The Abortionist's Daughter

Elisabeth Hyde's book, In the Heart of the Canyon made my top ten of 2009. I loved her characters and the story of a motley crew rafting down a canyon (natch) was intriguing. The Abortionist's Daughter is an earlier novel and it shows. It's still an intriguing story--I read it all in one weekend--but the creakiness of the craft comes through.

It's not a ripped-from-the-headlines Jodi Picoult novel, but Hyde delicately balances the two sides of the polarizing issue of abortion. The anti-abortionist side is represented by a reverend without a church, but he's no crazed monster. The abortion doctor, Diana Duprey is thoughtful about her work, taking her cue from her mother's early advice: ...if you believed in something, you didn't let your own personal circumstances stand in the way: the true test of your convictions came when your emotions rose up and threatened to scribble over everything you stood for. Diana thought, her job, as she saw it, was simply to push the reset button for the woman on the table.

The problem is that Diana Duprey is found dead in the first few pages of the book. Is it a crazed and angry protester, which is what most people believe in this tight-knit community? Is it her husband with whom she'd just had a knock-out, drag-down fight, which is what the police believe? Or is it her furious daughter, grappling with her own sexuality and politics?

Diana Duprey's death, like her very existence, sends ripples into that community and the police spend a lot of time tripping over information. I must admit I didn't have much doubt as to whodunit, but Hyde takes her time getting there, in a decent way. The question becomes not so much who killed the abortion doctor, not even the why, but the clever way Hyde keeps the killer in the periphery. You just want to shake everyone to tell them what's what, but the responsible character is so realistically drawn that you understand the oversight. Plus, there are so many secrets that need to come out that the reader becomes as distracted as the police. I liked the way the reader is given all the missed connections in people's lives, all the clues that are missed, whether by police or by loving parents and a long-term couple.

The title implies we'll care about Megan Duprey but if anyone needed a good shake, it's the 19 year old daughter. I didn't think she was very realistic for her age and circumstances, but she makes a decent catalyst. The police are better drawn and it would have been nice to get more of Diana's voice as we follow the final day in her life, a day that already starts badly and then...ends.

The Weird Sisters

It doesn't matter if you don't get the Shakespearian reference in the title of Eleanor Brown's book, The Weird Sisters, though you might spend some time thinking she's pretty harsh to call Rose, Bean, and Cordy Andreas particularly weird. The Shakespeare stuff only really rears its head when their father addresses his grown daughter because, yes, this scholar insists on speaking in the words of the Bard. Kind of an annoying construct, but even the girls realize this: Sometimes we had the overwhelming urge to grab our father by the shoulders and shake him until the meaning of his obtuse quotations fall from his mouth like loosened teeth. Let's just say that a little of this goes a long way. Fortunately he's not that chatty. The three sisters are the voice of the novel and Brown avoids showing favorites by writing in the third person plural. Not so much a royal we as an effacing, collective we; like the Fates who use the same eyeball to see the future or like, yes, the original Weird Sisters who are disturbingly interchangeable in giving Macbeth a prophecy.

The book begins nicely with: We came home because we were failures. Rosemund, Bianca, and Cordelia have all retreated from their poor decisions and come home to roost, ostensibly to help care for their cancer-stricken mother. They use their home and the tiny academic mid-western town as a touchstone before (we assume) launching themselves back into the harsh world.

In spite of the "We", Brown does a great job of keeping the women straight, their personalities apparently match their Shakespearian namesakes, but I only knew King Lear's Cordelia well enough to test that. The cancer is a backdrop, as is the real world, but we do want these women to sort out their lives. They're not annoying in the way some dithering characters might be. It's not like I wanted to shake them by the shoulders. Will Rose dare to leave her comfortable life (and ailing mother) to join her fiance in England? Will Bean extricate herself from some destructive habits and hook up with the Episcopalian priest? Will Cordy grow up enough to become the mother she has to be (in less than 9 months)?

Okay, there's not a lot of doubt in how things will turn out, but Eleanor Brown makes the path interestingly spiky and twisted. Wouldn't we all want to be relaunched from the comfort of home when the going gets tough? Brown balances that secret desire with the reality that even Shakespeare occasionally made his characters commit to a decision. Remember, things didn't end well for Macbeth when he was "like the cat in the adage." (Act 1, scene 7). Even if the ending doesn't quite satisfy, it was nice to get to know these women and The Weird Sisters was just the fun read I needed.

