Book Review: Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Return to Valetto
Author: Dominic Smith
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: June 13, 2023
Print length: 336 pages
Genre: Historical/contemporary fiction
Source: Library
Rating:

A captivating and moving new novel from the international bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos.

A nearly abandoned Italian village, the family that stayed, and long-buried secrets from World War II.

On a hilltop in Umbria sits Valetto. Once a thriving village-and a hub of resistance and refuge during World War II-centuries of earthquakes, landslides and the lure of a better life have left it neglected. Only ten residents remain, including the widows Serafino – three eccentric sisters and their steely centenarian mother – who live quietly in their medieval villa. Then their nephew and grandson, Hugh, a historian, returns.

But someone else has arrived before him, laying claim to the cottage where Hugh spent his childhood summers. The unwelcome guest is the captivating and no-nonsense Elisa Tomassi, who asserts that the family patriarch, Aldo Serafino, a resistance fighter whom her own family harboured, gave the cottage to them in gratitude. Like so many threads of history, this revelation unravels a secret – a betrayal, a disappearance and an unspeakable act of violence – that has impacted Valetto across generations. Who will answer for the crimes of the past?

Dominic Smith’s Return to Valetto is a riveting journey into one family’s long-buried story, a page-turning excavation of the ruins of history and our commitment to justice in a fragile world. For fans of Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr and Jess Walter, it is a deeply human and transporting testament to the possibility of love and understanding across gaps of all kinds – even time.

Return to Valetto is a story of family secrets and promises, set in a nearly abandoned hilltop village in the Umbria region of Italy. Valetto is now empty save for the Serafino villa, inhabited by three elderly sisters and their even older mother.

A fourth sister, the youngest, died years earlier, and as the story opens, her son Hugh — a history professor specializing in abandoned towns — arrives on sabbatical. But his arrival is marred by an unwanted presence: A squatter of sorts has taken up residence in the villa’s cottage, which Hugh’s mother had bequeathed to him. The squatter, Elisa, claims that the long-lost patriarch of the Serafino family had gifted it to her family years earlier, after they saved him in the closing days of the war. The sisters scoff at her claim, but Hugh wonders whether there might be a kernel of truth in Elisa’s tale.

As we learn, Aldo Serafino was a partisan fighter during World War II, and was last seen by his family in 1944. They never learned what became of him, but Elisa is able to fill in the blanks. He found shelter with her family, who hid him while partisans were being hunted down — and later, as he lay dying of an infection, they cared for him in his final days. She has a letter to prove his intentions, instructing his wife to give the cottage to the Tomassi family as repayment for their kindness on his behalf. The letter was never sent — and now more than half a century later, no one is willing to believe its validity.

As Hugh spends time with Elisa, he comes to see her sincerity and her devotion to her aged mother. Through this connection, he also finally starts to take an interest in life again, after spending years mourning his late wife. As Hugh and Elisa come closer to the truth about how their families intersected so many years ago, he becomes caught up in a search for truth and justice, with unexpected consequences.

Return to Valetto was my book group’s book of the month, and I can see that we’ll have lots to discuss. At the same time, I never felt any urgency about this book, and remained emotionally distant from it throughout, even at times of major revelations about traumatic events of the past.

The storytelling is slow-paced, full of descriptions and inner thoughts. It’s contemplative and shows an appreciation of history, geography, and the sense of loss and abandonment that informs the characters’ lives, as well as their town and surroundings. Shocking elements of the family’s wartime experiences gradually come to light, but even there, a lack of true drama keeps the reader at arm’s-length.

As for the conflict over the cottage, it fizzles away by the midpoint of the novel and is replaced by more dramatic conflict concerning the former townspeople of Valetto and the roles they played during the war. There are several key turning points, but somehow the narrative never truly feels compelling.

I enjoyed the depiction of the feisty older characters, as well as the descriptions of life in this empty town, and there’s a feast scene that’s just mouth-watering. The book presents several moral dilemmas to contemplate, which are interesting to think about, even while the storytelling itself feels a bit uneventful for large stretches.

I would likely not have picked up Return to Valetto without my book group — but I don’t regret reading it. I usually enjoy historical fiction, but somehow, the pacing and tone of this book work against the drama I believe it was trying to achieve, and many of the historical elements would have benefited from just a bit more exposition to set the scene.

Return to Valetto has many interesting elements in it, but it’s not a book that earns raves from me.

27Sep2024

Book Review: The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Underground Library
Author: Jennifer Ryan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: March 12, 2024
Print length: 368 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

When the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library in this heartwarming novel from the author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

When new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she’s expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running it, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her?

Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she’s only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help.

Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship in the literary community and aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied Europe.

When a slew of bombs destroy the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city’s residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Kate, and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?

The Underground Library is the newest book by talented historical fiction author Jennifer Ryan, showing the strengths and struggles of women on the homefront during World War II.

Three main characters are our points of focus, each with a memorable story of her own. Through these characters and their friends and connections, a sense of a strong, resilient community is beautifully presented.

The lead characters, Juliet, Katie, and Sofie, each end up at the Bethnal Green library in London by different paths. Juliet leaves her small town, where she lives with uncaring parents, after her fiancé disappears during battle and is believed to be a deserter. Juliet needs both a fresh start and a chance to make something of herself, and is delighted to land a role as deputy librarian — a role available to a woman only because qualified men are scarce during wartime.

Katie, a Bethnal Green local, works at the library temporarily as she prepares to leave for university, eager to pursue her education and escape the pressures of her social-climbing father and a mother who only cares about reputation and what the neighbors think. When Katie receives word that her boyfriend is missing and presume dead, her world falls apart in more ways than one.

Sofie is a Jewish resident of Berlin whose family urges her to leave while she still can, and secures her a British visa conditional on domestic employment — something Sofie has never done before, having been raised in a well-off family with domestic help of their own. She’s reluctant to leave her family, but is finally convinced of the necessity of doing so. After a hair-raising and dangerous trip, she arrives in London. There, she finds safety from the Nazi terrors of Germany, but at a price: Her employer is cruel, demanding, and abusive, and she lives in constant fear for the family she left behind. When she happens to stop by the library while on an errand for her employer, a new world opens to her, as she’s welcomed and encouraged to keep coming back.

As the women meet and come together, new opportunities for community emerge. The head librarian is stuffy and bound by tradition, wanting to keep the library a quiet, dignified space for the privileged, but Juliet is determined to infuse new life into it, planning book discussions and activities during the hours when her boss is away.

When air raids begin, the people of Bethnal Green eventually begin using the underground station as a shelter, and it becomes a place of refuge, where night after night, people sleep, share stories, seek medical care, and find a place of relative safety while bombs are dropped overhead. When the library itself is hit in an air raid, the head librarian wants to shut it down, but Juliet has another idea: With the help of her trusted group of friends and the women who form the inner circle of her reading groups, she relocates as many books and resources as possible down into the shelter, and the underground library is born.

The Underground Library is a wonderful portrayal of women’s strength and the glory of friendship, as well as the absolutely awesome power of books to bring people together, provide an escape from the harsh realities of daily life, and offer inspiration and hope. It’s also a realistic depiction of life during wartime, showing the struggles of people on the homefront to feed and clothe their families, find medical care, and find safety from nightly dangers — all while worrying about loved ones serving on the front and mourning terrible losses.

Juliet, Katie, and Sofie each have their own struggles and heartbreaks, and each is given ample space to grow as characters and face their challenges. Each of their storylines is well developed and affecting. In some books with multiple main characters, there’s often one who outshines the others, but here, all three are interesting and provoke sympathy and emotional connection.

In addition to the main characters, it’s fascinating to see how their friends and associates find their own paths forward and take on new and different roles through their involvement with the Underground Library. By the end of the book — which includes plenty of tears but is ultimately uplifting — we see how friends can become family, how families can rebuild, and how people who’ve suffered loss can find reasons to keep going.

The Underground Library has a gentle tone, even when frightening events are happening around the characters. The focus is on the people — this is less a story about war and more a story about how people impacted by war find hope and strength in unexpected ways. I came to care deeply about the characters and their lives, and felt thoroughly immersed in the book as a whole. In fact, my only complaint is that there are some secondary characters I wish we’d gotten to see more of — I felt like there were even more stories to be told about the people who made up the Bethnal Green community.

The Underground Library is Jennifer Ryan’s 5th novel, and I’ve enjoyed each and every one. She has a talent for showing the ordinary people affected by historical events, and especially, the importance of community during times of great struggles.

5Aug2023

Book Review: Mrs. Porter Calling by AJ Pearce

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Mrs. Porter Calling
Author: AJ Pearce
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: August 8, 2023
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

London, April 1943. A little over a year since she married Captain Charles Mayhew and he went away to war, Emmy Lake is now in charge of “Yours Cheerfully,” the hugely popular advice column in Woman’s Friend magazine. Cheered on by her best friend Bunty, Emmy is dedicated to helping readers face the increasing challenges brought about by over three years of war. The postbags are full and Woman’s Friend is thriving.

