Book review: Circe, by Madeline Miller, Little, Brown and Company

Circe is a goddess of Greek mythology, the daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She has the power of witchcraft – the ability to transform her enemies into animals with the help of herbs and spells.
Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles, another novel based on Greek mythology that won the Orange Prize, has taken Circe’s mythology and turned her into the central character in an epic novel.
Early on, Circe is banished to a deserted island, where she lives with animals as her only company. Miller adeptly weaves together various Green myths to create the story of Circe. Readers are fortunate to encounter characters like Hermes, Zeus, the Minotaur, Icarus and Odysseus in this story of loneliness, love and loss.
I’m a sucker for anything to do with Greek mythology and although this book sat on my shelf for more than a year waiting for me to crack it, once I did, I devoured it. There’s non-stop action, coupled with universal archetypes and the literary deliciousness that all myths embody.
When the familiar stories come along, it’s as though we’ve heard them 1,000 times before, but with each storyteller comes a new twist, a deeper understanding.
Miller is skilled at such twists and insights. Her Circe is a force on Earth and a character worth knowing.
I haven’t read The Song of Achilles, but it’s now high on my list.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett, HarperCollins

This is a story of a brother, Danny, and his sister, Maeve, and the unbreakable bond between them. Ann Patchett is such a gifted writer that readers will find their own familial relationships reflected here, without consciously realizing the similarities.
There’s an absentee parent, a cold step-parent, a loving father who is fundamentally flawed, a man who sort of lets life happen to him rather than making any of his own choices and a woman who is strong, but alone and stoic.
How they relate to each other is what makes this novel the success it is. The house itself – although central – is really irrelevant. Readers will travel with Danny and Maude through childhood, the teen years and well into adulthood.
The Dutch House has been lauded by many and is a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. Patchett has written seven novels and three non-fiction books. As always, in The Dutch House, she is both funny and touching, sentimental but wry. Readers won’t go wrong with this one.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Book review: Greenwood, by Michael Christie, Penguin Random House

Read this book. Whether you're a budding environmentalist, a downright tree hugger or neither of the two, give it a go.
I opened this book on holiday in Tofino, knowing I had just two days to read its 512 pages before it was due back at the public library. I thought I would give it 50 pages and if I didn’t like it, I could return it. If I loved it, I could either buy a copy or keep it a few days overdue.
As it happens, neither choice was necessary because I devoured it over the two days.
Written by B.C. author Michael Christie, it’s a sweeping family saga, that begins at the turn of the 20th century and ends in 2038. But the story structure is round, like a tree, so it starts where it ends and the middle is the beginning.
We begin with meeting Jake Greenwood, a tour guide in one of the world’s last remaining forests, which happens to be on an island just off the coast of British Columbia. She’s in deep debt with student loans and just barely surviving in the dystopian world of 2038. But she is ever so much more than that, as the reader learns with each ring of the tree. Like all of us, she is the product of everything, both good and bad, about the generations who came before her.
Readers will take a peak into the life of a present-day carpenter who uses salvaged wood to decorate high-end homes and restaurants. They’ll learn about a life-long hippie save-the-forests protester who gave up a fortune and lived in her Westphalia van for her entire adult life. They’ll learn about a West Coast lumber baron, who made his millions thanks to others – both the trees and his own family. And they’ll learn about a veteran of the First World War, who comes home to a life of PTSD and a life on the run, living on trains during the Great Depression.
They’re all spectacularly linked and readers will delight in finding out exactly how and why.
The theme of family – what it means, how they’re formed, the forces that shape them – is woven throughout the story.
How important is DNA? More important than our parents’ and grandparents’ lived experience and traumas? Do those traumas shape us or make us stronger? Those are questions Christie explores in this deep, but extremely readable novel.
This book was longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was chosen as a CBC Best Canadian Fiction title of the year, both with good reason.
Michael Christie’s first book was The Beggar’s Garden, a selection of short stories, based in Vancouver, which won the City of Vancouver Book Award. His second book was If I Fall, If I Die, also nominated for a number of awards. He’s a former carpenter and homeless shelter worker, who lives in Victoria and on Galiano Island.
Greenwood is a brilliant book, for its story, its structure and the timeless questions it explores.

