Three Times Lucky

 

By Sheila Turnage

Moses Lo Beau was a foundling. As a baby, she was found floating on a makeshift raft in a flooded river. She was adopted by the man who rescued her from the flood, Colonel Lo Beau. Together with his partner, Miss Lana, they raised the baby that Colonel named Moses because of the similarity of the baby's rescue to that of the Bible story of Moses. However, this baby was a little girl, which the Colonel claims he didn't know when he named her Moses. Mostly she goes by Mo.

Apparently Mo's birth mother placed her baby on the raft to save her from the flood. It is a mystery that Mo would dearly love to solve as she writes letters to her "Upstream Mother" and places them in  bottles to be launched into waterways and rivers upstream of where she lives hoping someone will find them and that will lead to finding her birth mother. This is her fantasy, anyway.

But Mo has a good life in the tiny village where she lives. Colonel and Miss Lana are fairly strict parents, but loving and kind and well liked by the local community of which they are a vital part since they have the only eatery in the little town of Tupelo Landing, North Carolina. Their little café is the local gathering place and so Mo knows everyone and all their business too.

When one of the local people is found with his head bashed in, naturally Mo makes it her business to figure out what went wrong in the dead man's life. For this she enlists the help of her best friend, Dale, who is eleven years old just like Mo is. Together she and Dale start snooping around and getting into trouble and getting in the way of the police investigation being run by an out-of-town detective, Joe Starr. 

I enjoyed this story quite a bit even though I usually find stories about precocious children annoying. However, Mo is not quite as mouthy and bratty as fictional precocious children are often portrayed, probably thanks to Colonel Lo Beau, who has raised Mo with military precision. So she is more disciplined than the usual fictional wunderkind. 

The murder mystery is not the most interesting part of the story, it's mainly about Mo's antics and how she gets herself and Dale tangled up in the investigation. Dale even becomes a suspect even though he is just a kid and ends up being arrested. However that is just a ruse to lull the actual murderer into revealing him or herself. 

So this was an entertaining read even though its intended audience is kids in the 12 to 20 year old range, I'm guessing. I'm not sure how I ended up with the book as I don't usually bother with kid lit. But I have nothing bad to say about the story, the characters or the plot. I liked it! 

The Christmas Train

 

By David Baldacci

Tom Langdon used to travel the world, writing stories for newspapers and magazines about the people and events he encountered. His work sometimes took him into dangerous situations but after many years of that, Tom came back home to the US and started writing about much less dangerous subjects, maybe because he was getting older. Or maybe because a failed relationship left him floundering and directionless. 

He had been very much in love with Eleanor Carter and had even bought a ring, intending to ask her to be his wife. But it didn't work out. He never got around to asking and she wearied of waiting for him to speak up. So she gave up and left him.

Because of an unfortunate incident at an airport, Tom is banned from flying. He needs to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast to join his current girl friend for Christmas. So he is taking a train instead, using the train trip as a subject for story for work. 

But a big surprise is awaiting him on the train: Eleanor is on the train. She is still pissed and gives him the cold shoulder. She is doing a script for a big Hollywood movie director, Max. Max and his assistant Kristobal are also passengers on the train.

Tom gets to know some of the passengers and tries to get closer to Eleanor, even as she continues to treat him with contempt. But Max talks Eleanor into working with Tom on the script, forcing the two ex-lovers into spending time together. Tom never understood what happened and Eleanor finds it hard to understand why he doesn't know what went wrong. Just when it seems Eleanor is starting to thaw, it all falls apart again, leaving Tom feeling lower than low. Fortunately for the two former lovers, the weather is going to intervene, in the form of an avalanche that nearly derails the train in Colorado. 

This was an entertaining read. There was some religious mumbo-jumbo that was a tad annoying, but not enough to make me stop reading the book. The plot was a bit contrived, especially with the double avalanche, but whatever. There is a minor mystery on board too, in the form of a thief who is helping themselves to the passengers' money and valuables. I was relieved no one died in the course of the story although I was kind of expecting a corpse a la Murder on the Orient Express.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The House on Mango Street

 

By Sandra Cisneros

A  collection of poetical short stories about the various people who live on Mango Street, with a young girl named Esperanza as the main character, observing the lives of those around her. Mango Street is located in a rundown part of town with people coming and going, some never staying long and many as immigrants from other countries. 

Many of the chapters are very short, just a paragraph of two. The author is a poet and her chapter on "Four Skinny Trees" is really poetry:

"They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things. 

Their strength is their secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.

Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.

When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be." 

And these two chapters about what Esperanza wants out of life. The first in "Beautiful & Cruel":

"I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for.

Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Netty has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty.

