The miniaturist

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book rates 3 stars because it had an original plot line, interesting characters, and was not badly written. However, it was overly contrived to the point of pushing credulity. All of the plot twists made it impossible to really understand the characters and their motivations. Too many actions weren’t explainable, and though the deluge of secrets kept the plot moving, when it was done, its randomness felt more like a gambit than an organic story.

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The True American

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is 4 1/2 stars. It is a very well-told story of Mark Stroman who shot a Bengledishi clerk Rais Bhuiyan days after 9/11. It chronicles who these characters are, and what they went through in their lives. Rais in particular has some interesting insights into American culture. A few years after the incident, coincidently as Stroman is about to be executed, Rais seeks to forgive Stroman and stop the execution. It goes on a bit long after the climax, but Gridharadas seems to want to show us how the same cycles are played out here in America, and for some ineffable reason, despite support and even some help, some people never seem to see the same opportunities here that immigrants sometimes find. This book has a lot less to do with racism and 9/11 than you would think; it’s more about paradigms that exist in our culture and why. Unfortunately as nonfiction can tell only facts, there are still some ambiguous plot points, but the change that both men went through is hopeful.

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The Animators

The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is called The Animators and it’s ultimately all about art. How art can get you through..... Fill in the blank. It literally goes through every scenario, health problems, friendship, past traumas, death, breakups, etc. etc. It can get to be a bit much. Also doesn’t alleviate the thought that you can’t have a personal life and a creative one. Yes, it ends on a hopeful note but it’s a slog to get there.

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The Screaming Staircase

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Loved, loved this book. Who cares if it’s written for middle schoolers?! The characters are well-developed, likeable, intriguing. The plot was suspenseful and if I could see the ending coming, I chock it up to my age, and it in no way diminishes the fun. For those tweens wondering what to read, this would be my first recommendation! (Ok, after Holes).

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Bring Up the Bodies

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel ties up the saga of Henry and Anne well with Thomas lurking about doing the lawyerly thing—in the name of the King!— but really exacting revenge for seemingly petty crimes performed years ago. Brilliant! Again, not sure how historicall accurate it all is but it makes a supremely satisfying read. This novel was not quite as nuanced as the first, so it read a bit quicker, (and was much shorter). All the hubbub about the pronoun “he” in the first book was addressed in the second, but since I had figured out her system of using “he” for Cromwell unless otherwise specified, I was actually irritated with continual clarification in this book! Still, a must read to continue the saga. Better historical fiction than most.


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All our labours, our sophistry, all our learning both acquired or pretended; the stratagems of state, the lawyers’ decrees, the churchmen’s curses, and the grave resolutions of judges, sacred and secular: all and each can be defeated by a woman’s body, can they not? God should have made their bellies transparent, and saved us the hope and fear. But perhaps what grows in there has to grow in the dark.’

He once thought it himself, that he might die of grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But the pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.

Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Great historical novel about Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII, and the creation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church as a for Henry to divorce Catherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Mantel does a good job of recounting the history with plenty of humanity, so you feel immersed in that world. It’s always hard to tell how much the author embellishes the truth for me since I am not much of a history buff, but Mantel does a good job of explaining the motivations and machinations in a believable way. So interesting to see how the split in the Catholic Church helped pave the way for the Bible to be available to the common man. Also interesting to see how little power women had and yet so much depended on a woman to produce an heir, and how a woman could use that dependency to her advantage. Women used what means they had to have a voice. Loved it. (The adaptation on tv is slow and whoever plays Cromwell doesn’t portray the humor and cleverness I found in the book)

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Her Body and Other Parties

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was an uneven collection of short stories. “The Husband Stitch” expands and riffs on the story of the woman with the black/green ribbon around her neck. It’s well done and the audience involvement is a genius touch, but it’s chilly tale is ultimately just a retelling. “Especially Heinious” is especially overlong, convoluted and unreadable. “Real Women Have Bodies” is the most original, with a tight storyline that comments on the sacrifices we willingly make as women to fit into society’s mold of fashion and conformity. It is probably the best of the bunch. Several more stories are simply forgettable. “The Resident” is haunting but confusing. And “Difficult at Parties” is simply unreadable. It’s always hard to find a solid collection of short stories but I would simply seek out “Real Women Have Bodies” in an anthology and call it good.

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Babies are heavier than you’d think.

 Her mouth is an endless cavern, into which light and thought and sound descend, never to return.

 Around me was not the absence of sound, but the sound of absence:

My body was so cold it felt like it was disappearing at the edges, like my shoreline wasevaporating. It was the opposite of pleasure, which had pumped blood through me and warmed my body like the mammal I was. But here, I was just skin, then just muscle, and then merely bone. I felt like my spine was pulling up into my skull, each vertebra click-click-clicking like a car slowly ascending a roller coaster’s first hill. And then I was just a hovering brain, and then a consciousness, floating and fragile as a bubble. And then I was nothing.

The receding bubbles leave strange white striations on my skin, like the tide-scarred sand at the beach’s edge.