The Aviator's Wife by Melanie Benjamin

An introspective novel, examining the life of Anne Lindbergh, the wife of the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. The first celebrity couple in US history, they captured the imagination of millions at the dawn of aviation and broadcast radio. The novel is fiction, of course, and examines the innermost thoughts of Anne as she copes with life in the shadow of her legendary husband, the death of her child, the notoriety of his anti-semitism and pro-nazi stance before WWII, and the revelation of his many affairs and illegitimate children.

It is fascinating reading, if a little too introspective for my taste. Anne is portrayed as continually questioning her marriage, while still acquiescing to everything her husband asks of her. Understandable actions on Anne's part, given the times that she lived in. At times I wished the novel would deal more directly with the action of the characters lives, rather than simply reflecting events as Anne attempted to decipher their meaning.

PYG: THe Memoirs of Toby, The Learned Pig by Russell Potter

There was an actual pig named Toby, who had a famous stage act in the late 18th century. He could respond to questions by spelling out words with placards that he manipulated with his snout. The act was very popular, so much so that there were many imitators, and Toby was mentioned in the popular press of the day.

This is a work of fiction, an imagined memoir of Toby. It seems to be very accurate in it's treatment of the historical characters around the pig. Toby is presented as being extremely intelligent . The writing is in the style of works from the period, and is very reminiscent of Jonathon Swift and Gulliver's Travels.

Unfortunately, it left me wanting more. Very little is mentioned about how Toby attained the spark of intelligence, or about how a pig would respond so differently than a human to stimulus. Toby is portrayed as a mute human more than anything else, and nothing like a pig. There is very little drama. I thought that the story could have been so much better, along the lines of the novels by Richard Adams.

The Lincoln Conspiracy - A Novel by Timothy L. O'Brien

Ho-hum. A thriller like so many others, it follows the usual formula. The maguffin in this case is a pair of diaries, one belonging to the widow of Lincoln and the other to John Wilkes Booth. The setting is Washington DC just after the assassination of Lincoln. A police detective intercepts the diaries, and then risks his life and that of his wife and friends to keep them from other armed thugs. It reminded me of the improbable TV series, "The Wild Wild West". Historical figures make appearances. There is much chasing around on horses, gun play, and fights between armed gangs. The hero and heroine get captured and escape. There are coverups, plots, and coded messages.

So it's very formulaic, containing all the required aspects of a thriller. It's not particularly convincing or even very novel. In the end, as is usually the case, the maguffin (the diaries) are not very important after all and get lost in the shuffle. There is a twist at the end (of course), but ultimately its just another historical thriller.

East of Denver by Gregory Hill

A black comedy. A son cares for his senile father on the family farm that they are slowly losing to an unscrupulous banker. Through in a paraplegic childhood friend, an overweight "girlfriend", the local drug dealer, and set it all in the dry prairie east of Denver.

It's just a little too dark for my taste. One of my favorite novels is "As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner. That is a masterpiece of the black comedy. "East of Denver" has comic moments that border of brilliant, but the big picture is missing. At times the novel lacks direction. Is it about the son's relationship with the senile father? At one point, I thought the whole odd assortment of characters was going to rob a bank - now that would have been an odyssey worthy of a modern-day Faulkner. But in the end it's just about the son's failure to help his father keep the family farm.

So I was disappointed with the arc of the story, but the comic moments almost make up for it...

Juliet in August

An excellent novel, one of the best I have read this year. It's not a traditional novel with a strong central character, and not a set of short stories, but something in-between. It's a set of loosely connected characters, all sharing the same small-town setting. Whatever it is, it works extremely well. The characters are interesting and engaging, their problems are real and easy to relate to, the setting is alive, and there is just enough plot to move each character along. Even the ending is satisfying. Well done and highly recommended.

The Yard by Alex Grecian

An adequate novel, set in the early days of Scotland Yard, right after the Jack the Ripper murders. It's not a mystery, since the murderers are revealed to the reader in the early pages. It's not particularly suspenseful or thrilling - the plot follows predictable lines. It is entertaining and enjoyable, although there seems to me to be a needless emphasis on blood and gore.

There are anachronisms, which can quickly ruin a historical novel. The insistence by a married woman that she be called by her first name by a complete stranger seems out of character with dialog from the novels of the period, as does the use of the American slang "okay". That may not technically be an anachronism, but it jars and seems out of place.

