"The Rules of Civility" Review

What is it with the books I have read this summer making me feel old?  I mean, I am only 31.  The characters in “The Rules of Civility” live through so much, and their various circumstances change so many times within the scope of the novel that by the end (or at least up to the epilogue) I just thought…wow.  You’re still younger than me. 

On to my review…

 

“The Rules of Civility” is a debut novel by Amor Towles, and my favorite of the summer, to date.  I thoroughly enjoyed his style of writing.  He’s not just a story-teller, like the authors of a good portion “talked-about” novels are today (I happen to enjoy those, too), but rather had a very individual and identifiable voice.  The very best part for me was the dialogue—witty, smart, and so effective.

The story is told from the perspective of Katey, a quite spirited and independent woman living in a boardinghouse, working as a secretary, and living it up after hours with her best friend and partner-in-crime, Eve.  They’ll put on their best dress and scrape enough change together for a drink, secure in the knowledge that they’ll find a handsome bachelor or two to fund the rest of their night out.  It is this way that they meet Tinker Grey, and the three are swept up into a series of glittering evenings in fancy bars and smoky jazz clubs.  That is, until the night when a chance event causes everything to drastically change.

Much of the plot seems to happen by chance, in the beginning, setting of a series of events that the characters must react and adapt to.  Katey, Tinker, and Eve all seem to hold their cards close to their chests, revealing only as much of themselves as is unavoidable, all the while believing that they understand the others completely.  This is a source of a good portion of conflict in the novel. 

“The Rules of Civility” is an even-handed story of high society…the charm, but the real people, and struggles behind it.  And while Katey does work her way up the social ladder, she is far from a social climber.  Rather, she works her own way up, which is of course the best part.  I will say there were a few spots where Katey did things I didn’t find believable and thought “Ugh.  This was written by a man.”  However, those spots were few and far between.

Not long into the novel, I realized I was picturing the entire thing in black and white, as if it were a movie with Rita Hayworth or Barbara Stanwyck.  I found that I like the New York of the late 1930’s more than I like the New York of today.  You get the feeling that you should be holding a cigarette in one hand (even if like me, you don’t smoke) and a cocktail in the other as you read this book, if it weren’t for the fact that it would leave you with no hands to hold the book in.

Happy Reading! 

"The Year of the Gadfly" Review

Less than four weeks until the of summer, which means less than four weeks to finish my summer reading pile.  I thought I could do it, until I picked up 3 of my selections from the library and realized how LONG they all are.  We'll see.  I will be posting my review of "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles soon, and am working my way through "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society."

On to my review of "The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller."  If you've read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What it’s about:  Teenage Iris, a hopefully journalist who has been deeply affected by the loss of her best (and only) friend, has moved to a new town to begin school at Mariana Academy.  It seems Mariana is full of secrets, as are most of its students/faculty.   Aside from Iris, there is science teacher Mr. Kaplan, a Mariana alum with his own secret, troubled past.  Parts of “Gadfly” are told from the perspective of Lily and take place in the late 1990’s, a victim of bullying who was hiding her own secrets.  And then there is the resurfacing of Prisom’s Party, a once inactive secret society that sees themselves as moral watchdog vigilantes.  The boundaries between bully vs. victim, and right vs. wrong are muddled as Iris tries to unravel the complicated web and blow the cover off the party responsible for a string of disturbing rumors and bullying. 

What drew me in:  Prestigious prep school, eccentric characters (a “Marvelous Species of sorts) that all have some sort of secret, secret societies, and a plucky main character.

What it reminded me of:  “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” by Marisha Pessl, for starters.  This is partly because Jennifer Miller, author of “Gadfly” sent me a little message on Goodreads suggesting that I read her book because of my rating of “Special Topics.”  The two do have their similarities…dark mystery, prep school and cliques, clever main characters, etc.  The main character here, Iris, reminded me more of a combination of Veronica from “The Heathers” and Flavia de Luce from “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.”  Oh, and Iris’s science teacher, Mr. Kaplan…for me, sort of a Mr. Keating (of Dead Poet’s Society) wannabe.   Mr. Keating to students: “Carpe Diem!  Seize the Day!”  Mr. Kaplan to students:  “Embrace extremity!”

What worked for me:  The story is told from the point of view of three characters, which I enjoyed, especially when each of their stories began to merge.  “Gadfly” shifts back and forth from present time and a late 1990’s timeline, and Miller did a great job slowly revealing the many ways that they intersected.  (I also admit to feeling a bit old when I realized that the “past” storyline was around the time I was actually in high school.)  Miller pretty much nailed the unique affects the loss of a (close) peer has on a teen-ager, and certainly captured the teen-age angst.  The story shows what we all know from experience:  What happens to you in high school follows you long after you graduate.

What didn’t work for me:  I found myself wondering as I read if this was actually YA Fiction (which it is not), and there were just a few scenes that seemed a bit…gratuitous.  Not really a big deal, but they irked me in relation to Iris only being 14, and because they seemed totally unnecessary to the plot.  The resolution was wrapped up a bit too “neatly” for the dark tone of the rest of the novel.

I gave this one a 3 star rating on Goodreads.

Happy Reading!

