Review: The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

Tom Rachman's debut novel, The Imperfectionists, about an ex-patriot newspaper in Rome, knocked my socks off. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, like so many sophomore efforts, is a major letdown.

The heroine, Tooly Zylberberg, is a 32-year-old bookshop owner in Wales with a profound disinterest in selling any books and a befuddling lack of knowledge about the internet. The story of her adventuresome past is told through a series of flashback-and-forths between her as a 9-year old in Bangkok, a 20-year-old in New York, and present day.

My big gripe is that the secret of her past was made so mysteriously obscure that there was almost no plot to the first half of the book, lest the secret be given away. Her activities in the flashback scenes are intentionally unmoored from full explanation until the final chapters, to build up the mystery. It got pretty boring, floating around, waiting for a story to turn up.

Of course, the trouble with a big build up like that is that it has to deliver. I was disappointed. Tooly’s unorthodox childhood turned out to have a pretty banal explanation. And she wasn't even likable. She couldn't do anything for herself, including finishing school, getting a job, making any money, or being a friend. I slogged on to the end to find out what happened to her, but by then I barely cared.

OTHER REVIEWS

New York Times

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NOTES

This is one of the books I read for my personal 2015 TBR challenge:

Review: Skios

Every year, the Fred Toppler Foundation on the Greek isle of Skios hosts the Great European House Party where guests come to study European culture for a long weekend culminating in a keynote address by a noted expert in something or another.

Until this year, when things go haywire. Oliver Fox, landing on Skios for a naughty weekend with a woman he’s known for five minutes, grabs Dr. Norman Wilfrid’s suitcase by mistake and identity on a whim. This leaves Dr. Wilfrid in a taxi to a villa on the other side of the island with nothing but his lecture notes for the Fred Toppler Keynote Address.

From there on, it’s nothing but mistaken identity, near misses, in-one-door-out-the-other, in-one-bed-out-the-other, prat falls, and laugh lines. The Toppler Foundation guests adore the younger, charming version of Dr. Wilfrid. The real Dr. Wilfrid falls into a herd of goats. Of course Fox’s weekend companion shows up, as does his long-suffering girlfriend. The Greeks can’t understand the Anglophones; the Anglophones can’t understand the Greeks. Hilarity ensues.

Michael Frayn wrote the side-splitting and perpetually-running play, Noises Off, so it is no surprise that he could take a similar formula for intricate farce, set it on a Greek Island, and come up with a winner. Skios is non-stop funny.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Skios counts as one of my books for my 2015 Mt. TBR Challenge.

Review: Portrait of a Woman in White by Susan Winkler

Young lovers are torn apart when Lili Rosenswig flees Paris with her family as the Nazis invade and her husband-to-be stays to defend his country. When the Nazis loot the family’s gallery, including a beloved portrait of Lili's mother, art, love, and war are entwined in an enthralling new historical novel, Portrait of a Woman in White by Susan Winkler.

Susan was captivated by French art and culture as a young child. Her appreciation deepened through a grad school degree in French literature and a career writing non-fiction guidebooks to Paris. Historical accounts of how the Nazis appropriated French art collections – primarily artwork owned by Jewish families – during World War II fired her imagination, inspiring a story of one fictional family’s loss and struggle to rebuild the family identity and fortune in a new country.

The book works all the way through. The story is compelling and well-told, with a lot of plot packed between the covers. The characters are believable people who change in believable ways as the story unfolds. Lili in particular becomes more interesting as she matures from a sassy pre-war teen ager to a responsible adult with difficult choices to face.

With war-torn lovers, a family saga plot, and a stolen Matisse, Portrait of a Woman in White is a terrific novel. Each copy should come with a "Perfect for Book Club" sticker on the cover!

OTHER REVIEWS

• American Girls Art Club In Paris

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NOTES

Read my interview of Susan Winkler here.

Also recommended: "French Impressions: Susan Winkler’s Portrait of a Woman in White on love, loss, and the human ability to reinvent oneself" on A Woman's Paris.

Review: Things Invisible to See

GREAT VALENTINE GIFT IDEA!

Magical realism and baseball are two things I steer clear of in novels, but Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard makes me rethink my prejudices. For one thing, there is very little in the way of actual baseball, for a book that starts off with:

In Paradise, on the banks of the River of Time, the Lord of the Universe is playing ball with His archangels.

And while there is plenty of magical realism to go around, no one bit gets played to death, which is my biggest gripe.

The story involves twin brothers from Ann Arbor in WWII, one who makes a deal with Death to save the paralyzed girl he loves. But can his sandlot baseball team really beat a team of baseball’s dead legendary players?

You have to read this adorably imaginative, quirky, and irresistibly romantic novel to find out.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I'm gave this one a go because it is on Erica Jong's list of Top 100 Novels by Women and was one of the books I randomly selected for my personal TBR challenge this year. I am so glad I did!