Review: “Prince Lestat” by Anne Rice

Almost 30 years after the defeat of Akasha, the Queen of the Damned responsible for the massacre of thousands of her own kind, there is a new crisis among the Undead. A mysterious Voice has been speaking to various vampires, young and old, provoking them to incinerate others of their kind. Meanwhile, the ancient ones whom the others depend on have hidden themselves away invarious places around the world, ignoring the pleas of the young ones to come together to prevent the destruction of their tribe. Only the strongest have a chance of answering the essential questions – who is the Voice, what is his motive, and how can he be stopped?

Prince Lestat was written in an entirely new way than Anne Rice’s previous books in the Vampire Chronicles series. Rather than being narrated by one principle character, each chapter jumps to a new narrative connected to the main plot. There are, of course, the ever-enduring personalities – Lestat, Louis, Marius, among others. But there is also a multitude of new or rarely seen characters, sometimes characters who were only mentioned in passing in the first books of the series. It is both surprising and pleasant to see these faces again after so much time.

While the structure of the book may be new, the main theme of Prince Lestat remains that which has pervaded all of the series – that is, the question of a vampire’s (and thus, humanity’s) inherent good or evil nature. The Voice that disturbs otherwise peaceful vampires demands the destruction of others, and some see little wrong in doing away with what they see as solely evil creatures. Others insist that this is arcane thinking, that no creature, even Undead, is inherently damned.

A new theme I noticed is a thinly-veiled hostility toward organized religion. This is no surprise to me, considering Rice left the Catholic Church a few years ago, disillusioned by its hypocrisy. She also has a progressive stance on science, which is also heavily reflected in the book.

In general, the book is very much representative of the world today, in which science tries to overcome superstition and people try to overcome their fears and assumptions in order to make a more peaceful world for everyone.

TL;DR: While Prince Lestat cannot live up to the first five books in the Vampire Chronicles series, it is a welcome addition after a 10 year wait.

Review: “Lucky Us” by Amy Bloom

Left on her father’s porch at the age of twelve, Eva suddenly finds herself living in the shadow of her half-sister, Iris, though the two love each other dearly. Eva follows Iris to 1940s Hollywood as Iris pursues her dream of being a star. When things there go awry, the girls travel across the country to New York, to start new lives. Iris’ beauty and talent continues to overshadow Eva, who only wishes for the family she was never allowed. There is joy and success, but also loss and heartbreak for both girls.

I was really excited to read this book. It has already gotten a lot of praise, and  Amy Bloom has gotten a lot of recognition for her past books. Also, I’ll admit that I probably first judged it by its cover, which is pretty cool. But it turns out that this book was just bland. There were one or two interesting characters, but in general I found the cast difficult to like. The two main characters, in particular, were impossible to sympathize with. What’s more, the plot was uninspired.

TL;DR: I’m not sure what Bloom was going for in this book, but she didn’t achieve it. Unless you’re a die-hard Amy Bloom fan, I’d skip this one.

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Review: “Drifting” by Katia D. Ulysse

Drifting is a collection of interwoven stories surrounding the lives of several Haitian men, women, and children, hinging on the devastating earthquake of 2010.

From the publisher:

Ulysse’s characters are everyday people: a ruthless entrepreneur who ferries peasants out of the countryside, promising them a better life in Port-au-Prince; the office worker who learns that the amount of money and time off she receives depend on her boss’s definition of family; a mother of three who is desperate to leave Haiti to join the husband who left her behind; young girls who fall prey to a trusted schoolteacher who advises them to “work smart, not hard.” And readers meet the desperate elderly woman who seeks the help of a vodun priest to help “fix” her dying husband.

I read this one quickly, in about 2 days. The characters were well-developed, believable, and easy to sympathize with. The descriptions were vivid and well put together. Though not a feel-good book by any means, it’s very informative and important.

TL;DR: All-in-all a good, worthwhile read, especially for those interested in modern Haiti or American immigration.

