The Hangman's Daughter

The Hangman's Daughter
By Oliver Potzsch (448 pages)
Published by AmazonCrossing
Bookish rating: 3.25

I read this book for two reasons. First, the premise seemed interesting: a series of murders in a small, 17th-century German village lead to accusations of witchcraft. Second, this was a wildly successful translation (from German) that Amazon's international publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing, bought and published. Since much of what Amazon publishes is cheaply (or freely) acquired, I was super interested to gauge the quality of  a bestseller.

Meh. The plot is good enough and the idea of humanizing and going into the head of a hangman is an interesting approach. Potzsch gives a good flavor of the town and its politics, and overall the novel isn't bad. However, the writing is bland and often cliched, which could be partially due to the translation. Hard to say, since I didn't read the original German version. Plus, you know, I can't read German. An excessive! use! of! exclamation! points! often makes the novel seem overdone, with a Batman-like (wham! bang!) cheese factor, especially with dialogue.

Some scenes are genuinely scary, such as when the so-called "devil" sneaks into a sick child's room to kill her (she escapes), and the "witch" torture scenes are blessedly not needlessly gratuitous--torture for the sake of drama and gore instead of plot movement is one of my pet peeves. Potzsch balances this very well, considering the village hangman (who's in charge of getting confessions via torture) is the main character and accusations of witchcraft abound.

In short, the novel is okay. Not bad, not great. I doubt I'll read the sequel.

Book of Shadows

Book of Shadows
By Alexandra Sokoloff (320 pages)
Published by St. Martin's Press
Bookish rating: 3.75

Well, it's October and that means it's time for spooky, scary stories, no?

I discovered Sokoloff's thriller and somewhat demonic writing while at a huge publishing expo I attended for work. In the exhibition hall, publishers literally hand you books (ahead of print). I was wandering along and a marketing guy literally pulled me aside and said I looked like their demographic (I was youthfully in my mid-20s at the time) and said I should read this spiffy new book, The Harrowing. The author, Sokoloff, was there and she signed the book for me. I was too shy to explain that thrillers ain't really my thing, so I left with the signed book and it sat on my shelf for a year or two.

For whatever autumnal reason, I got in the mood for something dark, picked the book and loved it. It was bubble gum entertainment, but well done spooky bubble gum entertainment. A win.

So, I picked up my second Sokoloff novel, Book of Shadows. In Boston, a wealthy college girl is murdered in what seems like a satanic ritual. Ruh-roh. We get the story from the point of view of one of the embittered detectives, which works fine. The plotting and pacing are very good and the writing is tight and not cheesy. (I hate cheesiness when it comes to whodunnits or thrillers or investigative whatever--I can't even be in the same room as an NCIS episode because I roll my eyes and editorialize too much, driving Chris batty).

The book is dark, gruesome, genuinely scary, and engrossing. Everything you'd want from a mid-October read.

The Sweet Far Thing

The Sweet Far Thing
By Libba Bray (819 pages)
Published by Delacorte Press
Bookish rating: 4

So, remember in my previous post on Rebel Angels, I made a fuss of extending (good) trilogies out, so I can draw out my bookish pleasure? Well, I just didn't make it this time. After Rebel Angels, the second book of the Gemma Doyle trilogy, I simply missed the Gemma Doyle world. The library had an e-copy available of The Sweet Far Thing, the third and final book, and after debating whether I could read 819 pages before it was due back, I downloaded it to my Kindle.

Done in 8 days. Granted, I've been on maternity leave since yesterday--without a baby to show for it--so I've had an unexpected and delightful amount of time to read in the past 36 hours. Time I shall soon long to have back, methinks.

I very much enjoyed this third book, but of the entire trilogy, this one was probably my least favorite. The plot gets a tad confusing, as Gemma must determine what to do with the power of the realms. Like the Harry Potter books, the fantasy element of the Gemma Doyle novels is deeply symbolic, almost religiously so. However, aspects of the realms got confusing and I didn't fully understand the mechanism that required this sacrifice or that one.

