Opening Sentence of the Day: Good for the Jews

"Smoke at the horizon."

-- Good for the Jews by Debra Spark
Does an incomplete sentence count as an opening sentence? Oh well. It gets much better very fast. I was immediately plunged into the connected lives of two families in the high school academic circle of Madison, Wisconsin.

Review of the Day: Incidents in the Rue Laugier

The story of Maud Gonthier’s marriage to Edward Harrison is not a happy one. Looking back on their years together, their daughter – the self-described “unreliable narrator” of the book – creates a story to explain the sighs, attitudes, and distance she perceived between her parents.

Incidents in the Rue Laugier involves family conflicts and class differences, a doomed love affair, and a marriage that ultimately was, in its own crabbed way, successful. But Anita Brookner presents more than an interesting story – she examines the nature of marriage and the struggle to build a joint life using limited individual resources. As Maud described her marriage:

There was a slight additional loneliness in her increasing isolation from everyone but her husband, but her own calm good sense was there to remind her that she was not at home, that she had never expected to be at home, and that those who did not rely on their inner resources, as she had been obliged to do, were forever condemned to weep in other women’s drawing rooms . . . .

Like Maud’s life, this is a quiet book worthy of reflection.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Opening Sentence of the Day: A Century of November

"He judged men and he grew apples and it was a perilous autumn for both."

-- A Century of November by W. D. Wetherell

So begins Charles Marden's quest to understand his son's death, killed in battle in France in 1918.

This is a beautiful book. Heartbreaking, but beautiful.  They are making it into a movie, which should be very good because the book is full of images that will translate to the screen easily.

Teaser Tuesday: Massacred for Gold

"Not only did the Chieftain delay nearly a year before reporting the murders, the April 19, 1888, edition that finally carried the story was missing from the newspaper's files. Rick Swart, the editor of the Chieftain, helped me search through the musty cardboard boxes containing the newspaper's early editions, kept in the basement of the Chieftain's one-story Bowlby-stone building in Enterprise." -- Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon by R. Gregory Nokes This quote exemplifies the book by showing the detail Nokes includes about the 1887 massacre of over 30 Chinese gold miners in Oregon's Hell's Canyon (for further example, he had earlier explained what "Bowlby-stone" is), as well as his personal involvement in the more recent investigation. Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.