Children of the Jacaranda Tree: A Novel by Sahar Delijani

Children of the Jacaranda Tree. Sahar Delijani. Atria Books. June 2013. 288 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9781476709093.

This is not a pleasurable read but a vitally necessary story.  It’s fiction but the reality is so vivid, the tales it tells just have to be true.  A constant state of increasing tension is riddled with a surrealistic ambience for Ashar, our first character, who is pregnant in jail and gives birth to her daughter Neda there.  But Ashar will not be allowed to keep her daughter after she is done nursing her for three months. Add to that Ashar knows the baby will be taken from her but never knows when and so lives with the agony and fear for far too long, day after day after day!

Omid is a young boy who stares in shock as his parents are arrested and taken away while Omid is eating his breakfast yogurt.  Too young to understand the horrific wrong done as a result of this brutal separation, he learns at a very young age to think, speak and act in a very careful way, knowing all too well that one’s happiest moments can be whisked away in a flash. 

Sheida learns very quickly that her father was executed under the rule of Sadaam Hussein, but she didn’t find it out from her mother.  No, her mother was so traumatized by the father’s arrest, she couldn’t bear to tell her daughter about his death. So the gap between the two grows until the day of truth arrives, and Sheida doesn’t get the horror of it for her mother.  What did he do wrong?  What was the penalty and why? 

No clear revelations fill these pages and pages and pages of torturing questions in and out of jail.  A constant juxtaposition of life and death keep the reader on guard with the same nervousness these people have endured for years and years. Many of these characters will escape this beloved but fearsome place, with the heart remaining behind and feeling guilty about not helping others in dire need.  Independence and emigration come with such a high cost to these decent human beings forced to endure the worst torture and ill treatment mankind can provide. This is a notable work of historical fiction that should be read by all, indeed perhaps even be part of the educational curricula for high school classes.  The reader can well imagine this account in movie form as well.  Kudos to you, Sahir Delijani, for sharing this momentous, dignified work of Iranian history in fictional form.

The Hypnotist's Love Story: A Novel by Liane Moriarty

The Hypnotist’s Love Story: A Novel.  Liane Moriarty. Viking Penguin Group (USA). June 2013. 480 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9780425260937.

Ellen O’Farrell is living a good life, with a successful hypnotherapist career and owning a home she inherited from her grandparents.  So what’s missing? A great love.  She spends a great deal of time reflecting on how it could be that she’s so good at helping others to solve problems but not so great on her own male relationships.  So now she’s ripe for romance when she meets Patrick.  Everything feels so right, even when Patrick tells her that his ex-girlfriend is a stalker who follows him everywhere, leaves him constant text messages and phone messages, and even leaves notes attached to his windshield on the car.  It strikes the reader as dangerous, as a phenomenon that feels like a foreshadowing of a violent end to someone!

So why is it that Ellen doesn’t feel grossly perturbed by all this but instead focuses on the growth of the care she and Patrick now increasingly share?  As the stalking increases, Ellen and Patrick’s life together grows closer.  Patrick meets Ellen’s mother and she meets his family.  Ironically, both sides seem rather obsessed with the previous relationships had before now.  There’s an additional complication with Jack, Patrick’s son by his first wife, Colleen, his first wife who died and whom he loved dearly.  But it was Saskia who took care of Jack like a mother and now she has no connection to him at all.  One wonders where this is all going.

It will take a “rock bottom” scene for these complex connections to sort themselves out, with all sides having to face some significantly painful truths, clear some outstanding misunderstandings, and learn to move forward having memories of these personalities that cannot help but be part of the past but learning they cannot be part of the present and don’t have to determine the future!

It sounds like a simple plot involving three people, but it’s not as it slowly develops from simple outrageousness to an audacious, panoramic map of how many people from our past inhabit our present lives in more than complex ways.  It’s a book about healing the past in order to fully engage and relish now and forever.  Very, very nicely crafted mystery/romance fiction, Ms. Moriarty!

Astor Place Vintage by Stephanie Lehmann

Astor Place Vintage. Stephanie Lehmann. Touchstone Books/Simon & Schuster. June 2013. 416 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9781451682052.

Imagine living your life as a working young woman in 1907 or in 2007.  What would be the same and what would be different?  Believe it or not, not much, although as this novel depicts two women from each period run into society’s strictures and mistakes of their own.  This is the story of Olive Westcott, a young woman living in the earlier part of the 20^th Century.  She wants to be a retail seller of clothing in the worst possible way, but her father and business owners will not allow social pressures to make her dream possible.  A woman could never go anywhere alone, let alone work without a male reference or supporter.  She is up to the fight however, when her father no longer has that ever-present influence in her life.  She proves that times are slowly changing by starting at the bottom as a salesgirl at a department store. 

