HarperCollins – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE ORCHARDIST by Amanda Coplin /2013/the-orchardist-by-amanda-coplin/ Sun, 22 Dec 2013 13:57:35 +0000 /?p=24118 Book Quote:

“From the folds of her skirt she brought out a dull green change purse.  How much?

He told her. She pinched out the correct change and handed it to him.

As he filled the sack with fruit, the woman turned and gazed behind her.  Said: Look what the cat drug in.  Those two looking over here like that, you aren’t careful, they’ll come rob you.  Hooligan-looking. She sniffed.

After a moment he looked where she nodded.  Down the street, under the awning of the hardware store, two girls— raggedy, smudge-faced— stood conspiratorially, half turned toward each other.  When they saw Talmadge and the woman observing them, they turned their backs to them.  He handed the burlap sack to the woman, the bottom heavy and misshapen with fruit.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (DEC 22, 2013)

In this understated and emotionally raw novel of a family born as much from choice as from blood, debut novelist Amanda Coplin explores themes of love, loyalty, courage, compassion, revenge, and honor, as well as the lifelong, traumatic impact of both childhood abuse and loss.

The novel opens with orchardist William Talmadge, a tall, broad-shouldered and solitary man who is composed of the most steadfast moral fiber and potent vulnerability of almost any protagonist that I can recall in recent (new/contemporary) literature. After his father died in the silver mines of the Oregon Territory when Talmadge was nine, he came to this fertile valley at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains (Washington State) in 1857 with his mother and sister. Within the next eight years, he suffered from smallpox, his mother died of illness, and his sister later disappeared in the forest, never to return. This is Talmadge’s story, and the saga of his chosen family, borne from the blood of loss and abuse.

Two young pregnant teenagers, Della and Jane, enter Talmadge’s life in his middle-aged years. They steal fruit from him at market, where he sells the apricots, apples, and plums from his sweeping acreage of crops. A bit of a touch and go, cat and mouse game ensues, as they follow him home, hide, and emerge when they are hungry, only to scamper and scatter away again, staying close to the edges of his property. Talmadge gradually gains, if not Della and Jane’s trust (they have a harrowing history of ritual abuse), then a tentative acceptance, and they become inhabitants of the orchard, living alongside Talmadge. He becomes their loyal benefactor.

If I give any more of the plot progression, it will proceed into spoiler territory. The story bears its fruit gradually, almost meditatively, during the first two sections (135 or so pages). There are eight sections in all, but some are long and pensive, and some short, at times just a few pages. The middle sections compress the years into thumbnail sketches without losing its stirring effect on the reader. The story is told in a quiet and nearly oblique manner, yet without being detached. The overall effect is powerful, and it rumbles fiercely, and menacingly, at intervals, without open sentimentality. The characters evolve delicately, with contemplative subtlety.

“Through glances she had caught various features—his nose, the set of his shoulders, the striking color of his eyes. But he had one of those complicated faces that one had to consider at length to understand how emotion lay on it, to understand it at all. It was like a landscape: that wide and complicated, many-layered expanse.”

The land is essential to the story—the planting of seeds, the cultivation, and the harvest. The orchard is Talmadge’s lifeblood, and a ripe motif for the burgeoning love he has for the family that has germinated from the edges of his vast plantation. Nature and nurture merge, and the repository of grief yokes to the deep basin of humanity and from there, the kernels of love grow and reproduce.

At times, as I reflect on the ending, I am troubled by the author’s choices, but so goes the cycle of life in its order and perplexity.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 675 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (March 5, 2013)
REVIEWER: Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Amanda Coplin
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another orchard book …

Bibliography:

]]> FLIGHT BEHAVIOR by Barbara Kingsolver /2013/flight-behavior-by-barbara-kingsolver/ Sat, 14 Dec 2013 18:59:02 +0000 /?p=23635 Book Quote:

“On shearing day the weather turned cool and fine. On the strength of that and nothing more, just a few degrees of temperature, the gray clouds scurried away to parts unknown like a fleet of barn cats. The chore of turning ninety ewes and their uncountable half-grown lambs through the shearing stall became a day’s good work instead of the misery expected by all. As far as Dellarobia could remember, no autumn shearing had been so pleasant.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (DEC 14, 2013)

Barbara Kingsolver is one of those rare writers with whom you know what you are getting before you open the first page.

