Jojo Moyes: The Giver of Star, Michael Joseph (Penguin Random House UK), 9780718183231, large paperback

Last review of 2019, perfect read between Christmas and the end of the year, a terrific yarn from the fabulous Jojo Moyes based on historic facts about the female Horseback Librarians of Kentucky who during the Great Depression employed by the US government WPA program went on horseback through ice, snow and heat bringing books and joy to dirt poor people in the Kentucky hills despite a lot of resistance from narrow minded folks and criminals. It’s a story about five strong women who followed their heart and conviction supporting each other.  

There is Alice Van Cleve, an educated, well brought up English woman who married into Kentucky royalty, a corrupt yet pious mine owning family finding herself stuck in a loveless, suffocating marriage.  

Margery O’Hare, whose tough childhood with an abusive felon of a father leads her to live a life as a self-reliant rebel horse- woman becoming the heart of the Horseback Librarians teaching them about horseback riding, the countryside and the Kentucky mountain folks.  She is not afraid to use her gun on occasion.

Izzy Brady, crippled after contracting polio as a child, has pretty much given up on a life for herself until her mother forces her to enter the Horseback Library.

Beth Pinker brings with her the toughness of a woman growing up with 8 brothers who is not afraid to ruffle feathers.

Last but not least Sophia Kenworth, the backbone of the library and keeper of the books, a trained librarian who spent 8 years in a colored librarian forced to return to Baileyville to care for her brother William after he suffered a mining accident in the Van Cleeve mines.

“The Giver of Stars” is a true page-turner of a novel with well crafted characters and a captivating storyline.  Jojo Moyes said this is the book she loved writing the best spending some time in Kentucky researching and writing, it clearly transpires, she had me greatly entertained.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine: Sabrina & Corina, One World New York, Penguin Random House, small hardback

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s  “Sabrina & Corina” was a finalist for this year’s  National Book Award and has been listed several times as one of the best books of the year, deservedly in my opinion. She is definitely someone to watch, falling into the writing steps of Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez.  The book has one of the most beautiful covers I have seen all year, you want to pick up a copy  just alone for that.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s literary short stories have a kick, most are set in Denver / Colorado describing the everyday world of Latinas. Reading them off and on, they had a powerful effect on me every time, I often felt unsettled when a story was finished. In parts reminding me of the subtle way Elizabeth Strouts’s describes the undercurrents running in seemingly ordinary lives, Fajardo-Anstine tells life stories in her very own distinctive voice. The tales of Latino working class women, their tragedies,  loves and abuse are so very real,  their story painful and aching at times.  But they also tell of female strength and family bonding.  “Sabrina & Corina” is probably the most powerful one, giving the collection its name. But they are all exquisitely written, be it “Galapago”  where a grandmother kills an intruder or “Any further West” where a  sex worker picks up her daughter heading for San Diego to find a new life,   “Remedies”  where New Mexican heritage and a half sibling provide strength to a young girl  or “Ghost Sickness” which also has a Native American element.  

Sandra Cisneros’ quote says it best: These stories blaze like wildfires.   

Marc Petitjean; The Heart - Frida Kahlo in Paris

9781590519905, Hardcover, Pub date April 28th, 2020, Other Press, NY/USA (Penguin Random House)


Marc Petitjean is a filmmaker, photographer and writer who set out to write about a lesser known period of Frida Kahlo's life in Paris in 1938  also investigating the meaning of a painting called "The Heart" she gave to his father. It is also an attempt to find out about the seriousness of the romance that developed between them. Michel Petitjean was working in an art gallery Renou & Colle in Paris during the 1930ties, an important place for the Surrealist movement around Andre Breton, Dali, Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. Petitjean was also the official lover of wealthy intellectual, Marie-Laure de Noailles, living with her and her husband in their villa.  

Frida Kahlo had met the Breton's in Mexico City granting them refuge at her and Diego Rivera’s famous Blue house when they found themselves without a place to stay. Out of gratitude Breton offered to arrange her first exhibition in Paris for her but when she arrives by ship from New York, nothing has been set up and her sleeping arrangement at Breton’s house is not what Frida is expecting. She and Breton's wife Jacqueline Lamba become close friends starting an affair but the bisexual Frida becomes also very attracted to Michel Petitjean who is her contact at Renou & Colle where her exhibition is finally taking shape. Their attractions leads to a passionate romance, something Marc Petitjean discovers many years’ later thru letters made available to him from various sources after having been contacted by  journalists and  historians from the US.  

