Month: July 2022

The Invincible Miss Cust by Penny Haw (Fictionalized History)

Writing: 3.5/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 4.5/5

This is the fictionalized story of Miss Aleen Cust, a minor English aristocratic in the 1880s who desperately wanted to be a veterinary surgeon at a time when that (and many other things) were forbidden to women (particularly of her class). She did, in fact, become the first female vet in Britain, and the description of the process was well documented and engaging. The story features great characters who were either those who encouraged and helped her along the way as well as those who did everything in their power to stop her (this category included most of her family who were aghast at the thought of a woman wanting to work!). I loved the details about the work itself and the arguments made by those horrified at the thought of a woman vet. Many felt that a woman castrating bulls was immoral. Not that it would be difficult or off putting, but immoral! That gave me pause as I considered a definition of morality that was so focused on women not having any exposure to (and definitely no enjoyment of) sex.

The story was interesting enough on its own, and I was pleased that the author didn’t add a lot of melodrama where it wasn’t needed. It followed the facts pretty well — I looked them up on Wikipedia earlier than I should have — don’t do that as it spoils the story when you know what is coming! The author is very clear on the few places where she allowed her imagination to fill in information that was based on unverified rumor. I will say that I personally did not feel those were the best parts of the story. I’m not generally a fan of fictionalized history — where the story of real people is fictionalized (as opposed to historical fiction where fictional characters are placed into real historical contexts). It seems somehow unfair to assign thoughts and words and actions to a person who doesn’t get to correct or object, but I did very much enjoy this subject, this characterization, and this book.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on November 4th, 2022

Sam by Allegra Goodman (Young Adult)

A story about a young girl who sinks into despondency and manages to (literally) claw herself up through rock climbing, her perseverance and stubbornness when faced with impossible climbing challenges mirroring the way she finally finds a path that works for her. The six parts of the novel take us from seven to eighteen — dealing with a beloved father who, fighting addiction, disappears for long periods of time; a (temporary) step father with no fondness for her and a somewhat violent temperament; a (most of the time) single mother pushing her children to not miss the opportunities she herself had missed; a half brother who needs constant management to get even the smallest thing done; and many others on varying sides of (my) moral boundaries.

The writing is good and I appreciated the thoughtful characterizations. While she finds her way at the end, I found reading the book to be a little depressing. While there were many good characters, I found myself wishing that people had just made better choices up front. It’s always painful for me to think about how many screwed up people there are and how their mistakes cause such pain for others. I’m aware that I’m completely missing the actual point of the story which is about how someone overcomes the problems of their childhood, but I find myself unhappy that they ever had to face those problems to begin with.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group, The Dial Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on January 3rd, 2023.

Where Coyotes Howl by Sandra Dallas

Sandra Dallas does a stellar job at evoking the historical West — in this case a small town on the prairies of Wyoming in the early 1900s. This is the story of two “ordinary” people of time — an imported schoolteacher and the cowboy she falls in love with. It’s a hard life and frankly that makes for a hard read. The tight friendships and support structure formed by the women who often live up to an hour by horse from each other can help but not quite overcome the relentless tragedies that occur — from weather, illness, starvation, and from (some) husbands that are just plain bad. Dallas never resorts to melodrama but then she doesn’t have to — the real life stories are (mostly) pretty awful. I’ve read every book that Dallas has written and will continue to do so, but I admit that this book left me pretty depressed — her depictions so vivid that (being the emotional sponge that I am) I couldn’t help but feel sad for all my new found fictional friends.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on April 18th, 2022.

The Sweet Remnants of Summer by Alexander McCall Smith (Literary Fiction)

Number 14 in my favorite McCall Smith series featuring Isabel Dalhousie, moral philosopher extraordinaire. While the narrative in these novels feature every day troubles such as family disagreements, child rearing, and interpersonal … irritations, the real story is the deep and well-expressed thoughts they trigger in our editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. The musings of her “tangential mental life” are endlessly intriguing, insightful, and thought provoking. Her brand of philosophy is never dry — it is philosophy as applied to actual human lives.

I love McCall Smith’s writing — it consistently reminds me of the beauty of the English language and embeds new (to me) or rarely used words that I find absolutely stimulating. Well, I never said I wasn’t a weirdo! Two of my favorites from this volume: adumbration and purlieus (if you like words, look them up!)

He always tackles topics of current concern, and no topic is left un-thoroughly discussed. No slogans, no strict identification with any party line. Characters get to examine and evolve their own thoughts and principles (sometimes with a little gentle help) into something that better adapts to their current situation.

I always feel calmer after reading one of these books.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Pantheon and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 19th, 2022.

Secret lives by Mark de Castrique (Thriller / Mystery)

Writing: 3/5 story: 4/5 characters: 3/5

75-year old Ethel Crestwater runs a boarding house for government agents and has the heads of the FBI and Secret Service on speed-dial. When one of her boarders is killed and a bag full of counterfeit money is found in his room, Ethel and her double-first-cousin-twice-removed take matters into their own hands staying just a step or two ahead of several agencies and agents who all have their own agendas and possibly something to hide.

