The Crowded Leaf

Quickies and the Christmas List!

Alayne — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:16:52 +0000

Book #2 is mid-edit/mid-design right now for Rozlyn Press, which explains the lack of postings happening on ye old Leaf. The Galveston Chronicles is going to be amazing, though, and my absence here will make up for itself when you read Audra Martin D’Aroma’s debut. Trust me, you will love it. (Visit TGC’s page at Rozlyn Press)

I haven’t been not-reading though, I mean seriously, when would I ever stop? In the last few months the most recent books I’ve read were The Magicians by Lev Grossman and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri,

The Magicians is The Chronicles of Narnia meets Harry Potter with some adult content sprinkled in. Really fun, really speedy. The lack of complete detail makes the book seem to fly by. In just over 200 pages Quentin had been accepted into a magical school, gone through all four years, and graduated. And although Grossman clearly borrows from other magically themed books, his additional plot points and characters are original enough for me to forgive his obvious references to Narnia, the White Witch, the Pevensie children, and all things Hogwarts. If you like those, you’ll like this. I’m very much hoping I receive the sequel for Christmas. (4 stars)

The Namesake is a coming-of-age story about the Ganguli family and their transition from a traditional Indian family to a more-Americanized version of themselves. Gogol Ganguli is born and raised in America but his parents stick with their home’s traditions. As he grows, Gogol fights the expectations of his parents and rebels to create a modern version of himself, away from his Indian heritage. It is a beautiful and at time tragic story of a boy growing into a man, struggling to find himself. The writing is smooth and fluid, and we really come to empathize with Gogol, understanding the reasons for the paths he chooses, but knowing it will not end happily for him we must wait and watch Lahiri’s plot unfold. Definitely recommended. (4 stars)

And for fun, these are the books on my 2011 Christmas List:

Hoping Santa brings me at least a couple of these readable goodies!

P.S. Who’s the cool kid now, y’all. My quirkily-unique name is all the rage in Book 3 of the Game of Thrones series. Yeah, yeah! Alayne in the house!

Review: The Rose Labyrinth by Titania Hardie

Alayne — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:31:31 +0000

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. A woman named Lucy needs a heart transplant, which she gets. She then becomes involved with her doctor, Alex. Somewhere along the way they’re pulled into a mystery that involves Alex’s brother, Will, John Dee (circa the original Queen Elizabeth’s time), riddles, roses, labyrinths in churches, angels, Shakespeare, and the Rapture. If you can make sense of the plot and it’s circumnavigations, then by all means, have at it, my friends. For me, it was way too much. The riddles on the papers that Lucy and Alex find have much potential, but are SO numerous the reader is inundated trying to figure them out. Eventually they become so overwhelming you start skipping over the details to just get to the meat of it all. With all the clues and mystery there should be a grand finale at the end, but it’s over so quickly it’s as though it was all a dream and the reader just woke up to a hollow sensation that none of it is real.

A wonderful effort, brilliant idea, but for me, The Rose Labyrinth was completed mired down in it’s own mystery.

3 stars

Review: The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Alayne — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 14:13:25 +0000

Sarah Addison Allen’s 2011 novel, The Peach Keeper, takes place in the town Walls of Water in North Carolina. Set near mountains and mystery, shrouded in fog, Allen disembarks from her usual light and delicate magical realism to attempt a darker novel, one with a murder mystery. Unfortunately, while I deeply appreciate her attempt at suspense, The Peach Keeper comes across as forced and piecemeal.

Willa Jackson and Paxton Osgood are unlikely friends living down their high-school memories as adult women. During the renovation of the Blue Ridge Madam, a beautiful old antebellum mansion that used to belong to Willa’s ancestors, a body is discovered. The discovery and investigation of the body bring Willa and Paxton together on the trail of their grandmother’s secrets. While this is the plot described on the cover of the book, the body isn’t discovered until half-way through the novel, meaning there’s a lot of unnecessary set-up that doesn’t quite fit.

Allen sticks to her usual magical realism at times, but it seems disjointed in the context of the mystery. At one point a group of women start spontaneously revealing their innermost secrets to each other, but there’ s no explanation as to why this occurs, and it never resurfaces for conflict resolution. Throughout the novel there are forced mentions of fantastical things; a bell over a door ringing but no one entering, the scent of peaches floating on the air. We get that they’re supposed to be manifestations of a ghost, but they’re too obvious.

