Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar

Reviewed by Kristin

These stories often read like fairy tales. In the titular story, “Seasons of Glass and Iron”, Tabitha is wearing iron shoes. She must walk and walk until they are worn out, and then begin anew in a new pair. Amira is sitting on a high glass hill, trapped there with a continual supply of golden apples. Only when the iron meets glass do the women find a possible escape.

“Florilegia; or, Some Lies about Flowers” is of Blodeuwedd, a woman who was formed from blossoms and trapped into a loveless marriage. She is more at home communing with the mud, the bees, and the books of the library, than with the life she is expected to lead. As in most tales cleverness prevails, and with El-Mohtar’s skill, in a mere sixteen pages.

“Pockets” finishes the collection, as strange and impossible items appear in Nadia’s pocket. Somewhere between a scientific investigation and a wise librarian, Nadia finds some measure of resolution to her mysterious collection.

This is a hard collection to describe. El-Mohtar does not suffer from using too many words. In almost everything I’ve read from her, she makes every word count. This slim volume contains eighteen writings published in a magazine, anthology, or online between 2008 and 2023. As El-Mohtar notes in the introduction, she saw a lot of life changes in those fifteen years. Each entry serves as a snapshot of that particular time in her life. There is not cohesion between stories, both poems and prose, but for the beauty of the precise words chosen.

Nevermore: My Mother She Killed Me, Living with Cannibals, Island that Dared, and I Take My Coffee Black

 

 

Reported by Garry

 

The chillingly titled My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is a collection of new fairy tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer, which contains retellings of classic fairy tales as well as newly minted stories, and there are a bunch of them!  At 567 pages, this tome contains forty stories from authors such as Neil Gaiman, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates and many more.  Dark, gruesome, hilarious, and unsettling, this book may not be for everyone, but our reader thoroughly enjoyed it!

 

 

Living with Cannibals and Other Women’s Adventures is a collection of first-person narratives from the National Geographic Society, edited and compiled by Michele Slung.  This collection highlights sixteen trailblazing (oftentimes quite literally) women from the past two centuries who faced hurdles both physical and cultural to explore distant horizons.  Our reader was particularly struck by the differences (and sometimes similarities) of the experiences of these bold women across the centuries; while the technology used by the explorers has changed, nature itself has not and remains as treacherous and beautiful as it was in 1800.

 

The theme of exploration by women continued with our next book, The Island that Dared:  Journeys in Cuba by Dervla Murphy.  Murphy, along with her daughter and three young grandchildren travelled extensively across Cuba in 2005. She then returned alone in 2006 and 2007, often times walking up to 27 miles per day, sleeping on beaches or in the forest and getting to know the people of the Caribbean island.  With vivid descriptions of the people, places, and things of Cuba, this book left our reader with a much deeper understanding of this often misunderstood island nation.

 

I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America is a humorous biography by Nashville based actor/author/comedian Tyler Merritt.  In this heart-warming book, Merritt recalls stories from his life growing up in an extremely diverse community in Las Vegas, going to college in California, and only truly experiencing racism once he moved to a less diverse area – specifically Nashville.  Our reader loved this book and specifically pointed out how funny and enjoyable it was, while still making the point that racism is a learned trait that can be un-learned.

 

Also mentioned:

The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson

The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon by Marcy McCreary

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helene Tursten

On Animals by Susan Orlean

Pickles Tails: The Hijinks of Muffin & Roscoe, Volume One by Brian Crane

Bait and Switch:  The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich

The Ride of Her Life: the True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America by Elizabeth Letts

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

The Price of Glory:  Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Weaver’s Revenge by Kathleen Ernst

Chance Development: Stories by Alexander McCall Smith

Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger

World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained by John Bowker

Gender Swapped Fairy Tales by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett

The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick

Reviewed by Jeanne

Martha Storm is a volunteer librarian—actually, she’s a volunteer everything whether she wants to be or not.  She’s just one of those people who ends up being a doormat for others.  She was the one who looked after her parents, Thomas and Betty, until they died, while younger sister Lilian married and began a family.  Martha is the one who ends up doing laundry, altering clothes, storing costumes, and even trying to repair a papier-mache dragon’s head.  She’s always been the one people depended on but never seemed to appreciate. 

Except for Joe, whom she had hoped to marry before her parents became ill; and Zelda, her mother’s mother, who encouraged her to do outrageous things that incurred her father’s wrath.  But Joe moved to America, and Zelda died long ago, so now all Martha has is her place at the library and a house packed to the brim with things: her parents’ things, her sister’s things, all the stuff that people want to keep but not at their houses.

