strange and random happenstance

Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
Published by: Simon and Schuster
Publication Date: October 6th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 416 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

"Fate is what you make of it, Hannah had told her. You can make the best of it, or you can let it make the best of you." In 1664 in Essex County, England, Hannah Owens found a baby guarded by a crow in a frozen field. She took the girl in and named her Maria. The crow, obviously the young babe's familiar, was named Cadin. They spent ten years together in the woods, Hannah teaching Maria the Nameless Art. Though for Hannah witchery was a choice, for Maria it was not. She was born to it. They tended to the locals and Hannah would never turn away a woman in need. On the day Maria's mother returned begging for help, Hannah didn't turn her away. It would be her death. Rebecca was a selfish creature, working a dangerous spell, Love Potion #10, to entrap her husband. Now Rebecca wishes to rid herself of her husband and run off with Maria's father. The spell is so strong she is unable to work the magic herself to quench her husband's fire. While Hannah helps release her, the love of Thomas Lockland turns to rage. He hunts his wife down. Maria escapes with her life, Hannah does not. Maria turns to her mother, now relieved of her husband due to injuries sustained in the attack. Rebecca shows her powerful and dangerous spells before she flees with Maria's father. A father who pays for Maria to leave England by selling her to the Jansen family in Curaçao. The island off the coast of Venezuela is unlike anything she ever imagined. She is dutiful in her work and develops a reputation for helping the women of the island. Too bad she can't help herself. When she is fifteen John Hathorne comes to the island to do business with Mr. Jansen. He is her fate. She saw it in a mirror years earlier. For five days they live in a world of their own making. On the sixth day, the thirty-seven year old man is gone. When she realizes she is with child she starts to make plans to seek him out. He lives in the other Essex County, the one across the sea from where she was born. She will travel there when she is able. On March 20th, 1680, Maria gives birth to Faith and in August they book passage aboard a pirate ship bound for Rhode Island. She was only able to convince the captain, Abraham Dias, by promising to save his son, Samuel, who is dying of breakbone fever. The two forge a strong connection, but she views it as her destiny to reunite with John Hathorne. But Essex County is a big place and she's in Boston for months before she hears of him in Salem. She, Faith, and a belligerent Cadin, head off in search of this man. A woman like Maria isn't welcome in Salem. She thinks for herself and wears red boots. She doesn't know the customs or the costume appropriate for women. Yet a shocked John strings her along. He has more secrets that she knows and they will be her downfall and the rise of a curse. One that will lead any man who ever loves an Owens to be broken in body and soul. One that could destroy the happiness of future generations unless they are able to break it. Unless they make the best of fate.

That this book actually has good characters and good ideas gave me hope. That this book then squandered all that is an affront and a grievance to all those who bothered to finish it. Magic Lessons is drawn out almost beyond human endurance. The constant repetition made this feel like a first draft. Because either this book should have been tighter or split in two. The stories of Maria and her daughter Faith feel diminished by sharing the same pages. Especially once Faith turns to the left. I can't put my finger on where exactly this book went wrong, but just like Faith, it became rotten. I didn't want to pick it up again once I put it down. I just wanted to be done with it. And yet, I am a completest and therefore I trudged through this word salad to inform you about the one thing you're wondering about this book, do we learn the details of the Owens Curse? Yes. We do. Though it's far more human and stupid than you can imagine involving the follies of youth combined with rage. The fact that Maria doesn't think about her actions in the moment and even when she does assumes that in three hundred years someone is bound to figure it out, made me strongly dislike her in the end. These are her descendants, she builds a home for them, and figures that they can just stumble through the horrible legacy she left them in a moment of blind rage? Sure. Nice one Maria. But then again you were seduced and impregnated by the thirty-seven year old man when you were a fifteen-year-old servant. You don't have the best judgement. And Alice Hoffman just had to make Maria's backstory with John Hathorne that much creepier. She didn't lose the love of her life, she lost a letch who momentarily let his desires take control. But then again he also married a fourteen-year-old in real life. And given the average age of marriage back then was nineteen, that's just sick and creepy. Yet that's not the worst age-related crime in this book. Alice Hoffman has this tendency to have children that are overly precocious. I actually call this "The Charles Wallace Problem," named after the five-year-old younger brother of Meg Murry in A Wrinkle in Time. The last time I read that book I was spending the summer with my friend who has three children. At the time one of them was five. So I know full well how five-year-old children behave. And Charles Wallace is not it. Alice Hoffman extends this to all her characters when they are children. Maria can remember being left in a field right after her birth, Faith remembers full pages of her mother's grimoire that she glimpsed as a child, and this even goes back to the first book in this series when Sally was four and handling the Aunts over the phone and organizing plane tickets after her parents deaths. This isn't normal! I know that this book has magic, but this is beyond magic, it's just illogical. And yet that wasn't what broke me. Before we've only ever known that the house on Magnolia Street was in Massachusetts. This makes it very clear that it is in Salem. AKA Witch City. And yet the Owens are viewed as odd outcasts and Sally and Gillian are bullied as children for their weirdness? I understand the bullying, I don't understand the outcast status for being witches. They are literally in the city known for it. I just can't.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Alice Hoffman, Charles Wallace, Curse, Essex County, Faith Owens, Familiars, Fate, John Hathorne, Magic Lessons, Maria Owens, Massachusetts, Meg Murry, Pedophile, Pirates, Salem, Season of the Witch, Witch City

