Across the Nightingale Floor

Synopsis
Takeo's world is upended when his entire family is killed and his village is obliterated. He is adopted by his mysterious savior and learns he is a member of the Tribe, a family of assassins that possesses modest supernatural powers. He hones his skills and nurses dreams of revenge.

My take
I can't remember how I first heard about this book—I may have read about it when it the New York Times named it one of the notable books of the year in 2002—but I'm glad I put it on my reading list.

The story takes place in a world that's very similar—but obviously not identical—to feudal Japan. While some of the characters and events are based on real historical figures and occurrences, I didn't mind that they weren't exact copies. Lian Hearn introduced the concept of a separate race of people who can move at super speeds and make themselves invisible, so why not alter other details to suit the story?

Across the Nightingale Floor was written for a non-Japanese audience, so I was impressed at how seamlessly Hearn incorporated information about a history and culture that most readers probably wouldn't know much about. Her writing style also helps move the story along smoothly.

Takeo has a strong voice and is a well-drawn character. I felt for him and was fully invested in his part of the story. It was fun to read along as he discovered his new talents, and it was wrenching to read about the choices he faced—avenge his family, stay loyal to his adoptive father, or fully join the Tribe. His metamorphosis from country boy to mature warrior is well done. Unfortunately, the female lead, Kaede, does not fare so well. Her story is never as captivating or convincing as Takeo's. She's supposed to be a young woman who finds strength within herself much as Takeo does, but it seems forced and even a little cliched. Takeo's and Kaede's stories eventually mesh and they predictably fall in love immediately. It was sweet to read about but distracted from the larger picture. The narrative was strong—until the end, which was mostly Kaede's fault. Without giving too much away, I understand she needed revenge just like Takeo did, but the resolution to her story seemed contrived and it came at the expense of a satisfying conclusion for Takeo. Since he was the main protagonist, I felt cheated.

Bottom line
Highly enjoyable and mostly terrific. I'd recommend it, especially if you have any interest in feudal Japan. It's the first book in a series—I put the second one on my to-read list, but I didn't run out and get it, mostly because I was a little disappointed in the ending.

Fine print
Across the Nightingale Floor, by Lian Hearn
Genre: Fantasyish/historyish fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Synopsis
And they all died. Once upon a time there had been a town-wide plague of insomnia-induced memory loss, a woman who rose to heaven with her sister-in-law's precious sheets, and rains that lasted for four years, eleven months, and two days. And so it goes.


My thoughts
I had to struggle to finish this book. Every now and then, I pick out a book because it's on all the "100 Best" and "Must Read Before You Die" lists. Experiences like this make it easier for me to ignore those snobby lists. I was disappointed.

Jose Arcadio Buendia, his wife Ursula, and their merry band of followers leave their hometown and wander around in search of the ocean, where they've decided to build a new settlement. They never find the ocean, so they eventually just plop down in the middle of nowhere. The plot is pretty straightforward—it charts Jose Arcadio and Ursula's exploits and those of their descendants for almost 500 meandering pages.

I love epic family sagas, but this one didn't hold my interest. The characters all have variations of the same names, but they're easy to keep track of through their individual incestuous and/or obsessive compulsive tendencies. I never felt close to any of the characters because there's not much to relate to.

The detached writing style and the sheer ridiculousness of the characters' circumstances don't help. I know that's Gabriel Garcia Marquez's style, but I prefer Jorge Luis Borges's brand of magical realism. Garcia Marquez has this maddening habit of introducing an event or idea that seems promising and then veering off on a tangent for seventeen pages (all one dense paragraph) before finally getting to the point. By the time I finally, finally reached the end of one of these, I was usually so exhausted/exasperated that I didn't get any reward from whatever I'd just read. Yes, the writing is lyrical, but the beauty was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of prose.

Bottom line
At least I can check this one off my list of must-read classics.

Fine print
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
Genre: Classic fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library
Edited for typos

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Synopsis
The four Garcia sisters come to terms with their Dominican roots, their lives in America, and their emerging feminism.


My thoughts
I was really looking forward to reading this book. To be honest, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. The book would work well if it were just a series of standalone essays. But it tries to be more than that and falls short. Because the book goes in reverse chronological order, there is no resolution to many of the questions raised at the beginning, so it feels incomplete.