You know, for example, that the prose is going to be literary, dense, and luscious (take this descriptive line: Summer’s heat had never really arrived, nor the cold in turn, and everything living now seemed to yearn for sun with the anguish of the unloved.”) You know that the content will focus on some kind of social justice, biodiversity, or environmental issue. You know, too, that at some point, Ms. Kingsolver will cross the line into authorial intrusion based on her passion for the subject she is writing on.

But you keep coming back for more. At least, I do. There is something mesmerizing about a Barbara Kingsolver novel, and something refreshing about a writer who combines a solid scientific background with stunning prose.

This book is entitled Flight Behavior, and for good reason. It opens with a young Appalachian woman – Dellarobia Turnbow – ready to take flight from her shotgun marriage and closed-in life with two young children. On her way up the mountain to engage in an affair, she views an astounding natural phenomenon that changes everything for her.

The core of the novel focuses on that phenomenon, centering on the migratory patterns of the bright orange Monarch butterfly, usually viewed only in Mexico. The topic is climate change and Ms. Kingsolver slashes through the obtuse definitions with language anyone can understand. Dellarobia is paired thematically with a Harvard-educated scientist Ovid Byron, whose lifework is studying the butterflies. He says, “If you woke up one morning, Dellarobia, and one of your eyes had moved to the side of your head, how would you feel about that?” That, in effect, is the same as the butterflies migrating to Appalachia.

There is much to love about this novel. Dellarobia is authentically portrayed: a woman who is confined in a life she has outgrown, complete with two very genuinely created toddlers and a best friend who is not similarly constrained. The duality of science and religion is also tackled. While Barbara Kingsolver makes no secret of how she feels about those who piously say, “Weather is the Lord’s business” while polluting our environment, she also concedes to the majesty and mystery of nature, culling in parallels from Job and Noah.

Ultimately, Ms. Kingsolver leaves us with the most important question of all: “what was the use of saving a world that had no soul left in it. Continents without butterflies, seas without coral reef…What if all human effort amounted basically to saving a place for ourselves to park?” The interconnectedness of all nature’s creatures – and our true place in our own lives and in the lives of the universe – is a message that lives on in this reader’s mind long after the last page is closed.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1,546 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (June 4, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Barbara Kingsolver
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our reviews of:

Bibliography:

Poetry:

Non-fiction:

]]> WE LIVE IN WATER by Jess Walter /2013/we-live-in-water-by-jess-walter/ /2013/we-live-in-water-by-jess-walter/#comments Wed, 27 Nov 2013 13:22:42 +0000 /?p=23639 Book Quote:

“Oren Dessens leaned forward as he drove, perched on the wheel, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, open can of beer between his knees. He’d come apart before, a couple three times, maybe more, depending on how you counted. The way Katie figured—every fistfight and whore, every poker game and long drunk—he was always coming apart, but Oren didn’t think it was fair to count like his ex-wife did. Up to him, he’d only count those times he was in real danger of not coming back. Like that morning on the carrier.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (NOV 27, 2013)

The world isn’t kind to the characters in Jess Walter’s collection of 13 short stories. Each of them is a loser, living in a “frontier of stale and unfulfilled dreams:” careless fathers, scam artists, ex-cons, gamblers, incestuous brothers, drug abusers.

These aren’t people you’d want as your neighbors or your friends. They are, however, people you want to spend some hours with – and it’s all because of Jess Walter’s great skill as a words craftman and his incisive ability to create a wave of emotions with a few well-placed descriptions.

The short-shorts – and there are a few in this collection – didn’t work for this reader half as well as some of the longer stories, which pack a wallop. A few of these stories are true stand-outs.

