The London Train by Tessa Hadley

From back of book:

After his mother's death, Paul goes in search of Pia, his daughter from a disastrous first marriage, who has disappeared into the labyrinth of London.  When he finds her, Pia is pregnant, single, and living in a run-down, illegal flat.  But Paul is entranced by her excitement at living on the edge.  Abandoning his second wife and their children in Wales, he joins Pia to begin a new life in the heart of London.

Cora, meanwhile, is running in the opposite direction.  Escaping both her constrictive career and the

disappointments of her marriage with Robert, she leaves London to return home to Cardiff.  But when Robert disappears from work, Cora begins a journey of expiation, which may lead her back to him.

These two compelling protagonists' disparate paths will converge in a chance meeting with immediate and far-reaching consequences. 

My Thoughts:

Subtle and engaging are the two words I would use to describe this book.  Hadley's The London Train is a slow moving novel that provides glimpses into the daily lives of two very flawed characters, Paul and Cora.   In fact, the characters are completely unlikeable - they hurt the ones who love them without abandon and don't even seem to realize how selfish and mean they truly are.  These are the types of characters that you don't really connect with, but that you can't stop reading about - you just have to see what they do next.  We have Paul, who has recently lost his mother and just found out his oldest daughter is pregnant and shacked up in London.  So, what does he do? He decides to leave his wife and two young daughters in Wales and move in with Pia, the preggers daughter.  Hmmm. Sounds like a midlife crisis to me.  Then there is Cora, she has tired of her life in London, including her husband, and decides to flee the city for Wales - she wants to live in her recently deceased parents' home and enjoy life in the country.  Hmmm. Another midlife crisis? 

Clearly, both characters have experienced loss and grief within their lives, but instead of  dealing with those raw and real emotions, they choose to abandon their realities and make a bid for freedom.  Freedom from their spouses, children, friends, responsibilities - whatever they feel is dragging them down into despair.  You can't help but feel sorry for the secondary characters and all they have to endure as a result of Paul and Cora's sudden departures.  And yes, Paul and Cora do meet on the London train and wind up involved in each other's lives, which is where the two parts of the story overlap - the book is broken into two parts, the first one is Paul's story and the second is Cora's.  We never get all the details, but we do get a sense of how and why these two connected with one another - both longing for something different, something new. 

Hadley has written a wonderful piece of literary fiction that exudes confidence and intelligence.  Her prose is subtle and perceptive.  The imagery is vivid and clear - you can easily imagine the streets of London.   The mood is gray and detached - you can feel the characters' despair.   Its easy to get lost in this book and find yourself wandering alongside Paul and Cora as they navigate the twists and turns life takes them on as they journey to freedom.  This is one of those books where not much happens plot-wise, but when it comes to the characters, its bursting with action.  Its the type of book that haunts you for days after.  I would most definitely recommend The London Train to anyone and everyone.  It is one of my favorite reads of this year!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book.

Another Reading Challenge!

Thanks to Frances of Nonsuch Book, I am joining another challenge.  I can't help it - the books involved are going to be such good reads that I know I have to at least attempt to read a few of them.  Frances, on the other hand is going to read all of them - that means she will be reading 42 novellas during the month of August  and blogging about it  (that comes to a book or two a day)! Talk about a voracious reader! So, after Melville House Publishing (they publish these books) found out about the challenge, they created this challenge around Frances' idea of reading all 42 novellas - how cool is that!?!

Anyhow, here are the details:

1. Anyone can join, you don’t need a blog to participate.

2. Read the books in any order you like.


3. Challenge begins August 1 and ends August 31.

4.  Here are the levels:

Curious – Read 1 novella

Fascinated — Read 3 novellas

Captivated – Read 6 novellas

Passionate — Read 9 novellas

Mesmerized – Read 15 novellas

Obsessed – Read 21 novellas

Fanatical – Read 27 novellas

Unstoppable — Read 33 novellas

Bibliomaniac — Read all 42 novellas

5. Prizes! Melville House will be giving away sets of The Duels, The Neversink Library, Melville International Crime, individual novellas, novella sets, Bartleby bags, Bartleby bags stuffed full of books, gift certificates to our website and much much more. The prizes will get better everyday.

6. Have Fun!

I'm not sure yet, how many of these novellas I'll be reading, but I do know that I can't wait to start this challenge and I look forward to reading everyone's thoughts on these books!  Hope you decide to join in on the fun!

