Review: Rose Under Fire

Rose Under Fire
Code Name Verity, Book 2

Author: Elizabeth Wein
Pages: 368
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Read: September 1-2, 2013
Source: ARC from publisher

Description from Goodreads:
While flying an Allied fighter plane from Paris to England, American ATA pilot and amateur poet, Rose Justice, is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious women's concentration camp. Trapped in horrific circumstances, Rose finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery and friendship of her fellow prisoners. But will that be enough to endure the fate that’s in store for her?

Elizabeth Wein, author of the critically-acclaimed and best-selling Code Name Verity, delivers another stunning WWII thriller. The unforgettable story of Rose Justice is forged from heart-wrenching courage, resolve, and the slim, bright chance of survival.

Previous Book in Series:
1: Code Name Verity

First Sentence: "I just got back from Celia Forester's funeral."

Review:

Code Name Verity is one of those rare books that awed both critics and actual readers. Initially, I almost DNFed Code Name Verity, but I ended up being seriously impressed with both Wein's writing and her gumption. At the same time, though, Code Name Verity never really got me right in the feels, the way it did so many other people. Thus, though I suspect it may not be a popular opinion, I love Rose Under Fire more than Code Name Verity. Once again, Wein's story is incredibly dark and daring, and with a powerful narrative voice.

As Rose Under Fire began, I really wasn't sure how I felt about Rose Justice. She's very different from Julie and Maddie, the heroines of Code Name Verity. Rose lacks their seriousness and their cleverness; she's not stupid, but she's a good deal more innocent and has seen less of life's dangers. Thus far, she's been sheltered and pampered, and, like many Americans setting off for the front, she sees the war as something romantic and anticipates performing heroic actions. She desperately hopes to be allowed to fly to France, stifling under the few jobs that American female civilian pilots are allowed to perform in the war effort.

Rose's narration fits her perfectly. Her sentences are long and push forward with excitement, as though venturing out in search of something exciting and wonderful. There's a perkiness to her in the beginning, a freshness, as well as a flair for the poetic, coming through in metaphors and unique word choices. As Rose's story darkens, the brightness and naivete seeps out of her narration, leaving her the same Rose, but weighted down by all that she has experienced.

Wein looks at World War II through a female lens, which is part of what makes these two books disparate from the mass of WWII fiction out there. The youth of the characters also distinguishes this series from the rest, particularly given the unflinching treatment Wein gives the dark subject matter. Wein does not shy away from the atrocities committed, and in Rose Under Fire she focuses on the concentration camps, particularly Ravensbrück.

Last year, I read a nonfiction novel about a train full of women sent to Auschwitz called A Train in Winter. As I read Rose's account of her time in Ravensbrück, I could not help compare this fictional experience with what I learned in A Train in Winter. That book puts forward the theory that the women were better able to survive in Auschwitz because of the way they all supported one another throughout the whole experience, putting the survival of the group over that of individuals, and creating a real family with their fellow prisoners. This same sort of spirit appears in Rose Under Fire, as Rose bonds with her bunk mates, the Rabbits. So many women survive Ravensbrück that might not have because of the way they all worked together and helped buoy one another's spirits. Those that did not survive will be remembered, their names memorized for posterity, and justice searched out in their honor.

The most heartrending aspect of Rose Under Fire is the accounting of the Rabbits, the women who make themselves into a protective family for Rose. These "rabbits" were medical test subjects. They were shot with bullets, given gangrene, amputated, and had bones removed from their legs so doctors could test cures for soldiers on the front. What these women went through is unbelievably horrific, but they are still such powerfully strong characters, such fighters, so desperate to live or at least get their story out. While the characters are fictional, real women went through these sorts of experiments and these tears that are slipping out of my eyes as I type (yes, this book did manage to make me cry) are for them. Wein's Afterword, in which she explains why she wrote this book, really drives the whole point of the book home.

Much as I loved this book, I was not a fan of Rose's poetry. Though I did quite enjoy Edna St. Vincent Millay's excerpts and the reference to Emily Dickinson in one of Rose's poems, I did not get Rose's. Most of them felt like prose chopped up into shorter lines to me. However, I will be the first to admit that I do not really get poetry. My heart and mind like prose. As such, I found myself generally skimming through her poems, since even reading them aloud didn't make them work for me, a technique that often helps me find the rhythm in the poetry and comprehend its beauty.

Rarely do books evoke so much of an emotional response from me, so suffice it to say that Rose Under Fire has every bit of the powerful emotional punch of Code Name Verity. I wouldn't really say that one or the other is a better book, but likely one will resonate more with each reader. I highly encourage readers to try these beautiful, emotional, historically resonant novels. Also, please note that while these are fabulous books for teen readers, they have wonderful crossover potential, and are good books to give out to skeptical adults who do not believe teen fiction can be literary.

Rating: 4.5/5

Favorite Quote: "Writing to you like this makes me feel that you are still alive. It's an illusion I've noticed before—words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or the pen, the pistons fall lifeless again."

Audiobook Review: The Chaperone

The Chaperone

Author: Laura Moriarty
Narrator: Elizabeth McGovern
Duration: 13 hrs, 18 mins
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Read: May 1-7, 2013
Source: Overdrive

Description from Goodreads:
The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922, and the summer that would change them both.

Only a few years before becoming a famous actress and an icon for her generation, a 15-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita to make it big in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle is a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip. She has no idea what she’s in for: Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous blunt bangs and black bob, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will change their lives forever.

For Cora, New York holds the promise of discovery that might prove an answer to the question at the center of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in a strange and bustling city, she embarks on her own mission. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, it liberates her in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of the summer, Cora’s eyes are opened to the promise of the 20th century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.

Review:

You guys, this book is so awesome. I totally would have finished this tomorrow, but I got home and was like eff these books I'm reading, because I want to listen to The Chaperone. You know it's good when you're making up excuses to keep listening!

Why Did I Read This Book?
I finally realized that I could download an OverDrive app onto my iPod Touch and download audiobooks onto it, which is way easier than going to the library to get the discs, which I then have to rip onto my computer, move to my iPod, and then delete from both after (so don't yell at me for stealing please). Anyway, this was my first one from there, and I basically just had it show me all the available audiobooks, and scrolled to the first interesting one. *pats self on back for an excellent selection*

What's the Story Here?
Okay, so The Chaperone is all about a chaperone. How's that? Worst synopsis ever? Alright, so the book is about Cora, a bored housewife who agrees to chaperone a young Louise Brooks to New York City for the summer, as Louise had been accepted to a dance program. Cora has her own reasons for wanting to go, since she lived in New York City at a home for "friendless girls" when she was a child, before she was shipped out west on an orphan train and adopted in Kansas. If you're really interested in Louise Brooks, I warn you that she's really only the framing element and mostly remains on the periphery of the story. She's also a bit of a jerk.

