This is a PSA for all the other emotional pregnant ladies out there. If you’re anything like me, this book will make you flood your living room. Let’s be real here. These days I weep at Publix commercials and Barefoot Contessa episodes. So I really didn’t stand a chance when it came to reading about a little boy’s journey toward healing after his dad is killed on September 11th. Still, the back of the book promised that the journey would be touching but hilarious in parts. I never quite saw the hilarity. In fact, when I got to about page 300 or so, I turned to my husband, tears streaming down my face, and said “I don’t understand, when does it get hilarious?”

Lack of hilarity aside, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was sweet, moving, creative and well-written. Nine-year-old Oskar Schell (well, he’s probably nine; he has a tendency to add or subtract years as it serves his purpose, making himself older if he thinks he has a chance at kissing a lady, younger if he wants sympathy) has been stuck in his own head since his dad died on 9/11, two years previous. Oskar’s life is difficult enough, between playground bullies, a mom who seems to be moving on with her life and a psychologist who irritates Oskar with his inane-bordering-on-offensive questions. But Oskar makes it much more difficult by constantly “inventing” in his head – from silly ideas like extra-long limos to torturing himself with the ways his dad might have died. Then one day, as Oskar goes through his dad’s possessions, he finds a mysterious key in an envelope with one word written on it: “Black.” Oskar’s dad always used to give him clues and quests, so he believes the key is one last game from his dad and he sets off on a journey through New York City, looking for the lock the key opens. Oskar thinks the quest is a way for him to stay close to his dad… but in fact, it’s his path to healing. On this path he encounters New Yorkers of all ages, some of whom share their own survival and healing experiences with him. Meanwhile, Oskar’s story is interwoven with that of his grandparents, who survived the Dresden bombing in World War II but each carry their own emotional scars.

I’d never read any of Jonathan Safran Foer’s fiction works, although I liked his veggie manifesto, Eating Animals. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I recognized a number of similarities to Safran Foer’s non-fiction – particularly the use of illustrations and wordplay to supplement the story. While I was a weepy mess throughout the book, I thought Oskar’s story was beautiful.  Recommended.

Get the book!  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (not an affiliate link)

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Robert K. Massie is arguably the best modern biographer of the Russian tsars.  His works are richly detailed and meticulously researched, but readable.  I loved his account of the last Russian Imperial family, Nicholas and Alexandra, and so I was very excited to read his newest biography, Catherine the Great.

Catherine the Great begins with an account of Catherine’s childhood as Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst.  Sophia was born to a minor German prince and his rigid, unhappy, ambitious wife.  Sophia’s mother, Princess Johanna, resented Sophia for being a girl… at least, until the Empress Elizabeth of Russia chose Sophia as the bride to her nephew and heir, the Grand Duke Peter.  Johanna and Sophia immediately journeyed to Russia together, where Sophia set about winning the affection and confidence of Empress Elizabeth (overcoming the roadblocks that Johanna set up by viewing herself as a secret agent of Prussia’s Frederick II and constantly bungling her “spying” endeavors).  Sophia converted to Russian Orthodoxy, became Catherine, and was betrothed and then married to Peter.  Unfortunately, it took her nine years to accomplish the one task Elizabeth had in mind for her – producing an heir to the Russian throne – because her husband slept next to her for nearly a decade while rebuffing every attempt she made to, um, carry out Elizabeth’s orders.  Catherine finally was persuaded to take a lover and it’s unclear whether her heir, Paul, was the result of her marriage or her extracurricular activities.

Eventually, Elizabeth died and passed Russia to Peter, who was an immensely unpopular emperor.  Peter hated Russia and idealized Prussia; he called Frederick II “the king my master” and instituted an ill-fated alliance with Russia’s historic antagonist, as well as number of unpopular and idiotic policies.  The pressure mounted and eventually, supported by the Russian military and church, Catherine mounted a sudden coup and took over the throne from her hapless husband.  She proceeded to rule for over 30 years.  Catherine’s reign was not always smooth – there were wars and attempted peasant revolts – but there were few monarchs in Russian history who proved as dedicated or inspired as she.  Catherine first attempted to create a new code of laws based on Enlightenment principles.  She went on to become a philosopher-empress who read widely, always entertained opposing viewpoints, assembled Europe’s foremost art collection of the day and built schools, hospitals, towns and cities, and persuaded thousands of Russians to be inoculated against smallpox.  She added vast swaths of territory to the Russian empire through wars and annexations (the wars were fair; the annexations were not).  Her personal life was often criticized: she took a parade of ever-younger lovers.  But her legacy remains as one of the greatest rulers Russia has ever had and, likely, ever will have.

