Incendiary by Chris Cleave

Incendiary by Chris Cleave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Incendiary is the second book I've read by Chris Cleave. I didn't feel it came up to Little Bee, but it is still a very good read. I listened to the audio version which was narrated perfectly by Tracy-Ann Oberman.

This is the story of a working class woman living in London, who suffers a horrible tragedy, then tries to cope. The novel is written in the form of a long letter to Osama bin Laden. Normally, a novel written in the form of letters is called epistolary, but this book deviates from the letter form by including so much description and dialogue that I wouldn't use that term.

The narrator is a brash and imperfect woman, but described in a way that brings the reader into her world enough to create sympathy for her. Here's what she says about herself early on:

I was what The Sun would call a “dirty love cheat.” My husband and my boy never found out, oh thank you, God. I can say it now they're both dead. I don't care who reads it. It can't hurt them anymore. I loved my boy. And I loved my husband...Sex is not a beautiful and perfect thing for me, Osama. It is a condition caused by nerves.

Sex helps her deal with life's problems prior to the tragedy, but afterwards, it isn't enough.

I had a problem with the novel's ending and I also felt there were some conflicts in the way the narrator perceived reality that weren't sufficiently explained by her state of mind. Still, this is a good book. It captured me and I felt it painted a full picture of a young mother who at first was trying to build a life that was a shelter, a place of love. Here's how she described a part of that place.

Our boy had his own room it was cracking we were proud of it. My husband built his bed in the shape of Bob the Builder's dump truck and I sewed the curtains and we did the painting together. In the night my boy's room smelled of boy. Boy is a good smell it is a cross between angels and tigers.

Her own imperfections along with the horrors of life in the 21st century pushed tragedy into her world. This novel is about what happens after that.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul


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The Silver Baron's Wife by Donna Baier Stein

The Silver Baron's Wife by Donna Baier Stein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Silver Baron's Wife is the last of the CIPA EVVY award winners I have chosen to read. Like the others, it is excellent. The Silver Baron's Wife won second place in the 2017 CIPA Evvy awards in historical fiction. (As I mentioned in the other reviews, my book, Hopatcong Vision Quest, won a merit award in the same competition, which is why I decided to read the other winners.)

This is the story of Baby Doe Tabor (Elizabeth McCourt Tabor) who lived from 1854 to 1935. She was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, then moved to Colorado after her first marriage. Her father-in-law gave her and her husband, Harvey Doe, a quarter share of a Colorado mine named the Fourth of July. When she first saw the mine, Lizzy fell in love with mining - “Dropping down into the Fourth of July had, like tasting the communion wafer on my tongue, opened me to a new understanding. If I'd felt betrayed after my confirmation, when Jesus let the fire take everything my family and I owned, a new confidence came over me after my descent into the mine. I was more than ready to believe there were treasures we couldn't see that were ready to be shared.”

Baby Doe was not a popular woman in the area where she lived, because she made some life decisions that were not acceptable at that time. However, Donna Baier Stein decided to write this novel from Baby Doe's point of view and the woman comes off as a strong and sympathetic character. I don't want to include any spoilers in here, yet I do have to say this is a rags to riches story, but doesn't stop there. Stein has created a wonderful character in Baby Doe, someone I will think about for a long time. She also created a wonderful picture of life in a mid-west mining town during the late nineteenth century.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul


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The Buried Giant by Kazuo_Ishiguro

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When the Swedish Academy awarded Kazuo Ishiguro the Nobel Prize in Literature, they described his novels as having “great emotional force.” This is the third novel of his I've read and I agree with that statement in The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, but there is a distance in all the relationships in The Buried Giant, which suppresses the emotions of the characters. One reason for this is due to the theme of lost memories. How can someone feel anything for what they can't remember? A second reason is the setting of England years after King Arthur's reign. There is an an odd mixture of formality and violence which seems to tie back to Camelot. This also dampens emotions.

