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204. The Girls

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Author:   Emma Cline

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Crime

355 pages, published June 14, 2016

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Girls takes place in Northern California during the tumultuous latter part of the 1960s.   Protaganist Evie Boyd, a young teenager at loose ends after her parents’ divorce is whose desperate need for acceptance draws her to a group of girls and their charismatic leader who entice her into their cult.  Things start to unravel and Evie comes close to committing heinous violence, ala Manson Family style.

Quotes 

“That was part of being a girl–you were resigned to whatever feedback you’d get. If you got mad, you were crazy, and if you didn’t react, you were a bitch. The only thing you could do was smile from the corner they’d backed you into. Implicate yourself in the joke even if the joke was always on you.”

 

“Poor Sasha. Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of live. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get. The treacled pop songs, the dresses described in the catalogs with words like ‘sunset’ and ‘Paris.’ Then the dreams are taken away with such violent force; the hand wrenching the buttons of the jeans, nobody looking at the man shouting at his girlfriend on the bus.”

 

“Girls are the only ones who can really give each other close attention, the kind we equate with being loved. They noticed what we want noticed.”

 

“I should have known that when men warn you to be careful, often they are warning you of the dark movie playing across their own brains. Some violent daydream prompting their guilty exhortations to ‘make it home safe.”

 

“At that age, I was, first and foremost, a thing to be judged, and that shifted the power in every interaction onto the other person.”

 

“I waited to be told what was good about me. […] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”

 

 “I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.”

 

My Take

The Girls is an intriguing, but very disturbing, book.  It explores how young teenager Evie Boyd gets sucked into a cult because Suzanne, one of the older members, notices her and gives her attention.  It also shows how easy it is for our innate sense of right and wrong to blur so much that we justify monstrous actions.  As the parent of a sixteen year old girl, my takeaway from this book is to love my daughter unconditionally, be interested in her life and know who her friends are and how she spends her time.

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197. Days Without End

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Sebastian Barry

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, Western

259 pages, published January 24, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

 

Summary

Days Without End is a western set in the middle of the 1800’s, during the American Indian and Civil Wars.  It is narrated by seventeen year old Thomas McNulty who fled Ireland’s Great Famine for a better life in America.  Thomas, along with his best friend and lover John Cole, joins the U.S. Army in the 1850s.  The men witness repeated cruelties, but rely on each other for love and create a family with a young Sioux girl.

 

Quotes 

“Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now.”

 

“There’s no soldier don’t have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that’s just a fact. Maybe only on account of him being alive in the same place and the same time and we are all just customers of the same three-card trickster.”

 

“A man’s memory might have only a hundred clear days in it and he has lived thousands. Can’t do much about that. We have our store of days and we spend them like forgetful drunkards.”

 

“Things that give you heart are rare enough, better note them in your head when you find them and not forget.”

 

“Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don’t care about that. World is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing going on but chicory drinking and whisky and cards.”

 

“It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you and your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.”

 

“The men hunched around, talking with the gaiety of souls about to eat plentifully, with the empty dark country about us, and the strange fabric of frost and frozen wind falling on our shoulders, and the great black sky of stars above us like a huge tray of gems and diamonds.”

 

“Gods work! Silence so great it hurts your ears, colour so bright it hurts your staring eyes. A vicious ruined class of man could cry at such scenes because it seems to tell him that his life is not approved. The remnant of innocence burns in his breast like a ember of the very sun.”

 

My Take

While I am typically not a big fan of the Western genre, I did really enjoy Days Without End which received numerous accolades:  Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist, Costa Book Award for Novel, Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction, Walter Scott Prize, Costa Book of the Year and HWA Endeavour Ink Gold Crown Nominee for Longlist.  While Barry vividly captures the rough and tumble of war time America in the middle of the 19th Century, the compelling part of his story are the characters of Thomas McNulty and John Cole who start a relationship when they are both hired to dress up as women and dance with miners.  As the story progresses, the reader is impressed with their fundamental decency during an indecent time and their affection for each other and the Indian girl they save and adopt.  Recommended.

