The Knowledge of Water

Finished August 21

The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith

This historical novel has elements of suspense and romance, as well as an interesting historical setting. It is 1910 and in Paris. 

One of the main characters, Alexander von Reisden adopted his current life when he was very young. At the age of eight, he was an American boy who killed in self-defense and fled, changing his name and his country. For years he had buried his memories of the past, but eventually remembered and now feels the weight of his actions heavily. He worried that his crime is a personality and moral flaw that he cannot escape. But the three people who know of his past have absolved him, recognizing the circumstances of the action he took. He now runs Jouvet Medical Analyses, an institute that specialized in mental disturbances and has an impressive case archive going back decades.

Perdita Halley is the other main character. She is a young American woman studying music, specifically piano, persevering in spite of her instructor's misogyny and her own failing sight.  She is the protégée of American rare book expert Gilbert Knight, who funds her studies and worries about her enough that he sends his friend, investigator Roy Daugherty to Paris to check on her, determine whether an outright gift of money is a good idea and see if his hoped-for union of Perdita and Alexander is likely.

Perdita and Alexander are close, and they grow closer despite their misgivings. They are drawn to each other, but Perdita worries that marriage will mean giving up music, and Alexander worries that Perdita won't be happy. 

Meanwhile the rain in France is at record levels and flooding issues grow more dire. There is also a murdered woman, who identified with the Mona Lisa, and whose body sits in the morgue waiting for the investigation on her death to lead to her murderer, and the museum guard who may have killed her. There is Milly Xico, a French writer whose ex-husband still tries to control her and exploit her talents as he did during their marriage, even as she makes strategic choices of her own. There is a possible art fraud regarding paintings by an artist who died a few years earlier, and his widow, Madame Mallais, who may be part of the fraud. 

I enjoyed the undercurrent of feminism here, with Perdita, Milly, and Madame Mallais, as they each navigate a world where women have different rules and expectations. There is also the very real flooding that happened in Paris and the immense damage it did, with both infrastructure damage and lives lost. 

Night Watch

Finished May 28

Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips

This historical fiction novel jumps around in time a little during the late 1800s. The book has five parts, with the first and third parts taking place in 1874 and the second and fourth parts taking place in 1864. There is also an epilogue that is set in 1883. 

The point of view changes between a few of the characters but is always clearly stated at the beginning of a chapter. The chapter sometimes has a month and year to set it more specifically within the time of that part of the book. The chapter headings are descriptive, telling us of events that take place, or people that are introduced within that chapter. I liked that the chapters were relatively short, and moved you through the book in a natural flow. 

The main character in the book is ConaLee, a thirteen-year-old girl as the book opens in 1874. She is travelling from her home in the high West Virginia mountain area with her mother to an asylum, taken there by the man that has been in their life for the last few years, one who insists that they call him Papa. ConaLee knows that the relationship between her mother and this man is one of control and abuse, but she doesn't understand the hold that he has on her. ConaLee has watched her mother go from an active loving woman who taught her to read and showed her the stars in the sky to one who lies in bed and doesn't speak. ConaLee's mother has had other children from Papa, all without names. The toddler, who ConaLee calls Little Chap has been taken under her own wing and mothered by her. She reads him stories, cuddles him, feeds him, and acts like a mother would. Her mother has recently given birth to twins, a girl and a boy, that ConaLee served as midwife to.  

In a cabin higher on the mountain, above the one that ConaLee and her mother share is one lived in by Dearbhla an older woman that trades in salves and tonics that she makes from the wild plants near her. Dearbhla was midwife to Little Chap, but has been banned from their home for many months now. ConaLee has met her secretly from time to time, to get advice and medicine, but Dearbhla has the vision to know what has been happening with this small family. 

We learn that ConaLee's father, her mother's husband left to fight for the Union in the Civil War, but never returned, and stopped writing home ten years earlier. He has an occasional voice in the earlier time setting, as The Sharpshooter. 

