MARIANA (Susanna Kearsely)

For the past 24 hours I have been trying to pick up Mariana and continue reading, but I can't because I've finished the book and now I feel like I've lost a good friend.  I don't know what makes Kearsley's writing so compelling and her characters so unforgettable.  They are just ordinary people (well, except for Geoff, who is a millionaire) thrust into extraordinary situations, caught between two vastly different lives and searching for meaning in both. I believe that Susanna Kearsley must have lived a past life.  I can't think of any other explanation for her ability to absolutely transport her readers through time!

"I first saw the house in the summer of my fifth birthday."  As this novel begins, Julia Beckett is speaking of Greywethers, the house that she would eventually buy in her thirtieth year.  After moving into this house she begins to experience brief periods of life as Mariana Farr, a young woman who lived in England's treacherous Jacobean era, when Charles Stuart was on the throne and the plague devastated Europe.  As Mariana, Julia has no memory of her future existence as Julia, but when she returns to the present she remembers Mariana's life and becomes obsessed with learning why she has such a strong connection to the past.  As Mariana she falls deeply in love with Richard DeMornay, ancestor and image of her neighbor, Geoff deMornay, the current squire of Crofton Hall.  There is, it seems, no record of Richard in local historical or burial records, yet Julia is sure that his role in Mariana's life has significance for her in the present.

Susanna Kearsley has populated the village of Exbury, present and past, with richly drawn personalities and romance.  Originally published in 1994, Mariana preceded The Rose Garden by many years.  The author's talent has grown, if possible, over time.  I can't wait to see what comes next!

THE BODY IN THE BOOKCASE (Katherine Hall Page)

It's funny how a couple of years away from an author causes you to notice little things that you never did before!  I love Page's Faith Fairchild series.  Faith Sibley is a native New Yorker, daughter of a clergyman, who falls in love with handsome Tom Fairchild before she realizes that he is exactly what she had hoped to avoid, a man of the cloth like her father.  She and Tom marry and settle in Aleford, MA, a suburb of Boston, where they raise their two small children in the vicarage while Tom tends to his flock and Faith tends to her catering business, Have Faith.  Faith, in the grand tradition of cozy mysteries, manages to stumble upon a dead body every couple of months and cannot resist investigating.  Here she has a personal stake in solving the crime:  her neighbor, gentle retired librarian Sarah Winslow, has died  during home invasion and thieves with the same MO have burglarized the vicarage, making off with many Sibley and Fairchild family heirlooms, jewelry, and sentimental trinkets. 

Since the police seem rather casual about attempting to find and recover her family's stolen goods, Faith, enlisting the help of neighbors, friends, and even the reluctant Tom, takes matters into her own hands and begins combing pawn shops, auctions, and other places that might lead to clues as to who burglarized their homes and killed Sarah.  Business as usual must go on, however, and Faith is also caught up in planning food for demanding bride Samantha Bullock's society wedding and rehearsal dinners (this is a culinary series, after all!).

I suddenly realized while reading this that Faith has a certain Lucille Ball-like quality that I had never noticed before, keeping details from her husband and putting herself into situations that are both dangerous and comical.  Though she is a devoted wife and mother, I kept wondering how she could endanger herself and her family life by getting too closely involved with the investigation, but I guess that's one of the things that define a cozy.  She does, to her credit, enlist the aid of her state policeman friend John Dunne in critical decisions.  

One of the things that is so endearing about Faith is that she is a real woman, one whom most of us could identify with.  She is not a hilarious caricature like Agatha Raisin (M.C. Beaton) or Helma Zukas (Jo Dereske) or a wealthy philanthropist like Olivia Limoges (Ellery Adams), or even a cheerful crocheter/events organizer like Molly Pink (Betty Hechtman), although I LOVE all of these characters.  Faith is a working small-town mother who has left behind a more glamorous life in new York City to raise a family as the wife of a small-town vicar.  She worries about child care, picks her kids up at nursery school, and worries about Tom's sermons.  Page does an excellent job of making Faith a real (despite the Lucille ball moments), mother and wife.  She is someone that might live on my street, except for the murders!  I like her.

