Barely two years after she got married, Maggie finds herself separated. Her husband moved out, took the cat with him, and they promised each other to remain civil. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Maggie soon spirals out of control without realizing it. As she lists to her friends all the things she does to prove she’s not sad, one of the friends points out that the things she does are textbook behaviour for someone suffering from depression. To which Maggie replies that she’s been feeling really good, actually. Careful suggestions about seeing a therapist (from her friends, family, co-workers, and random strangers) are cast aside, and instead she continues taking selfies to document her emotional journey, and posting on social media about Men. Toronto is an expensive city, and Maggie can’t really afford life there on her own. Instead of facing this reality, she ignores it for months. She complains about it to her friends and co-workers, and goes on rants that involve conspiracy theories about the economy, generational injustice, therapy, and the concept of marriage. The only reason she doesn’t end up homeless, is that her mentor feels sorry for her and offers her a basement flat to rent. Maggie wallows in her misery, and her behaviour starts to alienate her exasperated friends. She cannot be happy for anybody else, and her downer mood is annoying to all. Gentle hints about this, don’t land, or are purposely ignored. Being on social media all the time, does not help her in any way. On the contrary, of course: it only leaves her self-esteem down the drain. She uses their cat’s Instagram to stalk her ex online. She goes from shunning the idea of ever dating again, to having accounts on “all the apps” and going exclusively on first dates, because life’s too short to waste it on bad second or third dates. Because she’s so deep in denial, Maggie almost becomes an unreliable narrator. Almost, because there are moments of painful truth, in the form of chapters on google searches, that literally just list her search terms, and thereby reveal much more about her than she cares to admit. The same applies to chapters on email exchanges with her ex, and her divorce attorney. The fantasy chapters are really funny as well, and the one that features Harry Styles made me laugh out loud.
Maggie spends a year grieving the end of her life as she knew it. Being a Millennial she does this in a way that involves a lot of social media, and at times I wanted to scream at her to just Put.The.Phone.Down. All in all, this book does well in describing what we go through when we hit a brick wall at full speed: how difficult it can be to readjust your focus, and find a way to move on. Maggie’s story is sad, frustrating, and funny. It was a fun and breezy read, but not something that will stay with me for a long time.
This story starts on August 13, 1961. And if your history isn’t sharp on what happened that day, the first page gives it away: Berlin wakes up to a wall rising on its border. The border had been there drawn in chalk, but suddenly there was a construction going up. The only people still allowed to cross the border, were military personnel, and foreign press: everybody else is stuck where they are. This is problematic for Karin, a young woman from West Berlin, who was taken to hospital in East Berlin the night before. She wakes up with her appendix out, and a border up. Her twin sister Jutta, is on the other side, at home with the family. Their cousin Hugo is a radio reporter and he takes Jutta along with him to cover the development of the newly rising border blockade, while trying to find a passage still open. There is none. The best they can do, is find a member of the foreign press and ask them to bring a note to the hospital. In the days and weeks that follow, the Wall only goes up higher, and the strips of no-mans-land are becoming more fortified. It quickly becomes clear that Karin is trapped behind the Wall. It becomes Jutta’s mission to get her out.
The story goes back and forth between East and West Berlin, Karin and Jutta. The chapters are short, which keeps the pace going. It also does a great job in describing daily life in the city at the time, and the differences between the two parts. When Jutta accidentally stumbles onto a hole in the Wall, she goes through it, and locates her sister. She figures that Karin will be eager to come home with her, but Karin is settled into life in East Berlin by then: it’s been almost two years and she’s got her own apartment, a job, friends, and a man she loves. A man she loves so much, that it’s impossible for her to run and go home. Jutta tries to convince her that life in the West will be better, but Karin needs time. So, the sisters settle into a routine with Jutta regularly traveling through the Wall, to meet her sister for an afternoon. The fact that they made it undetected once, even twice, is a miracle. To think that they will remain invisible and keep this up, is a naïve gamble.