Dearbhla also has a voice in the book, as does a young boy who lives and works at the asylum, known as Weed. We also learn from the 1864 time what ConaLee's mother Eliza went through and why Papa has the control he has. We hear from Dr. Story, the man in charge of the asylum, and from the mysterious O'Shea, the Night Watch of the title, who is calm and watchful man. 

I really enjoyed seeing the story gradually unfold, understanding what connections were between characters, and seeing explanations for events uncovered later in the story. This is a book about love, risk, and the illusion of control. A fascinating read that was hard to put down. One gets a sense of the landscape of the places, both constant and those travelled through. 

The Damage Done

Finished March 19

The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson

This is the first book in a series featuring travel writer Lily Moore. Lily has returned to New York City from her more recent life in Spain after the police contact her to tell her that her younger sister Claudia has been found dead in her apartment on the anniversary of their mother's suicide. The apartment is actually Lily's and she'd tried living there with Claudia, but couldn't handle her sister's personality on a daily basis. Lily goes to the apartment and notices things that seem strange and out of character for her sister. When she goes to the morgue to identify her sister, things get even stranger, as the body there is someone Lily has never seen before. 

As she tries to find her sister, tracking down who and when anyone last saw or heard from here, she finds the police seem likely to think Claudia may have something to do with this woman's death. Claudia's best friend Jesse has her back, and provides a place for her to stay when she feels unsafe in her old apartment. 

With her ex-fiance, wealthy hotelier Martin trying to come back into her life, Lily finds herself still charmed by him, and yet wary too. There are a few other interesting characters, from Claudia's ex, Tariq, to the strangely friendly new neighbour Sarah, to the two police officers, Renfrew and Bruxton, assigned to the case.

I liked Lily, and enjoyed seeing both her strengths and flaws become apparent over the course of the novel, and found the plot gripping, with a few twists thrown in. 

I'd read the other two in this series a few years ago, so it was interesting to see earlier events in Lily's life, and I would have liked to see more of some characters, like Bruxton and Tariq, in the other books. 

Evil in Emerald

Finished August 28

Evil in Emerald by A.M. Stuart

This is the third book in an historical mystery series and is set in Singapore in 1910. Harriet Gordon is a widow living with her brother, a minister and headmaster of a boy's school, and their ward Will, a schoolboy. She helps with the paperwork at the school, and brings in extra income by typing up reports and other documents for the local police. 

Her tennis partner has convinced her to join the Singapore Amateur Dramatic and Music Society (SADAMS) for their upcoming production The Pirates of Penzance. Also in SADAMS are a journalist, Griff Maddocks; a friend and doctor's wife, Louise Mackenzie; a local police constable, Ernest Greaves ; a woman who is rumoured to have been on stage in London, Alicia Sewell; and an insurance broker, Tony Dowling. The director of the society is Charles Lovett, a lawyer, whose wife Elspeth organizes most of the supporting functions, such as costumes, and whose daughter Eunice, helps out wherever needed.

When a body is found badly burned in a fire on SADAM's premises, Harriet becomes involved as both an assistant to the police, and as someone with knowledge of the victim. Her boss, Inspector Robert Curran is in charge of the case, and has made some enemies of some of the colonial planters, one of whom has a definite grudge against him. As Curran investigates, the case takes him to other cast members of SADAMS, as well as to a local planter and another businessman. 

But Curran is also finding that his personal life has him distracted. His long-time partner Li An, a woman from a powerful Kuala Lumpur family is being drawn back into that family; and someone who brings news of his own family in need of assistance appears on his doorstep. 

This is a novel with a lot going on with both Harriet and Curran, and I found myself not wanting to put the book down until I finished it. 

Definitely a series with promise! 

