The Book of V by Anna Solomon

The Book of V by Anna Solomon
Published May 2020 by Holt, Henry and Company, Inc.
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
For fans of The Hours and Fates and Furies, a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power, and desire finally converge in the present day.

Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016.

Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life—along with the lives of others.

Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all.

In Anna Solomon's The Book of V., these three characters' riveting stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years.


My Thoughts: 
I can't actually recall requesting this book but I can tell you two reasons why I would have - I love the cover of this one and that opening paragraph comparing this book to Fates and Furies, a book I very much enjoyed and which was a probably the most talked about book in 2015. Comparing any book to it is a bold statement. Unfortunately, for me, it wasn't a comparison this one could live up to.

Perhaps if I'd more recently read the Book of Esther, this one would have had a greater impact on me. Because I hadn't, I didn't see where Solomon had veered away from that part of the Christian and Hebrew bibles and it made the final chapter of her story less impactful. Unfortunately, this storyline was also the storyline in which I had the least interest which was a problem given that it's the story that the other two storylines are based on.

To be fair to this book, it sort of felt like the wrong book for me to be reading at this time. When I finished this book and started looking for what to read next, I knew I needed either something light or something that would take me to another world. In other words, nothing like this book at all which is a book entirely designed to make readers think about what it means to be a woman, now, forty years ago, and thousands of years ago. We're in the heads of these women a lot which makes it slow going. It also makes it a book I want to be able to recommend; I want to be able to say "read this book about how being a woman has changed and how it hasn't."

I'm loathe to tell you what my other issue was with the book because I know it's not going to be a popular thing for me to say. Here goes: there was a lot of religion in the book (duh, Book of Esther) and I felt like that part took away from the part I was interested. It's not that I'm opposed to religion in a book, and I'm always up for a book that teaches me something new. But I didn't really feel like I was learning from this book, just that religion was being forced into the storylines.

Ugh. I feel like I'm beating this book up. It's not a bad book. If I'd been in the right frame of mind, I feel like I would have enjoyed this one more. If I was more familiar with the story of Esther, I might have enjoyed this one more. If the summary interests you, check out other reviews. Other people may feel very differently about it.

The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell

The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell
Published August 2019 by Atria Books
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
In July 1913, twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements had seen enough of the world to know that it was unfair. She’s spent her whole life in the copper-mining town of Calumet, Michigan where men risk their lives for meager salaries—and had barely enough to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. The women labor in the houses of the elite, and send their husbands and sons deep underground each day, dreading the fateful call of the company man telling them their loved ones aren’t coming home. When Annie decides to stand up for herself, and the entire town of Calumet, nearly everyone believes she may have taken on more than she is prepared to handle.

In Annie’s hands lie the miners’ fortunes and their health, her husband’s wrath over her growing independence, and her own reputation as she faces the threat of prison and discovers a forbidden love. On her fierce quest for justice, Annie will discover just how much she is willing to sacrifice for her own independence and the families of Calumet.

My Thoughts:
Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow is one of my all-time favorite books and I've been meaning to read more of her work for a long while. So when I chanced upon this one, I hardly even glanced at what it was about. But look at that cover and look at that description - you know I was going to read this one, regardless of who had written it. It checks off so many of my wants in a book. Strong woman? Check. Historical fiction about the U.S.? Check. A book about a subject I've been wanting to read more about? Check. Based on a real person and real events? Check and check.

From top left, clockwise: Annie Clemenc, parading strikers, miners for the Calumet and Hecla Company, James McNaughton (manager of the company), union organizers including Mother Jones, and the Italian Hall where at least 73 people died on Christmas Eve 1913.

It was only when I was nearly finished with this book that I discovered that Russell is a highly respected writer of historical fiction (I mean, I had seen some of her other books so I suppose I should have suspected that this was her wheelhouse). World creating, as she did in The Sparrow, is clearly not her usual jam. Instead she relies on real events and research to craft her stories. Unfortunately, that leaves her unable to create the kind of magic she created in The Sparrow, married as she must largely be, to actual settings and facts.

There's no doubt that Russell is an impressive researcher. Which is part of the problem with the book. She has packed so many facts and historical figures into the book that it's hard to actually connect with most of the characters and Russell doesn't leave herself much room to really develop them. Annie Clemenc was a fascinating person and Russell does a fine job with her for the most part, but other characters are flatter. Further, the outcome of the real strike is known and Russell chooses here to stick with the historical facts in so far at that is concerned instead of veering into the fiction piece of the genre. It makes for something of a flat ending.

All of that makes it sound like I didn't like the book. I did. I learned a lot and I kept thinking of the ways it took me back to Wiley Cash's The Last Ballad, about the mill strikes of the 1920's. I loved Annie Clements and was disappointed to find that the real Annie Clemenc's life didn't get much better after the strike. Ten years ago, before I started blogging (and really understanding how many books there are out there that I'll never get to), I would have been perfectly happy with this book, which I'd give a solid 3 stars, if I gave out stars. There's nothing wrong with a 3 star book. This one just suffered in comparison to its 5-star brother and all of the other really great books I've read this year.

