Peony in Love/Lisa See

Publishers Weekly

Set in 17th-century China, See's fifth novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families. It figures into the plot that generations of young Chinese women, known as the lovesick maidens, became obsessed with The Peony Pavilion, and, in a Werther-like passion, many starved themselves to death. See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, etc.) offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China (including horrifying foot-binding scenes) and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals. Peony's vibrant voice, perfectly pitched between the novel's historical and passionate depths, carries her story beautifully-in life and afterlife. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Although it took me a few days to get into the story once I was hooked I found myself racing to the end. I loved this book.

Empress Orchid/Anchee Min

Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of ancient China's Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes the nation's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together.

Much like Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I devoured this in three days. 'Nuf said?

The Ghost at the Table/Suzanne Berne

Sisters, living and dead, loom large in Berne's tale of family secrets unraveled. Cynthia Fiske writes a series of historical fiction for girls, depicting the lives of remarkable women through the eyes of their slightly less-remarkable sisters. An invitation to her own sister's house for Thanksgiving in New England coincides with her need to visit Mark Twain's home in Hartford to research a new novel on the writer's daughters, whose story of a charismatic father and three troubled siblings parallels the Fiskes' history. Complicating the usual holiday tensions is the presence of their elderly father, once brash and manipulative, now disabled and facing a divorce from his much-younger wife. As the family struggles with generations of dysfunction and unspoken secrets, including the mysterious death of their mother decades earlier, Cynthia rebels by sharing the most sordid details of the long-gone Clemens family. Although she is nearing middle age, her feelings of isolation and rejection that began in childhood have left her a perpetual adolescent in relation to her family.

The Friday Night Knitting Club/Kate Jacobs

Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own brewing.

I have to admit that I was drawn to this title mostly because of having read Ann Hood's The Knitting Circle. I found Hood's book the better of the two as The Friday Night Knitting Club had more of a soap opera feel to it and ended rather abruptly I thought.

Astrid and Veronika/Linda Olsson

This debut novel recounts the unusual and unexpected friendship that develops between two women. Veronika, a young writer from New Zealand, rents a house in a small Swedish village as she tries to come to terms with a recent tragedy while also finishing a novel. Her arrival is silently observed by Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who slowly becomes a presence in Veronika's life, offering comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly prepared home-cooked meals. Set against a haunting Swedish landscape, Astrid & Veronika is a lyrical and meditative novel of love and loss.

Ordinary Life:Stories/Elizabeth Berg

Berg is one of my favorite authors and this compilation of short stories doesn't disappoint. I particularly enjoyed Martin's Letter to Nan and the title story, Orinary Life: A Love Story. The first is the result of readers' queries to the author about characters from an earlier novel, Pull of the Moon one I really enjoyed. The latter is funny and touching at the same time.

Diagnosis Love/Maggie Leffler

From the Publisher

Dr. Holly Campbell is trying to outrun the symptoms of her life: her grief over her mother’s recent death, her chronic missteps at love, and, most of all, the doubts she’s had about her career since she started resenting her patients for being sick. So answering an ad for a residency program in rural England seems like the perfect escape.

By leaving home, Holly is following in her mother’s footsteps. But while her mother fled to medical school on Grenada, Holly has come to an odd little English hospital–where fate intervenes. For Holly no sooner learns that practicing medicine in England is like driving on the wrong side of the road than her twin brother’s runaway fiancée shows up on her doorstep, her grade-school crush turns up in her dormitory, and her mother’s old lover appears at lunch. How can Holly cure their ailments if she can’t even diagnose her own? Filled with the heartbreaking and healing powers of love, The Diagnosis of Love is the witty, warm, perceptive tale of a young doctor colliding with the past–and choosing her own future.

After purchasing a couple of books that haven't hooked me yet, I turned to the library catalog new purchase list for incentive. The title intrigued me and so far it is interesting enough to wile away these dog days of summer.

Abide In Me/Elizabeth Strout

From the Publisher
In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. At the same time, the community he has served so charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings-faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment-when a dark secret is revealed.
Tyler Caskey has come to love West Annett, "just up the road" from where he was born. The short, brilliant summers and the sharp, piercing winters fill him with awe-as does his congregation, full of good people who seek his guidance and listen earnestly as he preaches. But after suffering a terrible loss, Tyler finds it hard to return to himself as he once was. He hasn't had The Feeling-that God is all around him, in the beauty of the world-for quite some time. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons and in his conversations with those facing crises of their own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine, out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy.
A congregation that had once been patient and kind during Tyler's grief now questions his leadership and propriety. In the kitchens, classrooms, offices, and stores of the village, anger and gossip have started to swirl. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity-and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all.

This one is slow going. Started a few weeks ago, I have found the characters difficult to get close to.

