#19: Delicious by Sherry Thomas

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Verity Durant is a cook famed both in Victorian England and abroad. Abroad for her food, which is described in a way that borders on magical realism, and in England for an affair with her employer, Bertie Somerset, which many believe lasted for over ten years, until his death. After he dies, she comes into the employ of Bertie’s half-brother, Stuart, with whom she has a complicated history, though he doesn’t know about it.

Stuart, meanwhile, is engaged to Lizzy, a cold and pragmatic woman who doesn’t yet realize that she’s in love with Stuart’s secretary, Marsden. Marsden may or may not be gay, however. Then again, Lizzy also once did a bit of experimenting in same sex relationships, so she might be able to take the veracity of that rumor with a grain of salt.

There are also secret identities, a secret child, masked encounters, and old family secrets.

Like Thomas’s debut book, Private Arrangements, Delicious is told in both the past and the present, though most of the character development in Delicious is in the present, unlike its predecessor, and this is a much more polished book. I was very interested in Verity’s past and secrets, and very charmed by Lizzy and Marsden’s story. I had a difficult time, though, getting a handle on Stuart. When I did, it was fairly late in the story and at what was his worst point in terms of behavior, which resulted in my not being as kindly disposed towards him as I may have otherwise been.

While both of Thomas’s books have been very enjoyable, they’ve also featured questionable power dynamics between the leads. Despite the employee/employer aspect, though, there’s a better feeling of equality her in some ways than in Private Arrangements.

#7. February Flowers by Fan Wu

[sumofparts.livejournal.com]

Haven't posted or read in a long while.

Here's my latest book post.

Re the tags: her bio on her website says she lives in both the US and China, not if she's a citizen but I tagged this as "chinese-american" and "asian-american" anyway. The story however takes place almost entirely in China.

Everything Asian, by Sung J. Woo

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Everything Asian, by Sung J. Woo (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009; ISBN-13 978-0-312-53885-9)

This novel-in-stories centers around the Kim family, particularly 12-year-old David Dae Joon Kim, who has just come from South Korea with his mother and 16-year-old sister to join his father in the United States. Mr. Kim runs a store called "East Meets West" at a shabby New Jersey mall called Peddlers Town.

Stories from different perspectives show many facets of the Kim family and their world; although David's is the central point of view, other narrators include his sister, a private detective who's opened an office in Peddlers Town, the Kims' friends and fellow Korean emigres the Hong family, and others who are part of the mundane yet richly imagined world Woo evokes for his characters.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters are vivid, and Woo finds a delicate balance between depicting the specific cultural challenges of lower-middle-class Korean immigrants (English-language classes, the Kim children's first attempts to cook a spaghetti dinner for their parents) and the family dramas experienced by so many adolescents in every culture (David's difficulties in relating to his father, his sister's rebellion against their parents' expectations).

11) Tales of Neveryon

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Tales of Neveryon,by Samuel Delany is my second foray into the Neveryon series. It's the first book published, though I can't say it's the first chronologically. Chronology is fuzzy in Neveryon, which takes place in a civilization near the beginning of time. Such questions as the origins of money and commerce are explored, among many others.

The stories here are not as polished as some of the later stories, I felt, nor as delicately interconnected. They also tended to cover topics I am less interested in- I found the explorations of love and loss in The Bridge of Lost Desire incredibly powerful, and there is less romance here. But they are still beautiful stories.

The thinking about the ways that technology influences society in The Tale of Old Venn is fascinating. There is also a character plot, of growing up and of growing old, which is really rich and multi-layered, sad and hopeful at the same time. But embedded just beneath the surface is a sharp critique of the philosophical structures that have guided the Western World. First, Old Venn builds up a version of Mosaism and demolishes it. Then, she builds up a version of Marxism and demolishes it. Then she builds up a version of Freudianism and demolishes it. And by the end, I couldn't help thinking to myself, "Hell, Chip, are there any Jews you do like?"

But hell, the story works if I can suppress my most cynical impulses.

I didn't understand "The Tale of Small Sarg", and that fatal lack of understanding kept me from fully getting "The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers." But I loved "The Tale of Potters and Dragons" so, so much. The surprise revelation there probably should have been obvious, but it wasn't- and it illuminated all the other stories. The hidden structures of female power that Delany assembles are startling.

Multiple Reviews

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I was away from the internet for most of the beginning of this year, and so I've written some short reviews for the books I read during that time. At the link are my reviews of:

1. Natsuo Kirino, Grotesque
2. Alexandre Dumas, Twenty Years After
3. Shereen Ratnagar, Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age
4. Dalai Lama, How to Practice
5. Lalita Tademy, Cane River
6. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions
7. Wendy Lee, Happy Family
8. Randa Abdel-Fattah, Does My Head Look Big In This?

All reviews here!

I enjoyed all of them, but the short summary is: if you only read one, I recommend Does My Head Look Big In This?