A Place for Us

It's fitting that the year's last book should also be one of the best. Fatima Farheen Mirza's A Place for Us is a provocative, heartrending read that opens with a family wedding: eldest daughter Hadia is getting married - a love match, not arranged - and has invited her estranged younger brother to be present for her big day.

From that opening, Mirza's story spins backward in time, to Hadia's parents own wedding - arranged - and the lives they forged in California, far from their beginnings half-a-world away. The family's story, the births of Hadia, younger daughter Huda, and son Amar, unfold gradually, in snapshots recalled from the perspective of different family members. A Place for Us is the story of family life, notably, of the thousand little hurts that accumulate, the sibling rivalries, offhand comments, sideways glances whose damage is greater than a single, great betrayal.

This particular iteration of a story as old as time explores the immigrant experience and the experience of being Muslim in America in the years after September 11, but the framework is the shared experience of belonging to a family in which the members do not always understand one another, and the cumulative damage such misunderstandings can wreak over time. What makes Mirza's work so impressively powerful is that for much of the book, nothing really happens. This isn't a book about which one can easily write a complete synopsis; relatively early I even debated putting it down, so unassuming and ordinary was the plot. It's only as the book reaches its conclusion that it all becomes clear, and my admiration for what Mirza accomplished here, complete.

Five stars.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

I loved this book. After plenty of mediocre reads and then the heaviness of Gone to Soldiers, Eleanor Oliphant was a welcome change.

Written with a unique voice that reminded me of Ove (or more recently, Britt-Marie) in all the best ways, and with plenty of hilarity, this has been one of my favorite books all year.

Eleanor Oliphant is...different. She struggles in social settings (such as the office, or making a purchase in a shop) and has her life plotted out precisely, from her Wednesday evening chats with her (institutionalized) Mummy to knowing exactly how much vodka to sip through the weekend so that she is never completely drunk nor completely sober. Of course, the reader learns rather early that Eleanor's life has considered of hardships and harder knocks, doled out at regular intervals, so such oddities help her cope.

Two events turn her life upside down, though. First, she has met the love of her life, a musician she saw at a gig, and whose name she learned on the internet, whom she must woo and marry. She also meets Raymond, the new IT guy in whose presence she is when Sammy, an elderly man falls on his way home and she and Raymond rescue. In rescuing and then befriending Sammy, Eleanor begins to see beyond her narrow routines and current life experience into what life is like for others...and could be for her.

Five stars.

A Death of No Importance

It's 1910 and Jane Prescott is an accomplished lady's maid whose service to one of New York's most influential matrons positions her for service to the new-money Benchley family upon the stately Mrs. Armslow's death. Compared to Mrs. Armslow - related by birth or marriage to the finest families of the city - the Benchley's are quite the comedown.

They value Jane for her understanding of high society, an understanding they do not yet possess and which becomes all the more necessary (and apparent) when the youngest Benchley daughter, Charlotte, causes outrage and scandal by becoming engaged to Norrie Newsome, scion of the mining family. The Newsomes, while one of the "finest families" are also beset by their own scandals, from the mining disaster that killed so many children in Pennsylvania to Mr. Newsome's remarriage to his daughter's schoolmate. All of which is to say: there's plenty to unravel when Norrie is viciously murdered at his family's Christmas party, just as his engagement to Charlotte Benchley was to become official.

As Jane learns more of the murder, she discovers that she alone may be able to solve it.

Author Mariah Fredericks mystery is well-written and captivating. From the inclusion of anarchists to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, she's included significant historical events that make this more than a simple, puff piece, and increased my interest. I also appreciated the twists; just when I thought I knew what would happen (and I'm not speaking only of the murder mystery here), she added plot twists to keep the reader on her toes and decrease the predictability and formulaic turns that such mysteries can often take.

Four stars.

Gone to Soldiers

I won't go as far as the LA Times, which declared Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers "the most thorough and most captivating, most engrossing novel ever written about World War II," but certainly this epic novel is heroic in scope and well worth the time it takes to read the 750+ pages.

Piercy has created an entire cast of characters - ten separate narrators - and has given each of them a unique voice, compelling story, and impressive cast of supporting characters, in additional to intricately and believably linking together many of their stories, often in ways such that the characters themselves may not even realize they are linked to one another. In other words, like life.

Most, but not all, of the narrators are Jewish, some living comfortably in the U.S. while struggling to come to terms with what is happening to their relatives in Europe, others struggling daily under the heal of the Gestapo, watching in horror as friends, neighbors, family disappear, wondering when they themselves will be rounded up and departed.

From the jungle-covered islands of the Pacific, to the horrors of Auschwitz, to the factories filled with women churning out planes and tanks, and the halls of bureaucracy and secrecy in London and DC, Piercy explores the war from all angles. The final product is a carefully-crafted, thought-provoking work, admirable for what the author has done, as well as what she has written.

Five stars.

Wind, Sand, and Stars

Every good French major knows the story of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, vanished war hero, pilot, and author of Le Petit Prince. I was excited, then, when I read a piece about a lesser known work of his, Wind, Sand and Stars, winner of the National Book Award, no less.

Unfortunately, although the writing itself flowed beautifully, but the stories were dull and after weeks of slogging through a handful of pages at a time, I gave up the ghost.

One star.

The American Heiress (Take Two)

The opening pages of The American Heiress struck a familiar cord, and the nagging feeling that I'd read this all before increased until I could help but search this blog and discovered that, in fact, I had read this book two-and-a-half years ago. My verdict at the time? "Utterly forgettable, but also completely harmless." I was clearly on the money, for neither my own words, nor the many online reviews jogged my memory sufficiently for me to recall any of the details. I suppose I could have continued reading and been enlightened anew, but why spend my time reading for a second time a book I've already declared forgettable?

The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919

I looked forward to The Polar Bear Expedition for the better part of the year, hoping that it would be similar to The Winter Fortress, another tale of wartime exploits in the polar north. Unfortunately, after two attempts at this one, I think I'm calling it quits.

James Carl Nelson catalogued the 1919 expedition that saw 5,000 American soldiers - including the Michigan-based 339th - battling the newly-formed Soviet Red Army. Also, the Spanish flu. These men expected to be headed to the Western Front when they enlisted (or were drafted) late in World War I, only to be shipped north of the Arctic Circle and into the throes of the Russian civil war and General Winter, that frozen season that did in Napoleon and would later do in the Wehrmacht.

While this under-known episode of World War I(ish) history is interesting in its own right, I got bogged down in the writing and found the book difficult to read for more than 20 minutes at a time. This is a case of an author having conducted a tremendous amount of research, but needing to edit it down to a more manageable and cohesive whole.

For those who are interested in every.last.aspect. of World War I, this might be a worthwhile and fulfilling read. For those who prefer their history to have more of a narrative feel, The Polar Bear Expedition is harder to recommend.