Category Archives: American

June 17, 2013

Win a copy of The Silent Wife!

By bibliomouse

HE exists in dual worlds. SHE likes to settle scores.

HE decides to play for keeps. SHE has nothing left to lose.

The Silent Wife tpb.448x681

The fabulous Ben at Headline has offered me a copy of the eagerly-anticipated The Silent Wife by A. S. A. Harrison to give away. It’s been hailed as the new Gone Girl and is tipped to be a huge success when it’s released. My review is coming later this week but in the meantime you can win a copy for yourself.

To enter, just leave a comment below. You don’t have to follow the blog to enter but you will get an extra entry if you do – just let me know the name you use to follow in your comment. The giveaway is available for UK readers only this time, I’m afraid. The giveaway closes at midnight on Sunday 25th June GMT.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in American, Giveaway

June 6, 2013

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton diSclafani

By bibliomouse

riding camp

Publisher: Tinder Press

ISBN: 978-0755395170

Publication date: 6th June 2013

Anton diSclafani’s debut novel is gorgeously-written, as I’ve come to expect from Tinder Press, and one that I devoured in a weekend.

Set in 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression, the novel opens with 15 year old Thea Atwell arriving at The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls in the mountains of North Carolina. She is dropped off by her father who hurries back to Florida, leaving Thea feeling distinctly out of place. Coming from an unusually insular family and used to seeing only her parents, her brother and occasionally her aunt, uncle and cousin, the number of girls at Yonahlossee stuns her.

Negotiating the complicated relationships within the camp is made slightly easier when she is befriended the extremely rich and popular Sissy, and helped further by her skills on horseback. She is a daring natural horsewoman who prefers horses to people, and whose reluctance to stay within the rules of the camp come to the fore when she is riding.

There is an underlying mystery about why Thea was sent to Yonahlossee, a secret which is revealed gradually in flashbacks to her life in Florida, at her family home among the orange groves. The secret, when it finally comes to light, isn’t unexpected and yet somehow doesn’t feel like an anti-climax. The quality of diSclafani’s writing is such that, although the pace of the story is slow, even languid at times, the narrative doesn’t flag.

Thea is a brilliantly-realised character: self-assured and detached but also rebellious and passionate, fighting against the restrictions placed upon her both at home and at the camp. She is mature far beyond her years and yet still very much a teenager. One of the relationships that she develops at Yonahlossee might raise an eyebrow but the way that diSclafani set it up stops it being beyond the realms of credibility. The details about the Depression, with some girls being taken away from the camp as their families lost everything, and Thea’s family forced to sell the house she loves, add a sense of tension and highlight the uncertainty of the situation.

I loved The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. It has fabulous writing, real emotion, a boarding-school vibe, a bit of mystery and horses – in short, it’s the grown-up version of my favourite childhood books. 

4.5/5

Thanks to Tinder Press for sending me a review copy in return for an honest review. 

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in American, Reviews

April 16, 2013

Guest Post by Peggy Riley: If you liked Amity and Sorrow…

By bibliomouse

As promised in the review, the lovely Peggy Riley has written a guest post for me with suggestions of what to read next if you, like me, loved Amity and Sorrow. At the end of the post is an opportunity to win a hardback copy of the novel signed by Peggy – like all Tinder Press books, it looks gorgeous and there might also be a #GodSexFarming badge in it for you…

Over to Peggy!

In the spirit of Amity & Sorrow, here are a handful of books about God, sex & farming.  I do hope you’ll give them a read:

PLENTY OF FARMING, QUITE A BIT OF GOD, A LITTLE BIT OF SEX:

9780141185064H

The Grapes of Wrath had to be on my list, didn’t it?  The Joad family’s farm fails with the Dust Bowl that emptied most of Oklahoma.  They stack their possessions and family on the back of the family truck and head for California, the land of milk and honey where it’s rumoured there is plenty of fruit-picking work.  Raised in California myself, and granddaughter to an “Okie”, I have long been aware of our agricultural history and the injustices done to migrant workers.  Oklahoma refugees suffered terrible abuse in a state that was frightened it would fill to bursting.  We still have that fear of migrants, I suppose, so this is a wonderful history of a specific point in history, as well as a timeless examination of fear and want.  There is plenty of God and sex with the former preacher Jim Casy, who loses his faith after “fornicating with willing members of his church”.  Of his novel, Steinbeck said, “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]… I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags.”  I reckon he succeeded.  And how.

