Book Review: The Garden of Evening Mists

 

Today, I have a book review for you written by Kate Reynolds, author of Ernestine, a fine historical fiction novel. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng sounds like a great read. Let's see what Ms Reynolds has to say about the book

The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng, is one of those books that likely will haunt a reader in the wee, small hours of the morning. For one thing, it’s beautifully written, featuring clear-eyed, understated prose and an engrossing story that casts light on a time and place few westerners really know. (Well, this westerner didn’t know much about either the time or the place.) For another, the theme – memory – with all its wistful sweetness and thorns, reminds us that time flees too quickly for all of us. This is a story of looking back, of understanding and coming to terms with the past.

The place is Malaya in 1951. Yun Ling Teoh is a judge retiring from her years on the bench in Kuala Lumpur. She has served on the War Crimes Tribunal, exacting justice for atrocities committed in the years when the Japanese occupied Malaya. But the judge is hardly a disinterested party. She, along with her beloved sister, had been prisoners in one of those same cruel Japanese prison camps. Judge Teoh is deeply scarred, physically and emotionally. She survived the camps. Her sister did not.

The reader learns that Judge Teoh has been diagnosed with aphasia, which will soon bring about a loss of ability to express herself or understand words. She will lose her memories as well. 

The judge decides to compose her memoirs in her former home in the Cameron Highlands near the Majuba Tea Estate. It is in this account of Judge Teo’s life that a reader is introduced to her former mentor, Aritomo, a Japanese master gardener and artist. Some years back, Judge Teoh had asked this man to create a garden in honor of her dead sister, despite memories of the cruelty she suffered in prison. The judge writes of how she had to swallow her hatred of the Japanese to ask her former enemy for help. But Aritomo is, after all, an accomplished gardener, and what better way to remember Judge Teoh’s sister than to create a lovely garden that will live forever? After all, “Gardens were created to approximate the idea of a paradise in the afterlife.”

In creating a Japanese garden, Judge Teoh must face her hatred of all things Japanese and her own dark memories. Her relationship with Aritomo, the master gardener, takes unexpected turns throughout the novel.

The story weaves back and forth in time between the years she spent with Aritomo in his garden and the present when she knows her own life is ending. In unlocking the past, Judge Teoh faces her own frailties and the terrible failures in her past. 

I found the time switches confusing at times, and my own unfamiliarity with Malaya made it hard to connect with the geography. But when The Garden of Evening Mists wanders back and forth in time, slowing peeling back the layers to Judge Teoh’s life and secrets, I am spellbound. Read it for the elegant language or read it for the history or read it for insight into Eastern culture. But do read it.

Historical Fiction At Its Best

 If you like Historical Fiction, you'll find Madge Walls latest novel just your cup of tea. The story revolves around two women in the early 20th century who became close friends at Bryn Mawr, a private women's liberal arts college. Caroline marries before they graduate and later invites her close friend, Lily, to spend some time with her after graduation. Lily has no future set, no marriage possibility, or funds. She is educated and a lady with nowhere to go. Caroline suggests she become one of the 'visiting girls' who spend time with various friends who would be happy to open their upper class homes to her one at a time.

All is well, until Lily disappears without telling Caroline why or where she is going. Twenty years go by, and Caroline receives a letter requesting that she come to visit Lily and her husband, Marco. Recently widowed, Caroline decides to accept the invitation and travel from Philadelphia to Portland, Oregon to visit her friend to learn what happened the many years before. The fact that Lily is very ill and asking Caroline to come so that she can explain all that had occurred makes Caroline feel she must go. 

After a disastrous five day train trip across the country, Caroline is thrilled to be reunited with her close friend, but dismayed that Lily is so very ill with death hovering. The bond the women always had is still strong, and over weeks Lily tells her story when she feels up to it to Caroline, who meets and gets to know the rest of Lily's family--her husband Marco, her son, Mark, and a devoted employee and companion to Lily named Letty. 

Lily's story is revealed in bits and pieces, avoiding the dark secret she has kept for twenty years for fear of hurting her friend and destroying their friendship. The women's bond becomes closer and closer as Lily's illness leaves her weak and unable to do anything more than reveal more of her story on her good days until the most difficult part to tell is accomplished.

Madge Walls is a master of words and able to keep readers turning pages to learn more. It is obvious that she has done a great deal of research prior to writing this book. The reader is privileged to learn a great deal about what life was like for women in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. The author addresses education, abortion rights, the vote for women, the difficulty women met when trying to start a business, and the naivete of women in that era about sex. The author weaves information about Portland, Oregon through the story, as well. 

