Storymusing: Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time by Tracy Higley

 

Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time

by Tracy Higley

Kelsey is running the Chestnut Street Book Emporium for her “Gran,” who is actually her adoptive grandmother. She doesn’t know who her parents were at all. But Gran has had a stroke and is now living in assisted living.

Unfortunately, a developer and the city itself are breathing down Kelsey’s neck to get Gran to sell. There’s a big luxury hotel going in next door and the developer wants the property. The city is after her for back taxes as well. She either has to commit to paying a chunk of the back taxes and doing installment payments or they’ll seize the property and auction it off. Can she commit to those payments when Gran is in care and the facility also needs to be paid?

Kelsey has also put her own dreams on the back burner. She wanted to write for a living but a little bit of discouragement from two sources over the years sent her reeling pretty quickly. She stuffed the manuscript in a drawer and left it there.

And Kelsey’s boyfriend? Don’t get me started. Not exactly supportive, but then they’ve only been dating for a month.

“Despite everything going on, I savor this moment in my happy place, grateful for this bookshop that is everything I love stacked and bundled and shelved into one cavernous and glorious space with a hundred mysterious corners.”

The author creates for us an old-time bookstore, and the city neighborhood replete with a variety of shop owners, old and young, of varying backgrounds. It feels like a bit of Sesame Street that lives in so many of our hearts.

“Listen, Kelsey, you let me know if you need me to chain myself to the bookshop or anything, to stop the bulldozers. You know I will.”

Was that her neighbor William or …?

The story is picturesque and idyllic in places, but in contrast to the heartbreak and pain of life.

When Kelsey visits Gran to talk about all this, Gran mutters cryptic statements about the garden being the key. But there’s no garden. Can things get worse? Of course they can!

Then, one night, Kelsey finds the garden in the walled off lot next to the store, and a host of people inside, both demanding and supportive. Is this just a dream? If so, it’s a very literary one. Can they help her figure out how to save the bookshop?

I loved so much of the story, it really is for readers and writers, in particular. She has so much to say about imposter syndrome without naming it.

I feel a certain kinship with Kelsey – pushing my own writing aside so often for the more immediate necessities of family life and work at the library. “Imagination doesn’t pay the bills,” Kelsey thinks to herself in the first chapter. Thankfully, my work at the library includes the writer’s group, which keeps bringing me back to my own writing.

The biggest problem I had was that the author “read” it while I’m used to voice actors “performing” a story. I still enjoyed it, but it took a while for me to get into the story, and I think I would have enjoyed reading it more if I’d read it in a hard copy instead of listening to it.

First person and present tense is an interesting choice, bringing a sense of immediacy to a rather long book. It’s a lovely homage to the arts. There’s a bit of a side quest that didn’t really connect to me. I felt like it could be tightened up a bit and still keep the lush prose and deep dive into what it means to be an artist and persevere. It’s a strong 4 stars for me. I’m definitely glad I spent the time reading it and would recommend it to others.

A Story Musing: A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow

 

A Mirror Mended

by Alix E. Harrow

Our book club theme this past month was “A Fairy Tale Retelling.” Alix Harrow has been one of my favorite writers of the past few years with books like The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. Harrow’s writing is vivid with detail and energy. Her heroine’s have a great amount of agency in affecting how the story moves forward. Things don’t just happen to them, they make them happen.

A Mirror Mended is the continuation of an LGBTQ retelling of fairy tales that began with A Spindle Splintered. “Zinnia Gray has always been fascinated by Sleeping Beauty because she has a mystery illness. No one who has it has survived past their 21st birthday. Her best friend creates a Sleeping Beauty themed party for her on her 21st birthday. Of course, her story doesn’t end there, and Zinnia finds herself in a fight, not only for her life, but other sleeping beauties as well. I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s short and sweet, and beautiful and courageous.” https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2022/06/reading-lgbtq-books.html

This book picks up the story from A Spindle Splintered. Zinnia is able to jump from one dimension to another, and different versions of fairytales, through mirrors, to help people in other fairytales escape the doomed narrative.

There’s a certain aspect to this that reminds me of the funny space adventure movies I’ve seen where the hero or heroine is jumping from one adventure to another. She’s a swashbuckling heroine from my perspective, told in the first person with a strong sense of voice.

“You might think interdimensional travel is difficult or frightening, but it’s usually not that bad.” But this time is much worse than usual. “Maybe my conviction that my organs are turning themselves inside out is just a really shitty hallucination.”

This time Zinnia makes contact with yet another girl for help, but it turns out to be the evil queen. However, the evil queen isn’t quite as evil as the storytellers would have you believe, and Zinnia falls for the Evil Queen, who she dubs Eva.

