Here are new books for the Deering Public Library.
Remember that if Town Hall offices are open, the library is open. We work on an honor system: please fill out a card with your name or number and the date you took the book. If you would rather use a number than your name, please let me know in the comments section here.
The Little Red Chairs, Edna O'Brien, 2016
A mysterious 'healer' with a foreign accent comes to a small town in western Ireland. Women swoon. One of them, Fidelma, wants a baby that she has not gotten in her stale marriage to a man twenty years her senior. Taken with Vlad, the poetic healer, she will have his baby. In this he merely provided the sperm. She becomes pregnant just as it is revealed that Vlad is a Bosnian Serb war criminal. The little red chairs? Each of the 11,500 chairs represents one dead Sarajavian, killed by the Serbian forces under Radovan Karadzic (Vlad in this book) over about 1500 days of siege. Of those chairs, 643 represented children. Vlad's true evil is revealed within the first third of the book and he pretty much disappears into the War Crimes Tribunal process until the end of the book. Fidelma's life is downhill from here. She is scorned by her husband and the rest of her village. She is kidnapped by mysterious men intent on erasing all trace of Vlad, including the developing fetus. They use a crowbar in a very difficult and unbelievable scene. Be warned. The rest of the book was difficult to follow. Fidelma goes to London and, where she is down and out. She hooks up with other exiled people, many of whom tell their stories. She attends Vlad's trial in The Hague and confronts him in his prison cell to no effect. Fidelma ends up dedicating the rest of her life to victims and exiles. Several reviewers said that they could not sympathize with Fidelma: why didn't she get out of her marriage? Why didn't she see the evil in Vlad sooner? I am not sure what recourse a bad marriage has in Catholic Ireland and I suspect that if she had known that Vlad was the Devil incarnate she would probably have looked for a different mate. It's a short book. I was not as taken as the many who recommended the work on the cover.
Everybody's Fool, Richard Russo, 2016
This novel is a sequel to Russo's 1994 novel Nobody's Fool (which is in the Deering Public Library). Both are set in small town, Upstate New York. The new novel got a lot 5 star reviews from Goodreads reviewers. One reviewer said that you don't have to read the first to 'get' the new volume. Here's what one reviewer said. It seems to sum up the reviews I read:
"The magic of Russo is his ability to capture the quiet uniqueness of every day life as it happens to normal people in normal towns. The dialogue alone had me chuckling and rereading passages. So sharp! So clever! Each character so well-drawn! (Sully! What a guy!). Unhappy marriages, a chief of police who just lost his wife, a poisonous snake on the loose, a mysterious garage door opener that could be the key to an affair, a mischievous dog - and the whole thing unfolds over the course of one epic (and hot) day. It was such a pleasure to spend time with the flawed but endearing folks of Bath, NY. When I finished the book I almost wished I could stop by Hattie's for a burger and a beer, and talk shop with the locals."
Enchanted Islands, Allison Amend, 2016
I was attracted to this book in Toadstool because of the cover art and went from there to Galapagos Islands, memoir, WWII and spies to the checkout counter. There are a lot of 5 star reviews in Goodreads and a goodly number of 3 star reviews. Here is one of the five star reviews
"Inspired by the real life memoirs of Frances Conway, Enchanted Islands is the story of Frances Frank’s (then Conway) life, from growing up in Duluth, Minnesota, to marrying a Navy Intelligence Operator and living in the Galápagos Islands at the age of 50 right before WWII breaks out.
The first part focuses on the growing friendship between Frances and Rosalie, both Jewish, one born to poor immigrants from Poland and another born to a well-to-do family from Germany. But life isn’t exactly what it seems for both girls growing up, and that’s when their adventure really begins.
From Minnesota, to Chicago, to a betrayal that makes one of the friends move out on her own, I was reminded very much of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Circle of Friends while reading this first part.
Years later, they reconnect in San Francisco right before WWII breaks out. There, they see how different their lives have become. Rosalie, a wealthy, married, stay at home mom, Frances, working as a secretary at the Office of Naval Intelligence. There, in her late 40’s, she meets Ainslie Conway and begins another great adventure heading to the Galápagos Islands on a secret mission filled with arranged marriages and espionage!
When I first started reading, I thought this book would focus more on Frances’ island living, but that only makes up about the last third of the book. It’s mostly about Frances’ relationship with Rosalie and the path she took that led her to being a secretary one day, and a spy for the US Government the next.
Although a very fictional account of the lives of very real people, I absolutely loved reading about the strong friendship between Frances and Rosalie, both women who haven’t had it easy, but have somehow overcome all of this, about Frances’ complicated marriage to Ainslie, and of course wartime spying and living on a deserted island a lá Swiss Family Robinson."
