City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

City of Girls: A Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert --- 470 pages including Acknowledgments.

From Google Books:

It is the summer of 1940. Nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris arrives in New York with her suitcase and sewing machine, exiled by her despairing parents. Although her quicksilver talents with a needle and commitment to mastering the perfect hair roll have been deemed insufficient for her to advance into her sophomore year at Vassar College, Vivian soon finds gainful employment as the self-appointed seamstress at the Lily Playhouse, her unconventional Aunt Peg's charmingly disreputable Manhattan theater revue in a working class neighborhood near Times Square. There, Vivian quickly becomes the toast of the showgirls, transforming trash and tinsel from a secondhand clothing store into sumptuous costumes for goddesses.

Exile in New York is no exile at all: here in this strange wartime city of girls, Vivian and her girlfriends drink the heady highball of life itself to the last drop. When Aunt Peg's old friend, the legendary English actress Edna Parker Watson, arrives at the Lily as a wartime refugee and stays to star in the company's most ambitious show ever, Vivian is entranced by the magic that follows in Edna's elegant wake. But there are hard lessons to be learned, and bitterly regretted mistakes to be expiated, which drive Vivian away from the life she loves and back to that bleak existence with her parents. Vivian learns that to live the life she wants, she must continuously re-invent herself.

'At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is,' she confides. And so Vivian sets forth her story, and that of the women around her – women who have lived as they truly are, out of step with a century that could never quite keep up with them.

Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my favorite authors; even when she misses her mark occasionally, she never disappoints. This is a novel that could be called a 21st century feminist version of Tom Jones.  rollicking, sentimental, unapologetic and sexy.

Click HERE to read the review from National Public Radio.

Click HERE to read the review from Vanity Fair.

Click HERE to read the review from Vox.com.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

Click HERE to see the author promo on Youtube.

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna by Juliet Grames

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna: A Novel by Juliet Grames --- 445 pages including a Family Tree, a Preface and an Author's Note.

In Italian, stella fortuna means "lucky star." But as author Juliet Grames’s observes early in this, her debut novel:

"What a terrifying thing to call a little girl. There's no better way to bring down the Evil Eye than to brag about your good fortune; a name like Stella Fortuna was just asking for trouble."

And indeed in the course of her very long life, as related by her granddaughter, Stella seems doomed rather than blessed. From her childhood in the remote Calabrian village of Ievoli, at the toe of Italy's peninsular boot; to the last, lost years in a small white house in suburban Connecticut, tended by family who never understood her or, at the last, even remembered the person she was — Stella dodges strange and horrible deaths, and battles the subjugation of her life to the control of her father, her husband, her sons.

The author drew the inspiration for her story from her own, difficult grandmother, and suggests that many of us have similar stories of "difficult women" in our families. Perhaps we need to "unpack" these stories and discover what lies behind the difficulty.  Perhaps, like Stella, these women were just fighting for the right to control their own lives, to be recognized as a person with dreams and ambitions beyond what their families expected or demanded.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to listen to an interview with the author from lithub.com.

Click HERE to read the review from Criminal Element.com

The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

The Winter of the Witch: A Novel by Katherine Arden --- 372 pages including Author's Note, Note on Russian Names, Glossary, Family Tree and Acknowledgements.

The Winter of the Witch is the third and final volume in Arden's Winternight Trilogy, which also includes The Bear and the Nightingale (2017) and The Girl in the Tower (2018). This fantasy trilogy is based on the history and folklore of 14th century Rus, and the historic Battle of Kulikovo, when the princes and boyers finally united under Dimitri, Grand Prince of Moscow, to defeat the Tatars of the Mongol Golden Horde; it is celebrated in Russian history as the beginning of the Russian nation. 

As the third book opens, Moscow is on fire and the false priest Konstantin has put the blame on Vasya Petrovna. A frightened, furious mob drags Vasya down to the river to burn her as a witch, but she contrives to escape, drawing on her own powers and with the help of the chertyi, the pagan guardians of the land who are slowly fading under the pressure of the Church.

