The Witch's Hand by Wendy Joseph

The Witch's Hand by Wendy Joseph
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Witch's Hand takes place in southern France during the thirteenth century. The book mixes sorcery with a realistic portrayal of the period in a manner that reminded me of the best aspects of A Game of Thrones. The novel has a strong plot about a young peasant girl, Liana, who has been picked by Malaxia, a powerful witch, to be her heiress. Liana meets Jattaret, a disillusioned warrior who has returned from the crusades to restart a privileged life with an arranged marriage. Jattaret's full name is Michel Antoine Jettaret, Vicomte de Solignac. His family is wealthy and powerful while Liana is the daughter of a game watcher for the Bishop. But Jattaret still has the ideals that pushed him to join the crusades. Those ideals, along with his admiration of Liana's innocence, lead him in a fight to save her from Malaxia's power.

In some ways The Witch's Hand is a “good vs. evil” story, but it isn't told in black and white. The flaws of the church are shown and the bigotry of the local farmers who fight against witchcraft are also shown. Here is what Jattaret says about that subject:

All this witchcraft business...it is a way, I am afraid, of people saying they don't like what you think, what you believe, what you look like, what you do,”

The attention to detail in Wendy Joseph's writing pulled me into her story. Here is a sample from when Jattaret goes to a local village to purchase a horse for Liana:

He stepped closer, stroked the mare's head – eyes alert, deep and bright, no sign of cloudiness in them – and waved his hand behind each eye to check her rear and peripheral vision. She blinked. Good. To test her hearing he snapped his fingers by each ear, and she flicked them but was not head shy. Good. He pulled her mouth open and rolled her lips back for a look at her teeth, and judged her to be about seven; little wear on the back teeth yet.

The same attention to detail gives a beautiful authenticity to the period and the setting:

The trail descended into thick woods at the bottom of the ridge and they rode through them, not following any path that Liana could see. At Sext they halted briefly for a midday meal of sorts – bread, wine, and dried sausage that chewed like wood bark. As they continued the trees thinned out, broken more and more by meadows in soft bloom, and Liana's thoughts of Malaxia vanished. When the sunrays were slanting low from the west, and Jettaret judged they were well out of the way of any searchers from Peranville or chance wanderers, they stopped by a spring to make camp.

My wife and I spent two weeks in France last year, my first trip to Europe, so I have a particular interest in novels set in that country. This novel is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in European history, with the added pleasure of mysticism for excitement.


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Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is a book to read for its ideas rather than its characters. It is the story of a world that is suffering from radiation and other forms of pollution. The ability to reproduce has been damaged. Human and other animal species are disappearing. Plant life has also been affected, so there's less food and the remaining people are fighting for what's left. A family of scientists is working on a solution to this problem. They plan to use cloning to create livestock and people who, hopefully, will be fertile.

The novel starts out with two cousins, David and Celia, who are in love. Wilhelm uses their love to point out differences between naturally born humans and the first generation of clones.

Three Celias came into view, swinging easily with the weight of the baskets, a stair-step succession of Celias. He shouldn't do that, he reminded himself harshly. They weren't Celias, none of them had that name. They were Mary and Ann and something else. He couldn't remember for a moment the third one's name, and he knew it didn't matter. They were each and every one Celia. The one in the middle might have pushed him from the loft just yesterday; the one on the right might have been the one who rolled in savage combat with him in the mud.

These new clones have a unique sense of empathy. They are extremely close to their “sisters,” but don't reach out well to others. Sex is something the clones are obligated to have and something they enjoy, especially in large groups, but it is never a drive that pushes them into one on one, romantic relationships. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang was first published in 1977 and I wonder if this aspect might have been a reaction to the Sex, drugs, and rock and roll philosophy of the sixties and early seventies.

There are a number of problems inherent in the idea behind this plot. First of all, there are life forms that are not affected by the pollution. Trees seem to grow fine and so does grass. But beyond this and other technicalities are the problems of a plot about people who have trouble caring for each other. Wilhelm works her way through this by having some characters who still can care.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang would make a good book club selection because the ideas have the potential to stimulate a great discussion. I found the reviews on Goodreads to be fascinating while the novel itself never captured me completely.

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New York by Edward Rutherfurd

New York by Edward Rutherfurd

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I grew up in northern New Jersey, so the history of New York is fascinating to me. Edward Rutherfurd tells the story of people living in the city, starting in the 17th century when the settlement was called New Amsterdam and was governed by Peter Styverson and ending in the 21st century when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. The novel focuses on the Master family, but also looks at other families whose lives were intertwined with the Masters. I thought Rutherfurd did an excellent job of mixing history with fiction.