Life: It Goes On

Happy Sunday! I'm up, productive and getting ready to start a painting project. All of which should tell you that yesterday's Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon was another failure for me. What's that you say? I hadn't even mentioned that yesterday was Dewey's? Yep, that's just one of the ways I failed. I was so excited for this readathon - thanks to the quarantine, there was nothing on my calendar to conflict with my reading, no events to go to, no last-minute get-togethers were going to come up. The house is loaded with food so snacks were no problem. I put together a list of books to read. I. Was. Ready. Then I didn't even get a post typed up to kick things off. And it went downhill from there. I did get some reading done and I read without guilt about the things I "should" have been doing, so there's that, I guess. Wish I could tell you that I'd accomplished a lot of other things instead of reading, but I didn't do that either.

Last Week I:

Listened To: I'm still listening to Erik Larson's The Splendid and The Vile and hope to get a lot of time to listen to it today which I'm working on some projects.

Watched: My friend, Ellen, is a playwright who had a play that was performed at the Omaha Community Playhouse some time ago. Friday night they "live" streamed the play on YouTube so I got to watch that. Recommended Reading For Girls is, like all of Ellen's work, so clever and funny and heartfelt.

Read: I did finish both Sue Monk Kidd's latest, The Book of Longing, and Kate Atkinson's first Jackson Brodie book, Case Histories yesterday. I'm having to push myself to read right now (as I know so many of you are doing, too) and I think that was part of my problem yesterday. I have no library books coming due and no review books that need to be read right now so what to read next is entirely up to me. Now I need to find the book that will stick.

Made: I have finally hit my stride on doing that through all of this. I made a new version of chicken and noodles this week and a pan of lasagna and two batches of cookies. On the agenda today is bread, banana bread, and broccoli cheese soup in bread bowls. Yes, that's a lot of bread but I think we've all stopped judging each other at this point, right?!

Enjoyed: A visit from the mask faerie the other day. My friend texted and said she'd made masks and asked if we wanted a couple. So she dropped them off...with a bottle of wine! How cute is this!


This Week I’m: 

Planning: Last week went south on me; we had some things come up that really threw a wrench in things. So this week's plan is to get done what I meant to do last week. While I'm grateful to still be working and getting paid, there's also a part of me that really wishes I were bouncing around the house looking for things to keep me busy!

Thinking About: Thinking it's finally warm enough that I can stop babying the plants I potted a couple of weeks ago and get the rest of the plants I need to finish things up.

Feeling: Nervous. In another week, we will start going back to "normal." But I don't know that I'm going to feel safe out in public for months yet.

Looking forward to: Family Zoom time in a bit.

Question of the week: What did you cook up this week?

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier
Read by Fenella Woolgar
Published September 2019 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
1932. After the Great War took both her beloved brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a "surplus woman," one of a generation doomed to a life of spinsterhood after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a life spent caring for her grieving, embittered mother. After countless meals of boiled eggs and dry toast, she saves enough to move out of her mother's place and into the town of Winchester, home to one of England's grandest cathedrals. There, Violet is drawn into a society of broderers—women who embroider kneelers for the Cathedral, carrying on a centuries-long tradition of bringing comfort to worshippers.

Violet finds support and community in the group, fulfillment in the work they create, and even a
growing friendship with the vivacious Gilda. But when forces threaten her new independence and
another war appears on the horizon, Violet must fight to put down roots in a place where women
aren't expected to grow.

Told in Chevalier's glorious prose, A Single Thread is a timeless story of friendship, love, and a woman crafting her own life.

My Thoughts:
Which comes first for Chevalier – the idea for a new story about a woman or the discovery of a subject she’s dying to research? She never seems to run out of either the story ideas or the interesting subjects to explore and she always finds a way to make center the story around women, even when the historical focus has been on the men (as with Griet in The Girl With The Pearl Earring, a book about the girl who inspired the painter Johannes Vermeer).

In A Single Thread, the history and the art are less well known. And while there really was a Louisa Pesel, who lead the broderers who made the embroidered kneelers, cushions, and other accessories for Winchester Cathedral, this is not her story. Instead it is the story of a group of women, the broderers, who form their own kind of tapestry as their lives are bond together. It's also the story of a group of women who became known as the "surplus" women and the story of single women in the 1930's, a time when single women were looked down on once they reached a certain age, and the story of women who had to hide in plain sight because of their sexuality. At the heart of the book lies Violet, a woman struggling with grief from the deaths of her father, brother, and fiancé and trying to find her place in a world where nothing more is expected of her than to take care of her aging, unpleasant mother.

