Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #642, Spotlight on Women's Fiction
by muffy
The Garden of Small Beginnings * by Abbi Waxman is a story of loss but also the joy of second chances.
It has been three year since Lilian watched her husband died in a car accident 50 feet from her front door. After a breakdown and hospitalization, she is back at her job as a textbook illustrator in a small LA publishing house, and making a life with her two young daughters, Annabel and Clare.
With the industry downturn, she could save the company by branching out to illustrate a new series on vegetable gardening. Having agreed to take a 6-weeks Saturday morning gardening class with the author, Edward Bloem, "(m)any life lessons are learned in the garden, and not just by Lilian."
"The plot is straightforward, but it is Waxman’s skill at characterization that lifts this novel far above being just another "widow finds love” story. Clearly an observer, Waxman has mastered the fine art of dialogue as well. Characters ring true right down to Lilian’s two daughters, who often steal the show." (Kirkus Review)
For readers who are charmed by such titles as Good Grief, Heat Wave; Lost Lake, and recent debuts like Happy People Read & Drink Coffee and Angelina's Bachelors.
Gail Honeyman's debut Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine * is a "smart, warm, uplifting" story about a young woman's journey toward wholeness.
Scarred inside and out, 29 year-old Eleanor aspires to be unremarkable and normal all her adult life. An accounting clerk at a small Glasgow graphic design firm, her lack of social skills makes her the butt of office jokes. She finds comfort in strict routines, solitude, copious amount of vodka on the weekends, and will insist to all who care to inquire that she is "completely fine".
Almost simultaneously Eleanor falls for a gorgeous, out-of-her-league bar singer and begins an almost frenzied (and hilarious) self-improvement program, while striking up a tentative friendship with Raymond, the slovenly IT guy after they saved Sammy, an elderly retired postal clerk on the street. The three become the kind of friends who rescue each other from the lives of isolation, and it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
"Walking in Eleanor’s practical black Velcro shoes is delightfully amusing, her prudish observations leavened with a privately puckish humor. But readers will also be drawn in by her tragic backstory, which slowly reveals how she came to be so entirely Eleanor. Witty, charming, and heartwarming." (Booklist)
For readers of Jojo Moyes and Helen Simonson.
* = Starred review
Lectures & Panel Discussions
Lights, Camera, Austen: the screen adaptations of Jane Austen
Wednesday December 13, 2017: 7:00pm to
8:30pm
Westgate Branch: West Side Room
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #630
by muffy
The Woman Next Door, the U.S. debut of Yewande Omotoso is "an intimate, frequently hilarious look at the lives of two extraordinary women set in post-apartheid South Africa." (Booklist)
Nicknamed each other "Hortensia the Horrible" and "Marion the Vulture", these prickly octogenarians have been next-door neighbors for over 2 decades in Cape Town's upscale Katterijn community. Seeing beyond the obvious (one is black and one is white), they have a lot in common. Both are successful women with impressive careers. Opinionated, widowed and living alone, they both take a keen interest in community affairs, often the source of their friction.
When an unexpected event impacts both of their well-being, Hortensia and Marion are forced to take tiny steps toward civility. With conversations over time, each reflecting upon choices made, dreams deferred, and lost chances at connection, these proud, feisty women must decide whether to expend waning energy on their feud or call a truce.
Born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, Omotoso won the South African Literary Award in 2011 for her debut novel, Bom Boy. In 2013 she was a finalist for the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. She lives in Johannesburg, where she has her own architectural practice. Listen to the NPR podcast with the author.
"Like Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which also depicts the wisdom found in aging, this novel will have universal appeal." (Library Journal)
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #629
by muffy
Beijing journalist Lijia Zhang's debut novel Lotus is inspired by her grandmother's deathbed revelation that she was sold into prostitution at an early age.
Set in contemporary Shenzhen, China’s “City of Sins”, Lotus is one of the "ji" (Chinese word for chicken, a derogatory name for prostitutes) working at the Moonflower Massage Parlor. Originally from a impoverished village in northern China, she allows her family to think she waitresses in an upscale restaurant, sending her earnings home to support her family and to send her younger brother to university.
