Shine Shine Shine is a portrait of a marriage that may or may not be crumbling.  Maxon and Sunny have known each other since they were 7 and 6 years old, respectively, and Maxon has loved Sunny all that time.  Sunny loves Maxon too, fiercely.  But beyond their love, their marriage is based on their status as outsiders.  Maxon is an autistic genius; Sunny has a rare condition in which she was born completely bald.  Maxon and Sunny were “different together” and that other-ness bound them… until the day when Maxon decided it was time to have a baby and Sunny decided that she couldn’t be anyone’s mother without hair.  Now their son, Bubber, is in grade school.  Sunny has an expensive set of wigs, and they’ve moved to an exclusive neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia, where nobody knows the secret of Sunny’s bald head.  Sunny tries desperately to fit in with the neighborhood, forcing normality on Maxon and Bubber.

Then everything changes.  Maxon goes to space on a NASA mission to establish a robot colony on the moon.  While he’s gone, Sunny is juggling her autistic son, her second pregnancy, and her dying mother.  Things come to a head (literally) when Sunny and Bubber are in a car accident and Sunny’s blonde wig flies out the window in full view of the entire neighborhood.  With her secret out, Sunny begins to re-examine her life choices.  But then Maxon’s rocket suffers an accident and jeopardizes the lives of the crew.  Is Sunny’s awakening too late to save her marriage – and will her husband come home at all?

Shine Shine Shine was an incredibly creative book.  I suppose it’s to be expected that when you have two protagonists who are so very different and “other,” the book itself is going to be different.  I loved it.  I loved the flashbacks and insights into Sunny and Maxon’s relationship, the discoveries Sunny makes about herself and her neighbors, and Maxon’s musings on life through a series of mathematical formulas.  Shine Shine Shine is an intense book, not for the faint of heart.  But it’s a rewarding book – a book that lets the reader into the minds and hearts of two unique characters, lets you watch Sunny and Maxon’s love grow, lets you root for Sunny to get her head on straight and Maxon to get his rocket fixed.  It’s not an easy read, but it’s one that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

Get the book!  Shine Shine Shine, by Lydia Netzer (Not an affiliate link)

(Image Source)

Balthazar Jones is a Beefeater – one of the traditional guards of the Tower of London, whose functions have evolved over the centuries from guarding condemned prisoners to directing tourists to the lavatories and answering questions such as “Which tower did they keep Princess Diana in after her divorce?”  And while Balthazar has a job that many would covet, he also has a LOT of problems.  For one thing, Buckingham Palace has recently decided to move the Queen’s Menagerie from the London Zoo back to its historic home at the Tower, and Balthazar has been tapped as the Keeper.  (The Queen caught wind of the fact that Balthazar is the proud owner of Mrs. Cook, the world’s oldest tortoise, and figured that tortoise expertise would naturally translate to other animals.)  Soon a load of animals has arrived at the Tower – including a foul-smelling zorilla, a pair of lovebirds who hate one another, a talking parrot, a bloodthirsty Komodo dragon, and a high-strung Etruscan shrew.  Then there are the penguins, which belong to the menagerie but have somehow gone missing… and the giraffes, which belong to the zoo but have somehow ended up with the menagerie.  And if Balthazar doesn’t have his plate full enough already, his wife Hebe Jones has decided that she’s had enough.  Now Balthazar has to figure out how to win back his wife… and meanwhile, the animals are creeping further and further into his heart too.

The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise was a sweet, funny, poignant read.  I loved both Balthazar and Hebe and rooted for them to work out their differences, which were rooted in a very sad family tragedy.  I knew that Balthazar and Hebe loved each other and were both grieving in their own ways, and I wanted to see them realize that about one another.  Aside from Balthazar and Hebe, the supporting cast was just as charming and engaging – there was Rev. Septimus Drew, the rat-hating, erotic-prose-writing vicar of the Tower’s church, who is secretly pining for Ruby Dore, landlady of the Tower pub “The Rack and Ruin”… the philandering Ravenmaster… the corpulent Yeoman Gaoler, who reluctantly takes charge of the Etruscan shrew… Valerie Jennings, who works with Hebe Jones at the London Underground Lost Property Office and is courted by Arthur Catnip, a ticket collector of limited height… and so many others, all of whom had charming and hilarious and sad stories.

Julia Stuart weaves all of these disparate threads together masterfully.  The book moves at a slow pace, and at first it seems that not much is happening, and that none of the storylines really coincide.  But by the end, the characters have come together in ways that show their true regard for one another, and the reader is rewarded for her patience with a satisfying conclusion.  I found The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise to be a sweet, gentle, uplifting read.  It made me laugh and cry and root for the characters from beginning to end.  And I learned a bit of Tower history in the meantime – oh, and the next time I visit the Tower I certainly won’t ask where the lavatories are.  Highly recommended.