Blood, Bones, and Butter

Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir took me much longer to read than it should have, which doesn't entirely reflect my reaction to the book. I read the galley copy and was perhaps a bit set up by the ravings that covered its front and back: Mario Batali wants to burn all the books he's written, in homage, and Anthony Bourdain claims it's "simply the best memoir by a chef ever. EVER." So. Yeah, where do you go from there?

Well, I dove in, and Blood, Bones, and Butter is a fascinating account of a chef by accident. At least, that's how it comes across. Hamilton grows up in a slapdash, complicated family in that there's never enough money and there are too many kids without enough supervision, and there are massive indications that both parents have a screw or two loose, even while they gave their children plenty of interesting traits and skills. Hamilton learns to cook from watching her meticulous, ex-ballerina mother pull off meals as only a French woman can. There is no waste and no skimping, which seems like a contradiction but one that echoes throughout the book: Get the best you can afford and don't mess with it.

Hamilton's mother retires a bit awkwardly from the family and the book, only to reappear a totally different woman near the end. There were some disturbing parallels to my own mother which was one of a couple of reasons I put this book aside. The other that bothered me--and this is my personal tic--was having to listen to Hamilton talk about all the drugs she used to get where she is now. I get so tired of hearing that all the interesting people in the world were abusers at some point (or still are), but that's just me. Doesn't mean anything about the book and Hamilton isn't annoying about it.

The book isn't really a chef memoir in that food isn't lavished over in quite the way you'd expect. It seems more like a "how the hell did I get here and what were people thinking, putting up with me?" For this, the tone is just right. You believe in Gabrielle Hamilton, whether she's disabusing you of any romance over the beautifully catered food you ate at that fund-raiser last week or tossing KFC at some camp counselors, undeserving of a lobster dinner (really, they were undeserving, and the lobster story is depressing). When she stumbles into opening her own restaurant, it seems just as crazy and just as lucky as when she stumbles into her first job at age 13 when all she wanted was to have enough money to buy shampoo (because she sure wasn't getting money for that at home). Even Hamilton admits how wide-eyed and innocent she was about the restaurant business and, having read about her crazy path, "innocent" is not a word that comes easily to mind.

Food rhapsody comes late in the book (in the 'Butter' section) and then it's because that section takes place in Italy. I think it's a national requirement to talk lusciously about food in Italy and Hamilton switches gears readily to do just that. "Blood" is not just about family, but about the brutal way by which Hamilton enters the world of (restaurant) work; "Bones" is the structure she builds for herself, including the family; "Butter" is the place where she is now, though mellow, like innocent, doesn't begin to describe Gabrielle Hamilton.

So, best chef memoir ever? Naw, probably not, but I would eat anything Hamilton put in front of me, even if I never got a great sense of what she cooks. I just know she'll get it done and it'll be delicious and perfect.

Started Early, Took My Dog

Not everyone likes Kate Atkinson's books, but apparently everyone likes her character Jackson Brodie. This is the fourth book in which the former policeman appears, still searching for lost girls or lost childhoods, which he's been doing ever since his own sister was abducted and murdered when he was a child. In Started Early, Took My Dog, Brodie is older and wandering. He's starting to hear the voice of his ex (not quite wife) and he can't help getting muddled into the lives of other people even while he muddles his own.

Still, Brodie can be forgiven (as so many have forgiven him before) because he's returned to his old stomping grounds, chasing the ghostly childhood of a young woman now in Australia. She's eager to discover her origins which are strangely murky. While he's trying to rescue her childhood, Brodie also manages to rescue a dog from maltreatment, gets himself entangled in the lives of an actress suffering from dementia and an overweight, lonely former policewoman who is on the run with another lost child. There's a lot of time shift and character shift, and a lot of names to keep straight, but the book reads right along. Atkinson likes to throw out little tid-bits and then move on, which can be good in a mystery, but can be a bit maddening as well.

