#BookReview: The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat - Edward Kelsey Moore

Friends for over 40 years, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean have seen each other through everything.  From forbidden love to a cheating husband, the Supremes have been there for each other. And if one of them got out of hand, the other two were there to steer her back on course.

Unlike THE Supremes, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean aren’t singers. They’re just friends that happen to reside in the same small Indiana town. But Big Earl, owner of Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat diner, gave them the front window spot while they were in high school and, from there, they’ve watched over and gossiped about the comings and goings of Plainview, Indiana residents for decades.

The plainest and rowdiest of the group, Odette is a no nonsense kind of woman and always has been. If anyone knew that she had conversations with her dead mother, they’d think she was losing a few screws. If they knew that her mother’s ghost hangs out with Eleanor Roosevelt’s, they’d lock her away for sure.

As teens, Clarice’s cheating boyfriend Richmond, now her cheating husband, had a hard time finding someone to double date with because Clarice’s mother insisted she bring Odette along. But, as the saying goes, there’s a pot for every lid and James fit Odette to a tee. Clarice never would have imagined that her homely friend would wind up in a more successful marriage. She never imagined she’d be married at all.

Growing up poor, and with the skankiest mother in town, Barbara Jean vows that she’s going to have a much better life. Rescued from a future that was starting to resemble her mother’s, by the Supremes and Lester, her much older husband, Barbara Jean has been on a slippery slope for the longest. Clarice and Odette see it for what it is, but are too polite to say anything.

These were the tender considerations that came with being a member of the Supremes.We overlooked each other’s flaws and treated each other well, even when we didn’t deserve it.

When one of the Supremes becomes ill, not only is she forced to confront some truths, the others are as well. While the results may not be pretty, you can guarantee that the path they take to get there is pretty entertaining. As Sophia stated in The Color Purple, “things gone be different around here from now on.” Indeed, they are.

352pp
Published: March 2013
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.

 

Theme: With a Little Help From My Friends by Ike & Tina Turner

#BookReview: Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto #BP2W (Japan)

I knew when I started this challenge that there might be some books I wouldn't get because of cultural differences.  Two weeks in and I've come across that first book.  I really wanted to like Kitchen, but it was strange and otherworldly.  It was a huge hit in Japan though, so perhaps it's just me.

Though the book has one name, it's actually two short stories.  The first, Kitchen, tells the story of Mikage.  Most people have a favorite room in their house and for Mikage, it's the kitchen.  However, it's more than just her favorite room, it's where she feels most comfortable.  So when her last living relative dies and she's offered a chance to move in with a classmate and his crossdressing father, she gladly accepts, based on the level of comfort she feels in their kitchen.

In the second short, Moonlight Shadow, young Satsuki mourns the loss of her boyfriend.  Though she's comforted by the presence of her deceased boyfriend's brother, who dresses in the school uniform of his deceased girlfriend, she longs to see Hitoshi again.  An encounter with a stranger on her morning run offers her that opportunity, but only if everything goes according to plan.

Both stories dealt with death and crossdressing men.  I don't even know what to do with that honestly.  I've not read anything else from the author, so I don't know if these are focused on in her other works.  It just seems strange that both topics would play such prominent roles within the same book.

152pp
Published: 1988

In 1603, after decades of civil warfare, the Tokugawa shogunate (a military-led, dynastic government) ushered in a long period of relative political stability and isolation from foreign influence. For more than two centuries this policy enabled Japan to enjoy a flowering of its indigenous culture. Japan opened its ports after signing the Treaty of Kanagawa with the US in 1854 and began to intensively modernize and industrialize. Following three decades of unprecedented growth, Japan's economy experienced a major slowdown starting in the 1990s, but the country remains a major economic power. In March 2011, Japan's strongest-ever earthquake, and an accompanying tsunami, devastated the northeast part of Honshu island, killing thousands and damaging several nuclear power plants. The catastrophe hobbled the country's economy and its energy infrastructure, and tested its ability to deal with humanitarian disasters. - CIA World Factboo

Location: Eastern Asia, island chain between the North Pacific Ocean and the sea of Japan, east of the Korean Peninsula 

Size: 377,915 sq km, slightly smaller than California 

Population: 127,368,088 

Ethnic groups: Japanese 98.5%, Koreans 0.5%, Chinese 0.4%, other 0.6%. Up to 230,000 Brazilians of Japanese origin migrated to Japan in the 1990s to work in industries; some have returned to Brazil (2004)

Languages: Japanese

Theme: Kimigayo

#BookReview: Colored Sugar Water - Venise Berry

I remember thinking a few months ago that I missed the writing of authors like Venise Berry.  Then I re-read Colored Sugar Water during a read-a-thon and wondered what exactly it was that I was missing.  The book was okay, but I think I oversold myself on the story line before.  Maybe I liked her other books, So Good and All of Me, but this one? I found myself giving it the ultimate side eye on several occasions.

