The Mirrored World by Debra Dean

The Mirrored World by Debra Dean
Published August 2012 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my source courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in exchange for this review

St. Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg, the patron saint of St. Petersburg, is said to have given all her possessions to the poor after her husband, Andrey Fyodorovich Petrov, died. After he died, tradition holds that Xenia became a fool for Christ who wore her late husband's uniform and wandered the streets of St. Petersburg. Her grave is in Smolensky Cemetery where an ornate chapel has been erected in her honor.

In The Mirrored World, Debra Dean has taken what is known about Xenia and crafted a novel around it, narrated by a fictional cousin, Dasha. When a fire forces Xenia, her mother and sister to seek shelter with Dasha's family, where Xenia and Dasha form a bond that will carry them through marriages, loss, and poverty. Along the way Dean takes the reader into the courts of Empress Elizabeth and Grand Duke Peter and Grand Duchess Catherine (who would later become Catherine the Great) and out onto the streets of St. Petersburg and the depths of poverty.

I have long had a keen interest in Catherine the Great (since reading a biography as a child) and this time in Russian history so I jumped at the chance to read this book set in that time. Dean did not disappoint, exploring what life was like in the courts of the time, with the politics and intrigue that come along with the wealth and privileges. The excesses of the wealthy juxtaposed against the extremes of want are both vivid as Dean takes us along on Xenia's transformation from a privileged young woman who attends court functions to a woman who gives away all of her worldly possessions, wearing nothing but the tattered remains of her husband's uniform. The Mirrored World is a novel primarily about passion and love that works on many levels, the love of family, the passion between men and women, religious passion. It is written beautifully with many passages that resonated with me.

"Whatever we know as children, this is the world, eaten whole and without question."

Another passage gave me pause...and sparked an idea for something new I want to explore on Lit and Life. More on that later this week.

I did have a few quibbles with this book.For a novel that is marketed about being about Xenia, she is remarkably absent from much of the book.Dean focused more on Dasha for a good part of the book, particularly once Xenia disappears, presumed dead. The reader already knows, though, that Xenia is not dead and since Dasha is telling the story looking back in time, it felt like some of what happened to Xenia might have been explored.

This is one book that might have benefited from being longer, a complaint I rarely have. Some story lines are not developed as fully as I might have liked. A son comes into Dasha's life late in the book and within pages is a grown man. I'm sure that the point Dean was making had been made merely by putting the boy in Dasha's life; but it seemed, to me, abrupt to skip on so quickly.

I'm looking forward to picking up Dean's debut novel The Madonnas of Leningrad for another look at Russia through Dean's eyes.Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour. For other thoughts on this book, check out the full tour list. To connect with Dean, find her on Facebook.

Sunday Salon - September 2

Happy September! I can't tell you how happy I am that fall is here, or will be soon. We have battled heat in the high 90's again this week and I am so ready for cooler temperatures to finally arrive.

I didn't get much reading done this past week. My sister and her husband celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary last week so their kids, my parents, my brother and I hosted a surprise party for them at our house Friday night. Well, sort of a surprise. My brother-in-law bought a boat this summer and was bound and determined that he was taking advantage of this long weekend for a good boating trip. We finally had to break down and tell him about the party - but at least my sister was surprised. We had a great turnout and I think they both really enjoyed themselves!

After my utter failure with Carl (of Stainless Steel Droppings) this spring (how could I NOT have succeeded at something that required reading fairy tales and folk tales???), you might be surprised to find out that I'm jumping on into R.I.P. VII (Readers Imbibing Peril) with Carl and about 100 of his closest friends. When the gals at The Estella Society announced a readalong of Sarah Water's The Little Stranger in conjunction with R.I.P. VII, I decided to jump on in.I've been wanting to read this one for a long time.

Once I decided to join the Group Read, I decided I might as well explore the rest of the options for R.I.P. VII. Since I've been wanting to read some Angela Carter for a long time as well, I've decided to also read some short stories.

While I was signing up, I noticed that there is also a Peril for the screen and Carl mentioned the original "Dark Shadows" series. I have steered far and wide away from the movie of the same name but now that Carl brought it up, I'm going to track down the series and take a trip down memory lane.