Paris In July Reading Challenge!!

Paris in July? Sounds like a plan!  Thanks to Karen of BookBath and Tamara of Thyme for Tea, I will be immersed in all things Parisian come July - food, music, films and books.  I can't wait! I participated in this fun reading challenge last year and had a blast listening to Yann Tiersen and watching 2 Days in Paris. This year I plan to listen to more French music, read a few books (A Novel Bookstore, Lunch in Paris and possibly, My Life in France) and eat some yummy French food whilst watching a French film or two. 

In case you are wondering what the rules are, here goes:

Paris in July will run from the 1st - 31st July 2011 and the aim of the month is to celebrate our French experiences through reading, watching, listening to, observing, cooking and eating all things French.

There will be no rules or targets in terms of how much you need to do or complete in order to be a part of Paris in July - just blog about anything French and you can join in.

Some ideas for the month might include:
- Reading a French book - fiction or non-fiction
- Watching a French movie
- Listening to French music
- Cooking French food
- Experiencing French art, architecture or travel (lucky Tamara!)
- Or anything else French inspired you can think of...

If you are interested in being a part of this experience leave a comment at BookBath or Thyme for Tea.  And just so you know, there will be weekly French themed prizes during the month.

Sign up now and grab one of the Paris in July buttons that Karen and Tamara have created to add to your blog!

Hope to see you in Paris this July!!

Bossypants by Tina Fey

From book flap:

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update", before "Sarah Palin",Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream:  a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher.  She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told.  From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon - from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected:  you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

My thoughts:

When I first saw this book I was so excited to read it. I figured it would be full of interesting tidbits about Fey's life and make me laugh out loud so many times that the people sitting next to me at the Bucks would think I'm crazy. And, well, I was half right. I did find some of the tidbits somewhat interesting and I did laugh out loud a few times, so I sorta got what I wanted from the book.  Except, at the end, I felt as if I should have just skipped this tome altogether.  I just feel like a lot of the stories in the book I'd already read in magazines or heard in interviews that Fey has given, so there really wasn't anything that new in it.  As for the funny, well, she brought some of it into the book, but not as much as I would have liked. 

Overall, the book was okay.  There were bits and bobs about how 30 Rock got the go head (Alec Baldwin) to her reluctance about impersonating Sarah Palin for SNL - both of which were interesting to read about (the inclusion of Alec Baldwin's name scattered throughout her 30 Rock stories was funny, as were the excerpts from the scripts themselves).  And yes, you can definitely tell what a funny and clever woman Fey is through her writing in this book.  However, I just felt like something was missing or maybe my hopes were just too high - either way, I liked the book, but didn't love it.  Its weird isn't it? I mean, I can tell she's funny from the book, but I didn't find the book all that funny.  Hmmm. Oh well, if I want my funny Tina Fey fix, I still have 30 Rock. 

Happy Reading!!

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

From book flap:

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs.  Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many years, in locales as varied as New York, San Francisco, Naples, and Africa.

We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal.  Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of  a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to  avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend.  We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments for her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city's demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale.  We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life - divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house - and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco's punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift  for spotting talent.  We learn what became of his high school gang - who thrived and who faltered - and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie's catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou's far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall. 

My thoughts:

This book is epic!! I absolutely understand why Egan won the Pulitzer for fiction - how could she not?  The book is just that damn good.  Honestly, I don't even want to discuss the book, because I want you to read it and see for yourself just how excellent it really is. So, instead I'm just going to highlight a few bits and bobs and then let you decide if you are going to give it a read and hopefully fall in love with it like I did.

"Time's a goon, right?"

Most definitely.  Time is the biggest goon of all  (its part of the goon squad).  What's the goon squad?  Well, its basically a metaphor Egan uses to show the ways in which life's obstacles and forces can demolish or catapult a person within their lives.  And lets just say, those goons are made very apparent as we dive into this fantastic book and get immersed in the lives of its two main protagonists, Bennie and Sasha. 

Spanning 50 years, this brilliantly written novel takes us on a trip through the lives of two very different people whose personal stories connect and disconnect in a variety of ways.  Egan has constructed a book that is made up of several narratives that are linked together by multiple thematic threads: time, technology, and music.  Truthfully each separate narrative could stand on its own as a short story, because they are just so engaging and you can't help but get caught up in the lives of these peripheral characters.  Not only are they tantamount in impacting both Bennie and Sasha throughout their lives, but they are also interesting, complex and relatable - you can't help but want to hear more about some of them. Egan does a terrific job of bringing all of these characters together in such a way that helps to enrich the story and elevate it to another level.

