Lilies in Moonlight by Allison Pittman

Let’s just get the fact that the cover art is terrible out of the way. It’s terrible. Just find a piece of paper and hide it and fall in love. Because you will. Lily Margolis is a true-blue flapper. Having escaped from the clutches of her legalistic mother, she is barely surviving as a door-to-door cosmetics girl. One night, after crashing a Gatsby-esque party, she stumbles into the yard of the wealthy Burnside estate. There, she is informally adopted by the delusional ( and charming ) Betty Ruth and scrutinized by the enigmatic Cullen, whose past in baseball is as tragic as the mustard gas accident that has left him disfigured. A bright spark in the Christian market and one of my favourite reads this year, Lilies in Moonlight will charm the socks off of you.

First off, I have loved Pittman’s baseball-themed trilogy. Stealing Home is a revelation ( especially because her Crossroads of Grace series was so frustrating for me) and Lilies in Moonlight even surpasses it. A well-loved secondary character makes a beguiling cameo for those who are versed in this Americana by a talented pen . For those uninitiated, this is the perfect place to start with Allison Pittman. This is competent writing with themes far deeper than their surface initially tells. I loved it. It’s wrapped up in grace and redemption; but coated with strong verisimilitude, peppered with authentic dialogue and brimming with a wonderful feel for the era. You will be transported back to an easier time and the language, costumes and colour of the numerous sets back-dropping Lily’s adventures are warm and light-filled.

An unexpected road trip bonds Lily and the fabulous Cullen in a sweet and remarkable way. Both are able to admit their faults, exhume their pasts and respect each other at far more than a surface level. The motif of appearance ( Lily’s kohl liner and ruby lips and Cullen’s horrific war scars ) runs rampant---it even peeks into the delusion that pervades Cullen’s warm-hearted and sweet-tempered mother, Betty Ruth. Not everything in the story wraps up perfectly and we learn that God’s idea of miraculous undertakings can sometimes look slightly different than our own. I loved this book! This book that will always bring me to a bright and happy place. Kudos to Pittman for continually becoming stronger and stronger and establishing herself as one of the most competent writers in the historical genre.

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff ( with a bit of a film review thrown in)

In the Spring, on my online friend Ruth recommended that I read The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. A bit of a modern YA classic, I was surprised it had not yet made its way onto my list.

I loved it. I thought the writing was beautiful and atmospheric and I reveled in the themes of honour, valour, courage and loyalty. It was a great read with some fabulous dialogue, a perfect feel for the historical period and peppered with slow, easy suspense that acted as a bit of a backdrop to the relationships and character development forged in the book.

The central relationship of the story arises between Marcus, a Roman legionnaire desperate to reclaim the lost standard of his father’s vanished and near-fabled legion. Marcus is a great and starkly human commander whose testament to character is illuminated in his persistence in battle and his leadership with his men.

Upon gruesome injury, he is sent to convalesce at his uncle’s and sets to learning more about his father while regaining his failing strength. In one of the best literary scenes I encountered this year, Marcus saves a brave slave boy from the hands of a brutish gladiator in a grueling ring fight staged for public entertainment. It’s a brilliantly rendered scene; Marcus sees the young Briton boy and is taken by his will and determination and yells, screams and pleads for his life. He makes the Briton, Esca, his personal body slave and the two polar opposites establish an unbreakable friendship and bond.

This is unabashed bromance at its best, fair readers. Time passes and it falls upon the steadfast Marcus and (now freed; but still desperate to serve) Esca to reclaim the lost standard. Their journey to reclaim the Eagle and excavate the mystery behind the lost legion is gripping fiction at best.


Having read the book, I was excited when the 2011 film adaptation starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell was finally released on dvd--- because I had missed in the theatres and refused to go before I had finished the book.

The film was beautifully shot and the scenery and cinematography are splendid. I usually don’t pay that much attention to the most minute technical tenets of film; but the sound editing in this production was especially effective. I had trouble “buying” Tatum as the strong Marcus because he was very different than my imaginative conceptualization of the character. Jamie Bell fared better as Esca: the strong, silent type whose heart is broken on behalf of his friend and goes to great lengths to save their ripening bond.

Donald Sutherland has a wonderful character bit and Mark Strong shows up with a wavering accent ( he’s in everything now).

While the movie was entertaining, I felt it failed to capture the spirit of the book and the liberties it took with the chronology of Esca and Marcus’ friendship were distracting.

I would certainly have enjoyed the film more if I had not read the novel first. As such, I highly, highly, highly recommend the novel and encourage you to compare it to the recent adaptation: but only after living in Sutcliff’s fabulous adventure yarn a little first.

Film Review: Midnight in Paris

Friday night I indulged in this splendidly imagined movie with a movie-going friend who has the world's most detailed eye for sets and costume. We both were spirited into a magical world that fulfilled the title character's dream life and I, so obsessed with Paris' once literary elite, was re-invigorated in remembering the authors and their lives as they stole through my consciousness in University.

I cannot talk of the Golden Age of Artistic Paris: the effervescent 1920s without casting a thought for Morley Callaghan whose own A Moveable Feast, That Summer in Paris so held my imagination in my early, creative 20s.

A snippet of what I wrote on the anniversary of Morley Callaghan's Birthday:

"Morley Callaghan would have been 100 years old today. And what a jam-packed century he would have had. He already filled more than a lifetime usually allots in the first fifty years. His best writing was done when he was young, his greatest adventures played out mighty early, and all of his literary flings and acclaims came at a young age. Yes, I have romanticized Morley's early years, what with their splash of Parisian panache ( and what with his clobbering of Ernest Hemingway---- don't make me get into the climax of That Summer in Paris as a Canadian literary metaphor again ), but he defines a golden age of sorts for me. I envision him wandering aimlessly around 1920's Toronto---every snippet of his life reading out of the pages of his novel, A Varsity Story. I imagine him, as I often was, curled up in one of the red leather chairs of the Hart House Library at U of T and looking over the courtyards and spires, slightly interrupted by the pealing of the tower bell.And then, there is Paris and Morley's dappling into the lives of the Literary Elite. He defines Paris for me. Whenever I think of it with its dazzling life, parties and pizazz, I rarely think of anything I did not read of in the pages of Callaghan's autobiography. Forget We Were all so Young or A Moveable Feast. Canadians had their own agent in the flapper years!

When I discovered that Allen's latest was an homage to arguably one of the most artistically important decades of the 20th Century, I was eager to see how his vision matched my imaginative strolls by L' Arc de Triomphe and along the Seine.

How impressed I was at the marriage of modern with fabled past. Certainly Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Salvidor Dali, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald et. al are characterizations against a backdrop of glittering, gilded golden age; but it is the treatise on the power of imagination and creative sundry that most beguiled me.

