Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pandemonium is a YA book, the second release in the popular Delirium series. Its target audience seems to be teenage girls and judging by the other reviews I'd say it impressed that group of readers. This series, by Lauren Oliver, is the story of a young woman, Lena, who lives sometime in the future after a ruthless, dictatorial government has taken over the United States and has banned love. At age eighteen anyone living in one of the government controlled areas must undergo a cure, which is a brain operation that limits their emotions. There are, however, areas outside the major population centers called the Wilds. In these places the people still have their emotions and their freedom, but they have to struggle to find food and shelter and they have to put up with constant attacks from the cities.

I liked both of the books I've read in this series because Lauren Oliver has done an excellent job of getting into the mind of Lena. In Pandemonium Lena has matured somewhat. When this book begins she needs help to recover from what she experienced in the first book, but once she works her way through that she becomes a much stronger person. She has a relationship with a young man, Julian, who needs her help to deal with both emotional and practical problems. I liked that because in Delirium she was the one who needed to get her strength from someone else.

The book bounces back and forth between sections entitled Then which are set in the time when Lena was first in the Wilds and sections entitled Now which are set after she has regained her strength and is part of the resistance. Yet Pandemonium is consistently written in the present tense, keeping an intensity throughout the novel.

The rat-man stops. He doesn't look at us, but I see his shoulders rise and fall: an inaudible sigh. “They'd already taken her from me once,” he says quietly. “I didn't want to lose her again.”

I have the urge to lay my hand on his shoulder and say, I understand. But the words seem stupid. We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.

I had a few problems with the book that had to do with too many coincidences and situations that required suspension of disbelief, but the character of Lena is strong enough to keep the pages turning. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

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The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky

The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Woman Next Door is a woman's book. I glanced through pages of reviews on Goodreads and found only one other man who had reviewed it. The book covers a number of problems in suburbia that surround a threesome of friends, Amanda, Karen, and Georgia, who try to help each other but also spend a great deal of time gossiping. The group of friends include the women's husbands and used to include another couple, Ben and June.  June died, Ben remarried a younger woman, Gretchen, and then also died. So this suburban circle has been left to deal with a young, attractive widow who doesn't make an obvious effort to reach out to them, but does call on their husbands for help around her house. The situation is complicated when the widow becomes pregnant and the women realize too much time has passed for the baby to be Ben's.

The plot of this book revolves around family issues from problems conceiving to problems dealing with teenage angst, with trust and jealousy issues along the way. Amanda is a school counselor and also the woman who is trying to have a baby. Her husband, Graham, comes from a close knit family and that family isn't very supportive of Amanda. So there are problems there as well.

The major characters are well developed, especially the women. They have their flaws, but also qualities such as strength and loyalty. I think more men should read books such as this. The issues belong to both genders, but the perspective is different. I think it's important to understand that. I plan to read other books by Barbara Delinsky.

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Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Memoirs of a Geisha is the story of Chiyo Sakamoto, a young girl in Japan who is both blessed and cursed with beautiful blue-gray eyes. When her mother dies, her father, who is very old, sells her and her older sister, Satsu, to an okiya (a house where geisha live). Satsu isn't as pretty as Chiyo, so she is resold to a house of prostitution, while Chiyo stays on in the okiya. Chiyo's natural beauty makes her the focus for the jealousy of Hatsumomo, the one successful geisha living in the okiya. As the plot moves along Chiyo, who is renamed Sayuri, deals with jealousy and betrayal, but also finds friendship and kindness. The research that went into writing this novel has produced a fascinating and educational portrayal of the lives of geisha during the mid twentieth century, but Arthur Golden has also produced a work with strong characters who captivate his readers.

At one point in the book, prostitutes and geisha are called something to the effect of “distant cousins.” I suppose that description is accurate, because they both make money by entertaining men. But the geisha portrayed in Memoirs of a Geisha are careful about their reputations and instead of offering sexual favors to a number of men, look for wealthy patrons to become their “dannas.” In this way they are more like mistresses than prostitutes. Yet they seem to be so much more. They study their art in special schools where they learn dance, singing, storytelling and how to play a musical instrument called the shamisen. They are artists and celebrities.

