Love Conquers All

Hello dear readers. I missed the month of March on my book blog. I was busy with compiling (and typing and typing) anthologies for my Writers in the Schools students, and traveling for spring break with my high school senior. I’m finding some writing time again and want to talk books.  I’ve read some excellent novels, a book of short stories by the star of that genre (in my opinion) - Alice Munro - and one amazing book of poetry since I last posted here.  You can see the list of books I’ve read since July on the column to the right of the screen.

           A Land More Kind than Home  by Wiley Cash is a first novel that you may not have heard much about, and you must hurry out and get the book, now in paperback, from your local independent bookseller. It’s a Southern story of evil and love and families and it blew me away.

The story is told in through three distinct voices – the wise woman Adelaide Lyle, the young boy Jess Hall, and the seasoned sheriff Clem Barefield. All three have experienced tragedy in their lives and have chosen love over bitterness. Love is the answer and (spoiler alert) love wins in this tale of redemption.  Thanks again to Blue Willow Bookshop for the great book suggestion!

        

    The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker is also all about love. It was one of those books that I finished with tears pouring down my face, on an airplane. So hard to hide and so embarrassing. But I couldn’t stop crying; it was such a beautiful story.

            Heartbeats is a love story for the ages. The novel also involves a puzzle as a young woman searches for her missing father and unlocks his mysterious past. Her quest leads to her father’s native country of Burma and the tiny village of his sad origin.  I won’t say anymore except -- read both of these wonderful books! 

Modern Fan Mail

I am often the first to complain about social media and the Internet. With some many electronic devices competing for our attention these days, it is getting more and more difficult for the old fashioned book to get the time it deserves. But I recently discovered that Twitter and Facebook allow us to communicate with our favorite writers and sometimes even enhance our reading experience. This modern method of fan mail is just fine with me.

Recently, I enjoyed reading Me Before You,  a novel I picked up at the Book Expo last summer in New York.  JoJo Mayes' tale was totally engaging. The book tells the story of a 26-year-old young woman who still lives in her small English town with her parents and has settled for an existence rather than a life.  When she loses her job at a local café, she has to take a job as a caregiver for a bitter male quadriplegic.

Me Before You was one of those books that made me forget everything else I had to do until I finished it early on the MLK holiday Monday. I cried at the ending (no spoilers here).  Later that morning while watching the inauguration and because I follow several writers, I happened to see a tweet from JoJo Mayes, the author whose book I had just tearfully completed. I decided to tweet her about how much I enjoyed her book. I did (see inset) and a few minutes later, she replied, "thanks." I was thrilled. I had actually sent fan mail and gotten an immediate response. How cool is that?

So now I will tweet Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Chabon and more authors and tell each how much I appreciate their writing.  Just in case you are wondering, here are the writers and writing-related folks I follow on Twitter:  Susan Orlean, Very Short Story, Richard Blanco, Eating Our Words, World Book Night, Language Bandit, Bob Goff, Donald Miller, Caitlin Moran, Writer’s Relief, Book Expo America, GrammarHulk, Oscar Wilde, John Green, Marilyn Johnson, Nancy Pearl, Grammar Girl, Smith Magazine, OwnYourStory & Page Turner. I’m sure I will follow more writers now that I realize (finally) that I can communicate directly with my favorites.

Illusions of War

I don’t know how I missed The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert when it was published in 2002. Perhaps I thought it was set in Japan, which is sometimes a turn off for me or for some other reason, this book was off my radar until a good friend recommended it for my book club recently.

This gem of a book was a New York Times Notable Book and received several other awards. And with good reason. Walbert’s first novel (she had previously published an acclaimed short story collection), The Gardens of Kyoto is a coming of age tale of a young woman during the time of World War II.  The woman’s story reminded me of the TV sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” because the female narrator is telling her child how she met his father. She is addressing the child directly, often saying “your father” even though, as readers, we are unclear who this man is exactly. But the resemblance to HIMYM ends there because this is a dark story about loss and love.

The novel unfolds in a fragmented fashion with different stories unfolding in bits and pieces. The title, Gardens of Kyoto, is actually a book within the book about the beautiful gardens in this treasured place in Japan. The fragmentation of the gardens symbolizes the narrative technique of the book. One of the gardens described in the book leaves “the viewer to fill in the landscape.” This book, too, requires the reader to fill in the gaps and re-read portions until they make sense. The narrator, near the end of the book, says, “We are none of us who we are.”

The book illustrates that illusion with the themes of family secrets that damage lives, the repression of women in those post-war years and the ravages of war. Everyone is damaged in some way by secrets and illusions.  I found this to be an intriguing story beautifully written with all the fragments fitting together at the end.