Review: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein

Source: Review copy from W.W. Norton & Company
Rating:★★★★★

What kind of a people, she wondered, does what was done that day and then has no concept of the enormity of their act?

(from The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, page 339)

On the surface, The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is a novel about the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 during World War II and a handful of people from different walks of life who are impacted by the war.  But it goes so much deeper than that.  Jennifer Cody Epstein introduces her characters before the war, when life was filled with promise, and lets readers follow them through the darkest days of the war and the period of change afterward.

The novel opens with Cam and Lacy on a ferris wheel at a fair in New York.  Cam is shy and quiet from years of being ridiculed by his father for his stutter, while Lacy is a take-charge kind of woman who sets their relationship in motion.  The hopes and dreams they have are put on hold when war breaks out, and Cam joins the U.S. Army Air Corps.  Epstein has readers sit in the cockpit with Cam as he takes part in the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942.

Epstein also introduces readers to Anton, the architect behind many of Tokyo’s modern structures who is later called on by the U.S. military to help destroy them.  His son, Billy, is a sensitive soul who doesn’t fit in and feels at home only behind a camera.  Hana, a passionate, modern woman who eschews the old Japanese ways, feels abandoned by the men she has loved and is resigned to a loveless, arranged marriage.  Yoshi is torn between her love for her troubled mother and her need to escape the depression that permeates their home — and then the incendiary bombs rain down on Tokyo.

These characters were intriguing and their stories fascinating on their own, but when the pieces fell into place and the connections between them were made known, I was blown away.  Epstein does a wonderful job painting a picture of Tokyo before and after and makes you feel like you are standing beside Yoshi when the bombs drop, feeling the heat, tasting the smoke, getting lost in all the chaos and confusion.  She is a master storyteller, enabling readers to really get to know her characters as they flit in and out of their lives.

Epstein focuses on the contrasts that make war so complex: before vs. after, war vs. murder, orders vs. ethics, victors vs. victims, us vs. them.  With characters that straddle both sides, she explores the gray areas of war and identity.  Billy was born and raised in Japan but isn’t Japanese.  Yoshi speaks Japanese, English, and French, thanks to her mother, Hana, who was educated in England and feels more English than Japanese.  They desire love, acceptance, security, and to know their true selves — and the war makes their search for these essentials more desperate and necessary.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is beautifully written and skillfully constructed.  Epstein moves back and forth between the characters, telling seemingly separate stories, and while readers may not understand where she is taking them, they will be rewarded for their patience in the end.  It’s not an easy book to read given the subject matter, and Epstein doesn’t flinch in her descriptions of the atrocities perpetrated by both sides.  No book about war can be wrapped up neatly or painlessly, but Epstein manages to infuse the ending with hope.  Tokyo is a symbol of these characters, who are brought down by their families and the war, and those who manage to survive will be reborn.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for having me on The Gods of Heavenly Punishment tour.  To follow the tour, click here.

Book 16 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The Gods of Heavenly Punishment from W.W. Norton & Company for review.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: Seduction by M.J. Rose

To live in the moment of desire is to be yourself in the most pure and painful way possible, because beneath every touch is the knowledge of how fleeting the pleasure is.  How elusive the passion.  How impossible it is to contain it for long.

(from Seduction)

Seduction is the latest novel in M.J. Rose’s series about reincarnation, revisiting the main character from The Book of Lost Fragrances (which I loved).  As with all the other books in the series, it can be read on its own.  Rose weaves together the past and the present in this haunting, atmospheric tale.  She brings back mythologist Jac L’Etoile, who is still coming to terms with the hallucinations she’s had since childhood, refusing to believe they could be glimpses of her past lives, and mourning the end of a love affair when she is contacted by Theo Gaspard about checking out what could be Celtic ruins on the Isle of Jersey.