(Image Source)

Get the book!  The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise, by Julia Stuart (not an affiliate link)

Finally, FINALLY, a worthy addition to the YA fantasy genre!  The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is the story of September, a young girl who is Ravished – a.k.a. whisked away by a Green Wind, on the back of a Leopard, for an adventure in Fairyland.  But Fairyland isn’t quite what September expects.  It’s not a land of fun and joy and happy adventures with hot cocoa and a warm bed at night.  Instead, Fairyland is a land currently under the rule of an evil Marquess, who wants to chain it up in the humdrum realities of time clocks and industry and bureaucracy.  Boo on that.

September’s adventure begins when she stumbles across some witches and promises to retrieve an item of value for one of them – which will require her to steal from the Marquess.  Along the way she meets a Wyverary (like a dragon and a library, but not quite) named A-Through-L and a young Marid boy (like a genie, but not quite) named Saturday.  Together they travel with a pack of bicycles, meet a Fairy and a changeling, visit a forest where it’s always autumn and crisp and Halloween (my favorite part of the book, as I love autumn and Halloween), until A-Through-L and Saturday are whisked away and September must strike out on her own to save her friends.

Fairyland reminded me of The Chronicles of Narnia in that it was completely fantastical – but the language was pseudo-Victorian and the characters were even more whimsical, if that’s possible.  The descriptions of the cities of Pandemonium and Mercurio were delectable and September was a sweet, warm-hearted and brave heroine, for all she tried to be irascible and ill-tempered.  I loved it, and I’ll be waiting anxiously for the sequel.

(Image Source)

Get the book!  The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente (not an affiliate link)

Amazing… spectacular… breath-taking… monumental… no, I give up.  I just can’t think of enough superlatives to describe Suite Francaise.  Irene Nemirovsky’s final work is, even in its unfinished form, one of the most important books of the twentieth century.  I’d feel that way even if I didn’t know the author’s remarkable story, but having some context in which to place the book makes it that much more marvelous.

Irene Nemirovsky intended Suite Francaise to be a literary symphony composed of five novellas and modeled after Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  Tragically, she was only able to complete two of her intended five parts – and those in rough draft form, although rarely have I met a more polished draft.  Before she was able to complete her masterwork, Nemirovsky, a Ukranian-born Jew living in France, was arrested by the Nazis and died in Auschwitz.  She wrote the first two sections of her work as she was living them – the first part, “Storm in June,” depicts the June 1940 Paris evacuation, in which Nemirovsky and her family took part.  The second novella, “Dolce,” concerns life in a small French village under Nazi occupation.  Both novellas start quietly and build up to dramatic conclusions.  The truly remarkable thing about “Suite Francaise” is that Nemirovsky “held a mirror up to France,” as the French prologue reads, showing life in wartime France with great empathy but without glossing over truth.  Many of the characters are unsympathetic, yes.  But that’s reality.  In a crisis, we’d all like to think that we’d be heroes and heroines, but the fact of the matter is that heroics are often cast aside in favor of the rather stronger self-preservation instinct.  Nemirovsky tells it like it is, but somehow without judging her characters.  And the reader understands that as much as we might want to judge Madame Pericand, Corte, Hubert or any of the other characters, odds are we’d behave in exactly the same way in their position.

Nemirovksy’s extraordinary empathy even extends to the German soldiers in “Dolce,” some of whom she portrays as cruel, but others of whom she depicts as young, talented, with their lives and potentials tragically wasted by a war they did not start and in which they are only doing a job.  The fact that Nemirovsky was able to find the grace to not judge German soldiers as a group and to, instead, portray them as individuals and not a collective, many-headed monster, is incredible.  In her position, hearing the rumors of concentration camps and struggling to hide my family, I certainly would not be so generous.  That’s what makes Suite Francaise so amazing – Irene Nemirovsky lived in the pages of her book, yet somehow remains above it all, dealing with her characters fairly, honestly, and kindly even when she is eviscerating them for their human failings.

The third part of the book helps to place Nemirovsky’s work in context with the times.  It presents her plans for the three remaining novellas, which she was never able to write, as well as her correspondence prior to her arrest and her husband’s correspondence in his attempt to have her returned to her family after she was stolen from them.  The book concludes with the prologue from the French edition, which explains the historical significance of the book and the story of its publication: Nemirovsky’s ten-year-old daughter took the manuscript with her into hiding and kept it for sixty-four years before she was able to bring herself to read it.  She believed it was a diary, but when she finally opened the book and realized it was an unfinished masterwork, she published it immediately.  As a result, we have a ten-year-old with extraordinary presence of mind to thank for preserving one of the most important pieces of French literature.  It’s tragic that this book ever had occasion to be written, but it is transcendent in its beauty.