Brodie is a little tangential to the story even if he's there for the great denouement, on a train platform, no less: a classic ending for characters who don't know if they're coming or going. This book is all about missed connections. Brodie is almost always playing catch-up. He's always a step behind or ahead and he doesn't always know it. He's even running parallel to a man with his own name in reverse, B. Jackson. Started Early is about missing siblings, lost kids, lost women, and relationships that have crossed and recrossed themselves. Some things get tidied up in a neat little package and other things are left wide open. It's not clear how the policewoman's story will end, and Jackson's phone rings with a call from the past just as the book ends. I suppose there's a good chance there'll be another Jackson Brodie book sooner or later. I hope he's still interesting.

I just enjoy Atkinson's writing. She has some great throw away lines, for example she writes about a characater's "(misplaced) faith in exclamation points," which I can relate to. She nicely, if inaccurately sets up Started Early, Took my Dog with: Later, looking back, Jackson could see that his failed appointment with Linda Pallister was the moment when it all started to go wrong. If she had kept their rendezvous he would have spent a constructive hour or so, would have felt satisfied and purposeful, and might quite possibly have undergone another evening in a hotel, eating a room-service meal and watching a bad pay-for-view movie, instead of spending a restless time, blacking out for large portions of it, and having meaningless, promiscuous sex.

Well, it's lucky for us that Linda Pallister scarpered because it gave us this story.

If you haven't read any Kate Atkinson, read One Good Turn. Everyone raves on about Case Histories, but I really didn't like the obviousness of that one and I loved her second Jackson Brodie book, One Good Turn.

***the art work version of the book is a card from my 10 year old who loved the title, sight unseen, and made me a birthday card version.***

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

Weeeellll. Just when I get all impressed with myself for reading around 60 books a year, along comes Nina Sankovitch who spent her "year of magical reading" reading 365 books. Oh, and reviewing them. Oh, and then she wrote a book about the experience. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair (out in June) is not just one of those gimicky I-did-this-crazy-thing-and-lived books. Sankovitch is grieving and yes, we all do kind of strange things to get through pain and set ourselves back on the path to living. While at first I thought Sankovitch was a little unhinged, setting this rigorous task of reading a book a day (really? Not even a weekend off? How can you compare it to a job, if you work weekends,too? And you have a family. Oh, and you have to sit in a purple chair that vaguely stinks of cat pee?), I came to recognize that sometimes we need draconian discipline to succeed at something (see Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother--or at least, the hype about it).

The beginning of the book is difficult to read if you've ever lost someone close to you, as Nina grieves for the death of her sister, but the book is neither a sad pondering of loss nor a dull catalog of books of the "today I read this and it was great" sort. Instead, Sankovitch reads widely and weaves in the narrative her family life (both past and present). She writes "remembrance is the bones around which a body of resilience is built." She seeks in her books not only reminders of what she shared with her sister, but a guide to life, a reassurance that others have also experienced joy and love, and suffering. She reads both to forget and to remember which is a much better way to approach survival than any vice she might have picked up in the confusion after a death in the family.

I love that Sankovitch approaches her reading ecclectically, though with some hesitation. Her son, for example, hands her Watership Down and she despairs at the daunting length. She worries about gifts from friends for fear she wouldn't like the offerings and would be forced to admit so in her reviews. She solves the former problem by forcing herself to go ahead and read the 500 pages of Watership Down, and the latter by looking at the intention behind the gifts instead of at the books themselves. She takes advice from mysteries, reveling in the neatness of a solution to a puzzle (if only life were like that); she no longer avoids books with painful topics, thinking there is much to be learned; she reads kids' books; she abandons books she doesn't like and with no regret--there's so much else out there.

She gets through her year, and no she isn't "ready to relax" as a friend suggests, and surprisingly, all pleasure in reading has not been destroyed by complete and utter immersion in books. Instead, it seems, Sankovitch is able to live again, re-enter the world in a better position than when she ran frantically and aimlessly in an attempt to escape her grief. By the end of the book, Sankovitch has found some wisdom that she attempts to impart to us, about life and loss, and living, but she also--more immediately relevant, perhaps--gives us a list of books. I think we can all trust we'll find something to meet our own reading needs.

For more of Nina Sankovitch, check out her website: http://www.readallday.org/blog/.