Mini book review: Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, PenguinRandomhouse

I’m late to the party about Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, which has been out for more than a year and was on top of the New York Times bestseller list for 20 weeks. But, as the saying goes, better late than never. Speaking of late, this one kept me up all night. Even though it’s a cliché, I could not put this book down once I started it.
It’s the story of Kya, a young girl who is abandoned by her family, one-by-one, before she’s 10 years old. Her dysfunctional and abusive family lived in the marches of North Carolina, in a shack. Tragedy splits them apart, but Kya stays. She fends for herself, barefoot, penniless, alone.
Kya’s story is fascinating in itself, but it’s interwoven with a 1969 murder mystery that unfolds in alternating chapters. A local handsome and popular young man, with an penchant for sleeping around, who is rumoured to have been involved with Kya, is found dead, setting off a compelling whodunit.
Although she’s isolated personally, Kya is deeply connected to the natural world, something that is beautifully expressed in Where the Crawdads Sing. Author Delia Owens had already co-written three bestselling non-fiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa, so the connection to the natural world isn’t just a fluke.
This is a fully satisfying murder mystery, interwoven with an engrossing tale of a young girl who survives despite having to fend completely for herself. It’s irresistible.

Mini book review: The World That We Knew, by Alice Hoffman, Simon & Schuster

A little Alice Hoffman, anyone? In The World That We Knew, Hoffman writes about the French Resistance during the Second World War, but in her particularly special way. Fans of Hoffman – who is one of my favourite writers – will know she always mixes in a little magic into her stories of families, women and love.
And The World That We Knew is no different. It tackles one of mankind’s darkest hours, but tells the story through women’s strength, resilience and power.
Hoffman’s name may not be a household word, but she has written more than 30 novels, including Practical Magic, which you might remember was a 1998 movie starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. The World That We Knew is one of her best.
The story begins in Berlin, where a Jewish mother sends her 12-year-old daughter away for her only chance at safety, even though it breaks her heart to do it. The mother sends her daughter off with the protection of a female magical Jewish creature called a golem, created from clay with the help of a Rabbi’s daughter.
The daughter, the Rabbi’s daughter and the golem travel to France, spending the fateful final years of the Second World War intertwined with the French Resistance. It all comes together in this story of love, heartbreak, sacrifice and more. Did I mention there is a heron involved? Enjoy.

Mini book review: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, Simon and Schuster

Looking for a sweeping family saga filled with memories, love and heartbreak to read this summer?
Look no further – pick up Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane at your local book store and enjoy 388 pages of superbly relatable story. Ask Again, Yes is the tale of two families growing up next door to each other in suburban New York. It starts in the 1970s when the two fathers are young men, starting out as cops in New York City and follows them through marriage and all the way into old age.
In between, there’s love, of course. There’s also much more – mental illness is a key theme, as is addiction. Memories, abandonment and forgiveness play notable roles in this narrative.
But it’s the way Keane puts readers right inside the everyday lives of her characters that makes this novel special. We follow them to Little League games, to college classes, to the playground, all the while privy to their innermost thoughts. And Keane, who lives in New York and has written two other novels, is gifted at giving readers authentic characters who will remind them of themselves.
This one will stick with you long after you’ve read the last page.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Summer reading list: Two juicy mysteries and two au courant memoirs

I haven't reviewed any books in nearly a year, so here's an attempt at catching up!
Here are links to four reviews of books I've read in the last few weeks -- two juicy mysteries and two au courant memoirs.

Mini review: Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro, Penguin Random House - read this memoir if you're thinking of getting your DNA tested! Read my review here.

Mini review: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott, Penguin Random House - read this if you're interested in reconciliation. If you're not, there is even more reason to read it! Read my review here.

Mini review: Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson, Penguin Random House - Jackson Brodie lovers rejoice - he's back! For Atkinson fans and newbies, a romp of a modern mystery. Read my review here.

Mini review: Conviction, by Denise Mina, Hachette - part grand escape, part private eye meets podcaster novel, this one's a page turner. Read my review here.