Jac hasn’t seen Theo since they were teenagers receiving therapy at a clinic in Switzerland, but she remembers the intense bond they shared, how they understood each other in a way that no one ever had.  Malachai Samuels of the Phoenix Foundation, Jac’s therapist and friend who has devoted his entire life to the study of reincarnation and the search for elusive memory tools, warns her against going, but she’s not going to pass up a chance to explore the ruins and find proof of the existence of the Druids.  However, Theo also wants Jac’s help in finding a journal written by novelist Victor Hugo in 1855 that supposedly is hidden in one of the island’s many caves and details his conversations with the Shadow of the Sepulcher.

The novel shifts back and forth between Jac’s adventures in the caves and ruins of Jersey and the scent triggers that bring her back in time and Victor Hugo’s first-person account of the numerous séances in which he participated in the hopes of communicating with his beloved daughter who drowned 10 years before.  Hugo’s story involves a perfumer with ties to the Gaspard family and a spirit that tempts him with the impossible.

Seduction is a captivating, fast-paced novel that is sensual and mysterious, beautiful and tragic, with luscious descriptions of the scents of ancient woods and the sea.  I was surprised by the complexity of the plot, fascinated by the tortured characters, enamored of the scenery, and even chilled by the evil that Hugo must battle.  Readers don’t have to believe in reincarnation to buy into the plot, nor do they have to worry about romance overshadowing a story about haunted souls struggling to find peace in their lives.  Rose is a gifted storyteller who perfectly blends the fact and the fiction to create an unputdownable novel that had me wanting to drop everything to travel to Jersey and see it for myself.

Book 15 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received Seduction from Atria for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Wars by Timothy Findley

All this mud and water was contaminated.  Dung and debris and decaying bodies lay beneath its surface.  When the rivers and canals could no longer be contained — over they spilled into clyttes already awash with rain.

Houses, trees and fields of flax once flourished here.  Summers had been blue with flowers.  Now it was a shallow sea of stinking grey from end to end.  And this is where you fought the war.

(from The Wars, page 78 in the old hardcover edition I read, whose cover I couldn’t find online)

The Wars is a 1977 novel of the Great War by Timothy Findley that follows Robert Ross, a Canadian who enlists as an officer in 1915 after the death of his disabled sister.  The novel opens toward the end of Robert’s story.  The world is on fire, and Robert is leading hundreds of horses away from the front.  Readers soon learn that Robert has possibly gone mad, and Findley brings them back to the beginning to piece together the events that led to that moment.

The Wars has an odd structure.  Robert and his family are introduced and his wartime activities are uncovered partly through photos and interview transcripts as an unnamed writer or historian (called “you” in the narrative) researches his life.  The rest of his story is told through a choppy, disjointed, non-linear narrative.  Findley basically writes a series of scenes chronicling the major events that defined Robert’s life and paved the way for him becoming a tragic hero — from his relationship with his sister, Rowena, to his experience with the horses on the troop ship to England to a chlorine gas attack while he and his men are trapped in a crater.

Findley introduces readers to an assortment of characters, including Robert’s alcoholic mother; Harris, a fellow soldier with whom a friendship leans toward love; Barbara, a young aristocrat who trades in her soldier boyfriends as soon as they are injured; and Juliet, a 12-year-old girl who falls in love with Robert during a stay at her family home.  However, except for Robert, the characters are mostly flat, the sparse narrative making it difficult for readers to really get to know them.

The Wars is an interesting war story, focusing on a single soldier amidst the chaos during which thousands upon thousands perished.  The novel shines in its descriptions of life in the trenches, futile missions that have no chance of success, and one man’s desire to do what he feels is right…no matter the cost.  Despite a structure that was difficult to get used to, Findley succeeds in showing the insanity inherent in war and how it can transform men into murderers.  Life goes on while the men are fighting on the front, underscored by Robert’s mother’s disintegration upon the death of her daughter and her son going off to war.

I finished the book not really knowing what to make of it, but in the days since I turned the last page, I find myself contemplating it and liking it more.  Findley made me want to know what happened with the horses from the very beginning, and as piece after piece of Robert’s story fell into place, the more I could understand his transformation.  It definitely isn’t the best World War I novel I’ve read, but it’s certainly worth giving a try.

