Yours, Jack and The Night Circus

  Yours, Jack by C.S. Lewis

A wonderful collection of readings taken from Lewis's letters. He is known to have answered personally every letter received from his readers which must have taken up a great deal of his time, yet his insightful replies show he considered each question and comment worthy of a thoughtful response.

 

I've long admired Lewis as an author and a teacher, but having read this book I think I understand him better now as a human being, one who struggled as the rest of us do to live up to our beliefs. He lived with health problems, family difficulties, frustrations and unanswered questions...in short, he was one of us. 

Full of practical observations and encouragement in Lewis's refreshingly clear, honest writing, this book is one to be absorbed a little at a time, then returned to again and again. A treasure.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Full of magic and mystery, the Night Circus appears in your neighbourhood suddenly and unannounced with acrobats, magicians, fortune-tellers and other wonders for the entertainment of all, but something else is going on behind the scenes. It's this insidious something else that ruined the magic for me. I can't see the circus - and thus the book - as fun and whimsical when the purpose behind it is to cold-bloodedly pit two young people against each other in a competition that must lead to death for one of them. Everyone loves this book, but the malevolence behind all the pretty things took the fun out of it for me.

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs

Three narrators tell this story:

1 - Hazel Severy, proprietor of a failing bookshop in Seattle, in L.A. for her adoptive grandfather Isaac's funeral. Isaac, a brilliant mathematician, had left behind a cryptic message for Hazel to unravel. It would lead to further clues and eventually to a secret project of Isaac's that he instructed Hazel to destroy, telling no one. 

 

2 - Isaac's son, Philip, a physics professor whose work showed promise at one time but hasn't impressed anyone since. He's weighed down by his father's disappointment in him, and now his own in himself. 

3 - Gregory, Hazel's brother, a police detective carrying a lot of anger from childhood abuse. What he's been doing with that anger is a secret that seems almost out of place in this story.

I love books set in academia with lots of math and literature references. You don't have to understand them all (and I don't) to get the gist but it's fun to come across one you recognize now and then.  Many of the clues here that Hazel must solve to find her grandfather's work are mathematical. 

The Severy family are brainy types other than Hazel and Gregory who are more like the rest of us lesser mortals. They are Isaac's adopted children, taken in after their foster father, Isaac's son, Tom, was found to be criminally abusive to the children and sent to jail. Tom has just completed his sentence and been released, and now Gregory is watching his every move.

I enjoyed the mystery around Isaac's secret work and the clues Hazel followed to find it, but the story lacked the tension needed to make it a real page-turner. I wish it had gone into more depth about the equation (the one in the title, the end result of his secret project), about the people who wanted it and the unsettling plans they had for it. I have so many questions. Gregory's part of the story, too, was unsettling. It's too much, too big to be thrown in as a sub-plot. I'd love to read a second book that goes deeper into his story as well as expanding upon the purpose and impact of the equation.

I don't think it quite lives up to its potential, but I liked it and would probably read it again to look for things I'm sure I missed the first time.    

The Calamity Club

 The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

Meg, 11, lives in an orphanage run by the miserable, sanctimonious Garnett Wylie. Meg's mother, Charlie, had gone to the store one day and never returned, leaving Meg alone for days until the local doctor, Everett Wylie, found her and took her to the orphanage where he believed she would be better off, or at any rate fed and watched over. The Dr. doesn't know that his wife, Garnett, hates Meg - for reasons that will be revealed later - and deliberately mistreats her every chance she gets. 

When Meg is adopted by a well-to-do family, Garnett is furious and works to get her sent back so she can continue her abuse. Meg's adoptive parents are Lucille, a spoiled brat of a mother, and Robert, a kind, affectionate man Meg comes to love. Robert's parents are supporting them financially while he's finishing the novel he's writing, hopeful that it will get published and earn him an income. But Lucille doesn't like the waiting; she wants more - clothes, entertainment, everything - right now and isn't opposed to lying and cheating to get them. Having adopted Meg under false pretenses, their already rocky marriage unravels until it looks like Meg may have to be returned to the orphanage after all.

 In another story line, Birdie, a young woman who has left her impoverished family for a few days to visit her married sister, Francine, is hoping to secure a loan from her well-to-do brother-in-law. Francine works at the orphanage and gets Birdie to help out in the office there, where Birdie and Meg become friends. She ends up staying much longer than first anticipated when it's revealed that Francine's husband has been hiding financial and personal problems for some time. As the pressure on him becomes overwhelming he runs away, taking most of their valuables with him and leaving them destitute. 