Easy Crafts for the Insane

Finished November 12

Easy Crafts for the Insane: A Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things by Kelly Williams Brown

This memoir covers a few difficult years in the author's life. During this time she underwent several losses (divorce, breakup of relationship, loss of friendships, death of pets) and physical pain (breaking both arms and an ankle), not to mention mental illness. 

Kelly had been diagnosed and treated for depression at a very young age, and continued to battle this into her adult years, but during this time period, her treatments changed, and she had more severe and new mental challenges. 

All her life, one of her comforts has been crafting and throughout this book she includes several simple crafts for the reader, giving step by step instructions and, in some cases, direction to more information available online. 

She is very open about all her experiences during this time, both how she made bad decisions, and didn't always consider how her actions would affect those around her, not recognizing the pain she caused them at the time, and how they affected her in ways they didn't understand at the time either. 

Luckily, she was able to afford and get the help she needed, a privilege that she recognizes that not everyone going through similar challenges will have and she makes arguments for improving the access to mental health care.

This memoir definitely has elements of humour and the author is more than willing to laugh at herself and her experiences while still acknowledging the serious nature of what she went through.

Eye-opening and very engaging. 

Bitter Orange

Finished June 9

Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

Most of the action of this novel takes place at a country house in 1969, but the narrator is looking back on this time as she is dying some years later. Her name is Frances, and she is a woman out of sync with her times. She has lived with her mother until her mother died recently and has taken on work to catalogue the outbuildings and external elements of a country house for the American that recently purchased it. She is a large woman with no experience with men, other than her father who left the family for another woman when she was a child. 

She has developed an interest in architecture of the type she has been hired to describe and written articles, for free, for a small publication in the field, which is how her new employer discovered her.

When she arrives at the house where she will stay due to her tight financial situation, she finds a couple already there. The man in this twosome, Peter, is also working for the American, describing the house itself, and its contents. The woman is Cara, who seems to wild swings of emotion and who is very attached to Peter, although they are not married. Despite herself, Frances gets drawn into their strange relationship, and ends up caught in a situation that will change her life forever.

For me Frances was a victim of her upbringing, her parents' lack of good parenting, and her naivety. Cara is unwell, and prone to violent emotions and wild stories. Peter is both mercenary and weak. Frances just wants to have a friend. 

This is a sad story and I both felt for Frances and was annoyed at her acceptance of her situation. The story is very well written and I found myself caught up in it, both wanting to find out what happened and dismayed with the way things developed. 

The title related to a fruit tree found on the property, which had an abundance of ripe fruit, but it was not edible.

The Deepest Night

Finished June 27
The Deepest Night by Shana Abe

This is the second book in the series that started with The Sweetest Dark. It is 1915 and Lora Jones is a scholarship student at Iverson, a prestigious boarding school for upper class young ladies housed in an old castle on England's southern coast. Lora grew up in an orphanage, and spent some time in a mental institution as well due to the music that she hears due to her special abilities. In the first book in the series, Lora discovered that she wasn't an ordinary human girl, but one that could change into a dragon. Here, she is recovering from injuries she received then, and has a new mission, to rescue Aubrey the eldest son of her benefactor, who is in a POW prison in Austria.
To help her, she has only the younger son of her benefactor, Armand, a young man who has fallen in love with her although her love is elsewhere. Armand does what he can to protect Lora, whether at the school, or outside of it. Even sometimes from his own father. And Lora does what she can to protect Armand, even as he begins to go through the changes that will bring him into his own dragon transformation.
I enjoyed the first book and always meant to follow up on the series, and am glad that I did. A lot of the plot here has to do with social classes, but there is also World War One which figures strongly in the book. Lora has her baggage from the past, and she has challenges in the present with not only the mission that the stars have for her now, but also with some of the girls that she goes to school with and with the social situation that she finds herself in. I really liked her as a character, and how she developed over the course of the book.
Looking forward to reading the third one