Modern writer Gil is disenchanted with the city he yearns to roam in the rain. He is constricted to Hollywood scripts and his naggy fiance seems to strip the romance out of a city he has long harboured a passion for. At midnight, every night, he is catapulted back to his Golden Age: there, he meets the literary and artistic greats fully realizing the wealth of the decade that has spirited into his nostalgic writing.

Of course, come sun-up, the world is gone and nought but the strains of a Cole Porter tune follow him from the starry beyond. What the experience offers him in terms of creative development and how he learns that each artist pines for an era that, when recreated, can only be drained of its spark and pizzazz, is magic....

Woody Allen understands me. He understood me in Purple Rose of Cairo when he allowed a fictional world to seep into the "real" one and he understands how, like the beautiful Adriana, I have long desired to spirit back to the 19th Century: the canvas of gaslit lamps and the clomp of hansom cab hooves. But, he also explains what is lost when we attempt to catch a fleeting moment. As enchanted as Gil's moonlight walks are, he is well aware that living in the past would only strip it of its incessant charm. That, like those who yearned to live in pasts before him, no one can completely capture the Golden Age. Like clouds or stars, it would evaporate quickly upon our fleeting touch.

‎Midnight in Paris was divine. Like Purple Rose of Cairo, it makes me feel like Woody Allen holds a slice of my psyche. It's a treatise on nostalgia: the Golden Age, La Belle Epoque. It tampers with we imaginative sorts and expels the subtle threads of revelry that steal into commonplace thought. It's magical, deliciously Romantic, delightful.

I referred to it as 20th Century Literary porn: if you have ever cackled at Hemingway's hyper-masculinity or snickered at Dali's obsession with animal abstracts then this is the film for you.

Allen is just as enchanted and obsessed as we are; but his eye and savvy camera glance re-affirm us that what is best dreamt stays just where it is--- in dreams.

In Which Jane Eyre Continues to Turn Me Into A Christian (though, I suppose, I always kinda was one anyways)

It’s a pretty much well- known fact that I love Jane Eyre. Love it to distraction. Partly because I identify with the heroine ( I think a lot of female readers do, hence her ongoing popularity) and partly because it is just such a captivating and modern tale: far beyond the reaches of its rigid 19th Century publication.

I think about the book often ( as I do stories that transcend time and place and stamp themselves indelibly on my psyche). What the most recent film adaptation of this oft-filmed tale directed me to was a part in the novel that I think previous adaptations have not dealt with in such heart-breaking sternness: Jane’s unwillingness to sacrifice her sense of self. This was explored so potently in the version that I have not stopped thinking of it since. Some mental imp nudges it to the front of my brain when I feel like I need it most.

Jane sets her teeth and foregos what she most wants in the world in order to do right by Heaven and Higher Power. She will not submit to any Law but the Almighty’s and her self-respect far outweighs a chance at remarkable happiness: at a future secure and not awaiting her on the callous moors she will eventually turn to. Jane has a choice: love, wealth, family over uncertainty, poverty and homelessness.

Forced to confront a heart-breaking and certain dissolution in hope, in which her beloved, Edward Rochester, offers a tenuous solution, Jane regales against the warmth of an inviting future of romance and happiness to, instead, stay true to her laws and beliefs.

Says she: “—“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.”

“Laws and Principles, ‘Jane says above, ‘are not for the times when there is no temptation….’

Not to get all Christian on you ( though I suppose that’s what I’m doing), but it’s amazing how poignantly this part of a book I have read to shreds still resonates with me: on a higher level.
Housing a belief of any kind can suck, to put it crassly: really, really suck. There are times when the most rigid of promises I have laid out for myself and the metrics I have set in place by which to measure the strength of my personal convictions seem to pale in light of seemingly better, easier conclusions.

There are times when the sane solution would be to just jiggle the bar somewhat and re-assess a value system to seemingly reasonable extent. As the reader/viewer of Jane’s story inwardly (and outwardly if you are an effusive viewer/reader such as I )proclaims: it’s NOT such a bad thing, Jane. Not such a bad thing at all. You wouldn’t have to reproach yourself; just re-evaluate.

For me, exposure is sometimes found in the beguiling nudge of a literary remembrance. Jane’s steadfast planting of foot, heart and conscience is the jolt that surges me to reclaim my personal belief.

Sometimes I need something concrete to embody that which seems to mentally evade me. I need to settle the “what ifs…. “ or “ I could just …. Maybe….. “ with a twig-like snap to catapult me back to myself.
The standards to which we set ourselves, inspired by God, by Law, by Reason, by Family, by Conscience, are by far the most pre-possessing and stern reminders we have that our worth is so much more than the limitations we conceive as barriers around us. …
If you DO see the film ( and I highly encourage it; even without initiation to the novel ), make sure you focus on the part where heart-broken and torn, Jane sacrifices happiness for self-worth. She knows that if she were to budge and face what she views as her one true prize would mean the sacrifice of everything she is rooted to believe in.
It is that point that makes her the most super-hero of all Victorian literary heroines. For inasmuch as the literary world unravels her myriad of virtues: as a feminist, as a modern heroine, as a contemporary voice that extols the virtue of women’s education, creativity and imagination, it is her steadfast Faith that most speaks to me—exemplified in her shirking that which she wants most to secure a clear conscience and an eternity wiped clear of regret.


(She’ll get her happy ending, fear not, but it comes at a great cost and doesn’t necessarily materialize in the pitch-perfect, water-coloured rendition a fairytale would suppose).

In Which I Go Comic Book (It's like that Brian McKnight song---but worse)

Yesterday, I had a chat with a comic book aficionado friend who was able to shed some light into what DC's setting back to #1 this Fall actually means to the Comic Book World. In his opinion, this impending re-boot will simplify characters and storylines and move everything in each individual comic book universe back to a clean slate.

Character development, thus, completely washed away. Years of meticulous and thought out narrative trajectory? ..Wiped clean to ensure a new and engaging drawing board from which to re-boot characters and plots and storylines.

When I first read about the upcoming move for DC to move back to #1 I must confess that I gave it a quick glance. I didn’t know if it meant any real change to the content of the stories, or was just a Y2k digitized effort to re-boot a franchise ---- I mean, ignoramus that I am, I thought perhaps the numbers were running out ( As said, I didn’t give this much thought: I have dappled in comics ---more so as a child and teen--- have read my share of the popular graphic novels--- and keep a close eye on the film versions; but I am certainly not as well-versed as the friend who directed me to this article. I am also blonde). According to the above article: “DC is launching 52 titles at No. 1 in September featuring scores of its characters ranging from Wonder Woman to Green Lantern to the Justice League”

What is so poignant, potent and outraging about this particular article (sent as an example by my friend) is that it speaks to the loss of character development. Here, years of storyline devoted to the rather amazing Oracle (formerly Batgirl Barbara Gordon), will be completely obliterated.

This example was made more poignant, potent and outraging when I transplanted the idea into some of my favourite literary serializations.