The start of the story has a lot of action: the Wall goes up, the scene is set. But then it stagnates. While that helps to describe how life assumes a new normal even in such a situation, this part of the story felt disproportionately long compared to the beginning and end. Because it isn’t until page 340 that pressure starts to build, and for a book that has 393 pages (including an epilogue) that was a bit late. The two sisters are equal on paper, but Jutta was front runner for main character for me. She’s the one that goes through the Wall, she’s the one that realizes there is a sense of urgency. Karin felt too meek, too passive, and while her indecisiveness was understanding, it also got annoying, probably because it took too long, and it didn’t seem like she understood that she couldn’t take forever to make up her mind. Not making a decision, is a decision itself, and it got to a point where I thought Jutta should just leave her be, and move on. I don’t think that’s what I was meant to feel. In the end, reality catches up with the sisters, and in a very bad way. But just as things are speeding up again, the story suddenly ends with a cliff-hanger. The reveal happens in the epilogue which takes place on 11 November 1989 with the fall of the Wall. Having started the story with the rise of the Wall, that is a nice way to bookend things. But it felt hasty, as if space had run out, and this was the only way to wrap things up. The ending also felt a bit too neat.
Overall conclusion: this is an okay read, but for me it was on the verge of “meh”. It’s solid because of the obvious research that was done to provide a good setting, but a story is more than its setting, as it needs good characters as well. The characters in this book could have used a bit more oomph.
No. 2: A memoir Strong female character / Fern Brady
As a teenager Fern read about autism and it made her realize that she had a lot in common with the description. When she told her doctor, he laughed it off, told her she “just” had OCD and depression instead, and prescribed her medication. Twenty years, several misdiagnoses and a lot of unnecessary suffering later, she gets diagnosed with autism after all. I felt angry and frustrated on the author’s behalf.
Autism expresses differently in girls and women than it does in boys and men. One of the incidents described in the book, is when the author expresses her suspicions about being autistic to the psychiatrist she’s seeing, he wrongfully concludes she’s not autistic because she’s making eye-contact and has always had boyfriends, rationalizing that an autistic person would be incapable of that. Fern knows he’s wrong, just as she knows the others were wrong, but because she’s not able to express herself and shuts down when a conversation goes different from what she’s prepared for, she keeps stuck in the loop of misdiagnoses. The inability to communicate what is happening or how she experiences a situation, left me feeling almost claustrophobic at times. Being forced to sit through the wrong diagnosis, spending time at a psychiatric hospital, or finding yourself in a stressful situation only because you didn’t know how to say no, or otherwise express your feelings about it, is nightmare inducing.
I learned about meltdowns and shut downs (not the same), and masking. I also recognized certain traits and for a second thought, maybe I’m a little bit of that as well. But then learned that we’re in fact “not all a little bit on the spectrum”, and that either you are, or you are not. And this is not just the author’s opinion. She’s done her research and there are footnotes with sources listed. These footnotes, by the way, are the only thing I had a problem with. And not the notes themselves of course, but the layout: the symbols used to indicate the footnotes are light and tiny. Especially when the symbol follows a quotation mark, it’s easy to miss. Then I’d spot the footnote at the bottom of the page, and I’d wonder what it relates to, and had to scan the page back to find spot. It might sound petty, but as I said: the author has done her research and there are footnotes throughout the book, and missing the indications, kept pulling me out of the story. Thankfully the book is so well written, that I kept with it and picked up easily again. This book is insightful, and I learned a lot. It’s also funny, and dark, and very real. I laughed, and I cried.
Something different than usual: instead of a cover shot, one of the back of the book. It was the summary on the back cover that pulled me into this book and I wanted to share that as well because it is a far better summation than I can ever provide you with:
No. 1: A book based on a historic event The Night Ship / Jess Kidd
I went from Dublin to Dublin in my reading, and now from magical to (slightly) magical. It’s all connected and we’ll see where it’ll end up. For this book, it’s Beacon Island.
There are two stories here: Mayken’s, which starts in 1628 when she boards the Batavia ship. And Gil’s, which starts in 1989, when he arrives on Beacon Island, a tiny island (you can cross it in twenty minutes on foot) off the west coast of Australia. Mayken and Gil both lost their mothers due to unconventional / problematic lifestyles. Mayken and Gil live three hundred years apart, but their stories are mirrored: both live in/on confined spaces, are free spirits, cross dress, run into stories about monsters living in the water, and neither wants to be where they are.