I read The Wars for the Literature and War Readalong on Beauty is a Sleeping Cat.  You can join the discussion here.

Book 14 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I borrowed The Wars from the local library. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Last Telegram by Liz Trenow

“Are you cold, Gran?”

“No, my lovely, it’s just the memories.”  I send up a silent prayer that she will never know the dreary fear of war, when all normal life is suspended, when the impossible becomes ordinary, when every decision seems to be a matter of life or death, when good-byes are often for good.

It tends to take the shine off you.

(from The Last Telegram)

The Last Telegram by Liz Trenow will likely win a spot on my “Best of 2013″ list.  When I finished this book yesterday, I wiped tears from my eyes, sighed, and thought about reading it again.  It’s my favorite kind of historical fiction, with the history front and center, characters I care about and don’t want to leave behind, and writing that flows so beautifully that when you sit down to read a few pages, you’ve read a quarter of the book without realizing.

The novel is written in the first person and narrated by 80-year-old Lily Verner, who is mourning the death of her husband of more than five decades.  While helping her sort out the house she has lived in since childhood, her 17-year-old granddaughter, Emily, finds an old, locked briefcase in the back of the wardrobe, and memories she hasn’t confronted in decades overwhelm her.  Trenow brings readers back to the British countryside in the months before World War II.  Lily is 18 years old and preparing to study in Switzerland when the threat of war forces her father to cancel the trip, giving her a choice between taking cooking classes or working in the family’s silk mill.  She chooses the latter option, hoping to gain enough experience to work in an office in London, but her father says she needs to understand the business and starts her as a weaver.

While Lily learns the ropes, the world is rapidly changing around her.  A flirtation with Robbie Cameron, who owns a company that makes parachutes, and the likelihood that the mill will be forced to close when war breaks out and demand for luxury silk diminishes bring about a new business opportunity for Verner and Sons.  It’s not long before the mill becomes part of the war effort, weaving silk for parachutes — and despite being a woman, Lily finds herself taking on more responsibilities at the mill, especially when it looks as though her brother, John, might go off to war.

Lily soon finds herself torn between her family’s expectations for Robbie and her feelings for Stefan, one of the Jewish boys from Germany her family sponsored through the Kindertransport and employs as a weaver in the mill.  But the war soon comes between her and Stefan, as people grow worried about “enemy aliens” and espionage, especially as Germany gears up to invade England.  As the stresses of producing enough top-quality parachute silk and the seemingly never-ending tragedies of war weigh heavily upon her, Lily, with the help of her friend and factory manager, Gwen, manages to hold herself together — but a mistake comes back to haunt her and tears her world apart.

I honestly can’t think of one thing I didn’t like about The Last Telegram.  The romance between Lily and Stefan might seem like something that’s been done before in other WWII novels, but Trenow makes it different by incorporating the history of how the British government placed all men and boys age 16 and older with passports from enemy countries in internment camps.  I also loved the way she handled the story with the older Lily and her granddaughter, with a seamless transition from the present to the past and back to the present just once toward the end, so even though the present storyline is just a small part of the book, it doesn’t feel forced or unnecessary.  Seeing the feisty Lily in her granddaughter brought the novel full circle.  I also thought the descriptions of silk weaving and the little tidbits about the history of silk at the beginning of every chapter were fascinating; I’d never read a WWII novel about silk or parachute production, and that’s a plus given how many wartime books I read.  The fact that Trenow’s family has been silk weavers for hundreds of years and actually created parachute silk during the war make the story feel more authentic.

The Last Telegram is a story about love and loss, guilt and forgiveness, and although it made me cry, Trenow does a good job balancing the sadness with hope.  It’s a fast-paced novel that isn’t too heavy on the tragedy, but the love you feel for the characters and how Trenow transports you back in time, in their shoes, make for an emotional and completely captivating read.