And finally, although I've already passed the books onto a friend and didn't review them, I want to put in a recommendation for Sally Rooney's two novels: Conversations with Friends and Normal People. I read Normal People first, loved it, and immediately ordered Conversations with Friends, which I also loved. Rooney is an Irish writer and very interesting to read.

tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: Conviction, by Denise Mina, Hachette

This book is a tour de force. Denise Mina, Scottish author of 13 novels, keeps getting better and better. In Conviction, Mina hits us with action right from the first page. Anna McDonald, mother of two married to an older lawyer, gets hit with bad news first thing in her morning. Her husband is leaving her, to go off with her best friend, and taking their two daughters with him.
McDonald is shocked and distressed, but doesn’t fight back. Readers know why, right from the get go – it’s because she has been living under a false identity throughout her marriage and cannot travel without a passport.
McDonald escapes through a true crime podcast, which serves as a handy storytelling device for Mina to give readers the necessary background. The podcast is about a wealthy family, killed in France when their yacht mysteriously sinks. Podcast chapters alternate with real-time chapters about McDonald’s shock and distress in the opening parts of the book.
Soon, though, McDonald and a friend, Fin Cohen, an anorexic former rock star, are off on a grand adventure, one part running away another part determined to solve the mystery of the sunken yacht, which is, of course, linked to McDonald’s surreptitious past.
At times, Conviction seems a tad formulaic, particularly in the page-turning nature of some of the chapters. But the formula succeeds thanks to Mina’s storytelling skills – you won’t be able to put it down.
See other book reviews here.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson, Penguin Random House

Fans of Jackson Brodie can rejoice – he’s back chasing bad guys in Big Sky, Kate Atkinson’s latest novel. It’s been nine long years since the last Brodie caper and it’s been a long wait. Not that I’m complaining – Atkinson wrote some glorious novels in the interim, like Life After Life and A God in Ruins. But it’s damn good to have Brodie back.
He’s still a private eye – this time chasing an unfaithful husband to get proof of his infidelity for his wife – but more meaningful, if unpaid, work awaits. There’s a human trafficking ring operating underground just beneath the surface of the seemingly quaint, but slightly sleazy, seaside village, complete with pier attractions, where Jackson finds himself. He’s father to a growly teenage boy and a young woman about to be married.
As always, Atkinson packs so much into this novel that it begs to be read twice, just to catch all the finer details. But even for casual readers, this mystery is a joy. The characters are strong, including Crystal, a trophy wife, Reggie, a police detective who was a nanny in an earlier Brodie novel, and a pragmatic teenage boy named Harry, who works backstage at two of the pier attractions, most notably in the dressing rooms of drag queens and an aging, angry comedian.
The murder is almost a side note in this caper, but it does tie together the many subplots. When writing Brodie, Atkinson is always hilarious, but also profound. Little tidbits of depth – like one throwaway sentence when Jackson ponders the afterlife – are sprinkled throughout, adding to the reader’s experience.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com

Mini book review: A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, by Alicia Elliott, Penguin Random House

Reconciliation is a buzzword in the lexicon of Indigenous relations in Canada. In the memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, author Alicia Elliott takes readers right into the heart of why reconciliation matters.
She is Indigenous, from the Six Nations of the Grand River, in Ontario. She grew up on the rez, in a two-bedroom trailer, with four siblings and her parents. Elliott goes deep, writing about mental health, suicide, residential schools, Indigenous child welfare and its relation to neglect or poverty, teenage pregnancy, sexual assault, racism and much more.
In a series of essays, she relates these big issues to her own life, while also linking them to global history and current events. There’s also an essay set in Vancouver, where Elliott was
the 2017-18 Geoffrey and Margaret Andrew Fellow at the University of British Columbia.
I don’t want to make the book sound depressing. Yes, it does take on tough subjects, head first with no holds barred, but it’s also compelling, funny and modern. It’s also hopeful. Consider this passage, an idea attributed to nehiyaw writer Erica Violet Lee: “If historical trauma is strong enough to alter our DNA and remain in our bones for generations, then there is no question in my mind that the love of our ancestors is in our DNA and our bones as well. The memory of that love is strong enough that it still exists in us.“
Canada is in a moment – a moment where reconciliation can go right or wrong. Readers who want to know more about why it’s crucial, need look no further. Read this book.
Tracy.sherlock@gmail.com