Plus, the vivid descriptions of the cities, music, clothes and atmosphere provide crystal clear images of the various time periods we visit throughout the book.  You begin to feel as if you are being transported both backward and forward in time.  Its actually quite a trip.  From jamming out to punk rock music with Bennie to finding Sasha in Italy, you definitely find yourself immersed in all sorts of situations with all kinds of people.  Egan has written such a brilliant book brimming with depth and intelligence, that you will be left thinking about it long after you've turned that last page.  This is a book that I highly recommend to everyone - it is definitely a must read! 

Happy Reading!!

212: A Novel by Alafair Burker

From back of book:

A celebrity mogul's bodyguard is slain in his boss's luxurious penthouse at an exclusive Manhattan address.  At NYU, a sophomore is menaced on the Internet, stalked...and murdered.

The two cases, equally sordid and shocking, end up falling to NYPD homicide detective Ellie Hatcher and her partner - who soon find out that this is just the tip of the terrifying iceberg.

Because in the city that never sleeps, death doesn't either. 

My thoughts:

I don't normally read crime thriller fiction, but have read enough of them to know what to expect.  And 212 did not disappoint on that front - it was exactly what I expected - solid writing; somewhat likeable characters; formulaic storyline; and, that description of the dark, gritty reality surrounding cops and their jobs (the kind you see on those L&O TV shows). 

The book consists of five parts that are made up of short chapters, some are merely one or two pages long.  Each chapter begins with either a time or date on it, letting the reader know the breakdown in the days throughout Ellie's investigation.  I suppose it helps the reader keep track of how long it takes for Ellie and Rogan (Ellie's partner) to figure it all out - of course, being that its pretty obvious early on who did what, the reader already has an idea of what's about to happen next.  So, no, this book didn't really have that element of surprise that I enjoy in a good thriller, but it still provided an engaging tone that made it easy for me to keep reading.

As for Rogan and Ellie, they are cops through and through- always working to get the job done.  Albeit, they do take breaks now and again to either go out on dates; call their mom; and hang out with their brother.  Afterall, you have to have some light relief in between all those crime scenes, right?  Oh,and don't forget they also need a boss who comes down hard on them when need be - which they have in Robin, who of course winds up dating one of the killers.  Oops, did I forget to mention that there are two killers in the book?

Now as far as the homicides within the book, well, one revolves around a young college co-ed who was being stalked on a college gossip website that posts salacious details about everyone and anyone at NYU; the other murder involves a bodyguard who happens to be a part of one NYC's most elite resident's security detail.  Both victims are connected by a very tenuous thread, which Ellie and Rogan quickly piece together with the help of google and twitter.  Oh, and also with the information they gather via their interrogations of suspects and witnesses - both of whom are always readily available to talk (not very realistic, eh?).  And, yes, Burke was inspired by the headlines when she wrote this book - can we say, Eliot Spitzer and Craigslist killer? 

Don't get me wrong, the book is a solid read.  Its great for airplane reading, the beach, long car rides and when you want something quick to read.  It kept me entertained for the day - yes, it only takes a day to read.  Overall, the book was okay.  I'm not sure I would read Burke again, but I'm glad I gave her book a go - it was a nice change of pace for me and my usual reading fare.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for providing me with a copy of the book!

Japanese Literature Challenge 5 is here!!

 

It's back!! The JLC5 has begun! Hosted by Dolce Bellezza, this reading challenge is all about Japanese Literature.  From Murakami to Ogawa to Yoshimoto, there are so many wonderful authors to choose from. 

And the rules are simple:

 "read one book from June 1, 2011 until January 30, 2012. If you want to read more than one, wonderful. If one is all you can manage, wonderful. Once you've read it, you may wish to post your review on the JLC5 review site." 

One book! How easy is that? I know I'll definitely be reading more than one - especially, since I've been putting books aside specifically for this challenge - and, yes, The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto is one of those books!  However, if you do need help figuring out which books to read for the JLC5, Bellezza has included a "suggested reading list" on the JLC5 site - check it out!

Alright, I'm off to read! Hope you visit the JLC5 site and decide to join in on the fun! Happy reading!!