But Emmy’s world is turned upside down when glamorous socialite, the Honorable Mrs. Cressida Porter, becomes the new publisher of the magazine, and wants to change everything the readers love. Aided by Mrs. Pye, a Paris-obsessed fashion editor with delusions of grandeur, and Small Winston, the grumpiest dog in London, Mrs. Porter fills the pages with expensive clothes and frivolous articles about her friends. Worst of all, she announces that she is cutting the “Yours Cheerfully” column and her vision for the publication’s future seems dire. With the stakes higher than ever, Emmy and her friends must find a way to save the magazine that they love.

Emmy Lake is back! Mrs. Porter Calling is the third in a series of books about a magazine journalist and her group of close friends and colleagues, navigating life on the homefront in WWII-era London. In the first two books, Dear Mrs. Bird and Yours Cheerfully, we see Emmy land a job at Woman’s Friend magazine, where she eventually takes over the advice column, seeing it as her mission to offer compassionate, practical advice to women in need. Over the course of these two books, she also meets and marries a lovely man, and supports her best friend through horrible loss and recovery.

As Mrs. Porter Calling opens, the year is 1943, and Emmy continues her work at Woman’s Friend as well as with the fire service, which monitors and responds to disasters caused by air raids. Emmy’s beloved husband Charles is off on the front lines, the couple having had only a few short days together following their wedding before his deployment. Emmy shares a home with her best friend Bunty, and they lead busy, productive lives — they’ve learned to adapt and carry on, despite the constant fear and rationing.

Emmy’s professional life is thrown into a tailspin when the magazine’s owner dies. He’s bequeathed ownership to his niece, who turns out to be a spoiled upper-class woman who feigns delight with the magazine, provided they implement just a few of her “tiny ideas”. She finds the current version “A Bit Mis” — miserable — and decides that what the readers really need is more stories that are pleasant. Rather than focus on food columns about how to make good meals with limited rations or knitting/sewing clothing when supplies aren’t available, she wants glamour, fashion, and a focus on the beautiful lives of her own class. The staff of the magazine is appalled — this is not what their readers rely on them for — but having no choice, the magazine is changed to Mrs. Porter’s standards, and of course, readership and then advertising drop off. Soon, the future of Woman’s Friend is in doubt, and Emmy and her colleagues become desperate to save it.

Meanwhile, at home, Emmy and Bunty welcome a woman with three young children into their home, and soon their days are filled with activity and joyful chaos — but the realities of war are always present, and soon enough Emmy’s woes at the magazine are eclipsed by a more personal tragedy.

I enjoyed Mrs. Porter Calling so much! Mrs. Porter herself is an insidiously vapid character who acts sweetly haughty, until she hits the team with her “ideas”, all with the most saccharine of smiles and eyelash batting. As Emmy reflects:

I was beginning to feel as if I was being run over by a steamroller made from petals and kittens. It was delightful, but also somewhat immobilizing.

Beyond the work crises, where we can’t help but root for the underdogs — the hardworking, dedicated team of Woman’s Friend — the book delves sensitively into the lives of the women and children struggling to make ends meet on the home front.

“Don’t worry, Em, we’ll do what all the other women in Britain are doing.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Cope,” said Bunty.

Again and again, Emmy, Bunty, and their circle of friends show what true bravery is, as well as devotion and determination.

While there’s sorrow and conflict in Mrs. Porter Calling, there’s a chipper, upbeat air that carries the story along — the “Keep Calm and Carry On” attitude that lets the characters find happiness even in the darkest of days. I loved the found family aspect of the characters’ lives — despite fears for loved ones on the battlefield or sorrow for those lost, they bond together to get through it all, and clearly show how love and friendship can mend broken hearts.

“War’s bad enough as it is. Imagine if you’re trying to get through this on your own.”

The Emmy Lake books are emotional, entertaining, and heart-warming. I recommend starting at the beginning of the series, and continuing on from there. I understand there’s at least one more book planned, and also read a comment by the author that she hopes to continue writing books that will take Emmy and friends through to the end of the war. I hope that’s the case! I’d really love to see more of Emmy’s story (and will be waiting to see what I hope will be a happy ending for her once the war ends).

