The Outcast, a review

He shakes his head and smiles, swallows his small mouthful of food. For a country-raised Mennonite, he has impeccable manners, which only emphasizes my belief that you can look the part of the honored bishop but still be a barbarian inside.

Written in an engaging combination of voices, Jolina Petersheim’s stunning debut novel, The Outcast, tells the story of a young Mennonite woman battling a secret foe, one whose position in their community offers him the perfect opportunity to hurt her, and keep her from his younger brother, Judah, the man she is meant to be with.

The two brothers are “Bout as different as Cain and Abel,” to quote Ida Mae.

Judah and I had our own secret language, and sheathed in its safety, he would often confide how desperately he wanted to leave this world for the larger one beyond it. A world he had explored only through the books he would purchase at Root’s Market when his father wasn’t looking and read until the pages were sticky with the sweat of a thousand secret turnings.

The setting is a Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite community. Rachel, Leah’s twin, is unmarried, but she has delivered a son out of wedlock, a shunning offense in their small community. She refuses to reveal the identity of the father. There is more behind her refusal than simply wanting to protect the man. Leah, her twin, is married to a pillar in the community; a bishop, whose dark, disapproval and obvious dislike of Rachel contribute to her being thrown out to live in the world of the Englischer. There Rachel is befriended by Ida Mae:

Ida Mae hops down out of the cab. I look over while freeing Eli from his car seat and stifle a gasp. This is the first time I’ve seen her outside the truck, and I never noticed that she was short. Her legs, squashed into Wranglers so tight they must be cutting off her circulation, are the same as a chicken’s: plump at the top but narrowing down to ankles that are as bony as mine. She wears mud-caked boots that lace up, and as she stalks off toward her Amish store, I see there’s a perfect worn circle on the backside of her jeans from where she keeps her tobacco tin.

Ida Mae has a tragic secret, buried for years. Rachel uncovers hints of what it might be, but never comes close to imagining the truth until her own son is in danger. The full force of what Ida Mae has survived comes to light, revealing the ultimate clash of the Englischer and Plain worlds.

In early reviews The Outcast has been compared to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. There is a strong thematic resemblance, but it also shares a lot in common structurally with Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, in that it is narrated, in part, by a ghost. Amos is a thoroughly likable elder who has passed, but his concern for his family draws him back again and again to watch over them. His poignant perspective is saddened by what he can no longer influence or correct, and the reader feels his regret build as events unfold. He can see into the hearts of the other characters, but is unable to do anything to help, his time on earth being over. His narration adds a level of depth that would be missing without him. 

The Outcast offers a glimpse into a world that exists separately, yet right alongside the common one of TVs, cars and computers. The plot has tension from start to finish, some nice twists, and a good surprise ending that will have the reader chewing her nails. Petersheim has a surprisingly mature voice and writing style for a young author. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel and look forward to this author’s next.

Stop by for an interview with Jolina Petersheim tomorrow.

And Then I Found You – a review

It didn’t make any sense, but she was beyond sense now. Life, she believed from living in the wilderness, was tied together by hints, whispers, and unseen fabric-makers. She imagined someone far more knowing than she, sewing together a fragile web that she wouldn’t see until time was done. She could ignore the whispers and threads, everyone could, and she often did, but this time she wouldn’t.

And Then I Found You, by Patti Callahan Henry is not a mystery. It’s about the oldest story in the world: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, stuff happens and they break up. Then they get back together again and everybody is happy. No mystery maybe, but, it’s still a yummy, somehow comforting, read. And hey, it had me teary eyed by page 77, and again before the book was done.  (I’m not going to go into that aspect of the novel, because it’s already been written about a lot, and it’s also kind of a spoiler.)

Reading this novel is like watching one of the better movies on Lifetime or the Hallmark channel at the end of a long day, where you just want somebody to tell you a sad story with a happy ending, that doesn’t require too much from your over-taxed brain. But by that I don’t mean to trivialize, because story telling like that takes quiet skill; language that isn’t challenging, yet doesn’t bore, and pacing, which is outstanding in this novel. I can honestly say I was not bored for even one page, though I expected I might be because of some of the tropes used, one example of which is the protagonist runs a trendy clothing boutique.