Afterlife

Finished April 25
Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

This novel follows Antonia Vega, a retired college professor as she still mourns the loss of her husband Sam a year after his death, and is drawn into the immigration issues and love life of the illegal Mexican farmhand working for her neighbour. Antonia is still feeling at loose ends without her husband, and although her three sisters, Mona, Izzy, and Tilly, contact her regularly, and she values their close relationship, she doesn't feel like getting involved in new things. Antonia and her sisters immigrated to the United States with their parents when they were young children, and because she speaks Spanish she gets drawn into the issues next door.
She has volunteered with the immigrant community in the past, but has really pulled into a more solitary existence since the death of her husband, and is only gradually drawn out as the situation lands on her doorstep of the young farmhand's pregnant girlfriend.
To add to the upheaval in her life, Izzy, her oldest sister, always a bit flighty, has seemed to become more impulsive lately and goes missing enroute to a sisterly meetup. As the sisters try to track her down, and deal with what they might find at the end of their search, Antonia finds that there are still things in life that need her attention despite her grief.

See What Flowers

Finished November 19
See What Flowers by Shannon Mullen

This novel is told in four parts. It begins with a couple, Emma in Toronto, Adam in Vancouver, dealing with the aftermath of something they don't understand. They live together in Toronto, but Adam disappeared suddenly ten days ago and Emma hasn't been able to figure out why or where he is. Adam finds himself in jail in Vancouver, unable to remember how he got there. He is a mess, and feels ashamed and confused. As the two reconnect and try to make sense of what has happened, they react in different ways. Emma is a doctor working in emergency care, and Adam is part owner of a gym that is doing well. But he can't seem to move forward, and Emma finds it difficult to deal with this new version of the man she loves.
Part two moves back to before the incident that changed everything, and looks at their lives, their successes, and their happiness. We see how much they care about each other, but also the insecurity that couple often have about their relationship.
Part three deals with Adam's actions that led him to where he ended up as the book began, and we gradually understand that this is a more complex issue, and one that isn't easy for anyone involved.
Part four takes us a few months forward as each of them, in a new environment looks for a way to a future they can manage.
This is a fascinating first novel by a very promising writer. She deals with the realities of mental illness and its effects on both the person living with the illness and the people close to them. The story is told in vignettes with headers of the speaker, the date, and the time. She uses fonts to indicate what people are saying and what they are thinking. She uses pop culture references to bring a sense of normalcy to situations. I really like her style and how she her writing really made the characters real and relatable.
This is a book I'd recommend to anyone interested in people and what makes them tick.

I Know My Name

Finished December 26
I Know My Name by C.J. Cooke

I borrowed this book from my mom, who had borrowed it from a friend. A twist on your typical thriller. Set mostly in London, this book starts with Lochlan Shelley being called from his wife's cellphone by a neighbour. His wife appears to be missing, with only their four-year-old son Max, and twelve-week old daughter Cressida alone in the house. The neighbour, Mrs. Shahjalal, had come over after accepting a delivery for the house by a man who said no one answered. She'd seen Max at the window and wondered whether there was something wrong. Lochlan works for a corporate finance company, and spends part of every week in Edinburgh, where he was when called.
His company is not one for being understanding of their staff's personal lives, but he knows that his family must come first. He doesn't see his wife Eloise as one for taking off like this. While they had got more distant with each other lately due to his heavy workload, she was close to her children, and still breast-feeding their baby.
El had an unusual childhood, taken to England by her irresponsible mother Jude when she was only four, and being raised after the age of twelve and her mother's death in Switzerland by her grandparents, Gerda and Magnus Bachmann. The Bachmann's now live in England, and arrive shortly after Lochlan contacts them. He's already contacted the police, and there are a few paths of investigation being followed, one involving the four nanny cams the Shelley's installed in the house after Max was born.
Before having children, El ran a charity for refugee children, but she stepped down as leader to spend more time with the children.
There is a separate storyline of El's viewpoint, as she finds herself washed up with a boat on a remote Greek island. There are four people on the island, having a writers' retreat. Two women, Hazel and Sariah, and two men, George and Joe. Joe knows enough first aid to patch her up, and George is a take charge kind of guy, but not always in a good way.
I found myself fascinated as the two storylines progressed, worrying about El, and concerned for Lochlan's actions. A fascinating read.