Although it’s probably best known in Australia and the NL, the story of the Batavia has been told in documentaries and books, so I don’t consider it a spoiler when I say that its 1628 maiden voyage didn’t go entirely according to plan. Loaded with riches, and people, the ship was part of a fleet of East India Company ships travelling to what was then Batavia, and is now Indonesia. The sailors were literally sitting on top of chests full of silver coins, and with a skipper and upper-merchant that didn’t get along, tensions started rising all over the ship. The Batavia’s story is in the book, but told from Mayken’s perspective, which is that of a nine-year old girl. She notices the unrest, the tension, but doesn’t know what it means. Her focus is more on catching the monster said to be living in the hull of the ship. Gil is also living with tension and unrest caused by frayed relationships between the different families on the island. He also discovers he is causing tension and unrest, just by being different. Both stories build up to explosions of violence.
This book is a historical with gothic elements and hints of otherworldlyness. The build-up is nicely paced: it starts by calmly setting the scenes, the children exploring their new surroundings and getting settled in. Then, as story grows more urgent, the pace picks up, faster, faster. The story goes from hopeful new starts, to awful realities. The story of the Batavia is clearly well researched, making Mayken’s story a treat. I liked Gil’s story as much though, and was intrigued about the boy who, appropriately, and not coincidentally, gets nicknamed Gilgamesh. The story being told from the perspectives of children, gives it a slightly eerie sense, and I liked that most about it.
This book comes with plenty of blurbs: four on the front cover, and five on the back. More yet, on the inside. That can be annoying, but in this case, I have to agree with all of them: this book sweeps you off your feet.
I ended the year with a book that I’d bought in Dublin and I kicked off the year with a book that takes place in Dublin. It was by total accident, or maybe subconsciously I knew, but who has time to figure these things out? Onto the book!
The Lost Bookshop / Evie Woods
The Lost Bookshop is a magical story about three different people: Opaline, Martha, and Henry. The magical part is quite literal so if you’re a bit more skeptical, then maybe this book isn’t for you. I do love a bit of magic every now and then, and thought this book did it very well with just enough of it.
In nineteen-twenty-one, Opaline is being told that she needs to marry. She doesn’t like the idea one bit, and defies her mother and bully of a brother by selling a few rare books from the family library to fund her escape to Paris. She soon realizes she needs a job, and stumbles into one at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. Here she meets James Joyce, in the process of writing Ulysses, and Ernest Hemmingway, in the process of flirting. She also meets Armand again, a man she’d met on the ferry, who had prevented her suitcase being stolen.
In the now, there’s Martha, escaping an abusive relationship, and the Irish countryside, and starting over in Dublin. She finds a job as a housekeeper for an elderly lady, and the best thing about the job is that it comes with a small basement apartment. On the first morning there, she wakes up to the sound and view of pacing feet in front of her window. When she goes to yell out of the window, she discovers that the feet belong to Henry, an English scholar, looking to find a bookshop at number eleven. Except the only houses there are numbers ten and twelve. Just as the title puts it: the bookshop’s lost.
Martha has the ability to read a person, so she knows Henry is in love with another woman. She also experiences sentences popping up in her head without context, hears sounds in the basement apartment, and discovers tree branches growing into shelves on the wall, complete with books that pop up. She accepts these things as they come along, trusting her instincts and the good vibes of the place. Henry has the focus on his research shifted when the funding of his project gets cancelled, and he travels home to England to rearrange things. Once there, he finds out that his father has been in rehab, and is really trying his best to stay sober this time. Having had an alcoholic father growing up, has however, left a dent in Henry. He’s not able to trust his father’s recovery, and is used to keeping his guard up. Even though they don’t seem to have much, if anything, in common, Martha and Henry quickly connect and become friends. They bring out the best in each other, with Henry introducing Martha to learning and reading, and Martha teaching Henry to approach his research and problem solving, from new and different angles. Slowly but surely, the two of them unravel the story of Opaline, and the different storylines start to come together. Opaline, Martha, and Henry all experienced trauma and refuse to let it define them: they have painful pasts but know they can only move forward, and do so. They are able to re-open their hearts again, and love, and grow.