As summer drew to a close in 2015 my book club took advantage of the fine weather for our meeting and sat in cafe chairs sharing a Caprese salad while the last warm breeze teased the air. It was a day where you could feel the shift of the seasons, summer was ephemeral, much as the impression left by The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Ironically the member of my book club who put Neil's book into the hat was unaware of the unofficial book club outing two years previously, but somehow, the book getting picked, despite the attempted rigging to get The Martian selected, seemed right. The Ocean at the End of the Lane was coming full circle. We got to talk about our previous adventure but having now read the book there was a deeper meaning to that journey. What struck me, and the rest of book club, was that while we all rated it highly we agreed that it was a hard book to discuss, because much like summer, the book was slipping away from our collective conscious.

Much like the unknown narrator's continual memory loss as to what exactly happened in those days with the Hempstocks, this is a book that you enjoy while reading yet somehow when you finish you don't quite remember what happened. Oddly enough I don't think that this is a deterrent for the book. I think often of A Wrinkle in Time and how many endless occasions have led to me re-reading that book since it was first read aloud to me in forth grade, and yet I can not for the life of me tell you what exactly happens in that book. Yet both these books leave behind this feeling of childhood and hopes and dreams and endless possibilities that are just there for the taking. They are both classics in that they capture something true. Something crucial to hope and life. Now The Ocean at the End of the Lane might not be my favorite book by Gaiman, but I connect it to hope, and these wonderful experiences I have had with my friends, and that is pure magic.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Book Clubs, Fall, Gaiman Gala, Gaiman Reminiscence, Hempstocks, Memory, Neil Gaiman, Summer, The Martian, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus
Published by: Whittlesey House/ McGraw Hill
Publication Date: 1958
Format: Hardcover, 96 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
Out of Print

Basil is a mouse with one great ambition, to be the best detective for mice that ever was, much like his idol, Sherlock Holmes, is to humans. Basil has learned his trade at the very feet of this great detective, even if that detective is unaware of this. In fact Basil, with his trusty assistant, Doctor David Q. Dawson, has set up his headquarters in the basement of 221B Baker Street. Their first big case that rocks the Holmestead is the disappearance of the Proudfoot twins. They never returned home from school and their parents are sure something is amiss. Observing the area in which they were last seen Basil deduces that three men kidnapped the twin girls and that they need to be patient because there is surely a ransom note to come. Sure enough the note is delivered as expected and by carefully observing the bearer of the note Holmes is sure he can find the twins before they must meet the demands of these deplorable villains, which is giving them the vacancy of the Holmestead so they can have their criminal enterprise in the center of London! Basil would never stoop to allowing crime a foothold in Sherlock Holmes's house! By consulting maps and train timetables he thinks he has located where the twins have been taken, to the Northwest of England near the sea. Disguising themselves as sailors, Basil and Dawson set forth to rescue the twins and stop villainy from getting a grip in Baker Street!