Every Last One

Finished September 2
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

This novel begins with a typical day in Mary Beth Latham's world. She wakes up before anyone else, has a coffee and some time alone before waking her three children and seeing them and her husband off, then going off to her own landscaping business. Her daughter Ruby is in her junior year of high school, and has a unique sense of style and great self-confidence. She loves to write, and is booked into a summer writing class at a college. Her two sons, fraternal twins, Alex and Max are in their last year of middle school. Alex is a star athlete with decent grades and a small group of friends. Max is a loner, with an interest in music and comics. Both boys are booked into summer camps suited to their interest. Mary Beth's husband Glen is an opthamologist with a quiet manner and a strong sense of order. Their marriage has gotten to a comfortable familiar stage where they each do their own thing, and follow a routine.
Ruby is getting ready for prom, and plans to do it in her own way. But she is also looking at changes in her life and one of them is moving on without her current boyfriend. Kiernan lived next door for a few years when the kids were small, then moved away. When his family moved back to town, they lived on a different street, but Kiernan seemed to latch onto their family, and spent a lot of time at their house. He gradually became Ruby's boyfriend, but he seems to be rubbing her the wrong way lately, and a split-up is due soon.
Ruby had an eating disorder a couple of years ago, and Mary Beth still worries about her a bit, but her main worry now is her son Max, who seems to be too much alone, and not very happy. When Max's stay at camp is cut short, she worries more, and does what she can to help.
But when violence and tragedy come into Mary Beth's life, it is from a direction she wasn't looking, and she must find a way to move forward, rebuilding her life.
This is a book of how someone recovers from an unthinkable event, and we see how various characters struggle with their own role, however small, in what happened. As always, I love how Quindlen puts a story together, and I read this in one sitting.

Nemesis

Finished June 29
NemeSIS by Susan Marshall

This YA novel by a Canadian author involves a number of issues that teens face in today's world. The main character, Nadine, is the younger of two sisters, and facing a lot of adjustments in life. She moved to high school over a year ago, but didn't adjust to the new environment as well as she thought she would. She feels out of place and the friends she had in middle school have moved on. Around the same time that move happened, her parents separated. Her dad went to New York, and while it was supposed to be temporary, a year has now passed and he's still there. Nadine was close to her dad, and they spent a lot of time bonding when he took her to her hockey games. Now she's quit hocket because she no longer has a reliable ride, and she's been hiding in the library at lunch time. She's also been avoiding her older and very pretty sister Rachel, as Rachel hasn't taken the changes in their home life well and seems to blame Nadine for every little thing that goes wrong. Her mood is volatile, and the way she treats Nadine is something Nadine is only realizing now as a form of bullying. With their mother working more hours and studying for her real estate exam, the two girls are alone together more now than ever before.
She knows something has to change, but she isn't sure where to start until she notices a AA flyer mentioning the twelve steps, and decides steps are what she needs to set to make the changes in her life. Her first move is approaching another girl she sees in the library at lunch, Anne, and this move towards friendship takes her slowly toward other changes in her life, some more difficult than others.
I liked the way we saw Nadine's thought processes as she found her way towards more self confidence, and problem solved along the way. When she had to deal with bad choices, she realized that they were something she needed to learn from and not hide from. A good choice for teen readers.