How did I like Cora?
At first, I found Cora utterly insufferable. Much as Louise was whiny and unlikable, I totally took her petulant side over Cora's, because Cora mouthed off all the worst platitudes about virtue and the evils of drink and so forth. As the book goes along, though, Cora progresses wonderfully, both because of what she learns about her past and what she learns about life from Louise. She totally opens up and becomes this really empowered, strong woman, and I love it so much.

And the Romance?
Cora has long been unsatisfied in her marriage, because her husband stopped coming to the marriage bed after their twin sons were born. Because of how rough the birth was on her, they both agreed (as did the doctor) that she shouldn't have anymore. Still, Cora felt like they should be able to do something. She learns some things and partway through the book she has this revival, and it's just so great. Like, she starts off completely conventional, but finds out how much better life is if you live it the way that works for you. The romance is completely not like those usually found in books and is very touching.

How was the ending?
The story sort of fell apart towards the end. The last few chapters felt like epilogue on top of epilogue, because, where The Chaperone had been linear with occasional flashbacks, now the narration would jump several years forward all of a sudden and relate what everyone was doing now. While I was still interested, from a plot perspective, this was really weak, and the pacing was all off.

How was the Narration?
Though I have a slight obsession with celebrity narrators, I didn't choose this for that reason, because I totally did not recognize McGovern's name, but she plays Cora on Downton Abbey. Now she narrates a story about a Cora. Very interesting happenstance that. All actors aren't great narrators of course, but McGovern narrated fabulously well. She clearly distinguishes between characters and does some good accents too.

Sum It Up with a GIF:

Rating: 4/5

Sadie Hawkins Sunday Review #14: Tatiana and Alexander

Tatiana and Alexander
Tatiana and Alexander, Book 2

Author: Paullina Simons
Pages: 576
Publisher: Avon
Read: May 17-20, 2013 
Source: Gifted
Recommended by: Lisa V.

Description from Goodreads:
The epic saga of love and war continues--the heart-stopping sequel to Paullina Simons's beloved international bestseller The Bronze Horseman.

Tatiana is eighteen years old, pregnant, and widowed when she escapes war-torn Leningrad to find a new life in America. But the ghosts of her past do not rest easily. She becomes consumed by the belief that her husband, Red Army officer Alexander Belov, is still alive and needs her desperately.

Meanwhile, oceans and continents away in the Soviet Union, Alexander barely escapes execution, and is forced to lead a battalion of soldiers considered expendable by the Soviet high command. Yet Alexander is determined to take his men through the ruins of Europe in one last desperate bid to escape Stalin's death machine and somehow find his way to Tatiana once again.

Previous Book in Series:
1: The Bronze Horseman

First Sentence: "Alexander Barrington stood in front of the mirror and adjusted his red Cub Scout tie."

Review:
Tatiana and Alexander did actually turn out to be a much stronger read for me than its predecessor, The Bronze Horseman. Rarely does a sequel improve upon the first book, so yay for that. While I slogged through book one, this one I read over the course of just a couple of days. Simons' trilogy takes a turn for the historical, rather than the romantic, which is just what I was wanting from this series from the start.

Of course, the reason I like this one so much better than The Bronze Horseman is that Tatiana and Alexander are kept apart for the bulk of it. Only in the last 100 pages are they together again, aside from some brief flashbacks that catch the reader up on the events of the first book (and, no, it's not in the least frustrating that an 800 page book can be summed up in a few quick flashbacks). My issues with Tatiana and Alexander's relationship were and are threefold: the idiotic love triangle (which is a non-issue now, but still taints my opinion of the two), the age difference (which isn't really all that large, but Tatiana was not mature for her age), and the way Alexander bosses Tatiana around. I'm sure his bossiness is typically Russian, and it's also what he witnessed from his parents, but I still think he's a dick, even if society taught him to behave that way.

However, as I said, they're hardly together in this one and that's a blessing, unless what you loved about book one was the romance, not the part about the siege; in that case, better luck with book three. Simons totally goes for a dramatic irony thing, with the reader knowing that he's alive and Tatiana believing Alexander died. Will she move on? Will she commit suicide out of despair, leaving her son an orphan? Sadly, the latter was much closer to transpiring. Yeah, I knew her husband was alive and that they would be reunited, but I kept hoping she would move on anyway, what with not shipping them in the slightest.

Aside from them, though, I pretty much loved everything else. Simons writes well, aside from her tendency to get all gooshy with the romance stuff. Where the story in The Bronze Horseman was entirely linear, Tatiana and Alexander jumps through time, from Tatiana to Alexander. We learn more about Alexander's childhood and follow him from his faked death until their reunion. Since the lovers are parted, the focus is on historical events, not melodrama.

Warning: This paragraph has spoilers:
With Alexander, Simons is able to cover torture sessions and the way the Soviets try to garner confessions, in which every option is a trap. From there, Alexander moves to a penal brigade, and the reader gets to witness just how poorly managed the Soviet forces were, sending men out to die senselessly. Later, Alexander fights along the front line with Germany, poorly armed and with the NKGB waiting behind to shoot him and his men should they retreat. Forced to surrender or die, his men are then sent to a concentration camp (Sachsenhausen) for having dared to let the enemy win. All of these things are true to the Soviet experience in WWII, and Simons does a good job depicting the bleakness.

With only one book left in this saga, I'm hoping for more historical fiction, but suspect that The Summer Garden will be romance, romance, romance. At any rate, with this one, I'm glad I've read the series, and tentatively excited to continue.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote:

"'Does Hitler value your life?' asked Tatiana.
     'More than Stalin would. Hitler tries to heal us so he can send us back to the front, but Stalin doesn't even bother. He lets his men die and then sends fourteen-year-olds to the front. And then they die.'"

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Up Next:

The next Sadie Hawkins Sunday book will be Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma! I've been curious to try Suma's books for ages, so thank you to Jenni of Alluring Reads for suggesting it. I can only hope I love it as much as Jenni did!

Want to tell me what to read? Fill out the following form with a suggestion! For more details, check this post.

Review: The Perfume Collector

The Perfume Collector

Author: Kathleen Tessaro
Pages: 464
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: May 14, 2013
Source: Publisher for review

Description from Goodreads:
London, 1955: Grace Monroe is a young newlywed, eager to make a success of her marriage. However, with her intellectual curiosity and her unladylike talent for advanced mathematics, she finds the routine of elegant luncheons and exclusive parties among post-war London’ s social set more tiresome than exciting.

When Grace receives an unexpected inheritance from a woman she’s never met, she finds herself suddenly in Paris, embarking upon a journey to discover not only the identity of her mysterious benefactor but also the hidden secrets of her own past.

In a story that takes us from New York in the 1920s to mid-century Monte Carlo, Paris and London, Grace discovers a world filled with the evocative, intoxicating power of perfume; an obsessive, desperate love between muse and artist; and a trail of dark memories that may mean she isn’ t the person she thinks she is at all.

First Sentence: "Eva d'Orsey sat at the kitchen table, listening to a ticking clock, a copy of Le Figaro in front of her."

