Review: The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

Overview:

The hilarious and loving sequel to a hilarious and loving classic of travel writing: Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson's valentine to his adopted country of England

In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written. Two decades later, he set out again to rediscover that country, and the result is The Road to Little Dribbling. Nothing is funnier than Bill Bryson on the road—prepare for the total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter.

Review:

Once again Bill Bryson proves himself as one of my favorite writers. His descriptions of quaint and not-so-quaint towns throughout Britain paints such vivid pictures. Plus, who wouldn't love Bryson's sense of humor? From concerns about society's march toward total stupidity to his personal struggles at McDonald's, the jokes are clever and relatable. But perhaps where Bryson shines most is in describing the history of each location, his experience, and how time has treated the place. His thoughts on the British rail system are just one example of Bryson's intelligence.

The Road to Little Dribbling is engaging and charming, much like I imagine Bryson to be. Part history lesson, part personal adventure, this book is definitely a love letter to Bryson's adopted land.

Review: Bradstreet Gate by Robin Kirman

Overview:

 

Georgia, Charlie and Alice each arrive at Harvard with hopeful visions of what the future will hold. But when, just before graduation, a classmate is found murdered on campus, they find themselves facing a cruel and unanticipated new reality. Moreover, a charismatic professor who has loomed large in their lives is suspected of the crime. Though his guilt or innocence remains uncertain, the unsettling questions raised by the case force the three friends to take a deeper look at their tangled relationship. Their bond has been defined by the secrets they’ve kept from one another—Charlie’s love and Alice’s envy, Georgia’s mysterious affair—and over the course of the next decade, as they grapple with the challenges of adulthood and witness the unraveling of a teacher's once-charmed life, they must reckon with their own deceits and shortcomings, each desperately in search of answers and the chance to be forgiven.

A relentless, incisive, and keenly intelligent novel about promise, disappointment, and the often tenuous bonds of friendship, Bradstreet Gate is the auspicious debut of a tremendously talented new writer.

 

Review:

 

This book was a little perplexing for me. I found myself really engrossed in the characters, and what I assumed would be a clear solution to the books mystery: what happened to Julie Patel? Of course, reading the book's description, it's really about the intertwined lives of three students and a professor at Harvard; but the death of another student is the backstory that keeps alluding to more. Without a clear resolution to this secondary story, it feels like the book was somehow cut off. I found myself wanting more from each character. It began questioning their motives and who they really were after spending so many pages with them.  I also felt that the jump between college and ten years later was an interesting plot device not fully realized. Somehow the characters lost their depth as they got older.

Bradford Gate was very well written, and I enjoyed the book, I just felt it was missing a few elements to make it an excellent book. I was looking for a big reveal, and the book ended quite quietly.

 

* I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: The Legacy of Lost Things by Aida Zilelian

Overview:

Aida Zilelian's breathtaking debut novel, The Legacy of Lost Things, follows three generations of a family of Armenian immigrants living in the United States, as they struggle with one another and against the Old World expectations of their community. When Araxi, the oldest daughter of the desperately unhappy Levon and Tamar, goes missing, the remaining family members are forced to confront their painful histories together, and the role each of them has played in driving Araxi away.

 

Through Araxi and her family, readers are given a unique look at the generational and cultural tensions that both keep families together and tear them apart. Using spare, poignant prose, Zilelian deftly explores the themes of romance, duty, infidelity and guilt. Because of the mature content, this book is intended for adult and young adult audiences.

Review:

 

I was surprised by what a quick read this book was. It was a thoughtful exploration of family told through the eyes of each family member.  The characters had a lot of depth. Their struggles were easily felt, and despite many obstacles you kept rooting for each of them. A really engaging read.

 

*I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: A Thousand Days in Tuscany

Overview:

American chef Marlena de Blasi and her Venetian husband, Fernando, married rather late in life. In search of the rhythms of country living, the couple moves to a barely renovated former stable in Tuscany with no phone, no central heating, and something resembling a playhouse kitchen. They dwell among two hundred villagers, ancient olive groves, and hot Etruscan springs. In this patch of earth where Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio collide, there is much to feed de Blasi's two passions--food and love. We accompany the couple as they harvest grapes, gather chestnuts, forage for wild mushrooms, and climb trees in the cold of December to pick olives, one by one. Their routines are not that different from those of villagers centuries earlier.