I was very fascinated by this very personal and intimate account of Marc Petitjean’s investigation into his father’s time with Frida, learning a lot about this rather unknown period in Frida Kahlo's life and the surrealist connection. It was a crucial period for Frida as a serious artists when Diego Rivera was on the verge of leaving her after conducting an affair with her sister Christina. The clash between the very emotional Frida and the more abstract intellect of the surrealist artists in Paris could not have been more pronounced producing some fascinating encounters. 

This is a book for readers interested in art,  feminist literature and art history; I greatly enjoyed reading the proof of this upcoming small hardback.  

Anika Scott: Finding Clara, Hutchinson (Penguin Random House UK) 9781786331885, trade paperback 

“Finding Clara” is set in the winter of 1946 in war torn Essen, Germany where the first order of business is to survive with a roof over your head and food in your belly. Clara Falkenberg is on the run trying to avoid Allied troops under a false identity as her real background would land her in an allied prison for war criminals in a second. As the daughter of one of the most successful steel industry tycoons and an English mother, Clara was forced to run her father’s business with the use of slave laborers under the Nazi regime to achieve their production quota. But this does not feel like an excuse to her as guilt and disgust with herself are eating at her consciousness. 

Captain Fenshaw of the British Forces is hot on her heels as Clara is trying to find her best friend Elise in the ruins of Essen.  Enter fate and Jakob Relling, a black market dealer who lost one leg as a soldier in Russia, and Willy, a boy in hiding in a coal mine guarding a priceless commodity – food and daily goods..   

What made this novel so appealing to read is its setting in unfashionable Essen, the prewar center of Germany’s  steel industry, a very well-drawn out female characters in Clara Falkenberg, her cold hearted family, Jakob Relling, a salt of the earth type black marketer trying to provide for his sisters and the grim, realistic description of life during the post war years. It reminded me in parts and atmosphere of “The Aftermath” (Niemandsland) by Rhidian Brook which has been made into a movie starring Kira Kneightly. I can easily see the potential of this plot for TV or Netflix.  The author has clearly done some extensive research and written an authentic capturing story. I would guess some ideas were drawn from the history of the Krupp family. 

I have to confess I was not totally blown away even though it is a well crafted story, it was just too predictable for my taste. But I can easily see the appeal to readers who are not very familiar with German history during that time.

Abir Murkherjee: Death in the East, 9781787300576, Vintage UK, Penguin Random House, hardback, pub date November 14, 2019,Ebook available

I am a sucker for Abir Murkherjee’s historical crime series featuring sergeant police detective Sam Wyndham of the Calcutta police and his trusted, smart side kick, Indian Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee.  “Death in the East” is the fourth in the series, I have read them all and they are all equally fabulous.  His first, “A rising man”, won the CWA Dagger Award in 2017 for historical crime fiction and rightly so. There is something fascinating about the atmospheric Raj setting that has pulled me in from the start, the description of India, its society and politics during the Indian independence movement and the last days of the Raj, not to forget some very clever plots.

“Death in the East” has two separate murder cases running parallel, one set in 1905 London and the other in Assam in 1922. Towards 3/4^th of the book they merge into one thrilling development with an unexpected turn in the story.

1905 London: a rookie Constable Sam has to investigate the murder of his ex- girlfriend Bessie Drummond who was found brutally beaten to death in her room in London's East End, with the door locked from the inside. He vows to find her killer despite some inexplicable facts bringing him into contact with very dangerous East End characters. The chain of events he sets into motion have a different effect than anticipated costing him dearly.

1922 A much older, sicker Sam has finally decided to end his opium addiction travelling to an ashram in the hills of Assam which is known for a miraculous cure concocted by a sacred monk. While puking his heart out during his opium withdrawal, the ghost of Bessie arises from the past in his dreams and Sam is sure he has also seen someone linked to her murder at a train station on his way to the ashram who was considered long dead.  When a young fellow inmate from the monastery is found dead, Sam’s detective instinct tell him he did not die by accident and he starts digging, creating some disasterous ripples which leads to yet another death...

I loved the atmospheric, parallel running crime stories set on different continents, all coming together in the end leading to a gripping grand finale.

Craig Johnson: Land of Wolves, Viking/Penguin Random House US, 9780525522508, hardback

I should probably keep my passion for Craig Johnson's Longmire series hidden, but hell...it always guarantee me an armchair trip to Wyoming with beautiful descriptions of the unique nature of the American West featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire and his colorful cast of charcters be it staff, friends or  family.

The plots always lead to a surprise twist and so does this latest one, with a wolf, a still wounded Longmire, a murdered shepherd and a powerful ranching family at the heart of the mystery.

Had a fun reading time with "Land of Wolves" after reading more serious novels for a few weeks. I am not a fan of the Netflix Longmire series, my Longmire is a different one....

Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Water Dancer, 9780593133118, C format Paperback, International Edition, One World/Penguin Random House US

(German edition "Der Wassertänzer", Karl Blessing Verlag, March 2, 2020)

Ta-Nahesi Coates “The Water Dancer” is probably my favorite literary  book of the year, right alongside Ocean Voong’s “On earth we are briefly gorgeous”. Two very different books but both with such powerful prose that it is almost impossible to decide what to read next as they leave such a void.

In my view Ta-Nahesi Coates, who has written non-fiction before,  winning the National Book Award in 2015 with “Between the World and me”,  has written a debut novel that can stand alongside such masterpieces as “Beloved” by Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou’s work and Colson Whitehead “The Underground Railroad”. 

Reminding me also in parts of the magical realism of Latin American authors but with a very distinct voice of its own, “The Water Dancer” tells the story of Hiram Walker who was born into slavery by an African mother and the white owner of  a tobacco plantation in Virginia.  When his mother is sold, in his pain he loses all memory of her but she has passed on a powerful, mysterious gift to him which reveals itself for the first time when the carriage he and his white half-brother are riding in derails and falls into the river Goose. Only Hiram by magic survives and his real life journey begins. What follows is a dramatic story of atrocities inflicted to generations of slaves, where emotional and physical cruelty and disregard of human pain was considered normal by white people and the bravery and human cost of people working in The Underground  unimaginable.

Sometimes I put the book aside and let the power of the story  and the language do its work in my mind and heart before resuming the read.  I urge you to read this incredible book.

Cara Hunter: All the  Rage, Penguin Paperback (Penguin Random House UK) 9780241985113, pub date January 23, 2020

Cara Hunter’s mysteries are always psychologically very cleverly crafted and “All the Rage” is no exception. Set in Oxford featuring DI Adam Fawley and his colorful team of detectives , Faith Appleford, a beautiful fashion design student is found in a deserted part of the city by a taxi driver, looking very distressed, dazed and with her clothes torn.

Everything points to sexual assault but when Fawley and his team start investigating what might have happened to her; she is unwilling to press charges but is able to remember some striking details which point to an old case Adam Fawley would rather forget.  There are obvious resemblances to a case of a serial rapist whom Fawley was able to get convicted despite him claiming his innocence until the end of the trial. Fawley's wife had been one of the victims who got away.

“All the Rage” has a very plausible plot, the characters are richly drawn and I am really into this down to earth Oxford team of detectives now.  Be prepared for several unexpected developments which keeps you on your toes until the very end of the novel!  

Ocean Vuong: On earth we are briefly gorgeous, 9781787331501, Vintage / Penguin Random House, hardback

German Edition: Auf Erden sind wir kurz grandios, Carl Hanser Verlag, hardback

Ocean Vuong’s „On earth we are briefly gorgeous“ is one of these memorable books that will stay in your head for quite a while.  I still remember some sentences after 6 weeks!   One of the best literary reads for me for quite some time. 

Written by a poet in the most beautiful, elegant prose, this debut novel is many things: a heart-wrenching love story of Little Dog, a boy growing up as an outsider in America with a Vietnamese heritage but also discovering his homosexuality at age 15 to Trevor, the son of a tobacco farmer, a love letter written to his mother Rose who cannot read or write and earns their living slaving away in nail salons, the sometimes funny yet sad portrait of their lives as a family together with his very Vietnamese schizophrenic grandmother Lan, the absence of his biological and substitute father, both white Americans, the flashbacks to his grandmother’s and his mother’s lives during the Vietnam war, this novel is a whole mélange of feelings and memories. Vuong is unusually frank with the description of homosexual sex scenes; the tenderness of Little Dogs and Trevor’s feelings for one another and the heart-wrenching unfolding drama brought a lump to my throat.

Reading this unusual novel has been an absolute delight.

Manda Scott: A Treachery of Spies, 9780552176491, paperback, Corgi

 

Manda Scott’s “A Treachery of Spies” has one of the most complex plots of any spy novel I have ever read.  It is also brilliant and a masterpiece of thriller writing.  I cannot get over how the author created this complex story and kept a check on names, aliases, storylines  not to talk about the extensive research she  must have done . I read the book on holiday which was a good thing as I had time to read solidly, it  kept me completely captured for all its 560 pages and until the very end all kinds of endings were possible.  

Meandering between two storylines that are connected, one during the  Resistance of Nazi occupation in France in the 1940ties and one set in Orleans, France in 2018, this thriller made me feel like I had literally lost the plot sometimes but with every chapter the pieces of the puzzle come together especially once you get to the middle of the book.