Colored Sugar Water is Lucy Merriweather's story.  The granddaughter of a Louisiana healer, Lucy believes in a little of everything, from fortune telling to voodoo to God.  Lucy, the regional manager of a successful chain of fitness centers, is stuck in a stable, but boring, relationship with Spencer, a McDonald's franchise owner.  Spencer is dependable, but far too predictable for Lucy.

Adel Kelly has been Lucy's best friend since their college days.  Married to Thad, who's always on the brink of the next great idea, Adel is tired of carrying the weight of their household on her shoulders.  At her age, she should be thinking about having babies, but if Thad doesn't get it together, she'll be raising any future kids as a single mother.

When the two happen across a late night commercial for psychics, Lucy dares to call the number, even as Adel warns her not to.  Before she knows it, Lucy is caught up in a whirlwind romance with Kuba, the man that answered the phone, and Spencer and Adel are both losing the Lucy they used to know.

This book started off fairly decent and then it evolved into Christianity versus voodoo versus the supernatural.  It just didn't work for me.  I prefer to keep my genres separate.  I know that when I pick up a Tananarive Due book, I'm going to get vampires and what not.  When I picked up this book, there was no indication that Venise Berry was going to try to take me there.  If I had realized that before I started reading, I probably wouldn't have picked it up.

272pp
Published: December 2001

 

Theme: Nightmares by Dana Dane

#BookReview: Home - Toni Morrison

For the last few years I've told myself and anyone that would listen that I'm just not smart enough to read Toni Morrison.  I watch ToMo stans like Tayari Jones expound on her greatness and all I can think is, it must be over my head.  The last time I read a ToMo book and was able to comprehend it the first time around was pre-Beloved.  I read Song of Solomon, Sula and The Bluest Eye in high school and college and loved them.  Then Beloved came along and I had to read the book, see the movie and read the book again before it finally made sense to me.

After that came Jazz, Paradise, Love and A Mercy. I struggled with the first three and didn't even try with A Mercy.  I gave it to my mother as an audio book for Christmas and I swear she wrote me out of her will.  So when I saw that Morrison was publishing a new book, I was hesitant to request a copy from the publisher.  But they sent it and so I read it.  And I loved it!  I feel like the ToMo that wrote Song of Solomon is back.  Or maybe she never left. Maybe I've just come full circle.

Before I get into the review, let me just say that Tayari Jones has written a brilliant review of this also.  Mine isn't nearly as eloquent as hers.  When I talked to her about Home a few weeks ago, she tied characters & stories from previous ToMo works together in ways I would have never imagined.  So I'll give you my regular reader thoughts on why I loved the book, but if you're looking for something deep and meaningful, read her review when you finish reading my ramblings.

Simply put, Home is the story of Frank Money, a Korean War veteran returned home a fraction of the man that he was before he left.  While he returns whole physically, mentally, he is shattered. Back in the states a little over a year, he receives the news that his beloved sister, Cee, is ill.  As he journeys from Seattle, Washington to Atlanta and then Lotus, Georgia, the reader begins to understand that something is not quite right about Frank.  His anxiety levels are high and he can be impulsive.  As to whether or not his anxiety is a result of the war or his life prior to the war, it’s hard to tell.  He works hard, though, to keep the anxiety at bay.

From the moment her step-grandmother Noella saw Cee, she hated her.   Cee represents everything she resents about her husband Salem and his family.  Forced to flee Texas, in a scene repeated too often in towns like Rosewood, Florida and Tulsa, Oklahoma, Frank and Cee end up in Lotus, Georgia with their parents.  While their parents work the fields, Frank is responsible for Cee.  He sees the way Noella treats her and vows to always be responsible for her.

 “Misery don’t call ahead.  That’s why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.”