PLENTY OF GOD, QUITE A BIT OF SEX, A LITTLE FARMING:

357587

Red Water by Judith Freeman tells the story of a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon marriage through the points of view of three wives.  The story begins with the murder of their husband, John D. Lee, implicated in the notorious (and real life) Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, whereby a group of Arkansas emigrants, bound for California, was attacked by Mormons and Paiute Indians.  Freeman, raised Mormon herself, is a skilled historian and her book is filled with details that bring a mysterious episode in American history to life.  Of polygamy, Freeman writes, “Growing up we were taught that polygamy had been a holy institution, a Divine Principle, an edict from God for the betterment of man… I find the Mormon culture a highly sexual culture, lusty in spite of the veneer of primness. There’s a kind of precocious sexiness and I think this is a residue of the early polygamous culture.”  She is also a wonderful storyteller and her language is rich with poetry.

PLENTY OF GOD, A LITTLE SEX AND FARMING:

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A “mercy seat” is a cover put into the Ark of the Covenant, to be used on the Day of Judgement, but it also means “the place of grace”.  The Mercy Seat by Rilla Askew, is set on a dry and dusty pre-state Oklahoma, back when it stood in two halves, Oklahoma Territory to the west and Indian Territory to the east, the land that had been “given” to re-settled Native Americans from the south and east, moved off land that white Americans claimed.  (The Oklahoma Panhandle, where Amity & Sorrow is set, was a “public land strip” then, claimed by many and wanted by none.)  Before the land runs that would see Oklahoma carved up into farms, it was a hiding place, outlaw terrain.  The story is told by plucky ten-year-old Mattie, whose gift of premonition becomes a curse.  In this Cain and Abel tale of two brothers fighting over a gun patent and the need to be right, God is straight out of the Old Testament.  With beautiful writing and big emotions, The Mercy Seat will stay with you, long after reading.  It has for me, anyway.

GOD, SEX & TOBACCO FARMING:

200px-SheriReynolds_TheRaptureOfCanaan

I read The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds, when it was an Oprah book back in her grand old book club heyday.  Goodreads recently reminded me of it, and I’m glad it did.  It’s a gentle and folksy read about naïve Ninah, raised in the small, strict deep-South Christian faith created by her WW2 vet grandfather, The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind.  A cracking name for a church, that.  Ninah spends time with her prayer partner and cousin, James, attempting to resist all temptation.  But when she finds herself pregnant, she tells her community it is God’s…

PLENTY OF FARMING AND ALL TYPES OF GODS, A DASH OF SEX:

thenightbirds-thomasmaltman

The Night Birds, Thomas Maltman’s first novel, begins with a plague of locusts, devouring farms and livelihoods by the mouthful.  It is 1860s Minnesota and German emigrants are struggling to work land that is claimed by embittered Dakota Sioux, in the aftermath of the Dakota War or The Sioux Uprising, depending on which side you were.  When teenager Asa releases a Sioux from a local jail it gets him a whipping from his father, but the locusts all take their leave.  Throughout a book that is rich in metaphor, German folklore and Dakota mysticism, Asa learns his history and the history of the land through the stories of his aunt, recently released from a mental asylum, where she was put after her capture by the Sioux and her subsequent marriage to one of their braves.  It is a dark and riveting read about race, abolition, family and redemption.  Perfectly lovely.

To win the signed hardback of Amity and Sorrow, just leave a comment below and I’ll pick a winner at random. It can be sent internationally and you have until 26th April to enter. You can also enter by tweeting about the giveaway, mentioning @bibliomouse.

This giveaway has now ended. I’ll pick a winner from the comments and Twitter and contact them this afternoon about receiving the prize. Thanks for entering!

