A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Yep, that's right, I'd never read it before. I'm pleased to find A Tree Grows in Brooklyn completely deserving of its classic status. The detailed descriptions of life in a tenement, making do on scraps, is of course fascinating – almost exotic to a well-fed middle-class American. But besides that, the writing is beautiful in its sparse simplicity. The episodic, meandering storytelling is more like a series of snapshots than a plot, but is unexpectedly effective at building the characters, and the snapshots are themselves so vivid and haunting it was hard to put down the book.



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Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I haven't read Skating Shoes since my childhood, when I devoured everything by Noel Streatfeild I could get my hands on. I expected this to suffer from viewing with adult eyes, but it stands up surprisingly well. It's dated, of course, but in a charming way, and the characterizations here are actually stronger than some of her other books. She manages to avoid the stereotyped "spoiled rich girl" who appears in so many of her books, by giving the character of Lalla a smidge of complexity and emotion. I thought the progression and happy ending for all the characters was realistically done. It's almost enough to make you wish they'd never done away with the "figures" part of figure skating.

Definitely a worthy part of the "Shoes" series.



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The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Incredibly well-constructed and realistic myth. In fact portions read like authentic Greek tragedy. The only problem is, Greek tragedy is really depressing so I'm not sure I'll ever want to read it again.

I admit this was kind of a long slog, and I kept getting the names of all the elves mixed up, especially when there are multiple generations who all live forever.

Bottom line: impressive achievement by Tolkien, but lacks charm for me.



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Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Major Pettigrew's Last Stand was an absolutely fantastic read, my favorite recent book since The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. On the surface, it's a gentle love story. But it's also a remarkably insightful commentary on racism, religion, hospitality, families, change, etc, without being the kind of book to preach or hit with anvils or look down its nose or take itself too seriously. I don't like books looking down their noses at me, which is why I usually avoid contemporary "literary fiction." Also, I adore the characters, which for me is the #1 key to enjoying a book. Major Pettigrew himself is the best of all, the perfect (and very realistic) blend of grumpiness, dry humor, selfishness, nobility, and intelligence.

I highly, highly recommend it. To everyone, without exception. READ IT.



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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It's been a long time since I read a new book as delightful as The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This book has everything – elegant epistolary format, excellent characterization and voice, charming story, fascinating historical and geographical setting, pathos, humor, romance... everything. Highly recommended!

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A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


First, to clear up some misconceptions.

A Severe Mercy is not a great love story.

Someone (it might have been an English professor) once explained to me that Wuthering Heights is not a love story but a revenge story, and ever since then I've liked it a whole lot more. You have to approach A Severe Mercy the same way. It's a book about human relationships, yes, partly – but mainly it's a book about God reaching into one man's life and changing its course.

As a love story, it actually kind of stinks. The author and his wife are obsessed with each other in an extremely unhealthy way – a fact which the author seems to deny to the end of the book, even after the unnatural and twisted aspects of their relationship are pointed out to him by no less a person than C.S. Lewis. He persists in thinking that the "Shining Barrier" which divided them from everyone else was a good thing, as far as it went; although he does admit that it had to be broken in order to allow God in. Apparently no one ever told him that you can't stay in love forever. Love and being in love are not the same thing, and love is much more than an emotion.

As a story about relationship and God, it's much more successful, but not without some problems. God breaking into the Shining Barrior was the most interesting and moving part of the book for me. The personal account of the author's conversion to Christianity was extremely compelling to me, especially because he was no hardened sinner prior to conversion, but an intellectual hedonist who worshipped beauty and good literature. That's the kind of conversion story you don't hear too often.

( In which I go on at length, with a few mild spoilers )

Whew. After all this, I don't know how to rate this book. I'd like to give it three and a half stars. I'll probably go with four, reluctantly. It was fairly well-written, if sentimental (and the author uses British spelling throughout, although he is American – which is a peeve of mine). As a portrait of God working in a relationship, it's fascinating but very biased. It's worth reading, definitely. Just don't believe everything you read.