With Frank off at war and no one else to guide her, Cee falls for the first pretty boy that looks her way. Ditched by him shortly after arriving in Atlanta, Cee is determined to stay there and make a decent life for herself instead of returning to Lotus and Noella.  She lands a dream job working in a doctor’s office, but we already know that all that glitters isn’t gold.

The biggest takeaway for me, and I feel like this was Cee’s “a-ha” moment, came in the form of a conversation with Miss Ethel, a local woman who nursed Cee back to wholeness after a run-in with the good doctor nearly killed her:

“See what I mean? Look to yourself.  You free.  Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you.  Seed your own land.  You young and a woman and there’s serious limitation in both, but you a person too.  Don’t let Noella or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are.  That’s slavery.  Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about.  Locate her and let her do some good in the world.”

Though those words were said to Cee, I felt like that were meant for Frank as well.  While Cee was held back by physical pain, Frank’s pain was mental.  Those words and that way of living allowed both to move forward and become the complete people they were meant to be.

160pp
Published: May 2012
Disclosure: Copy received from publisher, opinions are my own.

 

Theme: Zoom by The Commodores 

Tayari's review

An Interview with Anjali Banerjee, Author of Haunting Jasmine

Q: When and why did you begin writing?
A: I began writing, or I should say scribbling, the moment I could pick up a crayon. As a kid, I loved to type stories on my little toy typewriter. I stapled the pages together and made little “books” with illustrations and copyright notices inside the front covers. I didn’t know any other kids who did that. 

Q: When did you first consider yourself a writer?
A: I’ve always considered myself a writer to some degree, but I didn’t take my writing seriously until I was in my late twenties, when I signed up for the Writers’ Digest School correspondence course in short story writing. Only after I moved to Washington State and joined a critique group of working women authors, did I believe I could get published in book-length fiction.

Q: What inspired you to write your first book?
A: Before I wrote my first novel, I penned many short stories, many of which were published in literary journals such as the University of Baltimore’s Passager: A Journal of Remembrance and Discovery, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, Lynx Eye, Writing for Our Lives, and an anthology called New to North America. After moving to Washington, I also wrote feature articles for local newspapers and company profiles for coffee table history books. In a sense, I was gearing up to write a book, building my publishing credits and experience. Then I found my writing group made up of working, published novelists who inspired me to try writing a romantic suspense novel. I thought it would be easy to write romance, but my critiquers humbled me. I had a lot to learn, and over 50 agents rejected that first novel. One agent wrote, “It’s not different enough.”

That agent doesn’t know it, but she inspired me to write my next novel, MAYA RUNNING, based on my experience as an Indian immigrant growing up in Canada. What could be more different? I got an agent almost immediately, and a couple of weeks later, we had a two-book deal with Wendy Lamb Books/Random House.

Q: What was the hardest part of writing Haunting Jasmine?
A: It took me a while to hone in on a story arc for Jasmine that would lead to a hopeful ending without being too predictable. I knew she would reinvent herself and find the promise of happiness, but I didn’t want the path to be too formulaic. I can’t tell you how I figured out what to do, or I would be giving away the plot!

Q: From reading Haunting Jasmine, I can tell that you have a love for literature.  I noticed that you managed to weave in The Chronicles of Narnia and Curious George into the story.  Did any more of your favorite works find a home in Haunting Jasmine?
A: I love THE FUR PERSON by May Sarton, and of course I love all the other authors as well. I ended up deleting a few of my favorites in the final draft – Rumer Godden, Paula Danziger, and Alexander Key, for example.

Q: I don’t know if you’re familiar with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Mistress of the Spices, in which the lead character intuitively knows which spices her customers seek because the spices “speak” to her.  If you are familiar with that work, did it influence Haunting Jasmine? If not, how did you come up with the premise for the book?
A: I have not read MISTRESS OF SPICES, although I’ve heard it’s good! My idea came out of nowhere. One day I thought, What if dead authors could come to life in a bookstore and try to get people to read their books? The idea seemed “high concept” to me –easily pictured and easily explained in a sentence or two.

Q: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
A: I try not to force any message onto readers. I believe my job is to try to write an entertaining story. My values and interests will naturally emerge (can you tell that I love animals, booksellers, books, love stories, Pacific Northwest islands, and ghosts?), and an underlying theme also naturally emerges (for example, a theme might be that love can heal all emotional wounds if you only take a chance and believe – that kind of thing). But in the end, the readers will interpret the story in his or her own way.

