The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

by Erin Morgenstern

published by Anchor Canada (www.randomhouse.ca)

I am so happy to finally obtain this awesome and fantastic exciting book. I first heard of it a few years ago but wasn't able to get it until this month of October. I am thrilled that it went far above my expectations, and they were pretty high! Erin Morgenstern is a fabulous writer. This is probably the longest book I've ever read and yet I read it steadily, only stopping to sleep, eat and since it is frosty these days in northern BC, chopping wood for the fireplace, what could be more cozy for reading?

I loved this book, it's amazing and unexpected, characters clearly defined, the circus itself a character coming to life only at midnight and closing as the sun begins to rise. Not quite your usual circus, no animal acts, no Big Top, no clowns, but on the other hand, not like the famous Cirque du Soleil or the equally famous Russian Circus. A circus like no other. No, Le Cirque des Reves is something beyond, something living, something elegant. Yet, there is a dark side, too. Not obvious, but competitive, selective in its application of what the competitors, who remain unknown to most, will be compelled to do.

What impressed me was the flow of this book. I felt like I could just become one of the spectators, in fact, I think that is exactly what I was! The story is very unique with a style of its own.

The Hydrofoil Mystery by Eric Walters

written by Eric Walters
 published by Puffin Canada
1st published 1999 Reissued 2018

A fascinating YA mystery the basis of which comes from the actual invention and historic bites of interest from WWI, I found the book very well-defined in its time-frame and place, Halifax, Nova Scotia, with WWI German submarines attacking the east coast of North America, lack of money, lack of entertainment for teens; no wonder people were desperate for both money and entertainment. Thus we find our young hero, Billy McCracken, not so much a hero at this point, he is getting in with the "wrong" crowds and his mother is in a quandry. This boy has a lot of anger buried and possibly doesn't even realize it, but more than that he is gambling and smoking, neither a particularly a healthy life.

Through some interesting maneuvers he finds himself sent off to work for Alexander Graham Bell. He has no idea of how his life might change. This is where the book became very interesting to me. Aside from Bell being an inventor and teacher of so many things, he becomes a real friend to Billy, who he insists on calling William McCracken. Alexander Graham Bell invented the first hydrofoil boat in 1911, intended to resist enemy submarines reaching/attacking the east coast. This I found fascinating. I believe young teens will find this interesting and older teens will be drawn to the technical side, but also what happens when the war and early technology clash. Billy becomes very interested in this machine that is so amazing. When danger lurks, he and others working with Bell are ready and willing to save the ship from attack. I thought the book had a lot going for it and in it. The lives if people in the Maritimes, the inventions and the well-written inventor, the technology, Bell's "lessons" to help young people. Altogether it makes for good reading.

The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

written by Emily Barr
published by Penguin Teen Canada

What an amazing read! I am not normally a fast reader, and wasn't really what one would call fast when I read this book, but I read the entire book in one sitting, very unusual for me. Flora Banks was a healthy, happy young girl in the early part of her life, but it all ended when she was ten. I have always been interested in stories that have a medical background running through it. Why would everything stop when she was ten when she is seventeen now? There is definitely a story here that will prove to be very interesting and very surprising. There is obviously going to be something unique in its structure and in Flora's life. She has a tattoo, she's had it since she was ten, it is on her hand and says FLORA, be brave; very strange for a child that age. But Flora is not five, she is seventeen! She is at a party, it says so on her arm. She and Drake kissed on the beach and she remembers, she's never remembered anything for any length of time, but this she remembers longer than any other thing. Unfortunately Drake is her best friend Paige's boyfriend but he is moving to Norway to study in the frigid north. But why is she like this? What happened when she was ten?

According to her notebook, which is not in her handwriting, Flora can not retain the memory of anything within an hour or possibly less. (Until Drake kissed her on the beach, that's a memory she has partially retained but won't write in the book.) The notebook tells her she had a tumor and it was removed causing her to lose memories of the present. She has Anterograde Amnesia. But does she? Something doesn't sit right. When her parents are called to Paris because her brother is ill, they assume her friend is coming to be with her, not realizing that her friend is angry with her and not a friend anymore. As a result, Flora, having found her passport and money is on her way to North Pole in Norway to visit Drake, so she decides. With Drake in her mind she is remembering, she is not losing the memory. Will she find him? Will she be able to get herself halfway around the world with her memory problems? What is so frightening about traveling? Why didn't her parents take her with them to see her brother in Paris? Why does she want to go to Flambards? Why are her parents so against it? So many questions in this book. The ending took me by surprise, though it shouldn't have. It is in the background of the "memories" and the notes on her arms, post-it notes, and notebook. Why won't her parents take her to a favourite place? This is an incredible story of loss, fear, sadness, lies, over-protection, self-blame, angst, confusion, joint effort between Jacob her brother and Paige who is her best friend, to free Flora from her trapped brain. So much sorrow, angst and need. Did Flora ever get real comfort? Her biggest support will come from the dying brother Jacob and her friend Paige. FLORA, be brave.