Take the “Wolf and the Wild,” which begins this way: “They fanned out in the brown grass along Highway 2 like geese in a loose V, eight men in white coveralls and orange vests picking up trash.” One of these men, Wade, is in prison for white-collar theft; when he emerges, he is assigned to a pilot program tutoring elementary schoolers. One of the little ones, Drew, requests the same book every time until Wade brings along a sequel. The last five pages contain no words and these are the pages Drew likes the best. This poignant scene – a young boy snuggled into the lap of a stranger, feeling safe through the power of storytelling, is beautifully rendered.

Another, “Helpless Little Things,” is a page-turning story of a scammer and drug dealer with a small network of teens whom he uses to solicit funds through fake Greenpeace offerings. But who is really the scammer and the helpless thing? This “turn-about is fair play” story is another winner.

The lead-off story, “Anything Helps,” focusing on a panhandling dad named Bit who goes to great lengths to buy his son the latest Harry Potter book and the eponymous story “We Live In Water” – about an adult son who attempts to learn what happened to his down-and-out father – are also noteworthy. In the latter, Mr. Walter writes, “The fish just swam in its circles, as if he believed that, one of these times, the glass wouldn’t be there and he could just sail off, into the open.”

No one can sail off, of course; most of these characters are, indeed, swimming in circles, no matter how hard these men strive for acceptance or redemption. And, for this reader, a couple of the stories didn’t work; “Wheelbarrow Kings,” for example, strives too hard for “attitude” and lost me along the way. A possibly personal story – “Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington” may well be the factually-based key to a couple of the stories. This isn’t an upbeat collection – it’s not meant to be – but it does reconfirm Jess Walter’s abundant talents.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 128 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper Perennial (February 12, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Jess Walter
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Other:

]]> /2013/we-live-in-water-by-jess-walter/feed/ 1 ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS by William Boyd /2010/ordinary-thunderstorms-by-william-boyd/ Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:29:31 +0000 /?p=8365 Book Quote:

“Clouds were his business – he was a cloud-man who made clouds in his giant laboratory and stimulated them to deliver their moisture in the form of raindrops or hailstones…So what was he doing lying, filthy and alone, in this small triangle of ground on the banks of the Thames? Not for the first time the life that he had once so recently led seemed some kind of taunting chimera – the contrasts between his two existences, before and after, appeared too acute to seem real – as if the Adam Kindred he had been was a fantasy figure, a vagrant’s dream, the fond imaginings of a desperate down-and-out.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (MAR 21, 2010)

In British author Boyd’s capable hands it’s actually believable that a slightly depressed, mild-mannered climatologist chooses to go underground in a strange city rather than report a murder.

Born in Britain, Adam Kindred has lived in America most of his life. Now, newly, devastatingly divorced, he’s left his U.S. university job and hopes for a new start with a fellowship in London. Fresh from the job interview, he treats himself to a meal, exchanges pleasantries with another solitary diner and afterwards discovers that the man – a research doctor – has left a file behind.

Good naturedly, Adam arranges to return it and goes to the man’s flat where he finds him fatally stabbed. “Philip Wang lay on top of his bed in a widening pool of blood. He was alive, very conscious, and a hand, flipper like, gestured Adam towards him.” His last words concern the file. “ ‘Whatever you do, don’t – ‘ Wang died then, with a short gasp of what seemed like exasperation.”

Going for the phone, Adam hears someone enter, and flees without calling the police, taking the murdered man’s file with him. Reaching for his cell he discovers blood on his hand, washes it in a fountain, then feels the need of a drink. “…he needed to calm down, give his thoughts some order…”

Incrementally time passes until it’s too late. The police naturally assume Adam is guilty, and the real murderer knows who he is. A vagrant on the banks of the Thames, he passes his first days assuming the situation will right itself, he will be cleared and the real murderer caught.

But things don’t work out that way.

Staying primarily with Adam, Boyd shares point of view among several characters: the mercenary who killed Wang and now has a contract on Adam; the hapless CEO of the pharmaceutical firm Wang worked for, whose new riches come at a hidden price; the CEO’s dissipated, aristocrat brother-in-law; and Rita Nashe, the cop who discovered Wang’s body.