10Jun2022

Book Review: The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle by Jennifer Ryan

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Author: Jennifer Ryan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication date: May 31, 2022
Print length: 432 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

Three plucky women lift the spirits of home-front brides in wartime Britain, where clothes rationing leaves little opportunity for pomp or celebration–even at weddings–in this heartwarming novel based on true events, from the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.
After renowned fashion designer Cressida Westcott loses both her home and her design house in the London Blitz, she has nowhere to go but the family manor house she fled decades ago. Praying that her niece and nephew will be more hospitable than her brother had been, she arrives with nothing but the clothes she stands in, at a loss as to how to rebuild her business while staying in a quaint country village.
Her niece, Violet Westcott, is thrilled that her famous aunt is coming to stay–the village has been interminably dull with all the men off fighting. But just as Cressida arrives, so does Violet’s conscription letter. It couldn’t have come at a worse time; how will she ever find a suitably aristocratic husband if she has to spend her days wearing a frumpy uniform and doing war work?
Meanwhile, the local vicar’s daughter, Grace Carlisle, is trying in vain to repair her mother’s gown, her only chance of a white wedding. When Cressida Westcott appears at the local Sewing Circle meeting, Grace asks for her help–but Cressida has much more to teach the ladies than just simple sewing skills.
Before long, Cressida’s spirit and ambition galvanizes the village group into action, and they find themselves mending wedding dresses not only for local brides, but for brides across the country. And as the women dedicate themselves to helping others celebrate love, they might even manage to find it for themselves.

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle is now the 4th book I’ve read by Jennifer Ryan, and like her earlier books, it presents a warm-hearted look at the homefront challenges and triumphs of women during wartime.

The year is 1942, London is being terrorized by air raids, and in the countryside, families are making do with less and less. Even clothing is rationed — materials are prioritized for the benefit of the war effort, so the local sewing circles are forced to become skilled at repairing and reworking the clothing that they do have.

In the village of Aldhurst, the vicar’s 24-year-old daughter is soon to be married. Grace and her widowed father find her mother’s wedding dress stored away, but the years have not been kind to the once-beautiful gown. Grace is looking forward to her marriage to a young curate, although she’s mostly motivated by duty and a need to be useful to the parish rather than by sentiments of true love.

But when Cressida, a famous designer whose home and business are both destroyed in a night-time bombing raid, returns to her family’s manor in Aldhurst, life in the village starts to change. Cressida lends her skills to the local sewing circle, encourages Grace to think bigger and explore her own talents, and even manages to get her niece Violet to see that there’s more to life than being the pretty little wife of an aristocrat.

As the women spend time together, they become tightly bonded, and manage to find creative inspiration in their sewing projects, eventually coming up with the idea of organizing what’s essentially a wedding dress lending library. Soon, women from all across Britain are donating their wedding dresses, and eager brides are now able to have the beautiful weddings they’ve dreamed of, rather than getting married in uniforms or practical clothing.

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle focuses on friendship and finding purpose. The women at the heart of the book all, in their own ways, reevaluate the assumptions they’ve made about their lives and find different, more meaningful paths for themselves. Through Cressida’s example, they learn to think differently, challenge expectations, and pursue careers and lives that are more fulfilling than what they’d thought they should want or expect.

I enjoyed getting to know the main characters and seeing each of them blossom in different ways. Each has a love story as well, none of which run particularly smoothly — but never fear, there are plenty of happy endings to go around.

As in her other books, Jennifer Ryan uses village life and characters to portray the effects of war on ordinary people. Her characters aren’t out risking their lives on battlefields or engaging in high-stakes espionage; these are the everyday women and men who must do the best they can in the face of shortages and hardships, holding on to their homes, their friends, and their communities the best they can. The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle is a portrait of a generous community, whose individuals come together to not just make do, but make better.

This is a gentle read, with drama on the more intimate and personal side. While the opening scenes of Cressida’s experiences in the air raid are very frightening and dramatic, and while there’s another incident later on of an air raid on a neighboring village that’s also quite scary and intense, the rest of the book is quieter and more restrained. The focus is on day to day life and the people of the village — the war is the constant backdrop, but it’s filtered through the experiences of the women and families on the homefront.

I enjoyed The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle very much. In fact, my only slight complaint is that it seems to echo the author’s other books in certain ways, so that the overall story feels less fresh this time around. In three of the four books of hers that I’ve now read, the main story is about plucky women in a small town who come together to make it through the war years — in one book, it’s about a choir, in another, a cooking competition, and here, a sewing group. The plots arcs and characters here feel familiar, not because we’ve seen them before, but because the overall tone is so similar to those of her previous novels.

That said, I did think it was an engaging, often moving read, and I enjoyed seeing the characters grow and change over the course of the story. Jennifer Ryan has a gift for bringing out the beauty in simple lives, and I always enjoy her light touch when it comes to dialogue and banter.

If you enjoy historical fiction, especially historical fiction focused on women’s lives, don’t miss The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle!

15Aug2021

Book Review: Yours Cheerfully by AJ Pearce

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Yours Cheerfully
Author: AJ Pearce
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: August 10, 2021
Length: 304 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

London, November 1941. Following the departure of the formidable Henrietta Bird from Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.
When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.