This actually seems to be more of a Little Red Riding Hood story with a particularly horrific bend. But, again, this is not your usual Red, and there’s a science fiction feel there too.

As always, the writing is vivid with details, funny, and thought provoking. It’s not your typical fairy tale though it does retain some elements, like a happy ending, of a kind. I highly recommend.

Book Review: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

 

Yellowface

by R.F. Kuang

Our thematic book club chose to read books for January with a one-word title. I happened on Yellowface by R. F. Kuang and had really enjoyed her book Babel so I opened up the description. Of course, as a writer myself I am drawn to anything that discusses the publishing world, so I downloaded the audio book from our Hoopla catalog.

I started the book on my ride home and was immediately sucked in. I listened to it every chance I got over the next few days.

June Heyward, is absolutely petty but sadly relatable in her initial jealousy of fellow Yale alum and author Athena Liu. Here is June, with her own first publishing contract from a publisher that paid her ten thousand dollars for her first book then folded, but her agent sells it to another publishing house for $20,000.00. (Sounds good to me!) But she is struggling with a lack of backing by her new publisher, as many authors do. Then her paperback release gets canceled. She finds herself deeply jealous of the meteoric rise to fame of her friend instead of taking it as inspiration and getting on with her next book.

Right off the bat, you get a sense of the narrator’s skewed perspective. She starts out telling us that Athena “has everything.” “Everything” though is apparently just in regard to her novels and publishing, because in the very next paragraph she says that Athena “has almost no friends.”

They aren’t so much friends as acquaintances with a shared interest in writing and publishing.

“…in recent years, I’ve developed another theory, which is that everyone else finds her as unbearable as I do.”

Then why, in the name of all that’s holy, are you spending so much time with her?!

This story can seem rather inevitable after a certain point but there are still a couple surprises and the author even gives us some situations to keep a little sympathy for June. For instance, there are some actions by Athena when they were at Yale that really make the reader wonder why June would even be friends with Athena? But June’s unreliability as a narrator makes that questionable too. You want to trust the narrator to at least tell you the truth, right? And June says other people didn’t like Athena, but then again, that’s what June says and can we trust June at all? (This is a dark and twisty path.)

June doesn’t exactly seem to be trying to ride Athena’s coattails. She never asks Athena to introduce her to her publisher, or editor, or agent. She just hangs out with her, taking advantage of free food and drinks.

When Athena dies horribly, choking on a half-cooked pancake, June does try to help her. Watching Athena die, unable to help her, other than trying to do the Heimlich and calling for help, sounds horrifying and traumatic. But then June steals Athena’s first draft of her latest book. Just slips it in her bag, along with some other docs, and sobs to the emergency workers then walks off with it. It’s wild. We don’t even see it happen, just hear about it afterward. Eventually, June starts editing and adding to Athena’s manuscript.

Okay, at that point, why not take it to Athena’s mother or publisher and say she wanted to finish this as a tribute to Athena? She could at least get credit that way, honestly. Instead, she turns it in as her own work. One of the most heinous things one writer can do to another.

Then there’s the cultural appropriation of using the name Juniper Song to make people wonder what her ancestry is. As I recall, this is the publisher’s idea and June pushes back on it but then gives in and totally rationalizes it. She even gets angry at people later in the book for making that assumption!  

June spends so much of the book justifying and rationalizing her actions that you end up just waiting for her to get her comeuppance.

Is what June achieves with the release of the book “success” or is it the illusion of success? Because it’s not her book. She edited it. She didn’t conceive of the story or write it. But then, did Athena? Or did Athena just transcribe stories of survivors then weave it together into a story that June finished?

In the end, the main actors in the story all seem to operate from a place of deep self-absorption. The blackmailer and the person who bring June down are not doing it out of loyalty to Athena, but because they want money or fame and are angry at June for themselves.

It’s a gripping story that confronts the worst aspects of publishing, including the required self-promotion on social media that feeds self-absorption.

Honestly, it makes you wonder if it’s all worth it or if I should just write the stories I want to write to amuse myself and put them in a drawer, never to see the light of day?

In the end, it’s a great story that keeps you glued to your seat and asks a number of questions but keeps the line moving. The authors way of describing things is detailed and nuanced. I highly recommend and am looking forward to her next book. 