"The Weird Sisters"

Review-- “The Weird Sisters” by Eleanor Brown

 

I love books.  I love books about books and I love books with characters that love books.  And the family at the center of “The Weird Sisters,” well, they love books, too.  While the Dad is a Shakespearean professor (hence his daughters all being named after characters in the Bard’s plays) and quotes Shakespeare for his part in just about any conversation, no one in the family is a book snob.  They read just about any book, without discrimination, mainly because it happens to be closest to them.  With the exception of the works of Shakespeare, we aren’t informed of a single title that any of the characters reads throughout the novel, and it seems to be because it doesn’t matter to them what they are reading, so long as they are reading something.

The original “weird sisters” hail from Macbeth, and here, at the center of the novel, we have our own “weird sisters,” who will explain to you, early on in the book, that “weird” to Shakespeare doesn’t mean anything close to what “weird” means to us.  For the first time since reaching independence and taking their own paths, the three sisters are all home together.  They’d tell anyone who asked that it was because their Mom has breast cancer, but the truth is that they each have their own reason for returning and staying.  We have Rose, locked into her sense of responsibility as the eldest daughter, refusing to leave out of the certainty that the family would fall apart without her.  But the truth is, something else is keeping here there.  And then there is Cordy, who clearly wants to be by her mother’s side although there is no denying that something else really forced her into giving up her nomadic lifestyle.  And finally, Bean, who for the first time not only can but must leave her carefully created life in New York.  Caring and dealing with their mother’s illness serves as a backdrop as the women each struggle to overcome the Shakespearean idea of what makes them “wyrd,” and instead realize that people can, in fact, change, and make a life for themselves rather than letting it happen to them.   

An interesting aspect to the novel is that it has a first person plural point of view, meaning it is actually narrated by all three sisters as one voice.  And while we learn, over the course of the novel, each individual character’s personal truth, we get the impression of all three sisters as one.  Interesting, because isn’t it true that sometimes our family see things in us; our true motivations, fears, and feelings, that we try to keep neatly wrapped and hidden away?  Your siblings will tell you the bottom line, point blank, which is that the collective voice of the sisters does for the readers in each circumstance.

Overall, the story is an interesting exploration of the complicated relationships of sisters and the family as a whole.  Truthfully, it didn’t suck me in and while I didn’t mind the characters, at times I had a hard time finding a reason to really be rooting for them.  I wanted it to work out; I just didn’t care all that much, or maybe I knew that, predictably, it would.  

Review: "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Crossing the first title off of my "Summer Reading" list!  Definitely a good one.  Up next:  The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.

The Language of Flowers centers around Victoria, a just emancipated eighteen year old that has been hardened by a lifetime of being passed around through the foster care system.  From the time of her abandonment, Victoria has had little experience with security, familial love and positive relationships.  In a sense, Victoria has almost always been “on her own” and this is just the first time she has no one directing her next movement.  She doesn’t have a family, a plan, hopes or dreams, but she does have her connection to flowers.  Homeless, she spends her days creating a garden in an untended section of a park until, driven by hunger and necessity, she uses her talent to secure a job with a local florist.  Here, Victoria’s boundaries are tested.  She is uncomfortable with opening up, gets ill at the slightest touch, and has no desire to be attached to anyone or anything permanent.  Anything that is, aside from her flowers.  And suddenly, in the form of a young man at a flower market, it all begins to change.  She is forced to consider a future, but also to face the secrets of her past.

The story opens on the day of Victoria’s emancipation, and alternates between momentous moments of her childhood and her current struggles to overcome her past, forgive herself, and learn to love.  Diffenbaugh’s history as a foster parent lends great authenticity to the characters and their complicated relationships.  I found her writing to be very real, and at times raw.  She doesn’t hold back on showing the good and the bad of her characters in order to win the reader’s approval of them.  This is especially true of Victoria.  You won’t always like her…in fact there were a few times when I was reading that I wanted to look away.  But, if you’re like me, you will always root for her.  I think it’s because underneath it all, we can sense that she’s doing her best with what she has…it’s just that what she has isn’t much. 

And then there are the flowers.  Flowers are to this book what New York is to Sex and the City.  The story would be impossible to tell without them.  Diffenbaugh is well versed in the use of flowers to communicate in Victorian times, which I found fascination.  From the beginning the flowers are critical in understanding who Victoria is.  Where Victoria doesn’t “get” people…or herself for that matter, she “gets” flowers.  They become her key to learning to communicate honestly, to understanding others, and to making new beginnings.

One additional note:  Vanessa Diffenbaugh co-founded the Camellia Network to support children “aging out” of the foster care system.  Check out her website…the statistics are staggering.  www.camellianetwork.org 

Have you read The Language of Flowers?  What did you think? 

Summer Reading

A summer reading list is a beautiful thing for a bookworm like me.  I spent some time scrolling through my “To Read” list on Goodreads, and finally compiled my pile for the summer.  (That is, I think I have finally compiled a list...it's so hard to choose.)  Here’s what I’ll be reading:

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

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Seating Arrangements  by Maggie Shipstead

Bridge of Scarlet Leaves by Kristina McMorris

Grace by T. Greenwood

The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows

The Age of Miracles by Karen Walker

First up:  “The Language of Flowers,” mostly because I already have it.  I’ll be posting my reviews as I go.

Have you read any of my selections?  What are you reading this summer?