There are books that elicit the nostalgia response in you very easily. Usually it's books that you read as a child that forever imprinted on you. Going back to them when you are an adult makes you remember what it was like to be that young innocent reader picking up that book for the first time. You feel safe and happy and the world is right just for those few minutes that you are once more lost in the story and things like bills and taxes don't exist for you yet. Unless of course it's one of those books that traumatized you forever, like The Witches or A Wrinkle in Time, but that's a story for another day. I view this as the Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas effect. Every Christmas when the music of Paul Williams plays over the river near Frogtown Hollow the world is set to rights. Ma and Emmet's troubles are just as real as yours and mine but everything comes out right with a song. I had this feeling while reading Basil of Baker Street. That warm inner glow that everything would turn out right. While it is very odd to have nostalgia for a book I've never read, there's something about the writing that made me feel this way. Also, technically, it doesn't hurt being a fan of the movie based on this series of books... Eve Titus has created a memorable story for children that doesn't feel as if you are being talked down to, I'm looking at you L. Frank Baum. This is just an endearing story that celebrates literature.

It is this celebration of Sherlock Holmes that pervades the whole book. This book was obviously not written to cash in on the Sherlock Holmes name but to bridge the divide between children and adult literature. In her dedication to Arthur Conan Doyle's son Adrian at the beginning of the book Eve Titus states the hope that this story will lead children one day to the great detective himself. I think that this is a very realistic goal. The book not only revels in it's love of Sherlock, but it pays homage to him in the most wonderful ways. The respect Eve Titus holds for the Holmes canon can be seen in the loving care she has taken to mimic the writing style of "Watson" with Dawson. Having immersed myself in Conan Doyle's work I can see on every single page how Eve Titus is spot on in her interpretation. Little details popping out left and right, like Paganini! Oh how the Paganini made me smile. I'm sure you could even hunt down the exact sections of certain stories that Basil and Dawson are observing from their hiding place within 221B. Even the solving of the kidnapping of the Proudfoot twins with the typewriter comes from the short story "A Case of Identity." But never does the story feel derivative. It is a reinterpretation, with mice, of the greatest literary detective ever.

But if Eve Titus is a fan of Sherlock Holmes, his true number one fan is Basil himself. I love how Basil doesn't just study Holmes's methods so that he can reproduce his sleuthing abilities for his fellow mice. Basil studies the man himself. He is literally trying to become Sherlock Holmes for mice kind. Basil even moves his entire community into the basement of 221B Baker Street to be closer to his idol, thus forming the wonderfully named "Holmestead." Above his fireplace he even has a shrine to Holmes with items he has picked up from the apartments above, from scraps of paper with writing on in, to various discarded violin strings. As we see in this story Basil has finally acquired a full set of strings for the violin he has carved. Sadly his playing abilities aren't yet up to the real Holmes. Then there is the clothing! He has had a clever mouse tailor outfit him in a replica of Holmes's own clothes. While at this point you may be thinking that Basil seems more of a stalker than a sleuth, yet never does the narrative cross the line from cute into creepy. This is because Basil is able to utilize what he has learned to solve cases. He is using his love of Holmes to make himself a better mouse and to provide a service to his fellow creatures. When he dresses himself and Dawson up as little sailors to track down the nefarious three, well, it's just plain adorable. Plus in removing him from the shadow of 221B it shows his abilities and removes any taint of being a copycat, though he would smirk at my turn of phrase.

What also makes it so distinctly unique and sets it apart from Sherlock Holmes is that it remains distinctly mousy in tone. It's little touches here and there about their paws and cheese that remind you and make the book so endearing and so individual. Couple that with Dawson describing them sneaking aboard trains and carriages to save their weary paws, and it's just delightful. But the one thing in the whole book that I think really brings home that we a reading a book about mice, not men, is that their number one nemesis isn't Moriarty, but owls. In the epic rescue of the twins from the abandoned barn at the end of the book the crime solving duo is almost derailed by a dangerous owl. Luckily it wasn't a full sized owl, because obviously even though they are being attacked and their very lives are in danger Basil takes the time to notice that the owl is only nine inches in height and therefore more easy to be repelled. As he notes, if it had been a full sized owl, well, there would have been no hope for them! It's details like this that raise the story up, but also, in an oblique way educate the children who read it. If there's anything I hate more then "teaching moments" I don't know what it would be. But through the narrative Eve Titus not only shows the young readers that owls are the natural predators of mice, but she reinforces "stranger danger" in a logical way with an interesting crime. Because obviously if the moral of the story is just a natural part of the story and not being forced on you with blunt blows to the head it will stick with you longer.