How do we know all this? Amanda Rosenbloom, who owns a clothing shop named per this novel’s title, finds Olive’s journal.  Amanda is in a bit of a quandary herself.  She’s an insomniac dating a married man.  She knows her future with him is going nowhere fast but lacks the strength to end it, at least initially.  As it turns out, the economy in New York City is changing as well, and Amanda finds herself being evicted so the owner can charge a more exorbitant rent to the next person.  After all, New York, both in Amanda and Olive’s time, is prime territory for real estate and business.  Amanda will prove to be creative and resourceful in her attempt to save her business, find a better place to live, and seek a satisfying romance.

Tall order for Olive and Amanda, yes; but Stephanie Lehmann offers the reader two females with all their strengths and weaknesses who are all the more likeable because they are so real!  Lehmann also offers us through quaint, exciting and painstaking detail a thorough panorama of the architecture, interior designs, fashions in clothing, food, music, and art prominent in both time periods.  This is an elegant picture of New York as it evolved over 100 years and a delight to relish equally with the story! 

Astor Place Vintage is very finely written and a hugely entertaining read!

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

The Moon and More.  Sarah Dessen. Viking: Penguin Group (USA). June 2013. 384 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9780670785605.

Emaline is very happy with her life. She works at her grandmother’s beach resort and has a steady boyfriend, Luke, who is described as “hot” without a shirt.  Her job involves making sure everyone has a comfortable stay and she has made no plans for the future, not because she fears anything but just seems to take life as it rolls by day after day.  But that’s about to change quite a bit – life is change at certain stages whether one wants it or not, and the essence of this story is how one embraces, fights, or flies from it.

When Emaline is taking a VIP package of wine and fruit to one of the more luxurious resort areas, she meets a summer intern named Theo, who is working with a snooty director on a documentary film about a famous painter who lives like a regular guy and really doesn’t want the hype.  Add to the mixture that Emaline’s absent father all of a sudden shows up exhibiting interest in his daughter’s education and college application process.  At first she is cautious, then enthused, and later shocked by his on again, off again presence.  She and Luke start to fight, have some misunderstandings, a betrayal and then a break-up.  But as upset as she is initially, she begins to realize the future may not have as many predictable scenarios as she had hoped. 

Forced to turn down a Columbia University acceptance, she decides to go to a local college but she’s not so sure that Luke will be part of that future picture.  Maybe she should change her plans totally.  But things get complicated when a relationship with Theo starts to grow and her father moves into the area, bringing her half-brother Benji along, who comes to worship the ground Emaline walks on. Mom and Grandma are not so sure about all these changes!

This is a tough, tender novel full of shifts in points of view about certain people.  The characters are presented with all their best assets and toughest, weakest flaws.  Unlike other books where characters paint black and white caricatures, Emaline learns to deal with whatever comes moment to moment.  Love is a changing phenomena as well and passion is something to follow with all of one’s being!  Readers will love this very real, smart and sassy character and the story threading and weaving its way around her town of Colby, a place built on sand that is far more solid than one could dream!  Very nicely done, Sarah Dessen! More please!

Royal Mistress by Anne Easter Smith

Royal Mistress. Anne Easter Smith. Touchstone Books. May 2013. 489 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9781451648621.

Jane Shore lived a harsh life! Rejected by her father, married to an impotent mercer, loved by many men but chosen by King Edward, she was grateful for the favors of her King.  Londoners and members of the Court grew to respect her because of her many acts of charity and care for those far less fortunate.  Jane is not one to involve herself in the political intrigues and betrayals of the Court, but she does relate them without bias.  After Edward's untimely end due to his own decadent lifestyle, Jane is accused of crimes that force her to undergo public penance; the accuser is Edward's brother, Richard, first Protector of the heir and then King after Edward's children are proven to be illegitimate.  Richard is given an interesting portrayal in this novel; determined to "clean up" the Court he is extremely harsh.  We also get an interesting take on the "disappearance" of the two Princes and an amazing execution ordered without the granting of a trial to Jane's second lover.  Yes, everything herein has been presented in other novels, but Anne Easter Smith's comprehensive depiction of all the significant characters and their alliances and betrayals is fascinating and unique.  Very, very well written and presented!  Highly recommended!