Book 13 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The Last Telegram from Sourcebooks for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver

Largely, now, it was not anger he felt, but rather a kind of bonescraping, quiet, ever-present sorrow.  To come to the place that was supposed to stay the same, to come and find it changed.  Dr. Miller had warned him against what he called “the geography cure.”  You can’t fix yourself by going somewhere else, he’d said.  You’ll always take yourself along.

(from The End of the Point)

The End of the Point is a novel about family, place, and how one’s identity is affected by both.  Elizabeth Graver chronicles the lives of the Porter family over nearly 60 years as they live and love and congregate at their summer home on Ashaunt Point in Buzzard’s Bay.  The family’s ties to Ashaunt are so strong, even the military presence couldn’t keep them away during the summer of 1942, where the book begins.

The Porters — teenagers Helen and Dossy, their younger sister Janie, their wheelchair-bound father, their loving but detached mother, and their Scottish nurses, Bea and Agnes — adapt to the presence of the soldiers, though they miss Charlie, the life of the party, the oldest child who is away from the family at Army Air Corps training school.  The war has not yet affected the family, and the summer stretches so promisingly before them.  The Porters are introduced through the eyes of Bea, a Scottish nurse in charge of the youngest Porter.  Bea’s entire world revolves around Janie, especially at the age of 36 when she laments that she likely will not have children of her own.  This fierce love for Janie, a mother’s love, poses some problems when she falls in love that summer.

The narrative shifts between Bea and 16-year-old Helen, who is restless, intelligent, and always seeking recognition and praise.  The post-war years are chronicled through Helen’s letters and diary — which took a bit of getting used to — before Helen’s son, Charlie, picks up the narrative as a troubled young man in 1970, when the Vietnam War throws the world into chaos once again.  While the world changes around them, they are held steady by Ashaunt and a litany of summers spent in its protective arms, under its spell, able to drown out the troubles outside — until even it must change with the times and tides.

After the fateful summer of 1942, when Bea is forced to choose between love and loyalty, the characters overshadow the plot as they go about their lives.  The book summary says the family is haunted by an event involving Janie that cuts that summer short, but in truth, it doesn’t carry as much significance or weight as one might assume and it hardly affects Janie at all.  It’s not until Charlie enters the narrative that the story once again picks up steam, with the introduction of a troubled Vietnam vet who shares his anger over development and environmental pollution on the Point.

I was captivated by Bea’s story about love, sacrifice, the meaning of family, and the definition of home.  Even though I didn’t feel as much of a connection to the other characters, Graver’s writing kept me turning the pages.  Her prose is beautiful — poetic without being flowery, saying so much in just a handful of words, painting such vivid scenes and delving deep into her characters so that I felt like I had actually been to Ashaunt and really knew this family.

The End of the Point is a beautiful novel about the passage of time and how connected we can be to places where we’ve made our happiest memories.  Ashaunt serves as a symbol of love and hope, and no matter what troubles or tragedies befall the family, they will always have this one place that has become part of their history, their blood.  Yet, we must all come to terms with the fact that these places remain static only in our memories and that home really is with the people with whom those memories were made.

Book 12 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The End of the Point from HarperCollins for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power

“Most of us don’t even have clear lives in the present.  How much more confused do our stories get when a few years go by?  Or when we hand the stories down?  Our mothers’ stories.  They’ve been told so many times it’s a wonder they can still hold together.”

(from The Clover House)

The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power tells the story of Calliope Notaris Brown, who is 35-years-old, newly engaged, and estranged from her mother for the past five years when she learns that her Uncle Nestor has died and left all of his belongings to her.  For some reason, her mother, who returned to her native Greece after her husband’s death, doesn’t want Callie to make the trip to Patras to go through her uncle’s collections, photos, and documents.  Clio is harsh and distant, and Callie only remembers her mother’s inability to adapt to American life and how she lived in memories and fought with her father, neglecting her in the process.

