Review: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Title: A Northern Light
Author: Jennifer Donnelly
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Graphia
Published: 2004
Pages: 408

Rating - 8 out of 10

Nestled in New York's Adirondack Mountains in 1906, Mattie has begun a new job at an expensive hotel. After spending so many years trapped working on her father's dismal farm lands, she feels intoxicated and frightened at her new-found freedom. A gifted writer, she is accepted to Barnard College in New York City, and yet feels held back by a responsibility to help her impoverished family and a budding romance with a local boy.

This honest, powerful book really surprised me. I had picked up another YA novel expecting some light reading, but Donnelly writes with mature, pitch-perfect depth and force. She doesn't shy away from the gritty aspects of poverty, murder, racism, and more. One of the most striking scenes in the book was one in which Mattie assists a local midwife in a particularly bloody childbirth.
The heroine's problems, feeling torn between her family and furthering herself at school rang true, and Mattie is a refreshingly honest, believable voice.

The book is loosely inspired by the true murder of Grace Brown, and by Dreiser's "An American Tragedy," which I haven't read yet.

A perfect, highly recommended book. Just gorgeous.

Review: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Title: Year of Wonders
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2001
Pages: 336

Rating: 7 out of 10

Year of Wonders is the story of a small village in 1666 England that is quarantined after the feared Bubonic Plague flares up there. The young, recently widowed Anna Frith struggles to make her way through terrifying times as she sees her neighbors change, fall to the disease, and turn against each other.

This book was elegantly written, and I was so gripped by the first chapter. I felt that I was really there in Anna's apple orchard. Geraldine Brooks is certainly a very talented writer, with vivid descriptions and strong characters.

Michael and Elinor Mompellion were the strongest of the characters. Michael is the town rector, a man of god, and on the surface seems to be the hero of the story. He encourages the villagers, doing his best to lift their spirits, he urges them to do what is right by quarantining the village, and he spends his days tending the sick and comforting those who have lost loved ones. However, through out the story, we see tiny glimpses of another man - one who is angry, bitter, stubborn, and self righteous.

His wife, Elinor Mompellion, was the blameless, beautiful woman who helped anywhere she could, always doing good. She was the angel of the story. Anna looks up to her, and their relationship is somewhere between sisterly and motherly. Elinor later reveals her sad background to Anna, but it isn't until the end that we really discover the extent of her pain. I don't want to give out any spoilers in this review, but after the book was finished, I came up with more questions about Elinor, and found myself wishing that Brooks would write a companion book telling her story.

Anna, our main character and narrator, was a good character, though not as well written as her friends. I think that her story gets lost a bit in the story she is telling, though I did like her. She is insightful, wise, and strong. I was especially struck by a few paragraphs in the book where she wonders if the Plague is a natural thing, instead of a divine thing of God. She reasons that if the disease is a thing of Nature, there must be a natural way to stop it. Though this sounds completely logical and obvious, there were few, if any, individuals with this idea in 1600's England, and the book reflects this.

I loved how the town took on a life of its own. It was made up of scenery that Brooks so eloquently described and the people themselves. Men and women who were not major or even minor characters played important roles in this book, because there are many instances where a mob, or a group, of villagers lash out in rage toward other townspeople. It reminded me of the Salem Witch Trials, and there is even a scene where the locals accuse a woman of witchcraft for trying to guard against the Plague. In these terrible scenes, I felt Brooks' writing potential the most as they were powerfully brought to life.

The downside to this book was that not a whole lot actually happens. I felt that the Plague should have been more present in the story, more tragic. While it is certainly ingrained in every page, it never seems so severe or serious as it presumably was. Other books I have read on the topic gave me more of a sense of the hardship and loss Bubonic victims suffered. In the beginning of the book, some of those close to Anna die of the disease, but after that, she simply keeps mentioning random names of those who have passed. The names mean nothing to us, however, which greatly lessens the impact.

Another negative for me was the ending (or, the second ending). I wish very much that it had just been left out, as it took the European 17th Century world half-way around the globe to a spicy Middle Eastern setting and starts talking about rugs and things. It had absolutely nothing to do with the story. I was shaking my head in bewilderment as I read it.

The chilly foreboding in this book was beautiful in a ghostly, sorrowful sort of way. I loved the writing style and will certainly be looking for more of the author's writing.

Recommended - just skip the epilogue!

Review: The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

Title: The Winter Ghosts
Author: Kate Mosse
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Putnam
Published: 2011
Pages: 288

Rating: 4 out of 10

While driving alone at night in 1928 France, a man named Freddie gets into a car accident after he hears strange voices in the wind. In a small town nearby, a kindly woman agrees to let him stay at her inn and recover. Freddie is still mourning the loss of his brother Henry, who died years ago in World War I. Everyone else seems to have moved on and gotten over the war's tragedies, but Freddie simply cannot. When making his way to an event in town one foggy night, Freddie takes a few wrong turns and finds himself at a strange party, where he meets an intriguing, beautiful girl named Fabrissa. The two instantly develop a strong bond, but Freddie soon begins to fear that Fabrissa and her past are not at all what they seem.