People feel quite strongly about the fictional worlds they imaginatively inhabit. For comic book readers who invest hours of thought and mind-painting into the universe of their choice, they become as attached to character development and progression and relationship as the 19th Century Dickens reader on tenterhook for the next installment of, say, Great Expectations ( the most comic-booky of the Dickens’ novels, perhaps).

In contemporary times (and by contemporary, I point out the dime serializations of the early 1900s through Louis L’Amour, James Bond--- anything with a recurring character and “’verse”, especially in mystery, thriller and fantasy genres) we love the created sphere of character. We step in and let the world overtake us, the characters materialize in depth before our eyes, the nuances of the fictional world seep into our psyche.

So what would happen if George R R Martin (whose eagerly anticipated book awaits fans this summer), were to say “Scrap that! I’m going back to #1” --- all character development and emotional and imaginative investment wiped clean?

For examples closer to my literary taste and heart ( though I love me some fantasy sagas, don’t get me wrong--- hello Locke Lamora!) , what if on book 15 of the Aubrey/Maturin canon, Patrick O’Brian decided that he had had enough with the world he created for Jack and Stephen and decided that their relationship and all meticulous development thus far needed to be scrapped so, like painter with fresh easel and palette, he could start again?

Sherlock and Watson, to name another passionate following of mine….. or any mystery series that we read 10+ ( or even 20+ ) books of because we enjoy the characters and the world far more than we care whodunit.

I stretch a bit when I wade into comic territory because, as mentioned, it is neither my forte nor my expertise. But, literary passion, fictional obsession and careful eye to well-crafted character and world development is a niche of mine.

I stepped into the shoes of a comic book lover for a moment and realized that, to many, this is an issue that will spark fury and outrage.

Have you all heard about this? What think you? Is there ever a reason to scrap a well-developed and rounded world for the sake of starting fresh? What about the many different variations on several of the same universes ( there are different artists and writers for Archie, Batman, etc., )

The Railway Children: Theatre Review

I went to see the exceptional Mirvish production of the Railway Children at Toronto’s new Roundhouse Theatre on Bremner Blvd.

A note on the venue: couched between the numerous historical train cars decorating the lot near Steamwhistle Brewery and offering a fantastic view of the Toronto skyline: just below the CN tower. The tent constructed for this production of the London smash hit is rather unremarkable from the outside; but you enter through your platform and upon seeing the auditorium you are transplanted into a magical, mystical Edwardian world.
The staging for this production is exceptional. The lighting and costumes, the music and sound are all on par with some of the best theatrical experiences I have encountered.

The audience is seated on either side of the makeshift “tracks” and the staging utilizes this set-up to its full-potential: the climax at the end of the first act resulting in the entrance of a gorgeous reproduction of an early 19th Century train.

Because of the odd nature of the seating, I wondered about visual limitation; but there is no such thing. The actors ( who are superb, by the way, especially the three playing the children: Roberta, Phyllis and Peter) , bound about always in your sightline. The director has carefully planted the action at angles that engage the audience at all times and children, especially, immediately connected with the action they witnessed.

Yes, the entrance of the famous train was indeed the highlight of the spectacle; but I was as smitten with the lighting and sound which recreated the “feeling” of a locomotive as the eponymous Railway Children bound about the tracks. At one point, as the three sneak into a terrifying railway tunnel to rescue a young boy, the tunnel closing in ( with nothing more than a skirmish of black curtain was one of the most brilliantly rendered theatrical scenes I had seen.

The Railway Children is based on the 1906 serialized novel by E. Nesbit. It follows the adventures of the precocious Waterbury Children, exiled to a modest house known as the Three Chimneys with their mother when their well-to-do Londoner father is accused of selling secrets from the government. Told episodically (as most morality tales for young people of its age), the three meet a myriad of interesting characters: including the kind-hearted railway porter Mr. Perks, a charitable doctor, an enigmatic old gentleman they spirit down to the tracks to wave to every morning at 9:15 a.m. and a recently imprisoned Russian novelist desperate to be reunited with his wife and daughter.

I really enjoyed this production, its ambience, its setting and its narrative. The dialogue was wonderful, with the actors breaking the wall to speak directly to the audience. They almost trip over each other to break into a new narrative strain and it is absorbing, high-energy and meets the rhythm of a young child bubbling with enthusiasm at all of their minute adventures.

There is an incredible amount of heart and talent here –meted out amidst one of the cleverest set designs I have ever seen.

I highly recommend this faithful adaptation ( it is VERY like the novel; down to the dialogue) to those looking for something to do in Toronto this summer. Make sure to have a pint at Steamwhistle after--- because it is SO close!

Boardwalk Empire: the Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson first crossed my radar when I watched the exceptional HBO miniseries of the same name back in the winter.

I was immediately transplanted to the heyday of prohibition and spun into a world with an infrastructure of greed, twisted politics, sex and money. A moral free-space, the corrupt nature of all of the main players in the series and their seemingly conscience-free zone propelled me to want to know more.

At the center of the HBO series and at the center of the high times mentioned in the book’s title is Nucky Johnson: a highly charismatic, outwardly charitable and brilliant businessman who not only played to the hands of widows and orphans; but also made rattling connections with mobsters such as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone.
Clad in one of his dozens of pinstripe suits and with his trademark red carnation, Nucky “The Czar of the Atlantic City Ritz” owned an entire city. He spent money as quickly as he made it and his generosity to the poor of his city was only met in dividends by his passion for wine, women and entertainment.


A powder blue rolls Royce was his transportation, his fitness regime was carried out in elite hotel indoor swimming pools and he breakfasted on steak and eggs at noon. His life is a fascinating one (played to great dimensional measure by Steve Buscemi in the series).

Aside from the mid-section of the book which delights in extracting all of the luxurious excess of a city stripped of any legal or moral obligation, is the countless years of labour that went into establishing Atlantic City as one of the world’s first successful vacation spots. A veritable Disneyland that enticed workers from the city to save and spend their last dimes on the excessive trinkets and treats that establishments along the infamous boardwalk made you believe you needed.

Workers would save for a year to take their family to the beach for a week. New Yorkers would steal one of the 95 trains in and out of Atlantic City to savour a few precious hours of gambling, games and booze and all who worked and thrived there partook in its luxurious, neon delights.

What I found most fascinating in the book was the exposition of the lives of the thriving Black community. It was in Atlantic City that they were given stations above the (sadly) usual domestic service sphere popular as employment in the years following the Civil War. Though they were reduced to a segregated beach and school rooms, the Black Community of Atlantic City had the chance to earn respectable money and varied positions. Being such, hundreds of African Americans flocked to the edge of the Boardwalk for a chance to make a better life for themselves and to utilize the trade skills they honed during the treacherous years of slavery.