When I received this book, the novel of the month for Shereads, I thought I wouldn’t like it. I imagined it would be too sappy for my tastes. But Henry won me over with her writing, which after all, is the only difference between one book and another, when you get right down to it. She has a wonderful ear for dialogue and a gift for economically creating believable secondary characters, and she successfully writes about topics that could easily become overly sentimental.

From the beginning of the book it’s obvious how the reader wants it all to turn out—and not a surprise when it does. And yet . . . it’s all satisfying; a feeling of rightness falling into place like the tumblers of a lock: click, click, click.

The extraordinary happens in the exact middle of ordinary, she thought clearly and permanently. No trumpet blast to announce the moment, no parting of clouds or Hallelujah chorus. Just the simple miracle (as if any miracle is simple) between an in-breath and an out-breath, the wide-open space where the unknown was known, the lost found, and the unseen seen.

A superb example of its genre.

 This writer’s strengths: Henry knows just how much tension to apply and doesn’t go over the top into melodrama. She’s got a steady hand at the wheel and it very soon becomes obvious how she could be a NY Times bestseller. The writing is economical and doesn’t wear the reader out. Subtle humor; the ass-stealing incident is a good example that had me chuckling—if you want to know more, you’ll just have to read the book.

Who will enjoy this book: Women, mainly; it’s a rare guy who’d read this novel. This one’s for the girls.

I can’t comment on the editing since the copy I read is an arc, provided to me by the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, via Shereads.

The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow – A Review

When I first began reading this novel I was delighted by its disregard for a common reality. Rita Leganski’s prose slips through that narrow space between the seen, and the unseen but suspected world, as fluid and sinuous as an asp.

From the back cover: Bonaventure Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. But he was listening, placing sound inside quiet and gaining his bearings. By the time he turns five, he can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops. He also hears the voice of his dead father, William Arrow, mysteriously murdered by a man known only as the Wanderer. Exploring family relics, he opens doors to the past and finds the key to a web of secrets that both hold his family together, and threaten to tear them apart.

I was excited by this book when I opened it. The element of magical realism was not something I’d encountered or expected in a selection from Shereads (for whom I read and reviewed this book). Most of the selections so far have been a more traditional women’s lit, so this one offered a welcome changeup. Unfortunately, for me, I felt the story took too long to get started, and the climax when it came, a vivid forced abortion scene involving characters who are each either insane (Calypso), self-serving and the very epitome of banal evil (Emmaline) or hateful and murderous (Suville—the abortionist) was both the best writing in the entire book, and a terrible let down in its transparent preachy-ness.

“Follow me,” she said, leading mother and daughter into a small room that held a bed draped in very white sheets and a small table that was draped in its own white cloth. Upon that table there rested a tray, and upon the tray there rested what looked at first glance like a piece of shiny cutlery. That is not what it was at all. It was a curette, a small instrument for cleansing a surface. That is the definition Suville offered to her clients if they asked; personally, she thought of it as a blade and loved how nicely it fit in her hand. Whenever she held it or even just caught a glimpse of it from the corner of her eye, Suville always thought the same thing: how feminine, how powerful, how elegant and deadly.

Really nice writing. The deceptive purity of the “very white sheets” draping the table where the abortion will take place; and the image of the difference in how the abortionist describes the curette to her clients, contrasted with how she really thinks of it, and how she enjoys (loves) using it with murderous intent. But this darkness comes to us on page 306, of an otherwise slow tale, and is an abrupt departure in tone.

Suville came to the room and began to bathe her patient, pouring water over Letice’s outer womb. Suville had entered a trance of her own, one in which she saw herself as the reincarnated John the Baptist. But Suville was nothing of the kind (a bit of author intrusion here as a judgement is delivered). Suville Jean-Baptiste brought no babies to life; Suville Jean-Baptiste took babies to death.

Again though; still pretty good writing. But, there’s a feeling of now getting to the point—no pun intended.

There’s a lot of religion sprinkled throughout the novel. It dips into Voodoo, Hoodoo, Evangelical Christianity, and Catholicism (did I leave any out?) as if straining toward a homogenization to avoid any prejudice. But none of it feels emotionally honest; more like ingredients added following a recipe, in an attempt to cover all the bases.

Some of the characters are very well done: The evil, mail-opening, homo-hating, weirdo Adelaide Roman is fun and awful, and awfully fun. And the character of Bonaventure is as lovely as the saint he is named after. It is in the character of Bonaventure that the reader gets a glimmer of what feels like authentic spirituality, through both the unforced descriptions of his awareness of beauty, and his gentleness. 