The author is adept at giving the reader a sense of place and the time period by weaving both in and out the story.

The cover, designed by the author's daughter-in-law, and the title would draw my attention if I was looking for a book at the library or a bookstore. Both are most appealing. 

I found an extra treat at the end of the book. The author included the following sections: Afterword, acknowledgements, About the Author, Book Clubs, Book Club Questions, and Selected Bibliography.

Find the book at Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Visiting-Girl-Madge-Walls-ebook/dp/B099NY2GDD

Ernestine--A Tale of Love, Honor, and Intrigue

 

Historical fiction brings the reader into another time period and can also tell a special story. Ernestine is Kate Reynolds's debut novel, but she is no amateur when it comes to crafting a fascinating story that draws readers quickly and holds them right up to the end using beautiful and descriptive prose.

 When only a child in the early 1500s, Ernestine learned how to cheat at betting games and became a fine bunco artist at her father's tutelage. Once a young woman, she marries the man she loves, helps him run an inn in France, and is happy being nothing more than a loving wife. When Sebastian dies, she flees with documents he and his brother had hidden, documents that could be world-changing. 

Ernestine takes the vows of a Clarissa nun and finds her way to an abbey in Spain near Granada. She knows she is being followed by a man who wants the documents she carried away. Hoping for safety in the abbey, she hides the documents but finds one problem after another amongst the 90 nuns. The Abbess is a kindly woman whose greatest love is caring for the olive groves the abbey owns. Keeping the accounts book is beyond her, and when she learns that Ernestine can work with figures, she begs the new nun to take over the Accounts Book. Reluctant to do so because of a problem with an account book in her past that might have led to her husband's death Ernestine demurs but is finally persuaded. 

Add to the story a priest who plays a betting game with Mother Faviola every week, always winning, a young novitiate who is hopelessly in love with a young man, a festival and parade which the Abbey has always won but is suddenly in peril, and Ernestine mixed up in all of it, and you have a very fine novel.

Taking place at the time of the Great Trials, or Inquisition, we see the effect on the everyday world of those whose vocation is often riddled with fear. 

The supporting characters in the novel are realistic and also of interest to the reader. In particular, Luz, the oldest nun who is blind, draws Ernestine's story from her as they work together in the cellary bit by bit and relates many of her own. As they work with the abbey's foodstuffs in a series of caves, Luz tells Ernestina the Spanish term 'pundonor' which means 'point of honor' and is an integral part of Ernestine's story.

 I enjoyed learning more about this period in history where no nun or priest was protected from the Inquisition. I found the nun's language of the fans fascinating as well as the beauty of the Alhambra surrounding the nuns who toiled in the olive groves and merely subsisted rather than thrived. 

This is a many-faceted tale that has much more than what I have written here. Unpeel the many layers as you read. Find it on Amazon with both a Kindle edition and a paperback. I look forward to reading more novels by Kate Reynolds.

The Indigo Girl--A Review

If you like historical fiction, then you'll be delighted with The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd. The book is a fictionalized version about a few years in the life of an actual woman who lived in South Carolina in the 1700's. The book covers the years 1739-1744. The author uses actual letters written by Eliza Lucas as she weaves the young woman's story. The letters were part of Natasha Boyd's research but she also incorporated them into the book.

Eliza's family owned three small plantations. When she was only 16, her father left her in charge of running the family holdings when he sets sail for the Caribbean islands to pursue his military ambitions. Eliza has been his helper and he has no qualms about leaving the young woman in charge. As time goes on, Eliza does her best but her father mortgages one plantation after another to further his military career and creating one financial difficulty after another for the family in South Carolina.

Her mother wants nothing more that to return to England, the original home of the family and the country where Eliza's two brothers are living and being educated. Eliza has grand plans to make the plantations profitable which will maker her father proud of her. She comes up with an idea to grow and process indigo as there is a market for it overseas. Knowing little about the crop or how to make the dye, she seeks help from a neighbor and asks her father to send one of her childhood friends who knows about the crop to help her. That friend is also a slave owned by a man who is a fraud but passes himself off as an expert on indigo.

Eliza's mother cares nothing about the business side of the plantation. Her only aim is to find a husband for Eliza and she doesn't care about his age or character. Eliza resists the idea of marriage over and over.

The story, written in first person, moves among Eliza's women friends, the slaves on the plantation where she and her mother and younger sister live, and Charles Pinckney, a lawyer whom she admires along with his wife. Eliza, at 16, is young and naive with grandiose plans. She is thwarted over and over, despite the help of her childhood friend, Ben, and a few other loyal slaves. 

