The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak

The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak

316 pages

Published January 2004 by W. W. Norton and Company 

Publisher's Summary: 

Every family has its secrets. But toward the end of his life, George decides to tell his daughter the story of his mother and the Turk. This initial revelation leads to a narrative tour de force that follows a family through four generations and around the world―through love, marriage, and betrayal, through illness, death, and war. Mary Helen Stefaniak's charming and flawed characters and the warmth of her prose will stay with readers long after they close the book.

My Thoughts: 

Several years ago my book club read Stefaniak's The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia - we were charmed by the book and by Stefaniak, who graced us with her presence when we met to discuss the book. I've had this book of hers sitting on my shelf for many years and when I chose this years' book club theme, You Learn Something New Every Month, I thought it was a good time to read a book that addresses different cultures and employs a different story telling style. 

I'm sorry to say this one was not a hit with my book club. Although, I think it might have been better received had people found the cast of characters that was hidden at the back of the book. Many people complained that it was confusing and were surprised by some of the things that were revealed to them when we discussed the book. This I attribute to the unusual way the book is crafted. 

The story is based, rather loosely, on members of Stefaniak's own family. Told through the point of view of several different characters, we come at the story from several different vantage points. We start with George and move, without readers even being very much aware of it, to George's grandmother, Staramajka who, in telling the story to her grandchildren, is, in fact, telling it to their mother, Agnes, who is eavesdropping. It's through that story that we come to learn of the relationship between Agnes and a prisoner of war, who is presented as being a Turk (but who, we learn, is actually Serbian) in the small Croatian village where Agnes and her husband, Josef, have started a family. Josef has gone to Milwaukee to earn money, with plans to return to the village. But war intervenes and it's years before Agnes and Josef will reunite. 

We'll learn more about the circumstances of the family when we follow the trail of Josef's brother, Marko, who is taken prisoner by the Russians and presumed to have died. We learn more, yet again, from the point of view of a woman George befriended when they were young. The stories and characters merge and separate and reveal that the details of a story often vary depending on the storyteller. We learn of Staramajka's relationship with a gypsy, of Marko's marriage to a Russian and escape from the White Army, and of Josef's relationship with a woman whose daughter would later befriend George. 

While my book club may not have liked this book, I was the lone exception. Was it confusing at times? Yes. But I loved all of the stories that Stefaniak managed to work into the book and how things tied back together. Most of all, I loved the way the book ended making me want to go write back to the beginning and start again to see what it was that I had missed in the story telling. It's not unusual for me to like a book more than the majority of my book club does (and sometimes less); it's rare for me to be the only person to like a book. But here I am fine with being that person and suggesting that you disregard their opinions and give this book a chance. 

Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes

Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes

Published February 2023 by Penguin Publishing Group

12 hours, 21 minutes

Read by Daisy Ridley

Publisher's Summary: 

Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope—she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. 

That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag—she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself. 

Full of Jojo Moyes’ signature humor, brilliant storytelling, and warmth, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.

My Thoughts: 

What I Liked: 

• It's Moyes, so you know that there will be a blend of humor, love, and drama. I've come to learn how I can expect Moyes' books to end, as well; and this was one of those times that I was happy to have that happen. Although I will never forget the gut punch she delivered in Me Before You. I can't help but hope that one day she'll surprise me again like that. 
• The women and their relationships. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I tell you that this book is about the unlikely friendships that often develop between people when circumstances throw them together. 
• The growth we see in these characters. It's slow to develop, as you would expect it would be in real life, and brings out the best in each of the women. 
• Although there was a part of me that felt like Moyes was dropping too much weight onto Sam's shoulders (one of those "if it can go wrong, it will" situations). But then it occurred to me that many of us are dealing with similar situations - caring for older parents, a stressful job, depression taking it's toll on a family, a lack of self-confidence that often comes with middle age. 
• Daisy Ridley's reading. She does a terrific job differentiating the characters and with the accents. 