Story Musing: At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities by Heather Webber

 

At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities

by Heather Webber

 

I’ve been a fan of Heather Webber’s writing for some time. I thoroughly enjoyed her Nina Quinn mysteries - a compulsively readable series that I wish hadn’t ended. I wrote a little bit about that series here https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-nine-quinn-mysteries-by.html

Her standalone novels often feature magical realism, another favorite genre for me. I reviewed Midnight at the Blackbird Café here https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-midnight-at-blackbird-cafe.html

At the Coffee Shop of Curiosities falls into the magical realism realm. It’s set in Driftwood, Alabama, on the coast. Maggie runs the coffee shop, Magpie’s, that her mother opened before she disappeared in a riptide swimming incident many years ago. Like a Magpie, Maggie collects little things and has an inspired ability to match people to these “treasures” that always mean more to them than anyone would suspect.

Driftwood is a close-knit community of wonderful quirky characters, very small town and homey. For example, Jolly Smith has a pet chicken that she walks with the Snail Slippers walking group. Sienna has coordination issues and is looking for a job where she doesn’t break everything. Estrelle makes pronouncements and has a terrible reputation for taking revenge, albeit in a witchy way, if someone does not follow her recommendations.

Everyone is very worried as Maggie’s father, Dez, has been acting a bit oddly. He’s talking about a ghost in the house and he has a tendency to collect things and not ever clear out. Then rumors start that he might be about to sell the coffee shop.

My heart rate skyrocketed. This didn’t make sense. My father wouldn’t sell the coffee shop. My mother’s coffee shop. Magpie’s was a fixture in Driftwood. It was the heart of this town. Closing it would be devastating.

Maggie’s blood pressure has been a threat lately, with a warning that she could have a stroke, and the rumors of her father selling the coffee shop don’t help.

In a fit of pique, Maggie posts an ad outside the coffee shop for someone to be a caretaker for her father and help him clean out his house. But she quickly takes it down.

Into this atmosphere drives Ava, half running from the terrible circumstances of her former boyfriend’s death and her own scary childhood of seizures. She’s been in remission from them, but something is going on and she’s scared they might come back.

Someone sent Ava the advertisement that Maggie put up then tore down and threw away. Ava has her own questions about how it arrived.

The letter had been sent by a dead man.

There was no doubt in my mind.

Fine. There was a little doubt. Okay, a lot of doubt. Buckets of it.

Everyone seems to have their own little secrets in this book, nothing too terrible, and some even they don’t know.

Along with her seizures, Ava has a hyperacute sense of smell and hearing that she doesn’t really want anyone to know about. They factor into the story in lovely ways. When Ava arrives at the coffee shop, there are a lot of sounds – “the blender, grinder, steamer, rattling ice, clank of silverware, music, and voices…..” But they somehow don’t overwhelm her. “Why did the whole town feel like a familiar song?”

Is it all coincidence, conniving trickery, unexplained but perfectly legitimate medical phenomenon, magic, or some otherworldly phenomenon?

I adore coincidences in fiction. I don’t need things to be scientifically and convincingly explained, as long as I’ve been given a good reason to suspend my disbelief. (Which is odd because the truth is that I’m something of a doubting Thomas in real life.)

The writing is lovely and humor features beautifully. There’s a dog that gives a quabark, half quack and half bark, according to Ava.

There are romantic interests for each Maggie and Ava, Donovan and Sam, that feature prominently in the story. They don’t have their own character arc, though they do have a little bit of mystery to their actions and motivations.

I love how you get Maggie and Ava’s perceptions about what is going on. They aren’t unrealiable narrators, but their perspective changes slightly as the story progresses and they find things out, which is real. It happens to all of us.

It was a very relaxing read, not too taxing or strenuous.

I anticipate reading more of Webber’s standalone novels and giving her Lucy Valentine mysteries a try soon.

Story Musing: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

by Benjamin Stevenson

As usual, I was looking for something on Hoopla that I could listen to on my ride to and from work. (I love how everything on Hoopla is always available, no matter who else has it checked out. It’s a great service my library provides.)

I’ve been enjoying murder mysteries, as I often do, and this title caught my attention – Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

I opened up the description and two things about it tempted me. First, they compared it to the movies Knives Out and Clue, both great recommendations for me. Second, the author is from Australia. I haven’t read too much by Australian authors, but it intrigued me. Different countries have slightly different senses of humor and I enjoy that. Sign me up.

One quick note – this author uses a breaking of the fourth wall where the narrator speaks directly to the reader. Some people hate that. Some people, like me, love that. Not every book is for every reader. As they say, you do you.

There was so much going on in this book that I was never bored. The writer could take us down one thread, skip to another and come back. Transitions felt smooth. There was plenty of humor and great description from the narrator and situations.

Our story starts when Ernest’s brother Michael shows up wanting him to help bury a body. A lot happens in that little chapter and ends with Ernest calling the police.