Her feelings for Ben bewilder and frighten her especially when he rebuffs her attempt to rekindle their friendship.

The frontispiece on this book, published in September 2017, tells us that the story is about romance, intrigue, hidden friendships, threats, ambition, betrayal and sacrifice. All of that, besides being based on a true story, makes for an enticing read. I found myself stealing moments here and there to continue reading. 

Being a writer myself, one of the things that appeals to me in a book is lovely prose and Natasha Boyd offers plenty of that. Some of the phrases stopped me long enough to read them again.. One example is I was a butterfly pinned by my wings to the canvas of my mistakes. 

I found this book on the New Books shelf at my local library. Definitely pleased that I brought it home to read. 

A Book Recommendation

I'm going to finish this week with a book recommendation. My book club is reading Melanie Benjamin's historical fiction The Aviator's Wife. I told the friend who is hosting that I would be out of town for the meeting so I wouldn't take the book that she was handing out. She said she had enough and suggested that I read it and return it to her before I left town. I'm so glad she gave me the opportunity to read this book but also sorry that I won't be here for the discussion that my book club will have.

The book is a fictionalized account of the marriage of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh written as if Anne is telling the story. Melanie Benjamin does extensive research for a book of this type, then uses fiction technique to tell the story, aiming for as close to truth as possible. So, the reader must read knowing that it's a mixture of fact mixed with the author's thoughts as to what happened.

Older generations are familiar with the Lindbergh story--his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 giving him instant hero status and the kidnapping of their first child. Both stories captivated our nation. This book gives us those stories and more, concentrating on the marriage and relationship of these two American celebrities.

We see Anne both loving and disliking her husband. We see her strike out to become a person in her own right, not just the wife of Charles Lindbergh or the mother of a child who was kidnapped. Anne lived first as an Ambassador's daughter and then as the Aviator's wife. Dubbing her that way was partly a sign of the times--the 20's, 30's and 40's but it also showed her submissive personality in her younger years.

The Lindberghs had five more children, continued to fly toghether in the early years of the marriage, and traveled the world extensively.They were hounded by the press wherever they were. The book covers the years prior to WWII when Charles became an admirer of Adolf Hitler, causing the American people to remove the aviator from the pedestal they had placed him upon years earlier. Anne was similarly chastised by her fellow Americans, as well. They were somewhat redeemed by Charles' work for our country during WWII.but the shine was never quite the same.

When Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote her acclaimed Gift From The Sea in the mid-fifties, I was one of the avid readers. It's a small book of essays that speaks to women. I so enjoyed the book that I've read it more than once. It's still available in many libraries and at Amazon.

I found The Aviator's Wife a fascinating read, a fine study of a marriage and the differing personalities of people who are attracted to one another. I sympathized with Anne many times and wanted to shake her and tell her to stand on her own two feet and defy her controlling husband at times, too. I cheered when she finally becomes her own person.

Give this book a try to learn some history and to have a satisfying read.

Downton Abbey Fans Will Love This Book

I raced through a book last week. Yes, raced is the proper word because the story hooked me immediately and made me want to keep reading as fast as possible. If I'd had a large time frame, I'd probably have read it one sitting. Instead, I devoured as much as I could each of three evenings til I'd finished.

Natasha Solomons' The House At Tyneford is historical fiction, a tribute to a English country estate house, and a romance. It begins in Vienna, 1938, when Elise Landau is 19. She lives a charmed life with her novelist father and opera singer mother and older sister. The family is Jewish and out of concern for their safety, they arrange to go to America. But a visa for Elise is delayed and she is sent to serve as a housemaid at a large country home in England. Frightened, alone, and inept as a maid, Elise makes friends with the owner's son, Kit. The story follows Elise into the war years, her desperate longing for news of her parents and sister. The reader watches her mature and change with each new hurdle she must clear. It ended as I knew it would, but even though I'd figured it out long before the final page, it satisfied me.

The author lives in Dorset, England. The House At Tyneford is her second novel. The debut novel, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English sits by my chair waiting for me to open it this evening. I most certainly am looking forward to doing so.

These are a few quotes by others who have read the Tyneford book. Look for it at your library or bookstore, or for you e-reader. The book was published in England under the title The Book In The Viola. I'm wondering why the American version has a different title.

"Both a love story set during the Second World War and an elegy to the English country house . . . the greatest pleasure of the novel is its stirring narrative and the constant sense of discovery."

(-Times Literary Supplement (London) )

"A vivid and poignant story about hope, loss, and reinvention."

