One Plus One by JoJo Moyes

I got an "advance review copy (ARC)" of this novel, which is not due to be published until July.

I have to say that I just loved it.  It's partly that it's a very well-structed romantic comedy.

But very much more than that, it's the authorial voice which is thoughtful, not glib, not too highfalutin and to me, terribly witty.  To me, there's something so satisfying about that witty voice.

JoJo Moyes is also the author of Me Before You and the Girl You Left Behind, which were very popular in 2013.  I haven't read either of them - there are so many things I want to read.  But having this ARC copy made it convenient and it's almost true that once I started I couldn't put it down.  I didn't really care about the characters until chapter three.  But then, I felt, as one does - that I just HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM IN THE END.

Jess is a cleaner.  Actually she has two jobs.  One is being a bartender in a pub, and the other is cleaning houses.

She married her high school boyfriend when she got pregnant at 17.  A few years later, she learned that he had already fathered another child with another woman at the time of their marriage.  She learned this because her husband, fearful of the child's mother's addiction, asked to take this child into their home.

They struggled greatly to make ends meet.  Her husband's get rich quick - or get rich slowly - schemes not only did not succeed, but backfired so that they were never able to secure any financial security and he became depressed.  He stopped working, took to his bed, and eventually moved back in with his mother.

Jess works a lot of hours at her two jobs.  Her elder child, Nicky, is regularly beat up because he's different; her younger child, Tanzie (short for Costanza) is a gifted child who loves mathematics.  She wants to protect her son and doesn't know how and she wants to provide academic opporunities for her daughter and she has no idea how to do that, either.

She's desperate, it's true, but she's also someone with an almost unbeatable case of optimism who's so fond of reassuring her children that they think it's funny that she always says that everything will be all right although it never has been to date.

How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean

I wasn't able to finish this book because I simply didn't have time; it had to go back to the library because, not surprisingly, someone else wanted to read it.

Therefore, I can only talk about the author's main contention and the first three chapters.  The book begins with a 20-page introduction in which the author explains that the Paris we know today, and the idea of Paris as the ultimate tourist destination, the city of light, the city of romance, all start with Henri IV's desire to use a building program to restore Paris after it was greatly damaged by decades of religious war in the 16th century.

I should note that when I first had a desire to read this book I assumed it was about Baron Hausmann's work in the 19th century.  In her introduction, DeJean explains that it is an erroneous view held by many that Baron Hausmann's transformed Paris from its medieval version but it is the work of the 17th century kings, financiers, and engineering boy wonders that transformed Paris and gave us the Pont Neuf, the Place des Vosges (then the Place Royale), and the Ile Saint Louis (then the Ile Notre Dame, named for its proximity to the Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite).

Henri IV's work began with his decision, around the turn of the 17th century, to build the Pont Neuf.  He was, among other things, concerned about creating infrastructure capable of holding the weight of carriages, the coming fashion in transportation.  The new bridge was completed in 1609, and it was different from the other bridges then being used for many reasons.  It was not lined with buildings as London Bridge and many other bridges were.  Henri IV financed it not with rents from these buildings but from a tax on wine coming into the city.  This bridge had broad, raised sidewalks for pedestrians, making crossing the bridge safer for them as carriages became more popular.  The bridge was unusually wide, 75 feet, which made it possible for merchants, performers, and gossipers to congregate on the bridge which made quickly made it most important gathering place to pick up news.

The Place des Vosges began as a silk workshop.  I loved learning about this.  Henri IV inherited an economically depressed city in which aristocrats were buying Italian silk for their dress, an expensive practice which did nothing for France's economy.  He resolved to create a silk industry in France and set up a workshop, with houses for the workers, on the old site of the Palace des Tournelles (which had been pulled down by Catherine de Medici after Henri III had been fatally injured in a joust there).  He decreed that the houses should have regular fronts, and the square was originally built with housing on three sides and a silk workshop on the fourth.  After Henri IV's death, his son did not pursue the project, which ended.  The silk workshop became (I don't know if it was converted or pulled down) the fourth wall of housing facing the square.  After some decades, the tradesmen who had lived there were replaced by aristocrats.  Eventually, the Place des Vosges became the centerpiece of an affluent, desirable neighborhood called The Marais ("the marshes").  As its name suggests, much of this area, and much of the area on the right bank, was not developed at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