 

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193. The Last Tudor

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Philippa Gregory

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

528 pages, published August 8, 2017

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

The Last Tudor tells the stories of three Grey sisters:  Jane, Katherine and Mary.  The great-granddaughter of Henry VII through his younger daughter Mary Tudor, Jane was a first cousin once removed of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s only male heir who was King of England and Ireland in 1547.  When Edward VI died at 15 years old, Jane served as queen of England for nine days after Edward VI wrote in his will that his successor should be Jane, partly because his half-sister Mary was Roman Catholic while Jane was Protestant and would support the religion whose foundation Edward claimed to have laid.  Edward’s will named his half-sisters Mary (daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) and Elizabeth (daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boelyn) as illegitimate and removed them from succession.  When the country’s allegiance switched to Mary, Jane was tried for treason and beheaded.  Jane’s sister Katherine Grey was the beauty of the family who earned the lifelong hatred of her cousin Elizabeth I when she married Edward Seymour for love.  Under four feet tall, the third sister Mary Grey was an extraordinary little person known as a dwarf in Tudor times, who defied Elizabeth to marry the tallest man at court in her own secret love match.

 

Quotes 

“You don’t get to be a favorite at a tyrant’s court without beheading your principles every day.”

 

My Take

Philippa Gregory, master storyteller and premier writer of historical fiction, has once again woven a fascinating tale that continues the stories of Elizabeth and Mary, the two daughters of Henry VIII.  In The Last Tudor, we get a different view of Elizabeth I who is portrayed as a tyrant who was constantly worried about losing her throne, especially to Mary Queen of Scots, and who was vindictively jealous of her prettier and happier cousin Katherine Grey.  As with all Philippa Gregory novels that I have read during my quest (The Queen’s Fool, The Taming of the Queen, The Kingmakers Daughter) I thoroughly enjoyed the rich details of the period and the compelling character studies of historical figures.

 

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184. The Remains of the Day

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Kazuo Ishiguro

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

258 pages, published September 12, 1990

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Hoopla

 

Summary

The Remains of the Day is a compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect English butler and of the changing landscape in England after World War II.   After devoting more than 30 years of his life to service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a drive through the English countryside to reconnect with Miss Kenton, who served for a period as the Housekeeper at Darlington and who was the closest thing to a romantic relationship for Stevens during his life.  As Stevens’ story slowly unfolds, a life of blind dedication, missed opportunities and chances not taken is revealed and we are left with the portrait of a tragic man who missed out on a bigger life.

Quotes 

“What can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished? The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one’s life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.”

 

“If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

 

“The evening’s the best part of the day. You’ve done your day’s work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.”

 

“But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of ‘turning points’, one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.”

 

“He chose a certain path in life, it proved to be a misguided one, but there, he chose it, he can say that at least. As for myself, I cannot even claim that. You see, I trusted. I trusted in his lorship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?”

 

“What do you think dignity’s all about?’  The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. ‘It’s rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,’ I said. ‘But I suspect it comes down to not removing one’s clothing in public.”

 

“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”

 

“But that doesn’t mean to say, of course, there aren’t occasions now and then – extremely desolate occasions – when you think to yourself: ‘What a terrible mistake I’ve made with my life.’ And you get to thinking about a different life, a better life you might have had. For instance, I get to thinking about a life I may have had with you, Mr. Stevens. And I suppose that’s when I get angry about some trivial little thing and leave. But each time I do, I realize before long – my rightful place is with my husband. After all, there’s no turning back the clock now. One can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been. One should realize one has as good as most, perhaps better, and be grateful.”

 

“It is sometimes said that butlers only truly exist in England. Other countries, whatever title is actually used, have only manservants. I tend to believe this is true. Continentals are unable to be butlers because they are as a breed incapable of the emotional restraint which only the English race are capable of. Continentals – and by and large the Celts, as you will no doubt agree – are as a rule unable to control themselves in moments of a strong emotion, and are thus unable to maintain a professional demeanour other than in the least challenging of situations. If I may return to my earlier metaphor – you will excuse my putting it so coarsely – they are like a man who will, at the slightest provocation, tear off his suit and his shirt and run about screaming. In a word, “dignity” is beyond such persons. We English have an important advantage over foreigners in this respect and it is for this reason that when you think of a great butler, he is bound, almost by definition, to be an Englishman.”

