Fiction Review – Page 7 – …on the B.L.

Difficulty: II
Length: III
Quick Review: Grace Hammond is having a rough time, so she goes home to figure her life out.

As summer approaches, I’m trying to compile a list of books good for a vacation reading list. The Rules of Love and Grammar fits into that category perfectly. It’s light, romantic, and escapist in nature. Not a fabulous novel, but it holds its own as a beach read.

The book begins with Grace Hammond telling the reader exactly what is going wrong in her life. It was abrupt and unnecessary. In her early thirties, she loses her, her boyfriend, and her apartment before returning to her small hometown. While she tries putting her life back together, she takes a small job at a bike shop, dates, hangs out with her hometown best friend, rekindles old rivalries, and deals with the ups and downs of living with family.

Grace is your run of the mill grammar nazi, and, quite frankly, she comes off as a bitch. (I, as an editor, am always finding grammar mistakes in people’s work… So I get it. I do not point it out unless I am being paid because it is not a trait I have found that makes many friends.) Grace returns to her hometown which seems to bring out antics similar to those of a high schooler with a tendency towards exaggeration and fantastical scenarios. It felt immature at times. Her love sick puppy attitude made it a little hard to find the interesting person through the husband-hunter exterior.

Each chapter starts with a grammar rule and a sentence depicting the previously mentioned rule. The chapter usually reflects a similar concept in Grace’s life. It’s a cute way to effortlessly weave the theme throughout the book.

I have a difficulty reading books about grammar obsessed main characters, which seems to be the most important character quality to the author never developed just constantly mentioned. Once that personality trait has been established, I am on duty looking for any mistake. This does not disappoint. There were plenty of grammar mistakes including one in Simses bio. Though, this is not the author’s fault but the fault of the editor. It’s just irritating.

Simses tries to add a flair of mystery but does a thin job veiling what that is. The love interests are all lovely but highly predictable. To be completely honest, I had the entire plot figured out by page 17. The aspect I appreciate the most is the complexity of familial relationships: ie. siblings, parents, perception, reality, coping, etc. Simses touches on these thematically, but I think it would have been a stronger book had she focused on Grace’s reconciliation more than her love life. I really thought the ending was going to be strong aside from the predictable love story portion. However, Simses felt it necessary Grace narrate the meaning of the book instead of allowing it to speak for itself. I audibly cringed as she ruined what she had managed to turn around. Us readers are not dumb. We get it, unless, you wrote the next Lolita… but this is not that.

Personally, I enjoyed the bike shop aspect. My brother was a semi-professional cyclist, so my life revolved around bikes for many, many years. For me, that was sentimental.

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Memorable Quotes:
“”Let life unfold, or you’ll miss the chance to be surprised.””

Title: The Rules of Love & Grammar
Author: Mary Simses
Publisher: Back Bay Books (Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group)
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9780316382083

Books

An Irish Country Doctor

March 17, 2018 RaeAnna

Read: Yes
Length: III
Quick Review: A sweet tale about the finding the beauty in a small town.

Patrick Taylor writes about Northern Ireland and doctors with authenticity because he’s a retired doctor from Northern Ireland.

An Irish Country Doctor is a sweet story. None of his writing feels trite or imaginative but grounded in reality, which is how I like my novels. Even though the town of Ballybucklebo is imagined, it is obvious Taylor has native experience with the region and people he’s inhabiting.

Ballybucklebo remains deeply rooted in their traditions and heritage. Doctor O’Reilly is the esteemed and trusted village doctor. It’s 1964, and the world is changing. O’Reilly brings young Doctor Barry Laverty into the fold as his assistant bringing with him new medicine and point of view. The town is inhabited by a group of highly eccentric yet totally lovable villagers. Barry is put off at first by O’Reilly’s unconventional treatments and rather bizarre medical practice in general. At a shocking pace, Barry is taken in by the community and begins to fall in love with the entire profession of General Practice in a small village.

The novel is full of Irish phrases and Taylor’s own unique word plays. It’s hard not to be drawn into his prose. His style is straightforward, but there are lots of descriptive bits. Normally, I am not a fan of too much descriptors, but Taylor is not excessive nor too flowery.

Ireland is a majority Catholic country, and was just as conservatively Catholic as you can imagine in the 1960’s. Taylor deals with issues that were prevalent during the time – and today, as well. The plot is thickened with touches of pregnancy out of wedlock, birth control pills, abortion, poverty, deadbeat dads, among other things. If the novel were any shorter, the abundance of hot button issues would have been a bit much; however at 429 pages set in a poor village, it’s appropriate. Taylor has touches of feminism as the books is riddled with strong female characters including a female civil engineer student. Even the aging Doctor O’Reilly is pro birth control, pro choice, and tells husbands to help their wives with the children.