Catherine would be a challenging figure for a biographer.  Her life was dramatic and full, her accomplishments vast.  But in the hands of Robert K. Massie, she comes to life.  This is a LONG, dense book, but worth reading for anyone who has an interest in Russian history.

Get the book!  Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie (not an affiliate link)

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For hundreds of years the town of Marstal in Denmark stood between land and sea.  The boys of Marstal gather to terrorize their teacher and sing their hymns beneath model schooners, knowing that one day they will be sailing on life-size ships like their fathers.  The men of Marstal look to the sea – it is more than the way they make their living, it’s their destiny.  The women of Marstal say goodbye to husbands, sons, brothers, knowing that many will never return – they will be swallowed by the sea.  We, the Drowned tells their stories, spanning over the course of 100 years.  The story begins with a sea battle in 1848, as Danish sailors take on German rebels.  The Danes suffer horribly, but Laurids Madsen manages to survive the battle thanks to his boots.  Not long after, however, he disappears and his son Albert searches the Pacific for years, looking for the facts behind his father’s disappearance.  Years later, Albert retires to Marstal and takes a young widow, Klara, and her son Knud Erik under his wing.  Klara is determined that Knud Erik should not be a sailor.  When Knud Erik defies her wishes, Klara declares war on the town of Marstal and the entire sea.

I don’t normally go in for seafaring literature.  I’ve never read Moby Dick and I didn’t care for The Old Man and the Sea at all.  But We, the Drowned was really wonderful.  It didn’t gloss over the brutality of a naval battle or a life at sea.  (Indeed, parts of the book could get quite violent and gory, so be warned.  I found that the violence made sense for the story, so it didn’t bother me – but if you’re sensitive to that, it’s something to consider.)  The descriptions of Albert’s prophetic dreams before World War I and Knud Erik’s experiences in World War II were heart-wrenching.  To my surprise, I found myself glazing over a little bit during the scenes that took place on land, wanting the characters to get back out on the open waters.  (Not a lot; the shore scenes were still extremely good.)  I can see why this book is considered “an instant classic” in Europe.  It’s well-written, fast-moving, emotional and gripping.  Highly recommended.

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Get the book!  We, the Drowned, by Carston Jensen (not an affiliate link)

Elise Landau is part of the glittering set of Vienna in 1938. (A peripheral part, to be sure – she’s really just a kid. But a part, nonetheless.) Daughter of a famous opera singer and an avant-garde novelist, sister of an up-and-coming (and beautiful) violist, Elise is accustomed to a world of parties, champagne, silk dresses, pastries in the famous hotels and cafes of Vienna. She is steeped in culture and luxury, living a life of ease as the petted baby of a well-off family. Until she’s not. Because, you see, it’s 1938 and Vienna and Elise is Jewish. Her parents, Anna and Julian, are bound for New York; her sister Margaret and brother-in-law Robert are headed for San Francisco. But Elise is not famous – she’s not part of the intelligentsia or glitterati, and so nobody wants her. Yet she must escape Vienna and she does – on a “domestic service visa” – a means for privileged young Jewish girls from the Continent to flee to England by taking up positions as housemaids in the great country houses. Elise finds herself a place at Tyneford House, with the Rivers family – one of the oldest, most respected non-titled English families. Life as a housemaid is hard, especially for one used to getting her way in everything. Elise has to learn to work hard, keep long hours, and ignore the disrespect she is expected to absorb as a maid. She has to keep silent through petty indignities from the other staff, and real cruelty from a nasty houseguest. But while Elise’s life in England is hard, Tyneford comes to feel like home. Elise makes friends – a local girl named Poppy, and Kit Rivers, the son of the master of the house. Elise’s friendship with Kit will transform them both – but when the war escalates, everyone at Tyneford is going to have to accept the big changes that are coming.

Elise’s struggles were wrenchingly real.  From the early fish-out-of-the-water moments she experiences as she tries to navigate London without much English-speaking ability, to her initially awkward, but later more natural, friendship-turned-romance, to her suffering at being considered an “enemy alien” by England when she has had to flee her own country, Elise certainly goes through a great deal.  Her experiences change her, in realistic ways – the reader sees her evolve from the spoiled, pampered young girl of the first pages to a more world-weary woman, old beyond her years.  Yet Elise does not allow the injustices she suffers to harden her.  She remains the same Elise – insecure, but capable of loving deeply.  It is a skillful writer indeed who can take a character through the many assaults Elise suffers without letting her become angry at the world.

