Early Review: The World Without You
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: fiction, death, sisters, family drama, war, grieving, divorce, siblings, Iraq
The World Without You by Joshua Henkin (pub date 6/19/12)
A moving story about a dysfunctional family and the good that can come out of a terrible tragedy.
The Frankel family have gathered once again at their summer home for the Fourth of July. Three generations under the same roof. But they’re not there to have a cookout or watch fireworks. Instead they’ve come to mark the one-year anniversary of Leo’s death. Leo, the baby of the four Frankel siblings, was a journalist who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq, leaving behind a young widow and a two-year-old son. Now a year later, the family are gathered from far and wide for a memorial service and to mark the Jewish tradition of the unveiling of the gravestone.
Though the story is about a family memorial, its main focus is not on the person who died, but on the people who have to go on living without him. Each member of the Frankel family has his or her own secret or grievance. Noelle is a former party girl who reinvented herself as an Orthodox Jew and moved to Israel. She came back to the US with her husband and four sons to pay respect to Leo’s memory, but she finds that her marital issues have followed her all the way from back home. Lily still carries bitterness toward the other members of her family, and is quick to start an argument with her sisters rather than deal with the task at hand. Clarissa is consumed with trying to have a baby in her late 30s, even though she never wanted children before now. And their parents Marilyn and David are trying to face the truth that their 40-year marriage may not survive Leo’s death much longer. Meanwhile, Thisbe, Leo’s widow, has also arrived for the memorial, though she feels more and more like a stranger in the family.
The characterization is what really makes this book enjoyable. Though this is not a long book, Henkin spends a lot of time with each character, letting us know their personal histories, wants and fears, and letting us know how each one of them was affected by Leo’s death. Each character feels dynamic and real, and though Leo is not a character in the story, his presence is always felt throughout the narrative. Soon, I also came to feel as if I had known Leo.
Whatever your feelings about the war in Iraq, The World Without You is a bittersweet story about the families affected by war. It’s about the pain of acceptance and moving on, and the joy in finding friends and family to cling to in sad times. A great book for anyone who’s looking for a dramatic story with well-formed characters.
Early Review: Gone Girl
23 May 2012 1 Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: crime, disappearance, fiction, kidnapping, marriage, media frenzy, missing wife, murder, sociopath, thriller
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (pub date 6/5/12)
“Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that’s how the hating first began.”
I’ve always believed that great characters are what make a great story. Making a fictional character seem human is a lot more difficult than it seems. I’ve read plenty of books in which the author spent way too much time on “what happens next” and no time developing the characters. But here is a book with incredibly realistic characters. . . in fact they’re frighteningly real.
It’s a story we’re all familiar with: a beautiful and much-loved woman goes missing, the story goes national, the public begins suspecting the husband. However, Gone Girl takes this storyline and turns it upside down. When Amy Elliott Dunne goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband Nick is shocked and terrified. Despite the fact that their marriage had been rocky in recent years, Nick cooperates fully with the police investigation. Amy is controlling and often manipulative, but Nick still wants her back. But then the police discover Amy’s secret diaries, revealing secrets that Nick would rather have kept hidden. Suddenly the “golden couple” doesn’t seem so perfect.
The story twists and turns all throughout the book, keeping you guessing until the very end. Was Amy kidnapped, or did she run away to escape an unhappy marriage? Is the whole thing a hoax? Is Nick capable of murder? Filled with nonstop suspense, Gone Girl is both a thriller and a portrait of a marriage in trouble.
I want to go on but I don’t want to risk giving anything away. I simply loved this book. I can’t say enough how amazingly real the characters are. Nick and Amy are two incredibly dark, screwed-up people. They remind me so much of the couple from House on Haunted Hill (the Vincent Price one, not that remake garbage). The lies, the manipulation, the deviousness on both their parts, it all makes for an enthralling (and at times disturbing) read. And the ending is delightfully subtle, sure to inspire debate in book clubs everywhere. I personally couldn’t stop thinking about it for hours after I had finished the book.
When I say that characters make the story, this is what I mean! Gone Girl has fascinating characters and a tightly woven plot, and is a must-read for fans of suspenseful stories.