Aside from the magic-magic, the story contains plenty of book-magic. The characters appreciate books, and what they can bring a reader. It’s about the hidden stories inside a bookshop, the hunt for rare books, and a missing manuscript. This book and I were a match made in book heaven, and I enjoyed every page of it.
Coincidence or magical interference? Last week I spotted an article in The Guardian about the Book of Kells and its new experience. Then a few hours after reading that article and texting friends about it, I was on the train, continuing my reading of The Lost Bookshop, and my mouth fell open when a scene happened where Henry takes Martha to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. The way she describes seeing it for the first time, the experience of being in the library’s Long Room, made me smile because I could so relate to that. And I couldn’t believe the happenstance of reading about it, after reading and texting about it earlier in the day. “No way!” was my out-loud reaction to it (startling the woman sitting next to me). The universe works in mysterious ways I’m not smart enough to understand, but I do believe it is telling me I need to go to Dublin.
My tbr pile is so big, that I lost a book in there. (Confession or brag: it’s a thin line. I guess it depends on who you ask. Just don’t ask my mom: she’ll only roll her eyes.) What happened, was that I started to read this book last year, and when for some reason I had to put it down, I accidentally put it on the wrong stack and it ended up on the tbr pile, instead of the “I’m currently reading these”-pile. When I was looking for a book to read for my reading challenge, I stumbled on this book instead, was so happy to have found it again, that I forgot about the reading challenge for a hot minute, and dove into this instead.
I bought this book in Dublin last year as a souvenir, and it’s very Irish. Factory Girls is set in Northern Ireland, 1994. It’s about Maeve Murray, who has two best friends, Aoife, and Caroline. They live in “a shitty wee border town” near Derry, and the girls have just finished school. They have all summer to wait for their exam results, and use the thirteen weeks to work at the local clothing factory, to save up money for university. Maeve dreams about studying journalism in London, where nobody will know her, and nobody will care about the fact that she’s Catholic and has a sister who died. Because they can’t wait to leave home, Maeve and Caroline rent a small apartment above a shop, across from the factory. The factory workforce consists of Catholics and Protestants alike, and even inside the small factory community, there is a strong divide that has tensions rising at times. The peace talks that are happening, are only cause for more tension. Maeve is relieved to finally find one thing they have in common: both Catholics and Protestants sing the happy birthday song exactly the same. Their boss is Andy, who is called Handy Andy by the workers. He’s a creep who unhooks the women’s bras as he walks his rounds on the factory floor, and regularly calls women into his office alone. Maeve becomes one of his victims, but when she finds out she’s comped an extra ten pounds in her weekly pay for it, she only cares that in thirteen weeks, that would add up to an extra hundred-and-thirty pounds. It is Andy who gives her the book How to Make Friends and Influence People which she applies in the funniest and darkest ways. Maeve is aware that survival in their corner of the world, depends on being able to stay out of the spotlight, to keep your head down, and not make any outspoken friends or enemies. Yet just as she is about to make a clean get-away, she breaks her own rules and gets herself into trouble.
The book is written in accent, and I don’t know about you, but I generally find reading accents difficult, it slows me down, and words or expressions can leave me stumped, or require reading out loud. But when accent writing is done right, it adds an extra layer to the characters and the setting. I thought this book was an excellent example; the accents are used to mark the difference between the standings in society, and I could just hear these girls talk. And Maeve talks the best talk. She’s rough around the edges, a sharp observer, and aware that her working-class, Catholic background, is not working in her favour. Maeve is also aware that her normalcy about living with terror all the time, is actually not normal. Not only has she witnessed, and experienced, the violence of the Troubles, but plenty of “normal” violence and sexual abuse too. As she says: life is tough on men, but it’s always tougher on women. Despite its serious setting and the roughness, there are plenty of (dark) laughs to find in this book as well. This book gives off Derry Girls vibes (if you haven’t seen it: this is a gem of a show that streams on Netflix in the NL, not sure about other areas) but it’s way more real than that and has a darker sense of humour. I liked this book a whole lot and it is a perfect example of why books make excellent souvenirs.
