Monday, December 26, 2022

Back To the Garden: A Standalone Thriller by Laurie R. King

This is the third novel by Laurie R. King that I am reviewing.   The other two were Dreaming Spies and Island of the Mad which are books in King's Mary Russell series.  The reviews are at the hyperlinked titles.   The genre of Back to the Garden  may be best described as contemporary/historical thriller, but the historical scenes don't feel very historical to me since they took place during my lifetime.  Yet there may be readers of this review who weren't born yet during the 1970's.   So whether a period feels historical can be very subjective.

                             

 

Bones had been found underneath a three headed triple Goddess statue by a fictional artist named Miriam Gaddo, who is supposed to have worked with the real artist, Judy Chicago .  Gaddo is referred to in the book and the investigating officer has a conversation with her, but she can't be said to be a major character in Back to the Garden.

The identification of the bones continues to be an ongoing issue because the lab that is doing the identification is behind in its work.  

There are numerous local missing women and it's assumed by law enforcement that the bones may be one of these women.  When the bones are finally identified, it really is a shocker.  The book changed for me.

The story line led us "down the garden path", so to speak.  When we find out the truth, the entire focus of Back to the Garden changed.  There is a suspenseful climactic scene at the end.

There could conceivably be future books involving Raquel Laing, who was investigating this case, but I was glad to know that Laurie R. King is working on a new novel in the Mary Russell series.  I will look forward to it.

                         

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Crooked Little Pieces Book Two: The Lives of Two Sisters Continue

This is the review of the sequel to Crooked Little Pieces Book One.  I posted the review of the first volume here

I received this book from the author Sophia Lambton, who is also the publisher.  She founded Crepuscular Press in order to release her work.

 I learned that crepuscular means like the twilight.  Twilight often refers to when the sun is sinking and the light is fading, but it isn't completely dark yet.  It has a liminal status, which is about being betwixt and between. 

                                

                            

   The two sisters, Isabel and Anneliese, find themselves in careers which are compatible for them.  Although Isabel has a tragic loss and considers her career temporary, Anneliese has incredible good fortune.                                  
Isabel is teaching music at the girls' school that she and her sister attended.  One of the students came to England with her mother illegally.  The school wants to keep this student safe. Her name is Margot. She speaks German.  Isabel is expected to teach her English. In class, Isabel repeated what she said in English in German for Margot.  She also arranged to teach her English on Tuesdays and Thursdays during lunch.  Isabel revealed that she once spoke German herself, and her sister spoke their father's language, Dutch.  To show the similarity of the languages, Isabel had Georgia, who spoke Dutch, speak some Dutch to Margot.  Margot understood some Dutch.  Isabel asked Georgia to make sure Margot wasn't all alone in school.

Isabel was having the students try to define what is modern in music.  She asked if something was modern because Beethoven never composed that sort of music.  She also asked if they were living in a darker age because there had been two world wars.

An old man who was one of Anneliese's patients griped about being picked on for being left handed. (Me-I'm left handed myself and have never been picked on for it.  I think that was still happening in my mother's generation, but it stopped in my generation.)

We learn that the girls' school was going to have a new headmaster instead of new headmistress.  Isabel was upset that the new headmaster is Jewish.  Anneliese is no angel either.  She stole transcripts from the library  because she didn't have the time to make her own copies of the transcripts.

I assume that the author is showing that the sisters are flawed to humanize them.   It seems to me that Isabel can be humanized without offending a segment of the audience.

This book ends with Benjamin asking Anneliese to accompany him on a housecall on a nine year old suffering from schizophrenia.  We don't learn anything further.

I would have ended it with the school's change from headmistress to headmaster.  It would have seemed more like a stopping point.  Ending with an invitation to join a housecall seems rather abrupt.

Despite this second volume's flaws, I'm going to give this book four stars on Goodreads.   I'm hoping to like the next book better.


                                 



 


                                    

                                                                         

 

                                    


Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Crooked Little Pieces : Book One in a Series

 I was asked to read  Sophia Lambton's novel,  Crooked Little Pieces, by the author who had seen my reviews on this blog.  This is the first book in a series which explains why it's not as resolved as a standalone novel would be.