Review:

When offered a review copy of The Perfume Collector, I did the same thing I always do first: checked out the Goodreads page to see how the early reviews had fallen. Based on the overwhelmingly positive response, I accepted, despite my crowded review schedule. I'm quite glad I did, as Tessaro's novel is a marvelous read, full of beautiful language and eccentric characters. Set in the post-WWII, Kathleen Tessaro's novel The Perfume Collector is a contemplative tale of one woman's journey to make amends and another woman's journey to find herself.

Grace Munroe lives a rather dull life in the upper crust. She doesn't much care about shopping or parties, preferring intellectual pursuits, and feels a bit lost. Her unease only increases with the suspicion that her husband, Roger, has been conducting an affair. Unsure how to react, she stalls for time, traveling to France to follow up on a mysterious and well-timed missive, informing her of her inheritance from one Eva d'Orsey. What's puzzling is that this Eva is completely unknown to Grace.

The overall plot is, to my mind, entirely predictable. The connection between Grace and Eva is, I think, obvious. There was no shocking reveal or mind-blowing twist. However, I do not see that as a bad thing. Even though the destination is clear, The Perfume Collector is much more about Grace's own mental journey, coming into her own, coming of age, even if she is over thirty, discovering independence for the first time in her life.

Tessaro alternates between Grace's timeline in 1954 and Eva's timeline from the 1920s until her death, slowly weaving them together until all is known. This narrative device is frequently used in historical fiction, but often one of the timelines is much more interesting the other, leaving the reader bored and impatient during the other. Thankfully, in The Perfume Collector, I found both Eva and Grace fascinating in entirely different ways. Though the pace is rather slow, it never flagged, and I was fully engaged throughout.

The characters are well-drawn and all bursting with personality. Grace really does open up in front of the reader's eyes, letting more and more of her true self shine through. I also loved Grace's interactions with her best friend, Mallory, and that, through everything, Mallory was there for her. I rather expected Mallory's character to turn out to be shallow and unreliable, because she's much more into the social scene than Grace, and fiction does that sort of thing, but, no, their friendship is real and delightful. The lawyer, Tissot, too, is a friendly, joking fellow, and probably my personal favorite.

In Eva's sections, the people are brasher, darker, and less likable, but also more compelling. As a young girl, Eva works at a high class hotel in New York City, cleaning up after illustrious and daring personages. She becomes involved with some of these people, and sets her life on a dangerous, exciting course. Grace may live a life of quiet desperation, but Eva's desperation is anything but calm and reserved.

Kathleen Tessaro's The Perfume Collector is a beautiful historical novel about one woman's awakening. Readers who appreciate historical fiction with a focus on women will want to give this one a look.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: "'I want to go to a café and sit with you. I want you to order something I've never eaten before and tease me about it. And I want to walk, anywhere, nowhere in particular, and for us to disagree.'"

Sadie Hawkins Sunday Review #9: The Bronze Horseman

The Bronze Horseman
Tatiana and Alexander, Book 1

Author: Paullina Simons
Pages: 810
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Purchased
Recommended by: Lisa V.

Description from Goodreads:
The golden skies, the translucent twilight, the white nights, all hold the promise of youth, of love, of eternal renewal. The war has not yet touched this city of fallen grandeur, or the lives of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanova, who share a single room in a cramped apartment with their brother and parents. Their world is turned upside down when Hitler's armies attack Russia and begin their unstoppable blitz to Leningrad.

Yet there is light in the darkness. Tatiana meets Alexander, a brave young officer in the Red Army. Strong and self-confident, yet guarding a mysterious and troubled past, he is drawn to Tatiana--and she to him. Starvation, desperation, and fear soon grip their city during the terrible winter of the merciless German siege. Tatiana and Alexander's impossible love threatens to tear the Metanova family apart and expose the dangerous secret Alexander so carefully protects--a secret as devastating as the war itself--as the lovers are swept up in the brutal tides that will change the world and their lives forever.

First Sentence: "Light came through the window, trickling morning all over the room."

Review:

This is going to be one of those reviews, so prepare yourself right now, okay? This is going to be a three star book review that reads like a rant of hatred, but, honestly, it's not. Every so often, there's a book you like, but that you have a lot of issues with, and you have to be up front about all of them. So, take this to heart: I did like The Bronze Horseman overall, despite my myriad issues.

The Bronze Horseman and I were somewhat doomed from the start not to have as happy a relationship as hoped, sort of like Russia and communism. Basically, I looked at this gorgeous, highly recommended book, and I made a set of assumptions. Based on the size, I believed this would be a historical, an epic one, full of feels and delicious historical factoids. I was wrong, which isn't really the book's fault necessarily, but that still colored my enjoyment of it.

Though historical fiction, The Bronze Horseman is first and foremost a romance novel. Now, I do not have anything against a good romance novel, but I really do not see the call for an 800 page romance novel. That just feels a mite excessive. A lot of readers are going to burn out along the way, I suspect. The first few hundred pages are romance, followed by some history, then a couple hundred pages of sexy times, and then more war-focused stuff. Readers here for historical will find the romance mind-numbing, and those just looking for sexy times will not appreciate the break to discuss starvation.

Unsurprisingly, the bit in the middle where Alexander disappeared for a good chunk of time was my favorite. The romance took a back burner to a depiction of life in Leningrad during the Siege. Simons does a brilliant job portraying the hunger, the desperation, and the hopelessness of that experience. The realities of survival, and how most people didn't, are conveyed unflinchingly.

Unfortunately, most of the book wasn't hard-hitting historical fiction: it was a romance that I just couldn't ship. From the beginning, I found Tatiana and Alexander's relationship off-putting, and I still haven't been able to forgive them for what assholes they were for so long. Now, I hope I can eventually so I can enjoy the next books in the series, but, for the moment, I'm very displeased with them.

To explain why, I have to delve into some SPOILERS, so now's the time to look away if you don't want things spoiled.

Tatiana and Alexander meet when she's just 17 and he's a soldier in the Red Army, several years older. The day they met, she was upset, unable to find food for her family on the day of the declaration of war, and comforting herself with creme brulee ice cream, when a soldier with eyes the color of her ice cream strikes up a conversation. His eye color already had me rolling my eyes with abandon, but it gets worse.

Alexander does what any red-blooded (Soviet pun!) soldier would do for a pretty girl he's just seen licking a cone: takes her to buy food for her family from a special store for the military. Once she has what she needs, he escorts her home, only to discover that he has flirted with her sister Dasha in the past. Dasha, who likes to hang around with soldiers if you know what I mean ;), immediately latches onto Alexander, with whom she believes herself to be in love. He exits swiftly, feeling really awkward, and Dasha proceeds to tell Tatiana how perfect he is and Tatiana fails to mention her own attraction to him.

