Karen’s Blog

Yes, I love to read. I read books, magazines, cereal boxes - everything. I love a good book, regardless of subject matter or genre. And if I start a book, I will almost inevitably finish it. I always figure, maybe it will get better next chapter even halfway through a book. But sometimes they just don’t, and sometimes what starts as a good book gets worse.

Two Moon Princess by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban 

This was a book was okay. But just okay. It starts out in a promising fashion, with the title character, Andrea, a Princess who would rather be a knight. Or at least a squire. The fourth of her father the king’s daughters, she has been allowed to train with the boys, and wins the big Archery competition they have been training for. Andrea, about to turn fourteen, is sure this will convince her father to let her continue with the training, and not to become a lady like her mother and sisters are. Set in a medieval kingdom, it seems a decent start.

And when the book takes a science fiction/fantasy turn, who could complain? By accident she ends up in modern California, and realizes her Tio (uncle) Ramiro travels there regularly when she finds his house not far from the beach she lands on. Still interesting enough, right? We then go through the expected culture shock and transition, and the expected tension when her uncle insists she return to her own world as soon as possible.

But it all kinda goes downhill from there, with Andrea and her sisters dealing with battling kingdoms, a deceitful suitor, princes, soldiers, romance, and what is proper and what is not. And I guess the story disappoints me, because in the course of all this action, Andrea is obviously supposedly falling in love with one character whom she dislikes. And it isn’t until the end of the books that she realizes this, and it just seems too dumb for a girl who is supposed to be strong, smart, and clever enough to get away with all sorts of stuff and travel secretly between worlds, but not to figure out her own feelings at all.

So, eh, don’t bother with this one. I am sure the author meant well, and it appears to be aimed at young teen girls, and is supposed to be empowering, I am sure, but it just loses steam. By the end, I was just mildly annoyed by Princess Andrea’s obtuseness, and didn’t even care if she lived happily ever after.

Oh, and by the way, I have always hated cover art that doesn’t quite fit the story. You can’t see her father’s castle from the beach archway she’s standing in - for goodness sake it’s far from the castle, down a large cliff and at the base of a rocky beach, and as the story begins her hair is short, not long enough for a long braid, and the “golden arrow” is supposed to be large and sharp enough to hurt someone with, and is hidden in her hair, not a cute little ornament like the cover illustration shows. I know, the artist was probably not given the actual story to read, but should have been!

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

This is a very sad, truly haunting book, whose images and impressions will linger with you long after you’ve set the finished book down.

Set in two times, 1942 occupied France and in today’s Paris, the novel follows the stories of two very different women, and how their lives intersect.

The first is Sarah Starzynski, a ten-year-old girl, born in France to her Polish Jewish immigrant parents. She and her 4-year-old brother Robert have been shielded from the meaning and events of the war, and when they are made to wear yellow stars on their clothing, her mother explains that it is because they should be proud to be Jewish. So when the events of July 16, 1942 - the great Vélodrome d’Hiver round-up - take place, her ignorance leads to tragedy. Because the men who come to take them away are French policemen, not the scary Germans, Sarah lets her brother go to their “secret hiding place,” and complies when he asks her to lock him in, and take the key. They both assume she’ll be home in a little while. Their mother knows about the little cupboard, so it is always stocked with a jar of water, some bread and a flashlight.

The main character in today’s Paris is Julia, an American journalist married to a native Parisian. Assigned to do a story on “the Vel d’Hiv” for its upcoming anniversary, she faces ignorance and denial from the French almost everywhere she turns. Younger French folk have never heard of it, and her Parisian husband and his family don’t want to talk about it. In speaking with his grandmother, Mamé, she begins to make connections about the apartment they are currently renovating, and her inlaws, always cold to her, resent her doing any digging.

Julia, who grew up in Boston, had never heard of “the Vel d’Hiv” round-up, and neither had I. Julia’s research, and Sarah’s story of her family’s treatment at the hands of the French policemen, combine for a riveting, and tragic tale. It is not all depressing though, as we also follow Julia’s own story as she is dealing with what she learns as her own marriage is ending and a new life is beginning.

This is an excellent book, compelling and well-written, and once I started it, I read it until I finished it in one night. I completely reccomend this book to anyone who believes we must learn our history in order to not repeat it. The real facts behind the novel are given at the end, in a section called “Historical perspective” and the whole book will haunt you and stay with you forever. It is no wonder it was an International Bestseller, and I fully expect it to be one here as well. It is scheduled to be released in October 2008.

The Boys Missing by James A. Jack  

This book, with the grainy, greyscale photos of three boys from the 1950s on the cover, is subtitled “The Tragedy That Exposed The Pedophilia Underworld” and was written by one of the detectives who worked the case more than 50 years ago. I met Mr. Jack at the BEA, so this is a book I have signed. From far away, I looked at him, and my brain registered “policeman, retired” before I even remembered quite what row I was in. (Author signings at the BEA have the authors perched on stools at tables, and the attendees have to go down a long roped-off row to approach.

The book is very interesting, and very straight-forward. The three boys - two brothers and a friend - went missing one day, and were found brutally murdered and dumped in a park days later. Mr. Jack was one of the police detectives on the case from the very start, when one of the boys’ fathers came in to report them missing. While emotions of course run strong in the families and in the officers handling the case, the book keeps a calm, even tone throughout. There is no sensationalism, just the dogged hard and often tedious work of policemen trying to find answers in a case that has everyone in the city baffled. The boys, John and Anton Schuessler, and Robert Peterson, were 13, 11 and 13 years old when they were abducted and murdered.

