You can find my updated reading list here. I am now including electronic copies of our book club flier as well. While I have started on posting book reviews here, I have many more to write. Stay tuned! As always, lots going on behind the scenes. Details to follow.
The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn
I can’t recommend The Alice Network by Kate Quinn enough, particularly if interested in historical fiction and World Wars I and II. American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant and trying to find out what happened to her cousin Rose. Set in 1947 and the aftermath of World War II, Charlie leaves her mother behind and travels to London to find Eve Gardiner, her only lead in her search for Rose. She is lost, driven by emotion, and angry that she is unable to access her own money. What happens next sets Charlie on an adventure throughout the French countryside.
Throughout the novel, we get Eve’s history during World War I and her involvement with the Alice Network, which is almost another novel. I normally don’t read afterwards in novels, but I did this time. I am glad I did. It turns out that much of Eve’s story does involve real actions taken by the Alice Network during World War I. Eve’s story intertwines with Charlie’s in unique and interesting ways, ultimately answering Charlie’s questions about Rose and helping Eve to make long awaited peace with her past.
There is romance in both stories to some extent, but it tends to move the plot along and isn’t romance for the sake of romance. The part I enjoyed most is Charlie’s determination to live her life on her terms and her terms alone. Throughout the novel, she is bombarded with familial and societal expectations. Ultimately, she leaves them behind and creates her own future. The reader is taken along for one fun ride.
In Eve’s story, much of the action is hard to take. It is difficult to realize just how much she and her fellow Alice Network members risked every minute they lived under German occupation. It is ultimately satisfying for the reader when she finally makes peace with her past. I only wish that a few of the male characters were more fully developed, but it is a minor issue considering it is not their story. I hate to admit this, but it would make a wonderful movie.
I enjoyed reading Marlena. While it contains components of a YA (young adult) novel, I would classify it as emerging adult. Fair warning: Lots of drugs and sex involved. The good news is that the drugs, and to a lesser extent, sex, drive the plot. They are necessary to the plot, and fortunately, do not glamorize the consequences of either. By the way, when I mention drugs here, I am including alcohol.
I didn’t read Marlena with a set purpose in mind. It wasn’t a book club pick or anything. In fact, I discovered it by browsing a selection of online books available through my library’s website. It just sounded good. It is ultimately a tale of two best friends growing up in a dull northern Michigan town. It took a while for me to get into the book. The protagonist, Cat, isn’t the easiest person to get to know. Also, in the beginning, I didn’t get the fixation on drugs. She clearly understands right from wrong, but she is fixated on her new best friend Marlena and making the worst possible choices for her life. By approximately a quarter of the way through the book, I was hooked and found it difficult to put down.
Cat, at least the older, wiser version in the novel, nails what it is like to grow up, to love and lose. There are so many powerful lines I found myself highlighting them in my Kindle copy, forgetting that it is a library book. Below are a few of what I consider to be the most powerful lines in the novel.
Close enough to being a writer, isn’t it, working at a library? – Page 45
As an aspiring writer, I loved this quote. Ultimately, Cat is a writer, but it took her a while to find her voice. Her empathy for other young women is clearly demonstrated later in the novel in her approach to difficult young library patrons.
For so many women, the process of becoming requires two. It’s not hard to make out the marks the other one left. – Page 96
This passage really made me think. I thought of the friends, male and female, in both high school and college, who helped to shape the woman I became. It made me think of what I wrote about W.M here in particular. There is something to be said for reconnecting with old friends after years apart and seemingly nothing (and everything) has changed.
I think it’s pretty common for teenagers to fantasize about dying young. We knew that time would force us into sacrifices – we wanted to flame out before making the choices that would determine who we became. When you were an adult, all the promise of your life was foreclosed upon, every day just a series of compromises mitigated by little pleasures that distracted you from your former wildness, from your truth. – Pages 129-130
This struck a nerve with me as well. First, I vividly remember being terrified of dying young as a teenager. Both of my parents lost close relatives as teenagers, and those stories stayed with me. Second, the fact that “time would force us into sacrifices” continues to be at the forefront of my mind. I have always tried to find a way to leave as many doors open as possible. There is just too much I want to do in life.