Since I'm working hard to make everything in my life, including blogging less stressful (and more fun!), R.I.P. VII is in, even if it does mean that something else has to be dropped. 

This week I've got reviews of The Mirrored World by Debra Dean and The Bookie's Son by Andrew Goldstein coming up. then my schedule is clear for October except for Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand for the Omaha Bookworms and The Headmaster's Wager for a TLC Book Tour at the end of the month. There will be plenty of time to read The Little Stranger and I'm also going to work in a couple more books that I have for review which just happen to also fit in with R.I.P. VII. What are you reading heading into fall?

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Published August 2011 in hardcover, June 2012 in trade paperback
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for this review

Thirty years in the future all of our worst fears have come true - this year's drought has stretched on for decades, gas is scarce and cities are crumbling under the weight of an influx of people who have moved in from the small towns and suburbs. The one place every wants to be is the OASIS, a computer simulated universe designed by the Howard Hughes-like James Halliday.

When Halliday dies, his will puts the world into a frenzy. Somewhere in the OASIS, among its hundreds of sectors and thousands of planets, Halliday has hidden an egg. The person who finds the egg will inherit Halliday's billions and control of the OASIS. The egg can only be found after three keys are found and three gates entered and beaten. Five years later, when no one has even discovered the first key, most of the world has given up. But for "gunters" (egg hunters) like Wade Watts, the search is everything. An orphan, Wade lives with an aunt who only puts up with him for the extra food she can get. With no friends outside of the OASIS and few inside, the only thing Wade really has going for him to an incredible memory and mad gaming skills.

When Wade discovers the first puzzle and the first key, his avatar draws the attention of the world, including the attentions of a giant corporation intent on winning the egg and ready to do anything to do it. To beat them, Wade is going to have to draw on everything he has learned about Halliday's passion - the pop culture of the 1980's and learn to trust and depend on others.

The Barnes & Noble overview calls this book "wildly original." That it is; I've never read anything like it. It also says Ready Player One is "stuffed with irresistible nostalgia." It certainly is filled with nostalgia; unfortunately, I had no problem resisting the nonstop references to the movies, music and games of the 1980's.

Since almost all of the action takes place in the OASIS, Wade is almost the only human we meet until very nearly the end of the book. With a story filled with nothing but avatars, Cline was left himself with very little to develop in his characters and it made them difficult for me to connect with them. While there were some things I wasn't expecting, there were no surprises for me which was a big disappointment.

At 100 pages, I was ready to make this my second DNF (did not finish) in a month but so many people love it, I plugged along thinking I would soon come to the point where the book would grab me. It never did. I will, however, pass this one along to Mini-him who is a gaming nerd. Although he wasn't born until almost the end of the decade this book highlights, the intricacies of the game play will certainly appeal to him more than it did to me.

The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy

The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
Published January 2012 in hardcover, August 2012 in paperback by Broadway
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in consideration for this review

Publisher's Synopsis:

In 1945, Elsie Schmidt is a naive teenager, as eager for her first sip of champagne as she is for her first kiss. She and her family have been protected from the worst of the terror and desperation overtaking her country by a high-ranking Nazi who wishes to marry her. So when an escaped Jewish boy arrives on Elsie’s doorstep in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, Elsie understands that opening the door would put all she loves in danger.

Sixty years later, in El Paso, Texas, Reba Adams is trying to file a feel-good Christmas piece for the local magazine. Reba is perpetually on the run from memories of a turbulent childhood, but she’s been in El Paso long enough to get a full-time job and a fiancé, Riki Chavez. Riki, an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol, finds comfort in strict rules and regulations, whereas Reba feels that lines are often blurred.

Reba’s latest assignment has brought her to the shop of an elderly baker across town. The interview should take a few hours at most, but the owner of Elsie’s German Bakery is no easy subject. Reba finds herself returning to the bakery again and again, anxious to find the heart of the story. For Elsie, Reba’s questions are a stinging reminder of darker times: her life in Germany during that last bleak year of WWII. And as Elsie, Reba, and Riki’s lives become more intertwined, all are forced to confront the uncomfortable truths of the past and seek out the courage to forgive.