I can't remember why the Ile St. Louis was undertaken, but it was created from two other islands that already stood in the Seine:  the Isle de Juifs and Isle de Vaches.  Both islands were uninhabited and primarily used for grazing.  An engineer named Marie, for whom one of the adjoining bridges is named, transformed the two islands into one.  The island was buttressed with embankments.  Innovatively, the street pattern was laid out in a grid.  DeJean writes that the architecture of the houses built on the Ile Saint Louis influenced French architecture in and outside of Paris.  Two great mansions were built on one end of the island; Baron Hausmann pulled the largest, the Hotel de Bretonvilliers, down to build the Pont Sully.  There is an arch left which I think gives an indication of the beauty of the the building, which I suppose was really more like a complex.  This is the style, smooth cut stone construction, which became our very idea of what is French architecture.

Let me go back to the Pont Neuf for a moment.  The bridge was built with observation platforms; DeJean said that this was a new innovation (and it has continued since I saw a couple of observation platforms on Blackfriars Bridge the other day).  De Jean says that this was the beginning of the mystique of Paris; people enjoyed stopping to view the Seine from the unique vantage point provided by the bridge and thus began an interest in urban views.  She points out that the Pont Neuf was the first piece of urban infrastructure that was neither a palace, fortress or monument that attracted tourists.   She sees it as the beginning of modern urban design, in which infrastructure itself may become a tourist attraction.

I know that later chapters of the book deal with other 17th century residential squares, the the design of the Tuileries and the Champs d'Elysee, and the civil unrest that took place in the middle of the 17th century.

It is especially interesting to me to read a consideration of the "beginning" of the romanticization of Paris as, coincidentally, just before I started this book I learned of "Paris Syndrome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome) which is thought to be similar to Stendhal, or Florence, Syndrome.  Fortunately, Joan deJean's elucidation of the history of Paris is not going to cause anyone to experience Paris Syndrome.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Loved this book.

It reads like the novelization of your favorite romantic comedy.

It's a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The Accidental Tourist.

I understand that it has already been optioned as a film, and that it began its life as a screenplay.

I just read the New York Times review today and the NYT reviewer compared it unfavorably to The Curious Incident; there, the reviewer opined, one was not dependent on observations made by the protagonist but could infer social cues and other information not provided by the protagonist by reading the dialogue.  It's a been a few years since I read Mark Haddon's book; my recollection was that as the book wore on, especially as it came to its conclusion, it became more and more contrived.  Nevertheless, that "shapeliness" is probably part of why it was so popular.

It's probably also a little slighter than The Accidental Tourist, if only because the latter book deals with grief and loss, and there, the love object lady was more problematic, and so, probably more interesting:  not the same class as Mason, the writer of the Accidental Tourist series, not educated, with the unfortunate name "Miriam," and an equally unfortunate dress sense, and a child who was struggling.  Anne Tyler is a resolutely hopeful writer and she manages to talk about dreadful disappointments in a poetic way and makes you believe that a happy ending is possible.

My to be read list

I currently own or have checked out the following books on my "to be read list":



The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I see the similarity with the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Not just that the protagonists exist on the autism spectrum, but that the constant interpretation of behavior lends everything an air of mystery and uncertainty.  It engages you early on and has good pacing - the exposition is brief.  I can see why it's been a popular book.

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

How Paris Became Paris by Joan De Jean


I've begun "How Paris" and I like it .. easy to read, good flow, interesting, not too many details.  It's primarily a book about the 17th century, not the 19th century as I expected.

4/22/14

I've started One Plus One by JoJo Moyes.  I'm only a few pages in but I can also imagine this as a movie .. it reminds me of that movie, Sunshine Cleaning, with Amy Adams and Emily Blount .. I just saw American Hustle the weekend before last, in which Adams was reunited with Alessandro di Novala from June Bug and whose performance in Mansfield Park I remember with fondness.

4/27/2014

Have begun an ARC copy of Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.. I've really only just begun, but I think I'm going to like this book very much.  I must also say I really like the cover.  It has a legal theme, and it reminds me of John Grisham and Scott Turow.  Like Grisham's Sycamore Row, it's set in Mississippi.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Read this for my book group; I didn't expect to like it, but I did like it and I found it very easy to read.