Everyday, Alexander shows up to meet Tatiana after work and they fall in love. Meanwhile, whenever he visits her house, he pretends to like Dasha and even brings along his skeevy friend Dimitri for Tatania. To be fair, Alexander just wants to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, but Tatiana is unwilling to hurt Dasha's feelings. This charade goes on forever, and Alexander eventually proposes to Dasha. Head, meet brick wall.

All this time, Alexander's hooking up with both sisters, and I basically want to murder all of them. To make things worse, Alexander and Tatiana never have to fucking come clean about the deception to anyone. Conveniently Tatiana's whole family dies except for her, with Dasha the last hold out. Gag me, okay. Ugh. No love triangle should ever be resolved by the death of one of the people in the love triangle. It's the coward's way out. Characters should have to face the consequences of their actions.

Instead, Dasha dies and the two reunite and then have mind-blowing sex approximately fifty times a day for a month, until Alexander has to go back to work. While they're enjoying their honeymoon, he berates her for giving to much of herself to others and urges her to never leave his side. Of course, serving others is wrong, but she should do everything for her husband, because, you know, gender roles. Alexander is controlling, codependent, rude, and occasionally violent, not to mention a guy who would cheat on both his fiancee and his love for months. I can't root for that relationship. I just can't. Had I read this when I was a bit younger, perhaps when I was a teen, I would have been swept away by the romance and concern for the main characters, but now, as a jaded adult, I kept hoping for them to obtain comeuppance for their actions.  

The Bronze Horseman is a well-written romance in a historical setting, but do not come to it expecting to learn much about the Siege of Leningrad. This novel has more in common with Diana Gabaldon than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; that's not a bad thing, but was not what expected or wanted.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: "'There will be other boys,' she finally added with a gallant shrug, 'but I will never have another sister.'"

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Up Next:

The next Sadie Hawkins Sunday book will be The Essence by Kimberly Derting, chosen by Blythe Harris, who enjoys torturing me.

Want to tell me what to read? Fill out THIS FORM with a book suggestion! For more details, check this post.

Review: A Tale for the Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being

Author: Ruth Ozeki
Pages: 432
Publisher: Viking Adult
Source: Publisher

Description from Goodreads:
A brilliant, unforgettable, and long-awaited novel from bestselling author Ruth Ozeki

“A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life of her great grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao’s drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.

Full of Ozeki’s signature humor and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

First Sentence: "Hi!"

Review:

Generally, when I sit down to write my review of a book, I know precisely what I want to say and have a pretty good idea how I feel about the book in question. My reactions tend to be clear and summing up my thoughts is not that difficult. Not so with A Tale for the Time Being. There were parts that I loved utterly, parts that bored me, and parts I'm not sure that I quite fathom. As such, this review might be a bit meandering, so bear with me.

In subject matter, though not in characterization or overall aim, A Tale for the Time Being reminds me heavily of Jonathan Safran Foer's remarkable book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Both follow story lines in the past and the present, as a main character searches through the history of their ancestors to find meaning in life after tragedy. Both draw lines between WWII and 9-11. Both feature odd protagonists, though they are strange in entirely different ways. Ozeki does very different things with these elements, but the similarities are fascinating, and I would recommend A Tale for the Time Being to Foer fans.

The opening pages of Ozeki's tale captured me immediately. A Tale for the Time Being opens with Nao, a sixteen-year-old girl living in Tokyo. Though born in Japan, she feels American, having spent much of her childhood overseas in Sunnyvale, California, where her father was working. When he lost his job in the bursting of the Dot-com bubble, they moved back to Japan. Nao hates it there. Her father still hasn't found work, instead descending first into gambling and then becoming an agoraphobic determined to commit suicide. Nao suffers from the change to the Japanese school system as well, since she's behind academically and horribly bullied by her classmates. At the time she begins her story, she's a drop-out, a ronin, studying to take the exams to get into high school again.

What I loved about the opening, though, is how authentic and real Nao feels. She's been through so much darkness at that point, is herself intent on suicide, but there's something fresh, young, and vibrant about her narration. My favorite parts of Nao's story are always those where she loses her train of thought and goes off on a rambling tangent. Her story itself is very sad, but her tangents are where you really get a look at the real Nao and how her mind works. She's darkly funny and I was desperately hoping for her story to come to a happy ending.

Nao's story takes place within another story, Ruth's. Ruth is half-Japanese and living in a remote Canadian city with her husband, Oliver. An urbanite, Ruth does not love her life there. She hates the way the power is constantly out from the storms and she's been struggling to get any writing done, cut off from her inspiration. Out on the beach, she finds a plastic bag and plans to throw it away, afraid of what might be inside. Oliver opens the bag, and inside finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox, within which are letters in old-fashioned Japanese, a diary in French, and a copy of Proust with a school girl's writing inside, mostly in English.

Ruth's story is both a mystery, as she searches for the ending to Nao's story, and self-discovery. As she reads, Ruth also researches, trying to find evidence that this diary is in fact a true thing. She gets the diaries and letters translated and the story slowly unfolds around her, becoming more present to her than her actual life. There's an almost magical realism sort of feel to Ruth's portion of the narrative, as though there's an actual mystical connection between writer and reader, allowing Ruth to influence the story despite the distance and time between them, though everything else is couched firmly in the real, non-magical world.

Within Nao's story, there are others, as she learns about her grandmother, her uncle and her father. Ozeki's got a huge focus on family and on the importance of life. She also delves into powerful philosophical themes, like the purpose of existence and Schrödinger's cat. The title, for example, is a lovely play on words, making use of two meanings, both a tale for the moment and a tale for beings that live in time. That phrase pops up at many points in the narrative and is crucial to Ozeki's overarching themes.

Unfortunately, I don't really feel like I got this. I think I'm partway there, but I most certainly do not have everything all figured out, which I don't think you're supposed to necessarily, but I should be a bit further along. Part of my problem is that I didn't have any clue where the story was going, having falsely believed Nao's assertion that it would be a story about her grandmother, but Nao is not a reliable storyteller, which had already been established, so silly me. As such, I allowed myself to get bored in sections that didn't seem important to me, because I had a predefined idea of where I thought the story was going. My expectations kept me from paying as much attention as I should have and from picking up all of the threads needed to weave the story into a cohesive, meaningful whole in my head.

All I can leave you with is that, though this novel didn't get an absurdly high rating from me in the end, it's one I will be keeping in my personal collection. These days, I have so many books I tend to give them away once I finish, except the ones in the 4-5 range, and a lot of the 4s I pass on as well. I think A Tale for the Time Being is one of those odd books that I will have a much greater appreciation for on a reread, because I'll have a better idea of what to expect and be able to appreciate more the intricate weaving of Ozeki's story.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: "And if you decide not to read anymore, hey, no problem, because you're not the one I was waiting for anyway. But if you decide to read on, then guess what? You're my kind of time being and together we'll make magic!"