Callie, curious as to what her mother is hiding, leaves Boston amid an argument with her fiancé, Jonah, who wants a level of emotional commitment that she just isn’t ready to give despite having agreed to be his wife.  She arrives in Patras during Carnival, a boisterous time of parades, seductive dances, and treasure hunts in the days leading up to Lent.  It’s a carefree time, but Callie has a lot on her mind, between weeding through her uncle’s things in search of whatever might explain her mother’s inability to mother her and fighting her attraction to a man she met on the bus from the airport on his way to celebrate Carnival with his girlfriend and friends.

As Callie digs through Nestor’s belongings, she must piece together random artifacts and bits of information dating back to the Italian and German occupation of Greece during World War II.  Her cousin, Aliki, believes the past should stay in the past, and her aunts, Sophia and Thalia, bicker about what Callie should know and what is best kept secret.  Callie isn’t sure how much of her mother’s past has affected their relationship over the years, and with Clio being so guarded, it remains uncertain whether they will ever come to an understanding.

The Clover House is set mainly in Patras in 2000 and told from Callie’s point of view.  I liked Callie, though I found it hard to relate to her.  Because she’s introduced long after her father’s death and years since she last saw her mother, readers never see the family interact, making it difficult to understand exactly why her childhood makes it hard for her to forge relationships.  I was riveted by the chapters set during the occupation of Greece, which reveal layer by layer Clio’s shame and guilt.  I would have loved more chapters about Clio and the Notaris family, delving deeper into why the events of the war made it impossible for Clio to have a relationship with her daughter.  I wasn’t exactly sure why the secret was so secret and so destructive given the other things the family had dealt with during the war.

Where the novel really shines is in the descriptions of Carnival, the customs and the costumes, the food and the parades, and especially the Bourbouli dances — where women wear masks and black robes that conceal their identities and possess all the power in choosing a partner.  Powers’ writing is beautiful, bringing Greece and its turbulent history to life.  Overall, I found The Clover House hard to put down, as I was captivated by the setting.  I wish there had been more chapters set in the past, more of a focus on Clio during her coming-of-age amidst the war, but I was intrigued by these characters and their troubles from the start and not at all disappointed when I turned the final page.  The Clover House shows how war brings about both shame and honor, how secrets meant to protect have the power to destroy, and how we shouldn’t let the past dictate our future.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for having me on The Clover House tour. To follow the tour, click here.

Book 11 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The Clover House from Ballantine Books for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

There is actually little difference as to colour in the moment before the blow and the moment before the kiss: the negligible space between her and him was now charged, full force, with the intensity of their two beings.  Something speechless, tenacious, unlovable — himself — was during that instant exposed in Harrison’s eyes: it was a crisis — the first this evening, not the first she had known — of his emotional idiocy, and it was as unnerving as might be a brain-storm in someone without a brain.

(from The Heat of the Day, pages 43-44 in the old hardcover version I read, which unfortunately had no cover)

The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen, first published in the U.S. in 1949, is a novel set in World War II London just after the Blitz.  It covers several interconnected characters but mainly focuses on Stella Rodney, who is told by a man named Harrison that her lover, Robert, is a spy for the Nazis, and he won’t turn him in if she breaks things off with Robert and becomes his lover.  She first meets Harrison at the funeral of her dead ex-husband’s cousin, who leaves his estate to Stella’s son, Roderick, despite never having met him.  Harrison’s presence at the funeral is odd; no one knows him, but he seems to know Stella and soon edges himself into her life.  She doesn’t know anything about Harrison or his occupation, and she doesn’t know what to think when he delivers his ultimatum.

Bowen also follows Roderick, Stella’s son, a young soldier whose life appears to be mapped out for him by the inheritance of Mount Morris; Robert, Stella’s lover, and his eccentric family; Louie, a young woman who struggles with isolation and loneliness since her parents are dead and her husband is off at war; and Louie’s friend, Connie, who has an obsession with newspapers.  The Heat of the Day centers on how the war affected London’s inhabitants, particularly their interactions and quickly-formed relationships, and how some people struggled to find themselves or questioned the meaning of freedom.

