Thursday, April 9, 2009
Little White Lies, Singleton Hippie Art
Little White Lies(c) Singleton 2009SOLDStanding over melike an aging rock star,wearing his crystal blue eyes likebling...he muttered"Silly little girlwith all your peace~love hoo~hah,who do you think believes you?"And I never lifted my head,never let go of the colors,the lines,the flow...Never let go of the spirit..."I do"....Drawn on reclaimed cardstock....colored markers, pencils, ink, peace,
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
'Flashback' Explores Memory in Page-Turning Fashion
FLASHBACK (Henry Holt and Co. 2004)
Author, Jenny Siler
FLASHBACK starts off with a nun performing an evening ritual in a chapel at a French Benedictine convent. But any notions that this book will start slowly and quietly are swiftly put to rest when the nun gets grabbed by a man--one of a band of armed thugs who creep up on the chapel in the gathering gloom and massacre all the nuns (all except the nun who's grabbed, but breaks free and gets away). While he has her, the man briefly questions the nun about a woman the convent took in--an American who's lost her memory, who they refer to as Eve.
Fortunately, Eve's with her shrink at the time, trying to deal with her memory loss issues and strange dreams that suggest she's perhaps not the nicest person, that she may have a sordid past that's possibly too painful for her to want to recall. Her memory loss was caused by a bullet shot through her brain. (That's a bad sign of some sort.) She can recall language skills, rudimentary tasks and other practical things. She just can't remember who she is or how she ended up in a field in France, with a bullet in her head.
Eve returns to the convent and is horrified to learn of the massacre. She talks to the sole surviving nun, who tells her, They came for you. These words send Eve off and running, with the reader happily following along. She can't stay at the convent, but must find out who she is. Her only clue is a Moroccan ferry ticket (scribbled with strange Arabic letters) in her pocket. So, Eve grabs a dead nun's passport, dyes her hair to match the photo and it's off to Morocco she goes. Where she meets a number of interesting, but not always friendly, people, including another American named Brian, who's . . . well, really interesting.
Jenny Siler, who also writes as Alex Carr, has an uncanny knack for capturing the feel--the sights, sounds and smells--of the exotic locales where Eve ends up. Her evocative descriptions of each place from Morocco to Bratislava are sometimes so thick with foreign place names, you may find it mentally tongue-twisting. But she can nail a scene with a single well-crafted phrase. Her sardonic sense of humor also stands her in good stead--especially when she writes about the American expatriate crowd. And the plot takes so many twists and turns, I thought I'd get mental whiplash. It's a story that keeps you guessing and turning the pages. Keeps raising the question: who can Eve trust? Can she trust herself? Her dreams? Her flashbacks? And what about Brian? He's so . . . interesting. (I shall say no more on that subject.)
Meanwhile, there's Eve herself. (Or is it Hannah Boyle? Or Leila Brightman? Or someone else entirely?) Eve, who's feeling insecure and plagued with strange dreams that may or may not be memories. She also has an uncanny ability to handle a gun, to apply aggressive force and an instinct to scan a room for the closest exit. Hmm . . . sounds an awful lot like she was . . . a criminal? A spy? An assassin? You really feel the pain and confusion of Eve's not knowing--as well as the pain of her knowledge that somewhere, at sometime, she had a child, who she can't remember either. (She has occasional flashbacks about an infant, but her only hard evidence is an episiotomy scar.)
And as Eve puts the bits and pieces to the puzzle of her past together (which may or may not come together seamlessly--but who cares? just enjoy the ride), her doing so not only comprises a riveting story, but leads the reader to ponder the bigger issues of memory and identity. Such as, how much can we trust our memories? How much do we really know about ourselves? Or anyone else?
Author, Jenny Siler
FLASHBACK starts off with a nun performing an evening ritual in a chapel at a French Benedictine convent. But any notions that this book will start slowly and quietly are swiftly put to rest when the nun gets grabbed by a man--one of a band of armed thugs who creep up on the chapel in the gathering gloom and massacre all the nuns (all except the nun who's grabbed, but breaks free and gets away). While he has her, the man briefly questions the nun about a woman the convent took in--an American who's lost her memory, who they refer to as Eve.
