Musings: The Door in the Forest

The Door in the Forest, by Roderick Townley, is a young adult fantasy that takes place somewhere in Europe shortly after the first world war.  Daniel is a tall, lanky boy in his early teens who physically cannot tell a lie.  He lives with his younger brother and his parents in a very small, rural town.  But strangers from town are coming through, including a fascinating girl named Emily who barely speaks.  She moves in with her grandmother, Bridey Byrdsong, a local witch.  And then the soldiers come, creating havoc and stealing a map (is it a map?) from Emily.  The villagers start getting angry, but one soldier in particular is greatly interested by the island in the forest by the village.  How do you get to it?  And what happens to you when you get there?

I've heard a lot about Roderick Townley's book The Great Good Thing, about a character in a fairy tale who decides to take her story into her own hands.  I've been wanting to read the author for a long time because he is well-regarded for his young adult fantasy.  But this book wasn't quite what I expected.

[TSS] Musings: Mrs. Ames

Mrs. Ames, by E.F. Benson, is one of the newer offerings from the Bloomsbury Group.  It centers on the small English town of Riseborough, where Mrs. Ames reigns supreme as the queen of social activity.  But all is not well in her world.  Mrs. Evans, a younger, prettier and more charming hostess has recently moved to town with her doctor husband.  She catches the eye not only of Mrs. Ames's poetry-leaning atheist son, but also that of her bumbling and self-satisfied husband.  Mrs. Ames realizes that to win back her man, she must undertake extreme measures of beautification.  But will those be enough?

I really enjoy books about small-town life at the turn of the century.  I love reading about the evolving class structure, the encroachment of new technologies and the slow evolution of domestic arrangements.  This book really hits on all that and more.  It's full of very sharp satire (razor-sharp, at many points) about people and their fascination with neighbors and scandal.  There were many points when I laughed out loud or gasped at the author's wit and ability to understand exactly what was going through people's minds and bring it to light so perfectly.  When I started this book, I didn't think I would enjoy it nearly as much as I did.  That is, I knew I'd like it, but not so much.

Musings: Kat, Incorrigible

Kat, Incorrigible is the first book in a projected trilogy (because it's apparently impossible to write fantasy in less than three books) about a 12-year-old girl in 1803 England who realizes she has magical powers.

This book obviously appeals to me on many levels, being set in my favorite historical period, having an author with a professed love for Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and being a young adult fantasy.  And it delivered on a lot of fronts.

Kat is the youngest of three sisters.  Elissa is an angelic 19-year-old who has come to terms with the fact that she will have to marry an old ogre for money (and is quite enjoying the martyrdom that comes with that role).  Angeline is 17 and is practicing witch magic to find her own wealthy heir so that she can save Elissa from a terrible fate.  Unfortunately, she doesn't always understand the consequences of her spells.  So it's up to Kat the pre-teen to lead everyone on a hilarious and entertaining romp through the Yorkshire wilds and a country house party, making sure that everything can end happily ever after.

New York, New York!

I'll be spending my summer in New York this year!  Got the official offer letter today and will be accepting by the end of the week.  I know there are TONS of book bloggers in the New York area, so if you're there and available, let me know and we can meet up :-)  I'll be there from after Memorial Day to mid-August.  So excited for a summer of fun in the Big Apple!

[TSS] Musings: Soldier from the War Returning

Thomas Childers' Solder From the War Returning:  The Greatest Generation's Troubled Homecoming from World War II is a fantastic book.  There are many books out there, and even more reviews, about how people in Europe dealt with the war- the home front, the rationing, the bombings, etc.  But there's much less about how Americans confronted the war and as far as I can tell, very little about the aftermath of the war.

Peter Jennings coined the now-famous term "The Greatest Generation" - referring to the men and women who grew up during the Great Depression, lived through World War II and then raised families through the tumultuous period of the 1960s.  As a country, we have whitewashed the entire generation to be one that put up with hardship and made the best of the little they had.  But this is not fair- yes, they went through a lot- but they were not perfect and it is a disservice to act as though they lived Camelot-like lives.  Childers wrote this book in an attempt to share with readers how difficult it was for men and women after WWII- how hard it is to settle back into a normal life.