Vasya escapes into Midnight, a place of myth and magic, where she learns the secrets of her heritage in an encounter with her great-grandmother, Baba Yaga. But with knowledge comes responsibility. Vasya is determined to find a way to save her family, her friends, her country, and to reconcile the old Rus of magic with the new Rus of Christianity.

The Winternight Trilogy is filled with its author's love for Russian history, language, myth and folklore. Her aim is to reconcile warring factions and disparate beliefs into a world harmonious and whole.  She achieves a powerful end to a beautiful trilogy, filled with memorable images and characters --- none more so than Vasya herself.

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from tor.com.

Click HERE to watch the review from @sff180 on Youtube.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence of the Girls: A Novel by Pat Barker --- 291 pages

Booker Award winner Pat Barker turns her attention to Homer's Iliad retold from the viewpoint of the captive Trojan women who have become the property of the Greeks, doing the hard work of the camp by day and servicing their captors by night.

Briseis, the former queen of Lyrnessus, is the narrator. In the Iliad, Briseis famously becomes the prize or trophy awarded to Achilles for his prowess in battle. Until she is snatched away by the spiteful King Agamemnon, and Achilles furiously declares he will fight no more for the Greeks. In the Iliad Briseis has no voice, no will of her own.  In Barker's retelling, men may enforce that silence, but among themselves the women find ways to reclaim their sense of worth and self.

A wonderfully compelling tale.

Click HERE to read a featured interview with the author in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read an article from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from the Guardian (UK).

Click HERE to read the review in Kirkus.

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller --- 393 pages including a Cast of Characters and Acknowledgement

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s first novel, a re-imagining of the Iliad,  was both a bestseller and a literary tour de force, winning the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012.

Having claimed mythology as her territory,  Miller – a Classics scholar – has returned to that fertile field for her second novel, Circe, this time taking her text from  the Odyssey.

In Miller's version however, it is the witch Circe, freed from the confinement of Homer's tale, who is transformed into the heroine of the story. With her words, Miller gives Circe her own, distinctive, voice.

“When I was born,” Circe begins her tale, “the name for what I was did not exist.” Circe finds her powers in response to years of humiliation at the hands of her predetory Titan family, her vicious cousins the Olympian gods, and even humans, who all see her as as their rightful prey.

Circe's adventures makes for absorbing reading. Written in a terse, glowing prose well-matched to her source material, there is nothing antiquated about this Circe or her travails. Miller has wrought a magic worthy of her heroine, transforming an archetype  of female subjugation into a paean to empowerment.

Click HERE to read the review from the UK Guardian.

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from NPR.

Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

Jane Steele: A Novel by Lyndsay Faye --- 436 pages including a Discussion guide and a Conversation with the Author.

Like the heroine of Jane Eyre, the orphaned Jane Steele suffers at the hands of a hostile family and a cruelly indifferent world. Like Jane Eyre, Jane Steele rebels, and her tormentors call her wicked and unnatural. But Jane Steele is afraid they are right. When she escapes to London, she leaves behind a trail of the corpses of her tormentors. There she hides from the law in London's most notorious neighborhoods, and supports herself by writing and selling macabre "last confessions" of condemned criminals to an avid public.  By chance she learns that her aunt has died and a distant relation has inherited her ancestral home, Highgate House. Mr. Charles Thornfield, late of the Anglo-Sikh Wars in the Punjab, seeks a governess for his young ward, Sahjara Kaur.  Anxious to prove that she is the rightful heir to Highgate, Jane applies for the job. But she never anticipated that she would develop an affection for her young charge, or find acceptance in the unconventional household --- or fall desperately in love with the enigmatic man she proposes to supplant.

A wonderfully macabre and entertaining tribute to Charlotte Bronte's classic proto-feminist novel,
Faye's book was optioned for a film adaptation by 1492 Pictures just days before its publication.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Daily News.