Fast forward several years. Michael is getting out of jail and the family gathers to welcome him out. For some reason, at a ski resort.

“I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.”

Perhaps Ernest should have refused this one.

Little mysteries abound. Ernest’s cousin Sofia has been suspended from her surgical practice. Why? What happened when Ernest’s father died? That has more than a few twists. You know there was a third brother. Why is he never discussed? (The resolution to that mystery was, I thought, incredibly sad and poignant.) Who the heck is the man who appears in the snow, dead, at the ski chalet?

I love how the author strung out the information so that you learn things along with the narrator. It keeps you guessing, but at the same time, you are never bored. There’s always something interesting going on, some revelation being made.

I loved the narrator’s voice, like in the section titled “My Wife” with only one sentence in Chapter 9 – “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I really, sincerely, thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to more by the author. If you like mysteries, give this one a chance.

Book Musing: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

 

The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

For October, our thematic book club chose the theme of books with weather as a major element or even a character.

I did a Google search and found several lists. After a little perusing, I chose The Guest List by Lucy Foley. “A wedding celebration turns dark and deadly in this deliciously wicked and atmospheric thriller reminiscent of Agatha Christie ….” It sounded intriguing and was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick.

On an island off the coast of Ireland, a wedding is taking place at an old Folly. (A folly is a building that serves no practical purpose, apparently, like a tower or mock-Gothic ruin.) This one is owned by a wedding planner and her husband. The bride and groom are what might be called a power couple – he’s the star of a big survival show and she’s the owner of a zine called The Download.

The format was intriguing. It started with a chapter from the perspective of the wedding planner, Aiofe, then alternates with a few other people including –

• The bride, Jules, 
• The groom, Will,
• The bride’s sister, Olivia,
• The best man, Jonah?
• The wife of the bridesman, Hannah

      I like the idea of getting different perspectives, and they were different. One of my problems was that the only one I really liked was Hannah.

You get, right off, that the groom is a bit of a gorgeous and charming jerk. Nothing new there. It takes a while to find out just how much of a jerk he is though.

Unfortunately, as often happens with this type of book, I was bored by about 25% of the way through. For me, it feels like there’s a whole lot of talk with nothing happening, like episodes of a soap opera I used to watch when I was in my teens. The language is not particularly beautiful and the story is intriguing but not really interesting.

I’m afraid thrillers just aren’t for me. I ended up skimming the last 25% just looking for who got killed and who did it. And maybe I wouldn’t have been so bored if I’d been reading it instead of listening to it, which dramatically slows things down for me.

I would recommend it for anyone who wants a quick reading thriller.

Story Musing: Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story by Carol Burnett

 

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story

by Carol Burnett

Our book club theme was “Things We Fear” for September. I know the scariest thing for me is always the idea of something happening to my child. There are certain things I can’t even read, but I’ve long intended to read this one.

I have always enjoyed the Carol Burnett show and I really enjoyed her daughter, Carrie, when she was on the television show Fame. It’s mind blowing to me to realize it was back in 1986-87 when I was all of 12 or 13.

Of course, when you watch Carol Burnett, or other famous performers, you can’t help thinking they’ve got it all and life should be a piece of cake. But life isn’t really like that.

This story has some very happy and inspiring moments, but there are some very raw and painful times as well. Carrie was addicted to drugs in her teen years and Carol talks candidly, reading from her own diary, about those struggles, her fears and confusion about what to do.

Thankfully, Carrie did find a way through with Carol’s help. The family had sent Carrie to a rehab center and thought she was doing great when she returned home. After a year, they celebrated her sobriety but that night they found out how wrong they were. Carrie refused to go back to rehab and left the family home. Carol worried about her terribly.

When Carrie was 17, close to 18, Carol decided she needed to “love her enough to let her hate me.” She conned Carrie into going to see her father who was in rehab and arranged for Carrie to be held there. Luckily, it worked out for the best. Carrie and her father both got better.

A couple decades down the line, Carrie had a number of great acting credits to her name as well as writing. She was living in Colorado. She was just embarking on a new project, taking a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, to research her latest project.

When she got back home, she didn’t recover from the fatigue of traveling though. Her local doctor diagnosed her with one thing and then another, but treatments didn’t work. Carol convinced her to come home and see a specialist.

Carrie never got to finish her project. She died of cancer in 2002. She asked Carol to finish her project but Carol could never quite manage it. It’s included in this book.

It’s a tough read, Carol’s grief is palpable. I listened to it on audio so that may have brought it home even more. But there’s a lot of beauty here too as they really seemed to love each other and corresponded quite a bit, by email and letter.

It’s a wonderful remembrance and I can recommend it to anyone who is interested.