READING TO HEAL (Jacqueline Stanley)

Bibliotherapy as a means to improve life and psyche is not a new idea. Most avid readers probably engage in therapeutic reading on a regular basis without even realizing it: to deal with stressful jobs or home situations, solve relationship dilemmas, examine faith issues, analyze family relationships, etc. Professional therapists use bibliotherapy to help patients deal with illness or emotional issues, but it can also be used by individuals to enhance everyday life. Stanley, who is a lawyer, not a mental health professional, discusses bibliotherapy here as an art rather than as a science. Although dated (published in 1999), this book would a valuable resource for anyone interested in using reading as a means to gain insight and make positive changes to their behavior or attitudes. I am toying with the idea of presenting a program on fiction bibliotherapy at our library, but that will take some time to develop. I'll keep you posted!

Stanley covers all of the basics of reading both fiction and nonfiction as a means to heal, including how to find books, the benefits of bibliotherapy (things like awareness that others have similar problems, learning practical skills, escape and diversion, reinforcement of self-worth), and what to look for in different types of novels. She also makes some very valuable and practical suggestions for getting the most out of what you read, overcoming problems that stand in the way of reading, and personalizing a reading plan. One of my favorite quotes that Stanley includes sums up what I believe to be the basis for all reading: "The only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you." (W. Somerset Maugham). Thinking back, when I was very young I was eager to fill my mind with historical adventures and family dramas written by Elizabeth Enright, Louisa Mae Alcott, and Frances Hodgsen Burnett. As I grew into adolescence I immersed myself in the classics (Thomas Hardy and George Eliot were my favorites!) and, of course, toe-curling horror by authors like Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft. As I matured I enjoyed exploring topics like the mysticism of Carlos Casteneda and the pop psychology of Marilyn French. Medical and legal thrillers were my main literature of choice during those years when my husband and I were nearly overwhelmed by the realities of trying to raise two wonderful kids while making ends meet after a job layoff and big drop in income. As my parents and in-laws aged and we took on new roles as their caregivers and decision makers, I have found myself most drawn to cozy mysteries (Elizabeth Lynn Casey, Anne Canadeo,or Maggie Sefton, for example), funny chick-lit (Hester Browne, Katie Fforde, Isabel Wolff), or to women's fiction that often features people dealing with similar issues in life (Joanna Trollope, Marcia Willett, Barbara Delinsky) I can see distinct patterns in my reading habits over the years and I can, in many cases, see why I have chosen certain authors at specific times in my life. Of course, sometimes a good book is just a good book! I think that bibliotherapy is fascinating, though, and I'm looking forward to reading more on the subject.

SHEER ABANDON (Penny Vincenzi)

Jocasta, Clio, and Martha meet and become fast friends while traveling to Bangkok during their gap year in 1985. Martha, the quiet daughter of a vicar, plans to study law. Clio, plump and pretty, has her sights set on medical school, while beautiful, blonde Jocasta is thinking about a career in journalism. Thailand and similar environs have never appealed to me and Vincenzi does an excellent job of confirming my desire NEVER to travel there. It's amazing to me that British parents would send their 17-year-olds alone to experience the drug and sex saturated culture of Thailand for months on end, but I guess I am also flabbergasted by the idea of sending an 8-year-old to boarding school! Obviously I'm not British!