You Should Have Left

Finished November 15
You Should Have Left by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Ross Benjamin

I picked up this short novel, intrigued by the title, but it turned out to be quite a surprise. The narrator of the story is a writer, struggling with a new play. He is beginning a vacation in the mountains with his wife Susanna, an actress, and their four-year-old daughter Esther. While away, he is also supposed to be working on his new play, and his agent Schmidt calls periodically to check in.
The characters in his new play and scenes that he is writing are here in the book too, and sometimes these characters seem to get placed into the settings that he finds himself in.
As the book progresses, the unnamed narrator seems to sense that the house they are renting has oddities to it, and as a reader, you aren't sure what is happening, whether the odd things that begin to become more and more prevalent are real, are imagined, a manifestation of a mental illness or some sort of psychological horror.
At one point, he begins to hear a voice telling him that he should have left this place, hence the book's title. A very captivating and unsettling read.

The Girls in the Garden

Finished March 26
The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

This novel follows eleven-year-old Pip as she and her older sister Grace and mother Clare move into a terrace house in a new neighbourhood of London. The family is still in shock after Pip and Grace's dad had a mental health breakdown that resulted in him burning down their home. He is in hospital getting the help he needs, and they must start over with everything gone. Pip is steadfast in missing her father, writing him letters about their lives and new home, and observing the world around her. Grace is angry and scared and at the age where she is looking for her own identity. Clare is fearful of what lies ahead, afraid of what she saw in her husband in his mental breakdown, and worried about managing everything.
Their new home backs onto a large communal park and the girls soon find their way among the other residents. Grace begins hanging out with 5 other kids around the same age: three sisters Catkin, Fern and Willow, another girl Tyler, and a boy Dylan. She hangs out a lot at the sisters' house, liking their parents, Leo and Adele. Adele home schools the girls. As the action begins, the sisters grandfather has come to visit from Africa as his diabetes now requires amputation of one of his feet.
Pip is more of a loner, not feeling comfortable with the other kids, or their parents. Something about Leo doesn't feel right to her. She befriends and older woman with a pet rabbit, and from her learns the history behind the girl memorialized on a nearby bench, Phoebe. Pip is a quiet girl, watchful and sensitive, an important role in this story.
At the annual part party, there is much going on, music, face painting, a barbeque, and as it is also Grace's thirteenth birthday, Clare has let her have more freedom than normal. When the day grows later, Pip searches for her sister, finding her unconscious and bloody in discomforting circumstances. What happened to Grace and who is responsible is the focus of the story.
We see the interaction of both the adults, teens, and preteens here, and how relationships change and develop with the arrival of this new family in the neighbourhood. I liked the way the characters were each so different. None of them perfect.

The Pocket Wife

Finished June 4
The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford, performed by Cassandra Campbell

Dana Catrell may have been the last person to see Celia Steinhauser alive, but the problem is that Dana can't remember everything about that afternoon. She had a lot to drink, and Celia told her something about her husband that both shocked her and made her angry. Dana wondered why Celia was so upset about it herself, and whether Dana's anger overcame her.
Dana had an incident when she was in college where she was hospitalized at Bellvue, and diagosed with bi-polar disorder. She's had a bad time after the birth of her son, now in college himself, but has mostly lived a happy and normal life without medication. But she can feel the signs of an episode coming on, and she is trying to maintain control while she figures out her own actions that day.
Dana swears that Celia showed her a picture that she took of Peter on her phone, but the photo doesn't seem to be there. Dana is sure that one of Peter's own phone contacts was Celia, a woman he claims not to have known well, but when she checks, that contact doesn't lead to Celia. Is Dana imagining things? Dana knows that she has a motive to kill Celia, and the opportunity, but did she really do it? She hopes not, but all the things she remembers don't seem to be true.
The detective assigned to the case is Jack Moss. Jack has marital issues of his own and worries about his estranged son Kyle. Jack grabbed the case because he recognized Celia's name as being the same as Kyle's GED teacher. He worries about whether Kyle has anything to do with Celia's death, and even more so when some of the evidence involves Kyle. Jack is being pressured by one of the lawyers in the office to close the case, but he wants to make sure he does it right. Jack has feelings about cases, about when something is important in terms of evidence, but is he letting his worry about Kyle influence him too much?
The title of this book comes from an instance of Peter, Dana Catrell's husband of putting his phone in his pocket when she called him and it was an inconvenient time for him to talk, making her a pocket wife, easy to dismiss.
This book had me engrossed in Dana's story, hoping along with her that she hadn't killed Celia, worried that she had. I also really like Jack and his goodness.

