Book Reviews from Writers Voices

“I Am Tama, Lucky Cat” by Wendy Henrichs

by admin on October 27, 2011

Books Review: by Cheryl Fusco Johnson

Iowa author Wendy Henrichs debuted two children’s picture books in 2011. Released by Peachtree Publishers, I Am Tama, Lucky Cat pairs Wendy’s often lyrical text with soft, stunning watercolors by award-winning illustrator Yoshiko Jaeggi. In When Anju Loved Being an Elephant, published by Sleeping Bear Press, John Butler’s majestic, uncluttered paintings shift from gray to amber tones as the title character transitions from lonely solitude to companionship and elation. In both books, a beleaguered animal eventually achieves a better life thanks to the belated kindness of strangers. Generosity, patience, and friendship play a large part in both books, as well.

After adopting two cats, Wendy noticed one often raised a paw while sitting, just like the Lucky Cat figurines displayed in Japanese restaurants. Curious, she did some research. In an afterward, Wendy explains she based I Am Tama, Lucky Cat on a popular version of the Lucky Cat legend, which probably originated over 350 years ago.

Concise, vivid details clearly establish this book’s exotic, ancient setting. In the opening, a cold, hungry cat stumbles upon “a rundown temple at the foot of a majestic snowcapped mountain.” Inside lives a kind, impoverished monk who names the cat Tama after a river, where “brilliant, blue-backed kingfishers fly.”

Tama offers the monk “a touch of fur to keep him warm, a mouse caught to protect our meager rice supply, and a happy companionship.” Together the new friends watch “carp swim between the plum petals floating on the pond” of “the overgrown garden of the temple.” Later—when thunder “barreled down the mountain. Boom! Clap! Crash!”—Tama brings good fortune to the monk, his hollow-cheeked followers, and a weary samurai warlord.

Concisely establishing lyrical settings contributes to the success of When Anju Loved Being an Elephant, too. Wendy created a fictional elephant, Anju, after reading about real elephant friends separated during their youth, then accidentally and ecstatically reunited decades later. This picture book covers Anju’s travels from Sumatra, where long ago she “romped and rolled in rivers and mudholes” with her best friend Lali, to present time and the “hard floor of the trailer truck” where “the chain clinks and clanks at her ankle.”

After many lonely years, Anju is leaving a small zoo: “Through the trailer window, she sees the tall spindly Carolina pines, rooted in their rusty-red soil, for the last time.” En route, Anju remembers that 50 years earlier she and Lali slept in “tall, ticklish grasses, heartbeat-to-heartbeat.” When the trailer truck stops, Anju rediscovers joy.

Embodying kindness, generosity, patience, and friendship, both Wendy’s animal tales entertain readers while subtly directing them towards better behavior. That’s why one online reviewer compares the comfort of reading Wendy’s books to the happiness she feels eating Granny’s soothing chicken soup.

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“The Way The Crow Flies”, by Ann Marie MacDonald

by Rudy Wilson on August 15, 2011

Perhaps a bit dated, but incredibly timeless, hit old, still familiar chords of childhood, those innocent perceptions and fears, the secrets — and in this book there are childish secrets and understandings as to how the world works, as well as very severe secrets of Soviet defection of a scientist to Canada, and the murder of a child. There are moments of odd child abuse by a fourth grade teacher, so subtly created, written at angles and shadows and indirect imagery, sadly, frustratingly experienced by us, the helpless readers. It touched me as well, the reality of how a family works and what it was like, exactly like for this particular one, a Canadian Air Force family, moving from post to post.

The writer creates several important subplots, all somehow woven together, from the relationships within the family of four, (a French mother, prone to exasperated expression in her native tongue, the father, and Madeline and her teasing, but loving, older brother,) to the quirky, crippled girl across the street who carries a switchblade knife, with her German Shepard dog, to the many young girls who are abused in the seemingly innocent Air Force base school, never to be known about except by us.

MacDonald’s seamless, natural writing comes to us smoothly, beautifully, and it appears her words flow out, all original, not a single worn out phrase or cliché, as easily as though falling through lovely space. She was clearly meant for the purpose of expression through language as she is a master of the craft. Her form, her pacing, her lack of fear to take the readers into the depths of character, all so natural, as if the story were being copied down from tablets shown to her, miraculously. I find it a flawless book.