This book was breezily written, and I got through it quickly. It was alright, and Kate Mosse has a very pretty way of writing; I loved her style. Her prose is excellent, and suits itself to the fairytale type of writing perfectly.

I only wish that the rest of her book followed so gracefully.

The book seemed quite childish to me, and not in a good way - in an unrealistic, raised-eyebrows sort of way. Things happened that I found very improbable, that were never tied up.

Freddie, the main character, was not one that I understood. He is still grieving for his brother Henry as if he had only passed away yesterday. Alright, but why? What is behind this? And how close of a bond did he have with his brother before the war began? The author never gives us any history whatsoever into the brother's relationship, which made Freddie come across to me as more of a psychotic boy with separation issues than a character I could sympathize with. Mosse's many descriptions of pain, of loss, and of the grief of missing someone were written beautifully, but without the power behind it, they were only pretty words that lacked depth.

Fabrissa is the only other character of major importance. She is introduced to us as stunningly beautiful, extremely perceptive, and mysterious. She seemed very intriguing, but she too lacked any depth or reality. Of course I knew her secret (or at least most of it) right from the beginning, but it still failed to make me warm to her.

Freddie and Fabrissa's meeting annoyed me. He basically falls in love with her at first sight, something that nearly always earns an eye roll from me. Only a few books have ever pulled that off, in my opinion, and this certainly isn't one of them. Within literally five minutes of first setting eyes upon each other, Freddie and Fabrissa are intimately discussing extremely personal details, and exchanging philosophies on loss, death, and other such things. It seemed highly forced to me.
About half an hour later, they are sitting alone in the snow and have now shared each other's life stories. They basically now know everything about each other and are (of course) hopelessly in love. Well, it's about time! Half an hour, gosh, no need to take things so slowly...
Freddie tells Fabrissa that he has "never met anyone else" like her.

After this, however, he wakes up and is told by everyone that he never went out last night. No one seems to know what party he is talking about, and no one has ever heard of anyone named Fabrissa. Is he crazy? I thought that this part of the book was interesting, waiting to see what Freddie would do and how he would come to a conclusion about this question.
But the conclusion wasn't exactly satisfactory. Once again, everything felt entirely forced.
Freddie goes back to his crashed car with a few other men to help. Once he gets there, he becomes convinced that Fabrissa is somewhere nearby. He convinces the other men to leave. And this is in freezing snow - and they would really just leave him? When they were saying that very day that he was not right in the head (more delicately, of course)? I don't think so.
Freddie even assures them that if he gets too cold, he'll just wait in the car to warm up. I giggled a bit. Um... If a car has been sitting broken down outside in the freezing wilderness for a few days, it is just as cold in there as it is out of it. And the doors would probably be frozen shut anyways.
However, the other men seem to see nothing suspect about a mentally unstable man urging them to leave him behind in the snow. They go merrily on their way, after which Freddie somehow seems to know that he must climb up a hill, where he finds a cave, where he finds a dress (which he again somehow knows is Fabrissa's). There was a very suspiciously high amount of "somehow knowing" going on.

At the end, many of my questions were left still unanswered. Why would Fabrissa choose to speak to Freddie, one person in 600 years? What was so special about him? The book had a lot of holes in it.

It was alright. Not very well written considering characters and plot, but the writing itself (out of context) was pretty, which saved this book a little bit.

If you are in the mood for a quick, easy read that is eerily pretty, go ahead and read this. Appreciate the writing, but try not to examine anything else too deeply.

Review: Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

Title: Between the Acts
Author: Virginia Woolf
Genre: Classics / Literary
Publisher: Mariner Books
First published: 1941
Pages: 228

Rating: 6 out of 10

Between the Acts, the last book that Woolf ever wrote, covers one day in the lives of a group of people living in a small English countryside town. The setting is just before World War II, and they are preparing to put together their annual play.

I was expecting this book to be another Mrs. Dalloway, and though there are many similarities, I never felt that inspiring sense of beauty that Dalloway gave me. I was put off by its simplicity, vague plot, and string of characters, while Mrs. Dalloway builds off of these same points. This book should not be looked at as a novel, but rather a spare description of a day's events.

The characters were slightly interesting, but I kept asking myself what the point of this book was. Perhaps to allow us a glimpse of a commoner's view on the history of England? The play was a brief exploration of the townspeople's native land through the ages, and Woolf allows us to "watch" the play while still hearing what all of the characters in the audience are commenting (often not complimentary).

However, if this is indeed what Woolf wanted the book to be about, it didn't work out all that well. I hardly remembered the subject of the plays until I flipped back through it while writing this review. The connection with English history wasn't a striking one. I think that she wanted to focus on the characters more, and yet, I never felt anything for any of them.
Isa was the only one who interested me mildly. She is a middle aged woman who is married with children, and finds herself wanting more out of life. She refers to her husband as "the father of my children," seemingly in an effort to remind herself of her duty and attachment to him. She has feelings for another man, but they never even speak to each other.

I felt that none of the characters were ever explored deeply enough to qualify this little volume as a true, character driven story.

As a result, this is a nothing-driven story, and it is only Woolf's beautiful prose that saves it. I love Virginia Woolf's writing style, and that is what kept me reading.

I would hesitate to recommend this to anyone except fans of Woolf.