In this follow-up to Dear Mrs. Bird, the story of Emmy Lake continues — although Yours Cheerfully works perfectly well as a stand-alone. Emmy is a young woman who’s just learning the journalism ropes at Woman’s Friend magazine, while also juggling her wartime volunteer work as part of the fire watch, spending time with her best friend Bunty, and squeezing in precious visits with her boyfriend Charles whenever he can get leave. It’s 1941, and the war dominates every aspect of life in London.

As the story opens, the British Ministry of Information convenes a briefing for representatives of women’s magazines, urging them to do their patriotic duty by promoting recruitment of women workers to support the war effort. For Emmy, this represents a chance to advance in her journalism career, but as she visits a munitions factory as part of her research, she learns that there’s a darker side to women’s factory work: For those with small children, childcare can be difficult to impossible to find, and women who sneak their children into the factories so they can watch them face immediate firing.

Emmy learns as well that some of these women are war widows or have husbands missing in action, so that the factory work is not only patriotic, but is essential to their families’ financial survival.

Despite the magazine needing to keep up the positive portrayal of woman’s war work, Emmy can’t help feeling that she’s letting their readers down by not advocating for more attention to the needs of the workers — especially since there are supposed to be government-funded nurseries, but only if the factory owners make the effort to make the arrangements, and apparently, many of them don’t bother.

The story of the factory workers with whom Emmy becomes friends becomes a main thread of the plot of Yours Cheerfully. Interspersed with this is Emmy’s friendship with Bunty, recovering from injury and terrible loss after events in Dear Mrs. Bird, and the story of Emmy’s romance with Charles. There are sweet romantic moments, as well as a depiction of the challenges of everyday life during war and the fragility of every moment of happiness, knowing sorrow could be just around the corner.

I enjoyed Yours Cheerfully, although it starts very slowly. My interest was slow to engage, but eventually I was drawn in by the story of the factory workers, whom we come to know as individuals, each with their own backstory, and by the ups and downs faced by Emmy and Charles as they try to juggle courtship and engagement with the realization that Charles is likely to be sent overseas at any moment.

Yours Cheerfully is a quiet book — even the moments of greater action, such as a march to promote nurseries for the munitions workers, are fairly mild affairs. The characters are all lovely, but the book doesn’t build a great sense of drama or urgency. It’s a very nice read, but I can’t say I ever felt compelled by the plot or totally engrossed.

Overall, Yours Cheerfully provides a thoughtful look at women on the homefront during war, depicting the bravery embodied in carrying on during a time of heightened tragedy and crisis, and the power of friendship and joy to see the characters through the worst of times.

**********

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Buy now at Amazon – Book Depository – Bookshop.org

2Jun2021

Shelf Control #271: Restless by William Boyd

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Restless
Author: William Boyd
Published: 2006
Length: 336 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

“I am Eva Delectorskaya,” Sally Gilmartin announces, and so on a warm summer afternoon in 1976 her daughter, Ruth, learns that everything she ever knew about her mother was a carefully constructed lie. Sally Gilmartin is a respectable English widow living in picturesque Cotswold village; Eva Delectorskaya was a rigorously trained World War II spy, a woman who carried fake passports and retreated to secret safe houses, a woman taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone.
Three decades later the secrets of Sally’s past still haunt her. Someone is trying to kill her and at last she has decided to trust Ruth with her story. Ruth, meanwhile, is struggling to make sense of her own life as a young single mother with an unfinished graduate degree and escalating dependence on alcohol. She is drawn deeper and deeper into the astonishing events of her mother’s past—the mysterious death of Eva’s beloved brother, her work in New York City manipulating the press in order to shift public sentiment toward American involvement in the war, and her dangerous romantic entanglement. Now Sally wants to find the man who recruited her for the secret service, and she needs Ruth’s help.
Restless is a brilliant espionage book and a vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Full of tension and drama, and based on a remarkable chapter of Anglo-American history, this is fiction at its finest.

How and when I got it:

I’m not sure! But I think I picked it up either at a used book store or a library sale several years ago.

Why I want to read it:

Someone — and I don’t remember who! — recommended this book to me. Strongly. I believe it was one of my book group friends, because I pretty much always take their recommendations to heart — they all have excellent taste!

Restless sounds intriguing. I love stories about hidden identities and multi-generational family secrets. The WWII setting and the focus on a female spy make this book sound like something I’d really enjoy.

I’ve previously read one book by this author, Brazzaville Beach, and even though it was many years ago, it’s a book that was disturbing and fascinating and has stayed with me ever since.

