Midnight Cab

Finished February 18

Midnight Cab by James W. Nichol

This gripping mystery suspense novel has at its center a young man looking for his roots. Walker Devereux was found when he was three years old. He was holding on to a wire fence at the side of a country road in French River. His mother had told me to wait there for her, but she never returned.

Walker was adopted into a welcoming family and grew up loved. He's not looking for a new family, but he does wonder about his past. Now, in 1995, he is nineteen and he figures he can begin to look into any clues he has. At the agency who handled his adoption, he is given a photograph and a letter that were found in his pocket back then. They provide a couple of clues and he decided to go to Toronto to track them down.

In Toronto, he finds a small apartment to rent, and a job driving a taxi. He also finds himself attracted to the night dispatcher at the taxi company, Krista Papadopoulos, a woman a few years older than him, who uses either crutches or a wheelchair to get around. She begins to help him with his research.

Interspersed with Walker's story are short sections about a boy named Bobby. Bobby is bad news. He isn't right in the head, and he uses violence when his words fail him. He also has some kind of sexual issue that is never really clear, but that becomes part of a pattern for him. 

We know that Bobby's story will link up in some way with Walker's, but we don't know how. As the two plotlines slowly come together, the plot takes us from Toronto to Fort Erie, to French River, and to Jamaica. Walker is a smart guy and he trusts his instinct, but sometimes it gets him into trouble. There is menace here, following him and showing itself through acts of violence and destruction. 

I found the story gripping, wanting to know what Walker wanted to know, and wanting Bobby to get caught and stopped. 

Tell Me Everything

Finished February 17 

Tell Me Everything by Cambria Brockman

This novel has three timelines. One of them is the narrator, Malin's freshman year at college. Another is her senior year at college. The third one is several years earlier, when she's a child at home in Texas with her family. 

Malin is going to college far from home, at Hawthorne College in small town Maine. She's requested a single room, and she doesn't have a friend network back home. In a way, she is looking to remake herself. On her first day, at an orientation session, she is befriended by an English girl Gemma, a theatre major, and brought into a group of friends that includes Gemma's roommate, Ruby, an art history major and soccer player. Gemma is extremely outgoing, but needing a lot of validation. Ruby also seems to have something in her past that she's hiding. 

The group also includes three guys: John, the son of an investment banker, but estranged from his father, who seems calculating and manipulative; Max, John's cousin, a pre-med student, close to his family and a guy who is watchful and caring; and Khalid, a prince from Abu Dhabi who is a bit of a playboy, but friendly and approachable. 

In freshman year, they're all finding their feet, tentatively choosing friends and setting themselves up for the next few years at college. By senior year, the six are living in a house owned by Khalid's family, and although they are all in different disciplines (Malin is in pre-law), they are also getting ready for life beyond college. Malin is also a watchful person, and she has concerns about both Gemma and John, and knows things about other people that they either don't realize that she knows, or that they've told her in confidence. 

Back in the earliest timeline in Texas, we see how Malin's parents are concerned about her older brother Levi, who seems to be exhibiting some dangerous behaviours. This timeline only emerges occasionally, and often with jumps of years, so we only see a few specific, yet important moments. 

It is only toward the end of the book that we see the full extent of Malin's story and what brought her to leave Texas and look for a fresh start. 

This is a book that has disturbing moments, and others that are quite prosaic as the plot slowly gets revealed. You know some crisis is coming, but it approaches very slowly. 

Rules for Visiting

Finished February 16 

Rules for Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane

This novel intrigued me from the descriptions and I borrowed it from my local library. The narrator of the story is May Attaway, a forty-something landscaper who lives with her father in the house she grew up in and works as a university gardener at the local university there in Anneville, PA. Some time ago, she ordered a cutting from the Fortingall Yew, a famous tree in Scotland that is believed to be at least three thousand years old. The UK Forestry Commission had announced the plan to offer cuttings, and she jumped at it. More recently someone has written a poem about the yew that grew from the cutting she took, and the poem won an award. The university has decided to give her some extra time off in honour of this and she has decided to use some of that time to visit friends. Two of the friends she decides to visit are from high school and two are from college.

