Book Review: The Book of Doors

 By Gareth Brown

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Fantasy, magical realism

• Where I bought this book: Enchanted Novelties, Harrison, Ohio. 

• Why I bought this book: The story's concept is intriguing 

• Bookmark used: Volumes Bookstore, Chicago    

 *****

    One of the many problems with incorporating the idea of time travel into your novel is that it is inherently inconsistent. You cannot get around the fact that travel into the past is impossible. You can ignore that and claim that your characters are unable to change their present, because if that is so, what's the point? And you can ignore the idea of a djinn particle -- which allows for items to exist in a time loop, never having been invented. 

    So, you just fudge it, and let things happen without explaining them. It may cause confusion, but hey, it's just a novel, right? Don't take it too seriously.

    But in The Book of Doors, Brown wants to be taken seriously. He wants to explore the ideas of existence, of love and hate, of goodness and evil. But he leaves several big, gaping holes in his story -- such as the existence of different versions of the same person living in the same time dimension, with nothing untoward happening.

     He suffers from the flaws of many debut novels -- wanting to cram too much into the story and the writing, and not knowing when to quit.

    It's not a flawless read, but it's okay for something to sit down with on a cold winter's night.

    Here's the concept: Cassie, an unexceptional young woman who loves books, has moved to New York City and taken a job in a bookstore. She lives with a roommate, Izzy, who is far more outgoing and gregarious. One fateful evening, Mr. Webber, an older man she has befriended, dies in the store and leaves her a mysterious book.

    It's the Book of Doors, and among its scribbled texts and sketched images is a note explaining that using it means "any door is every door." Mr. Webber's added note says she  should "enjoy the places it takes you to and the friends you find there."

    But of course there is more to the book, and Cassie gets caught up in a whirlwind that threatens not only her life, and Izzy's life, but the lives of the people she meets, and, indeed, the very existence of time and space itself.

    She'll discover, through the friends and foes she meets -- including the Librarian and the Bookseller -- the enormity of what she had gotten herself into. It's truly an overwhelming adventure, not only for Cassie, Izzy, and their band of others, but for the reader. It's also a but gruesome at times.

    The characters are a mélange of the nice, the creepy, and the tropes. One, known only as "the woman," is macabre beyond measure. Another, an evil sort who gets tossed into the Old West, returns decades later as a cliche, and I half-expected him to declare himself the rootinest, tootinest cowboy in the west.

    It'll carry you along, fer sure, but only if you squint hard and don't ask too many questions.

Book Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

 By Susanna Clarke

• Pub Date: 2004

• Genre: Magical Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Newport, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I was enchanted with her other work, Piranesi  

 ********

 

   An imaginative, expressive and tantalizing labyrinth of a novel, harmed only by its somewhat excessive length.

    Still, I was enthralled by its writing, its originality, its sense of magic, and the vibes it gives off of being an old, even ancient, work of art.

    Set mostly in early 19th Century England, a time of lords and ladies and excessive privilege amidst the belief of Rule Britannia, it showcases a time when Great Britain ruled the world with its dominance and might -- and was determined to return literal magical powers to the island.

    To do so, the country recruits the two magicians of the title, who have determinedly different ideas about the proper use of magic. Mr Norrell, a bookish and crotchety old man, sees magic as a calling that should be limited to those who venerate it. Indeed, in his reverence for the use and history of magic, he sees himself as its gatekeeper.

    But under pressure from the country's nobility, he agrees to take on a young student, Jonathan Strange, a gentle soul who has some liberal -- and to Mr Norrell, decidedly appalling -- ideas for magic's use and place in society.

    Clarke's narrator is a regal lady, of high repute, who will not be trifled with. She knows all, and will deign to tell you in her own sweet time. She will not be rushed, nor forced to use some of those new fangled words of English. She will shew you what is going on, when and how she chuses to. She writes of mediaeval times, Her words are rare, exquisite and precise.

    She writes of a doctor and his family on a summer tour of Venice, Italy.