Finally ‘Freed’
19 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: banned books, BDSM, censorship, erotica, female submission, fiction, male dominance, obscenity
It seems that most of the American public (myself included, *blushes*) just can’t get enough of the Fifty Shades trilogy. From a Saturday Night Live parody to constant speculation about the alleged film adaptation to author EL James’ highly successful book tour, Fifty Shades is continuously in the headlines. Stirring the controvery surrounding the books is the fact that a Florida county banned the books from its public libraries citing its “perceived pornographic nature.” Because Heaven forbid that a book portray a woman enjoying sex. I guess women don’t have sex in Florida. But my mom lives in Florida and I sent her a copy of Fifty Shades for Mothers Day, so take that, rednecks!
Having just finished the third book, Fifty Shades Freed, I can see overall why the trilogy may be considered a little controversial, but in the end I think the books are fun and will do more good than harm. Anything that encourages women to enrich their sexuality and to tell their partners what they want in bed is ok by me…and I know that my own husband has had no complaints about me reading the books ;)
Some have argued that the books are anti-feminist, in that they portray a woman desperate to please her man, trying things she’s uncomfortable with just to keep his interest. Come on, really? I definitely believe in equality between the sexes and all that good stuff, but I don’t think these books are anti-feminist. Ana might be a little bit of a twit at times, but whereas Christian was used to dominating women, Ana is the first woman he’s encountered who dared to push back. After all, she never did sign his sex contract. In her own way, she started to stand up to him and question his demands, and that’s what really got his attention and (more importantly) his respect. I think what the books really show is that a woman can submit in the bedroom and still be her husband’s equal. Personally I think that’s the best of both worlds.
**[SPOILERS]**
While Freed was fun to read and just as kinky as the first two books, it was definitely the weakest of the trilogy. There were too many subplots that got wrapped up way too quickly, and I really did not care for Ana and Christian becoming parents at the end. Like I said in my post about Fifty Shades Darker, I want my smut to be smutty, and settling down and having a brood ruins the fantasy for me. It’s a tidy way to wrap up the story (“happily ever after” and all that jazz), but I think it would be bold and refreshing if just once a literary couple would choose to be childfree. But I digress…
I’d like to close this post by finally sharing some pics from the EL James signing in Philadelphia on May 3. I blew off work and spent the day in the city, and got to meet Ms. James and some pretty interesting people in the process. Two women I spoke to had driven overnight all the way from Ontario. Suddenly my hour train ride didn’t seem so bad. If you follow me on Twitter then you may have already seen these, but if you don’t follow me (@ChicksDigBooks), scroll down and enjoy! Sorry for the not-so-great quality of some of the pics; someone else took my camera and we weren’t allowed to actually pose for photos with Ms. James.
Me just moments before the signing! The lovely Canadians were nice enough to take a picture for me.
She’s here!
We meet at last…
Yup, she signed it “Laters, baby”!
Thanks for reading, everyone, and I’ll see you at the Fifty Shades movie!
Book Review: Seeing Soriah
15 May 2012 1 Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: art, dead artist, family drama, fiction, mental illness, revenge, secrets, suspense, thriller
Seeing Soriah by Ivan Jenson (Kindle only, pub date 4/25/12)
“All art is dead. It only lives in our imagination, we the living.”
From artist, poet, and novelist Ivan Jenson comes a psychological thriller about revenge and family secrets.
Seeing Soriah is a story about a man haunted by the sins of his father. Jordan is an art dealer who left his life in New York behind to be with his elderly father in Michigan. His father, Harold, is an artist, and Jordan is pooling all his efforts into opening a retrospective exhibit of his father’s art. Shortly before the defining moment in his career, Harold confides in his son that he has been seeing a woman who resembles his dead first wife. Knowing that his father has a history of mental illness, Jordan wonders if his father is experiencing a mental break…until he starts seeing the same woman. This event causes Jordan to dig into his family’s past, and uncover a secret his father has kept hidden for fifty years.
Last summer I reviewed Jenson’s first novel Dead Artist. And while I found that book to be enjoyable, I was much more impressed by this book. Seeing Soriah is suspenseful and disturbing, and a more mature and multi-layered story than Dead Artist. It’s a book about secrets and lies, with a touch of satire thrown in. While the main plot by itself is quite interesting, what I enjoyed even more was the commentary about art and the life of an artist. Toward the end of the book, Jordan and his father disagree about whether an artist’s life is worth more than the art he creates. It’s a compelling question that stayed with me long after I had finished reading the book.
