Where Have You Been Korea?

To make this review all about me right from the start, Flower, I want to tell you about the startling revelation that came to me after reading "The Calligrapher's Daughter". I realized that in all my many years of reading novels set in Asia that this was the first one with a Korean setting that I had ever read. It's true. I can hardly believe it. I was as shocked as you are right now.

Ever since I discovered the satisfyingly chubby books of James Clavell (no relation to Miss Clavel as far as I know) the summer between high school and college I have hungered after novels set in Asia. So how did I miss Korea? There must be wonderful books out there set in Korea, right? Why are they unknown to me? As a buyer for an independent bookstore and wholesaler for 20 years I read every catalog every season from every publisher in order to do my buys and I cannot recall any Korean historical novels.

About 2 years ago an excellent contemporary novel about the daughter of Korean immigrants was published by Grand Central Publishing. It was "Free Food For Millionaires" by Min Jin Lee. You read it too didn't you Flower? I thought it was terrific. After I read it I wrote about it for our company newsletter and I was able to handsell it quite well. It's the classic second generation torn between duty to parents and the desire to attain what's perceived as All-American Success tale. The characters however were unique and intriguing, there was lots of humor in the book and the writing was first rate. I will definitely read what comes next from Min Jin Lee and I hope that good news makes her hurry up and finish whatever she's working on.

So? Back to no Korean historical novels. Where are they? If you know of any I'd love to hear.

In the broad strokes, "The Calligrapher's Daughter" is about the Japanese forcible annexation of Korea in 1910 that lasted until 1945 and Korea's entrance into the modern world after the horrors of the Japanese occupation ended. Up until 1910 the (united) Korea had been peacefully ruled for over 500 years by the Joseon Dynasty.

The intimate story of the novel is the life of the unnamed daughter of a successful calligrapher. Coming as she did with the Japanese so to speak the daughter is viewed by her father Han as a shame brought on the family and Han refuses to name the girl. As the Japanese take over more and more of the government, police and culture in Korea, Han becomes bitter and resentful. He is an artist and activist, a scholar who struggles to recapture Korea's glory and independence.

Najin's life, as the daughter is nicknamed at age 8, parallels her country's subjugation and modernization. She longs to fulfill both her Father's ideal of womanhood (essentially seen, not heard and make me another baby) and to get an education. When at 14 she gets unexpected help from her Mother to escape a marriage arranged by her Father and go and live in the King's court, it is her ticket to an education and to creating her own destiny. Of course it is not smooth sailing from then on in, but to know more about the plot you'll have to read the book.

The author, Eugenia Kim, based this novel on the life of her Mother. Kim's family story, detailed research and gentle writing style make Calligrapher's well worth reading. She does an excellent job capturing the desires for a lost world and the longing to have a future of your own.

"The Calligrapher's Daughter" is not without flaws. The religious aspects of the story, although important to the storyline, sometimes come across as preachy and the novel is written in such a completely straight forward and secondary plot-less manner that it does occasionally feel as though you are reading an upper level young adult novel. However. I have thoroughly enjoyed the book and I have learned an immense amount about Korean history and culture.--That has been fascinating and it's left me wanting more.

So where are those Korean novels?

Happy

P.S. I think the cover is beautiful and it did make me pick the book up to look at. Congrats to the designer!

It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated

Flower, Flower, Flower.

I know that you love award shows but how do you feel about awards? I'm all for them. The more the better.

My fav award is the Man Booker Prize. I know. There's no red carpet, but if there was guarantee everyone would be badly dressed, don't you think? Hilariously so. The bad-ness might be Grammy level only with more florals and boiled wool. Oh and picture if you will the hair! Is my fancy for Man a mere sideline of my supreme attachment to books? Oh no my friend!

It's the whole Long List /Short List thing. It builds anticipation. I love that first you get the 13 books that the judges have selected from out of every novel published by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. There's some reading for you. How many titles do you think that is? 40,000? 60,000? Are they all read by the judges? Let's just say, no. Then about a month later the Short List comes along. The 13 get shaved down to 5. Then a month after that comes the winner.