Book review – The Little Bookshop On The Seine / Rebecca Raisin
The Little Bookshop on the Seine / Rebecca Raisin
Boy-oh-boy, do I have things to say about this book. After all the happy-sigh reviews, and, I admit, the pretty covers for the different editions, I had such high hopes. Bookshops. Paris. Christmas. What could go wrong? Unlikeable characters, that is. You can have the nicest settings but if the main characters aren’t appealing, it drags down the story. And not be a total grinch, but the minor characters didn’t win me over either as they never really seemed more than stereotypes. Ye be warned: I’m in no mood to hold back so spoilers ahead.
The story goes as follows: Sarah is the owner of a bookshop in small-town America. Her best friend runs the café/bakery across the road, which is used as the hangout spot for their friend group (I cannot remember the others). Sarah doesn’t really step beyond the two locations, but she does have a boyfriend about whom I learned two things: 1) he’s superhot and 2) he’s a freelance journalist and away ninety per cent of the time, chasing stories in Indonesia, Russia, and anywhere in between.
Rant: it wasn’t until I finished the book that I learned that the second book in the binding was actually the first book story-wise. Who does that?! Seriously, I wish non-stop papercuts to the person who came up with that. I thought this was a standalone and so annoyed that I never even bothered to read that second-but-chronologically-first book (“The bookshop on the corner”). So yes, it’s entirely my own fault that I have no idea what on earth brought Sarah and her boyfriend together in the first place, but based on the book I read, they didn’t seem to have compatible lives or even that much in common, aside from the fact that they seemed equally hot for each other. I didn’t root for their happily ever after, and was too chagrined to continue with the prequel to figure them out.
Then there’s Sophie, who is the owner of a bookshop in Paris, and not just any bookshop in Paris, but the one from the title. She’s heartbroken because her ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend who owns a shop on the same street as Sophie’s bookshop, and she has to see them together all the time. She’s so desperate to get away from it all, that she contacts her online friend Sarah, and proposes they swap shop, and fast. It seemed a tad extreme, especially the hurry with which this all had to happen, but this happened within the first chapter and I was still on board. The women have a couple of video calls to figure stuff out and three days later, Sarah is on her way to Paris, while Sophie is jetting the opposite direction. Sarah’s enthusiasm for a change of scenery isn’t shared by family and friends, who aren’t as supportive as one would think, and they all seem Very Worried about her ability to deal with stepping out of her comfort zone. It’s explained that Sarah went through a traumatic event when she was young and this is why she grew up to be a shy introvert who is afraid of anything new and just wants to spend her days reading. Having people in your inner circle that keep reminding you that you are scared of things and don’t like to do much, is not helpful. Sarah deserved therapy, instead of this borderline gaslighting. Once she has touched down in Paris, Sarah needs to take the metro into town and acts like she’s never been on a busy mode of public transportation. Even if she hadn’t before, she just travelled from one international airport to another, so she must at least have been on an airport shuttle or something? In any case, she needs two tries to get on board which has her completely stressed out. It felt like such a cliché way to describe the fish-out-of-water situation and did not establish Sarah as the most capable person. But, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and blamed jetlag. When she finally makes it to the bookshop, she promptly has her luggage stolen there. Because no, you shouldn’t leave your luggage unattended anywhere, least of all not in a busy shop in a big city. As quickly as Sarah was annoyed with Paris, I was annoyed with her.