This was a hard book to read.  Bowen’s writing style was all over the place.  There are some passages that flow really well, but much of the book is chunks of unnatural dialogue and rambling descriptions.  It took me a week to read it (my copy was only 372 pages), mostly because my mind would wander and I’d doze off, or I’d have to keep re-reading a paragraph to decipher what she was trying to say given the awkward sentence construction.  My issues with the writing started pretty much from the first page, but I continued reading because it was the March pick for the Literature and War Readalong.  Then I kept going because I was curious about whether Robert really was a spy, and by the time I found out, I figured I may as well just finish the book because I was almost at the end anyway.

However, it wasn’t just the writing that didn’t work for me.  I was intrigued by Harrison, this mystery man Bowen put behind all of the tense scenes of the novel, but it was disappointing that I never really got to know him.  I didn’t find Stella and Robert’s relationship realistic, nor did I understand the purpose of including Louie and Connie, as their story really had nothing to do with the rest of the book; Louie’s only connection to the rest of the characters was through chance meetings that served only as interruptions.

I guess my thoughts on this book boil down to a few questions that I had to ask myself.  Was it a satisfying World War II novel?  Unfortunately, no.  I wanted very much to like this book, but the execution fell short.  It doesn’t make wartime London come to life in the exciting way that Susan Elia MacNeal‘s Maggie Hope series does.  Am I sorry I took the time to finish the book?  No.  I’d long wanted to read Bowen’s work.  Would I recommend this book?  That’s hard to say.  If you don’t mind lengthy descriptions and weirdly crafted sentences, then the characters might make this worth a try.  Mostly, I found reading this book to be a chore, with the odd moment of enjoyment here and there, but there’s a sense of satisfaction in crossing it off my to-read list!

I read The Heat of the Day for the Literature and War Readalong on Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. Click here to read and/or join the discussion.

Book 10 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I borrowed The Heat of the Day from the local library. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

There was something so bleak, so gloomy, so determined in the words Otto had just spoken.  At that instant she grasped that this very first sentence was Otto’s absolute and irrevocable declaration of war, and also what that meant: war between, on the one side, the two of them, poor, small, insignificant workers who could be extinguished for just a word or two, and on the other, the Führer, the Party, the whole apparatus in all its power and glory, with three-fourths or even four-fifths of the German people behind it.  And the two of them in this little room in Jablonski Strasse!

(from Every Man Dies Alone, page 133)

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, first published in 1947, is a novel loosely based on a true story about the German resistance to the Nazis during World War II.  It was my book club’s March pick, my nomination.  Fallada’s novel is epic in scope, covering an assortment of characters on different sides of the fence all connected in some way to one couple, Otto and Anna Quangel.   The death of their son in the war and a remark made by Anna to her husband in the throes of grief prompt Otto, a simple carpenter and factory foreman, to fight back against the Nazis, under whom the German people live in fear and spy on one another.

The Quangels write their hatred for the Nazis on postcards and drop them in public places, believing that they will prompt others to see the truth and take a stand.  But this seemingly simple act takes on deadly importance for everyone who comes in contact with the cards — from Inspector Escherich, the Gestapo agent tasked with hunting down the “hobgoblin” behind the postcards to Enno Kluge, a lowlife who deserted his wife, feigns illness to avoid having to work, and steals from the various women in his life.  Fallada peppers the story with an assortment of intriguing characters, including an overzealous Hitler Youth leader, a postwoman intent on leaving the Party and living a simpler life after learning what her son has been up to in the SS, and a young couple pondering whether to resist or live a quiet, normal life.

Although I was hooked from the first page, Fallada takes his time in the first half of the novel to develop the characters and their connections and build the tension that propels readers through the remainder of the book.  The second half was edge-of-your-seat exciting, despite the darkness and the exhaustion of following these characters on a journey that you know from the very beginning will not bring you to a happy place.  Fallada shows how the Gestapo messed with people’s heads and wore them down, and he drives home the point that the psychological torture was just as bad, if not worse, than the physical abuse.  With a mix of both respectable and truly loathsome characters, Fallada takes readers on an emotional roller coaster ride that made me feel tired, sad, angry, and helpless and had me contemplating whether anyone actually deserved what they got at the hands of the Gestapo and whether I could die an honorable, stoic death if I had been in their shoes.