Fortunately, Eve's with her shrink at the time, trying to deal with her memory loss issues and strange dreams that suggest she's perhaps not the nicest person, that she may have a sordid past that's possibly too painful for her to want to recall. Her memory loss was caused by a bullet shot through her brain. (That's a bad sign of some sort.) She can recall language skills, rudimentary tasks and other practical things. She just can't remember who she is or how she ended up in a field in France, with a bullet in her head.
Eve returns to the convent and is horrified to learn of the massacre. She talks to the sole surviving nun, who tells her, They came for you. These words send Eve off and running, with the reader happily following along. She can't stay at the convent, but must find out who she is. Her only clue is a Moroccan ferry ticket (scribbled with strange Arabic letters) in her pocket. So, Eve grabs a dead nun's passport, dyes her hair to match the photo and it's off to Morocco she goes. Where she meets a number of interesting, but not always friendly, people, including another American named Brian, who's . . . well, really interesting.
Jenny Siler, who also writes as Alex Carr, has an uncanny knack for capturing the feel--the sights, sounds and smells--of the exotic locales where Eve ends up. Her evocative descriptions of each place from Morocco to Bratislava are sometimes so thick with foreign place names, you may find it mentally tongue-twisting. But she can nail a scene with a single well-crafted phrase. Her sardonic sense of humor also stands her in good stead--especially when she writes about the American expatriate crowd. And the plot takes so many twists and turns, I thought I'd get mental whiplash. It's a story that keeps you guessing and turning the pages. Keeps raising the question: who can Eve trust? Can she trust herself? Her dreams? Her flashbacks? And what about Brian? He's so . . . interesting. (I shall say no more on that subject.)
Meanwhile, there's Eve herself. (Or is it Hannah Boyle? Or Leila Brightman? Or someone else entirely?) Eve, who's feeling insecure and plagued with strange dreams that may or may not be memories. She also has an uncanny ability to handle a gun, to apply aggressive force and an instinct to scan a room for the closest exit. Hmm . . . sounds an awful lot like she was . . . a criminal? A spy? An assassin? You really feel the pain and confusion of Eve's not knowing--as well as the pain of her knowledge that somewhere, at sometime, she had a child, who she can't remember either. (She has occasional flashbacks about an infant, but her only hard evidence is an episiotomy scar.)
And as Eve puts the bits and pieces to the puzzle of her past together (which may or may not come together seamlessly--but who cares? just enjoy the ride), her doing so not only comprises a riveting story, but leads the reader to ponder the bigger issues of memory and identity. Such as, how much can we trust our memories? How much do we really know about ourselves? Or anyone else?
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Fun Stuff
Here's an interesting idea: literary tattoos. (Thanks to The Reader's Advisor Online for this.)
And what's this? A book club on Twitter? Makes for pithy discussion, I'd think.
Plus, if you were wondering which book recently won the prize for the oddest title--well, here it is.
And what's this? A book club on Twitter? Makes for pithy discussion, I'd think.
Plus, if you were wondering which book recently won the prize for the oddest title--well, here it is.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
'Life of Pi' is Weird Form of Mystery
Review of LIFE OF PI (Highbridge Audio 2003)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, Yann Martel; read by Jeff Woodman with Alexander Marshall
LIFE OF PI is not a who-dunnit, but a did-it-happen. I am way behind the power curve on this one—people recommended it to me way back when I could read books with pages. Silly me, I judged by the cover—a folk art pic of a tiger in a rowboat. Maybe not, I kept thinking haughtily, eyes sliding to the next book on the shelf.
Finally, I got LIFE OF PI on CD—even then it sat alone on my dresser—all the other tapes came first.
Boy, was I a dope. Pi is not the mathematical constant, but a 16-year-old Indian lad’s first name (he’s named after a swimming pool, as he will tell you in the somewhat sleepy introduction to this adventure—bear with it, it’s worth it). His dad is a zookeeper and the family moves from Pondicherry to Montreal, sailing with some animals that have been sold to zoos in Canada and America.
A storm arises, and Pi can’t sleep and goes on deck. What happens next—well, that’s the mystery. He ends up in a lifeboat with some of the animals, including a 450-lb Bengal tiger, a hyena, an orangutan, a rat and a zebra.
No, this isn’t some cheesy Noah riff. The hyena attacks the zebra and tears off chunks. Pi is afraid of the tiger and suspends himself on an oar sticking out of the bow to stay safe. At this point, the ship gurgles beneath the ocean.
