Night of Miracles

Title:  Night of Miracles

Author:  Elizabeth Berg

Publication Information:  Random House. 2018. 288 pages.

ISBN:  052550950X / 978-0525509509

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "Surely you've had this happen."

Favorite Quote:  "Life is a mystery, death is a mystery, and everything in between is a mystery, too. The main thing is, people who are here, are here, for their own unique time upon earth."

The Story of Arthur Truluv was a story about loneliness and about friendship that can be found in the unlikeliest of places and about the family we create. For that, it was a sweet, sentimental, and heart warming story set in the small town of Mason, Missouri.

This book continues on the story of this small town. Lucille and Maddy - primarily Lucille - from the first book feature in this one also. This book introduces a new cast as well with their own need for support and community. This book is a sequel in the sense that it is the same place and some of the same characters. It stands alone in that reading the first book is not essential to following or understanding this story.

This is a book about recognizable, ordinary people living every day lives. Lucille is reflecting on age and the people she has lost. Maddy is contemplating marriage and the changes that will bring. Abby is facing illness and an uncertain future. Monica is looking for love, sometimes in all the wrong places. Iris is looking for a new beginning.

As with the first, the characters of this book embody a "character" - the lonely older woman, the divorced woman starting over, the ill mother, the happily engaged having misgivings, the father trying to keep home stable as his wife battles illness, and the little boy who steals everyone's heart.

This book is about not character growth or development. It is not about major plot twists or drama. It is not about depth of story. What happens is about what you would expect to happen. The book is just a quiet, sweet story about community and the families we create.

Mind you, this book is not as spiritual or metaphysical as the title would suggest. Visits from the angel of death also happen in this book, but that is an odd note in a book that is other wise about community and "regular" people. The other odd note in the book is the death of a character and the circumstances that is placed in. A bathtub? Really? To me, that too is not in keeping with the otherwise quiet and sanitized tone of this book.

This is not a lighthearted book either. Lucille's musings are focused on the losses in her life. A young mother fights a life-threatening illness. Another works through the loneliness of betrayal.

What resonated about The Story of Arthur Truluv also resonates about this book. It is a book about recognizable, ordinary people living ordinary lives. This one just does not strike the chord quite as strongly as the first one did.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Kinship of Secrets

Title:  The Kinship of Secrets

Author:  Eugenia Kim

Publication Information:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2018. 304 pages.

ISBN:  1328987825 / 978-1328987822

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "On a chilly summer night, a newsmonger trudged uphill to a residential enclave of Seoul, the last neighborhood on his route."

Favorite Quote:  "... change happens with the slip of a word ... and one's view of the past and future were mutable."

War divides families in so many ways. This has been a reality through history and continues to be a reality for so many throughout the world. It is in fact the reality of the author's family. This fiction is written based on Eugenia Kim's own family history - modified and fictionalized but, at the heart of it, true.

Korea was divided into two sovereign nations in 1948, the point at which this book begins. The Korean War began in 1950 and ended in 1953 although technically no peace treaty has ever been signed. Technically, the war still goes on.

This book tells the story of a family - specifically, two sisters - divided and then reunited. In 1948, Najin and Calvin Cho leave South Korea for the United States. The seek better opportunities and leave with the hope of one day coming back. They are parents to two daughters - Miran and Inja. They take Miran with them and leave Inja behind with extended family. The decision is based on practicalities - health, travel, and economics. Even more so, perhaps, it is promise to return.

In alternating chapters, this book tells the story of Miran and Inja. Miran grows up, safe and secure in the United States. Yet, she faces the challenges of a first generation immigrant. She is also continually in the shadow of the sister left behind and aware of her parents' sorrow. Inja survives the harrowing years of the war; she grows up poor and at risk but always loved. It takes years, but finally at age sixteen, Inja is reunited with her parents. At this point, her parents and sister are not the family she knows, and the United States is not the culture she knows. That brings with it its own transition and challenges.

As is common with books that alternate perspectives, one side of the story calls to me more so. In this case, it is the Inja's story. Hers is the story of war, survival, and the immigrant experience. It is the story of the child left behind and then of the child separated from all that she knows and thrust into a new culture and a new life. She is always surrounded by love and yet faces hardship after hardship. Miran's story is the quieter one also of the immigrant experience and also of a child who grows up knowing that her parents' life is not complete with just her. She sees a longing in her parents for her sister that, in her thoughts, sometimes surpasses the love they show her.

The one jarring note in this book is the ultimate secret of why the Najin and Calvin take Miran and leave Inja behind. To me, that history becomes an unnecessary distraction from the heartbreaking choice to leave a child behind. It creates a difference between the two sisters that undermines that choice by placing an external burden on it. It is an unneeded note in an otherwise powerful and moving book.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

The Rain Watcher

Title:  The Rain Watcher

Author:  Tatiana de Rosnay

Publication Information:  St. Martin's Press. 2018. 240 pages.

