The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James

Summary and review:

This "secret diary" of Charlotte Bronte follows her romance with Arthur Bell Nicholls. Nicholls was the Brontes' next door neighbor. He worked under her father as the curate of tiny Haworth village for eight years before expressing his love to Charlotte and giving her an offer of marriage. The near-decade that spanned the time between Charlotte's first meeting with Mr. Nicholls and his proposal saw Charlotte evolve from an imaginative spinster to a celebrated writer.

I thought the book started roughly. I didn't buy the idea that these characters were living in a tiny parish in Victorian England. The language seemed stilted and overly formal, yet it was peppered at times with modern-sounding phrases that were completely out-of-place in the dialog. For example, in one scene, Charlotte and Emily are angry with one another. "You cannot stay angry with me for ever," says Charlotte, to which Emily replies, "Watch me."

"Watch me?" Umm, I'm sorry, but I just don't think that Charlotte and Emily Bronte spoke like 21st Century eight-year-olds. So that bothered me. I also didn't like the fact that the "diaries" weren't written in a diary format. The style is more of a narrative than a diary. Charlotte begins the novel by addressing "Diary," but there aren't individual entries; it's as if she's recounting the entire story in two or three sittings.

I did, however, think that the story, if not riveting, was interesting. Syrie James based the plot around letters written by and about Charlotte Bronte and the other characters mentioned. Although the dialog was fabricated and much is conjecture, from what I can tell the story is relatively true to history. It was interesting to learn about the sources of inspiration for the Bronte novels. The lives of the Brontes were tragic, and while reading I realized that I knew very little about Charlotte or her sisters. I admit that formerly I had a difficult time keeping track of the three sisters and remembering which one was which. Having read this book, I feel like I know them better; I doubt I will be confusing them in the future.

Charlotte's romance with Mr. Nicholls is unusual; it was definitely not the sweeping, passionate love affair found in Jane Eyre or Wurthering Heights. It was different from what I expect in a romance and interesting because of it.

I would have liked to know more about Charlotte's early life; actually, I would have liked to know more about the life of all three sisters, Emily in particular. Although her life seems to lack the romance which Charlotte experienced, Emily Bronte is perhaps the most fascinating of the sisters. I've read Wurthering Heights twice times, and each time I was more disturbed by it. What were the circumstances that produced a woman who, coming from the strict, sternly religious upbringing in the rigid Victorian age, could write such a sordid, passionate and disturbing story full of horror, violence, and illicit love?

I also would have liked more more description of the village and the moors. The moors played such a huge part in the Bronte novels, but I never really felt their presence in this book. Haworth as portrayed by Syrie James felt like a bland one-size-fits-all English village.

Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books, and I approached this novel hesitantly. I didn't want to read something silly or talentless that merely coasted off of the popularity of Jane Eyre (Aside: I feel that most of the modern novels based on Jane Austen and her writing fall under this description). I wasn't expecting a true biography, and I didn't get it. I thought that most if not all of the romantic scenes were silly and would have been embarrassing for Charlotte Bronte to have read. However, I did end up liking this book much more than I expected, much more than I did when I first began to read. I imagined that Charlotte Bronte lived a cloistered life akin to that of Emily Dickinson; however her experiences were much more far-reaching than I knew. I'm looking forward to reading Jane Eyre again, and I'm also planning to venture out to Charlotte Bronte's other works and will be looking up some actual biographies written about her. ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (5/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: N/A

Sex: Very mild innuendos

Language: N/A

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Summary and review:

Jacob Rappaport is the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant in New York. In 1861, at the age of 19, he joins the Union army in order to escape the marriage his parents have planned for him--to the mentally disabled daughter of his father's colleague. He quickly settles into life as a soldier, pleased with his anonymity; however, one night he is called into the tent of a visiting general. Expecting a promotion, Jacob is puzzled when the general begins quizzing him on his background. Soon Jacob finds himself on an undercover mission. A Confederate spy in New Orleans is planning to assassinate President Lincoln, and Jacob's mission is to poison the man before he can harm the Union leader. The mission will be carried out on Passover, and the target is Jacob's own uncle. And the army has other plans for their Jewish secret service agent. Upon his return to Washington, Jacob is given another assignment. The daughter of Phillip Levy, one of Jacob's father's associates, is a suspected Confederate spy. The object of Jacob's mission is to marry the girl.