What do you think? Would you read this book? Have you read any other books by William Boyd that you’d recommend?

Please share your thoughts!

Stay tuned!

__________________________________

Want to participate in Shelf Control? Here’s how:

Write a blog post about a book that you own that you haven’t read yet.
Add your link in the comments or link back from your own post, so I can add you to the participant list.
Check out other posts, and…

Have fun!

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4Nov2020

Shelf Control #241: Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers by Sara Ackerman

Posted in Shelf Control by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers
Author: Sara Ackerman
Published: 2018
Length: 394 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

When her husband mysteriously disappears and rumors swirl about his loyalties, a mother must rely on the remarkable power of friendship in war-torn Hawaii.
It’s 1944, combat in the Pacific is intensifying, and Violet Iverson and her daughter, Ella, are piecing their lives back together one year after her husband vanished. As suspicions about his loyalties surface, Violet suspects Ella knows something. But Ella refuses to talk. Something—or someone—has scared her.
Violet enjoys the camaraderie of her friends as they open a pie stand for the soldiers training on the island for a secret mission. But even these women face their own wartime challenges as prejudice against the island Japanese pits neighbor against neighbor. And then there’s the matter of Sergeant Stone, a brash marine who comes to Violet’s aid when the women are accused of spying. She struggles with her feelings of guilt but can’t deny the burning attraction—or her fear of losing another man when Stone ships out for Iwo Jima.
Set amid the tropical beauty of Hawaii, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers offers a fresh perspective on World War II as it presents timeless depictions of female friendship, the bond between a mother and her child, and the enduring power of love even in the darkest times.

How and when I got it:

I bought a used copy online after reading another book by this author.

Why I want to read it:

In 2019, I read Sara Ackerman’s (then) newest book, The Lieutenant’s Nurse, and loved the Hawaii setting and the author’s approach to telling the story of ordinary people at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Once I was finished, I discovered this earlier novel, and had to check it out as well.

The Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers is also set in WWII Hawaii, which absolutely attracts me in terms of setting and time period. The mix of intrigue, family drama, and a focus on female friendship make this sound like it could be a great read.

And hey, I’ll just straight-up admit that Sara Ackerman’s books have gorgeous covers and I think I’d want to read them no matter what, just so I could look at how pretty they are and dream of returning to Hawaii some day!

What do you think? Would you read this book?

Please share your thoughts!

Literary Potpourri
Balivernes
A Booklion’s Hideaway

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23Jul2020

Book Review: Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Title: Time After Time
Author: Lisa Grunwald
Publisher: Random House
Publication date: June 22, 2019
Length: 432 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:

A magical love story, inspired by the legend of a woman who vanished from Grand Central Terminal, sweeps readers from the 1920s to World War II and beyond.
On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite and an aspiring artist whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York. Captivated by Nora from her first electric touch, Joe despairs when he tries to walk her home and she disappears. Finding her again—and again—will become the focus of his love and his life.
As thousands of visitors pass under the famous celestial blue ceiling each day, Joe and Nora create a life of infinite love in a finite space, taking full advantage of the “Terminal City” within a city. But when the construction of another landmark threatens their future, Nora and Joe are forced to test the limits of their freedom–and their love.

This beautiful love story is set at New York’s Grand Central Terminal, and the setting imbues the story with a truly majestic, timeless feel.

Joe Reynolds is a Grand Central leverman, working the intricate switches that move trains from track to track — the train equivalent of an air traffic controller, essentially. As the story opens, it’s 1937, the Great Depression is still having an impact, and Joe is grateful for a steady job.

Then he meets Nora, a beautiful young woman whose clothing is about ten years out of date. As Nora looks around Grand Central and tries to get her bearings, she and Joe strike up a conversation. Sparks fly, but they have different places to be, and they part. A year later, Joe sees Nora again, and their connection snaps right back into place. She’s wearing the same clothes and seems unchanged in every way. The two spend time together, but when Joe tries to walk her home, she disappears.

Thus begins a romance across time, in which Nora reappears over the years. She and Joe fall deeply in love, and start to unravel the mystery of why Nora continues to return, why she can’t seem to leave Grand Central, and how they can possibly be together when Nora’s reality is so different than Joe’s.

Their love story is set against the backdrop of World War II, as New York and the world change and the young men of the generation head off to war. As a leverman, Joe is considered essential to the war effort and is not allowed to enlist, but all around them, they see soldiers departing — some to return wounded, some never to return. Joe faces increasing challenges balancing his obligations to his brother’s family in Queens and his need to spend every possible moment with Nora.