Review: A Future Arrived

A Future Arrived
Passing Bells, Book 3

Author: Phillip Rock
Pages: 450
Publisher: William Morrow
Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours

Description from Goodreads:
Before "Downton Abbey", there was Abingdon Priory...The final installment of the saga of the Grevilles of Abingdon, beginning as the dizzy gaiety of the Jazz Age comes to a shattering end and concluding with German bombers coursing toward England. The theater of this books is the '30s, a decade of change and uncertainty, as all the old guidelines are swept away. "A Future Arrived" is a novel of the young, born during or just after "the war to end all wars". They grow to young adulthood as the inheritors of the hatred spawned by the Treaty of Versailles: Derek Ramsey, born only weeks after his father fell in France; the American writer, Martin Rilke, whose family roots in scandal entwine with those of the Stanmores, but who will conquer his questionable heritage by the worldwide fame that will soon come to him; the exquisitely beautiful Wood-Lacy twins, Jennifer and Victoria, and their passionate younger sister, Kate. In their heady youth and bittersweet growth to adulthood, they are the future-but the shadows that touched the lives of the generation before are destined to reach out to their own.

Prior Books in Series:
1: The Passing Bells
2: Circles of Time

First Sentence: "Spring came at last after a winter of snow and icy winds that had sent trees crashing in the tangled depths of Leith Wood and had blocked the narrow country roads with drifts."

Review:
Those who have been following along know that I really enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy, and had every expectation of finding the final book a four star read like the prior two. Sadly, A Future Arrived, while still good, did not quite rise to the level of The Passing Bells and Circles of Time. To be fair, I really wasn't in the mood for a historical fiction novel when I read it, but, still, I stick to my evaluation.

In A Future Arrived, Rock tackles both the year 1930 and the early period of WWII, from 1938 to 1940. Herein lies one of the major weaknesses of the book. These are both historically significant time periods, and the former at least could really benefit from more fiction. However, by combining them into just one volume, even a fairly massive one like this, Rock does both a disservice. Better to have had two more novels in the series or to solely cover the entry into World War II, since that predominates his interest.

The section set in 1930 does include some historical background about the impact of the Great Depression, but comes across largely as a means to introduce a whole swath of new characters. These new figures are predominantly the third generations, grandchildren to Lord and Lady Stanmore, children of the main characters of the previous two novels. The elder Standmores, now in their late 60s to early 70s hardly figure in the plot at all at this juncture.

The new characters are delightful. I really do like every single one of them, but the sheer mass of them was a bit overwhelming. No, it wasn't difficult keeping them all straight, but, since Rock didn't drop the prior main characters entirely, I found the narrative overwhelmed with perspectives. A Future Arrived focuses on far too many characters, especially since I found the sections about the adults boring, as, now that they're all married off, they can apparently only appear for the purposes of boring exposition. The novel feels much more fragmented and distracted than the previous two.

Part of that feeling stems from a change in his writing style. Rock might have made use of ellipses before, but I didn't particularly notice. A Future Arrived is lousy with this particular punctuation. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the power of the ellipsis, but a little goes a long way. Flip to a page and odds are high that you will find at least one ellipsis, and probably more than one. While sometimes they made sense, they often felt needless, expressing a pause that really added nothing to the flow of the dialogue.

The main themes covered are themselves quite clever, highlighting the real change in morals from the days of the Stanmores to the 1940s. Where a love affair was tawdry and shocking, meriting family disapproval and possibly even expulsion in 1918, by 1938 they're held openly and without shame. The attitudes, like the landscape, has evolved to something more similar to life in 2012 than in 1912. Watching this shift occur through the three novels has been fascinating.

Rock's take on WWII does differ from much of what I've read, focusing almost entirely on the boredom of war. There are a couple of dramatic fight scenes, but mostly he showcases the waiting around, the lack of action. Throughout it feels as though the war has hardly started, even though it really has. While I appreciate that he took a different tack, a focus on the boredom of war turned out to be just as boring as it sounds. I found myself skimming the war passages in an effort to resist falling asleep.

Rock goes a bit crazy pairing everybody off in this installment. It's like he's a yenta or something. He also is really hesitant to kill anybody. As was the case in The Passing Bells, he kills off one major character and that's it. However, it's less dramatic now, since the cast has doubled at this point. Of the three generations of main characters, only ONE dies in the course of 18 years, a couple of which include WWII? Really? To top it all off, the character left single (almost the only person not in a couple by that point) by that death immediately finds a new love on the LAST PAGE OF THE BOOK. I really can't even with that ending.

Despite all of my whining (thanks for letting me get that out), I did enjoy A Future Arrived. Rock's trilogy is a lot of fun, a must for fans of WWI and WWII fiction or of Downton Abbey.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: "'War,' he said to Albert, 'is truly the province of madness.'"

Review: The Confidant

The Confidant

Author: Hélène Grémillon
Translator: Alison Anderson
Pages: 256
Publisher: Penguin Books
Source: Publisher for review

Description from Goodreads:
"A gripping first novel" (Le Figaro Littéraire) and an award-winning international sensation as haunting and unforgettable as Suite Française

Paris, 1975. Camille sifts through letters of condolence after her mother's death when a strange, handwritten missive stops her short. At first she believes she received it by mistake. But then, a new letter arrives each week from a mysterious stranger, Louis, who seems intent on recounting the story of his first love, Annie. They were separated in the years before World War II when Annie befriended a wealthy, barren couple and fell victim to a merciless plot just as German troops arrive in Paris. But also awaiting Camille's discovery is the other side of the story, which will call into question Annie's innocence and reveal the devastating consequences of jealousy and revenge. As Camille reads on, she begins to realize that her own life may be the next chapter in this tragic story.

First Sentence: "I got a letter one day, a long letter that wasn't signed."

Review:

When I get a review request in my email inbox for a historical fiction novel with an appealing cover, I just cannot say no. The Confidant, set in Paris, as you can tell from the cover with the ubiquitous Eiffel Tower background, also takes place partially during the WWII era. Basically, I was all kinds of sold. What I love about fiction set in that era is how much variety there is, how much ground to be covered, and, yet again, I found myself in a book very different from any I'd previously encountered. The Confidant is a strange, oddly powerful little book.

The novel opens on Camille, who, in her mid-thirties, has just become pregnant by her boyfriend and whose mother has just died. These facts matter only in how they affect her mental state at the time of receiving the letters. After bereavement, people send letters, sharing stories, offering condolences, etc. Camille receives a thicker, unsigned letter, and opens it, curious to discover what it contains. Inside, she finds a story, one that seems to have little to do with her. The letters keep coming, always unsigned and always conveying a bit more of the story. This narrative device ensnared my curiosity, much as it did Camille's. What happened to the people in these letters? Were they delivered to Camille by mistake? 

While the bulk of the novel does take place during WWII, I will say that the war serves solely as a backdrop or a sort of catalyst to the drama of the piece. In fact, this story could have happened in another time or another place. It's a story of a woman and a girl, one desperate to fulfill what she sees as her duty and the other trying to find herself.

