The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (audiobook)

 genre: fantasy

This short novel takes us to a small town on the edge of an alternate fantasy world, a place where magical songs can connect people and keep them safe. The two sisters that live there are bonded by music and a fierce love for each other that they believe can withstand anything. But there is magic here, a magic that flows through a river and can reside in words both spoken and unspoken. Magic like this can change any kind of story.

What a unique listening experience! Lots of music and sounds, I genuinely appreciated the aural experience of this audiobook. And honestly, I liked the story a lot too. It is sparse but also powerful. I know I am a sucker for books that play with words and in my opinion, puns make any magical system better. Because I knew from the start that this would be a short story, I didn't feel like I needed more explanation, I liked the vague sense of a magic the plays with word meanings and "grammar" and the natural world. I LOVED how songs have power here and while I wasn't ready to be finished when it was over, the ending fit just fine.

Isola by Allegra Goodman (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction

Isola is historical fiction at its finest, the tale of a real woman in 16th century France whose fortune becomes slippery and her tale of perseverance and survival left me nearly breathless with awe.

I am so glad that I went into the story completely blind because I had no idea of what was going to happen or how it would end up. I WAS glad that I had somehow learned that it was based on the story of a real woman, and that made it even more incredible. Marguerite learns so much in this tale that begins in her early life and ends in her adulthood, as she maneuvers her changing circumstances, finds companions she can love and trust, and discovers an inner force that allows her to withstand both treachery and true danger.  Her spiritual journey is both interesting and sometimes exhausting, both in the way the world around her requires so much of one's outward spirituality and how one's religiousness can be used to help people get what they want.

Truly, I finished this story marveling at the scope of it, of the heights and depths of this woman's life. The writing is strongly narrated going only forward in time. The start is a little bit slow, but it is necessary to begin at the beginning in this case. There are scenes from Marguerite’s most trying times that will stay with me, I know, as I listened with my hand over my mouth and at other times with actual tears for what she endures.  Her strength by the end made me want to cheer for her - and although this is a tale from the time when the job of a noblewoman was literally to be pretty and not cause a fuss, Marguerite's life experiences showed her how much more she is capable of.

I am being vague in what happens to her because for me, finding it out as I listened was such an experience. The audiobook narrator is Fiona Hardingham, one of my very favorites, and she gave a fabulous performance.

If you actually want spoilers, go read someone else’s review ha ha. If you love historical fiction and strong women, this is worth your time, and I highly recommend the audio. Be patient with the slow start, this is a 4.5 star book for me.

Long Island by Colm Tóibín

genre: historical fiction

Eilis Lacey's life in America has been a good one.  Since leaving Ireland behind, she's had two children with her husband Tony, she has found a job she enjoys and soon her kids will be out of the nest.  But then a stranger at the door drops news into Eilis's life that will upend all of it:  Tony has had an affair.  To find space for her broken heart, Eilis looks back to the land of her youth and books a trip to Ireland.  If only the reality of "home" could always be the same as our memories of it.  

I genuinely enjoyed Brooklyn, the book that tells Eilis's story of arriving in America.  I even was able to fall into caring for her right at the beginning of this book, her distress at what's happened to her marriage, her trying to figure out boundaries and make hard decisions.  I also like the cast of characters in Ireland, I was definitely engaged in the story.  But the end was such a disappointment.  It almost felt like a joke. Even if there is going to be another book I don't know if I'd read it.  It was such a web of a love triangle and to have it just all get dropped link a pint of Guinness on the pub floor without any resolution felt like I'd been tricked.

Dream State by Eric Puchner

 genre: contemporary fiction

There is a small house by a lake in Montana.  The groom, who has spent the summers of his life here, has loved this property since before he could remember and the decision to have his wedding here was easy.  The bride was more than willing, loving this part of the world herself now that she felt connected to it.  But in the time before the wedding, while the bride is in the house alone to prepare for the big day, the way the bride's inner world and self had been aligned...shifts.  One person that she meets is going to scramble up her perfect plans and the way that summer shakes down will make it be a summer whose influence will ripple through generations.  That beautiful place and these people that love it are at the heart of this story of relationships  - both romantic and not (although the non-romantic ones are just as precious and almost more important).

It's been a while since a book was so hauntingly sad and so beautifully written.   The writing is luscious and introspective.  It made me think and despair and I don't know what it was about it that kept me so invested.  The changing climate, the reality of how complex the webs between people can be, the hope for something beautiful, maybe all of that. But the beauty was in the words, the way the story was told, sometimes even tiny moments of clarity - not in what actually happened.  Sometimes what actually happened was deeply upsetting or disgusting or confusing.   And yet.  It all connected.  The humans and how they treated the world and how the world changed as a result.  I actually liked this story's narrative device of skipping forward in chunks of time so you read about important things in bits and memories and impact.