ISBN:  1250200016 / 978-1250200013

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "I will start with the tree."

Favorite Quote:  "... how come  his own mother had never noticed? The answer was clear, then. It was because she had never wanted to see it."

A family with secrets and history. A father whose passion is trees. A mother who marries in a whirlwind romance and then has a lifetime of secrets. A son who has yet to feel comfortable in his own skin, particularly around his family. A daughter with a dysfunctional marriage and a past buried in guilt. A beautiful city about to drown as the river floods. A few days time but a lifetime of memories and history.

This is the background of The Rain Watcher set in Paris as a family comes together to celebrate the father's birthday. As you might suspect, this is cause of reflection and conversations and history and perhaps a reckoning. You might expect this to be a powerful novel of strong emotions about a city, about family, about love and about acceptance.

Except that it is really not. Even now, I am not really sure what the point of the book really is. There are so many story lines opened and questions asked. None of them really go anywhere. Affairs. Accidents. Survivor's guilt. Abuse. Sexual identity. Parent-child bond. Marriage. Infidelity. Family expectations. Suicide. All of these familial ties wind back and forth through time and the history of this family; it is easy to get lost. All are set within the impending doom of the Seine flooding except that there is never a climactic culmination to that sense of anticipation.

An interesting naturalist note in the book. Paul Linden - the father - is a world renowned tree expert. The trees are his passion. You might even say the trees are his life. The how and the whys of this are never really explained except that the point is made that this passion seems to exclude pretty much everything else in his life. His two children are named Tilia and Linden. Tilia is a group of about 30 species of trees native to the Northern Hemisphere. Linden is the name given to the European varieties of that tree. Coincidence? Probably not, but then again not explained in the book.

The message I walk away with from this book is that children, no matter how old they get and no matter how successful they become in other parts of their lives, still seek and need their parents' approval. That approval may never come. Logically, the child (even adult children) may realize that it may never come, but the need for it never really goes away. A sad and emotional reality that unfortunately does not quite take center stage in this book. The stories are opened and the questions are asked. However, they don't really go anywhere. Perhaps, there is a greater metaphorical point to be made in that structure. Unfortunately, I don't get it.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.

A Well-Behaved Woman

Title:  A Well-Behaved Woman:  A Novel of the Vanderbilts

Author:  Therese Anne Fowler

Publication Information:  St. Martin's Press. 2018. 400 pages.

ISBN:  1250095476 / 978-1250095473

Book Source:  I received this book through NetGalley free of cost in exchange for an honest review.

Opening Sentence:  "When they asked her about the Vanderbilts and Belmonts, about their celebrations and depredation, the mansions and balls, the lawsuits, the betrayals, the rifts - when they asked why she did the extreme things she'd done, Alva said it all began quite simply:  Once there was a desparate young woman whose mother was dead and whose father was dying almost as quickly as his money was running out."

Favorite Quote:  "... a change in fortune doesn't change who a person is. It reveals your true self, the one you were maybe hiding away."

The well-behaved woman of the title is Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont. Alva Smith was the name she was born with. Vanderbilt was the name she married into, and Belmont came later. While Smith may not be a recognized name, the Vanderbilt and Belmont names have both provided this nation with a legacy. Alva is a part of that legacy, with a contribution all her own.

This book is part of a growing trend of fictionalizing the lives of actual historical figures. The books don't simply reference historical characters. They create an image of what that life may have been like. Rule #1 of reading these books is to always remember that the books are not biographies. They are not history. They are a carefully crafted fiction - an author's imaginings of conversations and emotions and of events of which there may be no history. Typically, the works are researched so as to be based in history, but they are not history.

What I love about historical fiction is that it sends me in search of the history. I likely would never have picked up a biography of Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont. This fiction though did set me reading briefly about her actual life. What I learned is fascinating. Alva's legacy finds a home in the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument in Washington DC. Alva was a notable member of the National Woman's Party, which was active in promoting the women's suffragette movement and critical in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

I learned most of this from researching nonfictional sources about Alva's life but unfortunately not this book. The book does get there but late and only briefly. The bulk of this fictional story focuses on Alva's life as a young woman, her quest to marry William Vanderbilt, and their married life. It speaks to a life of poverty and a determined, concerted effort to emerge from that life through the way open to women at that time - marriage. It is about a marriage with its conveniences, its compromises, and its betrayals. It speaks to the gilded age of New York city, the lifestyles of the rich, and the glamorous homes they built. It is about the navigation and machinations to achieve and maintain a social strata and pecking order if you will.

I do wish the focus of the book had been flipped. It ends almost as Alva's true contribution to this nation's history begins. This story takes the history of a strong woman and makes it about money and marriage rather than work. It does lead me to research and learn about that contribution but unfortunately fails to capture it in the book itself. Interesting but leaves a lot missing.

Please share your thoughts and leave a comment. I would love to "talk" to you.