Twenties Girl

Synopsis
A twentysomething with a broken career and an even brokener love life is haunted by her dead great-aunt.

My thoughts
This was a really fun read. This is my third Sophie Kinsella book (after The Undomestic Goddess and Remember Me - I haven't read any of the Shopaholic series) and my favorite so far. I loved this story in particular because it's a buddy comedy and a romantic comedy in one. The wacky heroines in this story are Lara Lington and the ghost of her great-aunt Sadie, who's stuck in the 1920s and upset over the loss of her necklace. Sadie can't move on to the afterlife until she's found the necklace, and since Lara is the only one who can see her it becomes her mission to find it. And Lara's got enough to deal with without a tracking down some random relative's random bauble - her boyfriend has broken up with her and her business partner has deserted her and their fledgling enterprise. Things get even more interesting when Sadie falls in love with a business exec and insists that Lara woo him since she can't do it herself. There's a lot going on and it takes a while to set everything in motion, but once the story gets going the action and laughs don't stop.

Kinsella's manner of storytelling is infectiously, buoyantly bubbly. Her characters are always optimistic (sometimes borderline delusional) and I feel better after I hang out with them for a little while. She's also hilarious. The situations her characters get themselves into and their reactions to them are often laugh-out-loud funny.

I was a little skeptical of the paranormal element of the story. I wasn't sure a story with a ghost would be all that good, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Throwing a ghost into the story was (somewhat ironically) an inventive way of injecting some life into what can be a stale genre.

The one serious message from this book: call your lonely elderly great-aunt. Lara and Sadie's relationship is lovely, but it's also a bit sad because they're not contemporaries and Sadie eventually has to move on.

Bottom line
Grab this book, curl up with a nice bottle of wine, and enjoy!

Fine print
Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella
Genre: fiction, chick lit
Photo from Goodreads
I own this book.

Mockingjay

Synopsis
In the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss becomes a mascot for the resistance and takes her fight all the way to the Capitol.

My thoughts
I liked it, and I admire what Suzanne Collins tried to accomplish, but I wasn't satisfied with it.

First, the good. Collins continues with the action sequences that made the first two books such page turners. I tore through Mockingjay just as quickly as I did the first two.

More importantly, Collins hones her moral message. In too many books, good and evil are clearly delineated. The good guys can do no wrong and the villains are thoroughly, unquestionably corrupt. But things aren't so simple in Mockingjay. Katniss becomes part of the larger rebellion, but has she merely traded one oppressive regime for another? Before Katniss has time to come to grips with this, she's forced to grapple with something much more serious - the question of whether the rebels could commit unthinkable atrocities to win the war. Collins is intentionally ambiguous on this point. It's horrifying to think about, especially when you consider it in the context of actual modern wars (particularly the civil war in Syria).

And now the major reason I wasn't completely satisfied with the book: the abrupt ending. Collins delivers a shocking plot twist in the book's last pages, an event which would have had major repercussions for Katniss. Instead, everything is resolved quickly and neatly and then the trilogy just ends.

Bottom line
A strong YA series.

Fine print
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Genre: YA fiction, dystopian fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I own this book.

Catching Fire

Synopsis
Katniss won the Hunger Games, but now the Capitol is out to get her.

My thoughts
I just realized I never posted a review of Catching Fire even though I read it almost a year ago. I flew threw The Hunger Games on vacation and snatched Catching Fire off my bookshelf as soon as I walked in the door. And I flew through Catching Fire, too. It was a page-turner, although it was considerably weaker than Hunger Games (but not weak enough to dissuade me from picking up the final book in the series).

My main problem with the book is that it makes Katniss too important. Even if Katniss won the Hunger Games and embarrassed those in charge, it's too flimsy to support or even spark a revolution.

The love triangle gets fleshed out a little better, but the damage is already done. There's no conceivable way Katniss can end up with Gale even though he's a decent guy and he's probably a better match for Katniss than Peeta is. And speaking of Peeta ... he becomes too perfect and one-dimensional.

Finally, I think I might have actually groaned aloud when Katniss finds out she has to compete in the Hunger Games: All-Star Season. I wanted something new, not a rehash of the first book. But ... I was wrong. Suzanne Collins is really good at writing about the Hunger Games. The action is always riveting and unpredictable, and she pulls out all the stops to come up with new horrors for the characters. And that's why I ended up enjoying the book.