This writer’s strengths: Miss Laganski’s prose is often charming, especially her imaginative descriptions of the beauty of Creation. Her power though, came through strongest, and most honestly, when she wrote about her characters’ inner darkness.

Who will enjoy this book? Readers who enjoy magical prose, unconstrained by accepted reality. Those who like a lot of backstory and going into how a character became who they are.

Calling Me Home

It’s an irony that young people mostly see things in black and white, Dorrie. All or nothing. Sometimes, in spite of their enthusiasm for embracing change, it takes years of experience before they truly see the whole picture. Still, I don’t believe my mother ever really learned how to love me properly. Her basic needs were scarcely met as a child, and all she could do as an adult was clutch at the status she believed would save her. I really think it all boiled down to fear. She was so worried about what the people around us would think, she forgot about . . . me.

So says the elderly Miss Isabelle to her friend and hairdresser, Dorrie, who has agreed to drive Miss Isabelle from their hometown in Texas to “Cincy” so she can attend a mysterious funeral.

On the road trip Miss Isabelle recounts her late teen years which center on her growing love for Robert, the son of her parents’ Negro housekeeper. She first ‘notices’ him when he rescues her from being raped in an alley one night when she sneaks away to a nightclub in the nearby city. She has known him all her life, it turns out, as he works for her family and is tutored by her doctor father. But now she begins to see how different he is from all the other boys and young men she knows, who are mostly tongue-tied and loutish.

During the ride Miss Isabelle tells Dorrie of her growing love for Robert, and the obstacles to it, which are many, in a Southern town in the 1940’s; a town that has signs posted warning coloreds to be out of town by sundown (yes, those sundown towns did actually exist, as hard as it is to believe now).Young Isabelle appears almost blithely unaware of the danger her infatuation for Robert could spell for him.

Meanwhile, in the present, Dorrie, a woman used to taking care of herself, but not above wanting or appreciating help, struggles to sort out her teenaged son’s issues, and her own deep-seated mistrust of men. Having been through one bad relationship with the father of her two children, she now needs to decide if she should trust a new man, who is depicted as a keeper—but she’s certain there’s a worm in the apple somewhere. Though not without interest, Dorrie’s storyline is less compelling than Robert and Isabelle’s.

For me, this novel read a bit unbelievable in some early chapters: I found it hard to believe young Isabelle wasn’t aware of the extreme and very real danger she put Robert in. And Robert’s character, while vague throughout much of the book, was portrayed as almost perfect. All the other young males are portrayed as somewhat bovine in intelligence, or crazy and violent like Isabelle’s brothers.

But regardless of those flaws, by the middle of the book I was firmly hooked and couldn’t put it down. The string of misfortunes in the last quarter of the novel are tragic, but as presented, believable—and heart-wrenching. There were moments of brilliance in this novel: the humiliating struggle to find someone to marry them; and the wedding scene, which actually gave me goosebumps it is so tender and beautifully rendered. And there are moments in the second half where the prose is lovely and precise, and cuts right to the core with crystal clarity.

Calling Me Home is Julie Kibler’s debut novel. It’s of interest to note that the author wrote this novel after discovering her grandmother had fallen in love with a young black man as a young girl, and that family story was the jumping off point for this story. I’m happy to have read this novel and enjoyed it. It will be interesting to see what this writer writes next.

Calling Me Home is 322 pages. The copy I read is an ARC, so it’s not possible to comment on editing. Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and She Reads for providing me a copy of this novel for review.

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile

He crawled across the space between them and rested his head against her shoulder. Philae held them in its silted-up silence. Barely touching her for fear she’d collapse under the weight of an embrace or move away again, he encircled her with his arms. “I am waiting for the muse to visit me,” he managed to whisper, “just as you are waiting for God to speak to you again.” Were they not both self-made pariahs? He felt himself in complete sympathy with her, as if they had mingled their blood in the purity and innocence of childhood.