Then one day, Martha finds a package addressed to her.  Inside is a coverless book of fairy tales with an inscription to Martha from Zelda, dated 1985.

 Only Zelda died in 1982...

I admit I was put off a bit at first because not only was Martha downtrodden, but the flashbacks to her childhood made me dislike her father intensely.  He was incredibly controlling, keeping a tight rein on the purse strings, his daughters’ reading (disdaining fiction, fairy tales, and everything creative), and generally kept everyone under his thumb—except for Zelda, which is exactly why he and Zelda clashed so fiercely.

However, I felt sorry for Martha and thought I owed it to her to see her through. Surely, things have to look up for this poor woman!

I’m glad I did, and was able to see her rise to the occasion over and over again. It was good to see her gradually realize that she had intrinsic worth, that she wasn’t defined only by ways that she could help others.  I also met vivid characters—Suki with her malapropisms, ah-mazing Zelda, stoic Siegfried, and even rigid Thomas-- and explored a tangle of family secrets.  There was young love, mature commitment, and a woman learning that she can break free from the past and her own insecurities.  I may still not approve of Betty’s choices, but I understood them a bit by the end, and I closed the book satisfied.  I liked how the author used the fairy tales to illuminate situations and characters, and how skillfully she wove the strands of the story together.  Of course, all the book titles and authors that were dropped into the story delighted me. 

This is a charming tale and I look forward to reading more from Patrick.

East by Edith Pattou

Reviewed by Ambrea

In East, Edith Pattou tells the story of Rose, the youngest of seven children—and substitute child for the daughter who didn’t survive.  A misfit even amongst her closest family, Rose has never really fit in anywhere.  She’s different, out of place, but when an enormous white bear suddenly appears and asks her to leave in exchange for health and prosperity for her impoverished family.  Faced with the health and happiness of her family, Rose readily agrees.  But as she travels to distant shores upon the back of the white bear, she quickly discovers nothing is as it seems—and she’s soon in for the greatest adventure of her life.

East is a curious story that pulls directly from the Norwegian fairy tale, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” but it appears to draw on everything from history, Beauty and the Beast, Greek mythology, and much more.  It’s intriguing and fascinating and strangely beautiful, and I enjoyed it immensely.  Truthfully, it’s quickly become one of my favorite books for young readers.

I loved the imagery in East, especially when Rose weaves her stories.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked reading Neddy’s and her father’s narratives, because both Neddy and her father offer insight into Rose’s personality as a child and give perspective to her unexpected journey.  They are an anchor that helps tether her wild adventure to the real world, keeping a line between their world and the magical world of the north.  However, I enjoyed Rose’s narrative best because she has a way of looking at the world that impressed upon me the beauty of the far north, a way of chronicling sensations and thoughts that allowed me to better envision her adventure.

Rose loved to see the world, and she loved beautiful things in nature.  She knew how to capture and convey their appearance, their subtle ferocity and their ethereal beauty, but she also knew how to describe the terrible chill of the snow and the cutting sharpness of ice, which I absolutely loved.  She weaves a beautiful story, literally and figuratively.  Rose creates beautiful works of art in the cloth she makes, the tapestries she weaves, and she has a similar talent for stringing together words to create a narrative that’s both evocative and fascinating.

I loved it.

Additionally, I loved the originality of East.  I realize it pulls directly from “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” but Pattou manages to give the story an added depth by crafting complex characters and expanding upon the goblin myth.  Moreover, I liked that she pulled from all sorts of European myths, drawing out aspects of Beauty and the Beast (a French fairy tale, originally) and the story of Cupid and Psyche.  It was interesting to see all these difference influences come together to create a story that’s both compelling and enchanting, a novel that conveys a sense of history and myth—and, of course, magic.

Strangely enough, I also liked the pacing of East.  Pattou manages to convey a sense of elapsing time, making Rose’s adventure epic in scope.  Many months pass as Rose sets out with the White Bear, and many more months pass as she journeys to a place “east of the sun, west of the moon” to free him from the clutches of the wicked Troll Queen.  It makes for a long book, but, at least, the pacing is spot on.  The narrative has a natural progression that takes the readers on a wonderful journey from the French countryside to the coldest, most pristine reaches of the far north.

And I enjoyed every minute.