I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon

I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon

Read by Jane Collingwood and Sian Thomas

Published March 2018 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Russia, July 17, 1918: Under direct orders from Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik secret police force Anastasia Romanov, along with the entire imperial family, into a damp basement in Siberia where they face a merciless firing squad. None survive. At least that is what the executioners have always claimed.

Germany, February 17, 1920: A young woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anastasia Romanov is pulled shivering and senseless from a canal in Berlin. Refusing to explain her presence in the freezing water, she is taken to the hospital where an examination reveals that her body is riddled with countless, horrific scars. When she finally does speak, this frightened, mysterious woman claims to be the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia. 

Her detractors, convinced that the young woman is only after the immense Romanov fortune, insist on calling her by a different name: Anna Anderson. As rumors begin to circulate through European society that the youngest Romanov daughter has survived the massacre, old enemies and new threats are awakened. With a brilliantly crafted dual narrative structure, Lawhon wades into the most psychologically complex and emotionally compelling territory yet: the nature of identity itself. 

The question of who Anna Anderson is and what actually happened to Anastasia Romanov creates a saga that spans fifty years and touches three continents. This thrilling story is every bit as moving and momentous as it is harrowing and twisted.

My Thoughts:

Lawhon winds her twin stories - Anastasia and Anna - through time. Anastasia's story, told in the first person, moves forward from the days just before her family is removed from was removed from their palace and exiled in Siberia. Anna's story travels back in time, from 1970 when she is awaiting the decision of a German ruling on her identity, to 1920, when she was pulled from a canal in Germany. It's an interesting structure, made a bit difficult to follow (especially when you're listening to it) by the backward skips in time in Anna's parts of the book; sometimes Lawhon skips back four months, then six months. But it also worked to bring the two story lines together at the crucial point where we learn if Anastasia truly did survive the mass execution of her family and their servants. 

Almost as soon as the Romanovs were assassinated, rumors began swirling that Anastasia, the youngest daughter, had miraculously survived. Anna Anderson was not the only woman who claimed to be Anastasia and there was certainly a willingness among many to believe the notion that Anastasia had somehow not only survived the basement where the family was killed but also managed to escape Russia. For decades there were no remains to prove or disprove the stories, which only fed the rumors. I've read several books now about this time in Russian history; and even though I knew that reality of life for the people under the rule of the czars, it's hard not to buy into the romance of Anastasia's survival. I mean, who doesn't love Don Bluth's animated movie Anastasia, Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brenner in Anastasia, or the spectacle that is Nicolas and Alexandra, starring Laurence Olivier? 

If you don't already know how this is all going to end, please don't spoil it for yourself by looking it up. You will find yourself wanting to believe that Anastasia survived; Lawhon makes her such an appealing character and the brutality of what was done to their family so heartbreaking. Even knowing the truth didn't stop me from being surprised by the way Lawhon brings her story to a conclusion. 

I picked this book for my book club to read in January, hoping that there would be plenty to talk about and I am not disappointed on that score. It's not a perfect book but I'm always impressed with Lawhon's research and her ability to know what to include in her stories and I suggest that readers read the author's notes to see why Lawhon choose to tell her story the way she did. I also can't recommend the audiobook highly enough; both readers are excellent. This was just the book I needed, a mystery rooted in history. 

Stories From Suffragette City edited by M. J. Rose and Fiona Davis

Stories From Suffragette City edited by M. J. Rose and Fiona Davis

Published October 2020 by Holt, Henry, and Company, Inc.

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Stories from Suffragette City is a collection of short stories that all take place on a single day: October 23, 1915. It’s the day when tens of thousands of women marched up Fifth Avenue, demanding the right to vote in New York City. Thirteen of today's bestselling authors have taken this moment as inspiration to raise the voices of history and breathe fresh life into their struggles and triumphs. 

The characters depicted here, some well-known, others unfamiliar, each inspire and reinvigorate the power of democracy. We follow a young woman who is swept up in the protests when all she expected was to come sell her apples in the city. We see Alva Vanderbilt as her white-gloved sensibility is transformed over the course of the single fateful day. Ida B. Wells battles for racial justice in the women's suffrage movement so that every woman's voice can be heard. Each story stands on its own, but together Stories From Suffragette City becomes a symphony, painting a portrait of a country looking for a fight and ever restless for progress and equality.