So an enjoyable read, but nothing to get excited about.

I, Iago by Nicole Galland

A clever, thoughtful novel, this is a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello from the viewpoint of Iago, the villain of the play. Like many of Shakespeare's plays, the motives of the characters in Othello are open to interpretation. Volumes of literary commentary have been written about Othello, but by retelling the story as a novel, this book takes a fresh look at the character of Iago and his motives.

We all know what happens, of course. Iago plays on the jealousy and insecurity of the Moor Othello, the general of the Venetian Army, and his innocent wife Desdemona. Things get out of hand, of course, since it is a tragedy. Othello murders Desdemona, and Iago murders his best friend and his wife.

The novel starts, not with the beginning of the play, but with the childhood of Iago, and fills us in on the backstory of his character that is missing from the play, thus giving us a better understanding of his motives. The second half of the novel covers the action of the play, but since it is told from the first person perspective of Iago, we do not see any of the action in which he is not involved, and are not privy to the private thoughts of any of the other characters. This is very effective. My take on Iago, as presented in the novel, is that he loved Othello, and was jealous after being passed over in his promotion, and at the attention given to Desdemona.

I was also impressed with the author's use of dialog. She used modern English, of course, but it has the flavor of Shakespeare's dialog, with it's use of word play and puns and double entendres.

The novel is clever, carefully planned, and well written. Highly recommended.

The Solitary House by Lynn Shepherd

This is an interesting book, very creative and intriguing. The author has borrowed characters and plot lines from two of my favorite Victorian novels: "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens and "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins. The villain is the lawyer Tulkinghorn from Bleak House, and Collins' plot has been adapted and expanded and merged with Dickens' characters.

The hero is a new character, a private detective. Inspector Bucket from Bleak House makes an appearance too. The plot is well thought out and more modern than anything that Dickens or Collins could have used.

So if you haven't read "Bleak House" or "The Woman in White", why not? I think you will enjoy this novel more if you read them first. "Bleak House" is arguably Dickens best novel, and "The Woman in White" is a classic early mystery novel.

"The Solitary House" is a great read, very entertaining and creative.

Sisters by Nancy Jensen

These sisters, and their female descendants, cannot catch a break. Bad luck in the form of sexual abuse, poor choice of husband and sexual partners, misunderstandings and miscommunications, and so forth. The original two sisters are separated when they are teenagers because of a tragedy, and one of them disappears and stays lost on purpose.

An essential part of the book is the genealogical chart in the beginning - without it, keeping track of the many descendants would be impossible. The chapters skip years and narrators, so careful attention to the details is needed.

Fortunately the characters and their situations are all interesting, and the writing is excellent, so as a reader I was captivated enough to keep track of the complicated events and numerous characters.

Of course, I wanted a happier ending, but I cannot argue with the author's decisions.

Piano Lessons by Anna Goldsworthy

A memoir of the relationship between pianist Anna Goldsworthy and piano teacher Eleonora Sivan. Anna started lessons with Sivan at age 9, and she chronicles the relationship with her teacher and the lessons she learned about music, life, love, and playing the piano. A good read, very true to the the experience of learning a musical tradition.

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier

An excellent novel. Frazier has all the right tools in his arsenal. Nightwoods tells the story of Luce, who inherits her sister's twin children, after her sister is murdered by her husband. The children witness the murder, and are damaged by the experience and the abuse they suffered at the hands of their father. They don't speak, they kill chickens, and they start fires. A suspenseful plot pulls the reader along.

The other significant character is the setting, the mountains of western North Carolina and other areas of the South, from the 1960s. Maybe this is why I enjoyed the novel so much - that is the South of my childhood, and it rang true and vivid for me.

Much better, in my opinion, that Frazier's Cold Mountain or Thirteen Moons. It is violent, but the ending is much more satisfactory than his earlier novels. Highly recommended.

Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell

The opposite of the screenplay Amadeus. In this novel Mozart is thoughtful and sensitive, but the the real center of the novel are the four Weber sisters. Mozart befriends all of them, eventually marrying Constanze after being jilted by another. They all played a large part in his early life. Very interesting novel, authentic and entertaining.