Pi is at sea with the tiger for seven months—or was he? How does he survive? Can he intimidate the beast enough to live? They finally come to a weirdly undulating island made of delicious algae and swarming with meerkats. But I will leave that part for your delectation.
In an Epilogue, officials of the Japanese shipping company approach Pi and ask what happened. He tells them what we already know. They don’t buy it. Okey-dokey. He tells them another story, weirdly paralleling the first. Is this the truth?
Or is a tiger roaming the jungles of Mexico?
Your call.
Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and authors the blog Do the Hopey Copey, a humorous how-to guide to handling the recession.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Moody little Moon, Singleton Hippie Art
Moody Little Moon(C) Singleton"Hovering...Hanging out on top of my world,loitering,lounging,listening.....The many faces of the night changing...."Colored markers, pencils, ink on Cardstock.... Sometimes peace is found in the midst of chaos....And sometimes you just have to be a hippie to believe....Listening, waiting for les frivolites to answer....I believe....in peace and love and people....
Saturday, March 28, 2009
The Story of a 'Restless' Spirit
RESTLESS (Bloomsbury USA 2007)
Author, William Boyd
Literary spy thrillers have become a new favorite genre of mine. RESTLESS by William Boyd is about as literary as they come. The writing has a certain lyrical rhythm to it, the sentences running long, strung together by commas, sort of like this one only longer. And Boyd loves to use words that evoke marvelous imagery, likes description such as that of a manor house "falling down, on its last woodwormed legs, giving up its parched ghost to entropy. Sagging tarpaulins covered the roof of the east wing, rusting scaffolding spoke of previous vain gestures at restoration and the soft yellow Cotswold stone of its walls came away in your hand like wet toast."
See what I mean?
In the "interminable hot summer of 1976, that summer when England reeled, gasping for breath, pole-axed by the unending heat," our protagonist, single mom Ruth Gilmartin, finds out that her mother isn't Sally Gilmartin of London at all, but a Russian emigre named Eva Delectorskaya (try saying that ten times fast). Eva was recruited by the British Secret Service in 1939, after her brother died working for them. Eva's brought into the intelligence fold by a mysterious man named Lucas Romer--a "swarthy" man "with dense eyebrows, uncurved,like two black horizontal dashes beneath his high forehead and above his eyes," who also has "very white, even teeth," which he occasionally bares in an intriguing smile.
Ruth's mother tells her about this. But not all at once. She spoons out the story one chapter at a time. And, in between, we get a chapter from Ruth's life. Needless to say, Ruth has a hard time believing any of this at first. She's got enough on her hands trying to raise her son, Jochen, without benefit of a partner, while working as an English tutor for foreign students attending Oxford University. And then other complications ensue. Ruth doesn't want to have to deal with her Mum going all dotty on her.
But Mum's not dotty. She's right as rain and this spy story is the truth (stranger than fiction, as they say). She continues to provide Ruth one chapter at a time--in order to work out the story's imperfections, she says--but of course it's a writer's trick. It's just Boyd saying, "Wait for it . . ."
And as each woman's tale unfolds, they eventually find past and present coming together. Ruth ends up getting pulled into her mother's narrative, so to speak, though for the most part they have separate stories, that run in interesting parallel ways.
Regardless of how you feel about lengthy sentences, rich with description, a great yarn (or two, really) awaits you along with them in this book.
Ruth is also a likeable character, whether she's kidding with her son or cursing out a patronizing man. She's full of keen, funny observations and she has an interesting life, though quite different from her mother's. Her mother's is just amazing. And, even if Ruth is technically the protagonist (I'd say she is--her part is in first person and Eva's is in third, thus letting the reader identify more with Ruth), her mother's story is nonetheless the main event.
And, of course, as there always are in spy thrillers, there's a big twist. I saw it coming the moment it was set up (I'm not sure whether being a writer myself or a voracious reader is to blame), but that was okay. The question then became when will the twist happen, how and (more to the point) why?
Those questions were answered satisfactorily enough for me, and being a spy novel there was enough double-cross and triple-cross action to make your head spin trying to follow it completely. And, again, that's fine. Because, along with the story, which hums along to its fitting conclusion, there's this overlying theme of questioning how well we know those closest to us. Plus an exploration of the mindset necessary to survive playing spy games. Which, in a word, is: restless.
