposition, she must summon all of her strength to protect the birthing traditions and wisdom that have been passed down to her.

The Birth House is told in journal form from the point of view of seventeen-year-old Dora and also includes letters, news clippings, and advertisements.   I really liked the Novia Scotia setting.  It felt so wild and also romantic, particularly for this mountain town which demanded that its inhabitants carve out their life’s goodwill from what the earth would give them.

Dora is labeled as an anomaly as soon as she’s born.  In five generations, the Rare family line has simply never had the birth of a girl. Dora grows up with six brothers and as she gets older her father tries to squelch her tom boyish ways.  She moves in with the local midwife who trains her in catching babies, a skill that is a little prayer, a little magic, a little medicinal herbs, and a whole lot of knowledge of a woman’s body.

Dora has a fantastic voice.  I loved her.  In fact, I loved all the characters.  Miss Babineau was fabulous. So wise and caring but with a witch-like quality to her.   I felt a little sorry for the well-meaning Dr. Gilbert Thomas although you wanted to hate him too.  I really wanted to smack Dora’s new husband, Archer, over the head.  I wanted to know more about Charlie, Dora’s brother, whom she followed down to Boston when things got complicated at home.  And I can’t forget Aunt Fran whom disproved of everything Dora did.  I loved all the women in the town.  They often got together and talked about everything under the sun and conversations not meant to have in front of the men.

Although the characters are the heart of this story, childbirth is the focus of it.  Midwifery and modern medicine clash head-to-head and the women are caught in the very middle of it.  I found techniques from both midwifing and the new modern medicine to be fascinating.  Particularly, the treatment for woman diagnosed has having hysterical tendencies.  You’d just have to read the book to find out about that.

An examination of a community of women, their society, and the families they held together through their shared friendships, rivalries, stories and knitting circles.  Ami McKay wrote a incredible narrative and was one heck of a storyteller. I loved it.

Links of interest: Ami McKay website, blog, Twitter. More book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow. August 22, 2006.
Hardcover, 400 pages. ISBN 0061135852
Source copy:  Own
The Birth House is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

I first noticed Little Bee when it was first released a year ago because how could I ignore a cover like that?  As soon as I saw this cover, I knew I would like it.  And then the buzz was really good but yet I never managed to read it right away.  SHAME on me for waiting a year to read it because this was MY kind of book.  I loved everything about it.

But the thing is, I really can’t tell you anything about it.  Right on the back cover:

It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.  Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:  It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.  The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.  And it’s what happens afterward that is most important.  Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

I didn’t know ANYTHING about this book before opening it and I was so GLAD that I didn’t.  So I’m not going to spoil it for you either.

The only thing that I will say is that the book is about war, marriage, the refugee system in Britain and the connections that are made between people.  It’s a tough subject matter with truly heartbreaking scenes but interspersed with hilarious moments.  I was truly caught up within a huge range of emotions from laughing out loud to gasping in horror.

(And for those of you who have read the book will understand when I say that my boys are huge into batman and literally were wearing their batman costumes around the house while I was reading this one.  So it truly made for a complete immersion experience.)

And if you’re wondering even more what batman has to do with the book, then you’ll just have to read it!

I seriously just want to point you over to Rebecca’s review because she says exactly what I would want to say about the book but so much better than what I can at the moment:

Little Bee is beautiful, awful, hopeful, devastating, and utterly unforgettable. Cleave juxtaposes gorgeous, almost poetic prose with a truly horrific story that is made bearable by moments of great humor and warmth, many of which are provided by Sarah’s son Charlie, a four-year-old who is convinced he is Batman.

Read Little Bee for the language and the variety of voices that are so incredible you’ll want to wrap yourself up with them and stay for days. Read it for Cleave’s ability to tell a story that is framed by politics but that is ultimately about people. Read it because it does all the things fiction is supposed to do and then some. From the striking cover to the very last word, Little Bee is intense, satisfying, and not to be missed. This is a story you will carry with you for the rest of your reading days.

I couldn’t agree more!

Loved it, loved it, loved it.  I hope you love it too.  And if you don’t . . . well, maybe I’d rather not know about it. 

I was fortunate to go hear Chris Cleave at The Kings English Bookshop this past month.  Hands down one of the best authors I’ve heard speak. And a genuinely nice guy. And you know how some authors should never narrate or even read their own books out loud?  Cleave was superb during his reading.  I’ve included a lot of video for you to watch if interested.  Lots of fun stuff.  I had not read the book when I went and there were no spoilers.  When he reads it’s only in the first chapter.  His voice is a bit quiet so you’ll want to turn your volume up pretty high.