I loved The House at Tyneford. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, because this is exactly the kind of book that I have a tendency to build up in my mind until nothing could possibly live up to my expectations, no matter how good. But Tyneford was well-written, exciting, heart-rending and evocative of a lost period of time. I’m so glad that it proved to be a worthwhile read, because I so wanted to love it. Don’t you love when you want to love a book, and it lets you love it?

Get the book!  The House at Tyneford, by Natasha Solomons (not an affiliate link)

I’m submitting this book review to the What’s In A Name? Challenge hosted by Beth Fish Reads, in the category “House.”  Cruise on over to her blog to see the other submissions!

My first thought upon reading a few chapters of The Snow Child was: “This is like a depressing version of Little House in the Big Woods.”  But oh, it quickly became much more than that.  Jack and Mabel are an aging couple who have never been able to have children.  They moved to Alaska to escape the judging, pitying eyes of friends and relations who wonder why they have remained a family of two, and to be alone with their sadness.  But Jack and Mabel aren’t alone for long.  One night they build a little girl out of snow, and soon after, a real, live, flesh and blood little girl appears in their yard.  Faina, as they come to know her, is the orphaned daughter of a trapper, who flits through the forest, dancing atop the snow, killing small animals for her meals and migrating north when spring thaws the fertile Alaskan valleys.  At first Faina is afraid of Jack and Mabel, but they give her space and she gradually grows closer and closer to them, until they come to love her as a daughter and she to consider them her parents.  But Faina is growing up, and Jack and Mabel begin to dread the day when they will lose the only child they’ve ever had.

This book.  Was.  Incredible.  The language is so evocative, so transforming, that I felt as though I could see Faina’s tiny child-sized footprints in the crystalline Alaska snow.  I cried in the beginning, middle, and ends of this book – Jack and Mabel’s grief at not being able to have children of their own, their love for Faina, their struggles to survive in the wilderness of Alaska, their fear that Faina will melt away like the snow maiden in the old Russian fairy tale… are all portrayed with such realism, such sensitivity, that I was a weepy mess throughout the story.  But please, please don’t let that dissuade you from reading this wonderful sob-fest!  Pick it up for the quality of the writing alone, if for no other reason.  Pick it up so that you can feel rich soil and feathery snowflakes and cold Alaskan streams, even while all you’re holding is paper.  This book is destined to be a treasure of magical realism, maybe even a classic someday.  I for one will be waiting anxiously for Eowyn Ivey’s next book.

Read it: The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey (not an affiliate link)

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Elizabeth I is the story of two red-haired women at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. One is Queen Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, avowed virgin and monarch during what would come to be known as a golden age for Great Britain. Elizabeth’s story begins in 1588 with the first Spanish Armada. Throughout the book, her reign is plagued by threats both internal and external – scheming courtiers, Irish rebels, and the ever-present Spanish menace over all. The other woman is Elizabeth’s “lookalike cousin” and rival Lettice Knollys. Lettice, having made no vow to remain a virgin, had seduced and married Elizabeth’s romantic interest, Robert Dudley. For that crime she was banished from court – although Dudley was eventually forgiven – and has been spending the rest of her life plotting to get back in the Queen’s good graces. Lettice’s best hope for regaining her family’s power and influence lies with her son Robert, Earl of Essex, who becomes one of Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers. But Essex is a deeply flawed man – entitled, petulant, and ultimately dangerous – and Elizabeth’s consistent overlooking of his flaws will ultimately threaten her crown.

I had never read any Margaret George before, because I thought that she was fluffy. (I was lumping her in with Philippa Gregory and assuming that George wrote historical fiction in the style of The Other Boleyn Girl.) Clearly, I was wrong. Elizabeth I was absorbing and engaging, meticulously researched, and extremely well-written. Not fluffy at all! (Not that there’s anything wrong with fluff; it can be just what the doctor ordered at times. I just don’t like fluff in my historical fiction for some reason. Chalk it up to personal preference.) The characters become real – Elizabeth, for instance, is maddening in her insistence upon giving Essex chance after chance to live up to his potential, refusing to believe that this “wayward child” cannot be molded into a responsible man. Even after he directly threatens her person, Elizabeth refuses to believe that the courtier she loves like a son could be a threat to her. Her gradual dawning realization that Essex is a danger to the realm is almost painful to watch, and the moment when she finally gives up her hopes for him is poignant. Lettice, meanwhile, is even more conflicted over Essex. She sees the dangerous games he is playing, even as he tries to hide them from her, but she cannot turn her back on her son.