Click HERE to read the review from NPR.

Click HERE to watch the YouTube review by squibblesreads. 

The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey

The Widows of Malabar Hill: A Mystery of 1920s Bombay by Sujata Massey --- 385 pages including Glossary and Acknowledgements.

A new  historical mystery series by Sujata Massey, set in the legal community of 1920s Bombay, during the last decades of the British Raj, and featuring a female sleuth modeled in part upon the lives of the first Indian women to practice law in India in the 1920s.

Parveen Mistry has returned home to Bombay after receiving her law degree from Oxford University to fulfill her father's dream and join him in his successful law practice.  Although Perveen's Oxford degree automatically admits her to the Bombay Bar, female solicitors are still not allowed to represent clients in court, but she can handle all the rest of the work involved.  Her father assigns her what should be a routine case, executing the will of a wealthy Muslim mill owner and the inheritances of his three widows and four minor children. Since the widows and children live in purdah --- strict seclusion from all men except their closest male relatives --- in the zenana --- walled off woman's quarters --- of their husband's house on Malabar Hill, only Perveen can have direct contact with their clients.

Their husband had appointed a male guardian to look after the house and the widows while the estate is settled, but Perveen suspects that this guardian, Faisal Mukri, is taking advantage of the women. Her efforts to investigate the situation soon reveals tensions and rivalries simmering beneath the surface in the house on Malabar Hill.

In counterpoint to the widows' story we also learn of events in Perveen's life five years earlier that make her especially sensitive to the exploitation of vulnerable women in a time and place when traditions, prejudices and laws are all weighted in favor of men.

The first in a promising new series of historical mysteries with a proto-feminist sleath and a culturally diverse setting.

Click HERE to read a profile of the author from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from the UK Globe & Mail.

Click HERE to read a review from the Los Angeles Times.

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Girl in the Tower: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy - Book Two) by Katherine Arden --- 362 pages with Author's Note, Glossary and Acknowledgements. 

The fantasy adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as Vasya, no longer a child, is confronted with the stark realities facing a wellborn maiden in 14th century Russia. Because she refuses to marry or to be packed off to a convent, her only other option is to flee her home, disguised as a boy.  Unprepared to face the world on her own just yet, she finds  temporary refuge with the enigmatic frost demon Marozko. The attraction between them is strong as ever but ambivalent on both sides. 

Determined to find her own way, Vasya and her great horse Solovey decide to travel on.  But when she encounters a village that has been raided by bandits, who have stolen away three young girls, Vasya impulsively decides to track the bandits and rescue the girls.

One thing leads to another and Vasya finds her masquerade could compromise not only her reputation, but the reputations and safety of her brother, sister and niece, even as she becomes aware of a sorcerous plot to assassinate her cousin,the Grand Prince of Moscow and usurp his rule. She comes to understand that she is not the only one who will pay the price for the choices she makes. 

An enticing blend of Russian history and folklore provides the foundation for this feminist high fantasy adventure.  It will be interesting to see how Arden resolves her tale in Book Three.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read a review from Tor.com. 

Click HERE to listen to a podcast interview with the author.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale: A Novel (Winternight Trilogy - Book One) by Katherine Arden --- 322 pages with Author's Note, Glossary and Acknowledgements

My favorite books often combine history, folklore and fantasy; Katherine Arden's first novel (part of a projected series) has all these elements and is off to an utterly beguiling start.

Very few authors who write in English are tackling the world of 14th century Rus' where the Grand Princes in their wooden towns paid tribute to the Mongol Khans to buy an uneasy peace. Here the medieval age lingered, and the ancient lore of the Winter King and the Bear lurked beneath the canopy of the endless Forest and competed with the Orthodox Church for the allegiance of peasants and boyars alike.

In Vasilisa we have a true daughter of the old ways, loving and valiant in defense of her people and her land; willing to accept whatever challenges Fate has in store so long as it is by her own choosing.

The second book in the series, The Girl in the Tower, is scheduled for release in January 2018.

Click HERE to read the review from the Christian Science Monitor.

Click HERE to read the review from NPR.

Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read the review from tor.com.

Click HERE to watch the trailer on Youtube. 

The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel

The Moon in the Palace: A Novel of Empress Wu by Weina Dai Randel --- 395 pages

This is the first in a two volume set of historical novels imagining the life of the famous Tang dynasty 7th century Empress Wu, the only women to rule China in her own name. Interestingly, during the seventh century, there were also women rulers in the neighboring kingdoms of the Korean peninsula, and sitting on the throne of Imperial Japan.

In this novel, Wu begins life as one of three daughters of a Chinese Governor. Her father having no son, places his hopes for the family's advancement in his beautiful and intelligent second daughter Mei. When her father dies, Mei's family loses their home and position, and are forced to take refuge with a unscrupulous relative. Mei's only hope of restoring her family's fortune depends on being selected as one of the yearly tribute of maidens sent to the Palace to serve the Emperor Taizong.

But when she arrives in the Palace, Mai realizes that she still faces long odds to achieve the Emperor's notice. To do so she must learn to navigate the treacherous intrigues of the Imperial household, conceal her feelings, and find allies who can help. Her quest becomes even more complicated when she falls in love with the Emperoro's eighth son, Prince Zhi; and when the cunning and devious concubine Jewel decides that Mei is her greatest rival for the role of "Most Adored," the title bestowed upon the Emperor's favorite.

Worst of all the Emperor proves to be a man of unpredictable moods: genial and uxorious one moment, selfish and cruel the next.  Some dreadful secret eats at his mind, causing him to see treachery all around him. As the Empoeror sinks deeper into obsession and madness, signs and portents declare the ruler has lost the mandate of Heaven.  In such times of turmoil, Mei knows, the favor of Fortune can be won --- or lost --- forever.

If you enjoy this book, the second volume, The Empress of Bright Moon, will be published in April.

The author was born and grew up in China, reading stories about the Empress Wu. She trained as a journalist and came to the United States to pursue her career as a writer. She has published stories for both Chinese audiences and now, Western audiences. Dai Randel is married and lives in Texas.

Click HERE to read an interview with the author from the Huffington Post.

Click HERE to read a review in Library Journal.

Click HERE to read a review in the Dallas News.

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

Memory of Water: A Novel by Emmi Itäranta --- 263 pages

In the present-world, Noria Kaitio is the tea master in a small village in the far northern reaches of the Scandinavian Union, under the control of the repressive military regime of New Qian. 

In a world ravaged by global warming and massive pollution, fresh water is an increasingly endangered resource. To maintain their power the military must control the dwindling sources of fresh water. 

Noria, like her father before her, is suspected of concealing a fresh water source somewhere in the vicinity of her village. When the drought grows worse, and the people of the village are dying from lack of water, Noria faces a terrible choice: does she keep her secret and watch her neighbors die, or does she share the water, knowing that sooner or later something or someone will betray her to the military?  Knowledge, she slowly comes to understand, is also a kind of power.

The author, from Finland, now lives in Canterbury, England. She wrote Memory of Water in both Finnish and English; it was first published in Finland in 2012 under the title Teemestarin kirja (The Teamaster's Book), and won several prizes. It was published in English in 2014, and is currently shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Memory of Water has garnered praise as a different kind of dystopian novel. Her style has drawn comparisons to Ursula K. LeGuin. Itäranta is currently working on her second novel. 

Click HERE to read a review of Memory of Water on Tor.com.

Click HERE and HERE to read other revews.

Click HERE to watch a short video interview of the author.

Click HERE to read the biographical entry on Emmi Itäranta from Wikipedia.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell: a Novel by Nadia Hashimi --- 452 pages

The Pearl that Broke Its Shell is the story of Rahima and her four sisters, living in a village in Afghanistan in 2007.  Their father, in the service of a war lord, is seldom home, and when he is, the girls and their mother go in fear of his erratic behavior and increasingly violent rages, made all the worse by his addiction to opium and his bitterness that his wife has given him no sons. In desperation, Rahima's mother decides that Rahima should cut her hair and wear boy's clothes, in accordance with the ancient custom of "bacha posh" when a daughter can assume the persona of a son, in order to help her family --- at least until she reaches puberty, when she must revert to being female once again.

Rahima finds her new freedom as a boy exhilerating. She can go to school with the other boys, play in the streets, run errands and bargain in the market for her mother, even earn money by working for a neighbor. Her father treats his "son" with far more affection than he ever shows his daughters, and her mother no longer asks her to help with the endless work of the house as her sisters are required to do. And her mother's sister, Khala Shaima, reveals that Rahima's great grandmother, Shekiba, did something very similar in her own day, in the early 1900s. Khala Shaima tells Rahima Shekiba's story to inspire her to think beyond the moment and seize this opportunity to make her own future. The books alternates between Rahima and Shekiba stories, as they fight to claim ownership of their lives in a culture that demeans, oppresses, and preys upon those who are poor, female, or disabled.

Sadly, there is nothing unusual about the misogynist attitudes of tribal Afghanistan; these same attitudes persist in many parts of the world, and were (and are still) prevalent in our own culture, perhaps more subtle in expression but just as destructive.  The author fled Afghanistan as a child with her family, before the Soviet invasion in the 1970s. She did not return to visit her homeland until 2002.  Her novel draws upon family stories and real persons and events in Afghanistan, both past and present.

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore by Walter Mosley

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel by Walter Mosley --- 265 pages

This is a very moving story of a woman struggling with self-loathing, despair, forgiveness and redemption. Debbie Dare is a black porn film star, immediately and strikingly identifiable because of her signature (bleached) platinum blonde hair, vivid blue (contact lenses) eyes and the distinctive white tattoo just below her left eye.

She comes home from a long, exhausting film shoot to find her husband (an ex-porn star, producer) dead, electrocuted along with the young girl he was "auditioning" in their bathtub, when the video camera fell into the water.

The accumulated shocks of the day force Debbie to face some hard truths about her life and the path that led her to this dead end. She decides this is her chance to quit the porn industry and make a new and better life for herself. Making the decision is the easy part.  The hard part is understanding how she got to where she is, and what she has to do to get to where she wants to be.

Mosley doesn't pull any punches. In order to show us Debbie's struggle to rise, he must also show us the depths of her fall. In the process he gives us another portrait in his American gallery of flawed but persistent souls in search of salvation.

Walter Mosley is the award-winning author of the Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill mystery series, as well as many other works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama.

Click HERE to visit Walter Mosley's web site.

Click HERE to read an interview with Mosley talking about Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore in the Chicago Tribune.

My Real Children by Jo Walton

My Real Children by Jo Walton --- 317 pages

This is a hauntingly beautiful novel by an author I just stumbled across when I found her collection of essays, What Makes This Book So Great, on the new books shelf at my local library.

Ursula K. LeGuin invented the term "speculative fiction," and this is exactly the kind of story she meant by it. Walton begins with an old woman in a nursing home. Patricia is suffering from dementia; the notes on her chart often say she is "very confused." But she does remember people and places and events from the past --- only it seems as though she is remembering two different sets of people and places and events. At some point in time she made a choice --- either/or --- and her life and the world around her diverged down separate paths, but she remembers both: living, breathing, real.

Even if you don't read science fiction or fantasy, read this book. It will break your heart and fill you with wonder and pride in the sheer resilience of the human spirit.

Click HERE for a brief biographical entry on Jo Walton.

Click HERE to acess Jo Walton's web site.

Click HERE to access Jo Walton's blog on the Tor Book's web site.  

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

While Beauty Slept: A Novel by Elizabeth Blackwell --- 421 pages

A re-telling of the Sleeping Beauty story that's meant to be empowering for women but unfortunately Blackwell has stripped out all the traditional magic and replaced it with her own mash up of romantic stereotypes and superficial feminism. The sum total of her research seems to have been the Disney film. The characters are wooden, the writing is clunky, and the plot creaks like a cart with mismatched wheels.

Click HERE for an interview with the author.

Robin McKinley's Spindle's End and Jane Yolen's Briar Rose both offer better variations on the Sleeping Beauty story.

And if you are looking for something recent and really original, watch the PBS "Great Performances" DVD of Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty ballet, with its entirely new slant on the old story that marries Tchaikovsky's wonderful music with great choreography and ingenious stagecraft.

The Secret of Raven Point by Jennifer Vanderbes

The Secret of Raven Point by Jennifer Vanderbes - 306 pages

This novel opens in the months before World War II breaks out.  Juliet is a science nerd in high school with a close relationship with her older brother, Tuck whom enlists when he is first able.  The novel then fast forwards two years to when Tuck goes missing in action in Italy.  Juliet opts out of attending college, attends an accelerated nursing program, enlists in the Army Medical Corps, and ensures a posting to Italy to look for Tuck.  Once there, nothing goes as planned and medical care of the wounded in the field hospitals takes precedent.  Then one day they have a patient that comes in with a self-inflicted wound, prompting the appearance of Dr. Willard, a psychologist.  Juliet becomes his assistant and they work with Barnaby and it turns out the patient may hold the key to what happened to Tuck.

In all, the book was interesting to read.  However, it is not for the faint of heart.  The surgical descriptions are pretty gory.  At points the reader can feel Juliet's desperation to find her brother.  And the epilogue was masterfully written; it ties up all loose ends and elegantly tied together how Juliet and Willard lived out the rest of their semi-intertwined lives.

Then and Always by Dani Atkins

Then and Always by Dani Atkins - 320 pages

This hauntingly beautiful novel is Atkins' debut.  I was lucky to receive an ARC (it releases May 6).  Rachel Wiltshire was involved in an accident on the eve of leaving for college while dining out with friends and the event changed her life.  Five years later she is visiting home for her friend Sarah's wedding and collapses from an illness.  When she wakes up, she is in the hospital and everything has changed: she is well; her father never had the cancer; her ex-boyfriend is now her fiance; and her late friend, Jimmy, is alive.

Rachel embarks on a quest to determine how she can exist in two realities.  To this end,  it is Jimmy who helps her retrace the life she believed was hers and relate it to the life she has found herself in.  In short, it is a journey of self-realization. 

Atkins's writing is superb: vivid descriptions, subtle foreshadowing, and drawing out the mystery until the very end.

Lastly, in keeping with this month's theme, while in search of her missing memories she visits the library/archive of the magazine she works for to try to make sense of her life by examining the articles she wrote.

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann B. Ross

Miss Julia's Marvelous Makeover by Ann. B. Ross --- 297 pages

It's summertime in Abbotsville, and Miss Julia is ready to sit back and enjoy her newly renovated house and the happiness of her nearest and dearest. But fate just doesn't seem prepared to allow Miss Julia to relax.

First her husband Sam decides to run for political office, and then her overbearing cousin Elsie sends her granddaughter Trixie to stay with Miss Julia without a by-your-leave. Trixie arrives with orders from her Meemaw to pull herself together and find a husband. Miss Julia is both fascinated and appalled. Much to her surprise, Trixie manages to attract the attentions of Rodney Pace, a man who has chosen the mortuary business as a career because it's recession-proof. But Miss Julia questions whether Rodney is really more interested in Trixie as a future wife or in a piece of property Miss Julia owns as a future mortuary site. What with one thing and the next, it turns out to be a very busy summer for Miss Julia!