While the case may have exposed the pedophilia underground to the policemen of this city, it doesn’t seem like it ever caused the sensation it would in today’s media. But the climate was much, much different then. In looking for the killer or killers of the three boys, Officer Jack and his partner encounter people whose lies and lives surprised and disgusted them, all the while still keeping their heads and searching for the answers in the case.

This book was just published in 2006, as the case, despite hours and months and years of work by the Chicago police department, did not come to trial until 1995, when new evidence came to light linking a certain man to the crime. Murder cases, Jack explains, are never considered closed, there is no statue of limitations on murder. And obviously he, and many other members of the police force and community had never forgotten the case either. That, after all the work they had done, and all the sexual deviants, criminals, and other unsavory types they dealt with they had still not found a clear answer bothered everyone. When evidence pointing to someone came to light, everything became fresh again, and the case went to trial, 50 years after the crime.

This is just a fascinating book, completely matter-of-fact and evenly told, and is sort of a study of the attitudes and knowledge differences - as well as criminal prosecution and forensic technology differences, between 1955 and 1995. I recommend it if you are interested in real detective stories, as long as you don’t expect a lurid tale that’s solved in 60 minutes, like years of TV programs have conditioned us to expect. This case, and this book, are a study in patience, persistence and justice.

Kennedy’s Brain by Henning Mankell

Released last September in English, this is a novel by the Swedish author Henning Mankell, famous for the Kurt Wallander mysteries. It is always interesting to me to read books from other perspectives than normal. It is a fascinating book, but very, very sad. I’d still recommend, though, as it lingers in your brain after you’ve finished the story, which is always a good sign.

The main character, Louise Cantor, is a Swedish archaeologist working on a dig in Argolis, Greece, has made a career putting together pieces of the past, often quite literally from shards of pottery and bone. Satisfied in her work, long-divorced and content with staying that way, her world is turned inside out when she, travelling for a conference back in Sweden, discovers the body of her 25-year-old only child, son Henrik, dead of no apparent cause in his apartment. The police rule it a suicide, but Louise is convinced it is not.

In trying to understand Henrik’s death, and his life, she begins reading papers in his apartment, and starts to try to piece together events, like her work in archeology has trained her to do. More and more layers of complexity appear, and she travels to Spain, and to Africa, retracing Henrik’s journeys and meeting people who knew him, trying to find answers. The title of the book comes from some of Henrik’s papers, concerning the disappearance of JFK’s brain after the autopsy, and the mystery surrounding it, which puzzles Louise, as she had no idea he had any interest in the American president. She even contacts her ex-husband, who intentionally disappeared years before, but kept in touch with their son.

The more Louise digs, the more complex, and sinister things get. The story involves AIDS, unethical medical experimentation and personal and political tragedies, the realities of life in rural and desperately poor Africa, and the growing suspicion that Henrik was murdered for the work he was doing that was about to combat some of the horrors he had seen. It is a sad book, beginning with a death, and more and more people die as Louise pursues her relentless quest to understand her only child’s death and life. It might be depressing in someone else’s hands, but Mankell keeps his main character interesting enough, and the plot just complicated enough to keep you guessing even beyond the last page. The people she encounters are also multi-layered and deeply drawn, and like Louise, you get the feeling you just don’t know who to believe or trust.

This is not a book for the squeamish, by the way. There is plenty of illness, disease, and blood to turn anyone’s stomach, and enough moral ambiguities to make anyone think. But I do recommend it, especially if you are a fan of mysteries and like figuring things out.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

This was a really fascinating novel, rife with familiar Massachusetts history, and with a story that is at once simple and complicated. I grew up in Massachusetts, and live here still, so of course studied the whole Salem Witch phenomenon in school, and am even descended from the one accused witch who was not hung.*

This is set in modern Salem, and around a family of women who are lace readers - like fortune tellers, only they look through lace, not a crystal ball, to divine events and visions. They are not witches, nor do they claim to be, though the modern followers of Wicca are friendly to them. The main character is a “Towner,” a mentally-damaged woman, Towner, whose estranged mother lives on a harbor island, and whose beloved Great Aunt has just died. A phone call from her brother brings her back to Salem from her current life in California.

How Towner, whose own memory has gaps after a traumatic incident in her teen years led her to McLeans**, and electroshock therapy. Confronting the town and the home, the memories and the people she fled years before is a continual process of discovery, reminders, and an effort to distinguish reality from visions, it is a struggle for Towner to make her own way through the aftermath of her aunt’s mysterious death, and keep her head above water. Add in her own dead twin, her mother’s agoraphobia, relationships she had run from, her mother’s work helping victims of domestic violence, her uncle’s new status as a religious cult leader, and new relationships, the story keeps you wondering at every turn of the page. And, as one of the founders of DogoftheDay.com I do have to mention that semiferal Golden Retrievers play a significant role as well, and one in particular becomes her guardian and friend.

That in the process you end up learning (or being reminded of) local history and industry - Ipswich lace was a real, quite literal cottage industry at one time, lobstermen still work the Massachusetts coast - and family dysfunction and what it can do to people - is just a plus to what is an excellent good book.

The ending blew me away. I literally finished the book, set it down, then went back and reread the last chapters just to make sure I caught everything. I heartily recommend this book.

*Giles Corey, who was instead pressed to death. Ma, looking at the build of the men in her immediate family, figures he was probably barrel-chested and figured he could stand it.

**Yup, it’s a real place, and still in operation, a world-class hospital for the mentally ill, just one town away from me in Belmont, MA. Most people know of it through Sylvia Plath’s time there, or from the movie “Girl Interrupted.”