Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran

Some of us are born with an inclination to create beauty and live it no matter what the cost, while others follow traditions and keep their heads low.  Vanitha Sankaran's Watermark weaves an intricate tale in the shadow of dark forces that once held sway over the Church and through which a young woman blossoms and carves her path in the world out of love and sacrifice.

"'For crimes of heresy and thoughts against our Church,' he began, 'the condemned who have repented are forthwith instructed to wear the yellow cross of the heretic upon their clothes at all times, so all may know their crimes and trust or mistrust their words and deeds as is just.'  He brandished a parchment roll and read off names followed by crimes in his sonorous voice.  Relief rose in cries after each name.

Auda watched the archbishop's mouth move.  More than ever, he seemed like a puppet."  (Page 298 of ARC)

Auda is a mute Albino living in France during the 1300s at the time of the inquisition when heresy and witches are seen even among the innocent.  Her father is a papermaker and her sister, Poncia, is a young wife of a merchant in Narbonne, a prospering and sheltered city.  Innocent activities in Narbonne can be misconstrued into heresy by those who dislike you, misunderstand you, or simply wish to be devoid of suspicion.  Making paper and providing it to anyone, rather than parchment to nobles and the church, is unwise, but Auda and her father have unflappable dreams.  Auda wants her voice to be heard -- clearly and loudly -- despite her disability, but already she is an anomaly being a woman of letters.

"'The Italians and the Spainards have sold their broadsheets for years,' her father said, glancing at Auda.  'The Church has done nothing --'

'Because Her eyes are fixed on France.'

'Oc, because France houses her pope, not because of any heresy!' His voice rose.  'Even if paper brought cause for concern, that doesn't put me in the same barrel as witches and heretics.'"  (Page 189 of ARC)

Rising fortunes bring her to the forefront of society after being sheltered since her mother's passing, but can Auda handle what is to come, how her life will change, and where her conviction will lead?  Watermark transports readers to a time when many in France were carefully watching their own actions and those of their neighbors, looking for sinister subtleties in their behaviors.  It will emotionally tug at the heartstrings as Auda learns to come into her own, makes adult decisions, and learns that even simple actions can have hefty consequences and that love can transcend the physical.  One of the best books of the year!

About the Author:

Vanitha Sankaran holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University. In addition, her short stories have been published in numerous journals, such as Mindprints, Futures, Prose Ax, and The Midnight Mind. She is at work on her second novel, which is about printmaking in Italy during the High Renaissance.

Check out the rest of her TLC Book Tour here.





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Also don't forget to check out the next stop on the National Poetry Month Blog Tour at Reading Frenzy with Edgar Allan Poe.

This is my 23rd book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge. 






 FTC Disclosure: Thanks to TLC Book Tours, HarperCollins for sending me a free copy of Watermark for review. Clicking on title and image links will lead you to my Amazon Affiliate page; No purchase necessary, though appreciated.

© 2010, Serena Agusto-Cox of Savvy Verse & Wit. All Rights Reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Savvy Verse & Wit or Serena's Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran

http://www.librarything.com/er

Johanna Moran's The Wives of Henry Oades begins with the journey of a young family to New Zealand from England, but once on foreign soil, the family is met with tragedy.  Henry Oades leaves New Zealand for a new life in America where he becomes a farmer and rebuilds his life.  The story is based upon a 19th century court case involving a man with two wives, according to Moran's Website.

"Henry introduced the children, clapping a proud hand to John's shoulder, prying six-year-old Josephine from Margaret's leg.  Margaret turned back to the watery haze that was her parents, spreading her feet for balance, her pretty going-away shoes pinching.  She'd been told the river was calm."  (Page 5)

Moran's story is unique and even more intriguing because it has a basis in fact, but in many ways the writing is stilted and it is difficult for readers to picture the settings in detail.  Additionally, there are some details that could be excluded in favor of speeding up the plot, which drags for the first 75 pages.

Margaret is a prim woman from a proper English family, who is thrown into a colony where not everyone is as well-bred as she is.  There's a period of adjustment for the Oades family, but even that adjustment is just the beginning.  With much of the point of view focused on Margaret, the sudden shift to Henry's viewpoint once Margaret and the kids disappear from his life is a bit jarring.  Readers could find that they are not as well connected with Henry and that he is not as developed as Margaret's character.  This stumbling block can take a while to overcome, but then readers are thrust into another story, that of Nancy Foreland, a recently windowed, pregnant woman.