My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

In the movies there is always one with red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.

I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate." 

 

And this one in "A House of My Own":

"Not a flat. Not an apartment in the back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.

Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem." 

 

An excellent ambition, in my opinion, and one I have yearned for since I was about the age of Esperanza, a young teen. Decades later I am still waiting.  

 

 

Monstrous Regiment

 

By Terry Pratchett

The little country that was Polly's home, Borogravia, was at war. Which was not unusual, it was frequently at war with its neighbors, being very vigilant against any intrusions across its borders. Part of the problem was the river that formed one of the boundaries was prone to change its course and thus creating arguments about the boundary location. The other was that Borogravia's religion was intolerant of other beliefs and its leaders were militant in their protection of the state religion.

What was different about this latest war was the alliance that had formed against Borogravia. Out numbered, Borogravia was on the verge of losing the war. Finding new recruits to fight was becoming increasingly difficult. The more men sent to the front, the more the home front suffered, as the able-bodied  men were swallowed up in the war. One of those men was Polly's brother, Paul.

So when the recruiters came to her town, Polly cut her hair and donned Paul's clothes and joined up, calling herself Oliver. She wasn't really interested in being a soldier, her goal was to find out if Paul was dead or alive and bring him home where he belonged. 

As the recruiters traveled to the various villages looking for new recruits, Polly came to understand that she was not the only female passing for male among the new recruits. Each had joined for different reasons, some to escape unhappy home lives, some looking for a lost lover, some who wanted to practice a profession that was not acceptable for a female. 

The truth about the war is finally revealed when the new recruits reach the front lines: Borogravia is losing and losing badly. They also know that the enemy has captured an important fortress and that it is where they are keeping the prisoners of war. Polly is desperate to get inside the fortress to find out if Paul is among the prisoners. So the small band of raw recruits remove their male disguises and don female clothes, determined to sneak inside the fortress as part of a group of local washerwomen. They manage to get past the first gate but are soon apprehended and locked up. All is not lost however and the women prove that even females can be good soldiers. 

This was an interesting story about women, of various sorts including vampires and trolls, trying be successful in a world that assigns rigid limits on the choices available to women. The humor, of course, comes from females trying to act masculine and how well they succeed or not. Pratchett is on the side of women being whatever they wish to be, without the traditional constraints placed on them by society's expectations. At the end of the story, it is revealed that several of the top military brass are women who have successfully passed as men for years and years. 

When the women find out that their sergeant knew they where women, they ask why he didn't say anything. His response: 

"You ain't the first," he said. "I've seen a few. Mostly by themselves, always frightened . . . and mostly they didn't last long. But one or two of them were bonny soldiers, very bonny soldiers indeed. So I looked at you lot and I thought to myself, well now, I thought, I wonder how they'll do when they find out they're not alone? You know about lions? ... Well, the lion is a big ol' coward, mostly. If you want trouble, you want to tangle with the lioness. They're the killers, and they hunt together. It's the same everywhere. If you want big grief, look to the ladies."

 

One Plus One

 

By Jojo Moyes

Jess Thomas holds down two jobs: she does housecleaning and works in a pub. She also has two kids to take care of, teenager Nicky, her husband's son from a previous relationship and her daughter with her husband, Tanzie, a grade schooler math prodigy. The husband, claiming stress and illness, vanished from their life and moved back into his mother's house. Claiming also to be too ill to hold down a job, he pays no child support. So when Jess found a big wad of money on the floor of a taxi cab, she decided to keep it even though she knew who it belonged to, having just helped a drunk customer home from the pub where she worked. 

You see, an opportunity had come Tanzie's way, a chance to attend an elite school that offered Tanzie a scholarship that covered 90% of the cost of attending. The rest would have to be paid by Jess. And she just didn't have the money. But this opportunity was too good to pass up. So she took the man's money that he unknowingly dropped in the taxi.

The man, Ed Nicholls, was one of Jess's housekeeping customers. Their relationship was casual, as he was never home when she came to his house to clean it. But she knew him by sight and where he lived, of course, and so offered to make sure he got home safely that night when he got sloppy drunk. She got him into the taxi, got him home, used her copy of his key to get him inside, got him laid down on his couch and left. When she got back in the taxi is when she found his money roll. It wasn't a huge amount, 500 pounds British, but when you're as strapped for cash as Jess was, it was just too hard to resist. And Ed lived in a new, luxury home and drove an expensive new car and she figured he would think he just lost it in his drunken haze. Not very ethical of Jess but the temptation was overwhelming. Because that remaining 10% not covered by the scholarship, about 5000 pounds, might be acquired if Tanzie enters a math competition being held in Scotland and the 500 pounds stolen money might be just be enough to Tanzie, Jess, Nicky, and Norman, their oversize dog north from Britain to Scotland. So Jess loads the family into an old junker car of her husband's that he left behind when he split and they head north. 