Inspector Ines Picaut is called to a cruel murder scene and is very surprised to find a still stunningly beautiful woman in her 90ties obviously assassinated with her tongue cut out as a special touch, something that was done to traitors during WW II by the Resistance.  When she is finally able to identify the woman as Sophie Destivelle, she finds no trace of her existence, her clothes were bought in the US and a card of “Elodie Duval” is sewn into her suit lining.  The car she was killed in belonged to Pierre Duval, the son of Daniel and Lisette Duval, who were famous members of the Resistance providing her a starting point for her investigation. How were the victim and the Duvals connected?  Was Sophie a member of the resistance? What follows is a breathtaking, riveting account of the work of spies in a dangerous period of time in European and French history and the human costs of heroic alliances.  I found myself thinking about some of the characters when not reading and the price they were willing to pay to liberate France from Nazi occupation.

I guarantee you an absolutely fascinating read, one of the more unusual thrillers I have ever read; unfortunately I could find no German translation yet.

 

Alexandra Fuller: Travel Light, Move Fast, Penguin Press (Penguin Random House USA) 9781984879219, paperback

Ever since a colleague at Penguin USA introduced me to Alexandra Fuller’s “Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness”,  have I been a huge fan of her books.  Her description of growing up with her larger than life parents, Tim and Nicola Fuller in war torn Africa, first in Rhodesia, later in Zambia, spending a free spirited childhood surrounded by wild animals before being sent off to several boarding schools in Africa, are one of the best memoirs I ever read together with “Don’t lets go to the dogs tonight”.

She is witty, brutally honest with herself and her family (no wonder her family call her books these “awful books” and hope she stops writing), her emotions raw when she writes; she made me laugh out loud and also had me crying many times.  “Travel Light, Move Fast” is no exception, it is brilliant. It is a document to her unforgettable character of a father who died suddenly aged 82 during a trip with her mother to Budapest.  The book is homage to his life philosophy, the man himself who was the black sheep of a wealthier English family and his marriage to her mother Nicola who was raised on a farm in Kenya.  Alexandra Fuller  weaves back and forth masterfully  between her days spent  at her dying fathers bed site and memories of him and their family life in Africa, his misadventures and failures,  forever resilient never giving up but just moving on to another place. At times I asked myself how much loss and misery a person can endure and still come out optimistic. Her accounts of what it was like growing up in such circumstance  with her sister Vanessa kept me glued. She loved and adored her father but never overlooked his flaws.  The loss of him becomes surreal when her ailing mother and Bobo, as she is called by her parents, have to fly home to their farm to Zambia with her father’s ashes on their laps.   The second half of the book is called ”The Widows Farm” dealing with her and her mother’s grief trying to carry on as a family on their Zambian farm without her level headed father holding the entire family together. When she returns to Wyoming to her own family, his loss becomes even more unbearable. But nothing prepared me for her rawest grief and shock at the end of the book, tears rolling down my face reading.   

It is one of the finest accounts of a very unusual family, life and love of family I have ever read.  This book will stick with me for a while, I hope she never stops writing.

Gytha Lodge:  She lies in Wait

9780241362976, hardback & 9781405938488 B format, available, Penguin Random House UK,

 

“She lies in Wait” is a well- crafted dark psychological thriller centered on a group of six teenagers and later adults, set in two time zones, 1983 and the present,  with alternating chapters, another  one of my summer reads.

Aurora Jackson, the youngest of the group, vanishes without a trace when the group of friends is out on a camping weekend experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex in 1983. When they all wake up the next morning, Aurora’s sleeping bag is empty and she is gone. A then rookie DJ Sheen takes part in an extensive search for Aurora who remains lost. Despite some suspicious evidence pointing towards two of the male teenagers, there is never enough to nail them down and the body is never found. 30 years later the body is finally discovered, hidden in a hollow close to the river with a stash of drugs. DJ Sheens reopens the cold case and what follows are fascinating interview dynamics between the DJ and the group of friends who all claim to be innocent but who obviously have a lot to hide particularly since some of them have become wealthy and well known in their community. And one of them is obviously guilty.

The novel takes many twists and turns, you keep on guessing as if you were the detective in the case and the ending is very realistic. My only criticism is that it took too long for my taste, 400 pages could have been edited down somewhat. But that is probably the publishing professional in me speaking….

A captivating holiday read or for a rainy weekend.

 

Fiona Davis: The Masterpiece, Dutton, (Penguin Random House USA), 9781524742973, paperback

(German Edition: Wege ihrer Sehnsucht, 19. September 2019, Goldmann, Paperback

 

Summer time for me is often a time for light hearted reading. What attracted me to Fiona Davis “The Masterpiece” was her being inspired by two facts for this novel:  the artist Helen Dryden who was one of the most well paid female illustrators and industrial designers in 1920 and 30ties New York when female artist hardly had any recognition and the Supreme Court’s ruling to declare the Grand Central Terminal in New York a landmark saving it from developers. I had no idea there had actually been a  famous art school housed in the terminal, the Grand Central School of Art, which was founded by painters John Singer Sargent, Walter Leighton Clark and Edmund Greacen.