One of the aspects of this novel I found fascinating was the fact that it was set in Japan before and after World War II. The impact of the war on the life of the geisha was primarily economic. There was very little discussion about the war other than how it affected other geisha. And after the war was over the geisha began to entertain the Americans. They seemed amazingly apolitical.

Memoirs of a Geisha does what good novels do best, it takes its readers to a different place and time and lets us into the lives of the people living there. I would recommend it to most anyone who enjoys good fiction and if you read it years ago, it would be worth picking up again.

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read a few books recently that show the problems faced by women who lived in different times and locations. The Blood of Flowers takes place in 17th century Persia and Memoirs of a Geisha takes place in mid 20th century Japan. In both those books women were placed in difficult situations just because they were women. But I believe the wealthy women of 19th century China as portrayed in Lisa See's novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, had the hardest lives. The poor Chinese women of that period also had hard lives, but their troubles were based more on their economic situations than on their gender. They spent most of their lives working their small farms. The wealthy women were taught from birth that their only value would come from giving birth to sons, hopefully the sons of a rich man.

To have a chance at a good marriage to a man in a wealthy family, women had to be attractive. They achieved this level of beauty by having their feet bound at a young age, generally six or seven. This process killed one in ten girls and left the survivors crippled to various degrees. The women who had the most successful binding experience still could not run or even walk fast. The less fortunate women were sometimes unable to walk without using canes.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan spends a great deal of time on the subject of foot binding, but that isn't the only problem those women suffered. When they were young girls they were allowed to play outside, but after they reached the foot binding age they spent most of their lives in an “upstairs women's rooms” with the other women in their family. They spent their days weaving, sewing, and telling stories to each other. They were constantly reminded by their mothers that they were worthless. And, of course, the mothers were the ones who bound their feet, complicating that important relationship in ways that are unimaginable.

The women of that period were not allowed to learn men's writing, so they developed their own written language called nu shu. Men knew about this language but considered it too insignificant to acknowledge. The two main characters of this book, Snow Flower and Lilly used nu shu to write to each other on the folds of a fan.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan felt like two books to me. The first part was interesting because of what it taught me about Chinese society, but I didn't get into the characters until the second part. After that the relationship between Snow Flower and Lilly was fascinating. Their friendship had problems that could apply to people in any place and time. There was lying, jealousy, competing and misunderstanding, but there was also hope, loyalty and love. It seems that the relationships between women in that society was made stronger by the difficulties and isolation they had to bear. Although the women went to their husbands for “bed business,” they slept with other women and sometimes their relationships were sexual.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a great book for people interested in learning about living in different places and times.

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The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Red Garden is a collection of loosely connected short stories. The connections come primarily through the setting, Blackwell, which is a small town in rural Massachusetts once known as Bearsville. A few characters show up in multiple stories, but for the most part each story moves years forward so the characters from one are now either dead, missing, or old enough to be living through their memories. I love Alice Hoffman's writing style. This book, like the others I've read (The Third Angel and The River King) is best described as magic realism. That's a term that has been used in many ways, but in Hoffman's case I intend it to mean a set of circumstances that begin with a realistic feel but sometimes branch off in interesting ways. The Red Garden has a garden where everything planted in it turns red. It also has a number of bears who have unusual relationships with some of the humans. It has a young, female spirit known as the Apparition. And of course it has characters who know things others don't. These are just some of the examples where Hoffman steps away from the world's definition of reality and into her own.

I prefer Hoffman's books, such as The River King, where characters remain in the story longer. With this collect I felt as if I was starting over again with each new tale. I didn't realize that would be the case when I began reading the book. I enjoyed the latter stories more than the earlier ones because by that time I understood where Hoffman was going.

The Monster of Blackwell was one of my favorites in the collection. It's Hoffman's version of the Beauty and the Beast story. In this case an ugly, misfit young man comes to the woods outside Blackwell. Children in the town catch glimpses of this man and label him a monster. But when Kate Partridge, a teenaged camp counselor, has a group of children in the woods this monster saves one of them from a bear. (Bears are constantly appearing in all the stories.) Kate falls in love with this man despite their different backgrounds.