The Guest House: A Novel by Erika Marks

The Guest House: A Novel. Erika Marks. Penguin Books (USA). June 2013. 368 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9780451418852.

Edie, Lexie, and Meg Wright, three generations of women strongly affected by the summer visitors to their home in a small Cape Cod town, are each hoping to leave behind the painful memories that each have from love gone awry.  Edie has a construction business composed of women and is shocked when she is asked to take part of the project to repair and prepare the Moss family’s summer home and cottage for sale. For Tucker Moss broke her heart back in the late 1960s and her son and late husband have quite a resultant familial, protective hate for the Moss clan.  How will they react to her new friendship with Tucker’s friend Jim.  Can two adults escape the attitudes of younger, unforgiving family members or can they forge something new and exciting?

Lexie has just returned from studying architectural photography in England and is now surprisingly asked to do the photography to prepare the home to be registered as a historical home, but this is also the home where she fell in love with Hudson Moss and was dumped by him as well. It’s also the place where Hudson’s brother, Cooper, gave her a comforting first kiss right after she was jilted by his brother.  So who should be there to let her in and serve as guide to her but Cooper.  Both think the other forgot that night years ago, but that’s not so at all!

Lexi’s brother, Owen, is grieving over a divorce and treating his daughter, who is a college student, like a little girl. Meg’s got a lot on her plate with her mother’s constant text questions and her father’s expectations. How will she grow during her summer vacation – or not?

Meanwhile, the “wash-ashores” or tourists are pouring into the town of Harrisport, Massachusetts and business is booming.  How will the beginning of love burgeon in a way to heal old wounds and clear the path for what will hopefully be more than just a new summer season to be relished every second? Some secrets will be revealed, some misunderstandings cleared and others aggravated.  Most of all a secret carved into framing will force changes in attitude, forces that can make or break the futures of the Wright and Moss families.

Gentle and fierce passions rule these pages and Erika Marks knows how to satisfy the curiosity of the reader and keep it fueled with a complex, endearing romantic plot to satisfy every lover of this genre.  Prepare for a great summertime (or anytime) read!  Very nicely done, Erika Marks!

The Time Between: A Novel by Karen White

The Time Between: A Novel. Karen White. Penguin Books (USA). June 2013. 352 pp. hbk. ISBN #: 9780451239860.

“There is how we were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing which doors to open, and which to close.” Yes, this is the essence of two families’ stories, lives in which choices were made that have shadowed years upon years right up to today.  For Eleanor Murray it is her vivacious, adventurous personality that called her to issue a dare to her sister with life-changing, tragic results.  However, a larger choice is truly what has since affected the relationship between the two sisters, the choice to live riddled with guilt and shame rather than freedom and progress. Eve, Eleanor’s sister, marries Glen to whom Eleanor was once attracted and they are only now learning to live for the future. 

At the same time it is Eleanor’s boss, Finn Beaufain, who hires her as a companion to his Aunt Helen and trusts her with his fragile, brave and wise young daughter.  They all soon get to know each other much more deeply, learning of dreams unrealized, of musical talent stymied by grief, of beautiful art holding past secrets with historical and personal significance defying words, of trust betrayed and lost or restored, and of love’s possibilities.

Three sisters have beautiful voices in WWII Hungary.  Due to German occupation, they are forced to flee their beloved homeland.  How will they fare, when one has fallen in love with a German soldier and one a Jewish resistance fighter?  And why does the remaining sister hold such bitterness and self-loathing because of that past and how it led to her present dread.  What is it about Eleanor, Helen’s companion, that reminds her so much of the past?  What is it that recognizes a parallel story, one that she uses to push Eleanor into a future free of burdens?

An accident is just that, isn’t it?  A secret kept to protect a beloved sister is hidden for a noble purpose, isn’t it?  How important is it to forgive another person and one’s self as well? And even more precious is the question of how can a precious home on the beautiful island of Edisto, South Carolina be a tender, powerful healing factor in the lives of multiple people?  Will nature work its divine magic on those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and senses that need touching? Are these souls open just enough to allow the salve of nature’s beauty to mend ailing hearts and spirits?

The Time Between: A Novel is a beautiful, poignant story that one doesn’t want to end.  Karen White’s deft manipulation of a complex plot is clearly matured in this story that is even better than her previous novels.  A story that is so painful is here crafted and presented with exquisite beauty and sensitivity that is a joy to read and experience.  This is a MUST read as it is indeed superb fiction!