When the book talks of the double standard set by journalists who boasted of the need to rid Atlantic City of its Black workers; while failing to realize that it was on the shoulders of these workers that the tottering empire was built, the reader is forced to digest yet another jolt of a moment in history rendered shocking in its limitation, prejudice and incomprehensive cruelty.


The narrative in the story is excessively readable and Johnson’s passion and fascination with the history of this port town is infectious.

So many lives were wasted after years of excess. When the Depression hit and the American populous was stripped of any hope of vacation or amusement, Atlantic City began to crumble. When Prohibition ended (Atlantic City’s one succinct and consistent advantage wrought by racketeers and smugglers for years), the once lavish economy experienced its ultimate downfall.

It is hard to believe that such a society existed and thrived under the watchful eye of law enforcement and politics. The corruption of both sides and the blind eyes turned in trade of power, money and greed model a 20th Century Sodom and Gommorah.

I was absolutely riveted.

So, read this and watch the series and revel in the high times and even lower times of one of the most excessive decades in history.

Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions by Max Lucado

From the Publisher: We have questions. Child-like inquiries. And deep, heavy ones. In more than twenty-five years of writing and ministry, Max Lucado has been the receiving line for thousands of such questions. The questions come in letters, e-mails, even on Dunkin Donuts napkins. In Max on Life he offers thoughtful answers to more than 150 of the most pressing questions on topics ranging from hope to hurt, from home to the hereafter.
Max writes about the role of prayer, the purpose of pain, and the reason for our ultimate hope. He responds to the day-to-day questions—parenting quandaries, financial challenges, difficult relationships—as well as to the profound: Is God really listening?

Max Lucado’s He Still Moves Stones was the first work of Christian Living/ Christian non-fiction I had ever read.

My minister dad had left the book at home with his sermon notes and I was sick with the flu and reached for it on the coffee table because it was there. I was 11. But, Max Lucado has a way of speaking directly and easily to his readers, using simple analogies and never falling into condescension. I expected the same when I cracked open Max on Life Max’s Insights on Questions asked him by Christians in his congregation and beyond.

Max does not shirk from the easiest or trickiest question. Nor does he play devil’s advocate; nor does he blanket any answer with “ you should believe….” He answers straightly. Using scripture (always), using anecdotes ( when needed). I have read several books of this ilk ( a good representation is Eric Metaxas’ Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About God ( but were afraid to ask )) and what strikes me about Lucado is how greatly he distances personal experience to answer candidly. Sure, he draws on his own emotions and convictions; but this book could easily have fallen into “Well, when I was struggling…”etc., etc., This is not Max’s autobiography. What he leaves out in terms of personal example he makes up for by starkly pulling back a curtain and delving succinctly into the questions asked.

These are universal and familiar questions: about family, suffering, hope, destruction, God in a Godless world. To many, you will have heard these and seemingly every answer to them before. What is comforting about Lucado’s approach is that he speaks to you exactly as if you approached him for coffee and he was interposing as minister/guide. He handles tough questions on heaven/hell (yep, Rob Bell, you’re not the only one taking this on) and even speaks to homosexuality, divorce, pre-marital sex, abortion---- the major themes and questions which pervade 21st Century Christianity.

I was impressed by the realism in the book and Lucado's honesty: Lucado knows he cannot answer a question ( face it, what human can when dealing with questions of the universe), he accepts that we look through a glass dimly and provides the comfort of scripture as the slice of eternity or human comprehension can rely upon.

If you speak Christianese, this is a solid addition of Christian living for your collection.

I was grateful to Thomas Nelson for sending me this book

The Classics Circuit: Austen Vs. Dickens

I am defending Great Expectations on The Classics Circuit today! In the Austen Vs. Dickens Challenge

I have to tell you that these classics competitions are really tough for me. In some ways, it feels like picking a favourite friend… or favourite kind of ice cream.

Sure, sometimes I want peanut butter chocolate; other times I want cookies and cream--- both are equally worthy and wonderful.

I love me some Jane Austen---don’t get me wrong…. And I love me some all-of-Dickens: so much so that when people would ask me what my favourite Dickens’ novel was, for years, I couldn’t pinpoint. Sometimes it was Tale of Two Cities, often it was Our Mutual Friend, and Great Expectations always held a more-than-special place in my heart.

Forced to confront the fact that at some point I really should pick one, I decided to go with the one that reaches me on the deepest level. All have stories chock-full of brilliant characterization, sparkling sentimentality, wonderful wit and breathtaking materializations of London in all of its gritty glory--- all are like sinking into a favourite easy chair, re-visiting comforting friends, tea in hand.

But, Great Expectations brings to mind the most palpable of reading experiences. I feel greatly when I read Great Expectations, and I glean something different from between its pages upon every visit and am consistently fascinated by the style and the undercurrents of themes enforcing something more than Dickens’ pen-to-page brilliance.

At the forefront, Great Expectations is a relatively simple story. In fact, it is in this seeming simplicity that the reader is tricked into something more complex.

Philip “Pip” Pirrip stares at the headstones of his dead parents on the haunting marshes of the early 19th Century. (Yes, this is one of Dickens’ rare forays into historical fiction, as it is set years before its publication.) There, he is confronted by a veritable bogey-man: an escaped convict of the marshes who intimidates young Pip into near-jelly.

It is this fleeting instance that will shape Pip’s destiny.

Several of the tenets of Great Expectations are well-known to the greater populous: the unlucky-in-love Miss Havisham who wilts amidst the debris of her rotting, unforgotten jilt-at- the-altar; her ward, the icy Estella, well-raised in the art of scorning men and twisting them beneath her lily white finger, the kindly blacksmith Joe and his domineering wife, Mrs. Joe; the mysterious Magwitch; the troubling Mr. Jaggers and the extremely likeable Herbert Pocket.

Daring escapes, plot twists and family mysteries are uncovered at the backdrop of this keen bildungsroman. At the crux, Pip learns the downfalls of wealth and greed and awakens to the realization that with his great expectations a great price is exacted.

It is a bubbling and readable book and certainly one of Dickens’ shortest and most accessible. I think some of its resonance ( as one of the most beloved and adapted works of literature ) is its study in disillusionment and grace. Pip falls deeply into a trap of believing that which will make him whole is largely outside of himself and his meager upbringings. This is a commonality of the ages: a young man bred with good morals ( at least from the salt-of-the-earth blacksmith Joe) is tantalized by the prospect of something greater and holds no qualms at shirking his past, viewing his hometown as wreckage and turning into a veritable snob. What is heartbreaking is how those true to Pip are reluctant to dismiss him (even though, believe me, he can be, at times, the most absolute wretch).

It is these scenes: these confrontations between the now-gentlemanly (at least in form, if not in deed) Pip and the life he left behind as emblemized by Joe ,that wrench my heart.