Here is this year's Long List with U.S. availability noted:

The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt---due out in September, hardcover
Summertime by J. M. Coetzee--- due out in October, hardcover
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds ---no date yet for U.S. release
How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall ---due in September, paperback
The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey ---available, hardcover
Me Cheeta by James Lever ---available, hardcover
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ---due out in October, hardcover
The Glass Room by Simon Mawer--- no date yet for U.S. release
Not Untrue & Not Unkind by Ed O'Loughlin--- no date yet for U.S. release
Heliopolis by James Scudamore --- no date yet for U.S. release
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin ---available, hardcover
Love and Summer by William Trevor ---due out in September, hardcover
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters ---available, hardcover

The Man Booker judicial chair, James Naughtie, says:

"The five Man Booker judges have settled on thirteen novels as the longlist for this year's prize. We believe it to be one of the strongest lists in recent memory, with two former winners, four past-shortlisted writers, three first-time novelists and a span of styles and themes that make this an outstandingly rich fictional mix."

I'll not argue.

I have done fairly well with the Long List. The really long list of all novels published in the Commonwealth this year, no so much. I have read: "The Little Stranger", "Me Cheeta", "Brooklyn" and "The Wilderness". Waiting to be read are "Wolf Hall" and "The Children's Book". I adored Stranger, found Cheeta to be old Hollywood gossip sewn together with a clever hook but ultimately a bit dull and sad, Brooklyn is a gorgeous, clear-eyed love story, and Wilderness is a heartbreaker about a novelist with Alzheimer’s.

Any books that I think should have made the Long List? hmmmmm... "Winter Vault" by Anne Michaels. A beautiful novel about a young couple in Egypt in 1964. The husband is there as an engineer working on the move of Abu Simbel. The wife is a botanist with a passion for anything that comes out of the Earth. The intensity of the temple move, the ethics involved, childhood memories and a tragic loss forces the couple to circle around love and grief, destruction and rebirth. The fluidity of Michael's writing is flawless. She has the precision of a master short story writer and the understanding of human psyche of Jung.

Any others? Not that come to mind immediately, but I'll think about it.

Happy



P.S. If judge James Naughtie's name is really pronounced naughty---I'm dying just like any other 12 would be.

Nuns & Charles Dickens & Warm Woollen Mittens

Hi Flower!

Nuns and Charles Dickens and warm woollen mittens. These are a few of my favorite things. Whiskers on kittens? Not so much. But that's okay because there are some new books that will fulfill my nuns and Dickens needs. The mittens? I am currently knitting a pair seeing as it's going to be a cold summer.

This is a nice on sale week for Random House. They have one of their established bestselling authors, Sarah Dunant's new novel, "Sacred Hearts" going on sale as well as a first time author's debut novel, "Girl in a Blue Dress" which was long listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and got a lot of publicity in the UK. And... I imagine they have a lot of other nice things happening this week as well, but those I don't know about.

Just as Phillipa Gregory has a lock on the backstairs lives of English royalty so Sarah Dunant has with Renaissance Italy. Dunant is your go to girl for the annuls of antipasto. She's got the research done, gotten all the facts and we get to enjoy. In "Sacred Hearts" we are enjoying the many mysteries and rites of convent life in 1570 Ferrara, Italy. Sound a little tame? Not at all. This is a strong, engaging book about very interesting individuals.

The lives and history of nuns has always held interest for me. I'm not entirely sure why. I have no personal religious background. Until I was in college all I knew about the Bible or any religion really was what I had learned from watching Cecil B. de Mille movies and to the best of my recollection Cecil B. never made a movie about nuns. Maybe it's the disappearance of the individual into a communal life whose goal is to serve a common good. Maybe it's Belief which I've never had. Maybe it's the outfits. I envy women who can wear a hat and black is so New York and hip. Maybe it's that their regimented, shut in lives under the rule of men is a microcosm of the history of women for the last few thousand years. Maybe it's just that they exist. I don't know.

In "Sacred Hearts" the convent of Santa Caterina is a repository for the unmarriable of Ferrara's wealthiest families. Some know from childhood that the Church will be their lives, some are what's left when dowries have been stretched to nothing for a sibling's advantageous marriage and some are the end of their families and it's either the nunnery or... what? Once under God's protection at Santa Caterina each woman must come to terms with what they have lost and the life they will live from the moment of entrance until death.

The politics and complex relationships of "Sacred Hearts" are not wholly confined to the convent itself. There are pressures for change within the Church that cannot be ignored. These changes could turn the relatively liberal Santa Caterina into a completely isolated and devotional house. Also, the noble and wealthy families of the nuns and Ferrara must be kept happy to keep their patronage and thereby protect the convent. Into this cloistered but not unworldly community Dunant brings character, intense period and religious detail and good, strong storytelling.