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick

An interesting novel, set in the early 18th Century in Venice. The Pieta used female musicians in their choir, orphans and foundlings - virgins, in other words. Vivaldi wrote much of his music for them. The novel follows the life of one o the foundlings as she comes o age and discovers who her parents were. Music plays a large part in the novel.

Clara Schumann by Nancy B. Reich

The best English biography of Clara. Finally answered the question for me of how Robert Schumann died: Tertiary neurosyphillis.

If Jack's In Love by Stephen Wetta

A surprisingly good first novel, a traditional coming-of-age story. Jack is thirteen, and the youngest son of the white-trash Witcher family. As is usual in coming-of-age novels, he begins to see his parents and brother as they really are, makes friends with an adult (a Jewish jeweler) outside the family, and has his first girlfriend and kiss. His brother is also implicated in the murder of his girlfriend's brother.

It's told throughout from Jack's viewpoint, which does wear thin part way through, but the suspense of the mystery pulls us through the rough spots. The ending is satisfying if not unexpected. Overall an excellent novel.

The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams

Harold Roux is a minor character in this re-printing of a literary novel from 1974, but he and his hair stand as a symbol for what happens to the major characters. Harold is bald, at 24, and desperately hiding that fact with a bad toupee. He is intent and learning and embracing the finer, higher, things in life, but is assaulted on all sides by the other young WWII veterans at college. Ultimately Harold loses his toupee, and and is violated and assaulted to the point that he flees.

He is a symbol, of course, for what happens to the Catholic virgin freshman Mary, and to some extent all the other characters. The book is a strange mix of novel-within-novel. At the top level is Aaron Benham, writing a novel - "The Hair of Harold Roux", about Allard Benson, himself a writer and friend of Harold Roux, who is also writing a novel. All these fictional worlds collide and mirror each other. It's clear that Aaron Benham is chronicling his own life as he writes, which makes the reader wonder if the real author, Thomas Williams, is doing the same with the entire complex construction of stories within stories.

It's a reprint of a novel that first appeared in 1974 and which won the National Book Award, deservedly brought back to life. Warning: there are some really nasty jokes and smutty incidents - typical of college humor, but which may be highly offensive and shocking to some readers.

Lust for Life by Irving Stone

The classic biographical novel about Vincent Van Gogh. Stone, in the end note, says that, aside from a few fictional scenes, "... the book is entirely true." He based his fictional account of Van Gogh's life on his letters, which were saved by his brother, Theo Van Gogh.

The facts may be true, but there is certainly a spin placed on the interpretation of those facts by the author. The novel spends most of it's time and energy on Van Gogh's early life - his failed love affair in England, his attempt to be an Evangelist, his early training as an artist. Throughout he is described as someone who takes a passionate love for something to an extreme.

The most interesting period of his life is his time in the south of France when he first had his "attacks" and when he had his most creative period. Sloan seems to say that Van Gogh's illness was epilepsy that started late in middle age, exacerbated by the absinthe that he drank and his years of near starvation.

If you've seen the excellent movie of the same title based on the book with Kirk Douglas then it's difficult not to picture Van Gogh as Kirk Douglas or vice versa!

The Headhunter's Daughter by Tamar Myers

At first I couldn't decide if this was intended to be drama, satire, or comedy. Now I think it is a clever combination of all three. It's the story of a white baby raised by black Africans in the Belgian Congo back in the 1950s. It's told with humor and satire combined with a keen sense of the different cultures - the author is the daughter of missionaries and spent time in the Congo as a child. Well done and insightful.

The Sojurn by Andrew Krivak

No happy ending here. But then it's a war novel, the Austrian/Italian front in WWI. The hero is a young US citizen, whose father took him back to Hungary as a child. He grows up herding sheep with his father, enlists, becomes a sniper for the Austrians, and has some horrific adventures before the war ends. His troubles don't end there, since he has to get "home". But where is home?

It's well written and captivating, if depressing. An interesting look at a forgotten front in a war that is fast receding from human memory.

Leaving Van Gogh by Carol Wallace

An interesting novel. An account of the last year or so of Van Gogh's life, told from the viewpoint of the doctor and art lover, Dr. Gachet, who befriended Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. The good doctor has problems of his own, and the book spends more time with his character as observer than with Van Gogh's. The author has remarkable insight into Van Gogh and his art, the the affect that his personality had on his brother Theo and Doctor Gachet. Highly recommended.