Perfect

Finished August 2
Perfect by Rachel Joyce, read by Paul Rhys

This novel moves back and forth between the summer of 1972 and the present day.
In 1972, two seconds were added to time to adjust for the gradual change in the earth's rotation. When 12-year-old Byron Hemmings learns of this from his friend James, he can't stop thinking about it. When will it happen, how will it affect things. He is terribly worried about it, and obsesses over it. Then, one day, running late for delivering Byron and his younger sister Lucy to school, Byron's mother Diana takes a detour through a street with estate housing, Digby Road, and Byron's obsession and her newly acquired driving skills combine to create a situation that will change all of their lives irrevocably.
At first, only Byron notices, and desperate, he confides in James, who comes up with plans that continue to unfold as more happens, but even when James dictates what Byron should say, Byron realizes that things don't always unfold they way they planned because James didn't predict what the others would say. Byron's strongest feelings are toward his mother,  and this example shows them nicely: He didn’t know how he was going to keep his mother safe. The job seemed too big for one boy alone. There was something about her, something pure and fluid that would not be contained. Byron's need for control and order are beyond his ability to manage real life and things move forward in a sad and seemingly inevitable way. Byron's interactions with his mother, his sister and the little girl Jeannie all show his compassion and tenderness, and his vulnerability. His father is both controlling and distant, both in charge and needy, and Byron can't find the necessary connection to confide in him, even as things deteriorate in Byron's world.
In the present, Jim is adjusting to his new life following the closing of the mental institution that he has spent most of his life in. He works in the cafe of a large store, wiping tables. He lives on the edge of the moors in a camper van. His life is dictated by the rituals that his obsessive-compulsive disorder drives him to do. He has a stutter, possible a result of the electro-shock therapy he was subjected to. He is desperately lonely, but knows his own weaknesses and doesn't believe himself capable of sustaining a relationship. When a coworker, Eileen, captures his attention, he feels a connection with her that he envisions as his one last change to connect with the world. We see how his coworkers begin to see him as a person, one they care about. The writing around Jim and his mental illness is so well done, so empathetic, it is a wonder. I felt Jim's pain and worry. I felt for him, and the desperate way things in his life had led him to where he is.
But this book is also full of humour, and I found myself giggling at some of the action here, like the scene where Jim and Eileen have both used scented products as a way to prepare themselves for a get together.
Joyce's second novel is very different from her first but equally compelling and engrossing. There were times when the voice of Jim reminded me of The Curious Dog in the Night-time, in terms of really feeling the viewpoint of a person with a different outlook. While I listened to this book in audio, I really feel the need to buy a print copy to savour some of the writing. An amazing read.

Silence for the Dead

Finished July 14
Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James

This novel is set just after World War I, in 1919. Kitty Weekes has just lost her factory job in London. In her desperation she applies for a job at a remote hospital for mental patients, and she is accepted. She spends the last of her money getting there.
What had she expected, she isn't sure, but it isn't what she has found. The hospital is desperately understaffed, and despite her lack of real credentials, she muddles through her duties as a nurse. The men who are patients here are a mix from kind to cruel, from lost to angry. But one thing they all have in common is the nightmares. They don't talk about them, but they all know that there is more here than mental issues. Kitty's lack of knowledge and rebellious nature lead her to break the rules, but also complete the horrific tasks that she is given. When she learns of a secret patient, Patient Sixteen, she finds that she must discover the reason for the lack of information on him.
Given her past experience, Kitty is pretty good at reading people, and she finds that many of the men here turn out to be people that she cares about. She also finds that despite her lack of training, she's not that useless as a nurse as she thinks.
This is a story of ghosts intent on finishing what they started, and of men vulnerable to the influence of such spirits. This is a story of cruelty and madness, but also a story of hope and renewal.
I like the spunkiness of Kitty. She isn't about to give in and do what others want her to unless that is what she wants herself.

