Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See
Another marvelous book from
Lisa See!
Lady Tan's Circle of Women is based on a real person,
Tan Yunxian (1461–1554), who was a Chinese female doctor. The book is divided into four parts, corresponding to the traditional stages of a Chinese woman's life: Milk Days (childhood - in Yunxian's story, when she is eight); Hair Pinning Days (marriageable age - for Yunxian, ages 15-16); Rice and Salt Days (marriage, childbirth, and motherhood - Yunxian is 29-31 in the story); and Sitting Quietly (old age - but Yunxian is only 49-50).
After her mother dies when she is eight, Yunxian is sent to live with her paternal grandparents - both are doctors. Yunxian learns about medicine primarily from her grandmother, but also learns from Midwife Shi, whose daughter Meiling is also eight. Although their lives are quite different - midwives are lowly but necessary - Meiling and Yunxian become lifelong friends.
As the story continues, the reader learns more about life in China at that time, the hardships and obstacles women face, and how friendship can pull them through. Early on, Yunxian starts making notes about her medical cases, and at age 50, in 1511, publishes a book on 31 of them.
Although Meiling is fictional, Yunxian's book is real - an English translation is
Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor. In her acknowledgments, See notes that cases in the book "are reflected in the fictional stories in the novel" (p. 344). See even came up with narratives to explain two cases that involved women living outside the family compounds where Yunxian would have spent much of her life, having been born into and married into wealthy families.
The acknowledgments also list many other sources See used in this work. Her website also includes a wonderful link called "
Step Inside: Lady Tan's Circle of Women," which has even more information about topics in the book (Chinese medicine; Ming Dynasty history, traditions, and culture; etc.), as well as photos, links, and an extensive bibliography.
I couldn't put this book down - I finished it in one day. This would be a great choice for a
book club. Highly recommended.
Chenneville by Paulette Jiles
Like Captain Kidd, the news reader main character in Paulette Jiles' award-winning News of the World, John Chenneville is on a journey - actually, more than one journey. First is the trip from a military hospital in Virginia back to his family's home on the Missouri River near St. Louis, in September 1865. Fighting for the Union Army, John was badly wounded in the head in the Civil War, and is finally well enough to make the long trip home.
When he arrives home, he learns that his sister, her Confederate husband, and their baby (named after him) were murdered. As the subtitle indicates - "a novel of murder, loss, and vengeance," John wants vengeance. He spends over a year at home, working his property while trying to improve his memory, balance, and accuracy with numbers and guns. That's the second journey.
In November 1866, he starts the third - to find his sister's killer. His journey takes him through Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory (Oklahoma), to Texas, all areas experiencing the chaos, ruin, and lawlessness of Reconstruction in the western slave states. There's a map in the endpapers of the hardbound book I checked out from the library that shows most of the places he went.
Jiles was born in Missouri and spent the first part of her life there, and now lives in Texas. Research in Missouri for her memoir
Cousins and her first novel,
Enemy Women, which is also set in the Reconstruction era, provided background for the Missouri portions of this book, as did
News of the World (and two other books I haven't read yet) set in the same period in Texas. Jiles is also a poet, and between her research and her spare but powerful language, the reader can truly picture the settings and really get to know the characters, even the minor ones.
By the way, there's a reference to news reader in this book (page 300), as well as to a fiddler (page 303), likely an homage to Jiles' Simon the Fiddler, which I haven't read yet. If you've liked any of Jiles' previous Western historical fiction, you'll like Chenneville too.
The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Alison Pataki
I knew next to nothing about
Marjorie Post before reading this book. Heiress to the
Postum Cereal Company started by her father, C. W. Post, in Battle Creek, Michigan, she was a businesswoman in a time (1914) when it was uncommon. Along with her second husband, the financier
E. F. Hutton, the company acquired other food businesses and eventually became
General Foods.
Sadly, Marjorie was not so successful in her personal life - she was married and divorced four times. Much of the book focuses on the marriages.
She also became incredibly wealthy - one of her many homes was
Mar-A-Lago. The book is written in first person, and it got rather tiresome to read about Marjorie talking about her jewelry, artwork, yachts, plane, parties, homes, and their furnishings.
Like other reviewers, I felt one of the most interesting parts of the book was her childhood in Battle Creek, where her family went so her ill father could undergo treatment from his future business rival,
J. W. Kellogg.
The other interesting part was the time she spent in Russia in the mid-1930s with her third husband,
Joseph E. Davies, who was serving as the United States ambassador to that country. While there, Post acquired a number of pre-Soviet Russian art treasures for a fraction of their value. Many of these are on display at her
final home in Washington, D. C., now a museum.
Swanna in Love by Jennifer Belle - advance reading copy
Swanna Swain is 14 years old in 1982, and it's the last day of her summer camp. She's supposed to take a bus back to New York City and spend time with her father. Instead, she's pulled off the bus, and waits hours - alone at the camp - for her mother to pick her up. When her mom arrives, she's in the truck of her young Russian lover Borislav, and instead of heading home to NYC, they go to an artists' colony in Vermont, after picking up Swanna's younger brother Madding from his camp on the way. Children aren't welcome at the colony, so Swanna and her brother are forced to sleep in the back of the truck, barely getting anything to eat.