So many stereotypes are thrown around that it’s almost insulting: the French are arrogant and eat weird food. Nobody wants to help lost tourists. Of course, the shy guy sitting in the corner all day, every day, turns out to be Sarah’s favourite author. Of course, the haughty employee who steals money turns out to be a loving single mom, struggling to make ends meet. None of it was surprising or original. Sarah is disappointed when none of the staff jumps up to become her new best friend right away. Sarah is disappointed about life in Paris because she had pictured herself reading in the parks, walking along the Seine and sipping wine in cafés. Sarah sure is great at moping around and doesn’t do much self-reflection: building a life in a new place, requires some actual input. And Sarah is not investing time in making friends or exploring the city because she’s too flustered about the bustling shop, and the disorganized mess it all is. The staff is giving her a hard time and her doormat personality has them walking over her schedules and plans. When one of the shop girls finally feels sorry for Sarah and starts taking her out for lunches and shopping trips, she also provides her with some much-needed insider information, but basically tells Sarah to put on her big girl pants and get on with it. Then on top of everything, Sophie, all the way over in the US, gets mad because the reports indicate sales numbers are dropping every month. While understandable, this anger seemed weird to me because she decided to leave a shy, timid, woman in charge, one who barely manages to keep her own little shop afloat. At the same time, Sarah is surprised to learn that Sophie managed to turn her shop around because yes, that’s what happens when you stop reading behind the register and actually run a business. Sophie came across as a bit of a ball-buster and not particularly friendly, but I think that’s mostly caused by the story being told from Sarah’s opposite-personality perspective. These women had an online friendship and are quickly learning that they might not have known each other all that well after all. Sarah’s big solution for the shop is bringing Christmas into it. Because when didn’t a string of pretty lights solve all problems? Although everyone is dragging their feet, they do get into it and that is how she somehow saves the shop from nearly going under and all problems are wrapped up with pretty bows. The problems felt petty to begin with, and the ending was too easy. In between the bookshop drama, there is boyfriend drama for Sarah because while her superhot boyfriend had promised to stop by in Paris regularly, he doesn’t, and is instead continuing his Amazing Race-style chase around the globe, going from one news story to the next. His carbon footprint is not little. (I kept forgetting his name, and can’t be bothered to look it up now. It’s something soap opera-y.) Sarah feels abandoned but instead of telling him that, she pouts and passive aggressively ignores his calls and messages for a couple of days. Guess what: that actually gets his attention, and he travels to Paris right away to apologize and jump into bed with her. A relationship involves talking, even if that is or gets uncomfortable. This relationship felt very immature and unbalanced and they didn’t come across as a couple at all.
Oh, and there’s a second storyline about love letters Sarah and her favourite author find hidden in the shop but that did not create the intrigue it seemed designed to do. All in all, it felt like this book wanted to be more than it ended up being. As mentioned, I only realized this book was a follow-up and maybe that’s why things felt off and unbalanced in some places. It might be better to digest for those who read and liked the first book, but as a stand-alone this one, for me, was a big disappointment.
This is a fluffy read about death and ghosts. Strange as that may seem, it works. Florence Day is in her late twenties and working as a ghost writer for a successful romance novelist. She lives in New York with roommate Rose, whose sassy and go-getter attitude are the opposite of Florence’s insecure and angsty nature. Rose is the one out partying, and Florence is moping around the apartment with writer’s block. Florence’s lack of ‘tude and inspiration stems from a terrible relationship she was smart enough to walk away from. See, Florence can see dead people. And she sees them all the time, on the subway, in shops, they’re everywhere. I didn’t think a big city would be the place to go if you suffer from this quirk, but it’s still a step up when you consider the fact that back in small-town North-Carolina, her family runs a funeral business. The business has been in the family for generations, and every generation has at least one person who can see the ghosts. Florence is the only one of her generation that can. After she helped a ghost solve his own murder when she was just thirteen, it opened up a can of worms and she was basically run out of town (not literally, just the worst way: via social media). A death in the family brings her back, and it’s not easy. Especially, when Benji, her new editor, and recent make-out partner, shows up at her door, freshly dead. He gives a whole new meaning to “ghosting someone”. In between hanging out at the local cemetary at midnight, Florence is dealing with a lot of family drama: she and her sister haven’t really talked in a long time and so things are uncomfortable as can be while they process the death of a beloved family member. Florence isn’t making things easier by insisting on staying at the B&B down the street, so of course, she keeps missing out on things. Not sure why she’s surprised about that, but not coming home for ten years is a long time, and there are a lot of unsolved issues there. Most of which could have been resolved by at least putting in a phone call every now and then, and asking each other “what’s up?”. This is a predictable story, up to the end, and a chapter too long. But, Benji and Florence have great chemistry, and they gleefully share puns. Florence and her family also have a wonderful sense of dark humour, and puns and jokes relating to death are all around. The puns and jokes are what made this book a fun read for me, landing it as a middle-of-the-pack palette cleanser, with bonus points for the chapter titles.