Author, William Boyd
Literary spy thrillers have become a new favorite genre of mine. RESTLESS by William Boyd is about as literary as they come. The writing has a certain lyrical rhythm to it, the sentences running long, strung together by commas, sort of like this one only longer. And Boyd loves to use words that evoke marvelous imagery, likes description such as that of a manor house "falling down, on its last woodwormed legs, giving up its parched ghost to entropy. Sagging tarpaulins covered the roof of the east wing, rusting scaffolding spoke of previous vain gestures at restoration and the soft yellow Cotswold stone of its walls came away in your hand like wet toast."
See what I mean?
In the "interminable hot summer of 1976, that summer when England reeled, gasping for breath, pole-axed by the unending heat," our protagonist, single mom Ruth Gilmartin, finds out that her mother isn't Sally Gilmartin of London at all, but a Russian emigre named Eva Delectorskaya (try saying that ten times fast). Eva was recruited by the British Secret Service in 1939, after her brother died working for them. Eva's brought into the intelligence fold by a mysterious man named Lucas Romer--a "swarthy" man "with dense eyebrows, uncurved,like two black horizontal dashes beneath his high forehead and above his eyes," who also has "very white, even teeth," which he occasionally bares in an intriguing smile.
Ruth's mother tells her about this. But not all at once. She spoons out the story one chapter at a time. And, in between, we get a chapter from Ruth's life. Needless to say, Ruth has a hard time believing any of this at first. She's got enough on her hands trying to raise her son, Jochen, without benefit of a partner, while working as an English tutor for foreign students attending Oxford University. And then other complications ensue. Ruth doesn't want to have to deal with her Mum going all dotty on her.
But Mum's not dotty. She's right as rain and this spy story is the truth (stranger than fiction, as they say). She continues to provide Ruth one chapter at a time--in order to work out the story's imperfections, she says--but of course it's a writer's trick. It's just Boyd saying, "Wait for it . . ."
And as each woman's tale unfolds, they eventually find past and present coming together. Ruth ends up getting pulled into her mother's narrative, so to speak, though for the most part they have separate stories, that run in interesting parallel ways.
Regardless of how you feel about lengthy sentences, rich with description, a great yarn (or two, really) awaits you along with them in this book.
Ruth is also a likeable character, whether she's kidding with her son or cursing out a patronizing man. She's full of keen, funny observations and she has an interesting life, though quite different from her mother's. Her mother's is just amazing. And, even if Ruth is technically the protagonist (I'd say she is--her part is in first person and Eva's is in third, thus letting the reader identify more with Ruth), her mother's story is nonetheless the main event.
And, of course, as there always are in spy thrillers, there's a big twist. I saw it coming the moment it was set up (I'm not sure whether being a writer myself or a voracious reader is to blame), but that was okay. The question then became when will the twist happen, how and (more to the point) why?
Those questions were answered satisfactorily enough for me, and being a spy novel there was enough double-cross and triple-cross action to make your head spin trying to follow it completely. And, again, that's fine. Because, along with the story, which hums along to its fitting conclusion, there's this overlying theme of questioning how well we know those closest to us. Plus an exploration of the mindset necessary to survive playing spy games. Which, in a word, is: restless.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Online Book Recommendations
Here's an interesting new search engine to try. A site that will recommend books based on the author and title you type in.
I tried searching on "Walter Mosley" and it asked (Google-like) if I meant DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by that author. I said, sure--why not? Hit return. And got some interesting results.
HITMAN: A STANLEY HASTINGS MYSTERY by Parnell Hall--that I can understand. But HANS SOLO'S REVENGE and STAR TREK - SAREK? Not sure where those came from.
Farther down , it says, "To get more accurate suggestions, add more books you've loved to your list - to do this you'll need to register." Ah, there's the catch.
Think I'll just keep choosing books the old fashioned way. Learn about them and decide for myself.
I tried searching on "Walter Mosley" and it asked (Google-like) if I meant DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS by that author. I said, sure--why not? Hit return. And got some interesting results.
HITMAN: A STANLEY HASTINGS MYSTERY by Parnell Hall--that I can understand. But HANS SOLO'S REVENGE and STAR TREK - SAREK? Not sure where those came from.
Farther down , it says, "To get more accurate suggestions, add more books you've loved to your list - to do this you'll need to register." Ah, there's the catch.
Think I'll just keep choosing books the old fashioned way. Learn about them and decide for myself.
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