This is a novel I grew up with and a novel that inspired me to face ugly truths about all of humanity and, on a searing micro level, about myself. We all fall into Pip’s trap when something shiny is dangled affront us; we would all rather believe that our benefactor will lead us to our heart’s desire, not regale us with a past twisted into treachery and mire. We all want to believe we were born for something more, greater than our circumstance, deserving of everything the wealthiest people have attained.

With that stirring of pride and that callous and complacent turning of our disdainful heads comes a stark and powerful realization: that humanity at its pulse is frail, that society ---gilded and obtuse--- exists to spin us into a web of our undoing…. That the greatest force in our life is redemptive love---acts of limitless grace---binding us back to a place where we belong. Where people love unconditionally. Where the mistakes made in youth are wiped clean of a slate by the gnarled hands of honest work and the belief in Love, God’s Will and Redemption.

The Art of Romance by Kaye Dacus

I was very excited to receive an advanced "sneak-peek" at The Art of Romance by author Kaye Dacus. I had heard a lot about the author's work before, and was refreshingly surprised by her candid voice on the role (or lack thereof) of single women in the Church and the marginalization of this group therein. Thus, I was excited to hear that one of the major trajectories in her novels was the exposition of older women ( not elderly, mind, yet somewhat more mature than the many novels focused on the early 20s crowd) finding happiness and true love well after their 30th birthdays.

Caylor, the spirited and spicy academic at the forefront of The Art of Romance is no exception. A thinking, artistic and erudite English Literature professor, Caylor is a needed change from the chicklit heroines so predominant in the Christian and secular fields. No cosmo drinking, pink-shoe-shopping, hapless, assistant in a major marketing or publishing firm is she. No metropolitan existence and urbanite roommates pepper her flashy life. Instead, she lives in a house in the midst of renovation with her darling grandmother and, soon, her sister.

Caylor is in her mid-30s: not slim-perfect, not stylish ( she has moments, especially in a well-picked dress that catches our hero's eye), not petite. In fact, Caylor's height was one of the most outstanding aspects of this statuesque and poised woman. She is learning to be comfortable in her own skin and it shows..... especially to the somewhat-younger Dylan Bradley.

Dylan is the newest addition to the faculty at JRU, the institution where Caylor works. A painter who has not even dipped into his full potential, Dylan is trying to recover from a domineering relationship where he was victim to a possessive mate while establishing himself as a successful art professor.

I found Dylan's past and the reconciliation thereafter a welcome addition to the novel and to the genre. Christian writers rarely delve into relationships past that expose a hero's less-than-pure past in the same honest way Dacus does. Dacus is blunt about Dylan's past travails and eager to paint him a winsome hero despite them.

It works.

Though both have facets of themselves they keep from each other, the chemistry between them is absolute. Especially when it comes to their appreciation of art: written, verbal and visual.

Dacus showed a pleasing knowledge of the work of artists past and did a wonderfully descriptive job of painting ( forgive the pun) Dylan's artistry and his consistent work on new canvas. From the moment Dylan views Caylor as a prospective model and sees her, not as a flawed heroine, but as a woman who catches a certain depth of light, you know that these two are meant to be in each other's company.

There are several pleasing subplots and characters including Dylan's rambunctious and supportive brothers, the elder generation who thrives on matchmaking their grandchildren, Caylor's close girlfriends and Caylor's spunky sister. Overall, this is a very well-fleshed out novel.

I particularly enjoyed the duality of the title and how it means more than you think it does---when it takes a slant at revealing the hidden identity of a popular romance cover model!

Readers of Contemporary Romance and "Chick Lit" will enjoy the pleasant predictability of the plot and the cozy nature of the hero and heroine's burgeoning courtship.

Because of the age of her characters and the struggles they undergo ( due to age difference, maturity, intellect and errors in their past), I think Dacus is a much-needed voice in a sea of novels that favour the experience of much younger women.

If you, like me , have ever felt yourself restraining conversation in male company at a party because you were worried about coming off as too intellectual, then Caylor is the heroine for you. She is not afraid to be herself and her boldness sparks...and attracts... the attention of a man who, in any other novel, might overlook her for someone thinner, more stylish, younger, in less of a threatening position, etc.,etc.,

Overall, a thoughtful and well-told book that favours showing over telling and that delves into two characters whose redemption ultimately comes from their ability to recognize their downfalls and collectively pick themselves up, dust themselves off and head into a far more promising future.

Its conflict and undertones of past mistakes and present judgments give it a "meatier" feel than many of its ilk.

This was a welcome and different type of Contemporary Christian Romance and I hope you pick it up, have fun and find yourself in the refreshingly normal characters!

Courting Miss Amsel by Kim Vogel Sawyer

Courting Miss Amsel was the perfect Easter read to take to my favourite little market/coffeeshop in my hometown for the long weekend. It was definitely a cozy book and wills in the spring with its colourful world and warm-fuzzy feelings. We Christians LOVE our one-room-schoolhouse-marm stories and Ms. Edythe Amsel was the perfect match for the delightful, rambunctious and high spirit litter of children she was supplied with. She had the spunk and innovation of a teacher like Anne’s Miss Stacey ( see Anne of Green Gables) even when pestered by an older, mischevious student ( see Lundy Taylor in Catherine Marshall’s Christy). She met each challenge head on and with a surprisingly independent intelligence all while ironing out wrinkles in her personal life, learning to reconcile her past with her promising future and drawing closer to a God she had never learned to lean on.

Two of Miss Amsel’s favourite students ( and the reader will learn why when they encounter these endearing boys), are the blonde-curled nephews of upstanding workman Joel Townsend: a husky, kind-hearted man who raises his orphaned nephews as if they are his own. There are many touching scenes developing this family dynamic. When Joel sees how deeply and genuinely Edythe cares for his charges and how the sun catches the glistening lines of her well-manicured hair, he falls promptly in love. Circumstances, misunderstandings and timidity keep them both from acknowledging their feelings for one another, though the romance blossoms, slowly, swiftly and gradually with a knowing wink at the reader who is eons ahead: waiting for the clueless lovers to catch up.


One of the most interesting strands of the novel was Edythe’s burgeoning interest in feminine equality: especially pertaining acts forbidding women to own land. At one point, she causes more than bit of a kerfuffle with the town council when she is inspired to take her students to hear the famed Susan Anthony speak. If I have one criticism about the book, it is that this wasn’t pursued more ( however, Edythe’s growing interest and passion is left high and prospective at the end--- and perhaps, someday, Sawyer could think of writing a sequel). I completely related with Joel and his desire to find a mother for his boys in the same way I understood Edythe’s conflicts and crises of faith. This was a solid, engaging read with lots of historical anecdotes and tidbits painting an accurate picture of a young teacher in the latter 19th Century. In my opinion, this is Kim Vogel Sawyer’s strongest offering to date.