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Review: “The Dinner” by Herman Koch

[From the publisher] A summer’s evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness – the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened… Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified – by everyone except their parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

The characters Koch has created in this book are perfect. By that, I mean each one is carefully crafted and developed, people I could identify in real life if they existed. The book is designed in sections, each one pertaining to a course of the meal. The protagonist is relatable and hilarious in his distaste for his brother and the restaurant in which he finds himself. Despite this, I’m not sure that I liked anyone in this book. They are all morally questionable, though that’s really the whole point of the book – what would you do to keep things the way they always have been?

TL;DR: This is one of those books you’re going to want to discuss with someone else. Really enjoyable and thought-provoking.

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Review: “Gemini” by Carol Cassella

[From the publisher] Dr. Charlotte Reese works in the intensive care unit of Seattle’s Beacon Hospital, tending to patients with the most life-threatening illnesses and injuries. Her job is to battle death — to monitor erratic heartbeats, worry over low oxygen levels, defend against infection and demise.

One night a Jane Doe is transferred to her care from a rural hospital on the Olympic Peninsula. This unidentified patient remains unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. As Charlotte and her team struggle to stabilize her, the police search for the driver who fled the scene.

Days pass, Jane’s condition worsens, and her identity remains a mystery. As Charlotte finds herself making increasingly complicated medical decisions that will tie her forever to Jane’s fate, her usual professional distance evaporates. She’s plagued by questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she doesn’t regain consciousness — and when?

For such a long summary (I left out half of it), I found this book lacking. I enjoyed it, sure. But I didn’t enjoy it as much as wanted to. It was exciting, yet predictable. What I did enjoy was how Cassella developed the intertwine in relationships between characters, and she did a good job of alternating between past and present (something I usually hate in novels).

TL;DR: Fans of love stories and medicine might like this one. Otherwise I think it was over-hyped when it was released.

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Review: “Chasing the Sun” by Natalia Sylvester

From New Harvest:

Andres suspects his wife has left him—again. Then he learns that the unthinkable has happened: she’s been kidnapped. Too much time and too many secrets have come between Andres and Marabela, but now that she’s gone, he’ll do anything to get her back. Or will he?

…

Set in Lima, Peru, in a time of civil and political unrest, this evocative page-turner is a perfect marriage of domestic drama and suspense.

I took interest in this book because I have a certain affinity for all things Peru. It’s my favorite country and it has a fascinating modern history, which this story is a snapshot of.

Sylvester has a talent for character development, giving the reader a sense of closeness to the protagonist as the story progresses. I felt Andres’ hope when he thinks his wife may soon be home, and his devastation when those hopes are dashed.

The one character I most disliked, ironically enough, is Andres’ wife, Marabela. She had little sympathy or understanding for how hard her husband worked to bring her home or the agony he endured while she was gone.

This could be a natural reaction on my part, though, since the majority of the book is told from Andres’ perspective. Also, I can’t pretend to know how it would feel to be kidnapped and held indefinitely, not knowing what’s going on at home. Sylvester’s bio suggests that someone in her family was kidnapped when she was young, and so she obviously has a better understanding of how someone may feel in that situation.

TL;DR: Overall, a well-developed and interesting read. Especially good for those with an interest in recent Peruvian history.

Chasing the Sun is available today from New Harvest.

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Review: “The Hired Man” by Aminatta Forna

From the publisher:

“Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived. A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars.”

It’s been a long time since a book so engrossed me that I was kept up past my bedtime to read it. But with The Hired Man, it was effortless. What I liked was the small cast of characters, which allowed each to be richly developed and complicated.

The story alternates between the present and Duro’s past, telling the story of friendships gone wrong and illicit love that developed at precisely the wrong time.

TL;DR: It’s not an elaborate story, but it is beautiful and emotional (I almost cried, and I almost never cry during a book). It would be a great addition to a summer reading list for those who don’t want to read trash!

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Review: “Why Are You So Sad?” by Jason Porter

Ray, your average corporate slave at an Ikea-esque furniture company, is depressed. What’s more, he’s convinced that everyone around him is depressed, whether they admit it or not. On a whim one morning he creates an employee survey to measure the unhappiness of his colleagues, claiming the survey comes “from the top.”

From there the story is interwoven with a narration of the next couple days in Ray’s life, his amusingly cynical observations about the world around him, and his answers to the survey he created.

