Too Predictable

The other day, I picked a book from my “to read” list. Before I’d even finished the first two paragraphs, I knew how the story would go. Young boy has a make-believe friend. His nanny is alarmed by the pictures he draws of this friend. Young nanny is living in a small cabin on the property of the boy’s parents. Cabin is the site of a vicious murder that happened 80 years ago.

Let me guess. Boy’s imaginary friend is real. Said friend is connected to the ancient murder and will attempt to kill nanny or one of the family. Nanny will eventually save the day.

Okay, what I need to do now is read the blurb for the book. Throw in a bit of the supernatural and I’m find that I’m right about the story. How disappointing.

Perhaps I’ve read too many books?

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The Old Woman With a Knife – Gu Byeong-mo

Welcome to the world of professional assassins.

Be surprised when you meet one of the best, sixty-five year old Hornclaw.

Be surprised all over again when you realize Hornclaw is a woman.

She is nearing her retirement and doesn’t expect emotions to begin taking over her life. But as they do, her world is turned upside down. Still, she has one last target to eliminate.

This was an unexpected read—one that I unexpectedly enjoyed.

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At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age—that she’ll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.

Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses—for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she’s known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw’s world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.

A sensation in South Korea, and now translated into English for the first time by Chi-Young Kim, The Old Woman with the Knife is an electrifying, singular, mordantly funny novel about the expectations imposed on aging bodies and the dramatic ways in which one woman chooses to reclaim her agency.

The Gown – Jennifer Robson

We ooh and aah over the beautiful gowns worn by the rich and famous—Diana, Kate, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift… We admire the creativity of the designers—Chanel, Armani, Versace…

Rarely, if ever, do we consider those who do the actual work of sewing and embroidering the garments. Robson brings those in to sharp focus as she leads us through the creation of Queen Elisabeth’s wedding gown. Made during a time of great deprivation in England after WWII, the women involved toiled diligently to make the masterpiece created by Norman Hartnell.

“The Gown” is a lovely dip into history.

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“Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of color on the long road we have to travel.”

—Sir Winston Churchill on the news of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcoming wedding
London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?  

With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.

Killers of a Certain Age – Deanna Raybourn

A rip-roaring ride!

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Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.


Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.

Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier

Jamaica Inn – Daphne du Maurier

Like “Rebecca” and “Frenchman’s Creek,” “Jamaica Inn” bears the ominous hallmark of du Maurier. While they may have a “happy” ending, the overall emotion is an enticing menace.

This time the story takes us to the moors where we, along with Mary, are introduced to the brutality of the coastal smugglers. How Mary extricates herself from her uncle’s world and finds happiness in the end is a fascinating ride.

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Mary Yellan travels across the rain-soaked moors to Jamaica Inn on a cold November evening in respect of her dying mother’s request. When she arrives, the coachman’s warning begins to reverberate in her mind, as her aunt Patience cowers in front of towering Uncle Joss Merlyn. Mary, terrified of the inn’s ominous power, eventually becomes entangled in the murky plots unfolding beyond its decaying walls — and persuaded to love a man she can’t trust.

The source of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 masterpiece.

11/22/63 – Stephen King

Okay, this is an intriguing premise and well written, but what a ponderous read. There is simply too much detail and repetition. I slogged through about half of the book and then skimmed as I did want to know how it would all end. The characters were interesting as were the connections between them—orchestrated by time travel interference—but, I did not feel particularly connected to any of them.

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ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK?

In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

Africa is Not a Country – Dipo Faloyin

Why do we persist in the fallacy of considering Africa to be one country rather than a continent of fifty-four countries?

Faloyin’s book goes a long way in clearly presenting the historic conditions that fed us such a distorted image of the continent. Africa was systematically raped and pillaged by European conquerors. Resources stripped from the land. Men and women stuffed into slave ships. Millions more slaughtered. Thousands of cultural artifacts whisked away (the vast majority of which still reside in the basements of European and American museums).

Is it any wonder then, that we have little to virtually no background to see Africa as it really is?