What I Didn't Like: 

• As much as we see growth in most of the female characters, there's one character that's an a#@ from start to finish. To be fair, not all of us do grow and learn, so it's probably more realistic this way but he did feel fairly one-dimensional. 
• The woman who has stepped into Nisha's place seems destined, in the beginning, to be a driving force in the events that have transpired to this point. But it turns out that she doesn't play much of a role at all, other than to drive Nisha nuts when Nisha sees her out and about in Nisha's designer clothes. 
• Although I wasn't entirely sure how Moyes would bring things to a climax and closure (and some of it was unexpected), it mostly predictable. I know, I know, I said I was happy about that earlier. But it was a bit too predictable. Even though it was what I needed. Yeah, I know it makes no sense, but that's how I'm feeling. 

Overall, Moyes never really disappoints. I enjoy her characters, I enjoy the relationships she builds, I enjoy the balance of emotions she creates. I just wish that one day she would make my heart really hurt again. 

The Winners by Fredrik Backman

The Winners by Fredrik Backman

Published September 2022 by Atria Books

Read by Marlin Ireland

21 hours, 22 minutes

Publisher's Summary: 

Over the course of two weeks, everything in Beartown will change. 

Maya Andersson and Benji Ovich, two young people who left in search of a life far from the forest town, come home and joyfully reunite with their closest childhood friends. There is a new sense of optimism and purpose in the town, embodied in the impressive new ice rink that has been built down by the lake.

Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there's something about this place that prevents it. The destruction caused by a ferocious late-summer storm reignites the old rivalry between Beartown and the neighboring town of Hed, a rivalry which has always been fought through their ice hockey teams.

Maya's parents, Peter and Kira, are caught up in an investigation of the hockey club's murky finances, and Amat-once the star of the Beartown team-has lost his way after an injury and a failed attempt to get drafted into the NHL. Simmering tensions between the two towns turn into acts of intimidation and then violence. All the while, a fourteen-year-old boy grows increasingly alienated from this hockey-obsessed community and is determined to take revenge on the people he holds responsible for his beloved sister's death. He has a pistol and a plan that will leave Beartown with a loss that is almost more that it can stand.  

As it beautifully captures all the complexities of daily life and explores questions of friendship, loyalty, loss, and identity, this emotion-packed novel asks us to reconsider what it means to win, what it means to lose, and what it means to forgive.

My Thoughts: 

Curse you, Fredrik Backman! I knew you could play with my emotions; you've done it so many times, including in this series. But you took it to a whole other level with this one. You broke my heart! 

As much as the events of Us Against You were a followup to Beartown, they were even more a set up for the events of The Winners. What Richard Theo set in motion in the second book comes to fruition in The Winners but we don't even see it coming for well into the book, after the devastating storm amps up the animosity (as if it hadn't already reached its peak) between Beartown and Hed. We know things are going to come to a terrible end as soon as the book begins; Backman is the king of foreshadowing. He's also the king of foreshadowing that means something different than what readers first assume. So you don't know for sure what's going to happen. Except that the unnamed boy in the publisher's summary is probably going to play a part. It often feels like Backman is playing a game of cat and mouse with his readers. 

Terrible things happen. But the terrible things, as terrible things so often do, causes enemies to come together, causes communities to pull together more than ever. Backman gives us, as he always does, the full range of human emotions. It's what makes his books so relatable. Life is full of anger, violence, sadness, enemies and loss; it is also filled with friendship, humor, happiness, healing and love. 

I had a couple of quibbles with this one but I can't really go into what they were without giving things away, so I won't. I highly recommend these books in audiobook format; Ireland is fantastic and it's good to hear the pronunciations of the names. Of course, in print you can go back and read those trademark marvelous insights into humanity, so maybe print? Either way, you can't really lose.  

After three books, Backman seems ready to be done with the people of Beartown. There's not much left that he can do to these people without it beginning to feel like a soap opera. So he spends the end of this book catching readers up with what will happen to the characters in the rest of their lives. It felt a bit rushed but each character's future felt true to what you would hope and expect for them. 

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

Published March 2019 by Washington Square Press

448 pages

Publisher's Summary: 

Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did. Have you ever seen a town rise? Ours did that, too.

A small community tucked deep in the forest, Beartown is home to tough, hardworking people who don’t expect life to be easy or fair. No matter how difficult times get, they’ve always been able to take pride in their local ice hockey team. So it’s a cruel blow when they hear that Beartown ice hockey might soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in the neighboring town of Hed, take in that fact. As the tension mounts between the two adversaries, a newcomer arrives who gives Beartown hockey a surprising new coach and a chance at a comeback.