I loved every word of this honking big tome. In Elizabeth I, Margaret George proves that there is such a thing as a fastidiously detailed page-turner in the historical fiction genre. I’m a convert and will be reading everything she has written before this and everything she writes from now on. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth I, by Margaret George (not an affiliate link)

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Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron is not a book that you can expect to dispatch with in a few days. (I’d say that’s fairly typical of medieval literature.) But it’s not a book you’ll get sick of, either. I read this book on a beach in Mexico, on the subway on my way to work, and everywhere in between, and was endlessly entertained the entire time.

The premise is this: at the time of the Black Plague, ten young Florentine nobles – seven women and three men – decide to escape the carnage and pandemonium of their city and retire to one of their pleasant country estates. Once there, in search of amusement, they decide to tell stories to one another. Each day, they gather in a garden to entertain each other. The book consists of the hundred stories they tell – ten stories per day for ten days, the Decameron. On some days they tell whatever story they think their companions will find most amusing; on other days they speak on a predetermined topic. The stories range from slapstick comedy to bawdy hijinks to cautionary tales.

A couple of notes: the book is very much a product of the times in which it was written. Many of the stories poke fun or censure at corrupt friars – Boccaccio seemed to have none too high an opinion of clergy in general. I’d also note that although Boccaccio was known by his contemporaries to be a defender (and admirer) of the ladies, the book does come off as quite misogynist at times, which would have irritated me profoundly if I didn’t keep in mind the times in which it was written. I definitely would encourage anyone who picks up The Decameron to read the introduction first (not the translator’s note). The version I had was introduced by G.H. McWilliam, who did a fantastic job at placing the book in the context of its times and explaining some of the inside jokes in the stories, which Boccaccio’s contemporaries would have understood at once but which can seem obtuse to the modern reader. It’s a long intro – about 100 pages – but the book will be that much more enjoyable for those who put the time in to read it.

Each story is entertaining and, on average, brief – so it’s a great book to pick up and put down at your leisure. It took me a few weeks to get through it, but I’m glad I did – both because Boccaccio influenced many writers who came along later, including Chaucer and Shakespeare, and because reading “The Decameron” was just an all around silly, racy, good time.

The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccacio (not an affiliate link)

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Several of the comments on the back of Paris to the Past called it a book about love. That’s exactly what it is. On every single page, Ina Caro’s love shines through – love for France, its history and people, its food, and for the husband who is by her side as she “travels through time.”

When Ina and Bob were married, decades ago, they couldn’t afford to take their dream trip to France. After putting in their time and accumulating their success, they finally left for the vacation of a lifetime in 1974 or so. And they’ve gone back every year, driving all around France and experiencing its architecture, culture and food with glee. Then one day Ina had an epiphany: she organized their planned driving route chronologically, allowing them to visit the oldest cathedrals and castles first and work their way up through history. This allowed them to, quite literally, see France evolve before their eyes, and it led to a book about driving through French history. But after years of returning again and again, driving around for a month or so, Ina and Bob decided, one year, that they didn’t want to hit the road. They wanted to stay in their comfortable Paris apartment.

Did this cramp Ina’s time traveling style? Never! She discovered that, between the Paris metro, the RER suburban trains, and the TGV high-speed trains, it is possible to travel through the entire course of civilized French history, from Clovis and Abbe Suger at Saint-Denis all the way to Napoleon III. This fantastic feat could be done entirely in day-trips that don’t require, generally, more than 90 minutes on a train from Paris. Ina could travel through time back to the fifth century and be back in time to hit up the neighborhood bistro for dinner. C’est magnifique!

Ina is a fabulous tour guide. Her interest in history tends toward the fluffy, so she glosses over battles and bloodshed and devotes far more time to juicy court gossip. You’ll hear of power-hungry and plaigarizing monks, effeminite kings, scheming queens and nobles, and one very famous peasant girl who gave the English fits during the Hundred Years’ War. Ina perfectly treads the line between giving good information about how we can bear witness to French history by examining its architecture and sharing dirty deets like your best eighteenth-century girlfriend. And she throws in mini-reviews of the restaurants she visits near each monument, too. Paris to the Past was a wonderful read… in fact, my only complaint was that it made me even more anxious to go back to Paris than I already was! Highly recommended.

Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train, by Ina Caro (not an affiliate link)

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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 and courage to not judge German soldiers as a group and to paint them as individuals and not a collective, many-headed monster, is incredible.   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, believing it was a diary, and kept it for sixty-four years before she was able to bring herself to read it.  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.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky (not an affiliate link)

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