The Knitting Circle/Ann Hood

From the Publisher

After the sudden loss of her only child, Stella, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle in Providence, Rhode Island, as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days, not knowing that it will change her life. Alice, Scarlet, Lulu, Beth, Harriet, and Ellen welcome Mary into their circle despite her reluctance to open her heart to them. Each woman teaches Mary a new knitting technique, and, as they do, they reveal to her their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope. Eventually, through the hours they spend knitting and talking together, Mary is finally able to tell her own story of grief, and in so doing reclaims her love for her husband, faces the hard truths about her relationship with her mother, and finds the spark of life again.

More good summer reading. Interesting portrait of the trials and tribulations of a group of strong and colorful women.

Sleep Toward Heaven/Amanda Eyre Ward

From the Publisher

Amanda Eyre Ward's debut novel is an intimate portrait of three women whose lives collide during a brutal Texas summer.

In Gatestown, Texas, twenty-nine-year-old Karen Lowens awaits her execution with a host of convicted serial killers on death row. In Manhattan, Dr. Franny Wren, also twenty-nine, tends to a young cancer patient, and resists the urge to run from her fiancé and her carefully crafted life. In Austin, Texas, brassy Celia Mills, a once-vibrant librarian, mourns her murdered husband.

Over the course of the summer, fate pushes these eerily recognizable women together, culminating in a revelation of the possibility of faith, the responsibility of friendship, and the value of life. Sleep Toward Heaven is a luminous story of murder and desire, solitude and grace -- a rare literary page-turner where redemption seems perpetually within arm's reach.

I read this last summer I think. Good summer read that makes you think.

Happiness Sold Separately/Lolly Winston

This was a soap opera and not a very good one at that. I had trouble really sympathizing with the characters. Overall, they were melodramatic and the story was maudlin to begin with. There were times when Elinor seemed more interesting, like when she communed with the tree on her front lawn and spent time with her best friend and next-door neighbor. I'd categorize this as a light read for its writing style, but as I said, the subject matter was a downer.

From the Publisher:

Elinor Mackey has lived her life in perfect order: college, law school, marriage, successful corporate career. But suddenly her world is falling apart. In her late 30s, she's discovered that she and her podiatrist husband, Ted, can't have children. When Elinor withdraws from Ted into an interior world of heartbreak and anger, Ted begins an affair with Gina, the nutritionist at their gym--a young woman with an oddball son who adores Ted. Meanwhile, Elinor falls in love with the oak tree in her front yard, spreading out her sleeping bag to sleep under the stars. Gina's jealous ex-boyfriend--a charming alcoholic with a mean streak--becomes a dark presence as his passion turns to violence. Ted, who may be the only one who can help Gina and her son, suddenly finds himself in love with two women at the same time. In the tradition of Anne Tyler, John Cheever, and Tom Perotta, Winston's second novel looks beyond the manicured surface of suburbia to a world of loss, longing, lust, and betrayal.

Author Biography: LOLLY WINSTON lives in Los Gatos, California.

Skylight Confessions/Alice Hoffman

I've been a huge Alice Hoffman for years. Open this book and by the time you finish the first page you are transported. Hoffman's style is mesmerizing. This story kept me captivated though the ending was somewhat unsatisfying. Yet it is perhaps Hoffman's goal that we are left to speculate what ultimately happens to the story's final generation.

From the Publisher

A stunning new novel about three generations of a family haunted by love from the bestselling author of Practical Magic and Here on Earth.

Arlyn Singer believes in destiny and in love.

But fate seems to be playing a trick on the night when John Moody knocks on her door to ask for directions. Opposites who cannot understand each other, they are drawn to one another even when it's clear they're bound to bring each other grief. Their marriage is dangerous territory, tracing a map no one should follow. It leads them and their children to the Connecticut countryside, the avenues in Manhattan, the blue waters of the Long Island Sound, all in a search for family and identity.

There is Sam, the brilliant explosive artist who is drawn to self-destruction and dreams. Blanca, the beautiful loner who tries desperately to protect her brother from his destiny and lives her own life in a world of books. And Will, the grandson, who is left a legacy of broken pieces he needs to put together, an emotional and mysterious puzzle made up of people who don't know the first thing about love.

Here is a family so real, so tragic, so devoted it is as if they have written their own riveting history--a quest for love and truth. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. SKYLIGHT CONFESSIONS is a luminous and elegant work of true originality. No one who reads this novel will ever forget it or look at their own family in quite the same way.

About the Author: Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of 18 acclaimed novels, including The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The River King, Blue Diary, Illumination Night, Turtle Moon, Seventh Heaven, and At Risk. She lives outside Boston.

The Strangeness of Beauty/Lydia Yuri Minatoya

Description: When Etsuko Sone's sister dies in childbirth in Seattle's shabby Japantown, love for the precocious child catapults Etsuko back across the Pacific and into the austere samurai household of her mysterious mother, Chie - a woman who rejected Etsuko at birth. The dubious reconciliation is for the sake of little Hanae, that she might learn her Fuji heritage and the Zen lessons of humility, dignity, self-discipline, and grace. In Japan, Etsuko is the ultimate outsider: a returning emigrant in a land she left years before; a common woman thrust into a house of secrets and riches; a childless mother and a motherless daughter. As Etsuko and Hanae do their often quite comic best to adapt to life within Chie's samurai household, Japan is changing in dangerous ways. Worldwide economic strife strips Japan's people of food and clothing even as wartime preparations strip them of information and freedoms. Chie and Etsuko greet the mounting militarism with resistance, and when the imperial army cuts cruelly into Chinese Manchuria, accusations of treachery, of antipatriotism, begin to rain on the Fuji household. It is then that the women realize their separate independence is their common bond. It is then that Etsuko finds hidden strength to pursue meaning and beauty in a situation beyond her control.