4 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in American, Giveaway

September 4, 2012

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

By bibliomouse

Publisher: Headline

ISBN: 978-0755374045 

Publication date: 29th September 2011 (paperback)

I’ve had the audio book of A Discovery of Witches for ages but, since I wasn’t concentrating when I started listening to it and  started over half way through, I couldn’t really get into it. Admittedly this wasn’t the fault of the book but it did put me off. Fast forward to Spring of this year when the sequel was due to be published, and the lovely publicist at Headline sent me not only Shadow of the Night but also a paperback of A Discovery of Witches. Enough time had passed for me to largely forget what had happened in the chapter I’d heard so I gave the paperback a go.

Diana Bishop is an American academic who specializes in alchemical manuscripts and is currently studying in Oxford. She is also a witch who had worked hard to suppress any powers and who refuses to acknowledge that part of her self. When she calls up a bewitched manuscript in the Bodleian, she is suddenly surrounded by other witches, daemons and vampires, all of whom have been searching for Ashmole 782. The manuscript, somehow unbeknownst to Diana, is thought to be the only source of information about the evolution of ‘creatures’ and many will do anything that can to get their hands on it. Matthew Clairmont, a vampire geneticist (among other things), is one of those watching her and he quickly appoints himself as Diana’s protector. The two of them start trying to both understand Ashmole 782 and protect it from the others hunting for it. It soon becomes clear that the book is not the only thing being hunted…

I had such mixed feelings about this book. Parts of it had me speeding through the pages, eager to see where the story was going, but parts of it made me want to throw the book through the nearest window. Harkness knows how to tell a story but has a tendency to get slightly bogged down in details, which fall into two categories. The first, the good, happy little details, slow the story down but are worth it because they’re interesting. Falling into this category are all of the bits about the Bodleian and Oxford at the beginning of the novel. I happen to be a bit of a geek when it comes to old books (I know, you’re all amazed) and the Bodleian is particularly fabulous, so I enjoyed the passages about it.

The second category of details which Harkness is seemingly addicted to include the following: things about Matthew’s car; long tracts about wine; the way in which Diana manages to drink vast amounts of tea without spilling any; the hugely in-depth passages about yoga positions. Now, I understand that Harkness is a wine blogger, and obviously knows a lot about her subject, but no-one in the book was capable of pouring a glass without the whole history of the bottle being detailed.

It’s the same with Diana’s tea-drinking – she drinks a lot of tea (in fact, it seems to be the only thing stopping her from falling asleep most of the time) but every time she has a cup we have to hear the specifics of how she likes her brew. I live with a tea fanatic and I know all about the importance of correct tea-making  procedure but even Mr. Mouse doesn’t make me listen to a treatise whenever he makes a cup of English Breakfast. Also, how hard is it to drink a cup of tea without spilling any? Is this something to be particularly proud of?

The main problem that I had with Discovery actually isn’t any of the things listed above. Rather it’s the very mixed messages about women that Harkness seems to be putting forward. Diana is ostensibly a successful, intelligent, independent woman but as soon as she falls in love with Matthew, she becomes a simpering idiot. Despite Matthew telling her that she isn’t a damsel in distress, this is exactly what she becomes for large chunks of the novel. There are passages where you can see welcome flashes of the original Diana but, for the most part, I wanted to shake her.

Also, most of us found Edward Cullen a little creepy with his predilection for watching Bella sleep and his way of constantly treating her like a child. Maybe having Matthew doing exactly the same things to Diana isn’t such a great idea? Just a thought. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the bit when Matthew causally announces that, having married Diana without her knowledge, she now had to obey him unquestioningly as he’s the ‘pack leader’, and she agrees with barely a murmur. I was practically spitting blood at this point.

All of this is not to say that there are not also some lovely sections of Discovery, especially Diana’s aunt’s house in America, which has rooms that change position, and which hates visitors. More bits like this would have been very welcome. However, and it’s a big however, I probably will read Shadow of the Night. Despite all of the problems that I had with Discovery, I did keep reading it and I am interested in how Harkness deals with the time travel involved in Shadow (yes, really). Just call me a glutton for punishment…

2.5/5

A copy of this book was sent to me by the publisher but the thoughts are all my own and I wasn’t paid for the review (fairly obviously).