The main theme of The Confidant centers around childbirth. Obviously, this isn't a topic of much interest to me ordinarily, but the treatment here really made me think. Madame M desperately wants children, but, despite years of trying, she and her husband have yet to conceive. Constantly bombarded by war propaganda urging the importance of procreation to the continued health of France, Madame M feels guilty and like a failure. Her desperation drives her to try every single rumored cure for infertility, and goodness gracious but it was horrifying. The things women have been asked to do throughout history boggle my mind and sadden me deeply.

The tale told within these pages surprised me in its sordidness and darkness. Honestly, I expected something much lighter. However, The Confidant turned out to be a tale of sex and betrayal. While I didn't connect with any of the characters on a personal level, I could not help being caught up in their drama and the desire to discover just how the past had become Camille's present and where everyone ended up.

Sadly, though, I think this novel could have been formatted much better, as it was rather confusing. There are no chapter headings or indications that you're switching from one narrative to another, besides, sometimes, a change in font. Camille's narrative is an awful sans serif font. Then, without warning, the novel switches to Louis' letter. This, at least, had the benefit of being in a different font, but there was no transition at all, so it was jarring. More troublesome was the switch to Annie's perspective, which had no distinguishable difference from Louis'. I read several pages before I finally figured out what was going on. Once I knew what to expect, I didn't have any problems, but this really could have been handled better.

Grémillon has a poetic sort of writing style, which, while not entirely unpleasant to me, simply was not a style that has particular appeal to me. The phrasing was occasionally quite strange, and reads perhaps more like free verse than prose perhaps, though it could also be a result of an awkward translation from French. Grémillon even ends the novel with a poem, which definitely went rather over my head. I've been trying to do better, but I still have difficulty appreciating poetry.

For those of a poetic persuasion with an interest in women's issues and history, Grémillon's debut is a must-read. Though it did not end up being precisely my kind of book, I can recommend it highly as a quality read for a slightly different style of reader.

Rating: 3/5

Favorite Quote: "Nicolas said that no beauty mark had ever been more deserving of its name, and he was very fond of it. He would have done better to be fond of me."

Review: A Train in Winter

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France

Author: Caroline Moorehead
Pages: 384
Publisher: Harper
Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours

Description from Goodreads:
They were teachers, students, chemists, writers, and housewives; a singer at the Paris Opera, a midwife, a dental surgeon. They distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, printed subversive newspapers, hid resisters, secreted Jews to safety, transported weapons, and conveyed clandestine messages. The youngest was a schoolgirl of fifteen who scrawled "V" for victory on the walls of her lycée; the eldest, a farmer's wife in her sixties who harbored escaped Allied airmen. Strangers to each other, hailing from villages and cities from across France, these brave women were united in hatred and defiance of their Nazi occupiers.

Eventually, the Gestapo hunted down 230 of these women and imprisoned them in a fort outside Paris. Separated from home and loved ones, these disparate individuals turned to one another, their common experience conquering divisions of age, education, profession, and class, as they found solace and strength in their deep affection and camaraderie.

In January 1943, they were sent to their final destination: Auschwitz. Only forty-nine would return to France.

A Train in Winter draws on interviews with these women and their families; German, French, and Polish archives; and documents held by World War II resistance organizations to uncover a dark chapter of history that offers an inspiring portrait of ordinary people, of bravery and survival—and of the remarkable, enduring power of female friendship.

First Sentence: "On 5 January 1942, a French police inspector named Rondeaux, stationed in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, caught sight of a man he believed to be a wanted member of the French Resistance."

Review:
Obviously, I don't read too much nonfiction these days, still not recovered from the glut of required readings for my history major and also unable to resist the page-turning allure of fiction. Still, there are a few subjects that can tempt me into some scholarly reading, one of which is World War II. For whatever reason, I have always been drawn to everything about both WWI and WWII. As such, when I had the opportunity to review this, I jumped at it.

Very few history books read as smoothly as fiction, or as quickly. Moorehead's reads like history, and not like a story, but her prose is still beautiful and much less dry than most of the history texts I've encountered. Her phrasing also reads as delightfully un-American, very suited to the French women she's describing. I intended to just sit down and read this the way I do my fiction books, but ended up reading it in fits and starts, because it just went down better in small gulps, giving me time to mull things over, rather than frustrate myself by trying to read speedily.

Although the focus of this on the surface is a train, the train that took 230 female members of the resistance in France to Auschwitz, about half of the book focuses on how they got caught. Moorehead met with many of the still-living survivors as part of her research, and she obviously knew more about these women and the ones they were close to then some of the others. She doesn't tell the stories of all 230, of course, but she gives a nice picture of life in Occupied France, and the various roles women played in the resistance. This was an area I knew little of, so I was thrilled to expand my knowledge.

Sent to the Auschwitz, these women endure all the hardships there, most of which are probably quite familiar, as the horror of the Holocaust is already well-known. Moorehead's central thesis is that the reason so many of them (49/230) managed to survive was because of the kinship between these women. The friendships they developed and the way they supported one another in the camp greatly heightened their odds of survival.

These French women did their best to keep their minds active, reciting snippets of remembered poems and holding classes. They shared their food voluntarily, giving the largest portions to those most in need. At the freezing roll calls, they propped up those who could not stand. They secreted women who would otherwise be taken to the gas chambers away. They made each other Christmas presents from odds and ends they managed to steal. In short, the camps were still hell, but they were just slightly better with friends, serving as evidence that not all humankind is so evil and incapable of feeling.

One of my favorite things about A Train in Winter, I must admit at the risk of sounding childish, were the pictures. Okay, okay, hear me out. Many history texts include photos of the important figures, but they're often sectioned off into the middle so the photos can be glossy, which is nice, except that, by the time you get to that section you don't remember who most of them are. Moorehead located many pictures of the women, including ones taken in some of the camps. Seeing the change in the women once incarcerated is astonishing. Even more horrifying is the picture of some of the Auschwitz guards, presumably on some holiday, smiling and looking like any young, healthy folks out for a good time in the 40s, not like abusive killers.

Not what I expected Auschitz guards to look like. SOURCE.

Moorehead touches on so much, and I find reviewing history books a bit difficult. I thought her book quite well done, and would recommend it to those interested in studying the Holocaust or the French Resistance, whether for fun or for school.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Violins of Autumn

Violins of Autumn

Author: Amy McAuley
Pages: 326
Publisher: Walker Children's
Source: Own

Description from Goodreads:
When the Germans begin bombing London in World War II, Betty is determined to do her part. Instead of running air raid drills like most girls her age, she lies about her age and trains to become a spy. Now known by her secret agent persona, Adele Blanchard, she finds herself parachuting over German-occupied France under the cover of darkness to join the secret Resistance movement. Prepared to die for her cause, Adele wasn’t expecting to make a new best friend in her fellow agent or fall for a handsome American pilot. With the brutality of war ever present, can Adele dare to dream of a future where the world is at peace and she is free to live and love of her own accord?