The story line concerns a Canadian Air Force officer and his family as they move location to location, most recently from Europe to a small post in Canada. It’s peacetime, 1962 and most of the novel is seen and felt deeply by eight year old Madeline, and at times by her father, a good man, Jack McCarthy. Through one impossibly timed perception connects himself with his daughter through a terrible secret that they keep, without ever literally sharing it, the murder of a little girl….and who may have done it. The best part of Anne-Marie’s writing is the intimate understanding and real experience of the characters, especially the girl and her father. We experience her thinking, her fears, her views, her growing up, her confusion, her joys, her pains, her everything. We get to know her possibly far more than we could a real person.

And that’s the thing: we, in short, love these characters. I found myself missing them while away and have rarely regretted putting a novel away. The title itself, obscure at first, by the end takes on an amazing, uniquely startling perception of and in itself. The novel is a 738 page delight. I wish it’d been 1738 pages.
Ann-Marie MacDonald is a Canadian, playwright, novelist, actor, and broadcast journalist who lives in Toronto, Ontario The daughter of a member of Canada’s military, this novel seems likely to be familiar territory for her. MacDonald won the Commonwealth Prize for her first novel, Fall on Your Knees which was also named to Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.

Books Review: “The Way The Crow Flies”, by Ann Marie MacDonald

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“A Stranger Like you” by Elizabeth Brundage

by admin on August 11, 2011

New Book Review “A Stranger Like you” by Elizabeth Brundage Viking, published Aug. 5, 2010

This is a tough novel to review as it’s so good and at times so bad. There’s story and then there’s the presentation, the language, the fictional dream an author tries to create. And it’s so, so easy to break that dream, even with one sentence or one phrase.

Brundage is a master story teller, without many flaws or breaks in this dream….rarely. I recall the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury, a completely flawless first person account of reality and experience seen through the eyes of a 33 year old,’idiot.’ The ability to create this perfection in a fictional piece is almost impossible, especially with such a heady work as Faulkner’s.

Back to Brundage. Her story is multi-layered, involving Hollywood, the land of dreams, with some very well done illustrations of the machinations of how the film industry works and how politics and parties play into it all, as seen by a disappointed screenwriter and a producer, with other supporting characters. The story draws one in as there are strong emotions and plans for revenge against the powerful producer, a strangely drawn woman, Hedda Chase. She has rejected his screenplay, after the former producer had given it ‘the green light.” The drama begins.

I enjoyed the storyline, the twists, the revenge and possible murder. Then there is the huge twist, three fourths into the book, something completely out of left field which draws us in even deeper. I won’t reveal the plot or outcome but the book’s main theme is about power and the freedom from wielding it, even freedom of living itself.

Brundage is adept with structure and rhythm and word choice. She attended the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and received a Michener Award, which is given to a promising writer in hopes they will use the money and time to complete a piece of work. This story used time and plot in odd ways, not really unique, but it moves back and forth in its presentation. We may be reading the story, and at a chapter break, we find ourselves back ten years, tracing the life of one of the characters, and often it’s not obvious but confusing, even irritating at times. Yet her development of one of the main characters is so well done, we have no idea who he really is until deep into the book, like when a camera pulls back to reveal what’s really happening.

The problem for this reviewer is the language. It’s generally standard, used to push the story along and we hardly notice it; it doesn’t break the dream, but then she goes and says trite expressions like , “She laughed nervously….” Or, “He ran up the stairs quickly.” For me, a lover of originality, this threw me. She knows better than to cheat the reader of seeing just how did this woman laugh nervously. If she would have used her obvious skills to design and create a real character who had her own mannerisms, which she does, but not enough, it would be a tremendous accomplishment. Once she lets down her guard on expressions and cheats on clichés, it reduces A Stranger Like You,” to a very likable, easy to read mystery, but not a literarily superlative novel, which of course quite likely means little to most readers.