Recipes For A Perfect Marriage/Morag Prunty

Description: Afraid she is too old to wait for "The One," successful 38-year-old food writer Tressa Nolan marries the next man who asks her-her building super, amiable, kindly, not-very-educated Dan Mullins. Less than two months into her marriage, she realizes she does not love her husband, and never has. Horrified by his blue-collar habits, his desire to move from their Upper West Side apartment to Yonkers and his combative mother, Eileen, Tressa wishes desperately for the counsel of her late Irish grandmother, Bernadine, who taught her to cook and whose 50-year marriage to grandfather James seemed like the model of the perfect relationship. Along with old-fashioned recipes (e.g., Slow-Roasted Clove Ham and Honey Cake), Bernadine's tale, set in 1930s and '40s Ireland, is interspersed with Tressa's, in 2004 Manhattan. The two stories run parallel, each woman learning that as food too hurriedly made is inferior to its long-cooking counterpart, so the passionate love that immediately strikes the heart may be pale in comparison to the slow-growing, long-lasting love of marriage.

Comments: I read this a year ago and remember feeling it was very much a "romance novel" yet it had nuggets of truth worth pondering. I particularly liked the grandmother's story which is told in alternating chapters.

These Granite Islands/Sarah Stonich

Description: In the small town of Cypress, Minnesota, Isobel, a former milliner, now an older woman on her deathbed, recalls the summer of 1936 -- a pivotal season that forever changed her life. That summer her husband, Victor, bought a remote island where he took their two young sons to vacation while Isobel slaved at home in her hat shop with her daughter, Louisa. When a striking, enigmatic woman named Cathryn enters the shop, she and Isobel forge a fast friendship, sharing intimacies and deep secrets. As Isobel says, "A person need only walk over your threshold and your life can become forever changed, lived under a different sky." Stonich weaves her story seamlessly between the present -- the elderly Isobel's hospital bed in the wake of a stroke -- and the past, where she acted as a lookout for Cathryn and her lover, Jack, a handsome forest ranger. But Cathryn and Jack not only hide but disappear that summer, culminating in a fiery mystery. Reflecting on that summer and beyond, Isobel examines her own tragic losses -- losses even more devastating than that of her friendship with Cathryn, forcing Isobel to view her life, her marriage, and her own choices in a new light.

Comments: I found this title while browsing at the library. After a solid start the story becomes a little slow in the middle and I found myself not liking the main character so much at that point in her life. It resumes a good pace later and I found myself racing to the end to solve the mystery of the lovers' disappearance.

Light On Snow/Anita Shreve

Description: The events of a December afternoon, during which a father and his daughter find an abandoned infant in the snow, will forever alter the 11-year-old girl's understanding of the world and the adults who inhabit it: a father who has taken great pains to remove himself from society in order to put an unthinkable tragedy behind him; a young woman who must live with the consequences of the terrible choices she has made; and a detective whose cleverness is exceeded only by his sense of justice.

Comments: This is the first book I've read by this author. The story is intriguing and true and holds the attention until the end but the conclusion falls short. Shreve seemed to wrap up the story too quickly and simply for my taste. This may be accountable to the fact that the narrator tells the story 20 years after the events occur. I'd recommend this title when you're looking for something to wile away a lazy, perhaps snowy, afternoon.

Rise and Shine/Anna Quindlen

Two little words; that's all that's necessary to plunge Meghan Fitzmaurice into a major career disaster and life crisis. A pair of verboten words spoken impulsively into an open mike not only costs the morning-talk show star her job; it destabilizes her relationships and her sense of self-esteem. The effects of this personal earthquake extend even to Meghan's sister Bridget, a Bronx social worker who has always existed in the afterglow of Big Sis's glory.

This was a huge disappointment. The writing style was simplistic. The story was soap operatic. Black and Blue and One True Thing were much better reads. It's hard to believe this is even the same author.

When Madeline Was Young/Jane Hamilton

Shortly after Aaron Maciver married Madeline, his wife suffered a debilitating brain injury that left her with mental capacity of a small child. Years later, Aaron remarries, but he and his new wife, Julia, refuse to leave Madeline stranded. They take her into their suburban Chicago home, caring for her and accepting her into their lives almost as a beloved child; during nights of high anxiety, she even shares their marriage bed. Decades later, their son, Mac, reflects on this unusual, even eerie ménage, pondering its effects on his parents and himself.

This was thoroughly engrossing. The subject matter so unique. I also loved Hamilton's Map of the World.