The stories are a mix of heartbreak and happiness. This is my third Alice Hoffman book and I intend to read more.


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The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first Sue Miller novel I've read. It took me awhile to get used to her style, but in the end it was worth it. This book was a reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Billy, the main character, lost her lover, Gus, who was killed when the plane he was on was flown into one of the twin towers. But this wasn't a simple story about losing someone you love in a senseless act of terror. There were problems with Billy and Gus' relationship and those problems left Billy feeling confused and guilty. Since she was a playwright, she wrote a play about those feelings. The name of that play was The Lake Shore Limited, hence the name of the novel.

There were a couple of things that I found very unusual about Miller's style. First of all she included a great amount of detail that at first seemed superfluous, yet that detail seemed to push me into the characters' minds by emphasizing everything they might notice in their surroundings. Secondly, Miller generally told her readers what her characters were thinking instead of letting us see reactions that would show us their thoughts. Here's an excerpt from the novel that shows both those techniques:

“Yeah,” Pierce answered. They were all standing now. They moved into the aisle among the others inching back to the lobby. Pierce kept his hand on her elbow—a kind of sympathetic connection, she felt. She was grateful to him, but she was far away. She felt confused. Around her, she could hear others talking, speculating, commenting on the actors, on the arguments.

Some weren't. Some had shed the play quickly, were on to their own lives. She heard a voice say, “I wish I'd known it was going to rain today. I didn't bring an umbrella to work.”

All of Miller's characters seemed to analyze their own emotions and situations as if their lives were one gigantic therapy session. At the reception following a memorial service for Gus, Billy met a number of Gus' friends and colleagues who had heard about her through Gus. She kept thinking how she should be honest and explain everything, including why she wasn't part of the service. But she didn't because she felt explaining herself would be self-aggrandizing. This was his memorial service, not hers. The strange way Billy's mind worked, combined with her lack of emotion was intriguing.

I loved the way the play within a book worked. The characters in the play were aspects of Billy and all part of her need to be honest about her feelings. Also, I've been involved in school theater and community theater for years, so I can identify with the backstage activity

Oddly, I finished reading this novel the week of the Boston Marathon bombings.

I plan to read more of Sue Miller's work.

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The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Blood of Flowers is a historical novel set in 17th century Iran during the reign of Shah Abbas the Great. It's the story of a young woman who spends her first years in a small village, then, after the death of her father, moves to Isfahan, a large center of commerce. The culture and economy is male dominated, so when the narrator loses her father, she and her mother have to depend on the good will of an uncle, who is a carpet maker for the Shah. (The uncle's wife isn't thrilled with the extra expenses that come with these two relatives.)

The narrator is also an excellent carpet maker. Perhaps the talent runs in the family, but it still feels like a coincidence that this young woman ends up in a place where she can develop her skills. The book's one weakness is the author's use of coincidences. This is one. There's another later in the book that is critical to the plot.

The culture also has a tradition that seems to benefit the men in this male dominated society. Men, who can have many wives, can also marry some of them for short periods of time. A marriage like this is called a sigheh and can range from months to an hour in length. A sigheh is legal, but doesn't have the status of a full marriage. The roles of the women in these marriages seem to fall somewhere between the position of a permanent wife and a prostitute. The shorter the length of time for a singheh the less status there is. However, there are financial benefits to a sigheh marriage and the children of those marriages are generally acknowledged.

I loved the way this book transported me to a culture that is so different from our modern one. There were so many instances where characters were forced to act or dress (picheh and chador) in ways that seemed unfair, but this was all they knew so the rules didn't bother them. Yet in some ways the narrator overcame gender traditions, specifically when it came to her carpets.

The other part of the book that I found fascinating was the relationship between the narrator and her mother. They always loved each other, but sometimes disappointed each other as well. And often, because of the cultural differences, the one I saw as the guilty party and the one they saw as the guilty party were not the same.

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