They were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent -- they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which building, bridges and church all displayed, seem to charm them even more. They were Englishmen, and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of it own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else's) that they would not have been at all surprised to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city -- until the Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful.

    Oh, and the feuds between the two men are devilish and dramatic. Mini spoiler alert warning:. At one point, one of the duo publishes a three-volume history of magic. The other uses his powers to buy up all the copies and make them disappear.

    The tale itself winds through the Napoleonic Wars, the Battle of Waterloo, and the tale of an ancient king from the North of England returning to claim his domain. Oh, and there are Faeries. Lots of Faeries. Good Faeries, bad Faeries, sneaky Faeries, and many, many more.

    At times, it's a bit overwhelming. The story gets muddled and a tad repetitive. You find yourself wishing she'd wrap it up, as the night continues on into morning, but she will not be rushed. Any resolution seems far off.

    But as with Clarke's novel Piranesi, it is how the story is told that is the true work of art.

Book Review: The Book Woman's Daughter

 

•  Author: Kim Michele Richardson

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books, Covington., Ky.

• Why I bought this book: It is a sequel to a book I greatly enjoyed

*********

    I always a fear a sequel will never match up to the original, especially when the original is a unique tale is by a relatively unknown author. That fear is heightened when it seems the second book may be forced, simply to ride on the coattails of the first book.

 

    But with The Book Woman's Daughter, none of those fears is realized. Indeed, it is possible to say the sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a stronger, better book that its predecessor. 

    This one has better, more memorable supporting characters, tension in the overall plot, and a powerfully young female mainstay who can carry the story while showing fear, grief, foolishness, and wonder at the world.

    The first Book Woman introduced us to the Eastern Kentucky mountains, its traditions -- good and bad -- and its people, including the Blue People of Kentucky. It also told us about the Pack Horse Library Project, a WPA program during World War II to have women on horseback delivery reading material in the hills of  Appalachia. 

    It turned out to be one of my favorite reads in a while.

    The sequel returns us to Troublesome Creek, and the story of the Blue People. 

    This time, it's the book woman's 16-year-old daughter, Honey Lovett, who's in trouble. Her parents are going to prison for breaking the state's anti-miscegenation laws (her mother, who is blue, married a white man. They had been warned.) Honey risks being sent to the state orphan home -- basically, a children's prison. She'll be forced to perform hard labor.

    In a sense, the way the town, and the legal and medical systems, treat Honey and her family is a stand-in for the discrimination often faced by people who are different from the majority, or from the way things have always been done. At one point, Honey cries when she realizes her parents are in prison because they love each other, and wonders why people think they should have a say in such affairs of the heart.

    But Honey isn't the only one with problems. Her soon to be friend, Pearl, 19-year-old woman who is hired as a fire watcher in the forest, is being pursued and harassed by the family of the man who thinks he should have gotten the job. A woman on her book route, Guyla Belle, is being beaten by her husband. Another woman on her route, Bonnie, a young widow who is one of the few female coal miners, is sexually assaulted daily by her co-workers. 

    There are a few good men in her town. Her lawyer, who is looking out for her. Her doctor, who helps her stay in touch with her parents. And Francis, a young shopkeeper who fancies and respects her.

    There's also the books she delivers, which save a few people, delight others, and teach everyone who reads them.

    But it's the women who stick together, watch out for, and help each others

    It's a wonderful tale of a hard, sometimes nasty and unfair life. But it also shows how women cope, survive, bond, and fight for their rights and dignity. They are the community.

Book Review: The Midnight Library

 The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

    Imagine, if you will, a young, drab British woman named Nora Seed. She is depressed. She lives a sad, lonely life. Her music career fizzled out, and she cannot make it as a music tutor. She is stuck in a dead-end job she hates. She lives in a ratty apartment. She regrests dumping her latest boyfriend because she has no other prospects. 

    Oh yeah, and her cat just died.