While Eve Titus deserves all the kudos there are to give for creating this wonderful little tale, as an artist I have to give props to the illustrator, Paul Gladone. My whole life well-drawn books have called to me, but it was Garth Williams and his illustrating of Charlotte's Web that made me fall in love with anthropomorphized animal drawings. Well, Charlotte's Web and his tale of three kittens and their mittens which was part of his book Three Bedtime Stories. Paul Gladone's drawings are reminiscent of Williams but are just adorable and unique in their own way and shame on any publisher that had the nerve to hire some other artist to do a new cover! What I love is that they are so distinctly mice, unlike the overly cartoony look from the movie, this somehow makes the story more real. Not to mention the mouse equivalent of Mrs. Hudson and her keys, or the little pipe Basil smokes, or they way Basil listens attentively at the base of the chair supporting the great Sherlock Holmes. What is so wonderful about Gladone's style is that it has such detail but retains a freshness and vibrancy, a looseness that makes the illustrations live. Most likely this is due to the fact that he extensively observed animals in real life, drawing everything from the humble dormouse to the neighbor's cat. Whatever way you look at it, the text and the illustrations fit together hand in glove and need each other to bring Basil of Baker Street to the next plateau of children's books.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Arthur Conan Doyle, Basil of Baker Street, Charlotte's Web, Dawson, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, Eve Titus, Garth Williams, Mice, Paul Galdone, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, The Witches

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale
Published by: Bloomsbury
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"When Charlotte Kinder treats herself to a two-week vacation at Austenland, she happily leaves behind her ex-husband and his delightful new wife, her ever-grateful children, and all the rest of her real life in America. She dons a bonnet and stays at a country manor house that provides an immersive Austen experience, complete with gentleman actors who cater to the guests' Austen fantasies.

Everyone at Pembrook Park is playing a role, but increasingly, Charlotte isn't sure where roles end and reality begins. And as the parlor games turn a little bit menacing, she finds she needs more than a good corset to keep herself safe. Is the brooding Mr. Mallery as sinister as he seems? What is Miss Gardenside's mysterious ailment? Was that an actual dead body in the secret attic room? And-perhaps of the most lasting importance-could the stirrings in Charlotte's heart be a sign of real-life love?

The follow-up to reader favorite Austenland provides the same perfectly plotted pleasures, with a feisty new heroine, plenty of fresh and frightening twists, and the possibility of a romance that might just go beyond the proper bounds of Austen's world. How could it not turn out right in the end?"

Ok, so I was a bit harsh on the first Austenland book when I read it the first time. Now, I'm more mellow, I enjoyed the re-read and this was a fun Agatha Christie-esque spin on the idea of "Austenland."

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Published by: Reagan Arthur Books
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them."

I just loved how a review called it: "If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book." Sold.

Princess of the Wild Swans by Diane Zahler
Published by: Harper Collins
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Princess Meriel's brothers have been cursed. A terrible enchantment--cast by their conniving new stepmother--has transformed the handsome princes into swans. They now swim forlornly on a beautiful heart-shaped lake that lies just beyond the castle walls.

Meriel will do whatever it takes to rescue her beloved brothers. But she must act quickly. If Heart Lake freezes, her brothers will be forced to fly south or perish.

With help from her newfound friends Riona and Liam--a pretty half-witch and her clever brother--Meriel vows to finish a seemingly impossible task. If she completes it, her brothers may be saved.
But if she fails . . . all will be lost."

Fairy Tale retelling yeah!

A Parliament of Spies by Cassandra Clark
Published by: Minotaur
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"All the danger and intrigue of 14th-century England spring to life in this "compelling" (Publishers Weekly) series about the brave, incorruptible Abbess of Meaux.

Abbess Hildegard may consider herself “just a nun with no useful skills or connections,” yet her loyalty and intelligence have brought her to the attention of King Richard II himself—not the safest place to be, when the king has enemies on all sides. As Hildegard wrestles with her role as a spy in the parliament that is hastily gathering at Westminster, Cassandra Clark shows us the human side of history, giving readers new reason to follow Publishers Weekly’s rallying cry: “Medievalists rejoice!”

Olde Tyme England with evile poltte, yeah!

River Marked by Patricia Briggs
Published by: Ace
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Paperback, 304 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Being a different breed of shapeshifter-a walker-Mercy Thompson can see ghosts, but the spirit of her long-gone father has never visited her. Until now, on her honeymoon with the Alpha werewolf Adam. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River-and innocent people are dying. As other walkers make their presence known to Mercy, she must reconnect with her heritage to exorcise the world of the legend known as the river devil..."