This was entertaining and had some (obviously) quirky characters that I enjoyed. I know very little about how the FBI and Secret Service work but I can’t say I found this depiction in any way believable. Some clever hiding places and just the right amount of background information on cryptocurrency.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on October 11th, 2022.

Out of Patients by Sandra Cavallo Miller (Fiction)

Story: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Writing: 4/5 Enjoyment: 5/5

Norah is the tending-toward-cynical but unfailingly caring and dedicated family practice doctor in the Arizona desert. In her 50s, she thinks of retirement almost every day, but can’t get herself to pull the trigger.

With a jaded but humorous and never bitter tone, Miller brings to life the modern family doctor. Forget Marcus Welby, Norah and her colleagues are beset with endless regulations, condescending specialists, arrogant medical students, health insurance battles, and a plethora of patients who don’t always (ie hardly ever) advance their own cause. On top of this, the practice seems to be losing money despite a full waiting room, and someone is leaving nasty-notes on car windshields. Norah had to kick her do-nothing boyfriend of three years out of the house for … continuing to do nothing, and she has nearly daily calls with (possibly my favorite character) her 86-year old mother who has a crush on the elderly, but well-built mailman and gives detailed instructions on what to do if she doesn’t answer the phone (wait several days to make sure she is dead!). While too grumpy to even consider dating, Norah does come across some potential love interests — an even grumpier vet and a shy radiologist who suffers at her side during endless student admissions committee meetings .

I loved the tone, loved the characters, and appreciated the peek into a real doctor’s life by someone who a) has lived through it themselves and b) translates her knowledge into a highly self-aware and comical story. Some very interesting medical tidbits and asides as well…

Some good quotes:
“To give your life more purpose, for what that’s worth. I’m not sure anyone has ever convincingly proved that human life actually has a purpose. Evolution just does its thing. Sunrise, sunset.”

“I guess when your spirit pales to a washed-out shadow, you grow tentative.”

“Once upon a time we became physicians, but now we also must perform as secretaries and transcriptionists and file clerks and coding authorities and billing experts ad regulations enforcers.”

“And I wondered how anyone can eat baloney, that mash of pig snouts and ears and genitals. You can feel gritty little bits of bone.”

“That made me sad, but why should it? Why should I impose my arduous overdrive, my endless quests, on a quietly contented person?”

“No, apparently my ego needed to analyze and try to fix them. Make a difference in their lives. Maybe I worried that my failure with Grace, a previous student, might repeat itself. I may have mentioned how doctors often obsess about doing things right.”

“Nobody listens. Sometimes I feel like a tiny squeaky voice in a wind tunnel, about to be blown away.”

“And even before I say this next sentence, I’m aware it isn’t fair, because I know tons of great physician men, smart and intuitive, generous and wise. But between Jeremy Newell and Carter Billings, I’d drink my fill of medical males that day.”

“A long afternoon, but mostly rewarding. Nothing easy, nothing cut and dried. Everyone needed to talk. Mostly good patients, all with real problems. No one surly or defiant, no one acting like I owed them good health because they demanded it, no matter how unwilling they might be to earn it. Every now and then those petulant people stayed home and I felt in my element, listening, sorting, treating. Come on, Norah, I told myself, settling in with my charts after everyone had gone.”

“What would fix me would be better healthcare systems, not spending hours grappling with a convoluted computer program. Where I got more than ten minutes with an addict. Consistent medical billing and affordable insulin. Free insulin, Where medical students didn’t lose their glittering idealism in a few short years, while a handful of ego-besotted attending physicians badgered them into despondency. Until some students lost themselves under the crushing demise of their dream. The statistics on physician suicide are dreadful — every day, at least one physician or medical student is lost forever. What an unforgivable waste.”

Thank you to University of Nevada Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on August 16th, 2022.

Cora’s Kitchen by Kimberly Garrett Brown (Historical / Literary / Multicultural Fiction)

Plot: 4/5 Characters: 5/5 Writing: 4/5 Enjoyment: 5/5

In 1928, Harlem librarian Cora James writes a letter to Langston Hughes whose poetry has inspired her. In ongoing correspondence, he supports her confessed desire to write and offers advice and commentary on her writing attempts.

There are more story elements including a surprising friendship with a white woman and a dangerous encounter, but for me the real story is about Cora’s awakening to the concept of having her own dreams and desires — beyond the expectations of being a wife and mother, a Black woman, and a good Christian. I absolutely loved and was startled by her own recognition of the limitations placed on her by societal and familial norms that she hadn’t even been aware of herself.