The story is a sweet one allowing you to escape into a lovely small village of Northern Ireland. Every storyline wraps up with a nice, neat bow.

Memorable Quotes:
“Sometimes we doctors aren’t much better than a bunch of Druids.”

Title: An Irish Country Doctor
Author: Patrick Taylor
Publisher: Forge Books
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 9780765368249

Books

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

March 15, 2018 RaeAnna

Read: Yes
Length: 352
Quick Review: He’s an opinionated dentist with almost no online footprint until someone else did it for him. Funny, witty, insightful, and highly originally.

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is Joshua Ferris’ third novel, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I didn’t know a thing about the book when I picked it up, but I knew it was different than what I have been reading lately.

Paul O’Rourke is a dentist in New York City. He’s an average man. He’s addicted to his phone, but abhors people attached to theirs. He smokes, is a fan of the Red Sox, an atheist, has an obsession with religion, falls into obsession with the women he dates, and is alone. Paul O’Rourke has many opinions and a thriving internal dialogue. He keeps his online presence to a minimum hiding behind a different name; his dental practice doesn’t even have a website. He continues leading his rather mundane life until someone hijacks his identity online, which he deems wildly violating. What begins in anger launches him into a full inspection deep into his soul.

Ferris has an incredibly unique style. The majority of the novel is not action based but thought based. He has an uncanny ability to bring the reader into the mind of someone who, otherwise, would be difficult to relate to. He makes the mundane wildly funny. Paragraphs can go on for a brief sentence or several pages.

The novel could have been a complete disaster, but Ferris is very successful. The book is captivating.

Total side note… While reading this book, I was waking up at an age appropriate time. Coincidence? Most definitely.

Memorable Quotes:
“To me, a church is simply a place to be bored in.”
“”How could you be a good person and not believe in God?””

Title: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Author: Joshua Ferris
Publisher: Back Bay Books (Little, Brown and Company/Hachette Book Group)
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9780316033992

Books

Winter Garden

March 7, 2018 RaeAnna

Read: No
Length: 394
Quick Review: Meredith and Nina think their old, Russian mother hates them, but on their father’s death bed everything changes. A mother-daughter mystery couldn’t be more generic.

As a Russian speaker… This book was incredibly painful to read. As an English speaker… I found it mundane and common at best.

Meredith and Nina are sisters following vastly different paths. Meredith stayed home to help run the family business as her father aged. Nina left for adventures as a photographer. Their childhood was marked by a father’s unconditional love and their mother’s frigidity. A fairy tale they heard as children transformed into something meaningful to their mother and their own lives after their father dies suddenly.

Hannah tries to build a beautiful picture in the reader’s mind, but falls short as she uses too many unnecessary adjectives giving the narrative a clunky, arbitrary feel. Her efforts feel amateurish as she becomes overly repetitive. When she refines her language, everything flows better, but these moments are fleeting throughout the almost four hundred pages.

The characters come off as flat, grating, unempathetic, and overly stupid. Spoiler: The mother is an elderly, Russian woman with a heavy accent. The plot takes place in 2001. If I could VERY easily do the math: Woman. 80 ish years of age. Her heavy accent means she did not leave Russia as a child but an adult. Even if she moved to the US as a 23 year old woman, she would have been in Russia during WWII… Which explains all of her behavior. So… In the 37 and 40 years her daughters had with her, they didn’t even think about her life before them. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for adult characters who live in me-me-me land, which is exactly what the main characters here do. Not to mention their inability to view the “fairy tale” as an allegory for their mother’s life. As children, all of these things are excusable, but as adult characters it’s surprising and not believable.

Hannah has an obsession with “unconditional” love throughout the narrative. Every time the word “love” is used it is almost always in conjunction with “unconditional.” It just irritated me. After the first few times, she could have dropped the word since she was referring to family and not an “unconditional love” of dirt.

All in all, the book was a waste of my time. I had the plot guessed in detail within the first thirty pages. It’s a formulaic mother-daughter relationship story with an even more uninspired mystery for good measure. As a non-Russian speaker, I would have been able to forgive her, but I’m not that. She fell short. It’s a lesson in how one should only write about languages they’re familiar with.

Memorable Quotes:

“She had thought she was full grown then.”
“”A woman can be a girl and still know her own heart.””

Title: Winter Garden
Author: Kristin Hannah
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Copyright: 2010
ISBN: 9781615239498

Books

Kintu

February 23, 2018 RaeAnna

Read: Yes
Length: 442
Quick Review: The Kintu clan is widespread throughout Uganda divided by diverse experiences yet united by the curse created centuries ago.