                                   

 

The protagonists are the sisters Isabel and Anneliese who were born six days apart.  I expected to like Isabel because she is a musician, but the focus wanders away from music. I confess that I found her problematic because I am a feminist.  Isabel's perspective is troubling for feminists.  In addition, Isabel is antisemitic which I find offensive.

 Anneliese's scholarly view is more to my taste. She is also more confident  than Isabel.  Isabel is incredibly lucky to have Anneliese as a sister.  Anneliese's support is crucial for Isabel at some points in the narrative.                                   

Although the prologue takes place in 1968, the first chapter opens in the 1920's when the girls were six.  The novel ends in the WW II era. I expect that the second book will continue with this WWII progression.

Friday, September 30, 2022

Paths For The Divergent

A curandera was mentioned in my recent review of  the mystery Shutter which centered on a Navajo woman photographer. (See my review of  Shutter here .)  I am now reviewing a book in which a curandera is a major point of view character.  The title is Witches and the author is Brenda Lozano. 

                           


                                                                                                          

It seems to me that Witches is a somewhat misleading title.   Curanderas are more specialized than witches.  Witches may perform all sorts of magic.  The magic of a curandera is focused on healing.  She also practices a particular Mexican tradition of healing that may have similarities to magical healing practices in other cultures, yet there are also important differences.  I have never believed in erasing unique aspects that occur in the variety of cultures on our planet.  We can then lose wisdom, and are poorer because of it.

Wisdom is not the same as what we learn in school.  I believe that the characters of  Witches demonstrate that this is true.  Yet there is value in schooling. Literacy can broaden your knowledge of cultures other than your own.  The amazingly gifted healer Feliciana was illiterate.  She learned about peoples from outside Mexico when they traveled to meet her.  This normally wouldn't have happened to a woman who grew up in Feliciana's village.  She would have been quite culturally isolated.

If the village had been less isolated, another divergent character could have found connections with others who were like her.   Paloma was born with the name Gaspar and was raised as a male in a family tradition of men who were curanderos.  Curanderos are paranormal healers.   Over time Gaspar began to exhibit the female traits that were natural to her.  She was attacked for becoming who she was meant to be.  In Mexico she was considered a muxe, which is a third gender.  She called herself Paloma.  Few people in this village could accept Paloma, even though Paloma was the one who taught Feliciana who  became a powerful curandera. 

We learn that Feliciana and her sister Francisca first began to eat the hallucinogenic mushrooms that were tools for healing because there wasn't enough food.  It's sad that a family that had been healers for generations were so impoverished.

In the next generation of what had been a family of curanderos and curanderas, the divergent one was Leandra.  Leandra was a rebel who started fires and was kicked out of schools.   She told her sister Zoe that she had gotten married to a girl.  She asked Zoe not to tell their parents because she hadn't invited them to the wedding.  I suspect her parents wouldn't have come if they had been invited.  Leandra doesn't seem to have any awareness of the existence of homophobia.  

Professionally, Leandra wanted to be an art photographer whose work is exhibited in galleries.  The first time this happened, Leandra had three photos chosen for a group show.  Leandra's work attracted the interest of a collector who specialized in Latin American woman artists.

I liked this book dealing with unconventional people very much and decided to give it a B+ which is four stars on Goodreads. 

Monday, September 12, 2022

Female Navajo Photographer Protagonist in a Mystery

 In order to make sure I would get a mystery read in September, I got one picked out even before I'd arrived at the halfway point. It was Shutter by Ramona Emerson.  The copy I'm reviewing is a library book.  The protagonist is a photographer which isn't all that unusual.  I've reviewed several books with photographer protagonists -- most recently Michael Angelo & the Stone Mistress by Steve Moretti.  Yet this is my first female Navajo photographer protagonist. 

                                      

                                                                                       

As the book opens, Navajo Rita Todacheene is a forensic photographer.  This means that she photographs crime scenes. Yet she also sees spirits which isn't a trait that would be considered compatible with professionalism in most work environments.  Needless to say, Rita must be careful not to reveal her paranormal gift  to officers in the Albuquerque PD. 

Being paranormally gifted, isn't the only way that Rita's job is problematic. I also knew that the Navajo avoid mentioning the dead or even the names of dead relatives.  So it seemed to me that Rita's job was extremely incompatible with her culture. 