They don't get far. It's an old car and it breaks down. Ed happens to be driving by at the time and he offers them a ride. Now Ed has problems of his own. He is being investigated for insider trading, which apparently is as illegal in Britain as it is supposed to be here in the USA. Getting away from his troubles for a few days is an attractive idea, so he agrees to drive them all north to Scotland so Tanzie can enter the math competition and win the money that will enable her to attend the elite private school. Complications ensue. And just when it seems Jess and Ed were destined to be together, Ed finds out what happened to his missing 500 pounds! 

I really enjoyed this story as unlikely as the circumstances that brought Ed and Jess together were. I found it very touching at times and even shed a tear or two. 

Here are some excerpts that really spoke to me. This first one from teenager Nicky:

"Mostly, I don't understand how the bullies and the thieves and the people who destroy everything—the arseholes—get away with it. The boys who punch you in your kidneys for your dinner [lunch] money, and the police who think it's funny to treat you like an idiot, and the kids who take the piss out of anyone who isn't just like them. Or the dads who walk right out and just start afresh somewhere new that smells of Febreze with a woman who drives her own Toyota and owns a couch with no marks on it and laughs at all his stupid jokes like he's God's gift and not actually a slimeball who lied to all the people who loved him...I'm sorry if this blog has just got really depressing, but that's how our life is right now. My family, the eternal losers. Mum always told us that good things happen to good people. Guess what? She doesn't say that anymore."

And this description of Nicky, when he first came to live with Jess and her husband:

"And when Nicky turned up two years later, and everyone had told her she was mad to take on someone else's child, a child who was already eight years old and from a troubled background—you know how boys like that turn out—she'd ignored them. Because she could see instantly in the wary little shadow...a little of what she had felt. Because she knew that something happened to you when your mother didn't hold you close, or tell you all the time that you were the best thing ever, or even notice when you were home: a little part of you sealed over. You didn't need her. You didn't need anyone. And without even knowing you were doing it, you waited. You waited to anyone who got close to you to see something they didn't like in you...and to grow cold and disappear, too, like so much sea mist. Because there had to be something wrong, didn't there, if even your own mother didn't love you?"

So it's just a silly and unlikely romance story, but there were parts of it that really hit hard and a bit too close to home. But it all come out like it should in the end because it is a romance and light reading and a break from the reality we all deal with in this life. 

 

 

 

 

Portnoy's Complaint

 

By Philip Roth

The story of a young Jewish boy from about age 13 to 33. Alexander is guilt-ridden and lustful. He doesn't get much emotional support from his parents. His dad works hard and has digestive problems, spends a lot of time in the bathroom. His mom is a bit nuts, using cruel games and tricks to discipline her son, locking him out of the house and threatening him with a knife. 

Alexander manages to survive his teenage years and grows up to become a successful lawyer, doing work he finds important and meaningful. But at age 33, he feels that something is lacking and that maybe he needs to settle down and start raising a family. But instead of doing that, he hooks up with various women, finally ending up with a beautiful New York model that he actually despises. He views her as stupid, ignorant, and slutty, all of which are true, unfortunately. She seriously wants to be his wife but he knows that would be a mistake, for him any way. They travel to Europe and after an adventure with an Italian prostitute, he dumps the  model and runs away to Israel where he tries to rape an Israeli female soldier. Tries. 

The story is told as a session with a therapist but at the end (SPOILER) you find that the session hasn't even started yet: "So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?"

I thought this was supposed to be an amusing story but I didn't find it so. It's just 300 pages of Alex whining about his life. He is not a good person, you discover as you read further in the story. He's a dickhead. Does he figure that out in the end? I don't know. Or care. 

How he sees himself, about midway in the story:

"...a brainy, balding, beaky Jew, with a strong social conscience and black hair on his balls, who neither drinks nor gambles nor keeps show girls on the side; a man guaranteed to give them [girls who would like to marry him] kiddies to rear and Kafka to read—a regular domestic Messiah! Sure, he may as a kind of tribute to his rebellious adolescence say shit and fuck a lot around the house—in front of the children even—but the indisputable and heartwarming fact is that he is always around the house. No bars, no brothels, no race tracks, no backgammon all night long at the Racquet Club...or beer till all hours down at the American Legion...what we have before us...is a Jewish boy just dying in his every cell to be Good, Responsible, & Dutiful to a family of his own."

 

So, I found the book kind of dull and Alex's nonstop whining tedious. I would sit down to read a bit of it and within thirty minutes I'd be falling asleep. This happened almost every time I tried to read it. I don't know, maybe I just couldn't identify with Alex Portnoy. 