The next evening, they go to an art exhibit at a bowling alley, and Swanna meets Dennis - a 37-year-old married obstetrician there bowling with his two young children. Dennis is smitten with Swanna - you can figure out what happens next. (Hint: a blurb describes the book as "a kind of inverse
Lolita that explores adolescent desire from the girl’s point of view.")
All of the plot takes place over approximately a week, with Swanna as the (unreliable?) narrator. It's interesting that Swanna (who's a big reader) often talks about Holden Caulfield, a character in
The Catcher in the Rye, who is an example of a naïf, a type of unreliable narrator.
Reading this book made me think so much of
The Glass Castle, the memoir by Jeannette Walls about her childhood, with its self-centered, neglectful, borderline-abusive parents. Also, I'm no prude, but it was kind of horrifying reading about an obstetrician (!) obsessed with a teenager.
Author Jennifer Belle was 14 in 1982, and the first part of the novel (prior to Swanna meeting Dennis) is based on her life, according to
an interview. Belle also says that Swanna “never feels like a victim. I think she probably is a victim because she’s 14 and she’s having an affair with a 37-year-old married man. But she doesn’t feel that way for one minute. She thinks she’s in control and she really thinks she’s in love.”
I was a good ten years older than Swanna in 1982, but I can still relate to some of the cultural references (especially the music) in the book. And Swanna is very funny - I loved all the put-down nicknames she came up with when talking about Borislav (for example, New Jersislav, since he's from New Jersey, and Elvislav, since he looks like and does paintings of Elvis Presley).
All in all, I'm glad I had the opportunity to read this book. Swanna has a lot to say (and show) about the impact of the separation/divorce of self-absorbed parents on their kids. Despite the young protagonist, this is definitely a book for mature readers.
The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin
Author
Melanie Benjamin has taken
a real-life incident - a horrific blizzard that hit Nebraska and the Dakota Territory on January 12, 1888 - and built characters based on oral histories and newspaper accounts from the time to tell its story. My children's Scandinavian ancestors had settled in North Dakota by 1886, so I have to wonder if they experienced this storm. Beautiful weather earlier in the day had people out and about in light winter clothing, and they were surprised by the storm.
The Children's Blizzard (one of the names the storm came to be called) has four main narrators. Sisters Gerda and Raina Olsen are young schoolteachers, 18 and 16 respectively. Gerda is teaching near Yankton in the southeast corner of the Dakota Territory. Raina is closer to their family's home in the northeast corner of Nebraska, but far enough away that she needs to room and board with a family closer to the school, the Pedersons.
Anette Pederson, despite her surname, is really an overworked and mistreated servant in the Pederson household - sold by her mother. And Gavin Woodson is a newspaperman (really a propagandist for the railroad) in Omaha. There are also a couple chapters told from the viewpoints of Anna Pederson, Anette's boss, and of Ollie Tennant, a black bar owner in Omaha.
The first part of the book is about the storm itself, and its immediate aftermath. The second part follows the main characters some years into the future. This part could have been shorter, and there are some distracting and unnecessary side stories throughout the book that, in my opinion, could have been left out. Nevertheless, I'm giving it more stars than I would have to offset the downrating by an anti-"woke" reviewer here.
In her author's note, Benjamin provides some additional context, and cites her sources. She notes that Raina "is loosely based on the real-life heroine
Minnie Freeman," and the "character of Anette Pedersen is based on another survivor,
Lena Woebbecke" (page 443). I think parts of Gerda's experience were based on those of
Etta Shattuck and
Lois Royce, but sadly Gerda suffered from the tendency of others to blame and ostracize those who make poor decisions in situations that aren't entirely under their control.
Mother Nature Nursery Rhymes revised edition, illustrated by Itoko Maeno
This is the revised edition of the
original 1990 book by Sandy Stryker, with additional authors Mindy Bingham and Penelope Colville Paine. Some of the poems are original, others are rewrites of Mother Goose and other nursery rhymes, with an environmental message. The book ends with some resources for parents or teachers.
The book's description indicates it's for ages 1-5, but I think it is more appropriate for young school-age children (maybe grades K to 4th or 5th). Although the authors note in the introduction that "it has been shown that the lyrical cadence of nursery rhymes makes them fun and easy for children to repeat and remember," I also believe it's hearing everyone say the same rhymes that make this happen. I think this book would fit better with older children who can understand that the rhymes have been altered, and that it was done so to encourage them to take care of nature and the environment.
The best aspect of the book is the lovely watercolor illustrations by Itoko Maeno. The alphabet on the endpapers, with an example of an animal and a plant beginning with each letter, is especially nice. However, that's also additional evidence that the book would be better for older children, as some of the choices are species with longer names that are more difficult to spell and pronounce. For example, delphinium was used instead of the simpler daisy.
© Amanda Pape - 2024