First Sentence: "The shackles binding my arms and legs to the chair scour my blistered skin to a bloody mash."

Review:
Violins of Autumn mines the fertile literary ground of World War II, which has a seemingly limitless number of stories to be told. The plot of Violins of Autumn follows the work of a teenage female spy in the months leading up to D-Day. While I did enjoy this novel, the timing of my reading was bad. Unfortunately, Violins of Autumn came out on the heels of another novel about a young female spy for the Brits who is captured and tortured, Code Name Verity, and I could not help comparing the two, which weakened my experience of VoA.

This novel begins, as so many do these days, with a brief into a climactic scene from the end of the novel. This technique has become exceedingly popular in YA fiction and, while it can and has been used to great effect in some cases, I maintain that it should be used sparingly. The right scene put at the beginning can create dramatic irony, keeping the reader on tenterhooks throughout the book to figure out what's going on or how the main character ended up in that situation. If this technique does not succeed, it comes off simply as a lame attempt to create additional drama, often having the adverse affect.

The opening dramatic snippet of Violins of Autumn depicts Adele's torture by the Nazis. Adele (though her real name is Betty, I prefer her spy name for her and will refer to her that way), we now know will be captured at some point, and, based on the ending of that concluding section, possibly die. Wow, really, prologue? You mean a spy might be tortured or even die? Can this be true? This felt like such an unnecessary ploy, as I already expect that sort of stuff to happen in a novel about a spy and I felt less interested knowing what was coming than if I had been waiting to find out. Plus, Code Name Verity also opens with torture, and that made comparing the two even more inevitable.

Where Violins of Autumn wins over Code Name Verity is readibility. The story is much less complicated, the characters simpler and it also doesn't make you want to weep for the rest of your life. For the reader that loved the idea of a teenage spy but could not get through Code Name Verity (and seriously no judgment for that since I nearly DNFed it too), Violins of Autumn is the book that you're looking for.

McAulay keeps the plot moving along at a steady pace. Missions and danger and Nazis abound. All of the action kept me turning the pages. While I didn't particularly connect with the characters, nor did I dislike them. Adele is capable and skilled with language, so that was awesome. She avoided making stupid mistake and proved herself much cleverer than a lot of the other spies we see in the book, though she does struggle to do so well. However, I did not care for the love triangle, which resolved in an annoying way. Adele is one of those 'I love them both in different ways' girls, which I just cannot stand. With constant possibility of death, I am all for enjoying oneself, but attraction and fear do not love make.

The ending of Violins of Autumn struck me as the weakest part of the book. I thought it too optimistic. In the chapters before the last two, some sad things happened: people died, torture, etc. Yet, in those last two concluding chapters the tone is one of unmitigated celebration. There is not one mention of the fallen comrades, and, while I don't think they should wallow, THIS JUST HAPPENED. I expected something a bit darker and more contemplative.

Looking back on my review, I see how most of my comments are negative. I want to stress that this isn't a bad book; I did enjoy it. The timing was just off. Had there been a year or two gone since I read Code Name Verity, which covers the same basic concept, I would have appreciated this much more. So, if you've read CNV, give yourself some time.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favorite Quote: "My place in the world doesn't matter nearly as much as the people who open their hearts to me while I'm there. And wherever I am, as long as they're by my side, I'll be home."

Shelcha - Yael Naïm

The Far Side of the Sky

Author: Daniel Kalla
Pages: 460
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Source: Tor/Forge via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
On November 9, 1938—Kristallnacht—the Nazis unleash a night of terror across Germany that paves the way for Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army continues to rampage through China and tighten its stranglehold on Shanghai, a besieged and divided city that becomes the last haven for thousands of desperate European Jews.

Dr. Franz Adler, an Austrian Jew and renowned surgeon, is swept up in the wave of anti-Semitic violence washing over Vienna and flees to China with his daughter. There, at a Shanghai refugee hospital, Franz meets an enigmatic nurse, Soon Yi “Sunny” Mah. The chemistry between them is intense and immediate, until Sunny’s life is shattered when a drunken Japanese sailor attempts to rape her and murders her father.

The danger escalates for Shanghai’s Jewish refugee community as the Japanese ally themselves militarily with Germany and attack Pearl Harbor. Soon, the Japanese overrun the European enclaves within Shanghai. Facing starvation, disease and the threat of internment—or worse—Franz struggles to keep the refugee hospital open while protecting his own family and fights to outwit the Nazis and save the city’s Jewish community from a terrible fate.

The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish Second World War history, where cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of the everyday quest for survival.

First Sentence: "The shadow still swayed over the pavement."

Review:
Yet again, I find myself seriously impressed with the breadth and variety of WWII historical fiction. I honestly feel like whenever I read a WWII novel, whether I like it or not, I learn something new and fascinating. The Far Side of the Sky is no exception. I never previously knew that thousands of German and Austrian Jews escaped to Shanghai.

The story of these refugees has a double impact, since it allows Kalla to draw connections between the German's treatment of conquered territories and the Japanese treatment. I think this is seriously important for people in America to know. I have witnessed that here in the U.S., our schooling and basic mood towards Germany remains largely negative because of everything that happened in WWII. However, that same stigma definitely does not exist towards Japan or the Soviet Union. While, certainly, there were times where hatred or distrust for those countries eclipsed everything else, I don't think that their crimes have really caught in our consciousness the same way, largely because so much has been written and popularized about Hitler and the Holocaust.

The Far Side of the Sky begins in Austria on Kristallnacht. Franz's brother is brutally murdered by the SS, as are some of his family's neighbors. His brother's wife, Esther, has a huge gash on her arm. Thankfully, Franz is a doctor and can help. The opening is dramatic and makes its point. Franz Adler must get his family (himself, his daughter Hannah, Esther, and, hopefully, his aging father) out of Austria. Practically the only country accepting Jews at this point, fairly early in the war though it was, was China. The only reason China was open was because China really didn't have much of a say in anything at this point.

Through sheer luck and connections, Franz and his family escape to Shanghai. Though better, tensions in Shanghai are also running very high. Shanghai is inundated with foreigners, all in an uneasy truce and all ruling over the Chinese. The Japanese, however, are the ones really calling the shots, in their bid to take over the world from the east as Hitler moved from the west. Atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking are covered, although not in detail, quite clearly.

I found the writing style a bit awkward in the beginning, although I suspect that some of that will be fixed in the final version. Kalla seemed a bit unsure whether he should have his characters use German at all or whether he should just write in English. While I see the temptation to use the actual language, switching to English for the bulk of the conversation is more awkward. The reader can figure out that they would probably be speaking in German.

The characters are just great, which, as you all know, is the most important aspect of a book to me pretty much every time. I especially loved Sunny, a half-white, half-Chinese nurse in Shanghai. She's so incredibly intelligent and brave. Powerful women ftw! I was so caught up in their story by the end, and so desperate for things to turn out well for them.

