GO SET A WATCHMAN (Harper Lee)

I vacillated quite a bit about reading this novel.  The reviews were mediocre, the book was described as badly in need of editing, and people were disappointed in how Lee's characters, especially Atticus Finch, seemed to have "evolved."  Then a very intelligent and articulate friend of mine shared her thoughts on the book and suddenly it became a priority to read it.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you will know that Go Set a Watchman was actually written before To Kill a Mockingbird.  It was suggested to Lee that she take her original characters into their pasts and write a novel set 20 years earlier, in the 1930's, which she successfully accomplished.  This, her first manuscript, was recently rediscovered and Lee agreed to its publication provided that no edits were made.  Well. she is apparently a pretty good writer!  Yes, there were areas that obviously needed work, where the language needed sprucing up and the flow didn't work, just as there were pages that glowed with the same light and life as To Kill a Mockingbird.  The difficulty for the reader is to successfully separate the 2 works.  This was not intended as a sequel; the characters here have not developed nor evolved.  They were here first!

One of the things that struck me about this novel (in my apparently simple minded prioritization of what's important to note), was that the Atticus Finch described here looks JUST like an older Gregory Peck.  How strange is that?

I have heard that people were disappointed in the story because Jem was dead and because Atticus seemed to be a racist.  I didn't see the character of Atticus as racist in this novel, but rather as an intellectually curious product of his time, a time when civil rights for people of color were still in the formative stages and society as a whole had still not accepted racial equality after being brainwashed about the intelligence and abilities of black people for 150 years. Atticus didn't join the KKK or work against the NAACP because he hated black people, but because he wanted to be sure that they were NOT treated in a hateful and bigoted way.  Perhaps he was misguided in some of his thinking about the black race, but he definitely was not a racist.

As for Scout, I can imagine her growing up to be just as she was portrayed in this novel.  She reveres her father and is distraught and disappointed when she discovers that Atticus and Henry are consorting with racists.  She is a modern young woman in a changing world, having trouble deciding between the lure of her tradtional southen family and hometown and the culture of New York City.
I think that anyone who enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird should consider reading Go Set a Watchman. It will be well worth the few hours you devote to it and you'll still be thinking about it days after you reach the last page.

YARNED AND DANGEROUS (Sadie Hartwell)

This is the first in the new Tangled Web series by the author of the "Greek to Me" mysteries (written as Susannah Hardy), now writing under a new name (she is actually Jane Haertel in real life!).  This series is a little atypical and promises to be very appealing. I'm already looking forward to #2.

The first unexpected element in Yarned and Dangerous is Josie Blair, a non-knitting fashion designer who is called upon to travel to the Litchfield Hills in Connecticut to care for her recently widowed great uncle Eben, who is nursing a broken ankle and cannot drive.  Eb's wife, Cora, was killed in the car accident that injured Eben and, while Josie's mother is on a Mediterranean cruise, someone needs to help out the stubborn but lovable old man with his farm and also close up Cora's yarn shop.  Miss Marple Knits seems to be one of the few viable businesses in Dorset Falls and sits in the middle of a block filled with abandoned storefronts.  Since Josie's career has recently been derailed by her demanding and lecherous boss, Otto, it seems like the perfect time to take a break and head for the hills.  Josie is not your typical city girl who hates the country and is anxious to get back to the big city.  She is intelligent, caring, and apparently has never picked up a freshly laid egg or a pair of knitting needles in her life.  She manages to cope very well, though, with the help of Eben's handsome and very kind next-door neighbor, Mitch.

The second unexpected element in this novel is the townspeople.  None of them are conventional cozy stereotypes, expect, perhaps, for Diantha.  Someone has to take on the role of the unappealing antagonist though, or there wouldn't be enough tension in the book!  Hartwell allows her readers to know just enough about each of the townspeople to make us like them and want to get to know them better, as you would an interesting person that you look forward to seeing again.

I forgot to mention that the mystery involves the death of one of Cora's knitting group members, Lillian, whose body is discovered in the storeroom of Miss Marple Knits with a knitted blue cord around her neck.

I enjoyed this out-of-the-ordinary cozy very much and, as I said, I'm ready to start reading the next one, whenever it may appear!

THE LAKE HOUSE (Kate Morton)

I've had 2 of Kate Morton's books sitting in my house for months, just waiting to be read!  In my usual way, though, if I own it I can save it for a rainy day when I really need something to read.  Working in a library, however, means that the rainy day never comes, since I'm immersed in great books every day!

Several friends have read and raved about Kate Morton, so when The Lake House was published I placed a hold and just went ahead and read it (despite excellent weather)!  What a joy!  This is just the type of novel that I especially like: set in several different historical eras and employing alternating narrators.  Morton engages the reader in a long unsolved disappearance, the mystery of an abandoned estate, and a modern-day investigator slowly becoming obsessed with solving the 70-year-old case.  Best of all, it's set in Cornwall, which has to be the most dramatic, romantic, mysterious part of England.

Alice Edevane was sixteen in 1933 when her 11-month-old brother, Theo, disappeared without a trace the night of the Edevane family's annual Midsummer's Eve party.  The Edevane family abandons Loeanneth soon afterwards, never to return.  Loeanneth was originally the childood home of Alice's mother, Eleanor DeShiel and is eventually willed to Alice, who is now a very successful mystery writer in her 80's.  Alice seems to prefer to keep the mystery of her beloved brother's disappearance unsolved.