I recommend this book as a fun read, at times even spellbinding, but felt let down too many times when the author showed her hand. “Authorial intervention,” of any kind, went out in approximately the 18th century in literature. “Dear Reader, at this point in our story, let me tell you…etc.”
is almost never, ever done unless in dialogue or for some specific purpose, but never unknowingly, which I feel Brundage does at times. This is nitpicking but it concerned me as I know she can do better.

Brundage is also the author of The Doctor’s Wife, which is a mirror to this book, same structure, same style and a good, strong story, very good in fact. Enjoy her book and put it away on the shelf to be basically forgotten, although a good time was had by all!

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Epiphany: True Stories of Sudden Insight to Inspire, Encourage, and Transform by Elise Ballard

by admin on January 24, 2011

In Epiphany you will find a seamless combination of interviews with people from all walks of life telling their individual stories of epiphanies, with author Elise Ballard’s reflections on these stories, and the people telling them. Both elements offer an uncommon opportunity to connect with the humanity behind the written voice. A book that informs us may be worth reading. A book that entertains may be a best-seller. A book that does both becomes a classic. It is rare to find a book like “Epiphany” that not only informs and entertains, but makes you feel like you know, and wish you could know better, the people you find within its pages.

It is an intriguing assortment of people, and reading how Elise connected with each of them pulled me in. Even some of the celebrities, such as Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Deepak Chopra and Barry Manilow, were part of her personal network developed over her career as an actress, independent film-maker and producer (she produces Dr. Oz’ “YOU” DVD’s.) Others she reached out to specifically for this project, including Dr. Maya Angelou, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nell Newman. The same holds true for the lesser-known subjects. Many are Elise’s long-time friends and colleagues, while others are people she met or was referred to while in the process of asking everyone she knew if they had ever had an epiphany.

“Epiphany” is not primarily a memoir, and yet an enchanting portrait of Elise is revealed, bit by bit, even in her brief introductions to each subject. For example, she writes about being mesmerized by the trailer for “Horse Boy, ” a documentary of author Rupert Isaacson and his family’s healing journey through Mongolia on horseback. She continues:

‘Rupert did the voice-over, but you could never really see his face, only his hair. Several weeks later I was driving down South Congress Avenue… when in my peripheral vision I saw a man on a horse… Wait, that man had longish blond hair and was on a horse… I pulled over, turned around, and screamed out my window at him, “Are you the Horse Boy guy?!” And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I’m hoping the same is true for me and Ms. Ballard, at least through her books!

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Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg

by Monica on January 22, 2011

Books on writing fall into three main categories. There are books to get you writing – filled with exercises, writing prompts, and motivational insights. There are books on technique -”how-to” develop character, devise a plot, get from point A to point B. And there are books about what it really is to be a writer. Natalie Goldberg’s latest book on writing, “Old Friend from Far Away: The Practiceof Writing Memoir” brings all three of these themes to one table. It’s a smorgasbord, with a hint of the pot luck; the kind where you want to sample every dish and if you go away unsatisfied you have no one to blame but yourself.

Goldberg is the guru of timed writing exercises. Writing practice. Writing as spiritual practice. Her first book on writing, “Writing Down the Bones,” introduced the concept of timed writing – 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour, whatever you could commit to – to millions of readers. Keep your hand moving, don’t edit, don’t think. Just write. Write junk, write “I can’t think of anything to write about.” Just keep writing. Eventually, you get to the root, the heart, the good stuff. The scary stuff. In “Old Friend,” Goldberg focuses the use of this technique in writing memoir. “Ten minutes of continuous writing is much more expedient than ten years of musing and getting nowhere,” she tells us. If you look to memoir as a way of learning who you are, and why you are, rather than simply a means of self-expression, this book can help you on that path.

So yes, you get the exercises, the writing prompts, lots of them. “Tell me about your mother’s hands. Go. Ten minutes. Three minutes on a time you were freezing in July.” I can do that one! “Tell me about how a relationship ended.” Do they ever end? Or just morph into something different, something lesser, or greater, than what you thought you wanted. And you get technique – verb choice, structure, how to come at your memoir sideways instead of head on. Goldberg hops from exercise to technique and back again, barely pausing for breath.