     So she decides to end it all by taking a handful of sleeping pills and crawling into bed. But instead of dying, she wakes up in a library. An unusual library with row-upon-row-upon-row of books. The neverending tomes stream by at various speed. Sitting at a nearby table is a woman who looks suspiciously like her childhood school librarian, Mrs. Elm.

    Nora soons learns she did not die, but instead is visiting the Midnight Library, a place between time and space. The books contain the story of every one of her possible lives, changing like butterflies with every single decision she has made.

    So she picks a book, reads the first line, and enters an alternative life.

    Which is a cool idea, and opens up a whole timeline of changes, possibilities, and adventures. But its realization has  two severe flaws.

    One is that Nora jumps into a new life with all the memories of her old life, but having no idea what she was getting into. For instance, in her first jump, she finds what would have happened if she had married her beau and moved with him to buy a pub in rural Ireland. This happens in other jumps -- her being a rock star on stage without a clue as to what comes next, as a wife and mother who doesn't know who the child in her room is, and as a scientist with no knowledge of her speciality. So she has to fake it.

    The second problem is that Nora whinges. A lot. Some of her whinging is passed off as part of her depression, and some is part of her learning experience. But jeez, she is not a likable character.

    But the story does draw you in. You wonder in which life Nora will be satisfied. You enjoy the interludes at the library, where philosophical discussions with the Mrs. Elm lookalike bring exposition, background, and deep thoughts.

    It's an intriguing, well-written book, which gives insights to the bizarre yet conceivable ideas of time bending and alternative realities.

Book Review: The Woman Who Died A Lot

The Woman Who Died a Lot, by Jasper Fforde

This is Jasper Fforde at his best and his worst.

The writing is witty and wonderful. The story arcs are wild and unpredictable. The characters are well-drawn and seem exceedingly normal is an unnatural world.



The plot, is, well, bizarrely Ffordeian

This is book seven in the Thursday Next/Bookworld series. I've read them all, but my mistake was finding book number six, One of  Our Thursdays is Missing, and reading it first. That was a long time ago, and over the years, have read them in order. So I had a background before cracking this one open.

In some ways, it's a little too much Fforde. The plot is all over the place. So much is going on that trying to determine what is happening at any given moment is a special challenge. It's just better to let it all ride. Let me try to sort it out.

Thursday Next is home recuperating, in a forced retirement, after an assassination attempt at the end of the last book. But Thursday doesn't taken lying down lying down. God, now known as the one and only Global Diety, has come out of hiding and has been smiting towns (because he can). Thursday's hometown of Swindon is next on his list, so her daughter, Tuesday, a young scientific genius, is preparing an anti-smiting shield that may or may not work. (It depends on something called the Unentanglement Constant.) Thursday's son, Friday, has lost out on his future job as head of the force that polices time-travel because travelers to the future discover that time travel is impossible. Friday also knows he is destined to murder someone within a week and thus will spend most of his future in prison.

Meanwhile, lots of synthetic Thursdays keep showing up and replacing her. Also meanwhile, representatives of Goliath -- the company that either runs everything in this world or wants to -- keeps stealing obscure 13th century manuscripts. Thursday, in her prestigious (really) new job as chief librarian of Swindon's All-You-Can-Eat at Fatso's Drink Not Included Library, meets one of the thieves, Jack Schitt -- her nemesis throughout this seven-book series -- in her office. It leads to this conversation:

"'We don't often see any Goliath high-fliers in Swindon,' I added. 'What position are you on the ladder these days?'

'Ninety-one. The corporation rewards loyalty.'

'So? Starbucks rewards loyalty -- and they're not out to take over the world. Okay, that was a bad example. Tesco's rewards loyalty, and they're not out to ... Okay, that's a bad example, too. But you know what I mean.'"