In her prior novels, Allen’s character’s inner-dialogues were realistic and true to life if not a little fluffy; in The Peach Keeper they are grasping and cliché. Paxton’s crush on her best friend is described in several different ways, when we get it loud and clear. There’s far too much telling, and not enough showing.

If I could compare The Peach Keeper to The Sugar Queen, I would say The Sugar Queen is a wispy, airy, bakery-made cupcake with whipped frosting that feels light as air in your mouth, while The Peach Keeper tastes like a mass-produced Little Debbie snack–sweet, but not the home-made baked good you were craving.

Reading on her Facebook page, I know that Sarah has just undergone surgery, chemo, and radiation for breast cancer. I’m sad I have to give The Peach Keeper a negative review as I really loved The Sugar Queen and Garden Spells. I know I, like all her fans and readers, are wishing her a speedy recovery as we anticipate her next book.

3 stars

(I received an advance copy from LibraryThing)

Teaser Tuesdays: The Peach Keeper

Alayne — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:52:12 +0000

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted at Should Be Reading. For one reason or another Sarah Addison Allen’s latest two novels aren’t making me jump hoops like her earlier ones. This is either because they’re becoming formulaic, which was the case for The Girl Who Chased The Moon, or my literary sensibilities are changing (i.e. growing?). Regardless, there are some things I appreciate about The Peach Keeper that do make it unique from her earlier works. I’ll clue you in when I post my review. For now, here’s a teaser:

If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there’s more to what’s written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don’t see. (4)

Peter Pan, Chapter 6 & 7 – Fairies do what?

Alayne — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:14:50 +0000

Avery’s on the tail end of her cold so we were able to resume Peter Pan yesterday. A week or so ago we read Chapter 6 which involved the Lost Boys building a house for Wendy to recuperate in after she was shot by one of them when Tink said she was evil. Nasty, Tink. Peter Pan sits outside after the house is built keeping guard as fairies fly by on their way back from an orgy. Yup, orgy. That’s in the book, not my addition. I know back in the day an orgy is just a party (or is it?) but really? I can just see Avery now on her birthday: “Yay! An orgy!”

Chapter 7 is short and a bit dull. Wendy, John, Michael, and all the Lost Boys move back down into the underground house via hollow trees made especially for them. Everyone’s snug-as-a-bug and Wendy darns some socks and plays Mother-dearest while the boys slumber. Lots of description, lots of detail of Tinker Bell’s fashionable nook in the wall. Lots of classic language referencing designers and things I’ve no idea about.

To be frank, I’m bored to tears of this book and ready to give up, but, as my husband reminded me, I shouldn’t teach Avery to be a quitter. So we’ll persevere, though I’d rather be reading The Chronicles of Narnia. Them’s the good stuff.

Review: The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Alayne — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:47:59 +0000

I’ve been so busy editing and mothering lately that it’s not often I’m able to read anything purely for pleasure. Not that editing and mothering aren’t incredibly beautiful and fulfilling each in their own ways, I just haven’t been able to sink into a book without an ulterior motive since before Avery was born. (Looking back I realize I reviewed Kamala Nair’s The Girl in the Garden at the beginning of the month, however that book clearly left me underwhelmed since I can’t remember being satisfied with it as a reading option.) Finding something to represent reading for that “just-a-hobby” reason was like drinking a cool glass of water on a hot, humid day. I literally feel as though my soul has being quenched of thirst.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon is not Sarah Addison Allen’s best novel, but that doesn’t make it awful. I’ll get the bad parts over with quickly: partially cheesy dialogue, semi-cheesy romance, predictable plot and outcome. Done. Moving on.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon contains all the magic and sparkle of Sarah’s previous novels, this time in the form of the sweetness of cake and the glow of young love. Emily Benedict moves to her mother’s hometown following her death. Greeted with cold shoulders and dark glances, Emily has no idea that her mother’s legacy is not one the town is willing to forgive. With her eight-foot tall grandfather choosing to spend more time in his bedroom than explaining her past to Emily, she is forced to fend for herself and find out why Mullaby, and a boy named Win, are so mysterious.