For me, the narrative did start to lag about two-thirds of the way through; I can't quite put my finger on why but I definitely thought so.  Perhaps it was, in part, that the protagonist had gone through so many changes that by that point, she was really a different person, one I wasn't so interested in.

It's also the case that there was a discussion of retailing at that point that just bothered me.  It bored me; it interrupted the narrative flow.  And, it reminded me of the Nora Roberts books I have read where having your own business is the ultimate dream and the business dreamed of is always a retail establishment.

Molly is in foster care and she's just about to age out of the system. She's bounced from foster home to foster home, and she's emotionally closed off as a result.  She gets into trouble and is given a sentence of 50 community service hours.  Her boyfriend, anxious to help her, arranges for her to help a 91-year-old retire clean out her attic.  What happens to her in that attic changes everything.

(Molly's employer reminisces about her life, which proves to have been both fascinating and heartbreaking.)

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I've just finished this novel and I feel lukewarmly about it.

In 1942, Henry is a scholarship student at an all-white school in Seattle, the only student of Chinese descent; the only other non-white student, also on scholarship, is Keiko Okabe, of Japanese descent.  To help offset the cost of their tuition, they both help serve lunch in the cafeteria every day.  Henry's only other friend is a black street musician named Sheldon.  Through Sheldon, they become acquainted with Seattle's jazz scene.

More than 40 years later, Henry has taken early retirement from Boeing to nurse his dying wife; with a lot of time on his hands, he walks past the long-shuttered Japantown landmark, the Panama Hotel, and learns that Japanese "evacuees" left family treasures in the basement when they left Seattle for internment camps and and the new owner of the Panama Hotel would like to reunite these items with the families of their original owners.

It's a very popular book club book which was why I was eager to read it.  It's also a first novel, and I think it shows.  There are some errors in continuity which surprise me; I find myself wondering why an editor didn't catch and correct those errors.  Those errors don't really ruin the book.  They're distracting, and I find myself feeling confused as a reader.  I stop, and reread the paragraph, and the proceeding paragraph, and this happened several times during the book.  I feel that there should be some kind of rule about the revealing of information; it needs to be linear, and told "in order."

I was bothered by some other things, too.  One was that one of the characters called his Dad "Pops."  I didn't know anyone called their father "Pops" except in Charlie Chan movies.

But, sometimes, the very things that are not very literary or very elegant, seem to appeal to other readers, perhaps because they have grown up on the kinds of cliches we find in films.

The story's structure, moving back and forth across forty years, is the kind of structure I find I enjoy.  I know some readers find that challenging.  The story consists of memories, told in the present tense, of 1942, and the "present day," which in this case is 1985.  In 1942, Japanese-Americans were "evacuated" from their homes on the West Coast and interned in camps inland. The characters in this novel was interned in Montana, I believe.

I think the element that makes this story so popular with readers is that of young love.  I think that is a perennially popular subject and the story could be set in any historical period and appeal to readers.

My sense is that the author is a writer who has to work very hard at avoiding cliches in storytelling and style. Nevertheless, he is obviously a writer who knows how to tell a story that is very appealing to readers.

Inferno by Dan Brown

I always knew I would end up reading this book, although I had not read any of the other books he'd written, because I took a class on The Divine Comedy when I was in college.

My teacher was an expert on symbols in medieval art and the images and allusions that appear in Dante's poem.  He spent each class unpacking allusions. He illustrated his lectures with slides of art he'd photographed all over Italy.  Good times. No really, I loved that class.

So I'd probably like this book, I thought.

Ironically, at the point where I'd just completed the first seven chapters or so, I read a column in the Guardian or the Telegraph about the gratuitous stupidities in Brown's writing.  For instance, there is a line in the description of a young doctor, in one of the first chapters, that is redundant, clumsy, and cliched.  Of course, using cliched descriptions, hackneyed phrases, and stereotypes as a substitute for characterization seems to be a hallmark of the suspense writer.  This writer acknowledged that while Brown's style stinks, his style has actually improved greatly.  I bet that's true.