5 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in American, Reviews

August 30, 2012

The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey

By bibliomouse

Publisher: Headline Review

ISBN: 978-0755380534 

Publication date: 30th August 2012 (paperback)


I wrote the review of The Snow Child months ago and for some reason it was never posted. As the paperback is out today, it seemed  fitting time to finally publish this!

The Snow Child is the story of Mabel and Jack, a middle-aged couple who left their comfortable lives in 1920s Pennsylvania and moved to the Alaskan wilderness to start a new life, alone. They are trying to escape the grief of having a stillborn child ten years before, but they cannot outrun their sadness and they find themselves growing apart as they struggle with their new life. Jack is working himself to the bone as he battles the elements and the land in his attempts to grow enough food to see them through the winter, whilst Mabel is feeling increasingly trapped in their cabin as she waits for Jack to come home each night.

One evening, as the first snow of their first winter starts to fall, Mabel is overcome with memories of how it was in the beginning of their relationship, how hopeful and happy they both were and she rushes outside. Her sudden joy is infectious and the pair of them build a snow-girl, complete with a carefully carved face and red woollen mittens and scarf. In the morning there is nothing left in the snow apart from a trail of tiny footprints heading towards the woods. When Faina, a tiny delicate girl wearing red mittens and scarf, appears in their lives, they start to wonder exactly where she came from, and if she is even real. Has she been conjured by their longing for a child, or is she another inhabitant of the frozen woods, drawn to the warmth of the cabin like the bears?

I’m not going to say much more about the story itself, except it’s as harsh and beautiful as the writing.* Eowyn Ivey has lived in Alaska for most of her life and she has a simple and stark style which is perfectly suited to descriptions of the vast, unyielding wilderness and the pioneer life that Jack and Mabel are attempting to live. The descriptions of the environment around Wolverine River are terrifying in their bleakness, but also vivid – as someone who’s never visited Alaska, I feel as if I can really  imagine the wilderness that confronted Ivey’s characters, which is a testament to the quality of the writing (visiting Northern Norway last year also probably helped a little in terms of huge expanses of frozen land.)

Based on an old Russian fairy-tale, Snegurochka, Ithe Snow Child is a work of magical realism which brilliantly walks a fine line between being magical and realistic. It is also a stark reminder that, despite the common wish to have a ‘fairy-tale ending’, very few fairy-tales have a truly happy conclusion.

*You might need a tissue. Especially you, Mum.

I was sent a review copy but all the views are my own and I wasn’t paid for the review. Actually, someone sent me a copy to my home address, which is a bit of a mystery. Can someone own up please?

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in American, Recommended, Relationships, Reviews

July 14, 2012

Three bookshops and a bookfair later…

By bibliomouse

I do like living in Newcastle but, due to the ridiculous amounts of rain recently, I’m beginning to get a little bored of going to the same cafes etc. all the time, and staying inside makes me a little stir crazy. With this in mind, Mr Mouse persuaded me that 2 hours on a bus would be a good idea and dragged me off to Alnwick on Saturday, for a day of book shopping. One book fair, two second-hand bookshops and an indie later, we crawled back onto the bus home clutching bags of books. I was quite impressed at how restrained I was really…

I was really happy with what I found, especially with The Song of Achilles, as I’ve been arguing with my copy of the net galley of it for weeks. I’ll be reviewing some of these once I’ve read them, but here’s a bit about them from the blurbs:

Catch Your Death

A terrifying enigma – with the power to destroy…

Twenty years ago, Kate Maddox was a volunteer at a research centre where scientists hunted for a cure for the common cold virus. That summer, Kate fell in love with a handsome young doctor, Stephen, but her stay ended in his tragic death and Kate fled to a new life in the US.

Now Kate is back in England and on the run with her young son, this time from her vile husband. But a chance encounter sets her on a terrifying path of discovery. What really happened at the Cold Research Unit two decades ago?

Pursued by both her estranged husband and a psychotic killer who is obsessed with his prey, Kate must fight to solve the puzzle of the past – uncovering a sickening betrayal and a truth more horrifying than she could ever have imagined…

Heft

Former academic Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty milesaway, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising sporting career-if he can untangle himself from his family drama. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. After nearly two decades of silence, it is Charlene’s unexpected phone call to Arthur – a plea for help-that jostles them into action.