Julia has returned to Mullaby for her own parent’s death. Left with her father’s barbecue restaurant and costly mortgage, Julia counts the days until she can leave again and return to the life she’s created since she left Mullaby when she was a teenager. But fate has a different plan for Julia, and the love of her teenage life refuses to let her go so easily.

Surrounding these two stories are the secrets of Mullaby: the lights that glow in the woods every night, the strange townspeople, the Coffey’s and why they don’t leave the house after sunset, the ever-changing wallpaper in Emily’s mother’s room. Each nugget of mystery is almost as magical as Sarah’s other novels, and just as delicious as the cakes Julia bakes every day and night.

While The Girl Who Chased the Moon is not as effortless as Garden Spells or The Sugar Queen, it’s still a delicate, magical morsel of a read. Part of it feels as though the author was grasping at straws, trying to repeat her earlier success with a carbon-copy type of novel. It’s not as original as her earlier works. Still, I do love Sarah Addison Allen’s hold of magical realism; it’s fantastical without being pure fantasy, and seductive without hitting you over the head with its obviousness. She’s still one of my favorite magical realism authors, and I hope The Peach Keeper is a better representation of her skill.

4 stars

Rozlyn Press Call for Submissions

Alayne — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:16:56 +0000

My small press is at it again, folks. We’re open for submissions of unpublished manuscripts by female fiction novelists. Visit the SUBMISSIONS page for the details. Spread the word and post this on your page!

Peter Pan, Chapter 5 – An island full of hooligans.

Alayne — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:49:26 +0000

“They are forbidden by Peter to look in the least like him, and they wear the skins of the bears slain by themselves, in which they are so round and furry that when they fall they roll. They have therefore become very sure-footed.”
Peter Pan, Chapter 5

Mother-daughter reading of Peter Pan resumed last night, much to Avery’s joy (if by joy I mean utter indifference followed by a nap).

We’re on the island now, and most of chapter five deals with the inhabitants of the Neverland. The lost boys are looking for Peter, the pirates are looking for the lost boys, the redskins are looking for the pirates, the beasts are looking for the redskins, and so on, ad infinitum. Sprinkle in some scary stories about Hook’s hook, and pirate adventures. End with a tragic weeping from the sky, “poor Wendy,” followed by AN ARROW TO THE BOSOM of poor Wendy all thanks to the cantankerous Tink. A sweet feminine fairy she is not, more like a spiteful banshee.

Things are starting to pick up now. We see the burgeoning roots of Hook’s animosity toward Peter, and I had forgotten about the silly crocodile with the tick-tocker in her belly who wants to eat Hook. Lots of childlike suspense in this chapter, what will become of our dear, poor Wendy?

Q&A with Audra Martin D’Aroma

Alayne — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:15:43 +0000

Visit this here website to read a fun Q&A with Audra Martin D’Aroma, author of Rozlyn Press’s upcoming 2012 release, The Galveston Chronicles.

Peter Pan: Chapter 4 – The Psychedelic One

Alayne — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:47:33 +0000

Little Miss Avery was awake for all of Chapter 4 last night, so now in her tiny three-month-old spongy brain she undoubtedly thinks that she’ll be able to fly someday, and survive doing so by taking food from the mouths of birds and manage sleeping while floating on her back. That’s Chapter 4 of Peter Pan in a nutshell. Peter and the kids have flown the coop, literally, and are on their way to the Neverland where they are greeted by PIRATES and so cannot land. When said pirates start shooting at them they scatter and are separated. Poor Wendy is left with Tink, who is furiously jealous of Peter’s attentions toward Wendy (don’t forget, they thimbled in Chapter 3), and so Tink leads Wendy to her doooom, which we will uncover in Chapter 5.

Far less depressing, Chapter 4. A bit trippy instead. Reads like a drug-induced hallucination. Not that I would know.

This picture is from my favorite version of Peter Pan, the 1960 movie starring Mary Martin. Somehow this is the one I was raised on in the 80s and I’m fiercely loyal to my childhood favorites (1985 mini-series of Alice in Wonderland as another example).