The issue of the Navajo belief that the spirits of the dead (called "chindi" in mysteries by Tony Hillerman) could contaminate them, arose when Grandma took Rita to a church where ghosts were lingering.  I wondered why Navajo spirits of the dead would linger if they believed they were contaminating people that they loved.  Her grandfather's spirit worried that inimical spirits could make Rita crazy.

 I was interested in the fact that Rita's neighbor was evidently a curandera.  Curandismo is a a Mexican healing tradition. She rubbed Rita with an egg, then she cracked the egg into a glass of water and told Rita to put the egg in the glass of water under her bed.  "Whoever has their eye on you will let you go," said the curandera.  There were also jars to put in each corner of the room.  Rita thought it was superstition.  I think that Rita's lack of belief in the measures that Rita's neighbor was taking to protect Rita would undermine their efficacy.

<Spoilers--

 

Rita learned Police Lieutenant Garcia was behind most of the local distribution of meth. This was a major revelation.  I wondered if Garcia did that because Latinos were being discriminated against when it came to advancement in the police department.  

 

End spoilers.>


It was mentioned in this book that Saint Veronica is the patron saint of photography.  Since I had never heard this before, I looked for a confirming link.  I found it at St. Veronica which links to a page about this saint's connection to photography.  Since Rita doesn't seem to be a devout Catholic, I didn't think that St. Veronica would have been significant for Rita.

There is a positive resolution to the book from a law enforcement perspective.  I decided to give Shutter a B+.

 

 


  

                            

Sunday, May 8, 2022

Cleopatra's Dagger: A Journalist in New York in 1880

Since the last book I reviewed on this blog also had a journalist protagonist, readers will get the idea that I like journalists.  They'd be right.  I count ten previous reviews of books with journalist protagonists on this blog, and seven more on my other blog.  I identify with journalist protagonists because I once wanted to be a reporter.  I got no further toward that goal than writing for school newspapers, but that was some time ago. 

 I received a copy of Cleopatra's Dagger by Carole Lawrence from a publicist back in January.  Many apologies for the delay.  I got behind with my reviews this year.  With this review, I expect to be caught up.

                                          

 

 My reviews are based on voluminous notes from my book journal on every book I read.  So I very much related to what the protagonist, Elizabeth, had to say about her process. "The very act of putting her impressions down on paper helped her to understand what she thought and felt."

Elizabeth's editor warned her not to trust the police.  He told her about the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1874 in which the police beat peaceful protestors with clubs.  I considered this indicative of the period and what it was like.  I am going to reproduce an illustration from the Wikipedia page devoted to this riot below.

                                     

 

Elizabeth's family seemed to be rather well off , belonging to the late 19th century equivalent of the aristocracy of New York. Her father was concerned that being a crime reporter was an improper occupation for his daughter.  I really liked Elizabeth's response.  "I'm not certain it's a proper occupation for anyone...[but] I am determined it will not be closed to women."  

According to the blog Women's Views on News ,  the 1880 U.S. Census recorded 288 women journalists but that their stories were much like Elizabeth's assignment to report on Mrs. Astor's garden party in this novel.  Elizabeth's articles for The New York Herald on killings would have been very atypical for the period.  Yet my favorite real woman journalist, Nellie Bly, was also working during this period and she sure wasn't writing about garden parties.  See the section in the Wikipedia article on Nellie Bly about her career. I'm glad to see a fictional equivalent of Nellie Bly in this novel. 

Elizabeth became a crime reporter when she discovered a body wrapped as a mummy on a walk, and insisted on covering the story. She convinced the detective in charge of the case that if the photo of the body was put on the front page of The New York Herald, they would find someone to identify the corpse more quickly.

When a second body was found in the East River, Elizabeth was summoned to the scene via telegram.  Detective Inspector Thomas Byrnes described her jewelry and how she was dressed.  Elizabeth said it sounded like this victim was dressed like the Egyptian water goddess, Anuket.  There was an ankh on a leather thong hanging on her neck.  I'm afraid I couldn't resist adding "Ankh if you love Anuket!" in my notes. One of the policemen who responded recognized this second victim as a prostitute named Mary Mullins.

When the mystery was resolved, it seemed anti-climactic to me. I gave the book a B.