What I found was that I found the book engrossing and delightful despite Brown's frequent insertions of facts that had no place in the narrative, and chase scenes that read like travelogues.

I think I felt secretly pleased that Brown recited facts that some readers would never otherwise have any exposure to, or interest.  But, I don't think Brown unpacked very many images, and I imagine that treating Dante's work in greater depth would have hampered the narrative.

Some of the suspense was well done, I thought, and some of it seemed a little tricky to me.

I also found the ending a little contrived, and I didn't quite believe the twist.  I read the book in two days, which I certainly regard as a strong recommendation.  Really loved it.

This is another apocalyptic novel; in this case, the suspense revolves around a one-man bioterrorism plot.  I don't want to spoil the ending, but Brown raises serious issues that I suspect most readers will just ignore.

Who says art history doesn't pay?  They certainly haven't met Dan Brown.

This is quite funny, and a "spot on" parody of Brown's style:

http://bit.ly/1fvWZxy

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

If you want to know if you should read this book, I think the answer is yes.

It came out in 1943, and it's set at the turn of the century .. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at a time when Williamsburg is very different from how it is now.  In fact, it's set in Williamsburg a few years after the Williamsburg Bridge was built and the neighborhood experienced great change as it went from being an isolated, wealthy suburban area to being the overflow neighborhood for the immigrants of the Lower East Side.

In tone and feeling, it reminds me of a book about a Jewish family of girls on the Lower East Side that I read many years ago that was called something like "All of a Kind." It's a view of an urban immigrant experience that depicts a family that's poor but enjoys a lot of social connection, remembered fondly.

"A Tree" is a strange mixture of long narrative, brief scenes, unsentimental gaze, and something that is nostalgic or can easily be viewed that way.

Frannie Nolan, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, is the protagonist of the novel.  She's somewhat isolated by her father's behavior and her mother's pride, but she's a great reader, a writer, and someone who likes to cast a very observant eye over everything, and everyone, around her.

She's very close to her father, who's a dreamy and charming man.  He works intermittently as a singing waiter.  He's an alcoholic and his health collapses before the end of the novel.  Frannie's mother is a super, responsible for cleaning the building in which they receive free rent.

After Frannie's dad passes away, the loss of his income forces Frannie's mom to make some hard choices.  She decides that she will send Frannie out to work instead of sending her to high school.  Frannie is crushed; she's a very good student and she longs to go to high school.  Katie, Frannie's mother, reasons that Frannie will succeed in finding a way to get education on her own.  She sends her son to high school knowing that his interest is very low and that if she doesn't make it easy for him, he won't start high school, and he won't acquire the education later in life.

In real life, the author, Betty Smith, did not attend high school but was permitted, as a courtesy, to attend some classes at the college where her husband was a faculty member.

I asked a friend if she thought that my book group would like this book and she said "yes - it's a very romantic book."  One definition of romantic, to me, is a world in which human beings are at the center of the world and their thoughts, actions and decisions matter very much.  Frannie decides to read all the books in the library, and when she gets done she starts all over again.  This probably has something to do with her success at the clipping agency where she reads faster than anyone else and is paid the most even though she lied about her age to get the job.  Frannie has a teacher who encourages her to write.  She has a grandmother who believes that education is important.

In a flashback to Frannie's birth, we learn that Frannie's mother, Katie, despaired of being able to care for her child.  She asked her mother, Mary, how she could she care for her child, and how their condition was improved from living in Germany where they'd been very poor but no poorer than they were now.  Mary replied that the chance to get an education made life in America better and that saving was the key to financial security.  Saving and education are themes in the story.

Finally, Frannie's alcoholic father is presented as a dreamer, a romantic and a loving father - more a victim of his own weakness and their circumstances than as a guilty party.

This book was quite popular in my book group, although there was one person from New York who felt that the depiction of Brooklyn was not accurate because there was no mention of the many social services available to the poor at that time.  I find myself wondering if accepting charity - and the judgment that may go with it - is especially un-romantic, and if that is why there's no mention of it in the book.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I loved this book.  It actually reminded me of Thomas Hardy (like Tess of the D'Urbervilles, there's a very important letter to a beloved that tragically gets very, very lost and, like Jude the Obscure, there's a tragedy that is devastating and, aside from the rising misery factor, seems to come out of the blue) in more than one way.  I also was deeply impressed by the way the author conveyed his love of medicine.