Through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, HEFT tells the winning story of two improbable heroes whose sudden connection transforms both their lives. It is a novel about love and family found in the most unexpected places.

The Return of Captain John Emmett

1920. The Great War has been over for two years, and it has left a very different world from the Edwardian certainties of 1914. Following the death of his wife and baby and his experiences on the Western Front, Laurence Bartram has become something of a recluse. Yet death and the aftermath of the conflict continue to cast a pall over peacetime England, and when a young woman he once knew persuades him to look into events that apparently led her brother, John Emmett, to kill himself, Laurence is forced to revisit the darkest parts of the war.

As Laurence unravels the connections between Captain Emmett’s suicide, a group of war poets, a bitter regimental feud and a hidden love affair, more disquieting deaths are exposed. Even at the moment Laurence begins to live again, it dawns on him that nothing is as it seems, and that even those closest to him have their secrets . . .

The Hidden Child

Crime writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother’s possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family’s past and finally uncover the reasons why.

Her enquiries lead her to the home of a retired history teacher. He was among her mother’s circle of friends during the Second World War but her questions are met with bizarre and evasive answers. Two days later he meets a violent death. Detective Patrik Hedström, Erica’s husband, is on paternity leave but soon becomes embroiled in the murder investigation. Who would kill so ruthlessly to bury secrets so old?

Reluctantly Erica must read her mother’s wartime diaries. But within the pages is a painful revelation about Erica’s past. Could what little knowledge she has be enough to endanger her husband and newborn baby? The dark past is coming to light, and no one will escape the truth of how they came to be…

The Song of Achilles

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’s mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Witch Child

When Mary sees her grandmother accused of witchcraft and hanged for the crime, she is silently hurried to safety by an unknown woman. The woman gives her tools to keep the record of her days – paper and ink. Mary is taken to a boat in Plymouth and from there sails to the New World where she hopes to make a new life among the pilgrims. But old superstitions die hard and soon Mary finds that she, like her grandmother, is the victim of ignorance and stupidity, and once more she faces important choices to ensure her survival.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in American, British, Detective/Crime, Historical, Lists, Scandinavian

April 6, 2012

The Good Father – Noah Hawley

By bibliomouse

The first of Noah Hawley’s four novels to be published in the U.K., The Good Father has been dubbed ‘We need to talk about Daniel’ (James Kidd on www.theindependent.co.uk, 01/04/12), but is an easier read than Lionel Shriver’s modern classic.  This is not to say that it isn’t a powerful narrative, but rather that the writing is simpler and less challenging than in We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I personally found a bit of an unremittingly miserable slog of a novel.

Paul Allen is a renowned New York doctor, living a perfect life with his second wife and their twin sons in Connecticut. One evening, whilst eating homemade pizzas, Allen sees the breaking news about the shooting of the favourite Democrat presidential candidate, Jay Seagram. At the same moment, the doorbell rings and he opens his door to two men who have come to take him for questioning. As he is protesting, his wife, Fran, tells him that the news has a video of the shooting. The boy filmed with the gun is Daniel, Allen’s son from his troubled first marriage.

 After Danny’s arrest, Allen spends the next year searching for answers. He is convinced that they have got the wrong man, that his son, however wayward and aimless, cannot possibly be guilty of such an atrocious crime. Danny might have quit college and become a wanderer, but he is not a killer. He spends countless hours pouring over accounts of other assassinations  and shootings, sure that his son does not fit the profile of killers such as Lee Harvey Oswald and Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters. When he finally accepts that Danny might have actually pulled the trigger, he is once again convinced that it was not his fault. Obsessively mulling over other theories, Allen does everything to avoid looking at whether his divorce from Danny’s mother, Ellen, started a chain of reactions within his son that led him to shoot Seagram.
Told alternately from the point of view of both father and son, The Good Father looks at the lengths to which a father will go in order to understand his son’s actions, and at the unconditional love that a parent has for their child, even in the face of horrific possibilities. A page-turner, told with great honesty and humanity.
4/5
This book was provided for review by http://www.welovethisbook.com.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in American, Recommended, Relationships, Reviews

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