Soon a team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; always dutiful and eager-to-please Bobo; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the town’s enmity with Hed grows more and more acute.

As the big game approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt intensifies. By the time the last goal is scored, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after everything, the game they love can ever return to something as simple and innocent as a field of ice, two nets, and two teams. Us against you.

My Thoughts: 

When you don't start reading a trilogy until after the third book is out in the world, it's easy to say that you knew there would be more books after the first one. I'm pretty sure, though, that I would have felt that way even before Us Against You was published. The characters in Beartown left us wanting to know more. How will Maya, Amat, and Benji move on? What friendships will survive what happened in the first book and which will fall apart? What new friendships will grow? It's a given that hockey will play a role, but how? And what new truths about community, family, friendship, and humanity will Backman explore?

This is the fifth novel by Backman that I've read and Backman's commentary about the human condition is something I've always loved about this books. As Kirkus Reviews says, "evident in all his novels is an apparent ability to state a truth about humanity with break taking elegance." Yes, one could argue that the story itself should revel those same truths. And this is the first time that I've actually felt like Backman should stop telling me so much and just show me through the actions of his characters. I really, really wanted to get to the people, to find out what was going to happen to them.  the Medium reviewer says, the novel was frequently "baggy and digressive." Even having said that, that same Medium reviewer said this novel was "impeccably written work that explores the love and passion, and the sense of community." Also true. Which makes this still a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed, even though I thought it was 50 pages too long. 

"People say that leadership is about making difficult decisions, unpalatable and unpopular decisions. "Do your job," leaders are constantly being told. The impossible part of the job is, of course, that a leader can carry on leading only as long as someone follow him, and people's reactions to leadership are always the same: if a decision of yours benefits me, you're fair, and if the same decision harms me, you're a tyrant. The truth about most people is as simple as it is unbearable: we rarely want what is best for everyone; we mostly want what's best for ourselves."

It's that kind of observation that makes readers face uncomfortable truths about themselves and makes readers forgive those 50 pages too man. 

One of the other things I've admired about Backman's writing is his ability to humanize all of his characters. Some of them are not a "good" as others, some more prone to violence, others more prone to be cruel. But Backman tends to readers see the reasons those characters have become those people, giving readers the ability to see them as fully human and to see the goodness in them (and, I'd add, push us to try to find the same in real people). In Us Against You, though, Backman has introduced a new character, a politician that is more one-dimensional. He is clearly the bad guy here, despite any thought that he is taking on the established political hierarchy. I kept waiting for that moment when Backman would revel a side of Richard Theo that would make him understandable. It never came. Perhaps that's a revelation of another sort. 

I may have become even more attached to some of the characters than I was in Beartown (I see you playing with my emotions, Mr. Backman). I had to race through this one to make sure all of them would be ok. Here's the thing with Backman's books - some of them won't be, some of them will flourish. Some that I didn't care for in the first book will become dear to me, others will fall out of favor. And hockey? Hockey is, once again, just a device to show us those truths about people. 

Did I love it as much as I did Beartown? No. But it's still a mighty fine encore. It could stand on its own but I wouldn't recommend reading it without reading Beartown first. 

Kunstler's In Paradise by Cathleen Schine

Künstlers In Paradise by Cathleen Schine 

272 pages

Published March 2023 by Henry Holt and Co. 

Publisher's Summary: 

Julian Künstler comes from New York City to L.A. like many a lost twenty-something: to find a job writing in the entertainment industry. But this is 2020 and his temporary visit turns into an extended stay, trapped by the lockdown in a little house in Venice with his glamorous, eccentric, and ancient grandmother. Ninety-three-years old, Mamie came to Los Angeles from Vienna at eleven with her parents in 1939 among a wave of Jewish musicians, directors, and intellectuals escaping Hitler. As the months roll on, she begins to tell Julian her stories of the eminent emigres she’s known and the magical world they inhabited as their old world was destroyed—people like Arnold Schoenberg, Christopher Isherwood, and Greta Garbo. Not quite all her stories, however. The pandemic isolates Julian from his world, but from Mamie he learns of the world that came before him and how much the past holds of the future. A tender, sharply wrought comic novel about exile, the power of stories handed down and handed on, and the power of stories held secretly in the heart.

My Thoughts: 

How about the thoughts of some other people first: 

• Kirkus Reviews: dreamy, drifty, and droll
• Wall Street Journal: abuzz with biting repartee
• New York Times: a paean to the regenerative power of storytelling
• Chicago Review of Books: Schine’s writing is cut glass, a mix of Jewish humor and family banter

I tell you all this so that you know that I'm not alone in my appreciation for this book. I'm a huge fan of Schine's dialogue - it's the kind of dialogue that feels both natural and yet nothing like a conversation you yourself would ever have but really wish you would. 

Schine's book always have a depth to them that the lightness of her touch belies. Salomea (Mamie) comes to Los Angeles, with her parents and grandfather, a refuge. Leaving their lives, surviving when so many they knew and loved perished at the hands of the Nazis, leaves each of them with scars they will carry for the rest of their lives. They are never again allowed to be the people they were in Vienna, despite their soft landing in paradise. 

All of this is history Julian was unaware of until the Covid lockdown strands him at his grandmother's house, where he has gone to help her recover from a fractured wrist. Julian, who has been feeling very, very sorry for himself and who has been adrift all of his adult life, is feeling very much like a refuge and suffers from survivor guilt himself, knowing that his family is much more threatened by Covid than he is. But Mamie's stories begin to give him a greater perspective and he begins to see a future for himself in her stories. 

"Mamie, his wonderful grandmother - exotic and quixotic, his mother said. And neurotic, his father would add. For Julian, she had always been, instead, possibility, an extension of his family into foreign lands, an escape from the locked-in dailiness of life."

I loved my grandmothers dearly; but I sure couldn't help wishing I'd had Mamie for a grandmother. She is no-nonsense, caring, quick witted, and honest (except when she's holding back the parts of her life that are hers alone). Mamie's companion, Agatha, is sardonic and loyal. Julian is the least likable of the main characters; but, if you've loved a 24-year-old, you'll recognize him. The more time he spends with Mamie, the less self-absorbed he becomes, recognizing that someone else may actually be a more interesting person and that other people might truly want the best for him. 

"He loved her. Not a new feeling - he had always loved her. But he'd loved her in a rhythmic, unconscious way, each visit from his grandmother or trip to her house in Los Angeles a new revelation of love, soon forgotten, made irrelevant by distance, by time. Now he loved her consciously, consistently, daily. He loved the way she looked, somewhat worse for wear, that bright hair dyed by Agatha every three weeks, her lipstick an optimistic pink, her silk scarves thrown around her neck with the same aplomb as in her youth, her gentle gravelly voice, her stories." 

I feel in love with Mamie and her stories, too. This book gave me, as they say, all of the feels. It's a book I would read again. And that's saying something. 

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

Published March 2016 by Little, Brown and Company

9 Hours, 40 Minutes

Read by Juliet Stevenson

Publisher's Summary: 

A woman discovers that the foreigner she thinks will redeem her life is a notorious war criminal.

Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, Fidelma McBride, becomes so enamored that she begs him for a child. All that world is shattered when Vlad is arrested, and his identity as a war criminal is revealed.

Fidelma, disgraced, flees to England and seeks work among the other migrants displaced by wars and persecution. But it is not until she confronts him-her nemesis-at the tribunal in The Hague, that her physical and emotional journey reaches its breathtaking climax.

The Little Red Chairs is a book about love, and the endless search for it. It is also a book about mankind's fascination with evil, and how long, how crooked, is the road towards Home.

My Thoughts: 

I've been hearing the name Edna O'Brien for years and long thought I needed to pick up some of her work. At some point, this is the one I put on my list of books to read. I don't know that I even then knew what it was about, just that it was her latest (at 85!) book. I don't know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn't what I got - I never could have imagined what I got. 

The Little Red Chairs starts as one kind of book but quickly turns to an entirely different kind of book. It opens with the arrival of Dr. Vladimir Dragon in a small Irish village, filled with the kind of quirky characters (although O'Brien's characters are not caricatures; they are fully realized people) you'd expect to find in one. There is a gossip, there is humor, there is a book club where most of the members can't find the message in the books they read. 