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Prophet's Daughter: My Life with Elizabeth Clare Prophet Inside the Church Universal and Triumphant by Erin Prophet

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The subtitle of Prophet's Daughter pretty much describes the subject matter – it's a memoir by the daughter of a fairly well-known New Age cult leader. What it doesn't tell you is how surprisingly thoughtful, well-written, and non-scandal-mongering it is. It's a fascinating and even non-biased portrait of Elizabeth Claire Prophet and how her role as all-powerful Messenger corrupted her and led her whole religion astray. The author unflinchingly examines her somewhat twisted relationship with her mother, and her own role in their ill-fated project to build massive nuclear fallout shelters to prepare for the end of the world.

I'm not sure how appealing the book would be to anyone who hadn't already some familiarity with the Church Universal and Triumphant – some portions tend to be a little slow moving and ponderous as the author flashes back and forth between telling the story of the shelter project, and the history of the cult's founding. But the insight into the dark side of human nature and religious power made it worth reading.

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I finally updated with half-a-dozen reviews from the past two months! But in order not to spam you, I backdated all of them. I'll link 'em here for convenience if you're at all interested.

Books reviewed:
Emily of New Moon
Sabriel
The Five-Minute Marriage
Room with a View
The Devlin Diary

The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
My mom also lent me this for plane reading on my way back home from Italy – it was her trip book, but she'd finished it. The Devlin Diary is one of those historical mysteries which is divided between the historical characters and the modern day historians who are discovering their story (in an old diary, OF COURSE), in alternating chapters. Honestly I don't know why anyone even bothers to try this format. It's impossible to do it as well as Possession did, so you just risk being compared unflatteringly to that novel.

Even without considering the totally brilliant Possession, the writing is just fair. The historical chapters use one of my all-time least favorite devices, all present tense, while the modern chapters stay in past tense. I suppose this is some attempt at making the historical chapters feel more immediate or something, but I just found it terribly jarring every time the author switched tenses. If your writing is good enough, you shouldn't need a gimmick to seem more immediate.

I will say that the historical chapters were the better written of the two halves, and kept my attention, despite the Present Tense Horror, which is saying something. The heroine is Hannah Devlin, a female doctor in 17th-century London, who is called to attend the king's mistress and ends up investigating a series of violent deaths all tied to the French court. Implausible as that sounds, I actually thought Hannah was sympathetic and even believable. The author does not paint her as some kind of anachronistic feminist, but just a courageous but tired woman trying to earn a living and help her neighbors – a more subtle character choice I appreciated. As far as I could tell, the historical research was accurate, and incorporated in a useful way rather than infodumped. (Is that a verb? IT IS NOW.)

On the other hand, the modern-day heroine came across as more or less flat and oddly, less believable than Hannah. There is a modern-day mystery to solve too, which I found completely uninteresting, and was tied to the historical mystery in a way that really stretches credibility. I understand the author has written at least one other book starring this historian heroine, which is unfortunate, because she's totally boring. The book would have been a really gripping straight historical novel, if you just cut out all the modern-day stuff.

However, bottom line is, it was entertaining enough and successfully whiled away my hours on the plane.

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A Room With a View by E.M. Forster


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Since I finished my plane reading too quickly to last for the rest of my trip to Italy, my mom lent me her copy of Room with a View. I had seen the movie with Helena Bonham-Carter quite some time ago, and thought it was okay but wasn't really blown away. The novel has so much more complexity, human insight, and detail. The characterization is dead-on accurate, and so is the interaction between the characters. There are some lines that have an almost Austen-like incisiveness and humor.

Although I don't always agree with the novel's ideas of religion, I thought the overarching theme of honesty with oneself and others really beautiful and true.

As a side note, was absolutely delightful to be reading this when we stayed in Florence. I could imagine Lucy walking the cobblestones under my feet – I don't think the piazzas have changed much. Tourism, on the other hand, has changed quite a bit in a hundred years, but I could still recognize the typical tourist behavior Forster described, in 21st century form. You could look at people roaming the museums with audio guides clamped to their ears, and see just underneath, the figure of a 19th century tourist with a Baedeker.

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