Davis’s novel “The Masterpiece” has two story lines: 1920ties and 1930 New York and 1974 with two strong female characters at its heart.   Clara Darden whose character is based on Helen Dryden using fictional liberties, is a teacher for illustrations at the Grand Central School of Art when magazines only used illustrators  before the event of photography. She is determined to make her way as a serious artist even if it means having no money and  going to bed hungry at night. Through a stroke of luck she meets Oliver whose admiration and advances she happily gives into. His family connections help her breaking out into the New York art world landing her a job as a highly paid illustrator at Vogue.  Clara’s artistic friendship with Levon Zakarian, a successful painter and fellow teacher at the art school, who originally started out being rival slowly turns into something more intimate and she finds herself being torn between two men.  But when the Great Depression of the 1929 hits, everyone’s life is tragically altered.

In 1974 Virginia Clay, a new divorcee, is trying to find her bearings after a severe illness and being traded in for a less flawed woman by her husband.    Never having had to work as a lawyer’s wife she finds the only job she can land is at the information booth of the Grand Central Station terminal which barely covers supporting herself and her teenage daughter Ruby. By sheer accident she discovers the closed off section of the former art school and is fascinated by a stunning watercolor she finds which has obviously been left behind.  Trying to find out more about the art school and  who the artist in question gives her a new purpose in life. When she and her coworkers learn that the fading beauty of what  once was a  glorious Grand Central station has brought developers on the plan who are eager to tear down the building for their own gain, Virginia gets involved to save this historic landmark.

I had great fun reading Fiona Davis' well-crafted “The Masterpiece” which will appeal to readers who are interested in historical fiction set in the world of art with a light mystery as a backdrop.  

Lara Prescott: The Secrets we kept, 9781786331670, Cornerstone, Penguin Random House UK, C format paperback, pub date September 5, 2019

I can barely believe that “The Secrets we kept” is Lara Prescott’s first novel. Her superbly reimagined story is based on facts around the publication of one of the most well-known books in literature, Boris Pasternak’s “Doctor Zhivago” for which he won the Nobel Prize.

Alternating between the seemingly invisible women in the CIA’s typing pool, two female agents, Irina and Sally, and Pasternak and his family in Russia, this captvating story around a literary masterpiece kept me firmly in its grip. The chapters set in Russia around Boris Pasternak and his mistress Olga Iwinskaja are my favourites, they touched me the most.

I was completely oblivious to the fact of the  CIA’s involvement in using the publication of “Doktor Schivago” as is the title in German and literature as such as a weapon against the Russians during the cold war, something which was only recently brought to life when documents were declassified. As someone who has worked in publishing almost her entire life, I was absolutely fascinated by this marvelous tale and was equally ignorant andshocked that Olga, Pasternak’s agent and lifelong mistress, was punished to several years of labour in Gulags paying the ultimate price for loving Pasternak and helping the novel come to life.

Feltrinelli, the great Italian publisher, mastered the ultimate coup in getting the censored book out of Russia publishing it despite the danger it posed to the lives of the author and his loved ones, believing in the power of this masterpiece. "Go find me the next Russian Nobel Prize winner", he was rumored to have said to his scouting agent and so he did.

I do not want to go too deeply into details of the book around the publication of “Doctor Zhivago” as it would spoil the entire pleasure of reading this vividly constructed novel about one of literature’s great classics, a book Stalin and his successors were so deeply afraid of banning from publication in Russia. I urge you to buy a copy of “The Secrets we kept” and promise you a page turning read once it comes out September 5th.

Catherine Cusset: Life of David Hockney, Other Press, New York, 9781590519837, paperback original, available

 

David Hockney is one of my favorite contemporary artists whose endless creativity and exploration of all artistic expressions be it acrylic, watercolor, oil, Polaroid’s, camera obscura, iPod drawings etc. never fail to amaze me.  When a friend from publishing brought me the proof of Catherine Cusset’s “Life of David Hockney”, a novel but very close to his actual biography, I thought to myself whether it was at all desirable to write such a book.  Should one not stick to the biography of living artists? The author herself even questions this but wrote it as homage to Hockney; she imagined feelings, dialogues and thoughts.  To make a long story short, I was very taken with this wonderful little book,   Catherine Cussets pulls it off with grace and vivid prose.  Her research was meticulous and she even met David Hockney after her French original was published to present him with this book.  He doesn’t seem to have minded this novel at all. It is a fascinating overview of David’s artistic and personal life.  He was openly gay early on and like many suffered loss, illness and heartbreak,  losing very close friends to the Aids outbreak.  His life has been split between California, London and Yorkshire where his family lived for many years inspiring him to create some of his greatest work.  If you are interested in David Hockney or are a close follower of his work like I am, I highly recommend this novel.