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So often, Africa has been depicted simplistically as a uniform land of famines and safaris, poverty and strife, stripped of all nuance. In this bold and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective, weaving a vibrant tapestry of stories that bring to life Africa’s rich diversity, communities, and histories.

Starting with an immersive description of the lively and complex urban life of Lagos, Faloyin unearths surprising truths about many African countries’ colonial heritage and tells the story of the continent’s struggles with democracy through seven dictatorships. With biting wit, he takes on the phenomenon of the white savior complex and brings to light the damage caused by charity campaigns of the past decades, revisiting such cultural touchstones as the KONY 2012 film. Entering into the rivalries that energize the continent, Faloyin engages in the heated debate over which West African country makes the best jollof rice and describes the strange, incongruent beauty of the African Cup of Nations. With an eye toward the future promise of the continent, he explores the youth-led cultural and political movements that are defining and reimagining Africa on their own terms.

The stories Faloyin shares are by turns joyful and enraging; proud and optimistic for the future even while they unequivocally confront the obstacles systematically set in place by former colonial powers. Brimming with humor and wit, filled with political insights, and, above all, infused with a deep love for the region, Africa Is Not a Country celebrates the energy and particularity of the continent’s different cultures and communities, treating Africa with the respect it deserves.

Souvenirs

Most people come home from Mexico with a souvenir key chain. We came home with a cat.

Meet Buddy. A 8 to 10 year old feral cat rescued by our daughter. After 2 months of talking to and feeding him, she was able to touch and pet him. For the next few days we called him “the mechanic” as he showed up each morning covered in grease having spent the nights somewhere in the innards of a car. Our daughter couldn’t keep him as her two cats wouldn’t tolerate him. So….

Neutered and healthy after several visits to the vet and look at him now. He’s affectionate and soaking up our attention. Making up for the years without a home.

Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus

Garmus has given us a spot on picture of the “60s’ housewife. And, along with that, one of the most memorable heroines ever. I fell in love with Elizabeth—her intelligence, her courage, her determination, and her indomitable spirit. Every page was a delight as she battled against the status quo of the times.

All of the characterizations, the ones we love and the ones we find contemptible, are realistic and relatable.

While I love this book and highly recommend it, I did find the ending somewhat disappointing. Garmus ties up the loose ends with a too-often-used trope. I do not want to go into more detail and reveal a spoiler. And please, DO NOT let my opinion on the ending deter you from reading the book.

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Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel Prize–nominated grudge holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. 

Like science, though, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Eizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother but also the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show, Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because, as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women how to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.  

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

Four Treasures of the Sky – Jenny Tinghui Zhang

Four Treasures of the Sky – Jenny Tinghui Zhang

I’ve read a number of books about evil in the world. They all leave me feeling heartbroken, but ones like this about needless pain and suffering because of racism are atrocious. How one little girl could suffer such pain–physical and emotional—is belief.

I know I’m making this sound like the last thing you would want to do is read it, but I do recommend it. Infuriating and touching. Heartrending and lyrical. As the blurb says, “a spell binding feat” of historical fictions by Zhang.

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Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.

At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.

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Daiyu never wanted to be like the tragic heroine for whom she was named, revered for her beauty and cursed with heartbreak. But when she is kidnapped and smuggled across an ocean from China to America, Daiyu must relinquish the home and future she imagined for herself. Over the years that follow, she is forced to keep reinventing herself to survive. From a calligraphy school, to a San Francisco brothel, to a shop tucked into the Idaho mountains, we follow Daiyu on a desperate quest to outrun the tragedy that chases her. As anti-Chinese sentiment sweeps across the country in a wave of unimaginable violence, Daiyu must draw on each of the selves she has been—including the ones she most wants to leave behind—in order to finally claim her own name and story.

At once a literary tour de force and a groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Four Treasures of the Sky announces Jenny Tinghui Zhang as an indelible new voice. Steeped in untold history and Chinese folklore, this novel is a spellbinding feat.