(Image Source)

Get the book!  Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky (not an affiliate link)

A Good American is my new gold standard for family sagas.  All family stories now have to live up to this book… and that’s going to be a tall order.

This is the story of the Meisenheimer family and their life in America.  A Good American begins not in America, but in Hanover, Germany in the early days of the 20th century, where Frederick Meisenheimer is secretly in love with a young woman, Jette.  Frederick wins Jette’s heart by hiding in the bushes as she goes about her weekly Sunday stroll in the park, serenading her with his clear tenor.  But unfortunately, as easy as it was for Frederick to win Jette’s love, it’s just that difficult – no, impossible – to get her disapproving family on board.  It’s not long before Jette is pregnant, and the young couple steals away to a new life in the still young United States.  When they can’t get a boat to New York, they head for New Orleans instead (what’s the difference?  they’re both New, as Jette points out) and travel north to Missouri.  Their journey ends abruptly in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri, where Jette goes into labor, and their family decamps in Beatrice for the long haul.  Frederick and Jette make their lives together in Missouri as Frederick tries to be what a helpful stranger encouraged him to be: a good American.  As their progeny grow up, America grows up with them.  There are friends, laughter, tragedy, frustration, love, and all the ties that bind a family together across the generations – including secrets, the biggest of which the book’s narrator, Frederick and Jette’s grandson James, finally unearths in a surprising twist.

I can’t say enough good things about A Good American.  It’s a book that made me well up and laugh in the same chapter – sometimes on the same page.  I was torn between wanting to read slowly and savor the lovely, atmospheric writing, and to feverishly turn pages so I would finally know everything that happened to the family.  Now that I’m done, I’m sorry it’s over.  In fact, that’s my only complaint: this book could have been twice as long and it still wouldn’t have been long enough for me.  I could have read it forever.  Five stars, and applause.

Get the book!  A Good American, by Alex George (not an affiliate link)

(Image Source)

If you’re a fan of The Office – which I am; I even blog about the show for work – you know Mindy Kaling as the delightfully dippy customer service representative, Kelly Kapoor.  Kelly isn’t one of the main characters, but I’ve always loved her.  Her particular brand of ditzy neediness is all kinds of hilarious and endearing.  And I was even more fascinated by Kelly when I discovered that the actress who portrays her, Mindy Kaling, is a writer and producer on the show.  Kelly may have wasted all of her brain cells on online shopping and celebrity gossip, but Mindy is incredibly smart (Dartmouth grad! almost as good as Cornell! GO BIG RED!) and hysterically funny.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) is Mindy’s sort-of memoir, sort-of stream of consciousness ramblings.  She takes the reader from her days as a “timid chubster afraid of her own bike” and self-proclaimed comedy geek, through high school and college, to her early career as a Ben Affleck impersonator in a two-woman off-Broadway production.  (She co-wrote the show with her roommate, Brenda, and they decided to only have two parts, because then they could play the parts and they wouldn’t have to pay anyone.)  From her early days as Ben in Matt&Ben, Mindy jumps feet first into a new show that no one thought was going anywhere – a silly, random little show called The Office.

Between memoir-ing, Kelly – errrr, Mindy – gives you fascinating flashes of insight into her incredibly random brain.  She treats you to musings on topics such as what is the perfect amount of fame to have… why men should not shave their chests… why size 8 is the Hollywood stylist’s Kryptonite… why Amy Poehler rules… and more.  I was laughing until I cried and reading random paragraphs to my long-suffering husband as he tried to drive the car home after a long day at work.  And the next time I watched The Office (Ryan, Kelly finally found a great guy!  LEAVE HER ALONE!) I had new respect for Kelly.  (Like I said, I already knew that Mindy Kaling was a writer/producer on the show – but reading her book just brought home for me how smart and funny the lady really is.  And she’s only 2 years older than me… man, that burns.)  Mindy, if you’re reading this, I can be funny from time to time, in structured indoor scenarios.  Let’s be besties?

Get the book!  Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns, by Mindy Kaling (not an affiliate link)

First off, let me say this: I think Tina Fey is a genius.  A warm, witty, on-point, hilarious genius.  Now let me follow that with some sacrilege.  ::whispers:: ithinkilikedmindykaling’sbookbetter.