Knowing the shelf life of someone in her situation is finite, Lotus casts her eye among her regulars - Funny Eye, Family Treasure, hoping for a more permanent arrangement. In the meantime, she befriends Hu Binbing, a quiet and reclusive photojournalist who is hoping his documentary project on the lives of the "ji" will bring him the deserved recognition. But once his photographs of Lotus are published in a national magazine, his standing in the Communist party as well as their relationship is threatened.
"'A Newborn Calf Isn't Afraid of Tigers' is a typical chapter title in Lotus... Readers will find the entire text rich in Chinese proverbs, as well as folk wisdom of a more prosaic variety. Characters employ sage sayings in spoken form, as a kind of parlor game, and the author scatters aphorisms liberally throughout the narrative, with an effect that is both charming and thought-provoking....Some first novels, especially those birthed in creative writing classes, go heavy on self-consciously poetic language ...The images Zhang gives us, in contrast, are uncomplicated, concise and touching" (NPR)
"Pretty Woman but without all the glitz" (Library Journal).
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #621 Spotlight on Women's Fiction Debuts
by muffy
Nine Women, One Dress by Jane L. Rosen. This LBD, darling of the season (picked no less by WWD) is 90-year-old Morris Siegel's swan song, capping a long career as the celebrated pattern-maker for the Max Hammer line. But before he can truly retire, his LBD will touch 9 women's lives in unexpected ways.
From a Bloomingdale’s salesgirl dumped for a socialite to a secretary secretly in love with her widowed boss. From a young model fresh from rural Alabama to the jaded private detective who might have a chance to restore her faith in true love. From an unemployed Brown grad faking a fabulous life on social media to a mean girl who would die for the dress. Their encounter with the dress will transform them in ways beyond their imagination.
"Rosen’s debut novel is rich in relationships, written with clarity and humor and surprise twists that bring the tale to a satisfying conclusion." (Kirkus Reviews). Charming and irresistible, Chick lit at its best.
Not Working is what Claire Flannery does, and not all that well. Lisa Owens' 20-something protagonist quits her job to find her passion, without a clear idea what that might be. While she navigates, observes, and comments on the emotions and minutiae of day to day life as only someone without the distractions of a regular routine can, she's trying the patience of everyone around her - from her brain-surgeon boyfriend Luke, to her mother who is no longer speaking to her (all Claire's fault).
As Claire begins an inevitable downward spiral, drowning her sorrows in gallons of wine, self-pity, and bad decisions, "Owens deploys a deft sense of humor to help us laugh at the incongruities of contemporary upper-middle-class crisis." (Kirkus Reviews)
Kat Lind, an American expatriate living in London is feeling particularly vulnerable, having just lost her mother, sent her young son Will to visit her in-laws; and missing her jet-set entrepreneur husband, Jonathan. When she notices the announcement of an exhibition by British artist Daniel Blake at a prestigious gallery, images of their time in Paris as students come flooding back. At the show, Kat is stunned to find paintings of a young Kat, including one entitled The Blue Bath that holds particular significance for both of them.
As their attraction rekindles and the portraits catch the attention of the public, threatening to reveal not only her identity but also some devastating turn of events, Kat must face life-altering decisions.
"Set in London and Paris, Mary Waters-Sayer's romantic debut novel is filled with lush settings, sensuous details, and poignant events. Readers will be wholly involved with Kat’s heartbreaking dilemma." (Booklist)
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #615
by muffy
Referred to as The Dollhouse * by the Manhattanites, the Barbizon Hotel for Women is where aspiring models and secretaries who often come from small towns, try to make it on their own in the 1950s.
Darby McLaughlin arrived from Ohio to take up secretarial studies at the Katherine Gibbs School . Compared to the glamorous Eileen Ford housemates, she was plain, self-conscious, and homesick. Befriended by Esme, a Barbizon maid, she was introduced to an entirely new side of New York City: seedy downtown jazz clubs.