My thanks to Bethany House for the review copy

TLC BLOG TOUR: A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz

A Jane Austen Education is one of the most delightful books I have read this year and an essential compendium to any extensive Jane Austen Collection of works and criticism ( such as my own). It extolls all of the virtues of Jane Austen in a way we don’t often view them: as tantamount to the greatest life lessons. Walking us through Jane Austen’s six novels in a literary memoir, noted critic and renowned professor William Deresiewicz breathes fresh life into an author whose works I have read to shreds.

Reading Jane Austen for the first time ( as a bitter modernist with a penchant for coffee and sunglasses, apathy and modernism),Deresiewicz mocked the mundane world of Emma: the seeming non-happenstances that threaded through a novel with no overtly bold statements, no visceral truths at forefront, no gripping plot. But, then the book changed, it ( like the best books of literature we peel back like a leaf) become all-to-clear for our author and informed his life and formative academic years in a way that not only propelled him to sink into Austen’s entire canon; but shifted his world view.

His relationships, his view of love, the way he treated people and the lens through which he viewed literature was reformed and hi-jacked by a growing fascination with Austen: who said the extraordinary and catapulted universal truths into the wide sphere of her readership with the ordinary.

From his crush on Elizabeth Bennett to his learning to love in the same way Catherine Morland learned to love a hyacinth at the urging of Miss Tilney, a Jane Austen Education is an ABSOLUTE MUST for those who love her novels.

You will want to think back on your first reading experience, you will identify with the author’s feelings on one portion of the novel while rally against views on another and you will be forced to contemplate how Jane Austen has subverted herself into your psyche, whether or not you knew she was doing so.

Austen’s place in the cultural consciousness as well as her lasting place in media is another thread of the book.

Favourite moments include:

Deresiewicz referring to the New York Dating Scene as “an endless maze of stupid conversations”

His run-down of the films good and bad

The fact that he tries to gloriously extricate every splendid moment of the novel without spoiling the plot for new readers

His unabashed crush on Elizabeth Bennet and his willingness to defend her from any criticism: warranted or unwarranted

His treatise on novels as “practice life” and his exposition on the life of a reader whose novel reading informs make-up: morally, ethically, in love, reason and decision

His absolute joy in the Ang Lee adaptation of Sense and Sensibility: casting light on a dark plot

Most importantly, his recognition that the power of the best literary novels is one that takes residence in your brain and being and changes your life.



View the guest blog by William Deresiewicz at The Huffington Post

Visit the TLC tour

South Riding started last night on PBS.

Based on a classic 20th Century novel, focusing on the triumphs and travails of a rural community, featuring the splendid Anna Maxwell Martin ( think: Bleak House) and David Morrissey (whose Col Brandon in Sense and Sensibility was, to me, even greater than the great Alan Rickman in the Ang Lee adaptation and who steals scenes left, right and center in Our Mutual Friend and who sings his way opposite David Tennant in the really odd Blackpool and who now plays DI Thorne) the series has the right ingredients to make for a lasting impression and started off with a bang.

Couched in the uncertainty single women underwent after the Great War, South Riding flaunts an experience metaphoric of the shift occurring in traditional women’s roles. Knowing that a large population of young British men had never returned from service and knowing that the obvious role of domestic servitude a la wife and mother was a fleeting prospect, Sarah Burton represents the “other”: the women who recognized that they had to carve a life for themselves outside of marriage and motherhood.

Fortunately, Sarah Burton embraces change and says so with indignation and incendiary purpose when she applies for the position of headmaster at an all-girls’ school in South Riding. The board is pleasantly surprised by her passion and intelligence and her history with their township. For the most part, they believe that the experiences she gained in life and academic pursuit in London will greatly inform the development of the young women in their township. Robert Carne, a once-wealthy but now struggling landowner, believes that she represents the shifting change that has warranted his diminishing circumstances.

The first episode introduces a roster of characters that will serve as the main players in the piece. While concurrently reading the Winifred Holtby novel, the first drastic change I noticed between book and screen is the witling down of the book’s massive cast. Instead, Andrew Davies does what he does best: capture the spirit of the novel and attend to making character traits pervading strongly represented in one or two characters (instead of the novel’s 3 or 4, etc.,).

The political spirit of the novel, the at-odds penchant for passion, change and promise and the stern wills and ethics of both Sarah Burton and Robert Carne help establish the comparison this story often has to George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Other 19th Century literary comparisons can be made to Jane Eyre--- but you will have to watch the series, or read the book, to glean those similarities for yourself.

Overall, a refreshing start-off to a winsome costume drama with lots of heart, feeling, romantic tension and beautifully rendered dialogue penned by one of the BBC’s best writers.

TLC BLOG TOUR: THE PEACH KEEPER

Sarah Addison Allen does it again

Reader, I love this lady’s books! Love them!

I also sort of love her. Just join her facebook page or read her random Sarah Addison Allen facts on her exceptionally amusing website and you will be charmed.

Allen writes for the everywoman. If you speak “girl”, you will LOVE Sarah Addison Allen. She pays attention to the slight magic that silvers every day experiences, she turns fairytales out of the ordinary and she crafts romantic twists, spins and turns that will send your heart thudding. Moreover, her recipe is made of the ingredients of normalcy. She makes you believe that this could happen to you and drives it home with characters, towns and instances painted with utter realism.

If you have a heart, a penchant to believe in the extraordinary and the slightest will to imagine the impossible, then Sarah Addison Allen’s well-defined characters make you believe that something is just waiting for you around a colourful corner--- in the same way it is waiting for them.

You cannot JUST read the Peach Keeper. Buy it and savour it, yes, but know that when you turn the last page that a.) you will go and thumb through the book to re-visit your favourite parts b.) you will immediately want to revisit Sarah Addison Allen Land and will be itching to get your hands on anything else she has written.

If you have read and enjoyed Alice Hoffman, Angela Carter, Fannie Flagg, Billie Letts , Cathy Lamb or Rebecca Wells, you will LOVE Sarah Addison Allen. I argue that she is the best of all because, like the best authors, she allows her personality drip through into every word.

There is something comforting about reading a Sarah Addison Allen book, something that spirits you to a time and place you are nostalgic for ( even if you never lived there), something that folds you in the relaxing aura of home. Care-free and shoes-kicked-off, you’ll sink into her story and not want to leave.

At the center of the Peach Keeper are two remarkable women: former high-school prankster Willa Jackson and socialite Paxton Osgoode. Though their paths have crossed numerous times in the small town of Walls of Water, North Carolina, deeply-hidden family secrets, twists of romance, and the excavation of the dark and disturbing past plaguing the renovation of the Blue Ridge Madam inn bind them together in a way that asserts and exhibits both of their strengths and weaknesses. Though starkly different, Willa and Paxton’s pasts, determination and flaws complement each other remarkably. You will see a little of yourself in each of these heroines ( as you will in all of Addison Allen’s heroines) and you will root for their triumphs and the romance that awaits each in the least likely of places.