The first friend lives in Connecticut and she flies to see her. Lindy is married and has three daughters, and May spends a few days with her and her family. The second friend is Vanessa, who is also married with one child. Vanessa has been married only a couple of years, but has two young stepsons. 

The third friend is Neera who lives in New York City and and has one child. May discovers when she gets there that Neera is in the early stages of ending her marriage. The situation is more awkward because May introduced her to her husband Adam.

The last friend is Rose, and Rose is also a landscape architect. May had not entered this program directly from college, so she is a few years older than Rose. Rose lives in London England and has a job creating attractive vegetable gardens for her clients. Personally, I found this visit the most interesting, and the friendship the most sharing, perhaps because Rose isn't married either.

From each visit, May takes something from her friends' homes, that represents something for her. I found this intriguing. Also, for the last three years, her father, who is in his eighties, has been leaving her copies of information on trees, for consideration as a memorial after he has died. The ones that he leaves for her during the novel's timeline are included her at the beginning of chapters, along with her thoughts on each.

We also gradually see how May's life has got to where it is. We find out what happened to her mother, and see her relationship with her father in its complexity. May's journeys also bring her out of her routine, and get her trying different things. She engages more with her neighbours and coworkers, takes the first step towards a possible romantic relationship, and more fully engages in life. 

One of the things May travels with is an older edition of Emily Post, and she tries to follow the Rules for Visiting enclosed therein. These rules are included near the end of the novel. 

I really enjoyed this book, for its thoughts on friendship, for its quirkiness and for its character May.

Breathless

Finished February 14 

Breathless: An American Girl in Paris by Nancy K. Miller

This memoir is by a professor of women's studies looking back on her early adult years as she tried to follow a dream inspired by movies set in Paris. For her, this time was a time of experimentation, of rebellion against her parents' expectations, and a time of trying to figure her life out.

She began relationships with men, sometimes inappropriate ones. She taught and went to school, she wrote and read, she listened to music and learned about food. She explored her sexuality and tried to figure out what she wanted in a partner.

Not all her choices were good ones, but she threw herself into these things she tried, and made an attempt to look at them objectively. 

The time is the late 60s and early 70s, and she was not alone in her explorations. She met, became friends with, and had relationships with other expat Americans, some of whom she kept in touch with for years. She lived in a variety of housing situations, and visited other European places on occasion.

She is half a generation older than me, and some things she did I can't relate to at all, especially as we have quite different backgrounds. 

She grew up in a secular Jewish family who had a reputation to uphold, and friends in Paris. This gave her access to the life of real Parisians, but she also spent a lot of time with other students her own age, both Jewish and otherwise. 

It was an interesting read.

The Lost Love Song

Finished February 13

The Lost Love Song by Minnie Darke

This book has a lot going on, with a couple of main characters, and several minor characters that move the plot along. Most of the book takes place in Australia, but there are important elements in England, Canada, and the United States. The book opens in Melbourne with the beginning of a relationship. Diana, a young but already famous concert pianist initiates a relationship with a tech nerd Arie. The plot quickly jumps ahead several years, where these two have a spark that has lasted and they've bought a home together and Arie has a successful web design company with his best friend Richard. Diana is about to leave on another worldwide tour, and Aria tries to pin Diana down on setting a date to marry. They've been engaged for years, but something always seems to keep them from making that final commitment. Diana expresses herself through music and she starts a new song to try to find her own answer to this question. After a performance in Singapore, she sits down in her hotel and continues her exploration. The next morning she gets on a flight to France, one that never arrives.

Arie is heartbroken, as is Diana's mother. And so many other people that lose someone in this tragedy. But someone else in the hotel heard that song Diana was working on, and the song has its own storyline now, moving around the world from one musician to another. It brings other relationships to new levels, and is a positive influence everywhere it spreads. 

Meanwhile in England, Australian Evie is on a multiyear trip away, trying different things, exploring different places, and mostly working to pay for rent and food. She also writes poems, but has never tried to publish them until she is inspired by a contest. She takes her poetry notebooks along with her, and they are beginning to be a major part of her luggage. When she finally makes the decision to return home to Australia, she makes her first task to reclaim her car, stuffed with all her worldly possessions and reevaluate what is important among them before choosing her next adventure. She's tired of the life she's been living overseas and longs for a more meaningful life with someone by her side that truly cares for her. 