Okay, so this book wasn’t made into a movie, but a drama series (streaming on Apple TV in the NL), so I’m taking some flexibility for this entry, but trust me, it’s worth it. I had my eye on this book for a long time, but because the word chemistry is in the title, and from the description I learned it’s about a scientist, and my brain starts to short-circuit whenever science is involved, I didn’t buy it until I found it with a “second book half-price” sticker on it. Mostly, because this meant I got to buy another book as well, but still. Picture my surprise when I learned that yes, this book is about chemistry, but it’s about so much more! Because main character Elizabeth Zott is a kick-ass lady, who has the unfortunate timing of being a scientist in 1950’s America. She gets belittled, discriminated, undermined, and harassed, on a daily basis. The fact that she’s smarter than any of the men in her lab, doesn’t help. The only person who is interested in her intellect, is oblivious to her daily struggles, and women’s struggles in general, and is surprised to learn that women would actually like to study and work in STEM, but are held back by the men that rule the field. Calvin Evans is the male version of Elizabeth, and despite his young age, has been up for a Nobel prize multiple times, and his fame and wunderkind status provides the institute they both work at, with generous funding. Calvin and Elizabeth are in a relationship that is considered unconventional and strange, and therefore frowned upon: they live together, and despite his proposals, Elizabeth refuses to marry Calvin, not wanting to be forced to quit working, changing her name, and getting stuck in the background, only to be known as the supporter of her husband. Elizabeth doesn’t even consider herself to be modern, to her this is just common sense. Elizabeth teaches Calvin that anything a man can do, a woman can too, and Calvin uses this theory to teach Elizabeth to row. Calvin considers rowing the ultimate sport, but Elizabeth isn’t an athlete and it isn’t until she applies science to rowing that they stop toppling over. They find a dog and adopt it, and give it the wonderful name of Six-Thirty, because that was the time they came home with him. Of course, this leads to a running gag of people confusing the name with the time, and subsequent dead-pan responses from Calvin and Elizabeth. But Six-Thirty is as smart as they are, and his observations are a great addition to the story. When Elizabeth suffers a major loss, she has to pivot to keep afloat. She does what she has to, and if that means going on television and presenting a cooking show, so be it. Elizabeth can cook and bake really well because she applies science to it, as she does to anything in life. She refuses to present a “fun” show though, rationalizing it’s not just demeaning to her, but to the women watching, and makes her director faint when during the first show she invites the audience to come down to the stage and take anything from the carefully designed set they like. Within minutes the set is near-empty and Elizabeth has the clean work surface she asked for. She uses the scientific names of products, acetic acid instead of vinegar and sodium chloride instead of salt, and to the director’s amazement viewers don’t seem to mind that the cooking show turns into chemistry lessons. The show becomes a success locally first, and soon nationally as well. Elizabeth learns a hard lesson herself, when she discovers that despite everything, her fame is considered different from Calvin’s, and she still cannot get a decent job at any lab.
Belittling, shaming, discriminating, harassing, is still happening today as well of course. In any field, to anybody who is different from the majority. It’s scary and it’s frustrating. This book is about all that, and probably should come with trigger warnings for harassment and assault, because the book contains plenty of incidents, and horrible people that make life ever so complicated and painful. Elizabeth’s frustration seeps off the pages, and you have to be made of stone not to get frustrated on her behalf. The way she is treated is horrific. The fact that victim blaming happened back then, is ridiculous. The fact that victim blaming is still happening today, is downright shameful. But this story isn’t just about the injustice Elizabeth encounters, Calvin, and chemistry though. It’s about family, acceptance, support, and mostly, love. The story has wonderful side characters in neighbour Harriet, Mad, doctor Mason, and director Walter. It’s not only Elizabeth that needs these people in her life, but as a reader, you need them too, in order not to forget that there are generous, caring, and wonderful people in the world. And don’t think this book is all doom and disaster; it’s clever and funny and a treat to read!
Well, it happened again. First, I wanted more Australian authors and promptly read three in a row. Then, I asked for more not-your-typical animal sidekicks et voila: Pandora delivers me a pet magpie.