This is a marvelous, engaging, curl-up-with-a-cup-of-tea book that will have you sighing for hours after you leave it.

At times painful, romantic, sparkling, mysterious and humourous, you will live for the characters and hope every last thread will be tied into a knot worthy of their happy endings.

Don’t worry---they will be.


Alongside my copy of the Peach Keeper, I received a Yankee Candle---peach flavoured and featuring the book’s delicious cover.

What a treat!

But, the best treat of all was the arrival of a new Sarah Addison Allen--- she’s a book drug if ever there was one

Follow the TLC Blog Tour here:

My sincere thanks to TLC for granting me the privilege of diving into a new Allen book!

So THIS is what Lynn Austin Sounds Like...

Everyone in the world knows that I am a HUGE Lynn Austin fan.

Love her! LOVE HER! love her!

Consider this paragraph from my review of Fire by Night, my favourite of her reams of excellent novels:

I usually look for expert characterization, deftly-woven plot, some humour, some sparkle, some originality: some historical what-have-you in my historicals; some carefully-planted mayhem in my murder mysteries; the books that make me giggle and clap and gasp at their brilliance ( I have said before, I am an effusive reader). Lynn Austin ignites all of these things.

What makes Lynn Austin special to me ( for special she is ) is the fact that her works hit me on a deeper, spiritual level.

This is not mere infatuated emotionalism: the kind I reserve for the books I love, love, love. Austin validates in an erudite and carefully plotted fashion the role and journey of any woman of faith

Reading a Lynn Austin book for me is empowering: spiritually, emotionally, personally.

When her profundities surge through the page I am not just rattled in my usual "La! Such brilliance fashion"; but rattled, rather, to the core.

If I am having an off-kilter moment, if I am grappling at some truth in relation to Christianity if I am feeling, what with all my passionate opinions and strict independence, like I do not fit the mold of the ideal Christian woman ---Lynn Austin makes it okay.

Yah. I love her work. I do! I do! Back when I had twitter ( if you all remember), I started a Lynn Austin #hashtag campaign just before the release of her novels. Good times. Very few people subscribed; but I persevered.

Annnnyways.... I discovered this interview with Bethany House today. Why this elates me? If I have read an author's voice for so long, I am always interested to hear what they sound like. I got to hear Ms. Austin's voice for the first time as she elaborates on the writing process, speaks to the moving Though Waters Roar, takes us through the development of While We're Far Apart and even hints at the book publishing in October. Listen to this!

What stood out for me?

Her discussions on:

Characters taking lives on their own

-The strange and providential intervention that kick-started her career

-The challenges of writing during the distraction of real life.

-Her belief that the intended message will get across without preaching to it in a blatant way.

-A bulletin board of templates

-Finding her interconnected themes ( which are always poignant, potent and moving) after writing large chunks of the novel.

I hope you enjoy as much as I did!

HAPPY EASTER !

“Easter Our imitation of God in this life -- that is, our willed imitation, as distinct from any likenesses which He has impressed upon our natures or our states -- must be an imitation of God Incarnate. Our model is the Jesus, not only of Calvary, but of the workshop, the roads, the crowds, the clamorous demands and surly oppositions, the lack of all peace and privacy, the interruptions. For this, so strangely unlike anything we can attribute to the divine life in itself, is apparently not only like, but is, the divine life operating under human conditions.” --C.S. Lewis

Christianity is a power religion. Christ has the power to re-create men from the inside out, as every man who has ever met Him knows. --Peter Marshall

“Continuing a short series of verse on Christ: Hard it is, very hard, To travel up the slow and stony road To Calvary, to redeem mankind; far better To make but one resplendent miracle, Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect. Yet this was not God's way, Who had the power, But set it by, choosing the cross, the thorn, The sorrowful wounds. Something there is, perhaps, That power destroys in passing, something supreme, To whose great value in the eyes of God That cross, that thorn, and those five wounds bear witness.” --Dorothy L. Sayers

Long my Imprisoned spirit lay,

fast bound in sin and nature's night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee"

--Charles Wesley

A Heart Most Worthy by Siri Mitchell

First off, I want to thank Ruth for sending this my way! Thank you, Ruth!

Next to Lynn Austin, Siri Mitchell is my favourite Christian writer in the historical genre and she gives us another strong offering in a series that focuses on fashion through the ages.

Here, the fashion theme is blatant: the story follows three young Italian seamstresses working for the formidable Mme. Fortier in 1917 Boston. The outside world is fraught with conflict: immigrants, anarchists, the Spanish Influenza, the American involvement in the Great War. Near home, Annamaria, Julietta and Luciana discover life and love in a delightful coming-of-age tale told in the style reminiscent of Montgomery or Alcott.

I should speak a little more to the narrative style. As proven in A Constant Heart and Love's Pursuit, Mitchell enjoys playing with narrative perspective in voice. In the glorious, INSPYs-winning, She Walks in Beauty ( which I certainly enjoyed reviewing and commenting on as a judge in the historical category ), it is ephemera: in society columns and newspaper clippings that informs Mitchell's unique narration.

I must admit that the voice in A Heart Most Worthy was grating on me at times: especially with consistent asides to the reader and with the same word ending a perspective and being used, in a slightly different context, to begin the next narrative point of view. However, I got used to it very quickly and it did not detract at all from my enjoyment of the story and its meticulous historical research. In fact, I am impressed by Mitchell's constant dedication to reinventing her story-telling technique. In a genre and market-place steeped in same-old, same-old tradition, it is nice that someone takes risk.

While Mitchell's narrative voice informs of many character triumphs and failings, it is still up to the reader to judge on their own while watching the action unfold.

There is plenty of action: from an assassinated count's daughter to a Romeo and Juliet love story between a young seamstress and the Sicilian grocer across the road to a passionate woman who skips confession to meet a sinister young man in questionable situations.

Mitchell handles the historical aspects, as always, with great fervour and respect and weaves them seamlessly into her tale. Moreover, she is true to the Catholic faith and tradition as it would have been the most prominent and lasting religion in the Italian Immigrant world. She is able to pursue great themes of faith and God's redemptive power in a religion not often at the forefront of evangelical Christian fiction ( Austin did this quite well with the Jewish faith in While We're Far Apart).

Perhaps my favourite thread in the story ( something I share with Books, Movies and Chinese Food's amazon review) is the developing love between Annamaria and the sweet grocer, Rafaello. In tradition, Annamaria, as eldest daughter, is expected to remain single, childless and devout to her family. When she meets the forbidden Sicilian grocer's son and begins a sweet, often wordless communication, she realizes that all of the dreams she has harboured guiltily for so long must become reality. She finds a voice, a backbone and the courage to attend to her own desires. Rafaello's devotion to her family, his enemies, is a great act of love (putting one in mind of the great sacrifice made in Love's Pursuit).

As per usual, I was delighted to have a new Siri Mitchell in my hands and I identified with aspects of each of the strong, different and equally amazing women and their plights in self-discovery and love.