I like the idea of people loving their work.  That interests me.

There's a lot of tragedy and loss in this book, but there's also a lot of wonderful stuff like characters that are very romantic and noble and self-sacrificing.  Oh, I cried at the end!

Again, I read so much stuff about which I feel lukewarm, at best.  I'm just thrilled to have read something that I loved.

I read this book for a reading group, and while two of the others loved it as I did, one member of the group was very direct about the fact that she did not - she found it heavy.

Trying to think of what she means, exactly, reminds me that I was in another group where the topic veered off to other books and writers and someone brought up Maeve Binchy and another person said, impatiently, "Oh, her descriptions are too long - when I come to one of them I just skip it."  Wow, I said to myself.  I never thought of Binchy as a wordy writer.  I'm telling you, it's brutal out there with the readers who don't want their writers to offer them too many words!

What I'm Reading Now

For the moment, I've given up on everything but trying to finish Cutting for Stone which I love.  It has an operatic, John Steinbeck's East of Eden quality .. it is a bildungsroman/family saga, and its has a poetic and sensual view of medicine.  It makes medicine seem deeply exciting. 

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

This is a suspense novel, set in Denmark.  It was written by two Danish women who were already published authors in other genres, and, being friends, decided to work together to write this book.

The plot revolves around a three-year old Lithuanian boy who has been kidnapped - he's the boy in the suitcase.

Initially, one focus is on the boy's mother who was attacked by the kidnappers and who awakens in the hospital disoriented and unable to convince anyone that her child has been kidnapped.

The other thread of the narrative is on a nurse who works with abused women.  She finds the child in the suitcase, and her efforts to save this child form the other major thread of the narrative.

Eventually, we meet the couple who kidnapped the child and the two narratives merge in climax at a Danish home.

The reason for the child's kidnapping is horrific.

I liked this book because it was very well plotted and the characters, although not equally developed, did not seem flat.  It worked as a general novel as well as a suspense novel

It was easy to read and held my interest; I read it in one sitting.

5/11/14

My book group read this book and to my surprise, everyone liked it.  They really liked Nina.  And, we all agreed that the characterization was rich.  One thing several people mentioned was the fact that they kept feeling afraid for Nina and wanted to know why she just didn't go to the police?  and, what was she thinking, leaving a child in hot car?  The child could have died!  (One or two former nurses in my book group.)

I posited that Nina was feeling mistrustful of the "authorities" because of her inability to protect the Ukrainian girl who was picked up by her abuser at the Nina's workplace at the beginning of the novel. The man engaged in an sexual display that was designed to make Nina feel uncomfortable and helpless, which it did.  That was my explanation for why Nina didn't call the police.  But no one in my book group was persuaded by that explanation.

I really liked the book even more after hearing all of the others in my book group talk about how much they liked it.

The second book in the Nina Borg series is Invisible Murder; the third book in the series is Death of a Nightingale.

What I'm reading now

I have four books on my docket, and I wonder if I will get any of them read:

Sutton, by J.R. Moehringer, for a book group; Cutting for Stone, for a book group; Inferno by Dan Brown, and Five Days at Memorial:  Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital   by Sheri Fink.

For a book group, I recently read The Boy in the Suitcase, a suspense novel which I honestly enjoyed; I thought it was well-crafted.  

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

This book was another debut novel, one that was hugely popular in Britain and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.  The author, Rachel Joyce, wrote it while her father was dying and it's easy to see how the long walk of the protagonist, who believes that it will prevent his friend from dying until he can arrive to see her, was inspired by the deals and wishes we irrationally make when our loved ones are dying.

I did not finish this book, and perhaps I would have loved it if I had.  As it was, it seemed to me a strange combination of whimsy and despair.  I simply never felt really engaged; again, I thought the mild-mannered, hen-pecked husband who rebels by doing some eccentric is a cliche and while I felt that the novel obliquely raised serious issues like grief and mental illness it didn't seem to me to say anything new or profound - nothing that would gave me that sense of immediate recognition.