Nevermore: Two Old Women and Middlesex

 

Reported by Rita

Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis

Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.

An uplifting story. I really liked it. - AH 5 stars

 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl. In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them--along with Callie's failure to develop--leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all. The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly a hermaphrodite. Spanning eight decades--and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides's long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.

The writing is really good. It is interesting and full of teenage angst. I recommend it. - MH 5 stars

 

Other Books Mentioned:

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Mark Twain by Ron Chernow

Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness by Earl J. Hess

The Truth about the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline

 

 

New Books:

Corn From A Jar by Daniel S. Pierce

The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama

Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada

Nevermore: JFK, Beloved Poison, Donner Party, Fatal, Watcher, Silva

 Reported by Kristin

Our first Nevermore reader was moved by the story of peace-seeking President Kennedy in To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace by Jeffrey D. Sachs.  In communications with Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev, JFK sought to reduce the threat of catastrophic war.  The two world leaders wrote letter back and forth about how to achieve the goal of peace, and those letters were revealed decades later.  JFK had served in the military during World War II, and did not trust that military forces would not lose control if there was an escalation of the Cold War.  Our reader found this a detailed history of cooler heads prevailing, however briefly, in a potentially dangerous time.

A different although rather dangerous time to be alive was described in Beloved Poison by E. S. Thomson.  Following her father into the family business, Jem Flockhart dresses as a man in order to serve as an apothecary in a dismal 1850’s London hospital.  Although a murder mystery, the main force moving the storyline forward is the richly described setting.  Our reader said that the descriptions of the filth in the town and the medical treatments were just horrifying.

Continuing in fiction, our next reader enjoyed some lighter fare with The Messenger by Daniel Silva.  Israeli art restorer and spymaster Gabriel Allon is in the thick of things again.  In this installment, jihadists make an attempt on the Pope Paul VII’s life.  Allon attempts to plant art expert Sarah Bancroft into a Saudi organization in order to have someone on the inside.  Serious as the fictional events may be, our reader enjoyed the story as “mind bubblegum,” that is, not mentally taxing.

The Watcher by Ross Armstrong features Lily, a young woman who seemingly is watching birds, but actually does much more neighbor watching instead.  When an elderly neighbor is found dead, Lily cannot resist becoming involved, perhaps to her own detriment.  Our reader didn’t necessarily like the book, as it was difficult to know what Lily was actually observing and what may have been happening only in her own mind.

Turning back to non-fiction, our next reader read The Best Land Under Heaven: The Donner Party in the Age of Manifest Destiny by Michael Wallis.  A thorough history of the ill-fated pioneers, this volume lists every name and tells who they were and what happened to them.  With a lot of detail and emphasis on the idea that God had brought them to that land and it was their destiny to go west, this was a book that our reader appreciated for its historic detail.

Finally, Fatal by John Lescroart is a tale of San Francisco Bay area attorneys who seem to have it all—beautiful homes, wine tastings in Napa, perfect spouses—except that after a one night stand, someone ends up dead.  Our reader found this to be a compelling book that could be read in a day.  Also, although this is a standalone novel, our reader believed that it was very open ended, perhaps leaving room for a sequel.