 When Francine and her mother-in-law, Mrs. Tartt, in whose home they live, realize the extent of their debts and face losing the house, they decide to earn money by opening a dance club, offering lessons to local college boys. By this point Charlie - Meg's mother - has returned with a tragic story of why she left so suddenly. It was through no choice of her own and her one goal now is to earn enough to find Meg and take her away. Charlie stays at the Tartt's home with Birdie, both of them taking care of Mrs. Tartt and Francine who are unaccustomed to looking after - or waiting on - themselves. 

 At this point the story takes an unlikely turn. The dance club is to be a cover for something much seedier, not to mention illegal. Let's just say Mrs. Tartt's name becomes appropriate to the enterprise. It was hard to take quite seriously the new rather outlandish characters and dialogue, even the fact that they would come up with such a plan at all. But then who knows what a person would do given such extreme circumstances. Desperate times, as they say, require desperate measures. 

The plot is full of twists and turns, a definite page-turner. It's a tome at over 600 pages, but an easy read and those pages flipped by much quicker than anticipated. 

 A good story as long as you don't question too much.  

A Likely Story

 A Likely Story by Leigh McMullan Abramson

A story of a woman who wrote a novel, had it rejected by publishers, and then fell into a lengthy writing slump. Not an uncommon scenario for hopeful writers, but in this case it all plays out in front of a keenly interested public because her father is a successful, world famous author. The press keeps her failure alive as a matter of gossip. 

When her mother dies and she's sorting through her belongings, she comes across a half-finished manuscript. It's good, in fact very good. Should she dare to finish it and pass it off as her own? If it got published maybe it would change the public's  perception of her, and she might finally live up to her father's expectations. 

What she doesn't know is that her father has been keeping a secret, something utterly selfish and cruel he did years ago that changed the course of her life. When that comes to light, it will change everything.

A good story, with a father you'll be happy to hate.  

The Lincoln Highway

 The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

A road-trip story, of sorts. 

Emmett and his little brother, Billy, set out for California to make a new start. Emmett has just been released from a juvenile detention center, their father has died, and the farm he left them is about to be sold by the bank after foreclosure.

Enter Duchess and Wooly, escapee bunkmates of Emmett from the detention center. Just as Emmett and Billy get underway, the other two steal Emmett's car and the long adventure of trying to get it back begins. They meet a number of different people along the way including a Pastor who tries to steal Billy's collection of silver dollars; Ulysses, a boxcar-riding man who protects Billy from the Pastor and is then hunted down for revenge; a group of colourful women who help Duchess in his scheme to delay Emmett; the author of Billy's book of heroic stories; and Sarah, Wooly's patient but frustrated (with good reason) sister.  

The story is great with lots of characters and (mis-) adventures, but my oh my, how it does go on...and on. I became tired of Duchess very quickly. He reminded me of Tom Sawyer with his foolishness getting in everybody's way and serving nobody but himself. But as Huck put up with Tom, Emmett puts up with Duchess...until he doesn't. 

Possible spoiler alert -

Things take a darker turn toward the end when two of the characters lose their lives. You are left to wonder...Who was ultimately responsible for the deaths? Was the ending reasonable? Believable? Will Emmett and Billy get away with no consequences? Should Emmett?

 

My only real complaint is that I was looking forward to the road trip to California story but it begins only as the book ends, the rest of it being about trying to get the trip started. They are delayed, and delayed again, and again, by Duchess' folly and I was as frustrated as Emmett was (maybe more) by all of it. It's an immersive story, good writing, with some wonderful characters (Wooly and Billy are perfect) but that wasn't enough to make me love it. I don't regret the time I invested (it's 576 pages long) because it is a good story, but I am relieved to be done with it.

Funny Farm

 Funny Farm by Laurie Zaleski

The uplifting, heart-wrenching story of a woman (the author's mother) who left an insanely abusive husband to find a safer life for herself and her three children. They moved into a run-down abandoned house in the middle of nowhere and for years endured the harassment of their maniac father who did everything he could to destroy them, yet demanded the kids continue to spend weeks at his - of course - much nicer home. He had money, but once they went back to their mother he not only refused them any support, he actively worked to make their lives almost unbearable. 

Their mother, Annie, made the abandoned house as much of a home as she could and with a soft heart for any creature in need, took in stray animals until the property became a farm of sorts. Daughter Laurie, the author, grew up with her mother's compassion for animals and promised that one day she would buy them a real farm, a home for her and her mother and all the animals they could care for. 

At the end of each chapter is an Animal Tail, a brief story about some of the animals on the Funny Farm, the unusual friendships they form, health problems they've overcome, etc. These can seem a bit disconnected because they don't always relate to what's in the chapter they follow, but they do provide needed comic relief in the midst of a very heavy story.

Today the Funny Farm Rescue and Sanctuary in May's Landing, New Jersey is open to the public on Sundays and Tuesdays. They have over 600 animals and a large group of volunteers to help look after them. Pictures and animal stories can be found on their website at funnyfarmrescue.