the comet that disappointed

Night of the Comet by George Bishop
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction
Review: I enjoyed George Bishop's first novel, Letter to My Daughter and was excited to read this book, his second.  I was not disappointed.  Bishop explores similar themes in this book, as his narrator looks back on his childhood and the lives of his parents.

Alan Broussard, Jr. looks back on his freshman year of high school, when he fell in love for the first time, his father was his science teacher, his parents' marriage fell apart and came back together, and the comet Kohoutek didn't quite show up.  Bishop is adept at bringing his characters to life and managing all of the threads of his narrative.  The story isn't complicated or startling, but it's believable and satisfying.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

play ball!

Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season by Jonathan Eig
Rating: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: American history/biography
Review: The title of this book is wonderfully accurate.  It really is the story of the entire season, and not just the baseball parts (although baseball fans won't be disappointed in the description of plays and pitches).  But it is much more than a play-by-play of every game the Dodgers played in 1947; Eig paints a picture of the entire season and how it resonated throughout the country.

Eig's writing is so vivid, you can feel the emotion as Jackie walks into the clubhouse for the first time, as he takes the plate for the first time, as he faces both cruelty and kindness in cities and ballparks across the Major Leagues.  He gives us profiles of people who were affected by Robinson's barrier-breaking, including author Robert B. Parker, civil rights leader Malcolm X, and future governor of Virginia Douglas Wilder. Although some of these profiles go on a bit too long, they contribute a lot to the sense of change that was in atmosphere in 1947.

Eig doesn't exactly soft-pedal the negative reactions from both within and without baseball that arose as a result of integration, but in some ways, he down-plays it a little bit.  Some of Jackie's fellow Dodgers were opposed on principle to playing with a black man, but when he joined the team, they realized he was an ok guy and that integration probably wouldn't actually bring about the end of civilization as we know it.  Somehow I don't think it was that easy.

Mission: Disappointing (but only a little)

His Majesty's Hope by Susan Elia MacNeal

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: As you can see from my reviews of Winston Churchill's Secretary and Princess Elizabeth's Spy, I predicted that the second Maggie Hope mystery would be better than the first, and I was duly rewarded.  I therefore had high hopes for this third installment, but unfortunately, Maggie's mission to Berlin didn't exactly live up to its promise.  

Now with the elite Special Operations Executive, Maggie continues her somewhat maverick approach to acts of derring-do on behalf of His Majesty with a two-pronged mission in Berlin. Unfortunately, most of the people she encounters during her exploits there fail to come alive on the page.  Add to that less-than-convincing mission details and some entirely-too-coincidental meet-ups, and this adventure just doesn't measure up.  But MacNeal has already proven that she has what it takes in this genre, so I'll continue to hope for good things in future Maggie Hope adventures.

Two additional notes: First, this book shouldn't really be called a mystery, since there is no mystery to be solved.  Second, MacNeal shouldn't feel the need to rip off scenes from tv shows, although I'm sure it was entirely an unconscious thing on her part.  She chose one of my favorite scenes from an excellent show (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), but I was still very disappointed.  Her writing is strong enough without resorting to copying, even from the greats.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

a little too spare

Daughters Who Walk This Path by Yejide Kilanko

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: Although both plot and characters are written with very little embellishment, Kilanko is a very effective storyteller.  However, there are some puzzling gaps in her narrative.  She makes sure we know that it is a big deal that Morayo, the main character, must go far from home, to a different state on the other side of the Niger River, for the training for her National Youth Service Corps year.  The distance heightens the element of surprise when she meets Kachi, her teenage beau, at the training site.  After only a few pages, though, Morayo informs Kachi that she has been transformed to serve her year much closer to home.  As a plot device to remind her readers about Morayo's relationship with Kachi, this is all well and good, but as part of an actual narrative it leaves something to be desired.  For the most part, omission of such details doesn't detract from the overall sense of the story, but I found each omission distracting as I had to flip back through the pages to see if I actually had missed something.  Finding that I hadn't, each time I could only wonder why Kilanko chose not to add the very few lines that would have provided the missing details.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

show, don't tell

A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee

Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: As a reader, I never really understood the writer's maxim to "show, not tell".  I always thought, "I'm being told a story, so what's the big deal?"  Until now.  Now, I get it.