This is a romance, but it is also a bigger novel than that. It is definitely a feel good book despite its early tragedy. I was easily caught up in the characters' lives, caring about what happened to each of them. 

The Secret Life of Violet Grant

Finished February 12

The Secret Life of Violet Grant by Beatriz Williams

This is part of a trilogy with each book focusing on a different sister in the Schuyler family. I've read them in reverse order, but that didn't really pose an issue. 

This book is about Vivian Schuyler, a young woman newly graduated from college (Bryn Mawr) and with a job as a fact checker at a New York magazine called The Metropolitan. The year is 1964, and as the book opens Vivian has a notice of a parcel to pickup, and only a few minutes before the post office closes for the weekend. At the post office she meets a young surgical intern, who not only helps her maneuver the bureaucracy, but also helps her by carrying the large parcel to her apartment. 

The parcel has been forwarded and was originally addressed to a Violet Schuyler at her parents' address. It contains a large locked suitcase belonging to said Violet. Vivian has never heard of a Violet in her family and begins digging into the past. The contents of the suitcase provide some interesting clues, and one of her aunts proves to be helpful, as does an older cousin.

She soon finds that Violet was her father's sister, a bit of a rebel, who went off to London to work as a scientist in 1911. She apparently married the professor in charge of the lab that she worked for, and followed him to a new position in Berlin. At the beginning of the First World War, her husband was found murdered, and she had disappeared, presumably the perpetrator. 

As Vivian uses all her wiles and contacts to find out more about her aunt, she also must deal with an increasingly complex romantic entanglement with the young doctor.

Vivian is quite the character, an intelligent and beautiful young woman with a charming manner that she knows how to use to her best advantage. 

We also see Violet's story, a young intelligent beautiful woman as well, but unaware of her charms, and quite naive. She is easily taken advantage of by her supervising professor, and drawn into a marriage that it a sham of convenience for her husband and of limited advantage to her. She concentrates on her science, and is brought into the world of other prominent European scientists, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Lise Meitner. With this group, she finds support and intellectual stimulation as well as a social circle that she feels comfortable in. 

I found both storylines quite interesting, and Vivian quite a charismatic and entertaining character. She is a dogged researcher, following every clue she has. I could hardly put the book down, it captured me so completely.

Uncharted

Finished February 10

Uncharted: A Couple's Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing From One Life to Another by Kim Brown Seely

This memoir is told by a woman in her forties. In 2009, her husband convinced her that they should buy a sailboat that had been repossessed by a bank and was therefore a pretty good deal. They's talked about buying a sailboat, but this 54 foot Moody needed work and was in Rhode Island while they lived in Seattle, and thus would need to be moved across the country. They bought it and her husband Jeff, who had some sailing experience in his youth worked to get Kim and their two tween and teen sons competent sailors. While this book is about one specific sailing trip they took when their youngest left for college, it is also about the experience of having one's children move into adulthood by leaving, and about the way the relationship between a couple changes over time.

Partway through this particular trip, the couple's sons join them for a week, flying in to meet them by float plane. The whole family then docks the boat, locks it up and goes back home, with their older son heading back to his internship in San Francisco, and the couple flying east with their youngest to take him to college in northern New York State. 

There were definitely things that were foreign to me, besides sailing. I can't imagine my parents escorting me to university, or there being so much crying about me setting off on my own adult adventure, but maybe mine hid it well. I found the sailing well described, so that even a complete novice like me could understand, but not full of technical stuff that would bore the reader. 

It was the trip that fascinated me, leaving Seattle, and soon sailing into Canada, along the edge of Vancouver Island and the mainland, and up the Inside Passage to the Great Bear Rainforest. 

There are four pages of maps in the front of the book that show their journey, and they are better marked than other such books that I've read in terms of naming waterways and islands, but there were still a few that were named in the text, but not indicated on the maps. This is a pet peeve of mine. 

The journey was full of wonder at the nature and people that they encountered, and Seely really gave a sense of the feeling and ambience of the days. 

Also fun was that there was a lot of references to music, as they used an iPod for background, company, and mood. 

Seely is an award-winning journalist and the quality of the writing here shows that. I really enjoyed this book, and its setting was of great interest to me.