I started this book thinking I’d be reading a time-travel story, and it’s not that — but I don’t want to say more about what the truth is behind Nora’s appearances and disappearances and her strange tether to Grand Central.

The setting is just so perfect. There’s something magnificent about Grand Central, and having it figure so prominently into the storyline of Time After Time is really special.

Joe and Nora are fully developed characters who feel like real people. We get to know their hopes and dreams, their passions and secrets, and understand the obstacles to their love story even while rooting for them to find a way to make it all work.

The ending is bittersweet, and while my inner romantic might have wished for a different outcome, I can’t say that any other possible ending would make quite as much sense.

Time After Time was my book group’s selection for July, and I’m so happy to have read it. This is a beautiful book, and just should not be missed!

29Sep2019

Book Review: The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

In 1941, during humanity’s darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman.

In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she’s destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

In The World That We Knew, author Alice Hoffman brings her unique infusion of magic and nature to a store of survival during the worst of times. Starting in Berlin in 1941, the story introduces us to Hanni and her young daughter Lea. Hanni knows it’s only a matter of time until they’re captured and sent to a death camp like the rest of the Jews around them. Desperate to save Lea, Hanni begs for a miracle from the rabbi known to have mystical abilities, but instead, his daughter Ettie offers help in exchange for an escape opportunity for her and her younger sister.

Etti, having listened outside her father’s door for years, has herself grown wise in the art of Jewish mysticism, and uses her knowledge to create a golem — a powerful creature made from clay shaped into human form and brought to life through secret rituals, whose entire purpose is to protect Lea. Hanni can’t escape with her elderly, disabled mother, nor can she leave her behind, so she sends Lea away in care of Ava the golem, to seek what safety might be available to them in France.

France isn’t exactly safe for Jews either. Finding refuge with the Levi family, and joined by Etti, Lea and Ava are still at risk, and finally make their escape before their new shelter is raided by Nazis — but first, Lea forms a connection with the young son of the Levi family, Julien. Lea and Julien make only one demand of one another: stay alive.

From here, the story spirals out in multiple directions. We follow Lea and Ava from one temporary haven to another, including a remote convent where the nuns shelter the children who come to them, at risk of their own lives. We follow Etti into the forests as she seeks and then finds the resistance, desiring only vengeance. We follow Julien on his own path toward escape, refuge, and meaning. For each, and for the other characters we meet, there are dangers around every corner — and yet, there is also the opportunity to help others, to find meaning even in the middle of horror and tragedy.

Once upon a time something happened that you never could have imagined, a spell was broken a girl was saved, a rose grew out of a tooth buried deep in the ground, love was everywhere, and people who had been taken away continued to walk with you, in dreams and in the waking world.

The writing in The World That We Knew is just gorgeous. The author evokes the glory of the natural world, even as the people in it carry out horrific deeds and leave destruction in their wake. There’s magic all around, both in the form of Ava, the golem who starts as a mere bodyguard but finds her own personhood as time goes on, and in the flowers, bees, and birds that surround our characters and interact with them in unexpected ways.

Every now and then a crow would soar past with a gold ring or coat button in its beak, a shiny souvenir of murder.

The characters are lovely and memorable. I especially loved Ava, but it’s also wonderful and awful to see Lea grow up during war, having lost eveyrthing, but still clinging to her mother’s love and her connection to Julien. But really, I can’t just single these two out. There are side characters who come into the story briefly, whose stories we come to know before they exit once more, and their stories have power as well. In some ways, it feels as though the author has painted a picture through her writing of all the lost potential represented by the millions murdered during this terrible time.

And yet, the book is not without hope. Despite the tragedies, there’s still goodness, the possibility of a future, and the possibility of meaning:

What had been created was alive. Ettie did not see clay before her, but rather a woman who had been made by women, brought to life by their blood and needs and desires.

I don’t think I can really do justice to how special and beautiful this book is. The writing is superb, and the story leaves an indelible impression. Highly recommended.

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The details:

Title: The World That We Knew
Author: Alice Hoffman
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication date: September 24, 2019
Length: 384 pages
Genre: HIstorical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

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8Jun2019

Book Review: The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Elise Sontag is a typical Iowa fourteen-year-old in 1943–aware of the war but distanced from its reach. Then her father, a legal U.S. resident for nearly two decades, is suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a Nazi sympathizer. The family is sent to an internment camp in Texas, where, behind the armed guards and barbed wire, Elise feels stripped of everything beloved and familiar, including her own identity.