My Thoughts:

One hundred and five years ago more than 25,000 women marched through New York City calling for the vote for women. Five years later, white women finally won that right. This collection celebrates that victory by using that march as its theme. Some of the stories center around real women, some of them quite well known in the movement; most are about fictional women and girls caught up in the movement. 

Ida Wells-Barnett

As with all short story collections, some of the stories resonated with me more than others. Perhaps the weakest of the stories, for me, was Steve Berry's Deeds, Not Words, primarily because it tells the story of a man peripherally involved with the march. Many of the stories are told from the perspective of immigrants. I particularly was impressed with Chris Bohjalian's Just Politics which is the story of a young Armenian refugee who has been convinced to walk in the march but who can't shake a sense of impending doom because of what happened to her people in Adana, Turkey. All of the stories are told from the perspective of white women except Jamie Ford's Boundless, We Ride and Dolen Perkins-Valdez' American Womanhood are told from the perspective of women of color which are both strong stories. Perkins-Valdez' story is especially interesting because it focuses attention on the violence of the 1913 march in Washington D.C. and the betrayal of the black women who had worked so tirelessly to advance women's rights by white women. It's primary character is Ida Wells-Barnett, an investigative journalist and activist in the civil rights movement. She's certainly a woman I'd like to learn more about.

I don't know, of course, what parameters each author was given for the stories they wrote. There must have been some direction as to which point in the march the author's characters would become present, because the stories seem to be in a type of chronological order for the day. There may also have been a suggestion that a certain young girl named Grace, introduced in M. J. Rose's story, be incorporated as she appeared in several of the stories.  Where she did appear, it felt as a piece of the story that was fitted in just as a device to tie the stories together because it didn't really advance any of the other stories. Yet, once I'd become accustomed to her appearance, it felt odd when she didn't appear. For my part, I would have preferred she be left out of all but Rose's story. 

As a reminder of all of the women who worked so hard and risked so much to earn women (well, at least white women) the vote, I definitely recommend this book. It will almost certainly make readers want to learn more about the movement. Fans of the authors included will not be disappointed. 

Life: It Goes On - December 20

Happy Sunday! Are you as surprised to find that it's Christmas week as I am? I am so excited to have the whole week off; it's been a long year with very few days off. Even though this is going to be an unusual Christmas, I'm determined to make the best of it, including making some time for myself to just relax this week so I'm working hard this weekend to get things ready. 

I thought I was keeping things a little simpler this year, decorating wise. I only used about half of my tree ornaments. When I saw this picture, though, I thought I could have made things much easier if I would just have thrown everything at the tree and let it hang where it landed. Isn't that hilarious?!

Last Week I: 

 Listened To: I finished I Was Anastasia (review this week) and Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet. I recommend the audio version of both of these books. Today I'm starting Emma Donoghue's latest, The Pull of the Stars. 

Watched: Lots of football, the season finale of The Voice, and It's A Wonderful Life. 

Read: Alexander McCall Smith's Emma (sadly, I can't recommend it) and I started Marilynne Robinson's latest in the Gilead series, Jack. 

Made: More caramel corn (both vegan and regular), bavarian mints, hummus from dry beans (so easy but I'm still working on the seasoning), and two loaves of sourdough bread (I will get a loaf that turns out the way it's supposed to eventually!). 

Enjoyed: My book club's virtual Christmas party. Several of our members contributed treats for everyone and one of our members coordinated making sure everyone got some of everything and delivered it all. We had all chosen a "guilty pleasure" book to read and it was fun to see what each person chose picked to read. 

This Week I’m:  

Planning: Some last minute shopping, lots of meal prep, wrapping gifts, decorating guest rooms, and I have a fun project which I can't tell you about here but I'll share with you next week if I can pull it off. 

Thinking About: How much we're going to miss family this year over the holidays. Mini-me and Ms. S are stuck in Rochester so we won't even have all of our immediate family. I'm working hard to make the best of it - we've known this was coming for months and we're going to do what we need to do to keep each other safe.`

Feeling: A little freaked out. I tossed some bird seed out on the patio yesterday because I didn't want to bundle up to take it out to the feeders. Last night we looked out the window and there was a giant opossum dining on the bird seed. He didn't even run when we opened the door until I started banging on pans. I know he is supposedly more afraid of me than I should be of him but I kept looking at that long mouth and picturing him attacking me like the raccoon in Elf attacked Will Farrell! Plus, what about my cat - is it safe to let her outside?!