Perhaps my favorite Mercy Thompson book now in paperback! You'll have a year till a new one, so savor it.

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Carola Dunn
Published by: Minotaur
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Paperback, 304 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London—each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy’s off visiting their daughter at school. But when a teacher is found dead, Daisy is once again in the thick of it. As Daisy tries to solve one murder, Alec discovers that the three victims in his case were in the same Army company during World War I, that their murders are likely related to specific events that unfolded during that tragic conflict, and that, unless the killer is revealed and stopped, those three might only be the beginning."

While I'm not THIS far in the Daisy Dalrymple books, I'm happy to know I have lots more to read! And in paperback too!

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Published by: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: January 31st, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 280 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Fifty years ago, Madeleine L’Engle introduced the world to A Wrinkle in Time and the wonderful and unforgettable characters Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe. When the children learn that Mr. Murry has been captured by the Dark Thing, they time travel to Camazotz, where they must face the leader IT in the ultimate battle between good and evil—a journey that threatens their lives and our universe. A Newbery Award winner, A Wrinkle in Time is an iconic novel that continues to inspire millions of fans around the world. This special edition has been redesigned and includes an introduction by Katherine Paterson, an afterword by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis that includes photographs and memorabilia, the author’s Newbery Medal acceptance speech, and other bonus materials."

I remember the first time my 4th rgade teacher read this to us. Oddly enough, no matter how many times I've read it (even seeing a play about it) I can't seem to remember the plot, just that storm that starts off the book.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Austenland, Carola Dunn, Cassandra Clark, Diane Zahler, Eowyn Ivey, Madeleine L'Engle, Mercy Thompson, Midnight in Austenland, Patricia Briggs, Shannon Hale, The Snow Child

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Published by: Wally Lamb Books
Publication Date: July 14th 2009
Format: Hardcover, 197 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Miranda's life seems pretty normal, until her best friend Sal gets punched by Marcus, even if she didn't know the kids name was Marcus till later. After that everything changes. Sal will no longer speak to her, so she now has to walk home alone, everyday, past the crazy guy on the corner. She would be very isolated if it wasn't for her new friend Annemarie and her battered copy of A Wrinkle in Time. But slowly something bizarre and almost sinister happens. Anonymous and cryptic notes start arriving foretelling death and doom. Notes that with each appearance make Miranda realize this stranger knows way too much about her life. But can Miranda figure out who will die and why before it's too late?

I am truly at a lose as to why this book won the Newbury. Last year The Graveyard Book was right on, complex and interesting. This book was simplistic and it felt dated, like it was not just set in the seventies, but written in the seventies, and not in a good way. Plus can we say dense heroine! I can only assume that the librarians felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for all the Wrinkle in Time correlations and references that they thought it should win. Personally, I never liked A Wrinkle in Time, despite having read it many times I just don't get what there is about it that keeps people coming back. Then again, maybe everyone's just going back and re-reading it to see why everyone's talking about it making it some bizarre loop appropriate for this book. The fact that Miranda could not grasp the basics of time travel, even though she's read A Wrinkle in Time millions of times makes her irredeemable as a heroine. They had Doctor Who in the seventies, she can't be this thick. I can't believe children, who in this day and age have grown up with Harry Potter and the time-turner, could stand her not grasping the simplest ideas of time travel and having to sit through explanations that a kindergartner could grasp. I really just wanted to smack her upside the head and go wibbly wobbly timey wimey bitch. Sorry for the profanity, but I think she needs a right old smack down.

But I haven't gotten to what really bugged me, and this would be aside from the dentist's office being in the school, wtf really. Let's go back to a book I hate. I know other's love it, I just don't. This book being The Time Traveller's Wife. This was truly The Time Traveller's Wife written for children. All great deeds and true love and yadda, yadda, didn't like it then, and I sure as hell didn't like a dumbed down version of it. Right about now you're probably thinking, and why did she give it three stars? Because it was fast, and even if it was predictable, linearly convoluted with an annoying character who loves a book I don't, I still had some kernel of fun reading it. Award winning? Not in my book. But it's a quick read if you want something to divert you for an hour or two. Plus love and self sacrifice, not bad themes to promote.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 4 comments  

Labels: A Wrinkle in Time, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Miranda, Neil Gaiman, Newbury, Rebecca Stead, The Graveyard Book, The Time Traveler's Wife, Time-Turner, When You Reach Me