When I lived in the New York area, I went to the city often. I loved the museums, the theater scene from the small groups in store front theaters to the Broadway shows, and I went to countless concerts in Central Park and at the Fillmore East. I spent hours in the libraries, especially the main branch on Fifth Ave and the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. But despite loving the city I didn't know much about its history. I had no idea about the early connection to the slave trade, Spanish Harlem was just a song to me, and I knew next to nothing about the financial district, especially during the years leading up to the depression. New York covered those aspects of the city in a way that held my attention. I loved the book for that.

I saw in some of the other reviews complaints that Rutherfurd did not spend time with the African American families living in the twentieth century. He did cover their experience, especially during the pre civil war years, but those families were only mentioned briefly during modern times. I don't agree with that criticism. Rutherfurd chose to write a story about the Master family and if he left their story for too long the plot would have lost its continuity. He covered the Italians and the Irish during the years when those nationalities were the bulk of the immigrants. The African Americans were in the city from early on, just as the English were. Another novel about their experience in New York would be equally fascinating, but this novel was primarily about the English experience. Perhaps he could have spent more time with the Puerto Ricans families, given their importance to modern New York, but he did touch on that experience and I learned a good deal. He discussed the Lenape Native Americans, but as with many of the other groups that section was from the point of view of the European (Dutch) settlers.

My chief complaint comes down to a single word. Here's the line from late in the book:

He'd been fortunate to get a low number in the lottery and avoided the draft.

The word I object to is low. Rutherfurd was talking about the 1970s here and anyone who lived through that period knows that a low number meant you were going to war, not the other way around. The problem with this mistake is it stops the reader who knows its wrong and casts doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the book. But I'm still giving this book a five star rating. Overall, I loved it.

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I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been more than two decades since I saw the movie Amadeus, but I still remember a scene where Salieri looks at a score Mozart has written and is both amazed and jealous of the lack of scratch outs and eraser marks. The feeling I get from Sophie Kinsella's books reminds me of that. When I write, I rewrite over and over again. And most of the books I read feel as if they've been rewritten numerous times. But sometimes I want a book that feels as if it's being told by someone sitting next to me instead of one that feels as if the writer spent hours polishing it. Kinsella's books are light, funny stories generally centered around a flaky young woman who is much brighter and more capable than she realizes. I've Got Your Number is a funny book, with an easy style and a plot that caught me and kept me reading.

The story is about Poppy Wyatt, a young woman engaged to the handsome son of a couple of academics who are famous enough to have their own television show. The parents intimidate her and the fiance doesn't treat her with respect. Her life is changed when someone steals her cell phone and she finds another in a waste basket. She ends up sharing a phone with the head of White Globe Consulting, a highly successful firm with government connections. Sharing a phone is extremely personal. Here's what Poppy says about it:

I mean, Magnus has seen every inch of my body, including the dodgy bits, but I would never, ever let him near my phone.

Early on in I've Got Your Number Kinsella appears to be taking a swipe at the type of high brows who would most likely not be among her readers when Poppy reveals that she once published a letter in a magazine that was intended to be funny.

Of course, humor is a form of expression which one should factor into one's cultural narrative,” says Wanda doubtfully. “I think Jacob C. Goodson has done some interesting work in 'Why Humans Joke.'”

But Kinsella is also saying that what we hear relates as much to our own self images as it does to the words that are spoken. Poppy needs to understand herself before she can understand Wanda and her husband, Antony.


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The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak

The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The rhythm of Andrew Krivak's writing forces his readers to slow down. The Sojourn pulled me in and kept me turning the pages because its subject matter and setting are fascinating. But I had to work to read it. Here's an example of a typical sentence pulled from about halfway through the novel:

But among the Austrian and German troops we fell in with that autumn in Kobarid, we felt the camaraderie of skill and demeanor, and so began to believe again in the possibility of victory in that war, after having lost so many battles, a victory we would soon find out, that was being mapped out in the mountains above the plateau the generals had conceded to their enemy in order to save themselves and their imperial army.

I might enjoy sentences such as this if they were used in moderation, but Krivak rarely breaks his rhythm with shorter phrases.