But I still have many positive things to say about the book. The girls all have distinct, strong, often conflicting personalities. The depiction of sibling rivalry is pitch perfect and the various crises the sisters face are entertaining to read and easy to relate to. The stories move along quickly, so it doesn't take long to become engrossed in them. (This was a huge plus for me—I read the book while I was visiting family and needed something I could pick up and read during the short gaps between family obligations.) The narrative shifts back and forth between the sisters, giving you a panoramic view of the younger generation's experiences and opinions. It makes you feel like you're friends with each of them, so you're privy to their personal insecurities and internecine squabbles.

There are various levels of culture clash—the older generation's difficult adjustment, the younger generation's intolerance of their parents' backwardness. Alvarez does a particularly good job describing the sisters' sense of homelessness, their inability to feel entirely at home as Americans or Dominicans and their struggles to define and own (with varying degrees of success) their identities as dual citizens. Her firsthand experience is apparent here.

Bottom line
The vignettes are resonant and highly personal, but don't expect a cohesive narrative or a sense of closure.

Fine print
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez
Genre: Fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

The Invisible Bridge

Synopsis
Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish student, leaves Budapest for Paris to study architecture. The future looks bright—he's a talented architect and he's fallen in love. But it's 1937.

My thoughts
I don't think a book's acknowledgments have ever made me cry. But Orringer's acknowledgments are a reminder that the best works of fiction have their roots in reality. It's impossible to know which of the book's events are inspired by truth and which sprang from Orringer's imagination, but she has managed to weave them together to create a moving account of a chapter of World War II that too few people know anything about.


Hungary's role in World War II is often overlooked, but it was an anomaly. (Hungary itself—a Magyar nation separating the northern Slavs from their southern brethren—has always been an anomaly too.) Hungary was formally aligned with Germany and Italy, but it entered the war reluctantly. The Nazis reacted with hostility to the Hungarian government's attempts to broker independent peace treaties with the Allies. They occupied the country and installed a puppet regime in 1944. Until then, the Hungarian government had resisted pressure from the Nazis to send its Jewish citizens to concentration camps. (That's not to say everything had been rosy for Hungary's Jewish citizens; they still faced persecution and discrimination, saw their rights stripped from them over the course of the war, and were forced to do menial labor for the armed services.) But the Nazi takeover was devastating. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, more than two-thirds of Hungary's Jewish citizens died between March 1944 and the end of the war a little more than a year later. Today, Budapest has the most haunting Holocaust memorial I've ever seen. Near the Parliament building, dozens of pairs of empty bronze shoes lie abandoned in one long row along the banks of the Danube.

I was attracted to this book because of the history, but the strength of the book lies in the characters and their relationships with one another.

In Andras, Orringer perfectly captures the passion and potential, the naivete and optimism of a young man coming into his own despite the looming threat of war. The heart of the story is Andras's underdog love story. He becomes enchanted with the beautiful Klara Morgenstern, an alluring Hungarian mysteriously exiled to Paris to teach ballet lessons to support herself and her teenage daughter. There are shades of Moulin Rouge as she improbably falls for the penniless artiste, but I love a good love story and I loved rooting for them. Because of the complex backstory and complicating current events, their relationship is by no means a sure thing.

Orringer also takes the time to flesh out the supporting characters, particular Andras's brothers and the architecture student Polaner. All of them have compelling stories of their own and I grew attached to all of them despite my best efforts not to. (In a book like this, you know not everyone will live happily ever after, so the fewer characters you're invested in, the better your emotional state when it ends. At least that's the way it is for me.)

As the book (and the war) progress, Orringer wisely refrains from trying to describe too much. The tack she takes—sparingly depicting Andras's growing hopelessness—is much more effective. She even conveys Andras's weakening physical and mental state by cutting down the narration so that at times there are only sentence fragments.

Without giving away too much, the last chapters of the book are bittersweet. I renewed the book once and then kept it for as long as I could. I finished it at the library, sitting in a beautiful courtyard on an unseasonably warm December day. It was fitting that as I read the last few pages, one of the library's event coordinators was walking a prospective bride through the garden and helping her envision where the chuppah would stand.

Bottom line
One of the best books I read in 2011. We need books like this, books that vividly bring to life the truly shocking inhumanity of the Holocaust and other genocides.

Fine print
The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer
Genre: Historical fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library. Then I bought it.

The Last Spymaster

Synopsis
Disgraced CIA agent Elaine Cunningham is called back into the field to track down Jay Tice, a traitor who has escaped from prison.

My thoughts
This made for an enjoyable, entertaining thriller. Lynds kept the action moving and threw in plenty of twists to keep me on my toes.