Such is an example of the Welsh author's off-beat sense of humor. Here's another: Angry God's smiting of Swindon will center on the town cathedral. The City Council wonders how it will be replaced: "'The price of cathedrals is simply shocking these days, and insurance is impossible, as you know.' 'The "Act of God" clause?' 'Right'"

The town also takes its libraries seriously. Libraries have their own police forces, and the uniform includes combat fatigues, "replete with the distinctive camouflage pattern of book spines for blending into library spaces." Its chief in Swindon begged Thursday to sanction pre-dawn raids to collect on overdue books.

Like I said, sometimes a bit overdone. But don't worry. Fforde wraps things up nicely, although I am not sure if the series is ending -- this book was published in 2012, and Fforde has gone on to other books.

But you never know.

Book Review: Troublesome Creek

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson

About halfway through this intense, thoughtful novel, I had the thought that it may be one of the best books I have ever read.

Then it got better.

So, before I go any further, let me urge you to go out and buy this book. Or borrow it from your local library. Just go read it.

The book explores two issues, one that I was familiar with, and the second I was unaware of but happy to learn about. The book's protagonist, Cussy Mary Carter, is one of the Blue Fugates of Kentucky, mountain people who because of a rare blood condition and much inbreeding, had blue skin.To help survive in the rugged environment of Eastern Kentucky, Cussy joins the Pack Horse Library project, a WPA program that delivered books to the isolated people in the area. (I had heard about the Fugates: I was unaware of the Pack Horse project.)

Martin Fugate moved from France to the Troublesome Creek area of Hazard County, Ky., around 1800. Against all odds, he married a Kentucky woman who carried the same rare recessive gene as he did -- one that lacked a critical enzyme in the blood, causing it to have a chocolate-brown color, which in turn made the skin appear blue. Because of their isolation, members of the family married and had children with each other. This resulted in the recessive gene occurring more frequently, resulting in the condition later identified as methemoglobinemia. (I tried to find a photo of a family member online, but none seemed legitimate. They were either falsely colored, exploitative, or not a member of the Fugate clan.)

President Franklin Roosevelt created the The Pack Horse project as part of the Works Project Administration in 1935. It was meant to bring books to the schools and isolated cabins in Appalachia. It hired mostly women, and a few men, to walk or ride horses or mules across the rugged land. The people receiving the books were grateful for both the visitors and reading material, which they otherwise would do without.

But I digress. Back to the book.

Cussy Mary lives in a two-room cabin in an  almost inaccessible holler near Troublesome Creek. Her only human companion is her father, a coal miner suffering from black-lung disease, who is eager to marry her off before he dies. He is active in the efforts to organize the miners, a dangerous position to take in Hazard County in the 1930s. Cussy is a blue woman, perhaps the last of her kind. She is sometimes called Bluet, because her color resembles a wildflower that grows near her home in the Appalachian mountains.

As fictional characters, Cussy and her father are used to give a primer on the poverty in the Eastern Kentucky mountains, and the effect it has on the people of the area. It shows the devastating impact mining coal has had on the beauty and health of the natural surroundings, and on the community.

It shows the barriers Cussy must face because of her color, her gender, and her isolation. For instance, in one anecdote, she is forced to obey the hastily hung "no coloreds" sign in the restroom of the library room where she picks up the books and magazines for the people along her Pack Horse route. Richardson captures how the books she delivers show how Cussy's world, and the world of her neighbors, is sometimes beyond their ken.

"'Aeroplanes and trains,' I said to Angeline. ... 'The world's getting so big, Bluet. Makes a feller feel too small,' Angeline barely whispered. 'It's growing too fast. Right when you're looking smack at it, but you hain't really seeing it neither. Hain't natural.' She tilted her head down toward the dirt, plugging her toes into the earth as if to root herself from being carried off."

The writing is extraordinary, as the above illustrates. It's vivid and sensitive, filled with descriptive phrases. Richardson reaches perfection in her use of dialect -- just the right amount to give flavor to the speech of the people, but not too much that it appears mocking, is annoying, or hard to understand. Richardson has a keen ear.

She also has a keen heart and mind, pulling us in to watch her characters live their lives, allowing us to feel empathy and a certain kinship, even though their circumstance are far different in time and place to our own.