It does have some amusing moments, like when he molests a piece of raw liver. And when he falls and breaks his leg chasing after a girl. And, this is kind of shitty to say, but his girl friend's note to the lady who cleans her apartment was pretty funny: "dir willa polish the flor by bathrum pleze & dont furget the insies of windose mary jane r"

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

 

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lisa See

Set in China in the early to mid 1800s.

When Snow Flower and Lily were kids, their friendship was arranged by Madame Wang. A contract is drawn up and the girls agree to it and it is supposed to last as long as they are alive. It was a way, perhaps, to give women a relationship that was closer and longer lasting than those of the marital relationship. Because marriages were arranged, love was not a factor and men often took concubines when their wives became older or when the man became bored. So the sworn friend provided that long term, loving relationship lacking in marriage. 

The two girls do become good friends and grow up together and when they can't be together, they send each other messages written in the folds of an ornate fan which becomes a simple history of their lives. 

At first, it is clear to Lily that Snow Flower comes from a higher status family than her own. Snow Flower's clothes are nicer, her speech and manners more refined and her ignorance of household chores indicates those chores are taken care of by servants. Lily teaches Snow Flower the tasks that Lily performs every day, cooking, cleaning, caring for the elderly and the little kids. And Snow Flower teaches Lily the refinements she has been taught in turn. 

Foot binding was common in China at the time. I am not going to discuss a custom that I feel is depraved and barbaric except to say it was part of a young woman's appeal to a potential husband. Because Lily's bound feet were considered particularly appealing, she became the wife of man of higher status and privilege than her humble farming family.

However, even though Snow Flower's bound feet were also considered beautiful, she did not find a high status spouse but instead was married to a butcher. Snow Flower's father was a drug addict and a gambler and he bankrupted his family and a butcher was the best Snow Flower could do for a mate. 

It's not surprising that Lily and Snow Flower were not that close, given the disparity in their adult lives. As Lily's fortunes rose, Snow Flower's declined. Add to that the stress of a war that sent the people fleeing for their lives from their villages to shelter in the distant hills. Lily and Snow Flower became more dissatisfied with each other. While Lily wanted Snow Flower to try harder to improve her life and the lives of her family, Snow Flower wanted Lily to accept her and her life for what it was without nagging her to do better. Lily became distraught and cut Snow Flower out of her life. It was only as Snow Flower was dying that Lily came to understand how she had failed her lifelong friend.

This was a fairly interesting story. I have to admit that I hated the way women were treated in it, everything about the coldness and cruelty made me angry and distressed. On the other hand, the Chinese civilization is thousands of years old and apparently that system worked for them, as vile as it seems to me. 

This is not a happy story, the lives of the women as described in the book are miserable. They are hemmed about by rules and traditions and limited in every way, even the better off women have very little freedom and very little choice in how they live their lives. Throughout the story, we are reminded that women were viewed as evil and as a burden to the families unfortunate enough to produce them. Such sad, miserable lives and I was not sorry to be finished with the story.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Savannah or A Gift for Mr. Lincoln

 

By John Jakes

Set in late 1874, this is the story of the citizens of Savannah, Georgia on the eve of the takeover of the town by General Sherman, the Union general famous for the trail of destruction he left behind as he and his army advanced across Georgia in 1864.

The main character is spunky Hattie Lester, twelve, the only child of an landowning widow whose spouse died in the war. Hattie is an ardent supporter of the Southern cause, mainly because her father died for it. 

As Sherman draws closer, the citizens of Savannah are understandably nervous, given the destruction for which he is famous. As the Union forces draw nearer, Hattie and her mother leave their rice plantation and move in with a family friend, Vee, a spinster piano teacher in Savannah. Vee lives in constant fear of being attacked by looters, thieves or Union troops. That is until she makes the acquaintance of a wounded Yankee soldier, who was shot defending her and her home from Yankee looters. 

Meanwhile, Hattie gets into a confrontation with General Sherman and kicks him in the ankle. At the time, she did not know who he was. But whether that would have made a difference in her actions is debatable. The General becomes a benefactor to Hattie because he is missing his own family and she reminds him of his daughter. (I believe this part of the story is entirely made up.)

In the end, the fearful citizens of Savannah had little to fear from Sherman and his arrival ended the Northern blockade of the city, which enabled food and goods to once again enter the city at a time when resources had grown very thin for many people there.

This was a pretty good read, if a bit pat in its handing of the different plots in the story. I did find the first part of the book much less interesting than the later part where the Union Army took over the city. 

Here is a review by the Historical Novel Society.