When the novel started out I immediately fell into deep fascination with the details of life and religion in 1570, but I felt as though the plot was going to be as new and intricate as a communion wafer. I was wrong. The plot unfolded in surprising ways and is exceptionally well served by the fully drawn secondary characters in the book. The women in the book are of all ages and at all levels of devotion. In fact one of the strongest elements of the book was how accurate and true all of the characters felt. No small achievement in historical fiction where passionate and powerful women characters too often come across as contemporary.

Flower, how much do I love Charles Dickens? A lot. He's my all time favorite writer. He's my desert island choice. I fell in love with his books at 12 for three reasons: I loved all the words, the books are chubby and here were books that had more main characters than I had siblings--a first! But. Can I accept that he was human and a far from perfect one? Sometimes a far from nice one? I couldn't have at 12 but at 12+ I can.

Good thing or I would have missed an excellent novel.

"The Girl in the Blue Dress" is a fictionalized account of the life of Charles Dickens from the viewpoint of his wife Catherine. For years Catherine was viewed as sort of a 'Shakespeare's Wife'. A shadow of no real interest except for the number of children she gave birth to. A dull footnote in a brilliant man's career. In "Girl" Dickens is Alfred Gibson and Catherine is his wife Dorothea. In this Alfred is the It Boy of Victorian letters, magnetic, representing the values of home and hearth, popularly viewed as a social reformer and successful beyond belief. Dorothea is the quiet wife once loved and pursued now humiliated and left behind.

When "Girl" opens, Alfred is dead. The world is mourning his passing. He is being remembered as 'The Great One' and 'The One and Only'. He and Catherine have been separated for 10 years. Alfred had grown tired of his dutiful, ever pregnant wife. He cast her out, publicly painted her as mad, installed her in a barely decent apartment and kept all but one of their eight children from seeing her--just as Dickens did to Catherine. Dorothea humbled by the estrangement, did as she was told and moved on to a nun-like life. Spending her days reading and re-reading Alfred's novels and brooding over what had been and what it had become. An invitation from another widow, Queen Victoria pulls Dorothea back into the world and compels her to try and reclaim her life.

The events of Alfred and Dorothea's lives so faithfully follow those of Charles and Catherine that you might wonder why write a novel? Why not write a biography of the Dickens' marriage? A novel gives Catherine/Dorothea a voice that history can not. The subject matter is at the level of you-can't-make-up-this-stuff but the author's insights and handling of it all is made credible and consistent with the time period and her descriptions of Victorian life would have made Dickens jealous. The research is impeccable.

There never seems to be any middle ground with first novels. They fall into one of two categories: better luck next time or wham, a homer. First timer Gaynor Arnold has put this one out of the park and I'm thrilled. A new author to look forward to! Because after all it really is all about me.

Now I worry that I won't have a new nun or Dickens book for years to come. I'll find other lovely reads to fill the time but I'll always have one eye open for my favorite things.

Happy

A Little Stranger Than Us

Book Jacket Smack Down!
Which cover is more likely to make you pick up "The Little Stranger"?
The Brit version on the left? Or the Yank take on the right?

Hello Flower!

Have you ever read Sarah Waters? She's one of a handful of authors that due to my bookstore employment I feel as though I discovered. Do you have authors like that? Authors who you have followed since their first quiet book? You read that first one and fell in love with the storytelling or writing style--- something-- and started putting it into friends and customer's hands while you impatiently waited for the next book? Sarah Waters is one of those writers for me. I feel very proprietary and protective towards her books. --I didn't mean that to come out so much like a warning, but I'm not unhappy that it did.

All of these titles have been enjoyed by me and lovingly forced onto others by me:
Tipping the Velvet 1998
Affinity 1999
Fingersmith 2002
The Night Watch 2006
And now in 2009 there is--TA-DA! The Little Stranger.


On the page turning surface "The Little Stranger" is a ghost story. I have to say seeing that description on the book jacket stopped me in my tracks. I'm no reader of scary tales, Flower. Scooby Doo cartoons make me nervous. I am a certified, sleep with the light on coward. I do not want creepy thoughts and scary images tucked away in my brain files ready to pop out at me at any time. But... Sarah Waters is one of my pets so onward I pressed.

"The Little Stranger" could be called a follow up to the wonderful "The Night Watch". In Night a group of desperate people struggle to survive WWII London. There the war was the main character. It drove all action and decisions. In Stranger the war has ended but it's power has not diminished and the ghosts it left behind are many.