While the bride is a big part of this story, I'd say it feels way less a story about her than about the men in her life.  Not that it's a bad thing, at all, just maybe different from what I usually read.  Every once and a while I'd read a paragraph that felt so thick with the male experience that it caught me off guard a little.  It made me think about how I rarely read literary novels by men and ABOUT men.  Which I'm not judging about myself, just noticing.

To sum up: it is sad.  It is beautiful.  It is a warning.  It is an acknowledgement that we should cherish what we have, both individually and as a human race, because we never know what is fleeting.

Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

genre: magical realism

Birdie loves a rush, that thrill of throwing yourself headlong into actual, physical danger.  As a young single mom, this love of a thrill bumps up against having to care for her young daughter Emaleen in their tiny Alaskan town - where danger can be anywhere.  When Birdie becomes interested in Arthur, that silent and huge man who's lived off the land nearby for years, his calm manner and steadiness seems to be in contrast to Birdie's usual type.  Until we learn things about Arthur that make her growing interest in him make a lot more sense.

This is magical realism along the lines of a Selkie story or, even, the first book I read and adored by this author, The Snow Child.  The Snow Child has a different vibe though, that I liked better.  This book has dark undertones that ring not just of abuse but of the line between human and animal that can get blurred in a wilderness like Alaska.  Emaleen is a huge bright spot, she is so imaginative and clever - maybe a little immature for the six years old she's supposed to be, but understandable in the very adult world she has to navigate.  I longed for her to have a parent who could prioritize her, but Birdie is just that parent.

Even while part of me was upset by the story, I cannot deny that it is beautifully written, even the horrible parts are written with care and the ending actually fit in a way I couldn't have anticipated.  3.5 stars rounded up.

The King's Messenger by Susanna Kearsley (audiobook)

genre: historical fiction/paranormal fiction

Phoebe and her father live a quiet life in London.  She has her eye on a certain gentleman and her father is a respected scrivener in King James' court. Andrew Logan, a Scotsman and King's Messenger who lives nearby, is given a dangerous mission to find a man suspected of poisoning the king's son, Prince Henry, and quickly Phoebe and her father are both caught up in the intrigue.  A long journey will try everyone and if the secrets they are keeping don't land them in a dungeon, any other number of circumstances could do worse.

After two chapters, I was all in.  This is solid historical fiction that requires a reader to truly care as much about why things are happening as the fact that they DO happen.  So many political and familial factions, so many sides to a story and so many ways that royalty and their entourage create havoc that then people like King's Messengers and court scriveners have to manage.  The love story is a slow burn but a really good one, one of Susanna's best, I think, and this is the twelfth book of hers I've read.  There is some back and forth in time but it was no bother to feel grounded.  It is tender and it is exciting, and, as always, with a tinge of the supernatural  that keeps you on your toes in a way that doesn't distract from the historical setting.  Plus, her author note at the end was amazing for its detail.    Rounding up to stars for capturing my heart and making me want to listen nonstop until I was done.

The House of My Mother by Shari Franke

 genre: memoir

Despite the glossy image that Shari's mom posted on her YouTube Vlog "8 Passengers," Shari was not living in the perfect family. Actually, from her perspective, it was quite the opposite. Shari's perfectionist mother Ruby Franke didn't only expect perfection in the videos she posted online, she expected it from every member of her family, with the consequences for any misstep only increasing as their fame increased. When things really went off the hinge, though? When Ruby met and became enamored with the enigmatic "therapist" and life coach Jodi Hildebrande. From here, Shari's story went from being upsetting to being a genuine tragedy.

I'd already seen some about this story, while only glossing the surface. When a friend told me there was a documentary now and then I saw that Shari had written a book, I decided to start learning more by hearing what happened in the words of the eldest daughter who'd lived it. It's very readable, not juvenile but not particularly literary either. It's all still quite raw for her, you can tell.  It was hard to see the way her faith and how her religion was taught to her growing up, led to some serious mental and emotional consequences. That brought up some feelings in myself, having been raised in the same faith. And that Jodi? What a piece of work. Mostly, I just felt so sorry for the way Shari was raised in such an emotionally abusive home. I wish for her to have peace and for her younger siblings to get the help they need to feel safe again.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (audiobook)

genre: classic literature

Oh David.  Davy.  Trotwood.  Trot.  Daisy.  Doady.  Copperfield.  All of these are words that are used to name the boy that we watch grow into a man - David Copperfield.  David, whose early life is so painfully tragic, whose story is told in a first person narrative as our author remembers the small tendernesses that sustained him and the large injustices that plagued him as he tried to navigate the world without the kind of loving adult one so desperately needs.  And this is the same David who learns to ask for and accept help, who works things out, who finds his footing and turns into the kind of man whose compassion and patience make him a friend to all kinds of people - an an enemy of a few.   You aren't reading this book because you're dying to know what happens next, necessarily, you read because you start to care about David.  You feel protective of him.  You want him to find happiness.  You sometimes wish he wouldn't be so trusting and you sometimes think he's made a really poor decision.  And yet, in the end, you finish this monster of a story so surprisingly pleased with the journey.