This book is about Ben, Helen, and their adopted daughter Sara.  In the first part of the book, Dee does a fair job of showing us that Ben and Helen's marriage has fallen apart and the events that bring about its actual end.  We are shown how the marriage is dissolved and how Helen has to learn again how to support herself, and now her 12 year old daughter.  So far, so good.

Dee starts to get into trouble when Helen and Sara move to Manhattan.  Helen becomes more involved with the PR firm she now works for and Sara starts attending a new school.  Sara tells us that her mother has basically started letting her raise herself.  But, aside from the fact that Sara must order dinner for herself and her mother most nights, and that she becomes very devious about skipping both school and the after-school activities she's supposed to be participating in, we aren't ever shown what Helen has done to make Sara fling the accusations at her that she finally does.  Combine that with Sara being a generally unlikeable character to begin with, and the sections involving her are fairly unreadable.

All of which makes me wonder why Dee included Sara's plot-line to begin with.  The much more interesting aspect of this book is Helen's new job and her views on (and success with) apologies.  The title suggests that this was supposed to be the main story of the book, but it gets very little space.  Instead, Helen's supposed talent becomes something else that we are told, without really being shown how or why it works or is important to the overall story.  This is a shame, because a focus on apologies and how they impact public relations would have made a much better story.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

better and better

Princess Elizabeth's Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: In my review of Winston Churchill's Secretary, the first of the Maggie Hope books, I said that the series showed promise as MacNeal settled into her talents as a writer.  With this second installment, MacNeal is certainly starting to live up to that promise.  Although some of the language is still a bit clunky (and there are far too many mentions of birds), the story itself flows much more smoothly than it did in the first book and MacNeal takes fewer shortcuts to get her characters in and out of situations.

Newly installed with MI-5, Maggie Hope is placed at Windsor Castle at Christmas in 1940.  Posing as Princess Elizabeth's math tutor, she is really there to ferret out a possible plot against the future queen's life.  Descriptions of life at Windsor Castle during this period are well-done, and glimpses of historical personages are clearly well-researched.  Once again, MacNeal does an excellent job bringing to life a fascinating aspect of Britain during WWII, while at the same time allowing Maggie to grow as a character and as a spy.  I look forward to reading more!

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

unconvincing

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: historical fiction

Review: For all that this is a book that centers on a genocide, it's not very compelling.  There are two stories told in parallel, neither of which I found particularly engaging.  The primary story is the one that takes place during the 1915 Armenian genocide.  It's the story of Elizabeth, a recent Mount Holyoke graduate who travels to Aleppo with her father on a mission of humanitarian relief (although in her father's case it seems to have more to do with making sure his money is being responsibly spent).  In Aleppo, Elizabeth meets Armen, an Armenian engineer.  Although Armen presumes that his wife and daughter are dead, victims of the Turkish transportation, he is in Aleppo hoping to find someone who accompanied them across the desert and can tell him what exactly happened to them.  This might have made Armen a tragic and interesting character, except that he more or less abandons his quest the moment he meets Elizabeth.  He is drawn to her because her cheekbones remind him of his wife's, and he falls in love with her almost instantly.  The attraction is mutual, if not entirely believable, and the rest of the story is a foregone conclusion, and would be even if we did not already know the end of their story from their granddaughter.

The second story is told by Laura, Armen and Elizabeth's granddaughter, a writer who knows very little about her Armenian heritage (although, to be fair, she doesn't seem to know that much about her Boston Brahmin heritage either).  She is drawn into researching her history when a friend forwards her a photograph of someone with her last name from an exhibition focusing on the Armenian genocide.  Her story of discovering her grandparent's history is interesting, but lacks emotional heft, although that may be because I found her grandparent's story itself to also lack spark.

Put together, we get two stories, neither of which is adequately fleshed out.  Perhaps if Bohjalian had chosen to tell a single story, there would have been more room to create a more fully-realized world, and fewer characters who are simply shadows (Elizabeth's father, Armen's wife, and so on).  Likewise, if Bohjalian had chosen to tell only the historical story (adding the contemporary story seems like little more than self-indulgence on his part), he might have been able to actually help his readers understand more about the Genocide You Know Nothing About (as he has Laura call it).  Instead, I found myself confused by how Syria figured into the Armenian story, what the Germans were doing there, and what the Turks had against the Armenians in the first place (though I suspect most of the Armenians were asking the same question) and unconvinced both by Armen and Elizabeth's love affair and by Laura's historical quest.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.