On how we used to view and treat asylum seekers:

On how Britain now treats its asylum seekers compared to decades ago:

On why he writes fiction. I loved the story of his little boy in this one:

On writing Little Bee, part 1:

On writing Little Bee, part 2:

Chris reads the first chapter of Little Bee which is told from Little Bee’s viewpoint. Loved seeing how he, as the author, envisions the book to be read. Worth watching the whole thing:

Chris reading from the second chapter of Little Bee which is told from Sara’s viewpoint:

Such a good book!!

Have you read it?

Links of interest: Chris Cleave website, more book blogger reviews.
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Simon and Schuster February 16, 2010 (originally published February 10,2009)
Paperback, 304 pages. ISBN 1416589643
Source copy: Purchased
Little Bee is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Set in the 1870’s, fifteen year-old Gabriel, his mother and little brother have settled with their new stepfather on a struggling farm in Kansas, where black men aren’t fighting so much against the white folks but rather the land.  Gabriel grows increasingly dissatisfied with his new lot in life and the drudgery of homesteading.  When his orphaned friend James suggests that they get hired on with a group of cowboys headed to Texas, Gabriel abandons his family for the call of adventure.  But what begins as an exciting trek soon turns into much more then the boys bargained for as they come to realize that two of the men are brutal and dangerous.  While Gabriel is trying to leave his past behind him, he faces a future is even worse then he could ever imagine.

The writing in Gabriel’s Story is beautiful.  It made me slow down and savor what I was reading.  And it felt great to slow down.  One such passage:

Gabriel had the feeling that something was slipping away from him.  The earth moved under his feet instead of he over the earth.  He was aware of conversations taking place, but he played no part in them.  He heard Jack express his regrets and say his goodbyes and watched him ride off, slow and quiet but still going.  He heard the snap of Bill’s whip over the oxen and saw them enter the river.  The creatures sank in up to their necks and surged forward in rhythmic thrusts, like aquatic beasts of burden harnessed in a fable from some pre-Biblical time.  Gabriel watched them emerge on the other side and move off.  He saw James’s face before him, troubled almost to tears and filled with questions.  He turned and sought out Marshall and found only the man’s back, some thirty yards away.  He was smoking and talking quietly with Caleb, oblivious of the shift in the earth and as calm as any wayward angel whose work is still blessed by providence.  And still the earth rolled beneath the boy’s feet, like a slowly undulating ocean that did not yet drown him but might at any moment.

The American West was as much a character in this book as anything else.  I love it when the landscape plays such a large part in the story.

The San Juans rose before Gabriel like a great receding barricade conceived by the gods and built of the earth itself.  He knew he would have to learn mountain travel through trial and error.  He could construct an image of what was to come from dimly remembered descriptions, but he felt surer each day that he could complete this journey – if not the whole of it, at least that day’s portion.  He wove his way into the foothills, seeking passage through small gaps in the hillsides, over mounds of wind-scoured sandstone, around tilted slabs of granite.  Each ridge gave way to another and another, each higher than the one before.  He learned to gauge the scale of the peaks only slowly, with his wary progress from base to peak and down again.  He felt minuscule below the mountains, like an ant, a tiny thief crawling over the toes of giants.  Thus he rode or led the horse with hushed respect, as if he feared to wake the mountains, and he listened – at first for signs of other people, but increasingly to the many voices around him.

Gabriel’s Story is a quiet story of one boy’s coming of age in set against a loud backdrop.  I really enjoyed this one although a word of warning:  these cowboys are no saints.  Foul language, murder and rape are very present in the story and served to make me hate these men so much.  Durham did an excellent job portraying just how evil they were and just how intimidated Gabriel was.

So glad I read this one. My short review just doesn’t do this one justice.  Excellent.  Like give it some love excellent.

Gabriel’s Story is  part of my themed reading for the month of February which celebrates Black History Month.  Join me this month as I explore books that celebrate the history of African-Americans.
Links of interest: author Author website, book blogger reviews.
Genre: Historical Fiction, Western (Note: although it features a juvenile character this is not a children’s book)
Publisher: Doubleday. January 16, 2001.
Hardcover, 304 pages. ISBN 0385498144
Gabriel’s Story is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.