"Burial Rites" by Hannah Kent~ Mesmerizing

SUMMARY :

A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question: How can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Little, Brown & Co.
Pages:  330
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author:  Hannah Kent
Website: http://www.hannahkentauthor.com


MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

 Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. As a teenager she travelled to Iceland on a Rotary Exchange, where she first heard the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir.

Hannah is the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is completing her PhD at Flinders University. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.

Burial Rites is her first novel. It has been translated into twenty languages.

 

 

 

 

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

I don't know what took me such a long time to get through my book stacks to finally reach "Burial Rites," except the stacks were daunting and I was fighting my way there!  I am pleased to have gotten there because this is one of the books I would have named one of the best of 2013.

It is an astonishingly beautiful story.  Lyrically written.  With the poetic hand of Hannah Kent, the characters, landscape and even the barren and filthy hovels of the farming people are gorgeous in their own way.  She is a master writer of the first quality.  Her wording is simply intoxicating, and makes the story feel very ancient and very important at the same time.  I fell into it and couldn't put it down.

Not having the best experience with Iceland or the Icelandic language, I was at first worried about reading the book, but soon found that the names and places flowed very easily.  Kent has given us a small pronunciation guide and map at the beginning to guide us through.  It led me along quite well.
And, I learned to love this exotic element about the story.

Hannah Kent's characters are visceral and alive, carrying so many strong emotions you can't help being moved by them.  Agnes, of course, will tear your heart out with her story and her current situation which seems inevitable and hopeless.  The young Reverend carried frustration with him for me...and each character gave off this sort of strong feeling, touching me as I read about them.  This isn't a book that asks nothing of you as a reader.  It draws you in and challenges you to become a part of it!

"Burial Rites" is one of the best of the new authors I've read in 2013, and it's also one of the best all around I read.  I highly recommend it to everyone.  The book promises to touch you, and change your way of looking at women in the 1800's.

I loved it!

5 stars                             Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"The Funeral Dress" by Susan Gregg Gilmore~Go Out And Buy It!!

SUMMARY:

A deeply touching Southern story filled with struggle and hope.

     Emmalee Bullard and her new baby are on their own. Or so she thinks, until Leona Lane, the older seamstress who sat by her side at the local shirt factory where both women worked as collar makers, insists Emmalee come and live with her.  Just as Emmalee prepares to escape her hardscrabble life in Red Chert holler, Leona dies tragically.

  Grief-stricken, Emmalee decides she’ll make Leona’s burying dress, but there are plenty of people who don't think the unmarried Emmalee should design a dress for a Christian woman - or care for a child on her own. But with every stitch, Emmalee struggles to do what is right for her daughter and to honor Leona the best way she can, finding unlikely support among an indomitable group of seamstresses and the town’s funeral director. In a moving tale exploring Southern spirit and camaraderie among working women, a young mother will compel a town to become a community.


PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :

Published by:  Crown Publishing Group
Pages:  368  with Reading Guide
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author:  Susan Gregg Gilmore
Website:  http://susangregggilmore.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

SUSAN GREGG GILMORE is the author of the novels Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove.  She has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Born in Nashville, she lives in Tennessee with her husband and three daughters.



THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

 Oh, my, what a storyteller Susan Gregg Gilmore is.  The title of this wonderful book doesn't begin to really give insight into the richness of the tale you'll find in it.  I really couldn't stop reading it, though I found myself stopping momentarily many times, putting the book down and just recalling days in my life that fit the scenarios and places she describes.  This is a treasure of a book.

I want to say something else about the story here.  It is so full and moving as to have made me catch a tear and lump at my throat often.  This is old-fashioned "tear jerker" at its finest, but that's not all it is.  It's a relationship story too.  The women in this novel are deeply and significantly drawn so that you understand who they are and you can't help identifying with them in their struggles.  Their interrelationships are so meaningful.

One of my grandmothers was a mill worker in NC not far from the Tennessee border and the Blue Ridge Mountains where this story takes place.  She was a single mother, raising my mother alone in the 1930's to '40's.  She was such a woman as this book describes.  Dedicated to her work, strong and independent but with a tender heart inside, devoted to her friends at work, talented and helping others, and religious.  She never missed work.  Susan Gregg Gilmore has captured the heart of these women.

The story of Emmalee and her baby sits solidly amidst the rest of the story of Leona's, the older textile worker.  As it flashes back and forth it completes the circle and draws us in to the whole.  I thought the book was completely amazing and so heart-wrenching that my chest was nearly constantly tightening and my eyes welling up.  It's a good thing Crown Publishing sent me a complimentary packet of Kleenex with the book! LOL

This is a novel you can't miss reading.  It's perfect for discussion with friends and book groups.  Please do yourself a favor and don't miss this one!

5 stars               Deborah/TheBookishDame



 

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"How Lucky You Are" by Kristyn Kusek Lewis~Friends for Life!

SUMMARY : 

In the tradition of Emily Giffin and Marisa de los Santos, HOW LUCKY YOU ARE is an engaging and moving novel about three women struggling to keep their longstanding friendship alive. Waverly, who's always been the group's anchor, runs a cozy bakery but worries each month about her mounting debt. Kate is married to a man who's on track to be the next governor of Virginia, but the larger questions brewing in their future are unsettling her. Stay-at-home mom Amy has a perfect life on paper, but as the horrific secret she's keeping from her friends threatens to reveal itself, she panics.