Bottom line
Not as good as the first book but good enough - and fast enough - to read.

Fine print
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Genre: YA fiction, dystopian fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I own this book.

The Rebels of Ireland

Synopsis
Generational saga that traces Ireland's tumultuous history from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century.

My thoughts
I knew that Ireland was a Catholic nation oppressed by its minority Protestant rulers, but this book made it more real. It follows generations of interconnected families. The Irish families followed become the movers and shakers who attempt to reform Ireland, sometimes through parliamentary channels and other times by fomenting rebellion. Their English foils are less well fleshed out as characters. They're more like mindless borgs whose only purpose is to annihilate the Irish. There is a lot of historical and political background to wade through, but Edward Rutherford explains everything clearly.

The problem with generational sagas is that just when you're getting attached to individual characters, they die and you have to get acquainted with the next generation. This was definitely an issue for me, but I was surprised at how skillfully Rutherford gave the families themselves personalities. And many of the individual stories were so compelling that I couldn't help but be drawn in. Rutherford's writing especially shone when he described the various rebellions and the Famine. The last chapter, which dealt with the Easter Rising, was the strongest. It had a love story (and my favorite female character in the entire book), but it also brought the story full circle in several different ways.

I've only been to Ireland once - seven years ago and only for a few days - and it made a strong enough impression on me that I was able to remember certain Dublin buildings and streets when they were mentioned in the book. The characters also visit the ancient monastic ruins at Glendalough, which is the one place outside of Dublin I was able to see. It's an incredible site and this book made me want to go back and explore Dublin and the surrounding countryside.

I didn't realize that this book was the sequel to The Princes of Ireland, which covers Irish history from the introduction of Christianity all the way up to the Reformation. I'd be interested in reading that as well as Rutherford's other historical works. But they're all very long. At 863 pages, The Rebels of Ireland evidently exhausted the copyeditor, who went AWOL for the last chapter. There are a number of typos, and a character named Rose inexplicably becomes Rosa for the last four pages.

Bottom line

A good read if you have Irish roots, if you're going to Ireland, or if you're interested in learning how Ireland got the way it is today.

Fine print

The Rebels of Ireland, by Edward Rutherford

Genre: historical fiction

Photo from Goodreads

I own this book.

Absolution

Synopsis
Literary bigwig Clare Wald hires an unknown named Sam Leroux to write her official biography. The one thing Clare won't talk to Sam about is her daughter Laura, an anti-apartheid activist who disappeared in 1989. Both Sam and Clare (almost literally) have skeletons in their closets, which are revealed as the story plods to an ending that is whatever the opposite of thrilling is.

My thoughts
I was so excited about this book. It was supposed to be one of the best debut novels of 2012. It's set in South Africa and has the hook of a missing person mystery set against the backdrop of the fall of apartheid. Unfortunately, it read like an incoherent echo of Ian McEwan's Atonement.

The most frustrating aspect of this book was that neither of the characters had committed any real sins that needed to be absolved. Contrast that with Atonement, where (spoiler alert) the central character told a lie that led to all sorts of awful things and then everyone died in World War II before she could atone for it. Both books also use the novel-within-a-novel conceit, but Absolution muddles it with present-day narration from both Sam and Clare plus flashbacks to Sam's past PLUS Clare's imaginings of Laura's last days. It's ambitious, but it's too much.

I did finish this book, but I didn't read every word - I skimmed a lot of the last third. There was a lot about Clare's garden and I'm not sure what the last 50 pages were for. They didn't reveal anything new to me - they rehashed what Sam had learned and provided some closure for Sam and Clare, but I didn't care about that because I didn't care about them.

Absolution takes a bleak view of present-day South Africa. The apartheid regime was truly horrifying, but both sides committed atrocities. The scars of apartheid, like the scars of slavery in the United States, will be with us for many generations. I knew that in the back of my mind, but it was something else entirely to realize how that still impacts everyday life in South Africa. I always like "traveling" to other places when I read, and this book was no exception.

Bottom line
Read Atonement if you're after a mechanically perfect story. Watch Cry Freedom if you want to learn more about apartheid South Africa. Read J.M. Coetzee or Nadine Gordimer for outstanding South African literature.

Fine print
Absolution, by Patrick Flanery
Genre: fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from my library.