The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

 Sunday, Mar. 31, 2024--San Antonio

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is the first in a set of two books dealing with a group home for magical children.  (I think the author must have loved Harry Potter!)  In society, there are normal people, and there are those born with magical powers.  For the "good" of the majority, the government has set up special homes for those who are magical--to keep them separate from everyone else.  They also have implemented a "See something, say something" campaign to make sure that no magical person escapes the system.  Linus Baker is a case worker for the government who is sent to investigate the "orphanages" (although the children are not necessarily orphans; some have just been removed from their parents) where magical children are housed.  He has done this for 20+ years, living a rather bland life, following the rules of his job with fever, and feeling good about himself for always putting what is best for the children first in his field inspection reports.  He is "married" to the rules and regulations after all these years.  In the book, though, he is spent on a special mission to a unique home--one he didn't even know existed.  It is on an island just of the coast and having only a few children.  One of them is very unique, and the governing board is worried that the child could be a danger to others.  He is the Antichrist--the very young son of the devil.  Linus tries to do his inspection by-the-book as an objective evaluator.  But that is hard.  The children are fascinating.  They want to hold his hand.  They want him to go on their weekend exploration adventure.  And the two adults on the island with the children are just as casual and want him to use their first names.  With a month on the island to gather information and do his report, it becomes harder and harder for him to resist the pulls on him--the joy of being at the sunny seaside instead of the rainy city, the joy and humor of the irresistible children, the skills he observes the two adults using in teaching and guiding the children, and even the attractiveness of Aurthur, the man in charge of the home.  At the same time, the nearby coastal community, even though the residents are paid to ignore the home and its occupants, there are grumblings and the residents are more and more fearful as they hear rumors.  Soon Linus begins to wonder if the administrators who assigned him this job have an ulterior motive for having done so.  It's an interesting book written for both children and adults.  And it has some ties to political happenings in today's world.  I wouldn't call it great literature, but it is a good read.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Tuesday, March 26, 2024--San Antonio

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is an unusual novel that was named one of the top 10 fiction novels of the past decade by TIME.  What makes it different is that it involves multiple versions of the protagonist's (Ursula's) life story and the way that minor changes may affect the future--sometimes significantly, but sometimes not so.  Ursula is born into an upper-middle class family in England in 1910.  The story restarts over and over with a concentration on the ability of Ursula to recall incidents from the future in the previous versions of the story (sort of a reverse deja vu situation) allowing her to make alternative decisions in the retelling.  The early part of the book covers her birth, the shooting in Sarajevo, and WWI setting the stage for understanding the retelling-aspect of the alternative life choices Ursula makes in the repeated versions.  The majority of the book then involves revised versions of stories regarding her life during WWII.  It's a complicated book--not only because of keeping track of the revisions but also due to the vocabulary I didn't know and the frequent quotations/statements in various languages beyond English (Latin, Italian, German, etc.).  Fortunately, I read the book on a Kindle, and the touch of an unknown word would often give a pop-up definition and it wasn't necessary to be able to translate the foreign language usage.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen

Sunday, Mar. 17, 2024--San Antonio

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen was a finalist for the Lambda Award in the category of murder mysteries and was named a best book by Amazon, Buzzfeed, etc.  It takes place in San Francisco in the 1950s.  The protagonist is a cop who is gay and, therefore, leads a mostly closeted life.  He asks a friend in vice what bars they are raiding each evening that he wants to go out and makes sure he goes elsewhere.  But one night his friend is off duty and they raid where the protagonist is.  He is caught in a restroom stall with another man and with both having their pants down.  He is forced out of the police department and is considering suicide when a mysterious woman contacts him to work for her as a private investigator to solve a murder.  She doesn't want to go to the police or just any private investigator, because she lives a "hidden" life in a compound with other queer characters, and the woman who was murdered is her "wife."  The book emphasizes how dangerous it was to be gay at that time, how most gays lived a "hidden" life, how difficult it was to be out to anyone, etc.  The investigation takes the former cop to the compound where privately, everyone is a part of a chosen family while maintaining a public profile of being a regular family--mother, son, son's wife, son's private secretary, etc.  The book was very easy to read in two days.  The writing was simple, but the mystery was complex.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5. 