But really, no matter. Gemma Doyle is no Harry Potter, but oh, she is a girl! My very favorite thing about Libba Bray's three novels is how incredibly girly they are, but in a way that pushes them to be bold, powerful, brave, and smart, without being annoyingly obvious about it. She continually uses the corset as a metaphor--in an effing brilliant way, such as: "Should. That word, so like a corset, meant to bend us to the proper shape" (p. 562). Or, when observing her classmates preparing for their debuts to society and a cloistered life of weak tea and good behavior, Gemma describes the whole "coming out" process as "squeez[ing] their minds into corsets, lest some errant thought should escape and ruin the smooth illusion they hold of themselves and the world as they like it" (p. 784). Oh, Gemma loves herself a gaudy pink dress with beads and diamonds, but that doesn't mean she wants to be married off to the highest bidder and fill the rest of her days carefully grooming her social status and reputation via balls, teas, and so on.

Bray so obviously LOVES girls, and all three books really celebrate them, in myriad ways, without being cutesy or shallow. At the end of this final novel, Gemma overhears her straightlaced old headmistress generating a laugh that can only be described as a giggle. She says, "It is a giggle full of high spirits and merry mischief, proof that we never lose our girlish selves, no matter what sort of women we become" (p. 813).

I just love that.

Rebel Angels

Rebel Angels

By Libba Bray (548 pages)

Published by Ember

Bookish rating: 4.25

I adored the first book in Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, A Great and Terrible Beauty (read it! read it! read it!), so after a suitable time had passed (I like to stretch out trilogies and stories that I’m enthralled with), I started this second book, Rebel Angels.

Set at an English boarding school and in London during Christmastime in the 1890s, Gemma and her fabulously well-drawn friends, seek the temple that will allow her to bind the magic of the realms (an “other” world that Gemma can cross into at will). Did I mention there’s some hocus pocus? There is. The backstory is too complicated for me to fully explain, but suffice it to say that the realism of London, the girliness of Spence Academy, the wit of the girls, the occasional ball and pretty dress, and the magic of the realms makes for an engrossing, fun, and very satisfying read.

The books in this trilogy are the sorts of the books that remind you why you love reading so much.

Although you do indeed need to read the first book to make much sense of Rebel Angels, this second novel mercifully dodges the sophomore slump that ruins so many series or trilogies. Sure, it’s a transition book to get us to the (800-plus-page) final book, but the novel is genuinely good in its own right.

Confession: I don’t think I’ll manage to wait a “suitable time period” to tackle the third and final Gemma Doyle book.

Recommended, obviously.

Luncheon of the Boating Party

Luncheon of the Boating Party

By Susan Vreeland (448 pages)

Published by Penguin

Bookish rating: 3

Vreeland’s historical, artsy novel explores the creation of Renoir’s huge, popular painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. She takes us to Bohemian Paris, and surmises on the crowd of models shown in the painting and Renoir’s angst in painting it, and she conveys some of the contemporary debate and criticism of Impressionism at the time.

Vreeland successfully showcases lots of historical and French cultural detail, not to mention the sense of what Paris was like 100+ years ago, and she depicts the turbulence of an art movement still in flux, not yet fully understood or appreciated. However, the novel lacks enough plot to move it forward, so we readers are subjected to pages and pages and PAGES of banter among the 13 models and teeny tiny, inconsequential scenes. This results in a choppy read. One could argue that Vreeland’s choppiness is intended to mimic the short brush stokes that give a viewer of Renoir’s work an “impression” of the subject, but I highly doubt that’s what she was aiming for. If it was, well, then I’m not a fan.