WhenViolet can't take it any longer, she moves away, taking a job as a typist, a job that pays so little that she can't even afford to eat hot meals and where her coworkers are vapid girls who talk of nothing but finding a husband. It's a real measure of how miserable life with her mother was when this life is better than that was. Then one day she chances upon a church service recognizing the latest batch of completed embroidered works and meets a young women who will help her find a place among the group of broderers. It's just the thing that Violet needs to help her come back to life and find her place in the world. Soon she's found a strength she never knew she was capable of and a group of women to support her.

It's a quiet book (one reviewer called it "gentle"), heavy on the details of the embroidery (as well, a the music and skill behind the ringing of the bells in the Cathedral) and events unfold slowly. I listened to it and Fenella Woolgar does a lovely job; I can't imagine it's a book someone would find themselves unable to put down in print, though. Yet, I can also see it being exactly the kind of book that might be adapted into a movie because Chevalier is so marvelous and bringing her subjects to life. The colors and textures of the embroidery, the scale and majesty of the Cathedral, the mechanics of ringing the bells, and the visible circumstances of her characters' lives. There is one character and story line I felt could have been left out of the book entirely and nothing would have been lost; in fact, I might well have enjoyed it more without the threat that storyline carried. It's not a book for everyone, particularly those that enjoy a more fast-paced book, but I think Chevalier's fans will have been pleased with this one.

Conviction by Denise Mina

Conviction by Denise Mina
Published June 2019 by Little, Brown, and Company
Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher’s Summary:
The day Anna McDonald's quiet, respectable life exploded started off like all the days before: Packing up the kids for school, making breakfast, listening to yet another true crime podcast. Then her husband comes downstairs with an announcement, and Anna is suddenly, shockingly alone.

Reeling, desperate for distraction, Anna returns to the podcast. Other people's problems are much better than one's own — a sunken yacht, a murdered family, a hint of international conspiracy. But this case actually is Anna's problem. She knows one of the victims from an earlier life, a life she's taken great pains to leave behind. And she is convinced that she knows what really happened.

Then an unexpected visitor arrives on her front stoop, a meddling neighbor intervenes, and life as Anna knows it is well and truly over. The devils of her past are awakened — and they're in hot pursuit. Convinced she has no other options, Anna goes on the run, and in pursuit of the truth, with a washed-up musician at her side and the podcast as her guide.


My Thoughts:
Some months back, one of my bookclub members recommended this book based on an NPR review. It's not my habit to add a book to our list but if Maureen Corrigan recommends a book, I'm prone to believe it's worth reading. I'm not sure I've ever agreed with her more than I do about this book.

Anna has created an ordinary, albeit upper-middle-class, existence as a housewife in the suburbs, raising her beloved daughters. It's all blown apart one morning. First she listens to that podcast and finds that a friend from her past has died and another name has resurfaced, a name that causes her past to come crashing into her present. Then a persistent knocking at her door turns out to be her best friend who has, it turns out, not come to pick her up for yoga but to run away with Anna's husband. To say that Anna does not handle that that revelation well would be a major understatement. She is, in fact, a bloody mess on the entryway floor, contemplating suicide, when Fin appears at the door. The two soon find themselves both trying to find out what really happened to Anna's friend, Leon, and running for their lives.

All of that summary happens in the first couple of chapters and Mina never lets off the accelerator. I wanted to set everything else in my life aside and do nothing but read this book. And, guys, I did. not. see. that. ending. coming. If you read this and you do, please don't tell me. I don't want to find out that it was something everyone else saw coming. Not only is this a great story but Mina manages to hit a lot of heavy themes along the way, rape, addiction, eating disorders, and the damage caused by social networks.

Through all of that, she is weaving all manners of storytelling into the book - Anna's podcasts, books, folk tales, alibis, false leads, and lies. Anna even recalls a conversation she had with her friend, Leon, who died on the yacht, about the Arabian Nights, which he called simple children's tales.

“I was appalled. I went off on a rant about the ‘Arabian Nights,’ the collective nature of it, how it created a whole world through accretive storytelling: layers of lives lived simultaneously, intersecting. And how it bounced from genre to genre, the stories were funny and brutal and romantic and tragic like life. . . . It was produced before stories could only be one thing, before the form was set.”

I do love meta writing and Mina lives up to Scheherazade with all of the stories she has woven into this one book.

As much as I loved this book, and even though I thought the ending was satisfying in many ways, I also felt like it was a bit too easy. The rest of the book was so damn complex and there was a part of me that really wanted the ending to be just as twisty.

The Washington Post reviewer said "Denise Mina is one of the leading practitioners of what's called Tartan Noir: the melding of American hard-boiled detective fiction with the atmosphere and local color slang of Scotland." I've never heard of Tartan Noir but if this is what Tartan Noir is, I'll definitely be looking for more books that fall into that genre.