Sara Paretsky: Critical Mass, Berkeley (Penguin Random House USA) 9780451468185, paperback

(German Edition available as hardback "Kritische Masse, Ariadne Verlag)

  
Having ditched a novel in frustration after 200 pages, which one shall remain unnamed, I needed to return to safer author ground and a thriller it had to be. Sara Paretsky has been delivering excellent novels with gutsy female private investigator V.I. Warshawki  at their heart for years and an arm chair trip to my beloved Chicago sounded great.  I read a review rating her latest book “Critical Mass” with 5 stars; I can second that, she kept me glued.  How Paretsky pulls off writing about the complicated matter of nuclear physics  as well as stringing together a complicated  567 pages plot with numerous protagonists and historical details has my absolute admiration.  The thriller takes many twists and turns until finally racing to a satisfying ending.

Dr. Lotty Herschel, V.I.’s dear motherly friend in Chicago, had to flee the Holocaust 1937 via the kinder transport from Vienna to England and finally ended in Chicago as an adult where she became a highly regarded medical doctor. One of her childhood friends, Kitty Sagnior Binder, whom she fell out with later, fled with her leaving behind Kitty’s mother Martina who as a single mother was one of the most talented female physicists in Austria having been forced to work in a Nazi nuclear project.  Both Kitty and Lotty’s families perished in the Holocaust.  Kitty’s only daughter Judy had become a drug addict and dealer but when Lotty receives a desperate call from her fearing for her life but leaving no contact details, she hires Warshawki to find her.  Judy had abandoned her only child Martin as a baby leaving him with her mother Kitty. As a teenager the boy showed an exceptional scientific mind much like his lost great Jewish grandmother.  VI has an unpleasant conversation with paranoid Kitty finding her in a house with high security alarms and scared to death of unknown intruders.  She also learns that Martin, an adult now, has disappeared from his work at a computer company and has been missing  ever since.  Kitty’s seemingly unreasonable fear soon turns into deadly reality and VI becomes embroiled in chase that has its origin in Nazi Germany with some very high powered people unafraid of using all means to protect their secrets and wealth.

Jeanne Mackin: The Last Collection – A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel,  Berkley US/ Penguin Random House, 9780593099339, paperback

 

Summer time, fun reading and Jeanne Mackin’s “The Last Collection - A novel of Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel” hit the spot, especially since Frankfurt seems to have turned into the tropics for a few weeks. The book is historically well researched, also of the war years in Paris; a fascinating escapist read for the ladies, loved it.

I personally have always been more interested in Elsa Schiaparelli; she was the more positive, inspired and artistic of the two designers with a leaning towards Surrealism which she often applied to her fashion.  Schiap as she called herself was the opposite of Coco Chanel who was cool, arrogant, calculating and somewhat dictatorial leaving her workers often in tears.  She was also known to be leaning towards fascism befriending some high ranking Nazi officials before the occupation of Paris.  Hans Günther von Dincklage, the head of Hitler’s propaganda and press department, was rumoured to have been her lover granting her access to new German clients who were crazy about her perfume and elegant fashion.  Schiap in turn leaned more towards communism and socialism, detested the Nazi’s, housing refugees in her home  and was known to pay more than fair wages to her seamstresses.

The novel is centered on Lily Sutter, a very sympathetic young widow and budding artist. Visiting her brother Charlie in 1938 Paris, she gets entangled between the two rival designers when her brother insists on buying her a first couture dress to cheer her up.  Charlie, a promising medical doctor is in love with Ania, a stunningly beautiful, socially well connected woman who is stuck in an arranged marriage to an influential rich merchant. Charlie is unable to convince Ania to leave her husband as he keeps refusing to agree to a divorce or to give up their daughter.   Ania’s impeccable taste and money gains her unlimited access to both Chanel and Schiaparelli.  Lily gets caught up very quickly in Paris politics and fashion through her friendship to Ania and Schiaparelli who has struck up a friendship with the young woman offering her a job in her store.  Visiting Chanel’s salon on Schiaparelli's order, Lily meets and is strangely attracted to Otto, the attaché and driver to Hans Günther von Dincklage, a high ranking Nazi officer Chanel is trying to charm and gain as her lover eventually succeeding.  The looming threat of a World War II and it’s finally outbreak affects the lives of everyone tragically and brings Chanel and Schiaparelli’s rivalry to a head.