I was so incredibly disappointed with this book. So disappointed. I was thrilled when I first read the synopsis on the book jacket. Jewish espionage during the Civil War? How did I not know about this before? The premise had so much potential. But the book really did not go anywhere. First of all, there was so much needless repetition, of both small details and larger thematic elements. And these repetitions are not subtle, they are often word for word--twice we read about Jacob "mourning" the disappearance of an attractive girl's body part after she had covered up some skin that was provocatively visible, and "errant curls" must have escaped from their owners' carelessly coiffed hair at least a half-dozen times. And there were so many unlikely coincidences that occurred. Jacob meeting Abigail, who looked just like Jeannie and was in love with a soldier who looked just like Jacob, for example. And don't you think someone would have flagged Jacob's name after his first attempt at espionage in the South? It was just too improbable. I didn't buy it and it bothered me to read it.

I was also irritated by the constant corny sexual innuendos. This book always seemed like it was on the verge of becoming a corset buster. While it never crossed that line, there were so many cheesy lines that I actually found myself groaning out loud a few times. I'm sorry, but getting turned on over someone threading a needle? That's just a little too much imagination, in my opinion.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of this book, however, was Jacob. I can't think of the last time I read a book with such a weak, sapless main character. Other than running away to join the Union army, Jacob did not once act of his own volition. Every step he took was forced upon him by another person. And even signing up for the army was something Jacob did only as a last resort, after he was forced into it by the prospect of an arranged marriage. Jacob is constantly having misgivings about what he is doing, but he does it anyway, every single time. Pretty major spoiler coming up right here, but if Jacob was so in love with Jeannie, why didn't he do anything about it? Why did it take two years and the combined efforts of his father and hers to get him finally track him down? I honestly just wanted to shake him, "wake up man and do something!" To be fair, I think that what the author was going for was a discussion on choosing between competing impulses: love and honor, self and society, justice and emotion. However, the debate never fully played out, because the only choice Jacob consciously made was to not act. The rest of the time he was just swept along in the machinations of characters who actually had backbone.

At the conclusion of the novel, Dara Horn includes a fairly lengthy author's note, in which she discusses her motivation for writing All Other Nights as well as the historical sources for her novel's characters and plots. The information contained here is really interesting--she lists off a number of Civil War spies and also gives some background on Judah P. Benjamin, a major player in both Horn's novel and in the actual Civil War. Reading this, I came to a realization about the plot of All Other Nights, which at first seemed like nothing more than a messy, soupy mix of random detail and far-fetched characterization: there are simply too many incredible stories to tell. The historical details Dara Horn mentions in her author's note are fascinating, even though they're only the barest outlines of the stories. In trying to pull them all together, the spy who could dislocate her jaw at will, the slave in General Longstreet's camp who relayed messages through laundry, and the riding crop used to transport messages, Dara Horn tries to do too much. It feels like she was so enamored by the many stories she came across in her research, that she forced them into the novel, and they therefore sit awkwardly with the reader. With this reader, at least. ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (3/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: although little of the action takes place on the battle field, it is a Civil War book and so, as is to be expected, you'll read about quite a few amputations, bloody head wounds, and so forth.

Sex: More cheesy than explicit, however the reader is still privy to way too many of Jacob's fantasies, in my opinion.

Language: "Minor" curse words and blasphemy.

Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas

Summary and review:

Hennie Comfort is an eighty-six-year-old woman who has lived in Middle Swan, Colorado, a mining town situated high in the Rocky Mountains, since leaving Tennessee over 70 years ago. Hennie is, in many ways, the glue that holds the rough mining town together. Befriending everyone from the wife of the president of the mining company to the various "sorry girls" who entertain the men of Middle Swan. This story is about Hennie's friendship with Nit Spindle, a seventeen-year-old newlywed girl who has recently arrived in Middle Swan with her husband. Lonely in her new town and grieving over the loss of her baby, Nit is drawn to the sign hanging over Hennie's home, "Prayers for Sale." When she approaches Hennie to ask for a prayer, a deep friendship is born between the two women. Despite their differences in years, Nit and Hennie are drawn to each other by their love of quilting, their need for friendship, and the tragedies that they have each experienced. Throughout the book, Hennie unfolds the stories of Middle Swan to Nit, by doing so, she is able to confront the darkness of her past and embrace the future.