As said earlier, I usually take longer to read a story but I was so into it, and I admit to a bit of confusion and occasional lapses while reading, leading to distrust. This is a book I will read again, and a great book club story in my opinion. So, now, what is the real reason for the subterfuge. It is listed as Young Adult, which I consider absolutely correct, Flora is seventeen - now eighteen.

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

  

Published by Minotaur Books

When Louise Penny writes a book, I always find it comforting. This may seem a strange word to use in light of the fact that her novels feature Chief Inspector Gamache and therefore feature a crime of some sort; murder, loss, injury, death. The author paints a picture as clearly as if she has been the artist. The fact that this book in particular features art does not detract from her word pictures. The Long Way Home is the 10th Inspector Gamache book with more to come.

At this time of his life, Armand Gamache is recovering from severe injuries to body and mind, as is his son-in-law and former deputy Jean-Guy. Both are no longer working for the Sûreté du Québec, but duty calls to them regardless. Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie have found the perfect healing village of Three Pines, bi-lingual and calming, they purchased their home there a few years ago. This very small village might more easily be referred to as a neighbourhood, so close and welcoming the residents are. One would think that crime would never attempt to touch such a place, but no place is devoid of such things. But has a crime actually been committed? That is the question. Clara, what some might call a spontaneous artist, slapping paint on canvas with happy abandonment, is worried. She asked her husband to leave for one year and it is now past the time he should have returned. They are both artists, but with entirely different methodology. Why has he not come home? Is he dead or alive?

This book takes us inside the minds of several people, as most if not all the books in this series do. Louise Penny treats her creations as individuals she knows personally and that is what makes her books so comforting yet brilliant. We know these people. They are complete, flawed, righteous, giving, loving, supportive, in other words, they are Everyone in Anytown. As this story takes us through the growing pains of art and love, new discoveries about the population of these people are made. I love a book that teaches me something new, and this one teaches me a lot about art and its connection to heart and soul. It teaches me how to see into a painting.

Why can this group of friends not find Peter? It's almost as though he has stepped into a painting and disappeared. Yet, they are able to track his journey, but where will it take them in the end and what will they find? Clara, his wife, is sure she will find him but even the former Chief Inspector has little idea where and how to look. The journey takes this odd bunch of friends halfway 'round the globe and back. Though their journey has been extensive, it has been fruitful in an unusual way. Sometimes insight comes from surprising places. As some pieces fit together others fall apart. I loved this book for its depth of perception, its humour, its colour, its mystery, the many surprises, and the opportunity to get to know these characters and their village.

A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

Published by Scribner Publishing
Review based on Advance Reading Copy (ARC)

Amazing true story, beautiful, horrific, courageous. I couldn't stop reading.
This book will take your breath away. From an abusive household in Alberta, Canada as a child whose escape is found in old National Geographic books, Amanda has no idea how much she is learning about escaping into her mind or how much she will need this in her future. Her future as she sees it is travelling to the many countries she reads about. After she and her brothers move with her mother to a safe house, she starts planning for a future to include this travel.

Amanda Lindhout's memoir is a masterpiece of how the mind can change itself whenever it needs to, how it compensates, over-rides, and deals with the worst kinds of trauma to keep lifeblood flowing. But not to get ahead of myself, first Amanda finds a way to earn enough money to finance a trip to South America. The first of many trips interspersed with coming home to work for more money. As a cocktail waitress, she has advanced through the ranks until she is in a place to earn high tips, enough to make a trip every year. This takes her to countries in South and Central America, Asia and Africa as what she considers a beginning to many more amazing places. The writing in this stage of the book is absolutely wonderful, bringing to mind all those National Geographics, while she backpacks her way through these countries, we feel we are seeing what she is seeing, experiencing what she is experiencing. She makes us feel what she is feeling, and it is consistently beautiful. Some countries like India and Pakistan she visits more than once, but then she begins to expand her horizons: Afghanistan, Iraq, Bangladesh, Ethiopia....

Between trips she turns again to cocktail waitressing, but her need to be somewhere exotic takes over every year, and each trip she gets deeper into dangerous territory. She travels fr a time with a freelance photographer, decides that next trip she wants to show the world to everyone. She becomes a freelance photojournalist, occasionally selling photos and stories to various papers and magazines. She has teamed up with Nigel, another freelance photographer, an Australian. When she decides to head into war zones, she asks him to join her and he semi-reluctantly does. Here the book shifts dramatically. It is 2008 and she has chosen to go into Somalia.

Once in Somalia, known as the 'most dangerous country in the world,' everything changes. Although at first she and Nigel are enjoying the relatively 'safe' city of Mogadishu, on the fourth day she, Nigel, and their drivers are abducted by extremist Muslims. Assuming that all North Americans are rich, their abductors set an impossibly high ransom, which their parents are unable to even come near to paying and their respective governments have no intention of paying. Thus begins their ordeal which will last for 463 days of captivity and isolation. Kept in one room at first, they pretend they want to convert to Islam as a way of staying alive. They are visited sometimes by their captors wanting to learn English, and to teach them the Koran.