As life's pressures build all around them, Waverly knows she has some big decisions to make. In doing so, she will discover that the lines between loyalty and betrayal can become blurred, happy endings aren't always clear-cut, and sometimes you have to risk everything to gain the life you deserve.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK:
Published by:  Grand Central Publishing/Hachette
Pages:  352
Genre:  General Fiction
Author  Kristyn Kusek Lewis
Purchase this book:    Barnes & Noble  and Amazon


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

It's been a long time since I've read a novel about three long time friends who've remained close throughout their lives.  This one was a pleasure to read.  Absorbing and poignant.  I found Kristyn Kusek Lewis to be a storyteller of the first order.  She's wrapped her hands around the feminine capacity to love, become devoted and to sustain long term relationships with other women.  I enjoyed her sharing of this treasured capacity women have.

The plot here is one that flows easily.  It pulls you into the lives of the three friends immediately and carries through without a boring moment.  As their situations become more fierce and embroiled, and their pulling in ranks to support each other becomes more defined, the reader is more and more engaged.  I found this a strong story of the real problems women can encounter in their contemporary lives, and of the support it can take that matters in the resolution of those problems.  All this and pure reading entertainment at the same time!

I fell in love with the three main characters: Amy, Waverly and Kate.  All very different women with different lives and issues, but bonded in their commitment to and friendship for each other since college days.  These characters are so well developed they rang true in every situation and conversation.   Waverly, the problem-solver seeing everyone else's way out except her own; Amy the perfect homemaker with the horrible secrets; and Kate the wealthy and beautiful "it" girl with emptiness all around her...all were inspiring in their own ways.  The title of the book makes us wonder if they were all truly "lucky."

This is a book women will enjoy reading.  While it's not a deep well of literature, it has much to say about humanity and every day living.  It  has much to say about sorting out the problems of real situations we encounter as women.  And, it highlights the things we value so much in our friendships as women.

4 stars                   Deborah/TheBookishDame

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"The Orchardist" by Amanda Coplin ~ Powerful Read!

SUMMARY : 
 

Publishers Weekly

The implacable hand of fate, and the efforts of a quiet, reclusive man to reclaim two young sisters from their harrowing past, are the major forces at play in this immensely affecting first novel. In a verdant valley in the Pacific Northwest during the early years of the 20th century, middle-aged Talmadge tends his orchards of plum, apricot, and apples, content with his solitary life and the seasonal changes of the landscape he loves. Two barely pubescent sisters, Jane and Della, both pregnant by an opium-addicted, violent brothel owner from whom they have escaped, touch Talmadge’s otherwise stoic heart, and he shelters and protects them until the arrival of the girls’ pursuers precipitates tragic consequences. Talmadge is left with one of the sisters, the baby daughter of the other, and an ardent wish to bring harmony to the lives entrusted to his care. Coplin relates the story with appropriate restraint, given Talmadge’s reserved personality, and yet manages to evoke a world where the effects of two dramatic losses play out within a strikingly beautiful natural landscape. In contrast to the brothel owner, Michaelson, the other characters in Talmadge’s community—an insightful, pragmatic midwife; a sensitive Nez Perce horse trader; a kindly judge—conduct their lives with dignity and wisdom. When Della fails to transcend the psychological trauma she’s endured, and becomes determined to wreak revenge on Michaelson, Talmadge turns unlikely hero, ready to sacrifice his freedom to save her. But no miracles occur, as Coplin refuses to sentimentalize. Instead, she demonstrates that courage and compassion can transform unremarkable lives and redeem damaged souls. In the end, “three graves side by side,” yet this eloquent, moving novel concludes on a note of affirmation. Agent: Bill Clegg, WME Entertainment. (Sept.)


ABOUT THE BOOK :
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Pages:  448
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Author  Amanda C


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Amanda Coplin was born in Wenatchee, Washington. She received her BA from the University of Oregon and MFA from the University of Minnesota. A recipient of residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Omi International Arts Center at Ledig House in Ghent, New York, she lives in Portland, Oregon.

Find out more about her here:  Amanda Coplin


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

A rare treasure of a novel.  "The Orchardist" is one of those you'll read like enjoying a box of chocolates...slowly, just to savor every morsel of the story and the fine writing.  This is a book you'll want to capture and keep on your shelves to recall days spent visualizing the orchards of Northwestern America, and the hearts of incredible characters that will live on in your mind.  I love family sagas when they're written by a gifted author who can drop you down in the setting and with the people of the story.  This is a novel like that.  You shouldn't miss it this year. 

Story development and plot are so absorbing.  I was tortured by the hard life and gentle heart of Talmadge, the orchardist, but more so by the background and broken spirits of Della and Jane, the girls who escaped unimaginable torment to find shelter like stray cats on his farm.  Their story is blindingly bear in its open wounds~vulnerable and raw with emotion.  I found myself cringing and crying with them at their most horrific, heartbreaking stops along the story.  Michaelson is a despicable antihero. What powerful writing!

Amanda Coplin is a young woman who is wise beyond her years.  She writes with such brilliance and imagination.  Her characters just breathe tension, love, hatred, vulnerability, wisdom and life.  It was a wonderful experience to read her book.

Highly recommended to everyone.  This is a powerful novel of love and redemption.

5 stars             Deborah/TheBookishDame


"The Orchardist" is available here:  Barnes and Noble

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