Novel Whore

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I will follow Barbara Kingsolver to the ends of the Earth. Her profound sense of the past and dedication to research is amazing. I fell in love with The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer long ago, and so I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the Doylestown Library to get The Lacuna.

Set in Mexico and the U.S. from 1929-1951, Kingsolver tells the story of Harrison Shepherd, a young boy on the verge of adolescence, interacting with some of the largest political players in history. Born to an American father that knows nothing of him, and a Mexican mother that is always looking for her next companion, Harrison is on his own navigating through life. (more…)

In case you haven’t noticed, I read a lot of historical fiction, a lot. I love history, I love dragging my family through historical little towns, visiting museums, old ships like the USS Constitution, and learning more about World history. One of the things I love about historical fiction is that they bring a human element to history. I think most people hated history classes in school because it seemed like a lot of useless memorizing of dates and places. Real people were there! Real people had their real lives affected by historical events!

The second thing I love about historical fiction is that the events the novels surround are often events that our history books glossed over or skipped altogether. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford centers around the evacuation of Japanese citizens who were sent to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Luckily, Mr Ford doesn’t simply regale us with dates and places. The main character Henry Lee lets us into his life as a young Chinese boy living in Seattle during World War II when the Japanese were already beginning to feel the racial tension. (more…)

I have a confession, I have a sick obsession with the Holocaust. I wasn’t alive, my parents weren’t even alive, but we are part German, even if my great great grandparents had already emigrated out of Germany, I still feel responsible. I wonder what I and my family would have done as we watched our neighbors and friends being taken from their homes. Would we have stopped them? Hid them? Risked our lives? By high school I had already read Night by Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man, Diary of Anne Frank, and numerous other books that were available. Our final project in English my senior year was to read a book on a historical figure, and I chose Hitler. Instead of the thin books available in the school library, my teacher forced me to head to the large library in a nearby town and grab The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. There is still so much to learn and remember, so I picked up Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay a few years ago. (more…)

I’m not a big fan of Sci/Fi, and vampires have really never gotten my attention, especially scenes from Ann Rice and other “thrillers,” as they are mainly focused on violence. When my best friend handed me The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova it came with a warning that I might not like it.

The Historian takes a different view on vampirism as it retraces what happened to the remains of Vlad Tepes, a 15th century Byzantine ruler of Wallachia, through Istanbul, Bulgaria and Romania during the Cold War era. The search begins as several characters receive an antique book that contains nothing but a wood print of a dragon and the word: DRAKULYA. (more…)

This is probably the most screwed up book I’ve read in awhile, which means I loved it. Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald follows the story of the Piper family through three generations that are plagued by incest, attempted murder, accidental death, suicide, and a host of other sad story lines.

James Piper is introduced as a young boy left orphaned after his father disappeared and his mother died. He sets out on his own to become a piano tuner in the large city to the south on Cape Breton Island. He soon falls in love with a young daughter of a client, a much too young daughter. They quickly elope and are exiled by his new wife, Materia’s family. Set in the early 1900’s the family grows through the first World War where James enlists to avoid the feelings he suddenly has for his oldest daughter Kathleen, prohibition where James becomes a bootlegger, and the Great Depression when all of Cape Breton is angry with the Piper’s and how they survive. (more…)