Part love story, part historical adventure, Enid Shomer’s The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is a fun jaunt back into the Egypt of the mid 1800’s, only just beginning to be appreciated and explored by adventurous Europeans. The tale follows Florence Nightingale, during her pre-Crimean War years, and French writer Gustave Flaubert, as they separately travel the Nile by boat. Both actually did take such trips during their lifetimes—and indeed, even at the same time—though they never actually met, as far as history records. But Ms. Shomer has imagined an alternate, enthralling world—where they do.

The Florence she imagines for us is one who hungers to do some great humanitarian work and leave her mark on the world, but is hampered by the conventions of her Victorian culture, a culture whose foremost watchdog is Florence’s own mother. Prim and proper, but longing to be free, Florence strains against the stays of her society, and briefly escapes the constrictures of her family with two doting friends who agree to chaperone the Egyptian excursion. Gustave, tormented by his companions’ dismissal of his first novel (and not yet the writer who will one day write Madame Bovary), is in Egypt to gather impressions, both in the literal sense, as he makes ‘squeezes’ of hieroglyphs, and in the artistic sense, as he records with his highly attuned, hedonistic perceptions, the pleasures and realities life in Egypt offers.

Shomer, a poet with several published collections, writes with unerring skill, capturing with vivid prose both the characters inner lives, and the exotic world they travel through. And unlike some poets who attempt fiction, she at no time wanders astray into self-indulgent passages that have no bearing on the story being told; while the language is evocative and at times transportive, it at all times serves the tale, making this novel a delight.

This writer’s strengths: Language, obviously, being a poet, but she also possesses a good imagination, and doesn’t back off from an almost brutal honesty when depicting her characters inner lives. There are some graphic sexual scenes in this novel—it is about Flaubert, after all, and he did die of (probably) complications of syphilis; or ‘the pox’ which was something of a scourge among Europeans of the time. But they are written with such apparent honesty, that even the luridness of the brothel visits feels necessary.

Who will enjoy this book: The novel was clearly deeply researched, so history buffs of the time, or anyone curious about either of the main characters lives (and if you’re not, you will be, after reading this book), those who enjoy tales of Egypt, especially during the 1800s. Readers who enjoy deeply investigated flawed and believable characters. Readers who enjoy literary writing and a well-turned phrase combined with an adventurous tale.

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile is 445 pages. I did not note any editing errors. It was published in 2012 by Simon & Schustler.

I gave it five stars on Goodreads, and highly recommend it.

Man in the Blue Moon

When a mysterious oblong box arrives in backwater Dead Lakes, Florida, its contents complicate things for Ella. It isn’t easy, but Ella Wallace is doing the best she can; she runs the family commissary and takes care of her three sons, Samuel, Keaton and Macon. Her husband Harlan, a gambler and opium addict, has run off and abandoned them, but not before losing her family land to the town bully, Clive Gillespie.

Clive wants Ella—always has—though he will settle for the town’s crazy girl in a pinch. Sixteen year old Ruby wears a red sequined turban and treats the town’s occupants to a one woman parade every Friday (and don’t you dare argue with her if it isn’t Friday) complete with high-stepping, and a pumping baton that is slightly dangerous to bystanders. When Harlan forged his wife’s signature and lost Ella’s land to Clive he set his wife squarely down in the path of both Clive’s ambition, and his long thwarted lust. Aided by Narissa, a Native American woman who just arrived one day and never left, and Lanier, a cousin to her missing husband, Ella battles Clive for possession of the land she cannot give up.

Clive has big plans for the land, home to a magical spring that is still visited by locals who believe the waters can heal. He lures a famous evangelical preacher (Hear me now!) and the preacher’s sickly wife to Dead Lakes with dreams of building ‘Eden’, a money making center of enlightenment and healing. But to make that happen Clive must first vanquish Ella, and that proves more difficult than he thought it would be. Turns out it requires hired thugs.

Man in the Blue Moon explores topics of spiritual healing, addiction, greed, gossip, faithfulness and the lust for power. Particularly enjoyable are the sly wit behind the conversation during a breakfast shared by Myer Simpson, the Reverend Simpson and the local school teacher. And the depiction of Clive as a small man who will do anything to get what he wants. In the character of Clive, Morris’s writing is at times chilling in its portrayal of a malevolence made doubly horrifying by its easy believability and its complete lack of conscience.

In an escalating battle that will leave three of the main characters dead, Michael Morris’s Man in the Blue Moon delivers a beautifully depicted tale of the struggle between good and evil that lingers in the imagination long after closing the book.