Mackin is an engaging storyteller, she created a very colorful novel  with such sympathetic protagonists as Charlie, Ania, Lily, Otto and the two famous fashion icons, I desperately  wanted to know what happened to them and learned a great deal about the world of Paris fashion in the Thirties as a side benefit.

 

 

Casey Cep: Furious Hours – Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee,

W. Heinemann/ Random House UK, 9781785150746, paperback

 

“Furious Hours” is a fascinating mixture of a book:  true crime reporting  about the murders of an alleged serial killer, the Reverend Willie Maxwell, his very own murder, his  lawyer ‘s Big Tom Radney’s  role in this Alabama drama. And last but not least bibliographical reportage of Harper Lee’s life (the reclusive author of “To Kill a Mockingbird" and childhood friend of Truman Capote) unearthing the last known research activities for a book she saw but was unable to write after having spent years of research on  Reverend Maxwell.  

This book reads like a thriller but is also a portrait of Alabama, the South and a biography of Harper Lee’s peculiar life.  I would say it is beneficial to have an interest in the author Harper Lee as 25 % of the book is about her, her research of this case and her plight to write a second bestseller after the gigantic success of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. 

“Furious Hours” opens with the thriller element of the book.  Several relatives including two wives of the African- American Reverend Maxwell are found dead, all having died under suspicious circumstances.  Law enforcement treated Maxwell as a suspect but is unable to nail him to any of these deaths.  What turned him into a key suspect is the fact that he had taken out life insurance on all these people unbeknownst to them, something that could be done years ago, making him the sole beneficiary in case of death.  Reading about the investigations into these deaths, one is speechless that no one could pin Maxwell down to these murders despite him having more than one motive.  Enter Tom Radney, his lawyer and a gregarious Alabama politician who defended him brilliantly in all these trials.  When one of the grieving relatives takes justice into his own hands, Tom Radney switches roles without blinking an eye ending up defending Reverend Maxwell’s killer.  These chapters alone make this book a mind boggling read.

I had read Marja Mills book “The Mockingbird Next Door”  about her friendship with Harper Lee and her sisters  a few years ago and was astonished to learn from Casey Cep that there had indeed been the start of a second book for Lee, not counting her original version of the Mockingbird, “Go Set a Watchman”, which was originally dropped but published after her death. Harper Lee dug deep and painstakingly into the Reverend Maxwell’s case, spending years of interviewing people associated with him and even living in Alexander City for some time to conduct her investigation.  She amassed tons of material but after years of trying to write “The Reverend” as she called the work in progress, she gave up and the book never materialized.

Casey Cep has done some very extensive, deep digging herself to come up with this mesmerizing story.  Hats off to her, I was absolutely fascinated by her discoveries and the stories she had to tell.

Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott: Swan Song, 9781473543935. Hutchinson/ Penguin Random House UK,paperback available July 2019: 9781786090188

No German edition currently (I hope rights have been sold to Germany)

Truman Capote, the literary genius, bad boy and chameleon of the 1950, 60 and 70ties, provided enough material for several novels during his excessive life.  I read Melanie Benjamin’s “The Swans of 5th Avenue” last year and had a blast with her gossipy, sparkling, entertaining novel.  When I heard of Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott’s novel “Swan Song” which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, I just knew I had to read her version of Truman’s tragic relationship with his swans.

Both novels are excellent but different in their prose reimagining Truman Capotes life and that of his swans. “Swan Song” is the more extensive one with 480 pages and the more literary but just as juicy, gossipy and easy to read.  The author switches back and forth between Truman’s voice and that of his “swans” – the stunning grand dames of jet set society during their time:  Babe Paley, Slim Keith, C.Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill and Marella Agnelli.  Their glamorous lives and friendships were shared with unimaginable luxuries, gossipy, boozy lunches in the eating temples of New York, dream like summer vacations on yachts  in the Aegean or Yucatan, Babe’s beautiful meticulously planned dinners and of course Lee’s access to the Kennedys and Onassis families.  Not to mention Truman's famous black and white ball which went into the history books.

They all revealed their most private thoughts and troubles to Truman who in return showered them with the love, attention and affection most of them lacked from their philandering, rich husbands.  He would never betray them unlike their husbands of that they were sure despite Truman’s increasing dependence on alcohol and pills which eventually lead to his ruin.  So what in the world made him betray their love and trust publishing a piece in Esquire with thinly vailed names based on his swan’s lives spilling the beans of their most intimate secrets? The chapters in the novel about the consequences of his actions are exquisite.  Greenberg-Jephcott is brilliant in imagining Truman’s and the swans’ emotional rollercoaster after him being banned from their lives, the years that followed after his betrayal and loss of their friendship, all closely based on biographical data.