 

“The rest of my life stretches out as an emptiness before me.”

 

My Take

I saw the excellent film version of The Remains of the Day in 1993 when it was first released and was struck by how sad it was that the protagonist Stevens never dared to take even a small risk in the service of emotional connection with another human being.  The book version, which won the Man Booker Prize in 1989, is just as good and provides even greater insight into this emotionally stunted man.  It also provides a compelling portrait of post World War II England and how the class system is still alive and well, but changing fast.  The Remains of the Day is a powerful reminder that you need to live now and connect with your fellow human beings on a deep and personal level so that you don’t get to the end of your life and regret all the chances not taken.

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183. The Railwayman’s Wife

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Ashley Hay

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction

288 pages, published April 5, 2016

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Set in post World War II 1948 in the small Australian town of Thirroul, The Railwayman’s Wife follows the intersecting lives of three individuals.  Anikka Lachlan is a widow who is left to raise her daughter alone when her husband Mac is killed in a railway accident.  Roy McKinnon is a poet who has lost hope after the war, but finds poetry again when he falls for Anikka.  Frank Draper is a doctor who is weighed down by guilt of those he couldn’t save.

 

Quotes 

“There’s some comfort in seeing things go on; birds keep singing, buses keep running. But if you want those things to continue, perhaps you have to accept that the other kinds of things, unhappier, even horrific ones, will continue too. And that’s harder.”

 

“The oceans and the skies…and the sun coming up each new day. That’s all there is, I think. That’s all that matters to think on.”

 

“That is marriage, he thought, remaking yourself in someone else’s image. And who knew where the truth of it began or would end?”

 

“Such fascinating things, libraries.  She closes her eyes.  She could walk inside and step into a murder, a love story, a complete account of somebody else’s life, or mutiny on the high seas. Such potential; such adventure—there’s a shimmer of malfeasance in trying other ways of being.”

 

“How would you start to write a poem? How would you put together a series of words for its first line—how would you know which words to choose? When you read a poem, every word seemed so perfect that it had to have been predestined—well, a good poem.”

 

My Take

The Railwayman’s Wife is a beautifully written, poetic novel about loss, grief, and trying to move on with your life by Australian writer Ashley Hay.  The part of the novel that I enjoyed the most was a lovely and enchanting poem entitled “Lost World” which was specifically written for this book by Australian poet Stephen Edgar.  I’ve tried in vain to find it on-line so that I could post it with this review.  If you want to check it out, you will just have to read this recommended book.

 

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180. Brooklyn

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Colm Tóibín

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance

288 pages, published September 8, 2015

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis (pronounced eye-liss) Lacey, a young woman who travels from a small town in Ireland to Brooklyn, New York in the years following World War II.  Eilis leaves behind her mother and her beloved sister Rose (her brothers had already left for England after their father died) when she is sponsored by an Irish priest from Brooklyn to live in the United States.  We follow Eilis as she makes her way in a transatlantic crossing on a ocean liner, lives in a boarding house with other young women, gets a job in a department store, takes accounting classes and falls in love with Tony, a sweet boy from a big Italian family.  When Eilis must return to Ireland in response to a family crisis, she is forced to choose between her comfortable life over there and her new, challenging life in America.

 

Quotes 

“What she would need to do in the days before she left and on the morning of her departure was smile, so that they would remember her smiling.”

 

“She thought it was strange that the mere sensation of savouring the prospect of something could make her think for a while that is must be the prospect of home.”

 

“Carefully, she went back up the stairs and found that if she moved along the first landing she would be able to see him from above. Somehow, she thought, if she could look at him, take him in clearly when he was not trying to amuse her or impress her, something would come to her, some knowledge, or some ability to make a decision.”

 

“She felt almost guilty that she had handed some of her grief to him, and then she felt close to him for his willingness to take it and hold it, in all its rawness, all its dark confusion.”