                        


Saturday, March 5, 2022

The Choice : A Journalist Heroine in a Jewish Romance

 I haven't been posting much to Flying High Reviews  because the strong female protagonists that are my focus in this blog tend to be few and far between.   In fact, all the books I've reviewed so far in 2022 were fiction with male protagonists or were non-fiction.  So I've reviewed them on my general blog Shomeret: Masked Reviewer or posted about them more briefly on Goodreads.    Author Maggie Anton sent me an advance copy of The Choice for review.

                                        


The Choice takes place in the 1950's.  The attitudes were quite different from contemporary mores.  That's why the main female character, Hannah Eisen, was being scandalous when she removed her gloves in a man's presence. 

Back in 2014, I participated in a blog tour for  Anton's novel Enchantress.  That blog tour post included an interview with the author.  It was the last time I reviewed a novel by Maggie Anton on this blog. You can find what I had to say about Enchantress here

Apparently, Maggie Anton found it necessary to mention in her Author's Note for The Choice that she didn't get permission from the Potok estate.  Chaim Potok's The Chosen is very far in my rear view mirror.   So the issue of similarity between the two titles didn't occur to me when I was reading The Choice.  I also found more than a hundred and fifty books using The Choice as a title on Goodreads. It's really pretty generic.

The male protagonist, Rabbi Nathan Mandel, discovered that women had been emigrating to what was then Palestine for 900 years.  He also learned that 900 years ago women were counted as part of the minimum number for a prayer service (known as a minyan), and that they read aloud from the Torah in synagogues.  Since Orthodox Jews like Rabbi Mandel don't currently count women for a minyan or allow women to read aloud from the Torah during a prayer service, this was an amazing discovery for him.  I also thought this was an important revelation about the historical status of women within Judaism. 

I looked up why women aren't allowed to read aloud from the Torah by the Orthodox, and found a link to Jewish Answers which said women reading aloud from the Torah implied that there were no men present who were capable of reading aloud from  the Torah.  It would be a disgrace to the men of that congregation.  You see, men are religiously obligated to read from and teach Torah.  Women aren't. 

There is discussion of child sexual abuse in the Orthodox community in The Choice.  It dealt with someone who was molesting boys in Orthodox  Jewish schools.  We learn that this wasn't just a current problem.  One Lubavitcher Rebbe  had been sexually abused by a mentor beginning in his boyhood and continuing long-term until he got married.  That rebbe had become a patient of Sigmund Freud to deal with his trauma.

Hannah, who was a journalist, had written an article about a molester at the ultra-Orthodox girls' school which had been suppressed.  She showed her article to Nathan telling him that an Orthodox clinical psychologist that they knew, who was faced with all these current sexual abuse victims, would find it interesting.  Hannah later wrote an article about the same molester abusing Orthodox boys.  Her editor didn't want to publish it, but he did want to circulate it because it included the information about the Jewish clinical psychologist who could help survivors of abuse.  He had agreed to have his name mentioned in the article.

The relationship between Hannah and Nathan began with Nathan secretly teaching Talmud to Hannah.  Teaching women Talmud wasn't allowed by Jewish law.  Nathan compared his teaching her Talmud to the activities of  19th century anti-slavery abolitionists.  I thought that this implied that Nathan believed women should be taught Talmud and that one day it would be permitted.

Hannah's mother asked if Nathan and his father had been at the 1949 Peekskill Riots.  They had been there.  Racists protesting a Paul Robeson concert had started the violent disturbance.  I looked up the Peekskill riots and found a Wikipedia article here.  I also found some reminiscences about his 1949 Peekskilll experiences by Howard Fast here . They were quite intense.  

An important issue for Hannah and other Orthodox women was filthy poorly maintained mikvahs.  These are Jewish ritual bathing facilities.  Women were expected to visit mikvahs for purification after menstruation, and before intimacy with their husbands.  The condition of many mikvahs contravened their purpose.  

According to this novel, Columbia University accepted money from the Communist Party to establish a chair for Russian Studies.  When I did a search on the establishment of Russian Studies at Columbia University, I found a statement from  Columbia's Department of Slavonic Languages that the Russian Institute was established at Columbia University due to a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1946. So either The Choice was taking place in an alternate universe, or the novel was very mistaken about the source of funding for the Russian Institute. 

I wasn't mistaken in my impression that a relationship between the male and female protagonists was central to The Choice. I will allow readers to find out the specifics of how their relationship grew, and what it became.