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Saturday, Mar. 16, 2024--San Antonio

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is historical fiction set in Penang, Malaysia in the early 1900s--just before and just after WWI.  Penang was a major crossroads city in Asia at the time and Malaysia was a British colony. The story brings together a number of interesting events that were happening in Penang at the time--a mystery murder by a prominent British female, a visit by the noted author Somerset Maugham visiting within the English community while looking for tales that he could turn into new stories for publication, and a visit by the Chinese revolutionist Sun Yat-Sen who is trying to raise money within the Chinese community for his next attempt to overthrow the Chinese government and establish a democracy there.  Woven into all of this are other aspects of life--stories of elaborate parties, stories of greed resulting in both success and failure, stories of hidden intrigue and history, and stories of affairs between persons from different cultures, affairs between people from the same cultures, and homosexual affairs by men who have married to try to cover their sexual orientation at a time just after the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde.  Knowing Penang from having visited there twice, I was fascinated by the book which was long-listed for the Booker Prize last year and I didn't want the story to come to an end.  I gave it 5 stars out of 5. 

Lessons by Ian McEwan

Sunday, Mar. 10, 2024--San Antonio

Lessons is one of several books I have read by Ian McEwan.  It was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and Vogue.  I agree that it is a good book, but it is not, as far as I am concerned, the best book by the author.  I consider his novel Atonement to be one of the best I have ever read, and I have read a few more of his books that are better.  Lessons, however did grab my attention and keep it most of the time.  It's the story of one man who has lived approximately throughout the time of my own life--from the mid-1940s to today.  Set mostly in England, he is aware, like me, of his good fortune in life related to timing--avoiding having to fight in wars, seeing changes that he considers to be improvements in life for society in general (such as the fall of the Berlin wall and the related movement toward democracy in former communist countries), the improvements in quality of life in general, etc.  However, as a child he is molested by his piano teacher and he cannot get it off his mind.  Although he manages to stay away from her for 3 years, he cannot get over the physical sensations of her touch, and, at age 14, he shows up at her home and they become lovers.  This relationship changes the trajectory of his life.  The teacher is assertive in trying to maintain the relationship and to control him.  He loves the pleasure of sex which they have every day and often more than once a day.  Eventually, however, her control threatens his chance for high education and he becomes aware that it is not good for him.   But it is too late to hope for a higher education; he must run away from both her and education completely to escape her grip on him.  That experience affects him in terms of sexual relationships and financial standing for much of the rest of his life.  After a number of failed relationship that end because the women get tired of him expecting daily sex, he and a woman fall in love and get married.  She, however, eventually runs away leaving him with their 1-year-old child.  She cuts all contact and blames him for smothering her life by expecting daily sex and not having a good job which meant that she had to work to make money for them when what she really wanted to do was to be a writer.  And she eventually does become a very famous author.  He is a good man who has given up his chance of being a professional pianist to get away from his first lover and now sacrifices his hope to be a poet to raise his son.  But every person has their own version of what has happened--him, the piano teacher, the wife who became a famous artist, his parents about their lives, the writer's parents about their lives, etc., and each believes their own "truth" and hides secrets.  Over time in one's life, one eventually is presented with alternative perspectives on what was happening at any given time.  And not all things keep getting better in life over time--in one's personal life or life in general. It's a complex book, and at times there were details presented in too much detail--more than was required.  But McEwan is a very good writer in terms of getting the reader emotionally involved in the stories he tells.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

 Saturday, Mar. 2, 2024--San Antonio

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore was a BBC Top Book of the Year in 2023.  It is the story of a family living on the Isle of Wight in southern England.  The mother Margo is a "force of nature" type of person.  She ran away from home at age 16 with Richard, a poet in his 20s.  Life was exciting, but the pressures of keeping up with it led to Richard's alcoholism becoming unmanageable.  So after 10 years of marriage, he left when their 3rd daughter was only about 4 years of age.  His leaving sent Margo into months of depression during which she drank and stayed in her room.  The oldest daughter, only 8 or 9 years old, had to learn to cook and to accept the responsibility for taking care of her two sisters (with some help from Margo's sister living nearby and a housekeeper).  Most of the book takes place much later in time when the two oldest girls are in their 30s and the youngest is in her late 20s.  It's a time when Margo still tries to arrange and control their lives and the girls are rebelling in different ways and for different reasons.  Margo has never allowed any discussion of Richard since he left the family and the youngest, who cannot remember any of the time he was with them, is increasingly interested in knowing her dad and understanding what happened.  It's an interesting story.  I gave it 4 stars out of 5.