As time goes by and their captors' demands are not met, they are moved from house to house, always in the dark. Nigel and Amanda escape from one of the houses and are recaptured. From that point on, the two are completely separated and are shackled; Amanda gets the brunt of punishment as a woman, which includes rape, beatings and torture but she is able to separate herself in her mind from what is happening, a product of her childhood days. She is kept in complete darkness, later she is also bound and gagged. As fever takes over, beatings and rape continue almost daily but she is now living in her mind and guided by a calmness brought on by what seems to be a voice and is able to use different approaches to this separation of her being and her mind. Her mind's eye sees a beautiful house, one that she constructs room by room, floor by floor, until it reaches the sky. A focus for survival.

When finally rescued, neither Amanda nor Nigel are able to comprehend the fact that they are free. They can't comprehend that the food they are given is meant for them, they are fearful it will be taken away or they will be beaten. Both are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it will take a long time to learn how to handle that. It may never be gone. But Amanda has built that inner strength from her ordeals and although the fear is always with her, she becomes forgiving of many things, including forgiving herself. In the collaboration of writing this book, both Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett must have shared some very difficult and intimate moments, I can't even begin to know how hard this would have been. I commend both for how they went for it no holds barred.

In the Epilogue, we learn that she founds a non-profit organization, the Global Enrichment Foundation to help provide and support education in Somalia, and partnering with other groups, funding scholarships to thirty-six Somalian women attending university, among other projects. This book is gut-wrenchingly real, powerful, and well-written; although the memories and fears of the atrocities are obviously very much a part of her, she has chosen to move on with her life in a positive way.

Really Dead - a Ria Butler Mystery by J.E. Forman

Published by Dundurn

When action is called on this set, they really mean business!
An entertaining romp in the British Virgin Islands as a TV reality show is in the multiple forms of production. Ria Butler is just returning from a trip in the Andes when she receives a call from her brother's friend to come to the British Virgin Islands. Forget Galapagos and the promised photo for her niece of a blue-footed boobie, she is on her way via a number of flights.

As a travel writer, Ria Butler has seen many strange and interesting things, but nothing could have prepared her for what she finds when she arrives on the set of the reality show her brother James is producing. When she finally gets to the island where filming takes place she finds herself unable to avoid being under surveillance everywhere. How will she be able to find out from Rob, James' friend, what prompted his urgent call that James may be in trouble?

On her arrival James certainly seems to have both hands and more full with his room-mate, presumably not the trouble referred to. Ria does smell a mystery, though, and her curiosity expands the more she gets to know the cast and crew, but goes into overdrive when it comes to James' partner the obnoxious Dan, and Albert the mysterious courier, curiously coming and going at odd times flying between the islands and Toronto, delivering canvas bags one way and carrying a metal case back.

When action is called on this set, they really mean business! Fast-paced and unexpected action. As a reality show, competition runs in the extreme with the finale about to be filmed. With the assistance from afar of Ria's boyfriend Glenn, an investigative reporter, the mystery deepens. A young member of the crew has disappeared and left behind her luggage and her severed foot...or was that a production prop? Why do the police in Toronto say she is at home and whole? I loved this book, not just for the mystery and intrigue, but for the feel of the excitement, practical jokes, hustle and bustle of TV production. Well-written and taut, great characters, J.E. Forman knows what she's talking about. I'm happy to learn this book is first in the "Ria Butler series," a series I'm sure will have a long run.

Not an Ill Wind by Nancy Gettelman

I learned a lot in an easy-going way, much easier, in fact, than the people who populated this story. I refer to the very interesting trip to Tibet, the amount of information about the country, the history, and Buddhism, while the travelers taking the trip suffered greatly on their actual journey.

Therein lies the mystery, always on the edge of the story causing a feeling of discomfort without an event to explain it. Who are the two Chinese men who the travelers catch glimpses of along the way? Why are there no reservations made for their journey? Why did their host and travel guide turn the group over to his Sherpa wife who obviously does not have a clue to handling a tour, nor does she speak any English. These are the questions that kept me going right through the book, the discomfort growing quickly and the mystery slowly building.

This was a most interesting read, entertaining and teaching, with a satisfying final solution when the reader discovers that most of the travelers are not who we imagined; some were not who they said they were, others were taking the trip for different reasons. Even our main character is keeping mum about what she hopes to gain other than the insights of the trip itself. What she hopes will come of this trip are answers to a relationship, how true her feelings are in this older woman/younger man relationship, and whether she should stop it or pursue it. But the reader must read to the very end to learn what that resolution will be, quite apart from the resolution of the mystery.
Nancy Gettelman has a very distinct style of writing, like a conversation with a friend relating incidents that have happened to her within the story. Her books are diverse. For a good read, informative, mysterious, and satisfying, I highly recommend this delightful and adventurous author.