Because I am such a massive Lynn Austin fan and because Austin excels at weaving multiple story and character lines within periods of history ( especially exploring a woman's place in a domestic sphere and in the greater sphere of historical significance), more than once my mind tried to conceptualize how she would deal with this experience were the plot submitted to her hand.

A great read and one I am sure will be seen on the INSPYs shortlist again.

Dear George Clooney, Please Marry my Mom by Susin Nielsen

Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom by Susin Nielsen is a delightful middle-grade novel featuring a wonderfully spunky heroine. Recalling Judy Blume and Harriet-the-Spy, this coming-of-age tale is set in soggy Vancouver. A heroine whose mood and resoluteness is as steady as the steely-rain weather, Violet will steal your heart. Violet speaks right to us as she recalls the events that led to her director father leaving with the blonde bimbo star of a failed tv show. With their father living in Los Angeles with said blonde bimbo, Violet, her sister and her mother are left in a dilapidated house, scraping pennies and trying to get by. What’s worse, Violet’s mother insists on compulsive dating and when she sets her sights on the unfortunately named Dudley Weiner, Violet springs into action.


Divorce stories are nothing new in middle-grade fiction; but this one was teeming with realism. Violet’s embarrassment, awkwardness and roller-coaster emotions clearly established the author’s validity. I felt what Violet felt and even at her most mischievous, she was endearing. Rather like Harriet the Spy ( and at times with similar antics), Violet has the ability to be synonymously charming and prickly. When Violet decides that George Clooney is the only man for her mom and begins writing him deliciously detailed letters, the plot really springs into action. These letters alone make the novel worth reading. Nielsen has perfectly captured the pre-teen voice. Violet’s first crush, aversion to affection, desperation to avenge her mother’s honour and take vengeance on her father’s actions were vital, lucid and real. I was stunned by how well the author possessed the thoughts and psyche of a typical 7th grader. This offering from Tundra has received critical acclaim. In fact, it was that acclaim that led me to pick it up in the first place. I am glad I did.

Mildred Pierce Review

I started watching Mildred Pierce on HBO a few weeks ago and only finished it last evening. It is a long and gruesome production, ticking solemnly by-- very much as I imagine the dirty thirties did--- with nowhere to go and little money to spend things on ( to paraphrase Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird). Adapted from the James Cain novel--- which I vaguely remember reading in the insurmountable pile of books I read in high school and uni. ---it focuses on an ambitious woman in an unambitious time.

Mildred is a talented cook with a resolute spirit and more than a healthy dose of pride ( which is almost interpreted as snobbery in certain situations). When she learns her husband is having an affair, she kicks him out and falls prey as the victim of unpaid scandal. Not so long ago, no, but still in the age where women separated from their husbands had little chance at livelihood--- less of a chance during a country-wide depression.

Mildred scrapes by to raise her two daughters: the more formidable being the ghastly Veda, a snake-like red-head who is always ashamed of her mother, her circumstances and holds a general disdain for anything in her path. Veda's somewhat of a musical prodigy and Mildred worships her as a younger version of herself and does everything she can to ensure her happiness and opportunity.

A chance job as a waitress brings out Mildred's entrepreneurial side and soon Mildred is selling pies, opening chicken and waffle restaurants and carving a name and future for herself.

Veda is becoming more and more abhorrent and nothing that her resourceful and smart mother does is nearly good enough.

Mildred is a sensual and smart woman and has a few relationships that seem questionable in the still guarded and moral society of 1930s America. The most notable of these is with a dashing, be-moustached Monty: who can only afford to keep electricity in one wing of his sadly dust-gathered mansion. Mildred also retains a passable relationship with her first husband and with a friend and financial advisor named Wally.

As Veda grows older, Mildred, too, becomes prey to her daughter's vicious and manipulative personality. Coiled in her own pride and love and blinded by her insistence that Veda is just a stern and ambitious woman like herself, Mildred fails to see what the audience and nearly every other character in the miniseries does: that the central tragedy of the tale his Mildred's steadfast love for her daughter.

An almost surreal confrontation between Mildred and Veda is backed by a playfully eerie piano tune: weaving a carousel of melody that brings to light the almost vaudeville-esque antics of Veda and her puppetry of all around her: from her mother to Monty, the almost-step father she always held a disturbing attachment to.

What perhaps is most interesting about the film is how the camera lens shows but part of the unravelling of each scene. We are kept in periphery: never seeing the full picture. You'll catch glimpses of characters through slices of open windows, in the reflection of a doorframe they pass by, behind a passing car.... you are an established outsider, looking into this strange and well-formulated world.

As Veda's musicality progresses and upon discovery of her ultra talent as a bonafide coloratura, so does music play into the grand opus of the tale. I enjoyed the musical selection and thought Evan Rachel Wood did a passable job at lip synching the words from the beautiful voice cast as her double. The well-known standard, "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", becomes a potent theme song for the eponymous character and her stumbles and strifes through 1930s California.

The locations were beautifully scouted and expertly filmed. The interiors were meticulously detailed and everything seemed a perfect recreation of the past. The costume changes were extensive (especially for Winslet and for the dozens and dozens of extras) and I fell in love with a vintage style that seems to be creeping back into our modern world.

As mentioned, this is a very moderately-paced miniseries (this from the girl who loves Dickens and Masterpiece Theatre) and is very tame for HBO. Perhaps the melodrama, iniquity, passion and blood we expect from this broadcasting corporation, is riddled in the character's ulterior motives and the underlying feelings and thoughts we are but given a small glimpse into.

The darker side, the inhuman and savage side, is most clearly seen in Veda: a heartless creature who will stop at nothing to rip out her mother's heart.

I have not see the Joan Crawford adaptation in years; but can well say that this decides not to play up on the noir aspects its predecessor did. Instead, this Mildred Pierce strips the less-obvious yet still telling and poignant struggles and circumstances, nuances and dialogue from its source material, crafting a solid, if slow, evaluation on the highs and lows of parental relationships amidst quelled ambition.

BOOKS in the NEWS!

• Michael Crummey
• Henning Mankell
• Anthony Horowitz reads from the House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes novel
• Sarah Addison Allen's charming ode to the spell of books
• Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo, faces digital reckoning
• obsessed "Windies" pay homage to their favourite novel with a trip to Atlanta
• the Quill and Quire discusses the role publishing plays at the polls in the upcoming Canadian election ( especially in light of tonight's televised debates)
• My favourite Book of the Bible is filmed (starring 80s and 90s contemporary Christian music video star, Carman, as Boaz)
• can it be worse than the technicolour 1960s treatment?
• More people that recognize Kate Griffin's ( it's really Catherine Webb: she of the 'Horatio Lyle' novels ) brilliance
• Have you friended a fictional facebook friend yet? Try Melrose Plant or Sydney Carton