Pandora / Susan Stokes-Chapman
I guess I should think of other reading wishes to come true but I don’t want to be too greedy. And first things first: this retelling of a classic. I didn’t learn about the Greek classics in school, and only know some of the Greek and Roman mythology from doing crossword puzzles. All I know of Norse mythology, is with thanks to the Marvel movies. A few years ago I decided to dive into the subject, but honestly, the big books were scaring me off. So, I settled for Stephen Fry’s Mythos to cover the basics. It was a fun read and I learned a lot! I’m not sure if that was the book that set off the flow of modern retellings of those classic stories, or if it was just part of the early wave, but since then so many stories based on (mainly) Greek mythology have been published, that I was spoiled for choice for this entry. In the end I settled for Pandora. I’m being honest here and will admit that size of the book was part of its appeal: some of these books are just so big and it was the end of October and with so many items on my reading list still unchecked, I wanted to make as short work of it as possible. This book came in at just shy of 400 pages, so still a decent size.
Main character is Dora. Her full name is Pandora and she was named after the first woman created by the Greek gods. Her mother was Greek and slightly obsessed with the story. As a child, Dora travelled along with her parents, archeologists, all over southern Europe to dig, and find antiquities, but when she was eight, her parents were killed when a dig site collapsed. She was pulled out of the rubble and shipped back to London with her uncle. At twenty-one she still lives with that uncle, Hezekiah, in the attic above the antique shop he took over from her parents. Lottie is their housekeeper, although she’s mostly Hezekiah’s live-in lover, and both Lottie and Hezekiah have great dislike of Dora. The feeling is completely mutual, and they exist in the same space but that’s about it. Whenever she has to work in the shop Dora mostly dreams about designing jewelry, sketching her designs in-between tending to the few customers that come in. Hermes is her pet magpie (with an amazing Greek God name), who delivers her the necessary trinkets to use for making mock-up versions of those jewelry designs. Hermes resides either in his cage, or on Dora’s shoulder. The two have an incredible bond, and honestly, it’s changed my opinion of the birds a bit (their caw is just something that’s not my favorite sound in the world). Dora is aware that Hezekiah is mostly conning his customers by selling forgeries, but doesn’t care enough to stop him or warn the customers. The story takes place in 1799 which means that as a woman without other family, she is completely reliant on him and cannot afford to rock the boat.
Then there’s Edward, who very much needs to rock the boat if he ever wants to get accepted into the Society of Antiquaries. So far, his attempts to get in have not been received well and he’s been told to come with something strong, something truly interesting. When Dora finds out that Hezekiah is hiding a magnificent vase in the basement and is being incredibly secretive about it or its origins, she sets out to discover if it is another forgery, or the real deal. For this, she needs someone with an expert eye, and she finds her way to Edward. For Edward, this is a win-win: if the vase is real, he’s got an incredible subject to write about. If it’s a fake, his subject will be forgeries, which will still be interesting enough. Edward has a dark past that results in him suffering from claustrophobia and a fear of the dark, so working in the dark and damp basement of the shop in the middle of the night, is not within his comfort zone. However, he’s aware that they have to sneak around Hezekiah, and this is the only time and place available for research. So, he confronts his fears and gets to it. Edward’s benefactor and best friend, is Cornelius Ashmole, an idle gentleman and delightful grudge. The first half of the book I kept misreading his name as Asshole which seemed fitting because Cornelius doesn’t hide the fact that he is suspicious about Dora’s motives and does not like that Edward is so committed to the research. The moment Edward and Dora start to ask around about the vase and its origins, it sets a series of events in motion and I kept wanting to remind them about the story of Pandora’s box, thinking these two should know better. There’s a hint of the mystique surrounding the story, befitting of the myth. The way the characters and their environment are described, is so vivid and clear, that it all easily comes alive. It also fits especially the two main characters, Dora and Edward, who have observant personalities, and spent most of their lives living in the background. With books like this, you don’t need a time machine. (Also, it kind of puts you off time travel, because the way the stink is described…oof, I feel I can do without that experience in person.) Every character in this book has motives, reasons for their behavior, even if they’re not immediately clear. The characters also aren’t perfect and have flaws, but they grow and develop, and it makes them all the more real. Nobody is just grumpy, or mean.
This is a Greek myth, wrapped in a Dickensian story. Strange as that might sound, it totally works. I don’t know enough about the Greek myths to know if I missed references, names or the likes, but I was too immersed to care, and even without knowing, this book was a great read.
Bookworm in the City 