The only thing that makes the camp bearable is meeting fellow internee Mariko Inoue, a Japanese-American teen from Los Angeles, whose friendship empowers Elise to believe the life she knew before the war will again be hers. Together in the desert wilderness, Elise and Mariko hold tight the dream of being young American women with a future beyond the fences.

The Last Year of the War is the moving story of true friendship that lasts a lifetime, despite years of separation. Told through the eyes of Elise, the story opens in 2010 when Elise is in her 80s, suffering from the losses associated with Alzheimers, feeling pieces of herself and her life being stolen away from her. When her housekeeper teaches her to use Google, Elise uses it to look up her friend Mariko, a girl she last saw during the last year of World War II. And having found her, Elise decides to go see her, despite the memory lapses that cause her to repeatedly lose her focus and her purpose for traveling.

From there, we go back to Elise’s adolescence. As the American-born daughter of German immigrants, Elise enjoys her ordinary life in Davenport, Iowa, up until the day her father is arrested as an enemy of the United States:

As I watched the black car that held my father disappear around the block, the strongest sensation I had was not that this couldn’t be happening, but that it was. It was like being awakened from a stupor, not falling into a nightmare. I couldn’t have explained it to anyone then. Not even to myself. It was only in the years that followed that I realized this was the moment my eyes were opened to what the world is really like.

Eventually, the family is reunited at the Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas, where they, along with hundreds of other German-American and Japanese-American families, are assigned to remain throughout the war years. Life in the camp isn’t awful for Elise, because she finds Mariko — also an American-born daughter of immigrants. They attend the mixed school together and become deeply connected friends, sharing their dreams, their hopes, and their fears, and making grand plans for the life they’ll spend together after the war, moving to New York and pursuing their adult lives side by side.

It’s not to be, sadly — first Elise’s family and then Mariko’s are chosen for repatriation. Despite being American citizens, Elise and her brother Max along with her parents are sent to Germany in exchange for Americans being held there. Suddenly, in what will be the final year of the war, the family is thrust into a war zone. While Elise’s father’s family is there to welcome them and offer them a home, it isn’t home for Elise, who doesn’t even speak the language. From the safety of American soil, Elise finds herself in a strange land, where bombs fall over night as the Allied armies get closer and closer, and where the day after a bombing raid reveals nothing but death and destruction.

Throughout this time, it’s the thought of Mariko and their friendship that gives Elise hope, until the day a letter from Mariko arrives, telling Elise that she’s being forced to marry and that her family forbids any further contact. Heartbroken, Elise struggles to find a way to move forward, until a meeting with an American GI after the German surrender opens up new opportunities for her.

Enough synopsis! I won’t give away any further plot details. The Last Year of the War is a very compelling story, and Elise is a very sympathetic character. It’s almost impossible to imagine, sitting her in the comfort of the 21st century, that an American citizen could be torn away from her country like this and sent into a war zone, but the key events in this book are drawn from the historical record. The Crystal City camp was a real place, and repatriation of Japanese and German immigrants and their families really did happen.

I was actually shocked to discover that German-Americans were sent to internment camps — I’d only ever read about Japanese-Americans and their treatment during WWII. It might be just ignorance on my part, but it seems like that element of the war years has never been as publicly known and reported. I was equally shocked to learn about the repatriation of families to Japan and Germany. It seems incredibly cruel to send these people into war-torn countries for no reason other than the fact of their birthplaces — or in the cases of Elise, Mariko, and their siblings, the birthplaces of their parents.

Based on the synopsis of the book, I’d expected to have Elise and Mariko share the historical pieces of the story, but the book is actually Elise’s story, told through her memories of her war years and beyond. We learn about Mariko through Elise’s perspective, so once the girls are separated, we only know what happened to Mariko when Elise finds out more. This doesn’t diminish the power of the story — Elise’s experiences are powerful and fascinating on their own — but it was a little out of alignment with my initial expectations.

That doesn’t mean that I didn’t love this book, because I absolutely did. I learned pieces of history that were new and surprising to me, and beyond that, I got to meet characters who are richly drawn, deeply relatable, and full of hopes, fears, and passions that resonate. Elise goes on to live a life of purpose and meaning, but never forgets Mariko and what their brief time together meant to her.

My only wish might be that Elise and Mariko had more time together once they were reunited. These pieces of the story are so powerful, but we only get small segments of this time, as a framing device for the historical pieces of the story.

All in all, I’d say that The Last Year of the War is a must-read for fans of historical fiction or for anyone who wants to learn more about an unseen chapter of the war. It’s a wonderfully rich story of two friends and how a connection like theirs can change lives. Highly recommended!

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The details:

Title: The Last Year of the War
Author: Susan Meissner
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: March 19, 2019
Length: 389 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley