Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout - local book club, realistic fiction, e-book - liked this better than the first book, which I recently re-read - and found I liked better on the second reading, about 11 years after the first. Maybe because I am older now too? Maybe because, in this book, Olive also dislikes Trump? Olive ages quite a bit in this sequel, moving from the death of her first husband Henry (after a stroke puts him in a nursing home for a few years), to meeting, marrying, and then losing her second husband Jack, and finally, twice widowed, moving into an independent/assisted living facility herself. She also becomes more introspective and somewhat less meddling.
Montauk by Nicola Harrison - Despite being advertised as historical fiction, I'd have to describe this book as beach-read chick-lit, or maybe historical romance (with more emphasis on the latter than the former) women’s fiction. Despite being set in 1938 in Montauk, New York, I don't really get a feel for the historical era - to me, it almost could have been set in the present.
Some sort of afterword by the author, with some information about the real historical Montauk in that era, would have been helpful. For example, the climax of the book includes the 1938 New England hurricane (albeit never called that in the book, and happening a few weeks earlier than it actually did). I also wanted more information on the Montauk Manor and lighthouse.
I finished the book with no real feel for the time and place of its setting. If you are looking for good historical fiction - look elsewhere.
I received twelve free copies of this book in a contest, four of which I distributed to my local book club members who wanted it. One of those members gave me a pack of Montauk Pepperidge Farm cookies in return. Montauk cookies definitely better than Montauk book.
The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party by Allan Wolf - early reviewer, historical fiction, poetry, novel in verse. I loved Allan Wolf's The Watch That Ends the Night: Voice from the Titanic, and his New Found Land: Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery, so when I saw he had a new book in a similar format - historical fiction, novel in [mostly-free] verse, told from multiple viewpoints - I had to read it.
In The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party, Wolf once again uses a technique he calls "narrative pointillism," which he describes in a 2012 interview as follows:
"The idea is that history only exists in the collective minds of those who witness it. If 10 different people experience an event, then you are bound to get 10 different versions of what happened. Each of these individual stories is like dots on a painting by Seurat: Individually they have no particular significance, but if you view them from a distance (and in the context of all the surrounding dots), suddenly the truth emerges."
Not quite as many voices in this book as in the The Watch - six members of the ill-fated Donner Party (plus the diary of another), as well as two Native Americans that accompanied the group. Hunger is the omniscient narrator - and its ever-presence, both for sustenance and for wants/dreams/desires/ambitions/hope, is what drives the characters to do what they do - including the infamous cannibalism. Snow is also a non-speaking character, both in terms of its importance in the story and as a backdrop to mark all the deaths.
The book has extensive end notes, including biographies of select members of the Donner Party and other characters, a time line, various statistical listings such as Donner Party members by family and "by the numbers" (miscellany), and identification of the rescuers, the rescued, and the deaths. Wolf also acknowledges what he fictionalized and what he's unsure of, and discusses the role of Native Americans in the Donner Party story (and acknowledging, on page 365, that "whether or not, as a privileged white person, I have the right to speak for them at all is a question that haunted every stroke of my keyboard"). There's also a bibliography, glossary, and there will be maps in the final version of the book (which will be quite helpful: the advance reader edition did not have them).
Most definitely recommended to anyone who wants to learn more about the Donner Party and Westward expansion. I think it's definitely appropriate for grades 6 or 7 and up. There will also be an audiobook version with eight readers that I bet will be excellent (as the audio version of The Watch was).
1789: Twelve Authors Explore a Year of Rebellion, Revolution, and Change, edited by Marc Aronson and Susan Campbell Bartoletti - I was drawn to this book by my respect for its editors, Marc Aronson and Susan Campbell Bartoletti, who are award-winning authors of juvenile nonfiction. I was pleased to see the names of other authors I admire, like Tanya Lee Stone, Cynthia Levinson, Sally M. Walker, and Steve Sheinkin, in the bylines for the eleven essays in this collection. The essays have in common the year (or years around) 1789, a momentous time in history. Although they probably have the least to do with the theme, I most enjoyed the essays on painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, mathematician Jurij Vega, and geologist James Hutton. I learned something from all the essays, though.
At the end, the book includes a bibliography, source notes, an index (not in the advance edition, though), and author notes (which provide some insights on why each author chose their topics). There's also supposed to be a teacher's guide, I'm assuming online. The book says it's for ages 12 and up, but I think it would be more appropriate for high school, particularly when world history is taught. I'd like to read Aronson's and Bartoletti's other anthology, 1968, which has a similar subtitle - as I remember that year!
Lucky's Beach by Shelley Noble - There wasn't much to chose from (perhaps due to COVID) in the May 2020 LibraryThing Early Reviewer offerings. That's why I ended up with Lucky's Beach, a contemporary realistic fiction novel by Shelley Noble. The main character, Julie Barlow, is a 28-year-old fourth-grade teacher who's lost her passion but is afraid to quit and disappoint her single-parent mom. She's on her way to the beach with her two best teacher friends for a 10-day vacation when said mom calls her, asking her to make a detour to check on Julie's Uncle Tony - known as Lucky. Julie hasn't spoken to Lucky since he let her down as a teenager - but she doesn't say no to her cruising mom. So she and her friends head to the beach town where Lucky apparently owns a bar.
There's a little bit of a mystery going on involving Lucky, and a little bit of romance (it's clean - lots of hinting but no actual action). If you like these genres, this might be a good chick-lit summer/beach-read. I did not particularly care for any of the characters (there was little development of some), especially wishy-washy Julie.
© Amanda Pape - 2020