But when she does pause, it is for my favorite parts of the book. The stories of how she, and other famous writers, did it, or said it, or lived it. James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Zora Neale Hurston and many more. Goldberg tells their story, or lets them tell it, and then says – now you, reader – it is your turn. Ten minutes. Go.

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The Artful Edit by Susan Bell

by Monica on December 8, 2009

At the end of a satisfying week of Advanced Novel workshopping at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival last week, our instructor gave some final recommendations to the class. One of them was to buy this little book, “The Artful Edit,” by Susan Bell. That gave me the excuse I was looking for to rush right out to Prairie Lights, one of the best independent book stores in the world, and on one of my favorite places to hang out in Iowa City. They only had one copy, and it was mine.

Published in 2007 by W. W. Norton, this book is destined to be a classic, right up there with Annie Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” which is one of my all-time favorite books on writing. Bell has been a professional editor for over 20 years, for Random House books and Conjuctions magazine. But even better, she is a great story-teller.

My favorite writing books provide a combination of technical advice, and anecdotes about famous writers (and some not-so famous ones as well.) Technique is useful, but how do I know a specific technique really works? By seeing how it worked for someone else – preferably someone whose writing I admire. As Bell states in Chapter IV, Master Class, “I cannot furnish a formula for editing, as none exists. Instead I’d like to offer what has helped me hone my skills: a close look at the work and work process of other artists.”

She does this by revealing a specific technique through anecdote – either from her own experience or that of another writer, and is careful to include the specific results that were achieved by use of the technique. She weaves in quotes from other writers, historical and cultural references, writing exercises, and excerpts from books and essays to yield a multi-layered tapestry studded with writing gems.

The book is short yet substantive. It is divided into five chapters. The first three give a top-down view of self-editing, from Gaining Perspective, to Macro Editing and finally to Micro Editing. In Chapter IV, Bell gives space to three writers and two artists to discuss how they revise their work, and Chapter V is A Brief History of Editors, from ancient scribes to some of the most effective editors of the 20th century.

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A Good Man by Larry Baker

by Monica on October 9, 2009

A Good Man by Larry Baker is one of those books that came to me under a halo of synchronicity. There’ve been a few like that in my life. For example, Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar which literally fell off the bookshelf at my feet in a used bookstore days after I had seen an interview with Alice Walker in an anti-war documentary that really hit me. So I bought the book, and found in it a theme that was completely consistent with something going on in my own life at that moment.

“A Good Man” was sent to me by the publisher, Steve Semken of Ice Cube Books in North Libery, Iowa. The cover caught my eye. A grainy, colorful photo, blue sky and tawny sand, and a man holding the hand of a small boy, both walking away from the camera. But I set it aside, because we had a full schedule for the next couple of months. I’d learned that Steve publishes interesting books by articulate authors, so I wanted to do the interview… someday.

Then the coincidences began. First, we had a slot open up in just a week, due to miscommunications when an author switched publicists. We called Steve to see if one of his authors was available. Larry Baker was the first to respond. I picked up the book. As usual I started with the blurbs on the back cover, where I learned that A Good Man was, in part, an update of several Flannery O’Connor characters from “The River,” one of the stories in O’Connor’s seminal collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find. Which I had just bought, and just read, for the first time. I had just discovered Flannery O’Connor, and now here were some of her characters seeking me out.

I started to read. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It was a novel, with photographs, interspersedwith excerpts from newspaper columns and blog posts, with a few poems feeding the story line. The chronology jumped around a bit, but not too much. It tackled big themes - politics, religion, 9/11, salvation – in the venue of a small town radio station. Soon the main character, Harry Ducharme, finds himself interviewing writers on his talk show. Coincidence number three.

But what really sold me onthis book was the interview I did on Writers’ Voices the same day I started reading it, with Hugh Ferrer, associate director of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. This interview was based on a lecture I had heard Ferrer give on the Big Silent Dialogue – and the many ways that writers use and even hopefully steal material from those who came before them. I realized very quickly that Larry Baker was a living example of many of the techniques that Ferrer had divulged to our listeners. Like Baker says in his Notes to Readers, ” This is a work of fiction that sometimes relies on the words of writers other than me. That is an important point of the story. Read the book; you’ll understand.”

And I did.

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