They are befriended by the mesmeric Barlozzo, a self-styled village chieftain. His fascinating stories lead de Blasi more deeply inside the soul of Tuscany. Together they visit sacred festivals and taste just-pressed olive oil, drizzled over roasted country bread, and squash blossoms, battered and deep-fried and sprayed with sea-salted water. In a cauldron set over a wood fire, they braise beans in red wine, and a stew of wild boar simmers overnight in the ashes of their hearth. Barlozzo shares his knowledge of Italian farming traditions, ancient health potions, and artisanal food makers, but he has secrets he doesn't share, and one of them concerns the beautiful Floriana, whose illness teaches Marlena that happiness is truly a choice.

Like the pleasurable tastes and textures of a fine meal, A Thousand Days in Tuscany is as satisfying as it is enticing. The author's own recipes are included.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Review:

I found this book utterly enchanting. Marlena de Blasi has a way of describing an ordinary day that transports it to anything but ordinary. She captures the beauty in everyday life, and of course her description of life in Tuscany are magical. Every time de Blasi described a meal, I felt I could taste all the flavors coming together; as a result I was often quite hungry while reading. I've used some of her recipes, and the food has been divine. 

Having spent some time living in Italy myself, it was nice to be reminded of the slower way of life. Reading about days spent harvesting olives or baking bread; the daily rituals of breakfast at the bar, made me long to return. de Blasi has such a way with language. She paints such a vivid portrait of her life in Tuscany and the family she creates there.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in food or travel. I cannot wait to read the rest of her books.

Review: A Faraway Smell of Lemon by Rachel Joyce

Overview:

 

It is Christmas Eve. Binny has four hours to make Christmas happen and she couldn't feel less like wishing glad tidings of good will to all men - least of all to Oliver. It is raining, her house is falling apart, the streets are jammed with people and it is all Oliver's fault. Darting into a shop to escape a conversation, Binny finds herself in the sort of place she would never normally visit. But in amongst the shelves is a surprising source of peace.

 

_________________________________________________________

 

Review:

 

Joyce has written a sweet and thoughtful short story about making peace with the past. Christmas Eve finds Binny sad, angry and resolved to forego the holiday season altogether. In an effort to avoid a conversation, she ducts into a fancy cleaning shop. Her chance encounter with the young shop girl serves as a turning point for Binny- offering solace and hope.

 

Review: Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson

Overview:

 

In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. “Nirvana,” which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous”—first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology—a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

 

____________________________________________________________________________

 

Review:

 

Fortune Smiles is not at all the short story collection I was expecting. With topics ranging from cancer to the prisons of East Germany,  it's certainly not a lighthearted read. While the topics were sometimes uncomfortable, at least they elicited a response. I found the short story Fortune Smiles, where this collection gets its name, to be the strongest. Dark Meadow was a bit too disturbing, and Nirvana fell a bit flat. Overall, I didn't feel the characters were developed in any way that garnered sympathy or understanding. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of them.

Review: How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner

Overview:

In the spirit of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette and Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project comes a hilarious and heartfelt story of an aspiring author trying to rescue her single-mother family by writing the next Great American Novel.

 

Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for glory. Unfortunately, after her father's death, she finds herself plopped down in Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane's floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention, co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money.

Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material. If the Mom-character, Diane, would ditch online dating and accept that the perfect man is clearly the handyman/nanny-character, Penn MacGuffin, Aris would have the essential romance for her plot (and a father in her real life). But when a random accident uncovers a dark part of Thibodeau family history, Aris is forced to confront the fact that sometimes in life—as in great literature—things might not work out exactly as planned.

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Review:

 

How to Write a Novel chronicles family life as experience (and told) by 12.5 year Aristotle (Aris). Aris, her younger brother Max, and mom Diane, are still working through life after the loss of family patriarch, Joe.  Aris is precocious, funny, and smart.  When she's not co-parenting her little brother, she's hard at work trying to find a suitable match for Diane.

I found this coming of age story at turns heart breaking, hopeful, and funny. This is the perfect book for fans of Marie Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I highly recommend How to Write a Novel and can't wait for Melanie Sumner's next work.