It doesn't take long for readers to begin to understand that Dr. Vlad is not at all the person he claims to be, not a mysterious healing man but a man on the run from international authorities. It take longer for the villagers to see him for what he is; by then he has won them over, actually providing healing for many of them. So they are shocked to see television footage of him being hauled off of a bus, wanted for committing war crimes including the murder of thousands during the siege of Sarajevo (he is modeled on the real war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, the Butcher of Bosnia). For Fidelma, though, the harm he has caused will forever change her life. She has fallen in love with him and he has given her the child she has long wanted. But, because of who he is, the child will be taken from her in a scene that is so brutal I wish that I could forget it but fear I never will. 

The story keeps changing. When Fidelma flees Ireland, the story turns to one of the refugee women Fidelma becomes involved with, their stories of their homelands and the troubles they continue to face. We find ourselves in a dreamscape, where Dr. Dragan is visited by an old friend who recounts Dragan's crimes. Finally, we are in The Hague, where Fidelma travels to witness Dr. Vlad's trial and to visit him, to make him understand the harm he caused to her. 

In reviews by people who really know how to review a book, you'll find words like "genius" and "masterpiece." It's another of those situations where I wonder what I missed in a book. Maybe if I had read it, rather than listening to it, it would have had a greater impact, would have felt more cohesive. It's not that I didn't find a lot to like about this book. Maybe the genius of the book, for me, was in the way that O'Brien created so many characters that we became deeply involved with. Maybe it was in the way that she showed how good and evil live together. But I'll be honest with you, despite there being things that will stay with me from this book, I can't, a couple of weeks after finishing it, remember how it ended. 

The Accidental Further Adventures of the 100-Year-Old Man by Jonas Jonasson

The Accidental Further Adventures of the 100-Year-Old Man by Jonas Jonasson
Published January 2019 by William Morrow
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
He’s back. Even older. Even funnier.

It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they’re not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harboring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un. Yikes!

Soon Allan and Julius are at the center of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Needless to say, things are about to get very, very complicated.

Another hilarious, witty, and entertaining novel from bestselling author Jonas Jonasson that will have readers howling out-loud at the escapades and misfortunes of its beloved hundred-year-old hero Allan Karlsson and his irresistible sidekick Julius.

My Thoughts:
Ten years ago Jonas Jonasson published The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. It was his first novel and it sold ten million copies. It's one of those books that keeps showing up different places because it keeps finding new fans. And those fans weren't finished with Allan Karlsson.

A couple of years ago, that book was recommended to me and I meant to read it. But you know how that goes. But at least when the sequel was pitched to me by the ladies at TLC Book Tours, I didn't hesitate. Of course, I meant to read the first book first. But I didn't. And while it might have helped some, it absolutely is not necessary to have read the first book before reading this one. But this one will probably convince you to read the first one anyway, so maybe just read them in order.

Despite the humor of the book, Jonasson has a lot to say about politics and the political environment in which we currently find ourselves. Which brings me to a warning: Jonasson takes aim at a lot of political leaders in this book. But mostly as Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. So if you're a fan of either of those men, you might not care much for this book. On the other hand, if you're not, you're going to enjoy this book that much more.

If it were up to me to give you a summary of this book, I'd pretty much leave it off before that second sentence even finished. Because this is a book that keeps surprising you with the absurd situations that Allan and Julius find themselves in and you just need to let it be a surprise. If you read this book and tell me you see things coming before they happen, I will likely call you a liar. Jonasson takes readers to places you can't imagine Allan and Julius will find themselves as the uranium situation develops. My only little quibble with the book is that it landed a bit too softly for my tastes, although I'm not giving anything away when I tell you that you know all along that things will end well for these two old men.

I wonder how much longer Allan Karlsson can live. I feel like he just might have another book in him.

Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions of the book, check out the full tour.

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About Jonas Jonasson

Jonas Jonasson is the author of the international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, now a major motion picture. Prior to his success as a novelist, Jonas was a journalist for the Swedish newspaper Expressen for many years, and later became a media consultant and founded a production company specializing in sporting events for Swedish television, which he sold before moving abroad to work on his first novel. He is the author of the internationally successful novels The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden and Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All. He lives on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.

Find out more about Jonas at his website, and connect with him on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.