In writing Why Are You So Sad?, Porter satirizes the social norm of pretending everything is just great. In the United States, the expected response to “How are you?” is “Fine, and you?” Any other response will throw a person for a loop, myself included. When I worked in customer service, every once in a blue moon (actually, less often than that), someone would respond to me, “How are you today?” with “Oh, not very good, but thanks for asking.” Our society, at least American society, is not accustomed to acknowledging unhappiness in everyday life, and Porter addresses this issue in a refreshingly comical way.

What I really loved about the book is that Porter knows what depression is all about. While he adds humor, he does not sugarcoat it. One of my favorite passages of the book discusses the difficulty of getting out of bed in the morning:

Waking up is like reversing a burial; I was a  Cartesian  brain alive in a coffin, aware of my own thoughts and the requirements of the living, but with no will to rise and proceed with my life.

Anyone who has been through a prolonged bout of depression will recognize the feeling of being powerless over your own body in the morning. I’m impressed with Porter’s ability to capture this feeling so accurately.

TL;DR: This novel is just delightful. And it doesn’t take long to read either, so there’s no excuse not to pick it up!

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Review: “The Paris Herald” by James Oliver Goldsborough

An account of the people behind the most famous American newspaper in Europe (now the International New York Times). It follows the lives of various men and women as they maneuver Paris during the 1960s, an unstable period in America as well as in Europe. They fall in and out of love, move out of the country and back, and hurt each other and themselves in the process.

I’m a sucker for books about newspapers….but this one was really, really difficult to get through. There were just too many characters introduced, all poorly drawn. Goldsborough tried to take on too many people, which resulted in half-baked story lines.

Most of the book is about American men and women cheating on their spouses, a subject I find very distasteful. It would be one thing if that was the story line of one of the characters…but it dominated the entire book. The few characters I had empathy for in the beginning of the book I lost all feeling for by the end.

The most frustrating thing about this book, though, is how it builds and builds…to a climax that never happens. A wife is cheating on her husband and hears him coming up the stairs, about to open the door on her and her lover – and the next thing we hear about them, they’re divorced. A man is considering moving to Málaga, away from his wife and children – the next we know of him, he’s been living there for an indeterminate amount of time. Literary blue-balling…it’s something I’ve never experienced before, and I don’t like it.

On the back cover of the book the publisher writes that it’s “the best story of Americans in Paris since Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.” Hardly. That’s not even a very big genre, and I still disagree. Even Sarah’s Key was much better.

If I were Goldsborough, I would have written a good non-fiction account of The Paris Herald during this time period, if he was so interested in it. I might have enjoyed reading that if it were done well. But this historical fiction piece just does not work.

TL;DR: Skip it. That’s all I have to say.

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Review: “The Other Story” by Tatiana de Rosnay

From the author of Sarah’s Key comes a new book with a completely different direction. The Other Story revolves around a young and very successful writer who goes by the name Nicholas Kolt. The novel that made him famous is a fictionalization of his own story of how he discovered that his father, who died when Nicholas was a boy, is not who he thought he was. Now Nicholas still faces the mysteries behind his father’s life and death, while trying to reconcile himself to his fame. While spending a weekend with his girlfriend at a luxurious resort in Italy, he must come to grips with the past and the people he’s let down since his book took off.

I never found this book dull. It’s refreshing and unique, and provides perspective into how a person’s life can change for the worse with success and fame. It’s told in two time frames, alternating between Nicholas’ vacation in Italy (the present) and his search for his father’s past. Unlike other books that move between time frames, however, I did not find the shift jolting or distracting. The book reads smoothly and naturally. What’s more, de Rosnay’s cast of characters is vivid and colorful, personalities and appearances both brought to life.

I think a common criticism of the book will be its predictability. There were no surprises in the book, no twists, no punches (unlike Sarah’s Key. I’m still traumatized). Also, the original French title of the book directly translates to “In Russian Ink,” a much more intriguing and fitting title, in my opinion. Someone dropped the ball on that one.

Verdict:

The Other Story will most likely receive a fraction of the clamor and praise that de Rosnay garnered for Sarah’s Key, although apparently it has done well in France. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting read that’s worth picking up from the library.

The Other Story by Tatiana de Rosnay is available today from St. Martin’s Press.

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