In My Mailbox Monday: Bitter in the Mouth, State of Wonder

In My Mailbox is hosted by The Story Siren, and Mailbox Monday is hosted at Passages to the Past. This past week I received two books from the Amazon Vine program…

Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong (August 2010, Random House)

For as long as she can remember, Linda has experienced a secret sense—she can “taste” words, which have the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. She falls for names and what they evoke: Canned peaches. Dill. Orange sherbet. Parsnip (to her great regret). But with crushes comes awareness. As with all bodies, Linda’s is a mystery to her, in this and in other ways. Even as Linda makes her way north to Yale and New York City, she still does not know the truth about her past.

 State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (June 2011, Harper)

Years ago, Marina Singh traded the hard decisions and intensity of medical practice for the quieter world of research at a pharmaceutical company, a choice that has haunted her life. Enveloping herself in safety, limiting emotional risk, she shares a quiet intimacy with her widowed older boss, Mr. Fox, and a warm friendship with her colleague Anders Eckman. But Marina’s security is shaken when she learns that Anders, sent to the Amazon to check on a field team, is dead–and Mr. Fox wants her to go into the jungle to discover what happened.

Review: And Yet They Were Happy by Helen Phillips

Those who achieve even five minutes of such perfection–mediated or no–deserve our envy. The world is a humid and difficult place, and we are so often exhausted, and love is strange, and arrives in stops and starts.
And Yet They Were Happy, Helen Phillips

Some stories simply win you over with sheer perseverance.

Opening the cover of And Yet They Were Happy by Helen Phillips I was certainly not prepared for the fable-like entries on each page. More than a collection of short-stories, Phillips’ work consists of brief snippets into her mind, tiny replications of places, moments, moods. Fears. Each scene part of a theme, the floods, the envies, the regimes, taking place in the limited span of a spread of open-faced pages.

Yes, I’d read the collection would somehow involve the likes of Noah and Bob Dylan, amongst others, and I was intrigued. But chalking it up to short themed-fables does not encompass the fictional way our characters find themselves in horrifying plights and comic-relief-scenarios. These stories tug at your heartstrings, and before you know it, you’re eagerly devouring each spread to see what fantastic tale comes next. Will it be strangely magical, or hauntingly melancholic?

Something about Phillips’ stories hooked me when I was least expecting it. I thought it came at the end, but looking back, I think it was we? #5 that did it. The brief entry of a woman “whose sadness was so enormous she knew it would kill her if she didn’t squeeze it into a cube one centimeter by centimeter by one centimeter.” Or perhaps it was we? #6, the story of a couple who devises detailed plans for what to do if they’re ever separated from each other, whether by train or death.

Maybe it was just Helen that won me over, something autobiographical in her writing that opens her head to the voyeurs beyond the page. How she ends the themes with a section entitled the helens. How I can feel passion and pain from her words. Who are we to turn away when someone has opened their mind up like she has?

No matter the reason, And Yet They Were Happy is unique in ways you just don’t find these days. Support Helen’s book (coming May 1, 2011 from Leapfrog Press), and all books published by independent presses. Pre-order And Yet They Were Happy on Amazon or Barnes & Noble and help save the dying art that is unconventional fiction.

5 stars

(I received this book from the author for a fair and objective review)

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Slap-happy review here folks because if you are like me circa a month ago, you’re one of the few people who actually had no idea what this book was about until you picked up a copy from your home-town bookstore because you just “happened” to speed read the end of your last novel and wanted to go buy a new book which you haven’t allowed yourself to do in a REALLY long time.

So, Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist and he gets sued and is found guilty and has to “quit” the magazine he started in order to secretly get revenge. Lo-and-randomly-behold he’s hired by a rich old guy named Henrik Vanger (you know with a last name that starts with a V there’s all sorts of drama to be had) who wants Mikael to write an autobiography of the Vanger family, but also to secretly research the decades-old disappearance/murder of Henrik’s niece Harriet. Oh, and Henrik has “secret information” that Mikael can use against the guy that sued him. Hijinks and scandal ensue, and it’s page-turningly good suspense. Oh! AND! The “girl with the dragon tattoo” is Lisbeth Salander and the book is titled after her but she’s not really the main character which is intriguing. She’s a super smart computer whiz who finds out lots of secret things that people aren’t supposed to know and she assists Mikael in his investigations.

Overall I am not disappointed. With all the hullabaloo I wondered if this book was going to be for moi, and I can happily say that it’s definitely for moi and I do wish to be reading the sequel ASAP but good things come to those who wait and I shall not rush out and hop on your bandwagon. You have to get over the random translation issues, and you must try to remember all the various characters, because there are plenty, but then you realize that in this world of suspense-thrillers and paper-back-action-adventures this is one of the good ones and perhaps it’s because he’s not-of-this-country and also not-of-the-living.

In conclusion: if you are like I was a month ago and wondering if you should finally get around to reading this book and wondering if it is really worth it, buy the cheap paperback or rent it from the library and ye shall not be disappointed if what you want is good suspense. Cheers.

4 stars

Waiting on Wednesday: The Map of Time

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted at Breaking The Spine. 624 pages of time-travel fantasy leading into maternity leave in June? Heck yeah I want this book.

The Map of Time by Felix Palma (Atria, June 2011)

A page turner in which a skeptical H.G. Wells is called upon to investigate purported incidents of time-travel and save lives.

Teaser Tuesdays: And Yet They Were Happy

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted at Should Be Reading.

Currently I’m reading a very unconventional type of book, And Yet They Were Happy (May 2011, Leapfrog Press) by Helen Phillips. Best described as a series of short, fable-like stories lasting only the span of a spread of pages, each tale is different, unique. Some are incredibly lighthearted and whimsy, some are depressingly dark and tragic. Each brings about something unexpected. Here’s a teaser and I strongly encourage you to support the independent author and booksellar by visiting Helen’s website and buying her book next month.

I want this to be published so Bob Dylan might read it before he dies. These sentences are the closest I can get to rock ‘n roll. How pathetic. This is the closest I can get to a skateboard, a shadowed face. May there be some kind of drums or darkness in the white spaces between the worlds. (34)

Rozlyn Press Cover Release: A Long-Forgotten Truth by Rachel Ballard

Rozlyn Press released the image of our first ever cover! Visit www.rozlynpress.com and LIKE us on Facebook!

Review: The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman

Carol Goodman always has an unparalleled way of transforming a location in a book into a beautifully haunted atmosphere. Her descriptions jump from the page, and every time she sets her novel in a new location I know it’s going to be lush, gothic, decrepit, and wonderful.

Her location in The Ghost Orchid is no different. Set at the upstate New York sprawling aged and crumbling Bosco Estate, Goodman unites an intriguing cast of characters amid the ivy-covered statues and dry fountains. Novelist Ellis Brooks has hoped her acceptance into Bosco’s notorious writing program would allow her the freedom to pursue her novel in peace. But the past pursues her instead, and she soon finds that the residents of Bosco were not brought together by chance.

At times a romantic mystery, at times a suspenseful thriller, Goodman deftly weaves between an ages old missing child case, and the present day sleuthing Ellis is forced to undertake into the people and places around her. Always intriguing, I never want to finish a Goodman novel. Though the writing in this, her fourth novel, occasions into the trite and predictable, I was still engrossed by the scene set before me.

I had one issue with the end of the novel and a short side-tracked path that Goodman decided to briefly explore, but it was not the focus of the novel so I can set it aside as author-folly. Overall, I still love her novels and find them to be uniquely mysterious and haunting. I haven’t read many other authors that can successfully pull off a mystery while still making it literary. In this day of mass-market quick-publications, I delight in the fact that there are authors like Goodman who take suspense to another level.

4 stars