If, like me, you can't get enough WWII fiction, I would definitely recommend searching out The Far Side of the Sky.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "Simon shook his head. ‘The Nazis in Germany…the Japanese here in Shanghai…Treating people as less than human because of the shape of their faces or the sound of their names. Sometimes it feels like the whole damn world is unraveling.’"

"Too many screams in my throat
Too many faces
Too many plans
that I wanted to change
So many words
If I can only tell you
There's no other love
But the one I live with you

Still don't know how
We let all this happen
Will this war last forever and ever?
They've burned my hands
Cut my hair and steal my soul
But do you really want to know?"

The Last Time I Saw Paris - Henry Mancini

Code Name Verity

Author: Elizabeth Wein
Pages: 327
ARC Acquired from: Hyperion via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
Oct. 11th, 1943—A British spy plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. Its pilot and passenger are best friends. One of the girls has a chance at survival. The other has lost the game before it's barely begun.

When “Verity” is arrested by the Gestapo, she's sure she doesn’t stand a chance. As a secret agent captured in enemy territory, she’s living a spy’s worst nightmare. Her Nazi interrogators give her a simple choice: reveal her mission or face a grisly execution.

As she intricately weaves her confession, Verity uncovers her past, how she became friends with the pilot Maddie, and why she left Maddie in the wrecked fuselage of their plane. On each new scrap of paper, Verity battles for her life, confronting her views on courage and failure and her desperate hope to make it home. But will trading her secrets be enough to save her from the enemy?

Harrowing and beautifully written, Elizabeth Wein creates a visceral read of danger, resolve, and survival that shows just how far true friends will go to save each other. Code Name Verity is an outstanding novel that will stick with you long after the last page.

First Sentence: "I AM A COWARD."

Review:
Getting in to Code Name Verity took me a long time, perhaps 80 pages. In fact, I nearly DNFed this one, since I have plenty enough to read and was not feeling any connection to it. Even once I got a bit more caught up in the story, this book was a bit of a slog for me. I was never swept away and it was not a quick read. Still, I am very glad that I put the time and effort into finishing Wein's novel.

Code Name Verity is INTENSE. It is a novel of war, of interrogation, of women, and, most importantly, of friendship. Verity/Queenie (neither her real name, which you won't learn until about two hundred pages in) and Maddie are best friends. Maddie is a pilot and Verity does, well, lots of things. At the opening, the reader is working through Verity's confession. She has been caught by Nazis in occupied France, and has spilled her secrets. She is committing to paper everything she knows about the British war effort.

Verity's section, the first half of the book, gave me the most trouble. While I did like Verity's humor in the face of awfulness, I had a lot of trouble with the way that part was written. Verity writes in third person and in first person. When writing about past events she mostly uses third person, which is fine and interesting, as it conveys that she no longer feels like the same girl that she used to be. However, she also occasionally uses first person when talking about the past, not just the present, and I found that shift awkward and unrealistic. Maybe it's supposed to be a symptom of the pressure Verity is under or something, but I had trouble with this style.

Maddie's tale comes next, and I found it much more easy to read, even though it lacked the humor and, perhaps, the excitement of Verity's. I nearly made it through this book without shedding a tear, but Maddie got me in the end. I loved their friendship, and getting to see it from both perspectives, especially since it's hard to know what's going on with Verity. You can be more sure of verity from Maddie. Ironic that.

Other than the previously-noted issue, the writing was amazing. The story focused a bit too much on details that didn't especially capture my attention, another reason it moved so slowly, like the different kinds of planes. Oddly enough, this is something I also very much appreciate about the book, because it's so chock-full of history and so different from any other young adult book I've read.

Code Name Verity may not capture you immediately, but it's worth a read if you have any interest in history. It's also wonderful to read another WWII book on women's roles, especially the much more rare of women actually involved in what are more traditionally male occupations in the war machine.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution."

Not the Same - Ben Folds

Next to Love

Author: Ellen Feldman
Pages: 320
ARC Acquired from: Random House via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
It’s 1941. Babe throws like a boy, thinks for herself, and never expects to escape the poor section of her quiet Massachusetts town. Then World War II breaks out, and everything changes. Her friend Grace, married to a reporter on the local paper, fears being left alone with her infant daughter when her husband ships out; Millie, the third member of their childhood trio, now weds the boy who always refused to settle down; and Babe wonders if she should marry Claude, who even as a child could never harm a living thing. As the war rages abroad, life on the home front undergoes its own battles and victories; and when the men return, and civilian life resumes, nothing can go back to quite the way it was.

From postwar traumas to women’s rights, racial injustice to anti-Semitism, Babe, Grace, and Millie experience the dislocations, the acute pains, and the exhilaration of a society in flux. Along the way, they will learn what it means to be a wife, a mother, a friend, a fighter, and a survivor. Beautiful, startling, and heartbreaking, Next to Love is a love letter to the brave women who shaped a nation’s destiny.

First Sentence: "In the year and a half Babe Huggins has worked for Western Union, she has been late only once before."

Review:
Next to Love is much larger in scope than I anticipated, again because I tend to avoid reading blurbs in full, since they occasionally have spoilers. Anyway, I expected this to be a novel about WWII, and certainly that's a big chunk of it, but, even more, this is a story about war and its effect on families, especially women.

The novel tells the story of three different women, friends, Babe, Grace and Millie. All three get married before their husbands ship off to fight in Europe. These women are all different in their situations, their motivations and their expectations. Two of them do not get their husbands back; one does. One can recover from her husband's loss; one cannot. Even the woman who got her husband back discovered that just because he returned, it does not mean he is the same man that you married years before.

The perspective of these women waiting at home is entirely engrossing to me. They get jobs, do their part in the war effort, knowing, whether they will it or not, that they will have to give up their new found independence when the men come home. The whole concept of war brides, of all of the marriages that take place as men are about to set out for war, is entirely absurd to me. I mean, I get the desire for closeness and comfort, but the men are going to come back so completely different, and, in most cases, the courtship is so rushed they hardly knew one another in the first place.

Once the war ends, Feldman treats us to a view of post-war America, incorporating the fight for civil rights and the effects of WWII upon the next generation. The women's kids are now old enough to be dating and getting married and holding down jobs, and they are so completely messed up. The loss of their fathers or the mother's reaction to his loss is something that affects them permanently, or so it seems.

Next to Love is not a happy story. Actually, it left me rather emotionally ravaged at several points. Both of my favorite characters are raped (one instance might not be, but it was definitely in the date rape family). Even the most solid relationships have serious issues that never really get resolved. This is not a book to read when you're hoping to be uplifted.

What I love about WWII historical fiction is how many tales there are to tell, and, many as I've read, I still learn something new in every book. Next to Love makes a wonderful addition to this category, especially because of its focus upon the role of women.

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: " 'The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. "That'll keep the gals out of trouble."' "

"You see 'em drop like flies from the bright sunny skies
They come knocking at your door with this look in their eyes
You've got one good trick and you're hanging on you're hanging on...
To it"