To be honest… I don’t really know how to review this novel. It’s big but not huge. It’s epic but completely accessible. It’s a great novel, but I don’t know how to describe it to you because I’m still processing it, and I think I will be for awhile. I know a lot about Nigerian history and culture because I’ve read quite a bit; Ugandan culture, history, and people are far less familiar, so I spent a good deal of time looking things up, which is good.

Makumbi is a Ugandan writer living in England writing in English. She is not writing for a Western audience, though. She isn’t diluting her culture in order to be published or well received or better understood. She’s writing for her people. For those of us who are not familiar with her culture, she draws us into her world and asks us to do a little work. It’s only fair.

Kintu has been heralded as the great Ugandan novel. I can’t say because I have no depth in Ugandan literature, but it is a great novel on its own.

Ugandan history is depicted through the Kintu clan beginning with Kintu Kidda a Ppookino in Buddu Province of Bugunda in th 1750’s. A curse is placed upon him and his descendants. In 2004, the novel follows key members of the family and how the curse affects them.

Makumbi writes about a myriad of topics, which are universally important, through the different family members in the Kintu clan. The culture represented is vastly different than that of which I grew up in or am familiar with, but it is incredibly engaging. She says her novel is not feminist, but it would be hard to read it as anything but. The female characters sparkle with strength and resilience, while the men voice opinions that strongly support equality. Twins are a running theme throughout the novel and are viewed in a way drastically different yet eerily similar to what I am familiar with.

One theme that is impossible to not notice is that of family. How family and familial history affect those around us and those who come after us in one way or another. Family is an important part of a person’s identity whether one is close to them or not. Knowing where one comes from is a way of knowing and finding oneself.

I really, really, really enjoyed this book. I don’t want to talk too much about it or give to much away because everything is so intricately interwoven. There are a lot of parts and aspects I would read with confusion because it didn’t feel like it belonged, but everything comes together in the most magical way.

Memorable Quotes
“A child was far more secure than waddling down the aisle with a wedding ring and a piece of paper.”
“”A sexually satisfied woman is a good wife, that’s all I’m saying.””
“Most people, she presumed, grew up dispensing bits of their lives over and over. Eventually their stories flowed easily.”
“Normally, silence washed things like that away, but this time it watered and the deed grew.”
“to have a mind was to be alive.”

Title: Kintu
Author: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Publisher: Transit Books
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781945492013

Books

Homegoing

February 13, 2018 RaeAnna

Read: YES
Length: 300
Quick Review: Follow the descendants of two sisters, whose lives take different paths, through eras of great turmoil in Ghana and the US.

I rarely read a book that vibrates my heart, but this shook my soul. I knew it would be good because of all the hype both critical and popular, but I was thoroughly unprepared for the depth of Gyasi’s abilities. It is rare writers produce such a masterful work and even rarer it happens in their debut novel.

Beginning in Ghana there are two sisters who never meet, and their lives go in very different directions from an early age. One marries a white man and her descendants remain in Ghana for many generations; the other is sold into slavery in America.

Chapters are snapshots of lives for each generation alternating between the sisters’ descendants. The stories never have fulfillment or completion, but each has a depth allowing for an emotional connection to each person’s struggle. Each struggle the character goes through represents a similar struggle hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people experienced. The realness is palpable and heartbreaking and absolutely necessary.

Throughout the entire novel and each chapter there is an ominous air penetrating every corner of the narrative, but Gyasi is able to weave in tiny traces of hope, which is a human necessity to carry on through the darkest times.

Gyasi explores the history of the slave trade with roots in the Gold Coast and follows it through the history of Ghana as well as the history of America. Slavery, rape, murder, mining, Jim Crow, police, drugs, passing, so on and so forth.

It is an epic story of how people are formed and shaped by their pasts and their ancestors pasts. Every action cumulates and snowballs to create opportunities and circumstances which affect those who follow in our footsteps.

I absolutely cannot recommend this novel enough. Homegoing is phenomenal and important and entertaining and impactful. It’s a novel that will not leave you quietly.

Memorable Quotes
“He looked at her like her body was his shame.”
“the methods of gathering slaves had become so reckless, that many of the tribes had taken to marking their children’s faces so that they would be distinguishable.”
“watching this man she’s been told is her husband become the animal he’s been told he is.”
“They couldn’t tell one black face from another.”

Title: Homegoing
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Publisher: Vintage Books
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9781101971062

Tag: Fiction Review

The Rules of Love & Grammar by Mary Simses

An Irish Country Doctor

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Winter Garden

Kintu

Homegoing