When Sadie Sparrow is ordered to take a "holiday" from the Metropolitan Police after her over-involvement in a controversial case endangers her reputation and her career, she travels to Cornwall to visit her beloved grandfather, Bertie.  When she discovers Loeanneth she becomes interested in the family's history and in Theo's disappearance and begins to investigate "unofficially."  Morton is a superb writer.  I became convinced several times during the course of the novel that I knew what happened to Theo, and each time, as the story unfolded, I was proven wrong.  This is one of those books that you want NEVER to end, but at the same time you can't wait to find out how it ends.  all I can say is that if you want to spend several hours completely immersed in a story that you don't want to put down, read this one!

GOOD MAN FRIDAY (Barbara Hambly)

Benjamin January is an educated man of color living in an era where possible slavery lurks around every corner and race limits almost all opportunity to succeed in life.  In 1838 Benjamin, freed slave and Paris-educated physician, is not allowed to practice medicine in the white community, so he supports his family as a piano player.  After a vindictive slave-owner ruins Benjamin's opportunity to earn money by having all of his bookings cancelled, he is willing to accept an offer from Henri Viellard and his young wife, Chloe, to travel to Washington City to discover the whereabouts of Chloe's old friend, Mr. Singletary, who has disappeared without a trace.  Benjamin's sister, Dominique, is Henri's mistress, so she and her daughter and maid also accompany the group to Washington.

Hambly's novels are meticulously researched and expertly written (she also writes the Abigail Adams mystery series under the name Barbara Hamilton) and after reading Good Man Friday I felt as if I had had a very enjoyable and enlightening history lesson.  In New Orleans freed people of color, while still limited by the laws and tempers of the white population, could live freely, hold jobs (within limits), own businesses, and raise their families in relative peace.  In Washington, by contrast, free black people lived in constant fear of being kidnapped and sold as slaves.  While investigating Mr. Singletary's disappearance Benjamin lives in a rooming house owned by a black family while Henri and Chloe stay in separate, white-only quarters, socializing with the upper crust while Benjamin hob-nobs with the servants and slaves.  Interesting, Edgar Alan Poe appears in this novel, helping Benjamin with his investigation at a time when Poe actually would have been living in the Washington area!

I would highly recommend this novel.  The mystery is complicated and intriguing, yet it all makes sense in the end.  The sense of history is wonderful, as is the sense of place.  The characters are well-developed and generally interesting.  A warning, though...this novel does require some brainpower and an interest in history.  If you have these, you'll love it!

NOBODY HOME (Jacqueline Masumian)

I had the pleasure of meeting Jacqueline Masumian at our library a couple of weeks before reading this beautiful memoir.  She is a lovely and very interesting person, one that I felt I could be friends with if she lived close by.

Jacque's childhood was unusual, to say the least, and haphazard, to be perfectly honest.  Her parents divorced at a time when divorce was uncommon, leaving her mother, Jean, depressed and adrift in a world where she no longer fit the acceptable mold.  Thanks to Jean's affluent parents, she was able to house and feed her family, which included her own 4 children (Jacque is the second youngest) and her deceased sister's two daughters.  Her mother's mood swings and drinking, erratic behavior, and apparent lack of affection for Jacque and her siblings created a difficult atmosphere in which to grow up.  One of the most shocking anecdotes in the book is Jean allowing her children's 18-year-old babysitter to take Jacque, age 12 and insistent that she was too young to date, out for the evening.  The young man showed up at the front door with a pair of 4" stiletto heels for Jacque to wear on their "date." Jean's inability to realize the inappropriateness of this situation and to notice her daughter's discomfort illustrates the difficulties Jacque and her family faced throughout their formative years,

This memoir is filled with sadness, but also with humor.  A reflection on a turbulent childhood viewed from an mature perspective, Jacque's story is eloquently worded and thoughtfully composed, It was a pleasure to read.

APART AT THE SEAMS (Marie Bostwick)

Well, I skipped a few in this series because this one, #7, was available!  I am really enjoying the Cobbled Court series, which reminds me of Debbie Macomber's Blossom Street books.  In this one the main focus is on Gayla, a rather impulsive and technology-challenged woman who discovers that Brian, her husband of 26 years, has had a a brief extra-marital affair.  While using his computer she accidentally opens an unsent memo, written to her, in which he confesses the affair and suggests that it would be best to end their marriage since neither of them is happy.  Gayla reacts by fleeing New York City on the spur of the moment to their summer home in, where else, New Bern, CT, home of Cobbled Court Quilts.

Gayla is not quite as likable at first as some of the other women in this series.  First of all, she is impulsive.  She acts first and thinks about it later, failing to communicate with her husband at several crucial points and shutting him out of her life completely when she should be demanding an explanation.  Gayla also tends to be destructive, taking out her anger and frustration on innocent china (a horror to me, who collects beautiful dishes and teapots) or by digging up her yard.  Of course, by now we know that she is going to be asked to join the Cobbled Court quilting circle and that the friendship of the other women is going to have a positive effect on her life decisions, but that's OK.  This group is so supportive and so interesting that it doesn't matter if you can guess what's going to happen.  Gayla has told them all that she is "on sabbatical," so everyone in the group decides to plan a sabbatical project for themselves, to try something new over the summer that will take them out of their comfort zone.  This makes for some interesting subplots!

Several new characters were introduced between books 2 and 7, so I'm kind of anxious to go back and see what brought Phillipa, Tessa, and the others to New Bern.  This group of ladies are starting to feel a little like friends at this point.  I've already convinced 2 of my co-workers to read the series.  Why not join the fun with us?