The novel is set in a rural community in England. The national anxiety of waiting for bombs to drop or news of loved ones has been replaced with the death of hierarchies and the worries that massive social change brings. Those changes are especially strong in the Great Houses across England. In the book, Hundreds Hall is the former grand estate of it's neighborhood. It is now a shabby, barely hanging on wreck of a place. The great family is still living there: Mrs Ayres clinging to the past like grim death, her war damaged son, Roderick and her war missing daughter, Caroline. They have economized to the point of austerity. Half of the house is shut down, land has been sold off, they are attempting to keep the farm viable and have let all but 2 of the servants go but with the Labor Party ruling the day and the family's inability to adapt Hundreds Hall seems to be doomed to extinction.

Into this very contained world comes our narrator. The classic Victorian ghost story bachelor, Dr. Faraday. Set in his ways, slightly woman hating and socially unremarkable. Dr. Faraday isn't the sort who ever would have made it into the Ayres's circle in their glory days. He is the middle class on the doorstep of his betters. His Mother had been a maid at Hundreds Hall in her youth and his father a shopkeeper. Both of his parents sacrificed to raise him above his station. Faraday carries with him enough inbred British class system romanticization that his acceptance by the Ayres family into their world is the ultimate success for him. He is flattered, ready to worship and agonizes over each setback the family endures. This and his unshakable belief in science makes the veracity of his narration suspect and adds to the drama of the story.

Ghosts abound in "The Little Stranger". Each reader will decide whether or not there is an actual haunting at Hundreds Hall and as I have an aversion to giving away plot and will not go the spoiler alert route here is where my descriptions of the action and the characters ends. As for the other ghosts? The Ayers family is haunted by their past riches, snobbery, lost ambitions and the illusions they had about themselves. Dr Faraday is haunted by his own failures and the spector of the incoming National Health Service which could cost him his hard won rise in social standing.

Sarah Waters is always a great storyteller and always challenging herself. She has mastered the intricately plotted Victorian novel, the Merlin-esque ending to the beginning construction of "The Night Watch" and here the ghost story. Ghost stories follow a form. An innocent taken over by malevolence with an operatic finale. "The Little Stranger" does not marry itself completely to that template. Sarah Waters has not written a make you jump tale of terror. She has written a restrained, controlled, creepily suggestive novel about all kinds of hauntings. In fact the grand finale of the novel we are not even witness to. It takes place off stage with no witnesses and is all the more unsettling for that.

There are also touches of other classic things here like "Great Expectations" and "Rebecca" but don't think that this is not a unique work for all of the trappings. This is a sublime novel by a gifted writer that I discovered, sort of...

Happy

P.S. I prefer the Brit cover. The Yank cover I feel as though I've seen too often and it reads too English county house murder to me. The Brit cover successfully captures the 40's period and creates an intimacy that US cover lacks.

It wasn't my fault...

Flower, Flower, Flower.

I am doomed.

Sister A is going to be furious with me. I'm serious. This could be it. I've locked myself in and I am not answering the phone.

This morning A and hubby K took daughter O to swim camp. O was extremely excited! She couldn't wait to leave. In fact my little O was so distracted by her efforts to rush her parents into the car that I got 2 squeezey hugs and a kiss from her with out begging or bribery. Yea me!

With their departure I got the twins for the day. Yea me again!

We had a great morning. We went to the beach park where after kicking their tiny buttocks in badminton I sat and read for a while (NewFoundLand by Rebecca Ray and it is a dee-light! I think I'll have a lot more to say about it later.) H and S threw anything they could lift into the river. Then it was off to our local bookstore where H picked out Pinky Pye (having read and Ginger Pye and loving it) and S was thrilled to get the next book in The Little House series, By the Shores of Silver Lake. Then it was back to their house where we had lunch and rode our bikes for a while.

This is probably about where the decision making started going south. Don't get me wrong nothing ended in tears (unless you want to count mine which should be flowing in about 18 minutes) or a trip to the emergency room but well, I am hiding out right?

The weather was beautiful and surprisingly summery. Hey! Cue the Beach Boys music and let's go in the pool. The pool was terrific. There was splashing, there was floating, they was interpretive dance. Two hours later we exit the pool. Now we're all logy and brain tired. You know that feeling? You're comfortably cool and feeling lazy and weak?

I'm not quite sure how what happened next happened. I swear it really is a blur. I know that we were playing Who Can Cheat The Best At Candy Land --a family favorite-- and then suddenly I had Sharpies in my hand. And. There was H next to me still in his bathing suit and with a lot of exposed, unmarked flesh. The perfect canvas.