As part of the story she reads literature — Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, W.E.B Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, Miss Esale Fauset’s There is Confusion, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand — and each informs her developing desire to express more than she knew she had in her to express. It is thoughtful, inspiring, and fascinating. Her reactions to works of literature are individual. She doesn’t like Amos and Andy or the characters in a prize winning Zora Neale Hurston story because she feels they make colored people look like fools. And she doesn’t want to write the standard colored woman story — growing up poor and oppressed in the South etc. She says, “We have been through so much as a people, but we have endured. I guess that’s why I think racism and oppression shouldn’t be our only focus. There are other stories to tell.” And in the end, when forced to choose, she makes what I found to be a surprising (and I was surprised that I was surprised by this) choice to identify more with the womanhood of her characters, rather than their Blackness). She explains it much better than I can, so I’ll let you read the story.

I loved this book and read it in a single sitting (OK — I was on a long plane flight BUT I had plenty of other books available on the kindle!).

Just a couple of quotes to let you see how Cora’s mind works:
“But most books written by colored authors are about race one way or another. And though I know it’s important to talk about, I’m tired of that being the focus all the time. There are other things in life that are just as important. Dreams. Desires. But maybe that’s too much to ask of a book.”

“But I wish Miss Larsen spent more time exploring Helga Crane’s desire for individuality and beauty, rather than her struggle as a mulatto woman trying to figure out where she belongs. Then maybe the novel would have spoken more to the workings of a colored woman’s mind.”

Thank you to Inanna Publications and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on September 20th, 2022.

In the Shadow of Humanity by N. John Williams (literary science fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 4/5 Characters: 4/5 Overall Enjoyment: 5/5

What it means to be human is the theme driving this story of two brothers — one alive and one long dead (but faithfully rendered as an AI in the metaverse and allowed to age) — who each long for the other’s existence. One longs for the immortality and eternal healthy youth while the other longs for the rights and respect kept from him by dint of not being fully human despite his ability to think, feel, create, and perceive pain.

This is technology driven science fiction — my favorite kind, reminiscent of the “old days.” It made me realize how much better this kind of SF is when written by an author with actual experience in the technical areas s/he is extrapolating from. In this case, the author is well versed in Computer Science, Linguistics, and Artificial Intelligence, and it shows in his fully fleshed out cultures evolving from a thoroughly described metaverse (the metaverse is the blending of physical and virtual worlds, not to be confused with the multiverse which is the theoretical existence of multiple physical universes). There are power struggles (the Administration powered by Technologists; transhumanist activists; and an evolving superintelligence) with equal word count given to the abundant (and to me more interesting) ethical / political issues.

I’ve thought about the ending for some time — I’m not sure I like the conclusion but I do think I understand it, and it was quite thought provoking (a top criterion for me). One of the better SF books I’ve read in the past few years.

Thank you to BooksGoSocial and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on August 1st, 2022.

Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths (Mystery)

Writing: 3.5/5 Characters: 4/5 Plot: 4/5

Another fun, twisty mystery by Elly Griffiths of Ruth Galloway fame — number 3 in the Harbinder Kaur series. Harbinder — our 38-year old diminutive Sikh lesbian — has just made Detective Inspector and is now in charge of a London based Murder Investigation Team.

A great first line (in the prolog) appears to be a confession of guilt for a decades old murder. This is rapidly followed by the school reunion of a high achieving group of friends who were all affected by that long ago death. The long awaited “fun” evening ends in the death of one the group — his body found in the school bathroom with cocaine dust around his nostrils.

A nice, convoluted mystery with plenty of interesting characters. What I found particularly fun was Harbinder’s inner monologue regarding her new subordinates, witnesses, potential suspects, and surprising love interests. While always behaving professionally and never losing her cool, we are treated to her irritation regarding arrogant attitudes, bimbo responses, and one particular subordinate’s oft repeated macho stances. I thoroughly enjoyed this insight into an honest and human interior in contrast with a professional and impassive exterior.

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on November 15th, 2022.

Some Maintenance Required by Marie-Renee Lavoie (Audio Book — Fiction)

Writing: 4/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 4/5 Audio reader: 3/5
A sweet novel about a young woman kind of wandering through her own life: school ends and she contemplates university, she gets a job and experiences the drama of group dynamics, and she watches over (and becomes quite attached to) a badly neglected 2nd grader. And then … circumstances beyond her control slam her in the face. It’s a story about bringing love (and continual ongoing maintenance) to our relationships — with family, friends, and even possessions like a favorite car.
The writing is very good with many memorable phrases (unfortunately I listened to this in the car and therefore couldn’t capture any of them) and depictions of places and situations — both real and imagined, internal and external. I enjoyed the characters — the guys who worked at the garage with her father, her best friend, and a veterinarian-in-training who likes her, but whose social class makes her uncomfortable. And her mother — the best character of all. I also love the role that books play in the world that she and her mother have created.
Listening to this audio version of this particular book did highlight something for me that I hadn’t really noticed before. The reader did a good job with voices, pacing, etc. but she also imparted a distinct personality to each person through vocal pitch, pace, and tone over and above that which you would perceive simply from reading the words. Specifically, I found the main character to have a hint of whininess (that I didn’t like) which may or may not have been intended by the author. Overall I enjoyed listening but did take note of that point.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on July 5th, 2022.