The tension builds as Adam loses the trappings of normal life to blundering naivety, until he hits rock bottom and, starving, begins to exert himself. He has entered a world of muggers, prostitutes, hard-luck cases, and other opportunists, and the way back – if there is one – requires an education in street smarts.

It also requires detective work. The police are satisfied with him as their suspect and Wang’s file is his only hope. The file data mean nothing to him, but Adam begins to dig into the man’s work with pediatric asthma patients, determined to uncover the secret that killed him.

Winner of numerous awards, including the Whitbread, Boyd explores identity and the influence of social forces in this character-driven thriller. What happens when a man becomes unmoored from society? What will he do to preserve his life, his freedom, his dignity? What will he not do?

The prose is muscular and straightforward; the plot is compelling and tense, the secondary characters are well-fleshed. Boyd engages the reader in his quest and while not everyone will agree with his conclusions, fans of literary thrillers should enjoy the ride.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 78 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (January 26, 2010)
REVIEWER: Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia on William Boyd
EXTRAS:
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Short Stories:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE RED CONVERTIBLE by Louise Erdrich /2009/red-convertible-by-louise-erdrich/ Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:37:38 +0000 /?p=4451 Book Quote:

“So when I went there I knew the Dark Fish must rise. Plumes of radiance had soldered on me. No reservation girl had ever prayed so hard. There was no use in trying to ignore me any longer. I was going up there on the hill with the black-robe women. They were not any lighter than me. I was going up there to pray as good as they could, because I don’t have that much Indian blood. And they never thought they’d have a girl from this reservation as a saint they’d have to kneel to. But they’d have me. And I’d be carved in pure gold. With ruby lips. And my toenails would be little pink ocean shells, which they would have to stoop down off their high horse to kiss.”

Book Review:

Review by Terez Rose (AUG 27, 2009)

It is a daunting task to write a brief review about a 500 page book that holds thirty-six stories, most of which have been published in esteemed publications and spawned bestselling novels. Further, author Louise Erdrich is already known and beloved, a prolific, highly acclaimed writer of both short and long fiction. Her twelve novels include the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award winner, Love Medicine, and her most recent, A Plague of Doves, a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her own heritage—her father was of German descent, her mother half French, half Ojibwe —is reflected into all of her stories, set in the land she grew up in.

The stories that comprise The Red Convertible are ordered in chronological fashion but also grouped by subject (several come together to form the basis of different novels). This collection is a gem—every last story is beautifully written, well-crafted, full of delicious lines, distilled and descriptive, emotionally searing without ever descending into sentimentality. Within these stories the past century rolls across the page, cultures clash, collaborate, life delivers its knocks and people try to rebound.

Erdrich is unafraid to plumb the depths of despair, love in all its forms, death, suicide, cancer, anything that might strike down her strong, vivid characters. But the stories’ sense of wit and irony save the collection from ever being perceived as too grim. Several stories, in fact, border on the hilarious, the fantastical. Shop owners, displaced people, teenagers, Native Americans, immigrants, nuns, musicians, men suckling babies—these all are part of the ensemble cast, several making cameo appearances in later stories. It becomes like a jigsaw puzzle, the way families and professions fit into the grand scheme of Erdrich’s fictional world. Readers familiar with her novels will find quite a few recognizable characters and stories here. Readers new to Erdrich are given a sampler platter of which novel might appeal to them.

What connects these diverse stories is a sense of place—geographic and otherwise. Most occur near or within the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, not far from the Minnesota border, and all of its characters are engaged in a struggle—to make ends meet, to survive the minefields of marriage, of relationships, conflicts between the past and present or simply within the self. And what each story yields is a nugget of insight, of clarity, even if only to remind us that yes, life is a struggle, often violent, but within the suffering lies a certain fierce beauty, a glittering paradox.

In the eponymous “The Red Convertible,” a Native American Vietnam vet tries to pick up the pieces of his life after his military service, while his brother watches on, helpless. Two orphaned children struggle to upright themselves when forced to leave depression-era Minneapolis in “The Blue Velvet Box,” a story that served as the basis for the novel The Beet Queen. One of my favorite stories of the collection was “Naked Woman Playing Chopin,” which integrates two subjects of great interest to me: music and spirituality, in the form of a nun who is seduced by playing the piano music of Chopin, to the exclusion of all else.