I was always aware, in some buried place, that girls my age had just entered their peak prettiness, and that once my pretty years were spent my value would begin leaking away. I saw it on TV and in magazines, in the faces of my teachers and women in the grocery store, women who were no longer looked at … – Page 143
I so desperately want this not to be true, but it is true. I loathe this fact about our culture. Hopefully I will live long enough to see it change, permanently.
Before that year I was nothing but a soft, formless girl, waiting for someone to come along and tell me who to be. – Page 250
Thinking back to what I was like at ages 15-16, I like to think I was somehow stronger than Cat. Unfortunately, that just isn’t the case; I could closely identify with Cat in the novel. It makes the novel much darker. There is a fine line between the successful teenage Cat and the degenerate.
I would recommend the book, especially if you love to write or like reading about love and loss (or even friendship in general). Is the story sad? Yes, but it is also full of hope. It does seem that Cat is at least trying to deal with her loss, with varying degrees of success.
I know I have talked about this before, but I am convinced the right books find me at exactly the right time. While I certainly wouldn’t call Marlena great literature, it addresses certain topics I would like to cover in my own writing. I will be rereading this novel.
I just finished reading The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult. I found it difficult to put down, and that hasn’t happened for quite some time. That isn’t to say that I didn’t find issue with some parts of the book. It simply means that I enjoyed the overall story, particularly Minka’s story of survival during World War II. I could certainly relate to Sage as well, particularly to her desire for solitude and her relationship with her grandmother. Unfortunately, I found several things about the modern story to be “off.” If you are planning to read the novel, you might want to stop here. Please keep in mind that these are just my opinions.
First, let’s start with Sage. I couldn’t quite reconcile her personality with her actions. She may be an atheist and she may harbor lots of guilt, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for her to become deeply involved with married man (Adam). Being a guilt-ridden atheist doesn’t make one lack moral judgement. In fact, I would say that her guilt demonstrates that she does indeed have a moral compass. She even grudgingly agrees with Mary that her relationship with Adam is inherently flawed. If she was so guarded in her human interactions that she chose to work alone overnight as a baker, why wouldn’t she see all the potential pitfalls in their relationship? Not only is Adam a funeral director in their shared small town, which practically guarantees that he knows most people in town, he works for his father-in-law. If Sage was so intent on punishing herself by remaining in an adulterous relationship with Adam, why wouldn’t she consider those who would be hurt by its revelation, namely Adam’s wife and children? It just doesn’t add up.
Then we get to Adam. Sage already told Adam that she wanted to break it off. He then doubles down and divorces his wife. Sage then definitively breaks it off with him. None of it makes sense to me. I can understand why Adam decided to divorce if he felt so strongly about Sage; however, wouldn’t one think that he would check with Sage before he just throws his marriage and possibly his career out the window? It is this impulsiveness in the present-day story that gets to me, which leads me to Leo.
I find Leo to be the most troubling character in the novel. Something just doesn’t sit well with me. He waltzes in and sweeps her off her feet with no real backstory. The backstory available is hardly worth mentioning, and frankly, cliched. At least it takes Sage a little while to realize that she is falling for Leo. That doesn’t appear to be the case with Leo. He fell for Sage practically the moment he met her. His old-world manners and mannerisms could be charming if they were more fully developed, but that just isn’t the case. I am all for a happy ending, but Sage and Leo’s relationship at the end appears false and forced in a way that I can’t quite decipher.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Minka’s writing and real-life story make the novel well worth reading, even if she appears to be the only well-rounded character in the novel. It is enough. I highly recommend taking the time to read this book, particularly if interested in the World War II era at all.
On a personal note, I finally realized why W.M. found his way into my subconscious lately (read here). Somehow, I connected Leo’s character with W.M. I am not sure why, but I did. I am happy I figured it out! Mysteries like that have a nasty way of staying with me. Now to figure out why.
Ramblings of a Misguided Blonde 