 

“Some people are nice and if you talk to them properly, they can be even nicer.”

 

“We keep our prices low and our manners high.”

 

“What she loved most about America, Eilis thought on these mornings, was how the heating was kept on all night.”

 

“She has gone back to Brooklyn,’ her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.”

 

My Take

At the beginning of 2016, I saw the movie version of Brooklyn and was enchanted by the simple, sweet tale of a young Irish woman who must choose between a new, challenging life in the United States and her life in Ireland which was comfortable, but with less opportunity and adventure.  After finishing the book, I can report that it is just as good as the movie.  Sometimes, a simple story that is well told can be the satisfying read.  That was the case here and I recommend you check out both the book and movie.

 

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176. Rules of Civility

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:   Amor Towles

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

335 pages, published July 26, 2011

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

On the last night of 1937, boarding house roommates and friends Katey Kontent and Eve Ross are at a Greenwich Village jazz bar when they meet Tinker Grey, a handsome banker with blue eyes and a winning smile. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a yearlong journey from her work as a law firm secretary to  pool to the upper echelons of New York society and the executive suites of Condé Nast. Katey experiences a world of wealth firsthand and discovers that there is often more to things and people than first meets the eye.

 

Quotes 

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”

 

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice.”

 

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane–in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath–she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”

 

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion….if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to me.”

 

“Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.”

 

“The principle here is that a new generation owes a measure of thanks to every member of the previous generation. Our elders planted fields and fought in wars; they advanced the arts and sciences, and generally made sacrifices on our behalf. So by their efforts, however humble, they have earned a measure of our gratitude and respect.”

 

“For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.”

 

“Slurring is the cursive of speech…”

 

“Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.”                                     

 

“Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you – that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets – from having made choices with …. such poise and purpose.”

 

“—I probably shouldn’t tell you this, I said.

—Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.”

 

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”

 

“For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.”

 

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You’ve carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are – cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”

 

“Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people’s vacations?”

 

“For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise – that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.”

 

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us…then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.”

 

“…be careful when choosing what you’re proud of–because the world has every intention of using it against you.”

 

“That’s the problem with living in New York. You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

 

My Take

Published in 2011, Rules of Civility won The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) Fiction Book of the Year award.   After reading it, I can understand why.  While the plot meanders all over the place, you cannot help but be impressed by the quality of Amor Towles’ writing.  Just look at the quotes I pulled out.  The man knows how to write.  I didn’t like Rules of Civility as much as his recent A Gentlemen in Moscow (which garnered a rare five stars from me), but I still really enjoyed it and can wholeheartedly recommend it.

 

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170. The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆

Recommended by:   Heather Bohart

Author:   Jennifer Ryan

Genre:  Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II

371 pages, published February 14, 2017

Reading Format:  E-Book on Overdrive

 

Summary

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir is set during the early days of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet II in the bucolic village of Chilbury, England.  With many of the village men off to war, the ladies who remain in the village decide to ‘carry on singing’ as part of the “The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.”  As they do, the war rages around them as Dunkirk is evacuated and the German drop bombs on their village.  The ladies suffer more than their share of loss.  However, they keep hope alive and life goes on with romances, intrigue and a bizarre and hilarious switched at birth story.

 

Quotes 

“Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice.”

 

“I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have.”

 

“And I realized that this is what it’s like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion.”

 

 

“…we spoke about dying. [Prim] told me how she’d nearly died of malaria. She said that she didn’t mind the thought of death. That realizing you’re going to die actually makes life better as it’s only then that you decide to live the life you really want to live.”

 

Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it.”

 

“If we don’t think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live?”

 

My Take

During my thousand book quest, I have read a lot of books that take place during World War II (The Nightingale, The Girl You Left Behind, Life After Life, Going Solo, A God in Ruins, The End of the Affair, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Zookeeper’s Wife ) and for the most part, I have really enjoyed them.  The world at war, with the potential of a complete takeover by the Nazis, automatically raises the stakes in any book.  In a similar fashion to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir gives us the perspective of the British home front when invasion by the Germans felt imminent.  Jennifer Ryan is a skilled writer, creating a world that is easy to inhabit and characters that you want to get to know better.