The Buried Giant does have what I love the most in Ishiguro's writing, underlying themes that are approached in subtle ways. This novel isn't about Axl and Beatrice taking a journey to see their son or about Sir Gawain's loyalty to his mission. It's about aging, lost memories, and approaches to problems that lead to mixed results.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul


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The Last Great American Magic by L.C. Fiore

The Last Great American Magic by L.C. Fiore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Last Great American Magic is a retelling of the story of Tecumseh, “a Native American Shawnee warrior and chief, who became the primary leader of a large, multi-tribal confederacy in the early years of the nineteenth century” (per Wikipedia). In L.C. Fiore's novel there are elements of mysticism interwoven with history in a way that captures the spiritual side to the Shawnee culture. Tecumseh's brother, Rattle, was renamed Prophet after he died and returned to life, which indicates how important mysticism is to the plot.

This novel won third place in the 2017 CIPA Evvy awards in historical fiction. (My book, Hopatcong Vision Quest won a merit award in the same competition, which is why I decided to read the other winners.) All have been excellent books. The Last Great American Magic captured my imagination and kept me turning the pages. It was filled with action and taught me a great deal about the Shawnee people at a time when the Europeans were pushing them off their land. There is violence and hatred, but this is also a story of love. Tecumseh falls hard for a young white woman captured by the Shawnee, even after she returns to her people, and even after she marries William Henry Harrison.

I highly recommend this novel for readers who enjoy stories of Native Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul


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Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by D.M. Denton

Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit by D.M. Denton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

DM Denton's historical novel, Without the Veil Between / Anne Brontë: A fine and Subtle Spirit, is the story of the Brontë family from the point of view of Charlotte and Emily's younger sister. The title comes from a line in one of Anne's poems, In Memory of a Happy Day in February. The last stanza of the poem is quoted in the afterword of Denton's novel.

As was the case with many nineteenth century families, the Brontës suffered loss. Anne was born in 1820. Her mother died in 1821 and two of her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died in 1825. This left the father, Patrick Brontë, an Anglican priest, to raise the three sisters and one son alone. Denton's emphasis on the thoughts and desires of the youngest Brontë sister brings color and life to the pages of her novel. She expresses Anne's concerns in lavish prose that matches the 19th century Brontë style. Without the Veil Between isn't simply a biography, it is a journey back into the day to day lives of one of history's most famous literary families.

Anne's brother, Branwell, was a primary focus of her thoughts due to his troubled lifestyle. He often returned home after his habits left him no alternative.

“Branwell also had the refuge of home for career disasters, but nowhere but drink and opium for those of the heart.”

Early in the novel, Anne desired a relationship with William Weightman, an assistant to her father and a good friend of Branwell's. Her feelings for the young curate were a mixture of her own interest and respect for the effect William had on her troubled brother.

“Branwell had even confided to her that 'Willie' was the best friend he'd ever had – with a wink that caused Anne to wonder if William had admitted something, too. She knew she shouldn't think so. Nevertheless, before she closed her eyes on that day she would be tempted to hold and look at one of her most treasured possessions: a Valentine...”

Of course, the role writing played in Anne and her sisters lives is the most interesting of their concerns.

“Writing and talking about their writing inspired them, and defined them, at least to each other.”

It was, as it is for most writers, a means of escape and a way of dealing with life's frustrations.

“Anne found writing a most natural and constant way to seek relief. Her reason became another’s, a naively optimistic, determined, almost invisible young woman named Agnes, who composed musings out of sorrows or anxieties to acknowledge in a resilient way all those powerful feelings that could never be wholly crushed and for which solace from any living creature shouldn’t be sought or expected. Anne hoped Agnes' story would mark her own passage from a woman of mere occupation to one of true vocation.”

The works of Charlotte and Emily, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, are the two Brontë novels most well known today, but Anne's novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are still taught in schools around the world. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was successful enough during Anne's life to earn a second edition.

Steve Lindahl – author of Hopatcong Vision Quest, White Horse Regressions, and Motherless Soul.


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