At the age of twenty-four Haruko, a commoner, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, becoming the first non-aristocratic woman to do so. She, an accomplished, well-educated woman, enters a life controlled by the Empress and her minions—one where she no longer has an identity of her own. She suffers a nervous breakdown, but eventually recovers and perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another commoner to accept her son’s proposal.
Though histories of certain members of the Japanese Imperial family were an inspiration for the story, it is a product of fiction. However, it is a timely and relevant one—-a fascinating and enjoyable read.

-Yvonne

Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker’s trilogy about WWI, is the most powerful anti-war book I’ve ever read, and one of the best pieces of historical fiction I’ve ever read as well. Her latest book, Life Class, revisits WWI but not as successfully as the Regeneration Trilogy. The book is divided into two parts. Part One is set on the eve of WWI and follows the lives of three characters—Paul, Neville and Elinor—all art students studying at a famous art school in London called the Slade. Their lives revolve mostly around their studies and their romantic liaisons. Frankly I found this part of the book to be rather slow, and the characters not particularly engaging or appealing. But in Part Two of the novel, the narrative comes alive. Ms. Barker herself seems much more engaged. Her writing becomes more vivid and certainly more compelling , as the reader is thrown into the midst of WWI when the two male characters volunteer for the medical corps. Ms. Barker seems to have a unique grasp of the horror and tragedy of war and she manages to convey it best through the lens of WWI. This aspect alone makes the novel worth reading. I’m sure the main reason I found the book somewhat disappointing was that I couldn’t help but compare it to Regeneration. Anyone who has not read the earlier trilogy would undoubtedly find Life Class a compelling and powerful piece of historical fiction in its own right. -Billie

While I’m not a particular fan of mysteries I found Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, the author of Chocolat, to be great escapist fare. In this highly entertaining work, Ms. Harris manages to switch genres with great ease and even greater success.

Set in an old line English prep school called St. Oswald’s Grammar School, the entire story is told through the voices of two characters. The first, an anonymous narrator, who is obviously a sociopath, has returned to St. Oswald’s as a teacher determined to wreak havoc on the institution for what he perceives as past betrayals. His identity is revealed only at the end of the book. The other protagonist is a classics professor named Professor Straitley, a delightful curmudgeon with a wry sense of humor and a grudge against modernity in general and computers, e-mails and the like in particular. Professor Straitley is an unlikely hero, but as an intensely loyal and dedicated teacher who loves the school he presents the major obstacle to the villain’s ultimate goal–the destruction of St. Oswald’s.

Their contest of wits is played out using the framework of a chess game as its motif with each chapter alternating between the viewpoint of the villain, signified by the imprint of a black pawn at the beginning of his chapter and that of the professor, designated by the imprint of the white knight at the beginning of his.
In the early chapters, the professor is an unwitting player, only aware that there are nefarious events taking place at his beloved St. Oswald’s. But as the game progresses he is the only one who recognizes the danger and is able to maneuver to stop the mayhem. (Someone pointed out after I had read the book that only the knight can move both ways on a chess board.)

Although I don’t know much about chess, one doesn’t need to in order to thoroughly enjoy the book. Despite the implausibilities in the story—and there are a number–the intricate plotting, smart pacing and the many twists and turns keep the reader turning the pages until the last deliciously clever twist–a twist I realized had been hinted at from the beginning—hidden in plain sight as it were. -Billie

A few weeks ago, John passed me an advance copy of Bernhard Schlink’s novel Homecoming and mentioned that I might enjoy it. I had a couple books already in my stack at home, but John’s recommendations have proved fairly reliable, so I gave it a shot.

I was pleasantly surprised by Schlink’s writing (and the translation work by Michael Henry Heim from the original German). The prose is natural and seldom sounds out of place in the English translation. Schlink is excellent at describing moments of common experience that generally go unnoticed.

My favorite part of the novel, however, is the layered construction of the story — most importantly the protagonist exploring his family history through a novel published by his grandparents. Schlink weaves this theme of the ideas and beliefs that are encased in fiction throughout the story; you find yourself discovering the theme in moments of the story, instead of feeling as though the story is being dictated by the theme. The protagonist also returns again and again to the issue of inherited familial guilt, and wrestles with his inability to either deny or make amends for his ancestral evil.

This is a good read. Homecoming is going to stay on my bookshelf, and I am looking forward to picking up Schlink’s first novel, The Reader, which was an Oprah Book Club selection.

Last night I finished Geraldine Brooks new book, People of the Book. I took it home with me last week because I came to work and we had sold four copies of the book and it was only 9:15! NPR had done an interview with Geraldine Brooks that morning and people were pouring in the store to get the book. NPR said People of the Book is the best book of 2008! I was a little wary of that considering it was only January 4, 2008 but I knew there had to be something to it because Geraldine Brooks did win the Pulitzer Prize for her last novel, March.

Geraldine Brooks was inspired by a true story when she wrote People of the Book. During the bombing of Sarajevo, the librarians risked their lives and some lost them to try and save as many books as they could from the library in Sarajevo. The book at the center of this story is the Hebrew codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah. It was in the collection of the National Museum of Bosnia which was “splattered with the shrapnel of frequent shelling” during the war. The fate of the Haggadah wasn’t known until after war when it was revealed that a Muslim librarian, Enver Imamovic, saved the codex during the shelling and hidden it in a bank vault.