Cunningham makes a competent, compelling female lead (and I love that she drives a red Jag). The mystery surrounding Tice—a former high-ranking CIA operative who went to jail after admitting he'd betrayed his country—elevates an already intricate plot. I was a little worried at the outset because it seemed inevitable that these two would fall into a cliched May–December affair, and I was gratified that Lynds resisted this and even added a complex romantic backstory for each of them.

Lynds takes her time laying the groundwork for the plot, but even the slowish beginning held my attention and the payoff in the last chapters is immensely rewarding. She reveals each character's layers and motivations with precise timing so the pieces fall into place at just the right time. Lynds also has a talent for writing taut, nail-biting action sequences.

My sole issue with this book was the identity of the mysterious Moses character. He would have behaved entirely differently when he was first introduced—but then that would have ruined the entire book.

Bottom line
Good sick day read.

Fine print
The Last Spymaster, by Gayle Lynds
Genre: Thriller
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library

Redwall

Synopsis
The peaceful abbey of Redwall comes under threat from the fearsome Cluny the Scourge. Redwall's only hope may be young Matthias, a brave but inexperienced novice.

My thoughts
I had high hopes for this book because my brother devoured the series when we were kids. (Incidentally, this is the only way he reads—he rarely reads, but when he finds something he likes he doesn't come up for air until he's done.)

But. I just couldn't get into it. First, I'm not sold on the woodland creatures and their human-like civilization. Second, I couldn't connect with Matthias and his friends.

It probably didn't help that I dove into this book immediately after finishing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which highlighted Redwall's shortcomings. Redwall's plot seemed too simplistic. Matthias had a mission—to find the sword of Martin, the great warrior mouse—but there was never any suspense. I knew Matthias would encounter obstacles, but I knew he'd get past them. Matthias was meant to triumph because Matthias represented Good. The divide between Good and Evil in Redwall is comically cartoonish—the bad guys are pure evil and the good guys are righteous. Because of that, there was no character growth, no redemption, nothing that would make the storyline surprising or entertaining.

Finally, one minor quibble: old-fashioned gender stereotypes are in full force here. Matthias goes off on his quest while his underdeveloped potential love interest Cornflower packs some snacks for him and helps out in the kitchen. There is a brave female squirrel, a formidable female badger, and a sparrow queen who unites her clan—but none of them captures the heart of the hero. I guess that's what bothered me—the pervasive fiction that you get the guy by being pretty and demure (although I suppose being the same species helps somewhat in this world).

Bottom line
I won't be moving on to Mossflower or any of the other books in the series.

Fine print
Redwall, by Brian Jacques
Genre: Young adult fantasy/adventure
Photo from Goodreads
I bought this book at a local library book sale

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Synopsis
Book 3 in the Potter saga finds 13-year-old Harry plunged into greater danger than ever before. A mass murderer has escaped from the Alcatraz of the wizarding world and everyone is convinced he's on his way to Hogwarts to kill Harry.


My thoughts
This is my favorite and arguably the strongest of the Harry Potter series. The first two were fun to read, but this is the one that hooked me. It's nearly perfect—the friendships are well drawn, the humor is biting, and the action is perfectly paced. There are so many great little details and they all build to one of the best resolutions to any book I've ever read. Even though I've lost count of the number of times I've read it, I still have to block off a couple hours so I can read straight through the last hundred pages.

Azkaban introduces two of Rowling's most brilliant additions to Harry's world—the dementors and the Marauder's Map. The dementors are ingenious because of their stark simplicity. Rowling took the crushing despair of depression and made it literal, tangible, relatable—and terrifying. As for the Marauder's Map, I would like something similar to point out speed traps on the highway. (Who wouldn't?) But that's only half the reason I love it. Azkaban is full of reveals concerning Harry's parents and their friends from Hogwarts, and tying the Marauder's Map into that backstory was a truly nice touch. (Side note: The way Rowling manages to seamlessly blend her creations with existing mythological creatures and concepts is nothing short of magical. It's a real talent. Other authors take you out of the action while they beat you over the head with all the research they've done. Rowling has enough faith in her readers to trust them to keep up with her storytelling.)

Bottom line
I dare you to read this book and not fall completely in love with the Harry Potter series. If you can ... I'm not sure what that says about you, but it's not good.

Fine print
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling
Genre: YA fiction
Photo from Amazon UK
I bought this book (three times—I lent the first copy to a friend and the dog used the second one as a chew toy)