I never got terribly absorbed in the story, because there was so little story to hang onto. Parisians exchanging witticisms is interesting for a paragraph at most, but not full chapters—though Vreeland obviously does this to fill up scenes in which Renoir is painting. I mean, what can they do besides verbally interact? Each sitting of the models is mostly the same, and again, though Vreeland has carefully written these redundant scenes with clever dialogue (way too much dialogue, in my opinion) and little nuances and details that show she knows her stuff, it’s simply tiresome to read.

This is not a bad book, and it should appeal in many ways to those who love Impressionism and Renoir. However, the novel failed to grab me. I had no plot to follow, except for Renoir fussing about his painting, and the characters were (a) too numerous, (b) not super likable, and (c) not terribly interesting. Yes, parts were of the novel were done well, and Vreeland is a good writer. But overall, I just didn’t enjoy the novel that much.

The Pleasure of My Company

The Pleasure of My Company

By Steve Martin (176 pages)

Published by Hyperion

Bookish rating: 4

Okay, seriously, who doesn’t love Steve Martin? Yeah, he’s a comedic goofball, but he’s also a renaissance man! I mean, the dude can play the banjo, act a hugely wide variety of roles, is hilarious, and apparently he’s a genuinely not-sucky writer.

Did you even KNOW that he was a writer? Oh yes, he has a memoir, which I now totally want to read, and he also wrote Shopgirl, which I haven’t read, but I loved the movie (which starred Martin and Claire Danes).

The Pleasure of My Company is narrated by Daniel, who has some sort of mental health issue—autism, Asperger’s, or some sort of obsessive–compulsive disorder. We never quite know what the condition is, but Daniel is nevertheless a heartbreakingly decent guy, stuck in the mind of neurotic obsessions, compulsions, and fears.

Daniel lives by himself in his Santa Monica apartment, observing the world but unable to participate in it, due to his fear of curbs, need for balanced light wattage, and so on. His narrative voice is very matter-of-fact but also sort of disarming. He pines for three different women—his state-supplied shrink, the pharmacist at the Rite Aid, and a realtor showing the apartment across the street.

Overanalyzing absolutely everything, Daniel hyper-plans ways to interact with these women, mainly trying to appear normal. Eventually, he becomes the go-to babysitter for a toddler of one of the women, and Daniel’s narration of how the little boy interacts with him is extremely amusing and probably my favorite aspect of the novel. The toddler’s lack of predictability and logic matched up Daniel’s need for extreme order and a cause-and-effect is brilliantly portrayed, but they also have moments of being totally on the same wavelength. After all, like a toddler, Daniel loves his patterns and rituals.

The ending was a tad too tidy and almost rushed, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, recommended. Surprisingly.



The Three Weissmanns of Westport

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

By Cathleen Schine (292 pages)

Published by Picador

Bookish rating: 4.25

This wry, snarky novel—an updated take on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—follows three women as they relocate from swanky Manhattan apartments to a dingy cottage in Westport. And there, they tinker in love.

Betty, the somewhat silly matriarch, is left by her husband (who decides to keep the apartment) after 48 years of marriage and dramatically refers to herself as a widow. Miranda (based on Austen’s Marianne) is the theatrical and rather naïve literary agent whose career just went down in flames. And steadfast Annie (based on Austen’s Elinor) moves in with her mom and sister to keep an eye on them. She’s the only one who watches the household budget or is gainfully employed.

 Schine mimics Austen’s ironic tone, but she does so with a New York (and often Jewish) twist, and the result is hilarious but also sort of poignant. The women are so flawed but believable—in a ridiculously non-believable sort of way. I can’t quite explain it. Schine also narrates from an omniscient point of view, flawlessly bouncing from one character’s point of view to the next. The result is delightful observation and introspection, with nothing muddled or sloppy about it.

 If you’re an Austen-phile, you may read along the entire book, thinking you know how it ends. You don’t. And that was one of my favorite parts of this novel.

It’s refreshing to read a novel as well-written as Three Weismanns, with line upon line of wit, irony, parody, droll observation, and even a little romance. Recommended.