The Radleys

Do you secretly love vampires, but prefer them not to sparkle in sunlight and fall easily in love with mortals? Perhaps you think creatures of the night should suffer from rashes and be myopic. Meat-eater, sure, but give them migraines from the lack of fresh blood. If you are bemused or annoyed by Edward Cullan's good looks, try Rowan Radley in Matt Haig's entertaining--if a little alarming--novel of modern-day vampires trying to "pass".

Peter and Helen Radley gave up the wild life of drinking blood and flying off (and I mean literally)to terribly romantic places like Prague and Paris for a feast. They no longer feel it's proper, when raising a family, to bite the neighbors (or the unsuspecting tourist or homeless wanderer). They don't even share each other's blood. All this is for the sake of the children who know nothing of what they are or where they come from.Naturally, the children are geeky and misfitting in the English suburbs and Peter and Helen have fallen into a bloodless, er, loveless marriage. So much restraint, so British, so doomed.

Their neat, uneventful, and somewhat unhappy lives are turned in an instant when daughter Clara is assaulted by a fellow student and lashes out with all she's got (and never knew she had), and guess what? She rather enjoys herself. Turns out, vampires kind of need blood to feel whole. Oh, sure abstaining has its benefits (mostly to society), but there's nothing like the power of fresh blood. Clara enjoys bringing out those sharp incisors:

She had fun in the mirror, transforming herself, watching her canine teeth lengthen andsharpen. Dracula.

Not Dracula.

Dracula.

Not Dracula.

Dracula.

She studies her curved white fangs. She touches them, presses the points in the pad of her thumb. A fat blob of blood appears, shining like a cherry. She tastes it and enjoys the moment before making herself look fully human again.

Dilemma. Dilemma. Enter Peter's brother, an infamous vampire (oh yes, there's a whole network of them, based primarily in Manchester) who brings with him not just unsavory habits but a secret from Helen's past. He claims to be there to help Clara avoid prosecution or even suspicion, but things quickly turn for the worse.

As the kids get more handsome and popular due to, um, newly developed habits, Peter and Helen's neatly-constructed world begins to crumble. In the end we have to decide if there is room for abstainers in the world of vampires and whether vampires can be part of respected British society Matt Haig makes it worth finding out with The Radleys.

American Terroir. Savoring the Flavors...

It turns out I've been making and drinking coffee all wrong. Apparently dark roast does not translate to better coffee (must be the French in me). This sad realization was the only stressful bit of information I gathered from American Terroir. Rowan Jacobsen's search for the somewhat elusive examples of terroir (taste of place) in America mostly made me want to eat better food. It also explained why my Vermont-heritage husband prefers that pale version of maple syrup called "fancy" and why hard cider isn't as common (or often as good) as the European version. I learned a ton and even plan to follow a few of the recipes Jacobsen thoughtfully includes at the end of each chapter.

The book is loosely based on a day's normal progression through meals: It starts with maple syrup and coffee and ends with cheese and chocolate with pit stops in all sorts of places and foods, like Yukon King salmon and avocados from Mexico. Jacobsen blends anecdotes with lessons about taste and history, not unlike a good wine critic. In fact, speaking of wine, he didn't make me want to trust California wines any more than I already do (or don't), but now I feel like I understand why it tends to be sweeter than European wine. I also learned some disturbing tricks and gimmicks wine makers subject our wine to. Jacobsen seems to have it in particularly for Australian wine producers, but like the coffee chapter, I may plug my ears, sing lalala and keep drinking coffee and wine the same way I always have.


Even when he's not snarking (gently) on inferior product, Jacobsen's writing is quite entertaining. The cheese chapter (Vermont) begins with: In composition and behavior, a cheese is not unlike a dead body. It starts off fresh and springy and ends up ripe and runny. And yes, that made me still want to seek out Jasper Hill cheese.


In fact, I made a list of things to try: I will seek out local honey (probably waiting for summer farmer's market to start up again), I will try Taza chocolate, Jasper Hill cheese and--with two lactose intolerant people in the family--I will definitely try the berry tartlets with avocado cream recipe. I know avocado is very fatty but it's the good kind and Jacobsen swears it can replace artery-clogging cream in baking. I'll have to get back to you all on that, but feel free to pick up your own copy of American Terroir. Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields if you don't want to wait.