(-Psychologies Magazine (UK) )

"Natasha Solomons has written a lovely, atmospheric novel full of charming characters and good, old fashioned storytelling. Fans ofDownton Abbey and Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden will absolutely adore The House at Tyneford."

(-Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of Home Front )

"The House at Tyneford is a wonderful, old-fashioned novel that takes you back in time to the manor homes, aristocracy and domestic servants of England. In this setting, Natasha Solomons gives us a courageous heroine whose incredible love story will keep you in suspense until the final page."

(-Kathleen Grissom, author of The Kitchen House )

"The House at Tyneford is an exquisite tale of love, family, suspense, and survival. Capturing with astonishing detail and realism a vanished world of desire and hope trapped beneath rigid class convention, Natasha Solomons's stunning new novel tells the story of Elise Landau, a Jewish Austrian teenager from a family of artists, who is forced to flee her home in Vienna carrying only a guide to household management and her father's last novel, hidden on pages stuffed inside a viola. Elise hides as a parlor maid in a fine English country estate, but soon she discovers that passion can be found in the most unexpected places. Already a bestseller in Britain, American readers will thrill to The House at Tyneford."

(-Katherine Howe, author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane )

The Titanic Story With A New Slant

Yesterday, I finished reading The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott. The cover drew me in since I am a big fan of historical fiction. When I read the synopsis on the inside cover, I brought the book home from the library. It was yet another story about the sinking of the Titanic, but this one had a new twist. 

The author wrote a fictional account but based her story on real people, using their names within her story. There were plenty of fictional characters, as well. Woven into the story of the sinking of the great ship on her maiden voyage is a love story, a quest for a new life, the high fashion industry, women's rights, and the plight of a female journalist who had an upward battle to wage in the newspaper world of 1912 and .

Above and beyond all that, what fascinated me was a thread that runs through the novel that is eerily similar to our world today. I was unaware that there were congressional hearings soon after the ship sank concerning the actions of the crew and some of the passengers as well as the owners of the ship line that launched the Titanic. For me, this part is what made the book a very worthwhile read. Admittedly, I did enjoy the heroine and her plight, too. I'm a sap for a good love story, and when two men are in love with the same woman and she must decide where her heart lies, well, I'm hooked. 

The story flows well, kept my interest from start to finish, and I learned quite a few things. That's one of the reasons I like this genre. It's a totally painless way to learn history!

I found a review of the book that appeared in the New York Times. Unlike most reviews, this one dealt with the author and the difficulty she had in getting her book published. It's a fascinating story, which anyone interested in being published would benefit in reading. It will both encourage and dishearten you if you have a book you want to sell. You'll find the review here.

If you like historical fiction, give this one a try. Let me know if you enjoyed it, or if you didn't. 

A Good Historical Fiction Book

I picked up Ken Follett's latest novel, Fall of Giants, at the library last week. I'd had it on reserve/hold for so long, I'd almost forgotten about it until the notice that it was ready arrived in my e-mail. The size of the book startled me, so I asked the librarian at the check-out desk how long I could have it. "Three weeks," she said.

I checked when I got home to see the number of pages. Almost a thousand! Well, nine hundred and eighty-five to be exact. With everything else going on in my life and the Thanksgiving holiday coming up soon, I wondered how in the world I would get it finished in only three weeks.

I had read only a few pages to know that I would be able to read the book in the allotted time. Ken Follett hooked me almost immediately. This book is the first in a trilogy that deals with the entire twentieth century. We're introduced to a large cast of characters which I found quite easy to deal with. The author follows the lives of five families in the pre-WWI days and moves on into the war years and the 1920's. We become familiar with families in Wales, England, Germany, Russia and America. Their lives intertwine in various ways, and without even realizing it, the reader is treated to a painless way to learn history. Follett's research teams must have worked overtime to make the historical events accurate in the telling of this story.

I find myself wanting to pick up the book and continue reading several times each day and evening. I'm a third of the way through the book and my interest has not waned one bit. Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres to read, and Ken Follett has not disappointed me in this multi-family saga of a distinct period of World History. Love, war, the feminist movement--all are included in this intriguing story.

I'd definitely recommend it, and if many-paged books intimidate you, don't get it at the library. Purchase your own copy or put it on your Christmas List. It's a bargain at Amazon for $18. Order it at http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Giants-Century-Trilogy-Follett/dp/0525951652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290008964&sr=1-1 If you know someone who enjoys historical fiction, it would make a nice Christmas or Hanukkah gift--perfect for reading in the cold, snowy days of January.

I've written a few short stories that are classified historical fiction, but I can't imagine writing a book or trilogy of this enormity. I'm glad that Ken Follett has done so.