“Swan Songs” transported me into a fascinating re-imagined world of a literary yet emotionally crippled genius and his court of beautiful, rich and unusual women. I loved it,   5 stars from me!

Elizabeth Gilbert: City of Girls, 9781594634734, Riverhead Books, Penguin Random House US, hardback (also available as EBook)
(No German publication date yet)
 

Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book “City of Girls” is pure entertainment, uplifting  yet serious, a story you like to sit down with in your beach chair and to be carried away into the theater world of 1940-ties New York with a cast of colorful, eccentric characters.

An aging 89 year old Vivian Morris writes to a mysterious Angela unfolding the story of her exceptional life and what a colorful one it was! The only time I felt slightly critical was in the middle of the book where the story got a little repetitive but the narration soon picked up and never let down.  With “City of Girls” Liz Gilbert proves how many facets as a writer she truly has.  This book is sheer entertainment and fun reading, with a feminist subject at the heart, completely different to “Big Magic” (Non-ficition) or “The Signatures of All Things” which read like a classic. 

After having failed her parent’s academic expectations at Vassar, Vivian Morris is sent to live with her aunt Peg in New York who owns the Lily Playhouse.  She feels right at home with this tribe of actors, showgirls, writers and misfits who put on a show every night for the less affluent viewers in their crumbling playhouse.  Swiftly her talent as a magician with needle, fiber and thread is detected, making her the costume designer and seamstress of the Lily Playhouse where she creates stunning costumes from old discarded clothes.  Celia, the most seductive of the showgirls, becomes her best friend and introduces innocent Viv into a world of wild partying, sex, drinking and men.  When London is bombed, her aunt Peg’s best friend, the famous actress Edna Watson and her husband find refuge in the Lily playhouse. With Edna's arrival Vivian gets a first taste of what a true Grande dame is spurring her on to create her best outfits yet.  Her carefree existence takes a shocking tumble when poor judgement on a drunken night lands her in a terrible situation altering her life course once and for all. As so often with fate, it ultimately leads her to the rich, fulfilling and unorthodox feminist life the 89 year Vivian recollects – and to the very unexpectedly love of her life.  

Liz Gilbert hasn’t written a novel for some time but this is a great chunky page turner which I loved. I can absolutely recommend “City of Girls” if you are looking for a rollicking trip into the wild New York of the 40ties.

Juliet Grames: The Seven or Eight Death of Stella Fortuna, 9781473686274, Hodder & Stoughton, hardback, available

(Deutsche Ausgabe: Die sieben oder acht Leben der Stella Fortuna, Droemer, September 2019)

As so often, I came to this book through a recommendation by a publishing colleague.  I would have missed a very unusual novel otherwise, a sweeping saga spanning over nine decades, set in Calabria/Italy and in the US, a portrait of the Fortuna family but mainly that of Stella Fortuna.  Stella’s fate stayed in my head when not reading which gives you an idea how much I was captured by this emotional story.  The archaic, barbaric patriarchy of her monstrous father Antonio affected all females in the Fortuna family, but most profoundly overshadowed the life of the two strongest, her mother Assunta and Stella’s. The narrator, whose identity is revealed much later in the book, recounts Stella’s life in an almost neutral tone giving the writing a very special edge. Stella’s battle for control over her own destiny fighting the codex decided by the men in their Italian clan is representative for countless female struggles. It left me terribly sad and furious at times but there were also some very funny moments.

Born into terrible poverty of  peasant life in 1920ties Calabria / Italy, where women were slaves to their men with no rights, good only for childbearing and servitude, Stella is named after her sister Mariastella who died under tragic circumstances in early childhood. Her entire life, Stella is convinced her dead sister is casting an evil eye over her fate, responsible for the eight near death experiences she luckily survives. When her brute of a father leaves for the US trying for a better life, they are able to enjoy independence for the first time. His home visits always lead to another pregnancy for Assunta increasing the mouths to feed. Her father finally sends papers for the whole family to immigrate to the US. Their sorrow of leaving their beloved mountain village is heartbreaking only topped by their dread to lose the little independence they enjoyed while her father was away.  The novel shifts into another gear when the Fortuna clan reaches the US. Stella has reached adulthood by now, a strong willed woman who has no desire to ever marry, clicking horns with her father the moment she touches American soil. What follows are 448 pages in total of gripping reading about family life versus the fight for independence with all its hardship, horrors, betrayal and also love.

The author Juliet Grames comes from a tight-knit Italian-American family herself which might be one of the reasons why this novel is so very authentic.