Sometimes I felt like I was looking at an early draft of the book. The stories that Hennie told seemed unfinished, since they were told without dialog and through the point of view of the third-person narrator. One of the themes in the book is Hennie's story-telling ability, but I never heard her voice in the stories. There were also a number of repetitions: we are reminded constantly that Hennie does not want to leave Middle Swan to live in Iowa with her daughter and that she has some unfinished business to take care of before she leaves. It is clear that Sandra Dallas knows quite a bit about both quilting and life in mining towns, but at times it seems like a little too much. There were places in the narrative that seemed to be trying to educate the reader, rather than telling a story and letting little facts about life in a mining town be gleaned along the way. For instance, on page 74, Hennie is perusing the shelves in the town's general store:

"Another shelf held the tin bins of spices and sultanas. The lettering identified them as sultanas yet, but most everybody called them raisins now, and they no longer had to be stoned."

I read these sentences and thought, "Hmm. I guess raisins used to be called sultanas. Now I know." Instead of fleshing out the atmosphere of the old store, the passage totally pulled me out of the story.

Hennie was maybe just a little bit too perfect, she didn't seem to have a single weakness. Giving Hennie a few more flaws would have made it easier to relate to her, but I didn't mind all that much. Instead, I just really wished that I were her neighbor. Although some of Hennie's stories were sad and dwelt on the darker side of human nature, this was a happy, comfortable book. It reminded me of being young and sitting in a spot of sunshine in the kitchen while watching my mom make cookies on a Saturday afternoon. This book won't change the course of literature, but it doesn't need to. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: The book talks about awful mining accidents and mentions several other deaths, mostly from natural causes. However there are a few murders, including murders of children.

Sex: Despite the presence of the town's "sorry women," there is very little in the way of sex.

Offensive Language: blasphemy and a few "minor" curse words

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

Summary and Review:

Simon Ziele was working as a detective with the New York City police force when his fiance, Hannah, was killed along with 1,000 others in the General Slocum ferry disaster on the East River. In order to escape memories of the tragedy, Ziele transfers to a sleepy one-man police department in Dobson, a city located a few miles to the north.

However, only a few months after accepting the new position, Ziele encounters one of the most brutal murders of his career. A young woman is murdered in her bedroom in an upper-class portion of the city. To complicate matters further, Ziele is immediately contacted by Alistair Sinclair, a blue blooded academic who runs a criminology research lab at Columbia University. One of his "subjects," a psychopath named Michael Fromley has disappeared. And the murder in Dobson bears an uncanny resemblance to Fromley's style.

Although doubtful of Sinclair's motives, Ziele has to trust the researcher and his staff in order to discover the connection between Fromley and the murdered girl, and stop the killer from striking again.

I picked this book up from my library's "Readers' Choice Nominees" table. I've been unimpressed with some of the other nominees, but was pleasantly surprised with this pick. I haven't read a good detective novel in a long time, and it was a fun little diversion. I thought the book's biggest weakness was establishing the setting; despite Ms. Pintoff's obvious knowledge of the culture and history of the era, for some reason I never really felt like I was in turn-of-the-[last]-century New York. There were also a few places where the first-person narration was a bit clumsy. However, the book was engaging and exciting. It kept me guessing and was fun to read. I enjoyed the historical inclusions, such as Tammany Hall corruption, the steamship disaster, "yellow" journalism, and women's rights and the emancipation movement (I did not know, for example, that it was illegal for a woman to eat in a restaurant unaccompanied by a man). I also enjoyed learning about the early use of forensics (such as fingerprinting) and psychological profiling in criminal investigations. I'm looking forward to reading more by Stefanie Pintoff. ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: graphic descriptions of murder scenes
Sex: mention of prostitution, non-explicit references to sexual violence
Offensive Language: slight, if any