Bossypants was certainly amusing, and read more like a traditional memoir than Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?.  And, as an expectant parent, I did like the advice Tina gives on “how to raise an achievement-oriented, drug-free adult virgin.”  Tina brings a darkly funny voice to everything from gay rights to her first post-college job (receptionist at the YMCA, yowsa) to women in comedy to being the “boss” on 30 Rock.  I chuckled appreciatively at regular intervals throughout the book, and basically lived for the chapter in which Tina recounts in detail her experience impersonating Sarah Palin on SNL.  (I watched those sketches over and over and over and over in 2008.  And then again after finishing Bossypants.  They’re still just as awesome.)

But… and Mindy Kaling would kill me for saying this… ::whispers:: ilikedmindykaling’sbookbetter.  Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? literally had tears running down my face at times.  I was trying to figure out why this is.  Maybe because Mindy Kaling is a little bit closer to my age?  (Not that Tina Fey is old – she’s not – but Mindy only has a couple of years on me.)  Or that Mindy hasn’t been established for very long, and she still seems to believe that her success must be some kind of mistake?  Or maybe it’s because I actually watch The Office and I don’t watch 30 Rock.  (My husband hates Alec Baldwin with the fire of a thousand suns, so it’s a marriage thing.  I’d probably watch if not for that.)  I dunno why.  I still really, really enjoyed Bossypants and would recommend it to anyone who likes a witty memoir or who is interested in women in comedy.

Get the book!  Bossypants, by Tina Fey (not an affiliate link)

(Image Source)

Isabel (“Izzy”) Spellman is a private investigator because it’s all she knows how to do (aside from drink, that is).  Raised from early childhood to enter the family business, Spellman Investigations, Izzy resents her career but can’t really picture her life without it.  The same goes for her family – bosses Mom and Dad, lawyer brother David (hobbies include being perfect, negotiations, having perfect hair, and being perfect), little sister Rae (hobbies include eating copious amounts of sugar and sneaking out of the house to conduct “recreational surveillance” on strangers) and drunk Uncle Ray. 

Recovering from an adolescence filled with marijuana use and “creative vandalism” alongside her best friend, Petra, Izzy is now a slightly more mature 28-year-old who has (more or less) accepted her lot in life and her nutty family – until she snaps, having grown tired of Mom and Dad tracking her in an effort to find out the details about her new boyfriend.  Having had enough, Izzy turns in her notice and is told that she can quit after she solves a 15-year-old disappearance which her parents believe to be an impossibly cold case.  Izzy, however, isn’t deterred.  She agrees to work on the case for four months, during which time she begins to believe it can be solved.  But as Izzy closes in on her quarry, someone much closer to her disappears and the family begins to unravel.

I’d heard The Spellman Files described as “Harriet the Spy for adults.”  Since I loved “Harriet the Spy” I was all in.  Reviews were mixed on Goodreads, but I can honestly say that I really, really enjoyed reading about the crazy Spellmans – most of all the charming, maddening little Rae.  They have more than their share of issues – this is one dysfnctional family – but underneath the surveillance, the taillight-smashing, the room-bugging and the lock-picking, this is a family that really loves one another.  Every character is deeply flawed, but none in such a way as to make them unsympathetic.  Izzy, described by one of her short-lived dates as “a cross between Dirty Harry and Nancy Drew,” is the obvious star of the book, but she can only be who she is because of Mom and Dad, David, Petra, Uncle Ray and especially little Rae.

The main complaint about The Spellman Files (at least, among Goodreads reviewers) seems to be that the plot really only starts to move about halfway through the book.  That’s true – the first part of the book is heavy on character development, light on plot.  I have two things to say about this: first, this is the first book in a series and series authors always get off to a slow start while they set up multi-book storylines and introduce supporting characters; and second, I have a high tolerance for character development and for me, these characters were entertaining enough that I was perfectly happy to read their backstories for half the novel.  I do hear that the plots start moving much more quickly in subsequent books, which is great, but I wasn’t bothered by the slower pace of this one at all.

Great literature The Spellman Files is most certainly not.  But what it is… is pure, riotous, car-chasing, background-checking fun.  I’d recommend The Spellman Files to anyone looking for a light summer read or wanting to check out mentally and spend a few hours with a truly nutty family (and trust me, yours won’t seem so bad after you read about Izzy’s parents bugging her apartment).  I’ll be seeking out the rest of the books in this series.

I am submitting this review to the What’s In A Name? challenge hosted by Beth Fish Reads, in the category “Something in a pocket, purse or backpack.” 

Get the book!  The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz (not an affiliate link)

(Image Source)