Well, I'm getting off track here. Nearly a year after meeting, one of the girls (who remains unidentified for a good part of the novel) gives birth and abandons her baby at Heathrow Airport, then we fast forward 15 years and find that all 3 of the girls have grown into women with issues. Clio is a physician specializing in geriatrics, engaged to an overbearing surgeon who believes that she should give up her career to support him in his. Martha is an extremely successful solicitor who focuses 24/7 on her law career until she meets a much younger man, Ed, and is chosen by the new Centre Forward party to run for political office. Jocasta is a journalist working for a tabloid-like paper and in love with commitment-shy Nick, also a journalist. Jocasta's brother, Josh, who was also in Thailand with the girls, has been unfaithful to his his wife multiple times and is trying to save his marriage. At this time the reader is also introduced to Kate, a beautiful 16-year-old adopted by Helen and Jim after being found abandoned at Heathrow. Kate is desperate to find out where she came from and why her mother abandoned her. Much drama ensues, of course, as our basic cast of characters reconnects. What is especially interesting is how different British politics, law, medicine, and family life are from ours here in the U.S.A.

One of my complaints about Vincenzi's excellent novel, The Best of Times, which I read last month, was that there was no listing of characters to remind the reader of who was who. She does provide that in Sheer Abandon and I have to confess that I referred back to it frequently. I love Vincenzi's imagination, her language, her ability to juggle multiple threads of a story and bring them all together in a way that seems uncontrived and logical. I do believe, though, that if she could have cut this novel to about 2/3 of it's 626 pages it would have been a big improvement. I almost gave up and I did read ahead because I wasn't sure I could make it to the end! I did, and I'm glad that I did. It was worth it, but i have to warn you that you'd better set aside a good chunk of time for it!

THE ROSE GARDEN (Susanna Kearsley)

I originally chose this book because it had two of my favorite elements: an ancient family mansion on the coast of Cornwall and mysterious voices from the past. I was a great fan of both Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt back in the day and I still remember the Cornish prefixes, tre-, pol-, and pen-, and the magic associated with Cornwall. The main story takes place at Trelowarth, an estate in the fictional Cornish town of Polgelly and the scene of many happy childhood memories for Eva Ward. It is currently the home of Trelowarth Roses, a business originally started by George Hallett, a friend of Eva's late father. Eva's old friends Mark and Susan Hallett and their step-mother, Claire, welcome Eva to Trelowarth with open arms when she returns after 20 years in North America to scatter her sister's ashes from the Cornish cliffs.

The first line of the novel immediately sets the mysterious mood: "I lost my only sister in the last days of November." Kearsley's writing is magical and the sense of place that she creates is haunting. I wasn't sure about the time travel aspect of the story. I normally associate time travel with fantasy and science fiction, but here it felt so like something understandable and right. Trelowarth is located on a ley line, a supposed alignment of ancient sites that has, in modern times, been adopted by New Age occultists as a source of energy or supernatural power. When Eva suddenly starts noticing disappearing paths that did not exist before and a strange man standing on the lawn at Trelowarth, a lawn that is strangely changed, she begins to doubt her sanity. She comes to realize that she is glimpsing snippets of life at Trelowarth nearly 300 years ago and eventually begins interacting with Daniel Butler, the owner of Trelowarth in 1715, in his time. One of the most delightful things about Daniel Butler and his friend, Fergal, is that they accept that Eva is from the future and react to her with kindness and curiosity instead of fear.

Eva has no control over when she travels through time and is always caught unaware, which adds a bit of an adrenaline rush to the experience of reading The Rose Garden. Clothes that she wears in 1715, courtesy of Daniel, are old and worn when she returns to the present in them and, while she researches the Butlers and the history of the time with the help of her friend Oliver, she is careful while in the past to avoid doing or revealing anything that might change the course of history.

Kearsley has produced a phenomenal novel. it is, in many ways, a typical love story, but the author brings it to the next level by allowing her readers to feel as if they are experiencing the sights and sounds of 1715 along with Eva. This book is enchanting. When I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it and longing to return to the past with Eva. Kearsley provides a couple of unexpected twists near the end of the story that i absolutely loved. You may not be as delighted with this novel as I was, but it couldn't hurt to try it out. I recommend it wholeheartedly!