Looking forward to: Celebrating Christmas with my parents Thursday and then with my kids on Friday. 

Question of the week: How are you adjusting to the holidays this year?

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Read by Bahni Turpin

Published September 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary: 

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief—a novel about faith, science, religion, love.

My Thoughts:

Transcendent: adjective

• beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience
• (of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe
• surpassing the ordinary; exceptional

Two years ago I read Gyasi's debut, Homegoing, and was so impressed with her writing and the story she told. I knew that I would read her next book and requested it from my library before it was even available. I was not alone - it took until November for me to get the book. It might have been because other people had also been impressed with her first book or because this one is gaining high praise from all quarters. For good reason. This book lives up to its title in every way. 

It's a complex novel that handles a lot of themes beautifully, never becoming overwhelmed by them. Gyasi's characters are complicated and wholly developed and I felt so deeply for them. Gyasi looks at the immigrant experience from the point of view of those who choose to stay and those who choose to return home. But this is not just an immigrant story. It's the story of parenting, the relationship between parents and children, the pressure we put on our children, marriage, addiction, mental health, faith, and science. 

Certainly these are not, on their surface, characters to whom I shouldn't necessarily be able to relate. But I can relate to the experience of being the mother of an addict and the constant fear that you are going to lose your child. Mercifully, I did not lose my child to a drug overdose as Gifty's mother did; but I can absolutely imagine finding myself reacting in the same way, being crippled with grief and depression. I also related to Gifty's struggle to reconcile her religious upbringing and faith with science. Even as Gifty is studying science and running an experiment she hopes will help people like Nana, she longs for the days when she could put herself in a higher beings hands. This conflict is one of the strengths of this book, of which there are many. 

If you've listened to any other books read by Bahni Turpin, you'll understand why she was the perfect choice to read this book. I'm always impressed with her work; you absolutely find yourself believing you are listening to the characters tell their stories. If you choose to read this book, I highly recommend the audiobook. I was about a third of the way through this book when I knew it would make a great choice for my book club and put it on our calendar. I recommend it for your book club as well. 

The Last Story of Mina Lee by

The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Published September 2020 by Park Row Books

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot can’t understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. Determined to discover the truth, Margot unravels her single mother’s past as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother, Mina. Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment leads to repercussions for Mina that echo through the decades, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death. Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a powerful and exquisitely woven debut novel that explores identity, family, secrets, and what it truly means to belong. 

My Thoughts:

Told in alternating chapters between Mina and Margot, Kim tells the story of Mina's immigrant experience  and Margot's story of growing up the daughter of a single-mother, undocumented immigrant. Like so many books with dual narratives, Mina's story line is stronger than Margot's. It felt like Kim had the idea for Mina's story and designed Margot's piece as a vehicle to explore one piece of it. 

Margot's present day story line requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief and lacks the passion and the emotional depth that Mina's story has, although Margot's story when she looks back on her life growing up with her mother has more emotional heft. It was easy to believe that Margot would have had incredibly mixed emotions growing up with a woman who didn't fit in in the country they live in and who seems to be completely consumed with working. As Margot tried to discover if her mother's death might have been something more than an accident, I enjoyed the "mystery-to-be-solved" element of the story, although some of the pieces felt a bit forced and I didn't care much for the piece that involved a police detective. 

Mina's story is heartbreaking even before she arrives in the United States. Unfortunately, we know from the beginning that her life doesn't get better and ends sadly. It's an important story to explore right now as we struggle with what who we should allow to immigrate and how we treat (and mistreat) those who do.

As with so many relationship stories, so much of how the characters feel about each other has to do with a lack of communication.  How might have Margot felt about her mother if she knew why her mother refused to learn English? It always makes me wonder, when I read books like this, what have I not said to the people I love that I should have said. There were so many times Margot's and Mina's relationship might have been different if Mina would have knocked on Mina's closed door or Margot would have learned Korean so it was easier for the two of them to communicate.