Over half-a-century later, journalist Rose Lewin is evicted from one of the Barbizon condos when her divorced boyfriend decides to reunite with his family. Rose is forced to take refuge with her reclusive downstairs neighbor Darby, one of the original tenants. As Rose's life implodes around her, she is consumed with the story behind the rumors that Darby was involved in the grisly death of Esme. Yet as Rose's obsession deepens, the ethics of her investigation become increasingly murky, and neither woman will remain unchanged when the shocking truth is finally revealed.
"Darby and Rose, in alternating chapters, weave intricate threads into twists and turns that ultimately bring them together; the result is good old-fashioned suspense," (Publishers Weekly) by debut novelist Fiona Davis.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar was based upon her time working at Mademoiselle and living at the Barbizon (called The Amazon in the novel). This historical landmark, built in 1927 is now upscale condos under the name Barbzon 63.
Readalike: Searching for Grace Kelly by Michael Callahan (another FFF) and Suzanne Rindell's Three-Martini Lunch will captivate readers with a strong sense of time and place as the authors bring a legendary New York building to life and populates it with memorable characters who find themselves in unusual situations.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Eleven Hours
by Lucy S
Pamela Erens’ new novel, Eleven Hours, is the story of two pregnant women whose lives cross paths for a brief time, less than a day. This short book (165 pages) begins with Lore, in the last month of her pregnancy, taking herself to the hospital as she feel the stirrings of labor, a very detailed birth plan in hand. She arrives alone and is attended to by a nurse, Franckline, who is also pregnant, and has seen her fair share of birth plans. In the ensuing eleven hours, Pamela Erens takes us through the moments of a woman’s labor, from start to finish, with precision. Fiction has rarely provided readers such a true account of childbirth.
In these eleven hours, we are exposed to both the exciting and the dull stretches of labor, the ups and downs. Just as one’s mind might wander during any eleven hour period, especially one so full of ebbs and flows as the process of labor, so wander the minds of Franckline, recalling her family in Haiti, her new, second pregnancy; and of Lore, thinking of the failed relationship that has ended in her pregnancy and her being here, alone. Erens’ dexterous writing takes us down different, winding paths to reveal some of each woman’s story. While the lines of their accounts run parallel within the framework of Erens’ novel, these two women, who go through this incredibly intense experience together, never really know each other. Erens combines their narratives beautifully, yet maintains their separateness. They are each important to the other in some way and travel together on this one journey, on this one day, but at the same time, they are alone, with their thoughts, their worries, their histories.
Lore thinks, “how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn’t tell, or told stories that weren’t entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form.”
Erens does not shy away from the mess and panic that childbirth can elicit and so this book is not for the feint of heart, nor, probably, for expectant parents. But Erens is unfailingly honest in giving us a candid picture of this one woman’s experience of childbirth. Despite the fact that certain passages evoke the visceral pain of childbirth, the novel is so well written, the flow of Franckline’s and Lore’s tandem eleven hours so well described, that the book is hard to put down, a striking and gratifying read.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #610
by muffy
One of Bon Appetit's 8 New Food Novels to Read This Year - The City Baker's Guide to Country Living is a debut novel by Boston pastry chef Louise Miller.
Running away is what thirtysomething Livvy (Olivia) Rawlings does best. After her Baked Alaska sets fire to Boston's exclusive Emerson Club, she packs up and heads north to Guthrie, Vermont where her childhood (and only) friend Hannah lives. Luck would have it, the Sugar Maple Inn needs a pastry chef, a job that comes with a charming little cottage - the Sugarhouse.
Margaret Hurley, the cantankerous and demanding inn owner puts Livvy through her paces but is soon won over by Livvy's creations, along with the guests and the town-folks. Before long, Livvy finds herself immersed in small town life and intense scrutiny when she gets involved with Martin McCracken, a prodigal son who has returned to tend his ailing father.