Q: What books have most influenced your life most?
A: Too many books to name! If I mention a few authors, I will inevitably exclude many other important ones. I read widely. I enjoy children’s books, literary novels, mysteries, commercial fiction, memoir, historical fiction and nonfiction – a wide range of genres.

Q: If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
A: I would choose many writers, but mainly other authors who are in or have been in my critique group and have taught me what they know: Sheila Roberts, Elsa Watson, Carol Cassella, Suzanne Selfors, Susan Wiggs, Lois Dyer, and others.

Q: What book are you reading now?
A: I’m reading a few different books, including Fannie Flagg’s latest hardcover, I STILL DREAM ABOUT YOU (I love her humor), Anita Shreve’s RESCUE, Janna Cawrse Esarey’s memoir, THE MOTION OF THE OCEAN (she and I will be presenters at the upcoming Whidbey Island Writers’ Conference), MAJOR PETTIGREW’S LAST STAND by Helen Simonson, and more…

Q: Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
A: I’m reading a wonderful literary manuscript, a historical novel due out from Hawthorne Books in October: THE LUMINIST by David Rocklin. I will certainly give the book a glowing endorsement.

Q: What are your current projects?
A: I’m working on another women’s fiction novel for Berkley/Penguin, tentatively titled ENCHANTING LILY and due for release in February 2012. I’m also developing my next children’s book.

Q: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
A: I always have to work out story details, but I enjoy the process. The big challenge is balancing writing with my other job (I write reports for an investment consulting firm) and the other demands of daily life! For example, right now I’m trying to type answers to these questions on my laptop computer while a rather large cat is also trying to sit on my keyboard.

Q: Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?
A: I don’t have a favorite author. I love too many of them!

Q: Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?
A: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Whenever I receive a nice note from a reader, I’m walking on air. Authors live to hear from readers. We write for our readers.

Anjali Banerjee was born in India, raised in Canada and California and received degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. She has written five novels for youngsters and three for grownups, and she’s at work on her next novel for adults to be published by Berkley/Penguin. Her books have received accolades in many review journals and newspapers.

Be sure to visit her over at Anjali Banerjee.

#BookReview: Haunting Jasmine - Anjali Banerjee

It's early in the year, but I can honestly say this book is a contender for my favorite book of the year.  If you know me, you know I'm a fan of Bollywood.  So it'll come as no surprise to you that I loved Haunting Jasmine.

The recently divorced Jasmine Mistry comes to Shelter Island in the middle of Puget Sound to run her aunt's bookstore for a month.  More than that, she's come to get away from the painful memory of her former husband's betrayal.  Her family believed that as a Bengali American she should have married a Bengali man.  Unfortunately she chose a cheating American.  Her Auntie believes that working in the store will help heal Jasmine's heart.

Left to run the store while her aunt goes to India, Jasmine doubts the store will heal anything.  What it may do is drive her crazy.  She could swear that she hears voices talking to her.  And people keep showing up in the strangest places in the Victorian mansion turned bookstore.  In addition, visitors to the store seem to expect her to know exactly what book they need without them telling her.  The only thing that seems sane in her bookstore world is the handsome Dr. Connor Hunt, a frequent visitor to the store.

What did you like about this book?
First, I have to say I loved the cover.  It's one of the prettiest that I've ever seen.  You can't tell by looking at your screen, but the scarf she's wearing has iridescent glitter in it.  And the colors are just beautiful.


I also loved the storyline.  It reminded me a lot of The Mistress of the Spices, which also happens to be one of my Bollywood favorites.  While the lead character in Mistress was guided by the spices, Jasmine is guided by the literary authors that speak to her.  This was an absolutely fascinating read.

What didn't you like about this book?
I really wanted Jasmine to have her happy ending.  Let me re-phrase that.  The book ends with a potential happy ending for her, but I wanted to read more about it only because I grew so fond of her and wanted to make sure she was really happy.


What could the author do to improve this book?
One of Jasmine's childhood acquaintances walks out on her family and though it's speculated that the pressure of being the perfect Indian wife/mother/daughter may have gotten to her, it's never confirmed.  She was a very minor character, but since she was introduced into the story, I felt like her story line should have been completed.

304pp
Published February 2011
Disclosure: Copy received from the publisher.

Theme: Sounds Like A Love Song by Phyllis Hyman