I'll admit it. I'm weak and I guess S is too because she had a handful of markers and I had a handful of markers and H now has some "tattoos". There's a Mom heart with wings on his left arm, a hula girl on his right arm, a battleship on his stomach that he can make roll with the waves if you know what I mean, a pink heart of his left cheek--lower case cheek, and he now has brown chest hair.

This was when the phone rang. It was A to say that she and K were at our local exit and would be home in about 15 minutes. All of a sudden my life was an 80's teen movie. Man oh man did I snap back to reality with a vengeance. I hustled H back into the pool and S and I tried to scrub the Sharpie off him. I know, I know. It's a permanent marker. I was paniced. I thought that the chlorine might help fade him a little. When that didn't work I got him out and dressed. Everything was covered that could lead to questions and sentencing as an adult.

By now H and S both knew the amount of trouble we were about to be in and that it was going to go much worse for me. Confessing and throwing ourselves onto A's mercy was not an option. Hey we weren't raised to give in. You don't confess if there's any kind of chance you can beat it. The three of us worked out a little scenario where in H keeps his clothes on and tubs and scrubs himself before bed everyday for the next 5 years.

Did it work? I don't have a clue. As soon as A and K walked in the door I bugged out. I'll tell you I now perfectly understand how the insanity defense works. I do have a history of "tattooing" children without parental knowledge. When O was a baby I put a temporary tattoo of a rose on her bottom and a dove on her shoulder and then took her to meet A at the pediatrician's for a check up. I cannot tell you how angry A was after the examination. As I recall "you idiot moron" and "it's on her permanent record" were both yelled at me numerous times. This time it was not premeditated. It all happened in a too-long-in-the-pool induced haze.

That's it. I shall use the Pool-Brain Defense and maybe someday I will have unsupervised visitation once again with my wonderful nieces and nephew . If there is any incarceration-ing involved will you promise to bake me a cake with a file in it? And a hamburger too, can there be a hamburger in there?

On the lam,
Happy

Blood Begets Blood

Maybe it's a little late for me to be on the Internet poking around but when I saw "Mr Darcy, Vampyre" ...well after my experience with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" I had to call on my inner Nancy Drew and investigate.

Flower, where oh where will all this classics-meet-the-undead end? Will "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" be hungry for blood? Mother Goose? Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went the blood was sure to flow. To Kill A Mocking Zombie? Will Scarlett O'Hara be Scarlett for a different reason?

From the publisher's website:
Sourcebooks Landmark Announces New Major Release: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre
Sourcebooks Landmark, the leading publisher of Jane Austen-related fiction, is excited to announce a major release in the category: Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by international bestselling author Amanda Grange. Amanda Grange's style and wit bring readers back to Jane Austen's timeless storytelling, but always from a very unique and unusual perspective, and now Grange is back with an exciting and completely new take on Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Mr. Darcy, Vampyre. "Amanda Grange is our internationally bestselling author of Mr. Darcy's Diary," says Sourcebooks acquisitions editor Deb Werksman, "and we were so excited when she came to us last year with this brilliant vision for an altered Darcy. Amanda starts where Pride and Prejudice ends and introduces a dark family curse so perfectly that the result is a delightfully thrilling, spine-chilling, breathtaking read. A dark, poignant and visionary continuation of Austen's beloved story, this tale is full of danger, darkness and immortal love." Sourcebooks has announced an on-sale date of August 11, and a 75,000 copy first print run.

Happy

Wish Your Postcard Was Here

Holy Cow Flower!

That is the very best coincidence story I have ever heard. No Contest.

How on Earth did that little 3x5 piece of paper make it to the trade show? I would love to have seen Jane's face when she found it.

The closest thing I have to that magical tale (and mine is a weak, vest pocket imitation of your great story) was when sister A and I pulled a shopping cart out of the cart train at the supermarket and there in the bottom was the shopping list that A had given her husband K the week before. We were both equal parts surprised to find the note and disgusted that K hadn't thrown the list away.--Hey Man! Give a hoot and don't pollute!

I had no idea that postcard collecting was so big. I remember a few years ago a book came out called "Boring Postcards USA" from Phaidon. The title said it all my friend. We carried it at the bookstore because there was a postcard in there of a long out of business grocery store from the next town over. Can you imagine how happy the sales rep was to have that to point out? This book was actually a follow up to "Boring Postcards" which was all British postcards and presumably a whole different kind of boring than the American ones. Maybe the Brit version had a lot more savory pork pies.

Having a wonderful time,

Happy