My Thoughts: 

I was really drawn to Elsie's story and was much more invested in her life in Germany. From the beginning of the book, I was struck by McCoy's original take on World War II. Not often do we find our protagonist on the side of "the bad guy." While Elsie's opinions certainly grow and change throughout the book and the Nazi's are clearly in the wrong, McCoy does an excellent job of illustrating, both in the Elsie's story and in Riki's, that things are more often grey than black and white. 

Alternating chapters between the past and present, McCoy draws her readers through The Baker's Daughter, although for me it was much more to get to Elsie and the tension that just did not let up. Writers often put their characters into dangerous situations only to pull them back just in time. McCoy offers a much more realistic approach. Like most Germans, the Schmidt's suffer, with very different resulting opinions about what has happened to them.

McCoy contrasts the Nazi's treatment of Jews with the United State's treatment of illegal immigrants through Riki's part of the story. It's an interesting comparison, although it got lost somewhat with so many plot lines involved. McCoy has tried to cover a lot of ground here and I would have preferred to focus more on Reba's family and how that affected her relationships. 

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely, it is a lovely book about women who must find their inner strength under very different but very difficult circumstances. It would make terrific book club selection with much to discuss. McCoy has written a book that is thought provoking on many levels.

"We all tell little lies about ourselves, our pasts, our presents. We think some of them are minuscule, unimportant, and others, large and incriminating. But they are the same. Only God has enough of the story to judge our souls." 

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour. For other opinions about this book, check out the full tour. This is Sarah McCoy's second novel. To learn more about McCoy and her writing, visit her website, her blog, or her Facebook page, or chat with her on Twitter. My how being an author has changed in the past ten years - can you imagine trying to find the time to write, tour to promote your work, have a family and keep up all of this internet presence? Fortunately, McCoy seems to have figured it out; she is currently working on her third novel.

Sunday Salon - August 26

Ah, Sunday - I never know what to make of you. I don't have to work and I generally try not to clean on Sunday but you mean I have to go back to work tomorrow. I shall endeavor to make the best of you.

The Big Guy raced through The Lighthouse Road last week. Like me, he liked it (although maybe not as much as Safe From The Sea). He liked the movement in time and thought Geye did a great job with a work of strictly historical fiction. Now, like Safe From The Sea, this one will now make its way out into the world - first stop, my parents. The Big Guy isn't necessarily what I would call "a reader"  (he can't sit still long enough most of the time) but he does love books. He will pick up and put down books on a whim and entirely reads what ever appeals at the moment. Sometimes that means he's grabbing books from my shelves instead of his nightstand - case in point, he recently picked up Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending. I haven't gotten to it yet but if he delivers it back to me in the same shape as he did The Lighthouse Road, he is in big trouble!

I came home from work to find Joanne Harris' Peaches for Father Francis in my mailbox the other day. What a nice surprise - I've really enjoyed the books I've read by her and this was a complete surprise. And it will fit in perfectly with my plans for Fall Feasting reading coming up in October and November again.

Late last night I completed my eighth pin for the Pin It and Do It challenge. On a whim, I decided to make granola at 11:30 p.m. - given that it needs to bake for an hour, you can imagine how late I went to bed!

It wasn't the recipe I had initially pinned but it seems to be one that we will all like and it was one for which I had all of the ingredients on hand. Since I'm actually typing this up while I'm waiting for it to finish cooking, I can't give you a verdict on it yet. But I'm already imagining the variations on the basic recipe I can make: different fruit, different nuts, a batch with coconut for those in my family who like it, different grains. The recipe call for rolled oats but I used half rolled oats and half rolled barley. If we like it, I'm going to have to work in bigger batches; the recipe I used only makes enough granola for each of us to have about one bowl.

I neglected to mention, when I reviewed it, that Sea Escape by Lynn Griffin was my seventh pin. It was one of the books I took on vacation but I didn't include it in my vacation Pin It and Do It post because I wasn't done with it yet then. Since I still have about five more days this month, I may just be able to knock out another pin or two. I've got a party coming up with weekend and I might have to try out a couple of new recipes.

This week I'll have reviews of The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I'm hoping to get some pictures of the cats who aren't supposed to be living here but who are, so far, not bothering my allergies and working their way into our hearts. This week I'm reading The Mirrored World by Deborah Dean and The Bookie's Son by Andrew Goldstein for TLC Book Tours next week. What are you reading this week?