The novel follows the life of Jozef Vinich, who was born in Colorado but raised in Austria-Hungry. He and his adopted brother, learn to shoot with great skill because they are hunters from an early age. When World War 1 begins, their skills as sharpshooters are highly valued. The scenes from the battles and from long marches in harsh environments bring a very clear picture of a struggle to survive, but Krivak also shows the guilt surviving can bring.

I said that I had ceased to think of life or death because it seemed that I was destined to serve out the sentence of one for having delivered so well the sentence of the other, and that I saw the dead every night before I went to sleep as though they were still alive and standing before me.

The Sojourn is not a book to curl up with on a rainy day. But for readers who enjoy history and who like to work at what they read, it's a good one.


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The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Chris Bohjalian refers to the Armenian Genocide as “the slaughter you know next to nothing about.” This horrific event involved the mass murder of Armenians living in what is now Turkey. In my case Bohjalian's statement was true until I read his wonderful novel, The Sandcastle Girls. Here is a quote from Wikipedia about the Armenian Genocide:

It took place during and after World War 1 and was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million.

The Sandcastle Girls bounces back and forth between the period when World War 1 was  in its early stages and the present time. It is about Laura Petrosian, a novelist, who is shown an old photograph of a woman who suffered through the Genocide and who shared Laura's last name. This picture starts Laura's effort to learn more about the history of her ancestors. The portions of the book that take place during the early twentieth century tell us about Laura's grandmother, Elizabeth Endicott, as she arrives in Syria with her father. They are on a humanitarian mission to help the victims. The first day Elizabeth is in Syria she sees surviving women from one of the marches.

These women are completely naked, bare from their feet to the long drapes of matted black hair. And it is the hair, long and straight though filthy and impossibly tangled, that causes her to understand that these woman are white – at least they were once – and they are, in fact, not old at all, Many might be her age or even a little younger. All are beyond modesty, beyond caring. Their skin has been seared black by the sun or stained by the soil in which they have slept or, in some cases, by great yawning scabs and wounds that are open and festering and, even at this distance, malodorous.

The novel views the genocide from a short distance. We hear about the massacres of the Armenian men, but we don't see them. And Elizabeth is in Syria, so the women she sees are the survivors. Along the way many of the women were raped and some were slaughtered for fun, but we find out about those crimes through second hand stories or the recollections of characters such as Nevart, an Armenian woman who has taken on the care of Hatoun, a young, silent, orphan girl.

Bohjalian's book is not only about genocide. The story also covers other, smaller aspects of the characters' lives. Elizabeth falls in love with an Armenian she meets and he also falls for her, but he never loses the love he feels for his wife and his child although they have been taken from him. In the present time we feel Laura's need to find out more about her family and to use that knowledge to better understand her own life.

The Sandcastle Girls is a novel about the importance of remembering our history, especially the bad parts. But it is also a book about hope and love and surviving.


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Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Company Of Liars by Karen Maitland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Company of Liars has the subtitle a novel of the plague.  It makes me wonder if the person who designed the cover ever read the book. It takes place in 1348 as the plague has started to overwhelm England, but the plague is only one of a number of reasons why nine outcasts have taken to the road. The disease has changed the landscape through which these travelers wander, but it is not the cause of their suffering. Fourteenth century England had plenty of other reasons why it was a hard time and place to live.

The story is told by an old character who is known to the readers as Camelot, a profession rather than a name.

I am, after all, a camelot, a peddler, a hawker of hopes and crossed fingers, of piecrust promises and gilded stories. And believe me, there are plenty who will buy such things. I sell faith in a bottle: the water of the Jordan drawn from the very spot where the Dove descended, the bones of the innocents slaughtered in Bethlehem, and the shards of the lamps carried by the wise virgins.

Camelot, who is clearly a seller of lies, is joined by eight others. These include Zophiel, a magician who owns the cart and horse they are using and who has a number of boxes with unknown contents, Osmond and Adela, a young couple who are expecting a child, Rodrigo and Jofre, an Italian musician and his apprentice, Pleasance, a midwife, and Cygnus, a storyteller who has a swan's wing in place of one of his arms.  All of these people have secrets they do not want to reveal. But they also have brought another traveler with them: Narigorm, a young, pale skinned, white haired girl who is a mystic and who has very little use for liars.

This novel has strong characters and an excellent feel for life during the fourteenth century, which is the aspect I found most interesting. But there was more to it than that. Karen Maitland handled the subjects of human sexuality, gender identification, and bigotry in interesting and sometimes surprising ways. She also mixed mysticism and reality in ways that made me think.


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