The Impossible Knife of Memory

Finished May 4
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

This teen novel has high school senior Hayley Kincain as its main character. Hayley's mother died when she was just a baby, and she lived in this small town with her grandmother until the age of seven, when her grandmother died. Following that her life path becomes a little less clear, but she has spent the last five years on the road with her father, until he finally decides to move back to the house and town he grew up in so Hayley can spend her senior year in a real high school instead of reading textbooks in the truck and in hotel rooms. Hayley reunites quickly with a friend from the distant past, Gracie, but has more trouble adjusting to high school. She doesn't know the rules of how to act, and finds many of her fellow students' behaviour unappealing. Her introduction to nerdy Finn, first as a friend, then as math tutor and perhaps more, have her feeling less sure of herself and yet more connected to this town.
But Hayley's real struggle is with her father, a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, suffering from his own demons in the form of post traumatic stress disorder. It is these disturbing memories that first drove the two into a nomadic life, and now brought them here. Hayley has been forced into the role of looking out for and after her father, loving him fiercely, but always wary of what he will do next. As his behaviour grows increasingly erratic, she is finally forced to look to her own past and reach out for help to those who care about her.
Once I started reading this book, I could barely put it down. Hayley has all the inner concerns of any girl her age, plus the burden of her father's illness. She is a character that is finely drawn, and that I quickly grew to care about. Her struggles brought me both tears and laughter, and her father's PTSD is revealed in all its complexity. His flashbacks show the experiences that brought him to where he is now.
A wonderful book.

Give Me Everything You Have

Finished February 21
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun, read by Robin Sachs

James Lasdun gives an insightful and open account of his stalking by a former student. Starting as a straightforward exchange when she was working on a novel, chapters of which he had read and encouraged her in when she was his student, this relationship gradually devolves into something else entirely. The student approached him a couple of years after the met when she was in his creative writing class, and as he really thought her writing good, he encouraged her and even introduced her to people he thought would be helpful to her writing career.
But the email interactions first became overly friendly, and then hateful and aggressive. She eventually moved into posting comments online, making public accusations of plagiarism and sexually inappropriate behaviour, and impersonating others when making such statements. She progressed into attacks on others he had professional and personal relationships with and sent emails to current and potential employers.
Despite these things, Lasdun found he had little recourse in any legal sense, an interesting development of the Internet Age, showing that some aspects haven't entirely caught up to the realities yet.
He touches on mental illness, reputation, racism, and social norms and looks into his own reactions and how he learns to control what he can and learns to deal with what he can't control.
A window on a very difficult and increasingly present phenomenon.

Bittersweet

Finished December 31
Bittersweet: lessons from my mother`s kitchen by Matt McAllester

This short memoir is written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist McAllester about his mother and his relationship with her. His early childhood was happy, full of delicious food, family togetherness and love. But when Matt was around the age of 10, his mother began to decline into mental illness and alcoholism. He felt that she was lost to him for two decades. Then, although her health was still bad, a connection was restored in the last few years before her sudden death.
Despite his experience as a war correspondent, Matt was stricken by her death, and used his journalistic skills to delve into her life, both the happy years and the illness that stole her from him. Part of him wanted to know whether things could have been different, but he also wanted to know more about her as a person and hold onto the happy memories.
By taking her cookbooks, he finds a connection that allows him to honour her memory and move forward with his own life.
An open and touching look at mental illness and the effect it has on those who love someone with it.