Quick post for mid-August...

I’m finished reading for the Silver Birch committee for the year, and was thrilled to be able to unfreeze the holds on some adult fiction library books that I’ve been waiting to read for quite a while.  When I checked out a few books yesterday, I noticed that the due date, which is in three weeks, is the day school starts.  What a cruel reminder that my days of leisurely reading are rapidly coming to a close! 

I recently read one adult book that I had on my shelves, Oyster, by Canadian author Marianne Ackerman.  This book is featured prominently on all the bookstore shelves, and I got a signed copy from the author when I was at the library conference in January.  I was a bit put off by the cover, but it was quite short, the exact length I needed to take a break before finishing reading my last committee books.  This book tells the story of Amelia Cameron, a once-bestselling author who is experiencing writer’s block.  When her father dies suddenly, Amelia heads from her home in Toronto to Prince Edward County, where she grew up and where her father lived until his fateful fall from the roof.  There she reconnects with both of her brothers, one she remains close to and the other somewhat estranged.  She also reconnects with her estranged niece, Ginny, and eventually her sister, who has been living in Africa running a volunteer program for years.  When Ginny tells her that she wants to be a writer and foists the outline of a novel on her to get her feedback, Amelia reluctantly accepts and reads the outline, providing feedback as requested.  The resulting novel, The World is Your Oyster, takes the publishing world by storm but could shake the very foundations of her relationship with Ginny and her long-time publisher and ex-boyfriend Barry.  Can the siblings figure out a way to get along?  Can Amelia and Ginny save their relationship?  Will Amelia ever write another novel?  This novel was interesting and very well-written, and I’m glad to have read it, but it didn’t WOW me.  The main problem I had with it was that I couldn’t decide what it was supposed to be about.  Was the main theme the writing process,  dealing with writer’s block and navigating the world of publishing?  Was it family relationships, sibling rivalry and dealing with the death of the last surviving parent?  Was it about finding a relationship and settling down?  It was maybe too short to deal with all of these themes (and more!), leaving each one a bit too under-explored:  they can all be in the same book, but it would need to be longer to delve into each theme thoroughly and satisfactorily (that’s just my opinion, but what do I know?!).  I think I would still recommend it, as Ackerman writes beautifully and thoughtfully, and there were moments in the novel that really stood out and made me think about life and family and the way the choices we make determine the direction our lives will take. 

That’s all for today.  Get outside and read a good book! 

Bye for now… Julie

Short post for early August...

This summer has been a whirlwind of activity so far, with friends’ and family BBQs hosted and a trip to Iceland, so this will be extra short, but I wanted to write about these books before I forgot them!  I read three books and a bunch of Silver Birch contenders in July. 

The first was The Lost House by Melissa Larsen, about a woman who, while she recovers from a surfing accident in California, goes to the small town in Iceland where her grandfather grew up to help solve the cold case of the murder of her grandmother and aunt, a mere infant at the time of her death.  Her grandfather fled to America, which was considered proof of his guilt, although there was no concrete evidence to support this.  But now Agnes returns to her ancestral home to join a true crime podcaster in order to find the truth and possibly clear her grandfather’s name.  This was a so-so thriller that could have been so much better, in my opinion, if the characters were more credible and if the story wasn’t so uneven in terms of flow.  A true crime podcaster looking into cold cases is a common plotline in many mystery-thrillers, and it had a great cast of characters as potential suspects, but I just couldn’t connect with Agnes and found her actions to be less-than-believable for most of the book.  Still, it was interesting, fast-paced and complex enough to keep me reading to the very end. 

The next book was Burial Rites by Australian author Hannah Kent, which was great!  This historical novel explores the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person executed in Iceland in 1828 for her role in the murder of two farm owners.  Orphaned at a young age, Agnes had been moved from one family and farm to another all her hard life, but, in her early 30s, she finally found a place where she thought she could be happy and loved. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned and here she finds herself, sent off to a family to await execution, since there were no prisons in Iceland in those days and it was too expensive to keep her in Denmark.  The way Kent imagines Agnes’ time with the family, and her interactions with the young priest who is sent to help prepare her to meet her death, make up a large part of the story, along with her life story and the events leading up to her arrest.  The archival documents interspersed throughout the book serve to remind readers that this is not a character in a book but a real person, making the story all the more poignant and moving.  This was Kent’s debut novel, based on the story she heard about this case while in Iceland as an exchange student, and it was well-written and well researched, keeping me glued to the page until I reached the heartbreaking conclusion.  I would highly recommend this novel. 

And the last book I read was The Blue Fox by award-winning Icelandic novelist Sjón.  This was the least straight-forward of the three books, and the only one written by an Icelandic author, but it was, in equal parts, interesting and strange.  One section of this slim novel tells of an elusive blue fox who leads a hunter on a transformative journey, while another tells of a naturalist who struggles to build a life for a young woman with Downs’ Syndrome whom he found on a shipwreck years before.  It was both a mystery and a fable, with magic realism thrown in, and I think I have to read it again to fully appreciate it, as it was very much outside my reading comfort zone.  I read it because I brought his next book, Red Milk, on my trip, although I never had the chance to read it, as I was too busy taking in the beauty of that amazing island.  I would recommend at least giving this award-winning author a try if you’re in the mood for a really thought-provoking, puzzling, transformative literary book that you can read in a couple of hours but that will stay with you for days. 

That’s all for now.  Back to reality and the rest of my Silver Birch reading before we make our final selections in a couple of weeks, so I may not have any books to write about for a while.  Keep reading and enjoy the rest of the summer! 

Bye for now… Julie