Every Man Dies Alone is a powerful book, one I won’t easily forget.  It was easy to see where the story was headed, but there were plenty of twists and turns to keep it from being too predictable.  It’s one of only a few books that have affected me so deeply that, after turning the last page, I could do nothing but sit and stare and ponder what it all meant.  Reading the bonus features about Fallada’s difficult life, especially how the Nazis stifled his creativity, and the true story behind the book made for a richer reading experience.  Every Man Dies Alone is an important novel, and I fear I didn’t do it justice here.  I urge you to give this one a try, so long as you don’t mind a story that plunges you into the depths of evil and despair but also leaves you with a better understanding of what it was like to live in Nazi Germany.

Book 9 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: Every Man Dies Alone is from my personal library. A big thanks to Sandy for telling me I needed to read it, though I can’t believe it took me so long! I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Crooked Branch by Jeanine Cummins

Ginny turns in circles, looking for any trace of life, a single green leaf, a purple blossom, a breath of prayer.  But there is nothing, only the stench of death now, rising up from the soil, clinging to the thick air like a fetid warning.  Everything, everything is rot.

(from The Crooked Branch, page 3)

The Crooked Branch follows two desperate mothers struggling through vastly different hardships, one in present-day Queens and the other in Ireland in 1846-47 during the Great Hunger, also known as the potato famine.  Majella’s present-day story centers on her inability to adapt to motherhood and her fears about her mental health.  She feels like she failed baby Emma from the beginning because she had a c-section after a long and difficult labor.  She loves her daughter, but worries that she’ll never be the mom she dreamed of being, feels that she’s lost the person she was in her life before, and thinks she’s going crazy.  She doesn’t think it’s postpartum depression; she thinks being a bad mother has been passed down through the generations and is in her genes — and the dreams, the blow-ups, and the inappropriate comments she can’t help making must prove it.

Majella’s relationship with her own mother is hardly a model one.  Her mother is so far removed from anything that’s real, rambling on and on about random things and never stopping to listen to her daughter, who is falling apart at the seams.  When Majella finds a diary written by an ancestor who survived the famine in Ireland, there’s one passage that makes her believe she is genetically programmed to fail at motherhood.

Back in 1846, Ginny Doyle is living a happy existence with her husband, Raymond, and their brood, Maire, Michael, Maggie, and Poppy, when the blight suddenly descends upon their farm and ruins their potato crop.  With all the other crops and farm animals — aside from a few hens and the cabbages and turnips Ginny grows in her own garden — needed to pay rent to their English landlord, those potatoes were all the family had for themselves until the next harvest.

It’s not long before the blight leads to mass evictions and widespread hunger.  Parents waste away and watch their children do the same.  Neighbors steal from one another.  The “famine fever” spreads.  The Doyles are better off than many of their neighbors, but still, Raymond thinks their only hope is for him to set sail for New York and stay with his brother while he gets a job and sends money home to his family.  When months go by with no word and no money and their food runs out, Ginny is forced to take matters into her own hands and make an impossible decision in order to keep her children alive.

The Crooked Branch is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.  Normally when I read a novel that weaves together the past and the present, I find myself drawn to the historical story and think the present-day story is just so-so.  But this time around, I was equally captivated.  Majella’s first-person narrative was so honest and even funny.  It brought me back to when I was a new mom, and at times, it felt like I was reading about my own life.  Ginny’s story (told in the third-person) was so heartbreaking, but her strength, determination, and her fierce love for her children were admirable.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live during the famine, and Cummins does an excellent job portraying the fear, helplessness, and desperation of the Irish people.  Majella’s and Ginny’s stories alternate by chapter, so just when you think your heart is about to burst, there’s an injection of humor and snarkiness that makes the depressing scenes more manageable.