Seeing Soriah is an excellent follow-up to Dead Artist, and a compact but very interesting novel. Great for anyone who’s into indie authors and stories that are a little out of the ordinary.
Book Review: Conjugations of the Verb To Be
10 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: fiction, life and death, literary fiction, love, montana, short stories
Conjugations of the Verb To Be by Glen Chamberlain (September 2011)
If you’re looking to feed your mind with some beautiful and intelligent writing, look no further. Here is a collection of short stories about the universal truths that bind us all: living, loving, and dying.
Written by prize-winning author Glen Chamberlain, all of the stories in Conjugations are set in Montana, and most are set in the small town on Buckle. Chamberlain truly transports her readers to this beautiful setting with her stories of hay stacking, horse breeding, and rural farming. Each story is unique in its own way, but together they form this small but powerful book.
In each of the stories in Conjugations, the characters experience a profound moment in their lives. In “The Tracks of Animals,” a woman searches for her missing husband. In “Horse Thieves,” a farm hand finds meaning in her life when she nurses a sick foal back to health. In “A Mother Writes a Letter to Her Son,” a mother tries to reveal a painful secret to her son, but doesn’t know if she can send him the letter. And in the title story, a teacher wonders if she has wasted her life on a thankless career.
My favorite story was the longest one, “Stacking,” in which three generations of women from the same family experience love and death. I found this story interesting because it hints that these women have a destiny they cannot escape, a sort of cycle that must be completed. It’s almost as if they are predetermined to relive the actions of their foremothers. This story felt so real to me that I could almost smell the hay on the family ranch. It’s a beautifully tragic tale. Another remarkable story is the disturbing ”Twin Bridges, Montana,” in which a group of orphans discover a boy frozen beneath a pond. But instead of being frightened, they come to think of him as a playmate, and come up with stories about who he is and where he comes from.
The connecting threads in Conjugations are life, death, and love, and each character experiences these in a different way. This is a unique group of stories about the things that make us human, with beautiful prose that needs to be read slowly to be appreciated. Moving and well written, this book is perfect for anyone who loves great writing. It would also make a great gift for the literary-minded person in your life.
Book Review: Afterwards
06 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: arson, crime, england, family, fiction, mother daughter relationship, supernatural, suspense, thriller
Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton (pub date 4/24/12)
“And for a moment he feels my presence. For a second I am a draft on his back, a tingling in his scalp, something touching his thoughts. A mother. A guardian angel. A ghost.”
Imagine being the victim of a terrible incident, and wanting to help uncover the truth about what really happened but being unable to. Not because you are too afraid to speak up, but because no one can see or hear you. For the protagonists in this excellent novel, this is their reality.
Set in England, Afterwards is both a thriller and a story about the power of a mother’s love. Grace is a typical upper middle class wife and mother, whose teenage daughter Jenny and eight-year-old son Adam attend a prestigious private school. On a seemingly ordinary day, Grace is rushing to get her children to school for its annual sports day. Later that day, a fire breaks out in the school, and Jenny is trapped inside the building. In an attempt to save her daughter, Grace runs inside the building and is injured when part of the structure collapses on her.
Grace and Jenny are rescued and rushed to the hospital. Both are in a coma, and it is unsure if either one of them will survive for long. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, both Grace and Jenny find themselves having an out-of-body experience. They are able to see their own bodies, to move around the hospital, and to see and speak to each other. But tragically they are unable to speak to their loved ones, or to the police who are investigating the fire. Grace’s husband and sister-in-law are determined to uncover the truth about who started the fire, and piece by piece, the key players and clues are revealed.
I really enjoyed this inventive and suspenseful novel. Afterwards combines a Law & Order type of story with supernatural elements, creating an engrossing book. The story pulls you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end. The characters feel very real, and Lupton does a great job of depicting the attitudes and social politics of the parents and teachers at the school.
Afterwards is a perfect book for anyone who enjoys thrillers. But it’s also a deeply moving story about the nature of a parent’s love. It’s altogether a compelling and well-crafted book.
Happy Birthday Chicks Dig Books!
05 May 2012 Leave a Comment
One year ago today, I started this blog. And even though I haven’t made a dime off it, it’s been a real labor of love and a lot of fun for me. Getting free books is incentive enough for me anyway 
I’m looking forward to another year of book reviews, Book Expo America, and hopefully some author interviews as well. Thank you for reading, and here’s to another great year!