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167. Sweet Tooth

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Ian McEwan

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction

378 pages, published November 13, 2012

Reading Format:  Audio Book

 

Summary

In 1972, Cambridge student Serena Frome’s beauty, intelligence and staunch anti-Communism make her an ideal recruit for the UK’s intelligence service MI5.  Once there, Serena becomes a part of operation “Sweet Tooth,” the intelligence agency’s efforts to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government.

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, recruits Tom Haley, a promising young writer and they begin a tempestuous love affair.   With Serena fearing that Tom will discover her role in his financing, Sweet Tooth finishes with an unexpected twist.

 

Quotes 

“Love doesn’t grow at a steady rate, but advances in surges, bolts, wild leaps, and this was one of those.”

 

“There was, in my view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honour. No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on an authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual. This was a contract founded on mutual trust.”

 

“By degrees, he joins that sorry legion of passive men who abandon their children in order to placate their second wives.”

 

“Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience.”

 

“My needs were simple.   I didn’t bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them. Generally, I preferred people to be falling in and out of love, but I didn’t mind so much if they tried their hand at something else. It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say ‘Marry me’ by the end.”

 

“I was irritated by the way he conflated his own shifting needs with an impersonal destiny. I want it, therefore…it’s in the stars!”

 

“And feeling clever, I’ve always thought, is just a sigh away from being cheerful.”

 

“What I took to be the norm — taut, smooth, supple — was the transient special case of youth. To me, the old were a separate species, like sparrows or foxes.”

 

“Four or five years – nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.”

 

“Everyone knew as much as they needed to know to be happy.”

 

“Here were the luxury and priviledge of the well-fed man scoffing at all hopes and progress for the rest. [He] owed nothing to a world that nurtured him kindly, liberally educated him for free, sent him to no wars, brought him to manhood without scary rituals or famine or fear of vengeful gods, embraced him with a handsome pension in his twenties and placed no limits on his freedom of expression. This was an easy nihilism that never doubted that all we had made was rotten, never thought to pose alternatives, never derived hope from friendship, love, free markets, industry, technology, trade, and all the arts and sciences.”

 

My Take

Having previously read Atonement, Amsterdam, On Chesil Beach, The Children Act, Saturday and Nutshell, I am a big fan of the brilliant English writer Ian McEwan.  While not his best work, Sweet Tooth is still a very interesting book with a compelling female lead character (Serena Frome) who delivers an inside look at the Cold War mentality in Britain during the early 1970’s.  McEwan also has a lot to say about the pleasures and purposes of reading (something I can relate to) and some fascinating asides on logical math problems.

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162. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Jamie Ford

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Fiction, Romance, World War II

290 pages, published January 27, 2009

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is set in World War II era Seattle and tells the story of two star-crossed lovers (well actually friends who love each other):  Henry Lee, a 13 year old Chinese kid whose father is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American , and Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American girl whose parents are proud to be American but are becoming increasingly worried after war breaks out with Japan.  Both Henry and Keiko are “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary school where the two outcasts find each other while working together in the school cafeteria.  When the internment of American-Japanese families begins, Henry and Keiko are torn apart.  Fate separates them until forty years later, when newly widowed Henry contemplates finding his first true love.

 

Quotes 

“The hardest choices in life aren’t between what’s right and what’s wrong but between what’s right and what’s best.”

 

“He’d do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”

 

“Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much.”

 

“I had my chance.’ He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. ‘I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”

 

“But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it’s how you spend your time on the way down that counts.”

 

“I try not to live in the past, he thought, but who knows, sometimes the past lives in me.”

 

“The waitress brought a fresh pot of tea, and Marty refilled his father’s cup and poured a cup for Samantha. Henry in turn filled Marty’s. It was a tradition Henry cherished—never filling your own cup, always filling that of someone else, who would return the favor.”

 

My Take

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a quick and enjoyable read that does a fine job of demonstrating the staggering impact of the World War II internment on the Japanese families who were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and lives.  The characters are engaging and provide a sweet lens through which to view a historical atrocity.

 

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