The Crooked Branch is a story with motherhood at its core, how parenting comes with its ups and downs, no matter the time or place.  Majella’s problems may seem insignificant in comparison to Ginny’s, but her fears and inner turmoil are authentic.  Cummins paints a picture of two women willing to do anything to protect their children and addresses the issue of heritage and one’s identity after becoming a mother.  It’s a tale of mothers and daughters — Majella and the mother she feels she never knew, and Ginny and Maire, who was forced to grow up too soon.  Cummins’ prose flows so beautifully that it’s easy to get lost in the story and breeze through a whole chunk of pages without even realizing it.  The connections between the past and the present are satisfying, and the characters are so fascinating that I didn’t want the novel to end.

Book 1 for the Ireland Reading Challenge

Book 8 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The Crooked Branch from NAL for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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Review: The Turncoat by Donna Thorland

“They hang men.  Women disappear.  It’s only glamorous in the novels, Kate.  If we are successful, we can’t boast.  Spying is a dishonorable trade for women, for precisely the reason you despised me this afternoon, and you despise yourself now.  We exchange our virtue for their secrets.  If we fail, we don’t have the privilege of a public trial and famous last words.  Our reward for failure is an unmarked grave.”

(from The Turncoat, page 40)

The Turncoat is the first novel in Donna Thorland’s Renegades of the Revolution series, but readers don’t have to worry about starting a new series as it looks like each of the books will stand alone.  Set in 1777 amidst the British occupation of Philadelphia during the American Revolution, The Turncoat is the story of an innocent Quaker girl whose determination, outspokenness, and bravery get her into a whole heap of trouble.

When Kate Grey’s father goes off to serve with General Washington, she’s left on the family farm with Angela Ferrers, a.k.a. the Merry Widow, a Rebel spy determined to destroy Colonel Bayard Caide, who is busy drinking, looting, and raping his way through the Colonies, and steal the plans he is to pass on to General Howe.  But it’s his cousin, Major Peter Tremayne, Lord Sancreed, who arrives at the Grey’s farm…and there’s something different enough about him and Kate that they immediately are intrigued by one another.

Months later, Tremayne, disgraced by the Merry Widow, seeking to rebuild his career, and still thinking about Kate, enters Philadelphia and finds a very different Kate working her charms on his cousin.  Having witnessed the evils of war, Kate puts her Quaker pacifism aside and puts her life (and virtue) on the line to help the Rebel cause.  But she is torn between her loyalty to the revolution and her feelings for Tremayne, and one slip will lead to their downfall.

I wanted to read The Turncoat because I’ve always been fascinated by stories about female spies, but I soon worried that the romance and the sex would overpower the danger and the war.  However, there was just something about these characters and the time period that made it impossible for me to put the book down.  Thorland’s characters are well drawn and complex, especially Bayard Caide, who comes off as evil but has a story that makes you think twice about him.  I loved Kate and Tremayne, the passion and tension between them, and the obvious conflicts that arise between a Rebel and a Redcoat, a plain Quaker and an aristocrat.  Thorland’s portrayal of the historic figures, including Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John André, General Howe, and Peggy Shippen, seemed realistic, though I didn’t know more than the basics about them before reading this book.

The Turncoat covers so much ground, from the battles at Forts Mercer and Mifflin and the decadence of occupied Philadelphia to espionage and the treatment of women during war.  Readers should be warned that there are some pretty steamy sex scenes in this book, along with several instances of rape, but I thought for the most part, they were well done and contributed to the development of the characters.  There is much suspense and danger throughout this novel, and I was on the edge of my seat and up past my bedtime, needing to know how it all played out.  Thorland really brings the American Revolution to life in The Turncoat, with a strong heroine and plenty of historical facts, fascinating characters, and exciting adventures to hold readers’ interest from the first page.

Book 1 for the American Revolution Reading Challenge

Book 7 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Disclosure: I received The Turncoat from NAL for review. I am an Amazon associate.

© 2013 Anna Horner of Diary of an Eccentric. All Rights Reserved. Please do not reproduce or republish content without permission.

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