A brief history of seven killings, Marlon James, 2014
I knew about this book because it won a Man Booker best book prize. I was attracted to it because my first tropical field work was in Jamaica in 1971, during the election campaign that brought socialist Michael Manley as Prime Minister and during that field trip I was stoned. I mean, literally stoned as in flying rocks crashing against my Landrover in a small village. Truly scary. Outside of those clean resort hotels around Montego Bay, around Kingston for example, violence was nasty for a long time after Manley's election. That's the crux of this book. It's helpful to know a little Jamaican history but not necessary. The book opens in 1976 and involves the assassination attempt on Bob Marley ('The Singer; in the book). It leads from there to drug wars in Brooklyn in 1991. There are far more than 7 killings and at 700 pages the book is not brief. Each chapter is a single character often talking only to him or herself. The book follows the characters, but few make it out in the end. There is even a ghost, a murdered diplomat who sets the historical scene for each of the five parts of the book. there is the CIA, Colombian drug dealers, Rolling Stone writers and a lot of Jamaicans, some hoods and some just caught up. Fortunately there is a cast of characters that was essential for me. The Jamaican characters speak in patois that takes some getting used to.I still do not know what 'bombocloth' means, but it's not good (forgive me if I am 'swearing' here). I would love to have this book on tape, as did many Goodreads reviewers.There is a lot of graphic violence. These are generally not nice people. There are graphic homosexual sex scenes. It turns out that some of the most brutal characters are 'on the 'downlow.' The authors says, in the afterword, that maybe his grandmother should not read part 4. Be advised. I should probably read the book again. It was very good but very intense.
Arcadia, Iain Pears, 2016
Did you ever wonder whether your -- our -- life is existing on a plane, a flat disk, and that our disk was just one of several spinning disks, each having its own population and time? Maybe time has structure, physical dimensions with past, present, future representing irrelevant concepts in the conveyor belt of time? Intersections of time and planes of existence, then, make up this book Arcadia. An Oxford don, writing in the 1960's, creates a world in his head. A time traveling colleague/espionage buddy, now working in the 23rd Century puts flesh on our don's world. His story is one of civilization populated by Medieval characters: kings, queens, handsome robbers, conspirators and so on. This neighborhood has neither past nor future apart from what is provided by the writer of the story. Now, this book is a bit complicated because there is yet another parallel universe situated in a post apocalyptic Island of Mull sometime around the 23rd Century. A young girl, neighbor to the 1960's don, accidentally enters the idyllic world and meets people from there and people who have come there from a very brutal 23rd Century. It's a bit confusing. Within this there is love, murder, mystery, spies, and a cat in addition to the young girl. Characters overlap from one universe to the other so part of the challenge of the book is keeping the 'who,' the 'when,' and the 'where' all straight. It's fun, all 500-odd pages of it.
Elle & Coach. Diabetes, the Fight for My Daughter's Life, and the Dog Who Changed Everything, Stefany Shaheen (with) Mark Dagostino, 2015
Here is what one Goodreads reviewer said:
Stefany Shaheen doesn't need to think when asked what was the worst day of her life. It was November 28, 2007, the day her daughter Elle was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Elle and Coach recounts the family's journey and the trials they faced managing Elle's chronic illness. Elle was active in the fight against the disease and signed up for many research studies. She and her mom also acted as delegates and spokespeople for the fight to find better treatments and a cure for this autoimmune disease. It was through their advocacy that they learned about medical service dogs who can alert to blood sugar lows and highs simply through their sense of smell. Coach is the dog that changed Elle's life.
Elle and Coach was written for adults, but is not a difficult read and may appeal to 'tween and teen readers who are interested in diabetes or medical service dogs. Elle's story is a strong and courageous young woman and the stories of Coach's skill are both heartwarming and awe inspiring.
I loved this book and read it quickly in a weekend. Coach doesn't become involved in the story until about half way through, so a warning and a bit of skipping may be called for in the case of dog-loving and impatient younger readers. I think they'll think the delay is worth it though and cheer on Elle, an amazingly strong and appealing girl. This would be a great addition to middle school and high school libraries or classrooms. Highly recommended.
Thirty-eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England, Stephen Long, 2016
Most narratives of disaster hurricanes deal with the destruction that takes place on the coasts. Indeed, that is certainly where the loss of life and brute force destruction of cities is greatest. And probably most news crews and writers are situated in cities so, sure, we're going to see stories of mayhem in cities. This book takes a different tack. The author is a forest ecologist and, apart from the human toll, he sees the effect of all that wind on our forests and the communities that depend upon them. In the short term, maybe not as dramatic as, say, flooding in New Jersey (apart from the horrible loss of life). Perhaps the greatest long-term destruction in 1938 was to the forested landscape. That is what this book is about. Long introduces us to hurricanes and the forces that shape and direct them. He then describes in detail the immediate destruction wreaked by that particular hurricane and its impact on the future. The forests of our state of New Hampshire may have been the most seriously affected of the New England forests. Forests were, and are, a big part of our economy. How our parents and grandparents got through that hurricane of 1938 is of immense importance to us. The book is imminently readable, intelligent and fascinating.