After a Rockwell-worthy Thanksgiving, a funeral, and a surprise visitor shake things up, Livvy must decide whether to do what she does best and flee--or stay and finally discover what it means to belong.
This August Indie Next and LibraryReads pick, will appeal fo fans of Kitchens of the Great Midwest by Ryan Stradal; South of Superior by Ellen Airgood; novels by Erica Bauermesiter and the Little Beach Street Bakery series by Jenny Colgan.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #609 “Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
by muffy
Shutting out the world beyond her Paris apartment for a whole year after the accidental deaths of her husband and young daughter, leaving management of her literary cafe Happy People Read & Drink Coffee in the hands of her well-meaning-but-not-so-capable partner Felix, Diane is finally ready to join the world of the living. Out of the blue, she announces that she will be moving to Ireland, the one place her late husband had wanted to visit.
Renting an isolated cottage in Mulranny along the wind-swept Irish coast, Diane makes tentative steps towards rebuilding her life, aided by endless cigarettes, music, copious amount of wine, friendly villagers and Postman Pat, a canine who takes an immediate liking to her. The exception being Postman Pat's owner, her neighbor - the rude and abrasive photographer, Edward, who is battling his own demons. I don't have to tell you what is likely to happen....
Agnes Martin-Lugand's debut, already an international bestseller, confronts life's most nightmarish tragedy with an unblinking examination. "For readers of women’s journeys and tales of hope, this slim volume engages thoughts and feelings without whitewashing grief." (Booklist). In development as a Weinstein Company feature film, sequel anticipated.
Journalist and translator Milena Busquets's debut This Too Shall Pass * is a lively, sexy, honest, and moving novel about a woman coming to terms with grief.
Forty year-old Blanca is wrecked with grief, losing her mother - the most important person in her life. Unable to carry on in Barcelona, she returns to her mother’s former home in Cadaqués with, among others, 2 sons, 2 ex-husbands, 2 best friends, and looking forward to meeting up with her married lover.
Surrounded by those she loves most, she spends the summer in an impossibly beautiful place, finding ways to reconnect and understand what it means to truly live on her own terms, just as her mother would have wanted.
"Witty and playful in tone as well as poignant and reflective, Busquets’ novel is drawn in part from the loss of her own mother, Esther Busquets, a prominent publishing figure in Spain. The seductions of its setting add to its appeal for American readers." (Booklist) Film rights to Buenos Aires based producer Daniel Burman.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #604 "It washed over me for the first time in my life how much importance the world had ascribed to skin pigment... " ~ Sue Monk Kidd
by muffy
With references to William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Suzanne Feldman's debut (and a winner of the Missouri Review Editors' Prize) Absalom's Daughters * is a tale of sisterly adventure through the 1950s Jim Crow South.
Young Cassie helps run the family laundry with her mother and grandmother in the black part of Heron-Neck, Mississippi. She has no idea that Judith who is white, is her half-sister, though she knows that it is her grandmother's plan to orchestrates the births in her family so that her descendants can, one day, pass for white.
When their father Bill Forrest runs off leaving the family destitute, Judith finds a letter from a mysterious sender in Virginia explaining they are heirs to a rumored family fortune, surely enough money for her to run off to New York City to be a singer. Sensing her grandmother's design on the jazz-playing Albino boy from New York City visiting one of the white families on the hill, Cassie realizes this may be her only opportunity to escape. The girls steal a car, and with a ham, a gun, and a map so old that state lines are blurred, they head north. While getting their first taste of freedom, courting danger at every turn, they are reminded of the tyranny of skin color, and the heavy responsibility of being the master of your own fate.
"Feldman’s prose blisters and pops with sparks... In this novel, most things are not as they seem, and Feldman doesn’t hew too close to reality. The sisters encounter mules who were once men, discover towns that appear in one place on the map and another on the road, and Cassie even spends a few days as a white girl. Eventually she decides to return to the skin she was born with; as a mysterious woman tells her near the end: 'What’s important is the past.' " (Kirkus Reviews)
* = starred review