Teen angst and the stigma of being poor is addressed in a searing yet tender fashion in “The Dress.” Here, we have a perfect problem—Dot and her mother think they’re splurging, while being budget-conscious, when they mail-order five “grab bag” dresses for a dollar each. When the dresses arrive, however, Dot discovers they are five of the same horrific print dress, her sole attire for the school year. This kind of humor mixed with unlikely pathos—Dot’s vulnerability amid the richer, prettier girls is just aching— represents what else I enjoyed in the collection: tragicomic writing centered in the everyday. Daily life struggles made both buffoonish and noble.

“Fleur,” too, is another wonderfully compelling story, with a brilliantly drawn, strong warrior-like female character, clashing with every man she encounters. Also mesmerizing is “Saint Marie” (from which the opening excerpt is taken), a wondrous, scathing, bittersweet account of a reservation girl’s desire for Catholic enlightenment, which pits convent life and its nuns against reservation values and beliefs.

In “History of the Puyats,” Erdrich serves us grittier fare, while maintaining her lyricism and fine storytelling, even offering dollops of humor in the first part. The story takes a dark turn, however, culminating in loss of life, followed by the systematic emotional destruction of a young girl and her mother. Elegantly rendered, it nonetheless became a struggle to finish. Was the story metaphorical of the struggles of the Native American? Was I getting a cultural lesson? Most likely, yes. The story’s violence shifts from the plight of the characters to that of the buffalo, in a scene of carnage foretelling their demise as a species, a slaughter of 800. The surviving buffalos linger at the site long afterward, grieving, eventually charging, trampling the carcasses.

“The buffalo were taking leave of the earth and all they loved, said the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts. The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things. Like us, they saw the end of things and like many of us, many today, they did not care to live. What does that tell you about the great pain of the end of things that lives in every family, here on the reservation? The daughter was, of course, the warped result of all that twisted her mother. She was the hope, the poison, what came next, beyond the end of things. She was the residue of what occurred when some of our grief-mad people trampled their children. And so the history of the Puyats is the history of the end of things. It is bound up in despair and the red beasts’ lust for self-slaughter, an act the priests call suicide, which our people rarely practiced until now.”

Do I recommend this collection? Certainly. Buy it, however. No chance of borrowing it from the library and reading it in a short period of time. It’s just too dense. It’s like a vat of chocolate mousse. Each bite is exquisite, but when you’re only halfway done, you start feeling a little queasy from too much stimulus, too much intensity, much of it uncomfortable, unsettling—which, of course, is the literary fiction writer’s goal. You have to pause, switch to nonfiction or some fluff commercial fiction to ease the tension in your head before you can go back for more. But when you do return—wow. There are no clunkers in this collection. This is pure, unadulterated, quality fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 11 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (January 6, 2009)
REVIEWER: Terez Rose
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Louise Erdrich
EXTRAS: Another review of The Red Convertible
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: No need to refer you to other authers!
Here are the Louise Erdrich books also reviewed on MF:

However if you are looking for similar authors, try Michael Dorris or Susan Power

Bibliography:

**Ojibwe reservation

With her husband, Michael Dorris:

For Young Readers:

Nonfiction:

]]> THE LAST WAR by Ana Menendez /2009/the-last-war-by-ana-menendez/ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:10:55 +0000 /?p=4012 Book Quote:

“That’s how it is, isn’t it? If you’re going to die, you might as well live. Death on a full belly is better than a life of hunger.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Beth Chariton (AUG 10, 2009)

If you become numb to the conflict of constant war, does it prevent you from dealing with your own personal battles? In The Last War, by Ana Menéndez, Flash and Brando get paid to travel and document war – he the “Wonderboy” journalist, she the photographer/wife that follows in his shadow.

Brando travels to Baghdad, while Flash stays behind in Istanbul, waiting for photography equipment, travel papers, or any other excuse she can find to avoid joining him. He calls her from Baghdad, sometimes twice a day, from the rooftop of the mansion he’s staying in, while she answers from their four-bedroom apartment with the fabulous view. Their type of reporting allows them to live several classes higher than their means, and all on Brando’s company’s bill.