What makes this book so special is the fact that it is illuminated. It was discovered in 1894 when an indigent Jewish family needed to sell it. The art historians where shocked because it made them rethink the belief “that figurative art had been suppressed among medieval Jews for religious reasons”.

Many of the facts about the Haggadah are true to its known history but the plot and characters in People of the Book are all from Geraldine Brooks imagination and what an imagination she has. We begin with an Australian rare book expert, Hanna, who is offered the job of conserving the Haggadah and doing research on its history. While inspecting the book she discovers three artifacts in the book’s binding, a piece of an insect wing, a wine stain, and salt crystals. Using the information known to her and these three objects, she begins to learn about the book’s mysterious past. From here we travel to Bosnia during WWII, to the salons of Vienna, to Venice in 1609, to Tarragona in 1492 and then to Seville in 1480. Hanna’s investigation will introduce her to the world of art forgers and religious fanatics and will make her question her decisions in her work life and her personal life.

Geraldine Brooks is a wonderful story teller and I know that if you read this book you will love it as much as I do. I read a lot of historical fiction but there was something really different about this one. So I can really say, “Believe the hype.”  This is a good book. Will it be the best book of 2008? It is way to early in the year for me to go that far, but I do firmly believe it will be in my top 5 list for 2008.

Ian McEwan’s long awaited novel, On Chesil Beach, finally came out last week. The slight novel portrays two young newlyweds on the first course of their honeymoon. When we meet them, they are dining across from one another and in these moments, alone together for the first time, each recognizes in turn, the vast beach of unspoken words, emotions and desires that separates them. Set in 1962, on the brink of the sexual revolution, McEwan’s novel explores the culture of sexual repression, as it exists just before the world will explode into a new era of free love. True to form, McEwan manages to create protagonists so fully developed that their humanity evokes laughter one moment and sadness in the next. It is indicative of his literary prowess that he can write characters so endearing that the reader continues to engage and empathize with them throughout moments so unbearable that there is no option but to cringe with discomfort. Just when things seem to be heating up, zippers get stuck, emotions are misinterpreted and the honeymoon preemptively ends. As he is wont to do, McEwan leaves the reader contemplating things done and things left undone, and proves, once again, that ordinary actions and words can change the course of all that is left to come in the most extraordinary ways. – Caroline Morrison

A dazzling triumph from the bestselling author of  The Virgin Suicides—Middlesex is the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek-American family and flowers in the body of a teenage girl.
In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls’ school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them–along with Callie’s failure to develop–leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.
The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia- back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie’s grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.
Spanning eight decades–and one unusually awkward adolescence- Jeffrey Eugenides’s long-awaited second novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire. It marks the fulfillment of a huge talent, named one of America’s best young novelists by both Granta and The New Yorker.

Having finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a few weeks ago, I have been able to reflect on what I enjoyed and what I learned from Hosseini, the famous international author of last year’s very popular title, The Kite Runner. A native of Afghanistan, Hosseini, who now lives in California, covers approximately thirty years of recent history in his native country, ranging from the Soviet invasion, to the reign of the Taliban, to post Taliban rebuilding, all areas that I would be unlikely to study or explore, including extreme, despicable, overt female oppression. To say that I am thankful to live in the United States is for sure an understatement and a fortunate by-product of this lengthy read. However, the expert and talented way in which the author weaves this fictionalized story between two women, originally a likely dueling pair, who are a generation apart, and linked together by their husband (yes, their mutual husband) and actually become friends and co-conspirators in his murder, out of self defense, makes this novel one of the most meaningful and poignantly beautiful that I have read in some time. The ending warmed my heart and gave me hope that some day world wide violence toward women may actually lessen. Deeply moving and explicitly descriptive language concerning oppression and biases toward women cause this title to be simultaneously hard to read but yet hard to put down. A Thousand Splendid Suns may put Hosseini back at the top again.  -Nan

In his debut novel, The Raw Shark Texts, British writer, Steven Hall, takes the coming of age theme to a whole new level. The protagonist is not the usual awkward teen facing the impediments of high school, but a young guy named Eric Sanderson who knows no more about himself than that. The novel opens to a protagonist who knows nothing about himself but his name, Eric Sanderson.
As he navigates the murky depths of his past, he soon learns that the onset of his amnesia is loosely related to his many failed attempts to move past the tragic loss of his fiance. He also discovers that a supernatural fish called a Ludovician is lurking in the depths of his subconscious waiting to steal his identity again. Through a mix of mind games, puzzles and old-fashioned stealth Eric begins his journey to find himself while eluding the Ludovician.
The novel is quite different from the sort of thing I usually read but I found Hall’s unique voice a refreshing change of pace and the ease of his prose gave way to his imaginative tale and charismatic protagonist. All in all I thought Raw Shark Texts was a great read…it’s a page turner that will definitely keep you at the edge of your beach chair but out of the water. Here are three related book reviews. – Caroline Morrison

When I began reading Ellis Avery’s first novel, The Teahouse Fire, I had no idea where it would take me. Avery’s delicate writing style engaged me immediately, but I found the plot’s many twists and turns in the first few chapters confusing. As I read on, though, I became engrossed in the many levels of Avery’s character development and fell in love with her fictional protagonist, Aurelia Bernard. The novel intertwines aspects of Japanese history with Aurelia’s journey and by blending both, Avery creates a beautiful story that celebrates tradition, culture, family and the malleable nature of the world around us. As I neared the end of the book, I could hardly put it down. – Caroline Morrison