Despite these drawbacks, the struggle of Margaret and Nancy to adapt to a new situation in which they both find themselves as the wives of Henry Oades will keep readers turning the pages.  Overall, The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran is a detailed account of one family's immigration journey and an exploration of what it truly means to be a family.


To win a copy of The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran (US/Canada):

1.  Leave a comment on this post about what court case you've found fascinating.
2.  Blog, tweet, Facebook, or otherwise spread the word about the giveaway and leave me a link in the comments.

Deadline March 18, 2010, at 11:59PM EST

About the Author:

Johanna Moran comes from a long line of writers and lawyers. She lives on the west coast of Florida with her husband, John. The Wives of Henry Oades is her first novel.

Check out her Website.

This book is my 15th book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge, and thus signifies my completion of the challenge, though I could be reading more new-to-me authors throughout the year.

If you are interested in the rest of the TLC Book Tour for The Wives of Henry Oades, check them out.




FTC Disclosure: Thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewers for sending me a free copy of the book for review.  Clicking on title and image links will lead you to my Amazon Affiliate page; No purchase necessary, though appreciated.

© 2010, Serena Agusto-Cox of Savvy Verse & Wit. All Rights Reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Savvy Verse & Wit or Serena's Feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

The Writing on my Forehead by Nafisa Haji

Nafisa Haji's The Writing on my Forehead transports readers into another culture and the struggles that members find themselves in as the world around them evolves, causing clashes between modernity and the past.  Told from the point of view of Saira, readers are taken on a very personal journey into the past, uncovering the deep secrets of Saira's grandmother and grandfather as well as her own parents.  The dynamic between Saira and her sister is only partially shown, with the point of view of Ameena silent.  From fate to choices, each character must follow their path to the end -- no matter what it holds for them.

"I close my eyes and imagine the touch of my mother's hand on my forehead, smoothing away the residue of childhood nightmares.  Her finger moves across my forehead, tracing letters and words of prayer that I never understood, never wanted to understand, her mouth whispering in nearly silent accompaniment.  Now, waking from the nightmare that has become routine -- bathed in sweat, breathing hard, resigned to the sleeplessness that will follow -- I remember her soothing touch and appreciate it with an intensity that I never felt when she was alive."  (Page 1)

Saira grows into an independent woman who is running from her culture and tradition to find herself grasping for it in the darkest moments of her life.  As an American with a strong Pakistani-Indian heritage and a mother reminiscent of Mrs. Bennet in Pride & Prejudice, it is no wonder that she rebels against tradition and culture to become a traveling journalist.

"I shudder, now, to think of how my mother, trying hard and failing to be subtle, got the word of my availability -- accompanied, I learned later, by a full-size, glossy headshot -- out on the proverbial 'street' where desi families gathered and speculated, assessed and collated young people into the 'happily ever after' that getting married was supposed to promise."  (Page 191)

Haji's prose is eloquent and engages not only the readers' sensibilities and emotions, but their inquisitive nature as family secrets are unraveled.  Saira is a complex character who searches for a center, an axis on which she can revolve and become grounded.  While she is connected to family, like Mohsin and Big Nanima, throughout her life because they are in effect the outsiders of a culture she rejects, she continues to struggle with her other relations -- her sister, Ameena, her mother and her father -- because they represent to her a culture she finds limiting.  The Writing on my Forehead provides a variety of topics for discussion from political imperialism and its consequences to the tension between the modern world and tradition and the modern dilemmas facing adolescents striking out on their own to the loss of family -- making this an excellent book club selection that will inspire debate and introspection.

About the Author: (From her Website; Photo Credit: Robert Stewart)

Nafisa Haji was born and mostly raised in Los Angeles—mostly, because there were years also spent in Chicago, Karachi, Manila, and London. Her family migrated from Bombay to Karachi in 1947 during Partition, when the Indian Subcontinent was divided into two states.  Nafisa studied American history at the University of California at Berkeley, taught elementary school in downtown Los Angeles for seven years in a bilingual Spanish program (she speaks Spanish fluently), and earned a doctorate in education from the University of California at Los Angeles.   She started writing short stories at first, which then developed into an idea for a novel. She now lives in northern California with her husband and son and is currently working on her second novel. Nafisa maintains close ties in Pakistan, traveling there regularly to visit family.