I truly try not to shy away from particular books just because they are exceedingly long - but I absolutely do it.  I have read several of Dickens' books thus far and they've been both hit (Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities) and complete miss (Great Expectations).  I haven't had it in me to try another one - until I heard that Barbara Kingsolver was writing a modern retelling of this novel and that was enough to get the idea of trying another Dickens start to simmering in my brain.  Eventually I decided to go the audio route and I am so truly glad I did.  I listened to an edition narrated by Will Watt and he was phenomenal.  It made it so much easier to keep SO MANY CHARACTERS straight by the different voices.  There are villains and fools, school mates and companions, random neighbors that keep showing up, opportunists, mentors and family members and friends that become family.  I actually looked it up and there are 75 distinct characters in this book and they keep showing up!  That person from the beginning?  They are going to show up again!  And maybe again!  So many circumstantial meetings of the same people!  But in the end, I was able to roll with it.  Again, the different voices genuinely helped me to not just track people but to remember how I felt about them too, keeping me continually invested in the story.  Also, sometimes they were just actually funny - David's Aunt Betsy?  Eccentric and Redoubtable, she made me literally cackle out loud at one point, she's so snarky. 

I liked that this is not historical fiction - this is contemporary fiction from the PAST so that the life Dickens is telling me about is the actual kind of lives that people lived in that time from the point of view of a contemporary.  The things they worried about, the way they lived their lives, the ways people could cause harm to each other - those were real, even if the people doing them weren't flesh and blood.  I'm not going to gush.  This wasn't the best novel I've ever read. It is seriously longer than it needs to be - some of these characters just talk and talk and talk, using an entire page to say what could've been conveyed in two strong sentences.  But once I was invested in this character and his life, I was all in.  By the last two hours, I felt actual feelings for him and for how far he'd come in knowing himself.  

Gliff by Ali Smith

 genre: dystopian

Briar and Rose have had to leave their mother behind and their stepfather has hidden them away to keep them safe from an unknown something.  What IS known? That the red lines are not good.  That to be "unverifiable" is to be unsafe and that Briar will have to do something about their situation if their stepfather doesn't come back when he says they will.

This book threw me for a loop with it's indirect plotting and wobbly chronology - trying to figure out where in time I am and who is telling their story.  But I figured it out, and it floored me sometimes with it's wordplay and skillful use of language.  I mean, so beautiful, the ways that
words can be dissected and repurposed and used to help our human brains make sense of what is happening around us.  The Britain of this story is a fact-collecting, control-freak of a bad machine that has no compassion for difference or for not toeing the line of their rules.  The way that Bri's gender is handled is both lovely (with words) and terrifying (the way that power can make decisions FOR us).  Rose, this precious and precocious younger sister, I found nearly everything she said to be profound and yet obvious in the ways that truth just feels like solid ground sometimes.  Her innocence made all the dystopian crazy be in even starker contrast.

I even loved the actual physical layout of the words, the headings and the funky punctuation, it made me feel off balance just like the story did, just as I think it is MEANT to do.  This is a world that doesn't feel all too unfamiliar to the one we are in now, like we could BECOME this if we don't catch ourselves.

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

genre: memoir

Beryl's memoir of her life in Africa before the Second World War, both as a pilot and as a horsewoman, is a look into a place and time that no longer exist. We are with her in her childhood in the bush, living on a farm with her father and spending her days hunting and playing with her dog. It is a wild life, where danger genuinely lurks in the tall grass and where Beryl's own wild spirit is allowed to fly - in more ways than one.

What a unique life! I enjoyed the anecdotal stories and imagining living during this time of change, what guts Beryl had to have to do the things she did. Beryl is a thoughtful memoirist, if not sometimes blatantly revealing her own prejudices. The relationships between the colonizers and the colonized is a complex one here where there is, maybe, true care but also clearly a hierarchical understanding of status. I can appreciate the ways she broke barriers and found ways to pursue the things she loved. I will say, there is little here about personal relationships unless it is with a mentor or a childhood friend. It's not that kind of story. It is about animals and hunting, airplanes and the flying of them. The hunting parts were not my favorite but overall, I am once again grateful for Book Club that brought a new book into my hands. Three and a half stars.