Any intimacy between them has slowly diminished from exposure to war, human hatred and revenge. They get by on small amounts of surface dialogue, the war too devastating to discuss out loud or often, and daily topics of conversation too trivial compared to the surrounding destruction.

At first, Flash enjoys her time alone, glad for the break from their strained marriage. While Brando waits patiently for her arrival in Baghdad, she continues to accept small freelance jobs and visits her list of desired tourist destinations in Istanbul.

After two weeks, Flash receives a letter stating the Brando is having an affair in Baghdad, and Flash’s inner battle begins – the constant, internal dialogue, the nagging pre-occupation with not knowing the truth. She starts to wonder if she ever loved him, and if he truly missed her or just the fact that she follows behind him. Consumed by doubt and resentment, she searches his office, looking for clues. She struggles with insecurity, realizing how much time she’s spent in their marriage waiting around for him to return from assignments. Rather than confront him by phone, she tells herself she’s waiting to see him in person, to see his face when she asks. He senses through their phone conversations that something isn’t quite right, and now, he’ll be the one waiting for her.

In the days following the arrival of the letter, she wanders aimlessly through the city, obsessing about the letter and the supposed sender, Mira. Feelings of insecurity, paranoia and inferiority overwhelm her, depleting her concentration and preventing her from working.

Then Flash realizes she’s being followed by a mysterious woman in a black abaya, and that she’s seen her a number of times in her daily travels. The woman finally reveals herself outside Flash’s apartment, and she instantly remembers Alexandra from their previous travels in Afghanistan. She continues to show up unexpectedly and uninvited, and her beauty and charisma make Flash feel awkward and self-conscious. Flash is suspicious of her constant presence, and wonders if Alexandra has anything to do with the letter. But Alexandra denies having anything to do with it, and her reaction is cool, calm, and unsympathetic.

Insomnia and migraines take over, and Flash paces through the nights while her upstairs neighbors argue violently, screaming and dragging furniture across their floor. Unable to decide whether she should return to the States, or join her husband in Iraq, exhaustion takes her on a downward emotional spiral of packing and unpacking the new suitcase she purchases in the marketplace. It’s no longer clear to her where her true home is.

Alexandra’s presence stirs up many restless memories for Flash. Night and day she’s consumed with flashbacks to her time in Afghanistan with Brando, Alexandra, and Alexandra’s boyfriend, Amir. Then Alexandra’s lonely, insecure side is exposed at a party they attend together, and Flash relaxes around her, feeling a mutual empathy for their situations. But it’s the last she’ll see of Alexandra in Istanbul. A week later, she sends Flash an e-mail, saying she’s leaving on a flight for Amman.

An unexpected tragedy forces Flash to realize that her self-righteous martyrdom has conveniently distracted her from her own shortcomings, leaving her a self-made victim. Four years later, Flash runs into Alexandra, who confesses the real reason she pursued Flash in Istanbul. Relishing the moment, she finally exposes the truth to Flash about the hurtful betrayal they had ignored all along. Now both women would have to deal with their own sordid pasts in order to get on with their lives.

Maybe it’s Flash who figuratively threw the first bomb, or shot the first bullet on the battlefield of her marriage. But who would be the first to wave the white flag? Universal or personal, there are no winners when any war ends, and the true enemy is sadly revealed after the damage has been done.

This novel is well written, and just the right length. Ana Menéndez does a wonderful job of bringing the character’s humanity to the page. Written in first person, the author places us right in Flash’s psyche, along with her anxieties, insecurities and their extreme accompanying emotions. The intricately layered themes of war and conflict on all levels are something that every reader will relate to while reading this story.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 28 readers
PUBLISHER: Harper; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
REVIEWER: Beth Chariton
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Ana Menendez
EXTRAS: An earlier interview with Ana Menedez (2001)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More war torn stories:The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton

Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward

Certainty by Madeline Thien

More by Ana Menendez:

Adios, Happy Homeland

Bibliography:

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