This is my 2nd book for the 2010 South Asian Author Challenge.

This is my 14th book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge.

If you are interested in the rest of The Writing on my Forehead blog tour, please check out TLC Book Tours.

The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar

Thrity Umrigar's The Weight of Heaven is a heavy with grief, emptiness, and struggle.  The Bentons (Ellie and Frank) lose their son, Benny, at age seven from meningococcus.  Ellie has liberal leanings politically and is a therapist to clients in Ann Arbor, Mich., while Frank is a proud, American business executive with residual issues of abandonment.  The loss of a child can be daunting for any family, and it is clear how grief of this magnitude can slowly rip a family apart.

"And now they were two.  Benny was gone.  What was left behind was mockery -- objects and memories that mocked their earlier, smug happiness.  Benny was gone, an airplane lost behind the clouds, but he left behind a trail of smoke a mile long:"  (Page 2)

As this American couple struggles with the loss of their son, Ellie and Frank embark on a new life in India when Frank is transferred to a new HerbalSolutions factory.  The distance between them had gaped wide by this point, and both hope that the experience will help them repair their relationship and bring them closer to one another.  However, in rural India with its impoverished population, Frank and Ellie find that their values change and their current circumstances and grief dictate their reactions to one another, their servants, the local community, and other expatriates.

"Now she was trying to control the sway of her hips, trying hard to resist the tug of the pounding drums that were making her lose her inhibitions, making her want to dance manically, the way she used to in nightclubs when she was in her teens.  But that was the beauty of the dandiya dance -- it celebrated the paradoxical joy of movement and restraint, of delirium within a structure.  This was not about individual expression but about community."  (Page 220)

Readers will be absorbed by the local community and its traditions, the struggles of the Benton's servants, and the stark beauty of India.  But what really makes this novel shine is the characters and their evolution from idealistic college students and young parents to a grief-stricken and dejected married couple in a foreign nation.  The tension between Frank and Ellie is personified in the dichotomous views each character reveals to the reader about the Indian community from the lax work environment and labor disputes at Frank's factory to the deep-rooted sense of community and communion with nature shown through Ellie's interactions with individuals at a local clinic.

The Weight of Heaven is more than a novel about grief; it is about how grief can distort perception and push people to make life-changing decisions that can broaden their horizons and transform them forever.  Umrigar's prose is poetic and full of imagery that paints a vivid picture of India and its rural community and its city life in Mumbai/Bombay.  Class differences, the struggles of American expatriates, grief, death, and marital woes are explored deftly in this novel, and it is clearly one of the best novels of 2010.

To win 1 copy of The Weight of Heaven; this giveaway is international:

1.  Leave a comment about what nation you would move to or have moved to.
2.  Blog, Tweet, Facebook, etc. about the giveaway.

Deadline Feb. 19, 2010, 11:59PM EST

About the Author:

Thrity Umrigar is the author of three other novels—The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time—and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. A journalist for 17 years, she is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University and a 2006 finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. An associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, Umrigar lives in Cleveland.

This is my 9th book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge.

This is my 1st book for the 2010 South Asian Authors Challenge.

If you are interested in The Weight of Heaven, please check out the rest of the blog tour.



FTC Disclosure:  I received a free copy of The Weight of Heaven from the publisher and TLC Book Tours for review.  Clicking on title and image links will go to my Amazon Affiliate page; No purchase necessary, though appreciated to fund international giveaways.

Government Girl by Stacy Parker Aab

Stacy Parker Aab's Government Girl chronicles her time in the White House during the Clinton Administration from the age of 18 to her early 20s.  Expecting the bulk of the memoir to be about the Monica Lewinsky scandal or the like would be a mistake, although Monica's fall from grace could have just as well been Stacy's story if she did not have the personal drive to achieve more, live within the confines of her duties and principles, and focus on self-satisfaction.

"You want acknowledgment -- all that comes when you've done a good job, when you're so deserving.  You want that light.  That hand on your shoulder.  At least if you're like me and this sort of loving affirmation from authority figures still feeds you, even if you wish it would not."  (Page 13 of ARC)

Being young and in politics, Stacy had a daunting task of navigating an adult world when she was not quite secure in her self-identity and still evolving as a woman.  She's a product of a single mother, an alcoholic father, and her mixed heritage as an African-American with a mostly unknown-to-her German ancestry.  All of these elements come into play as she navigates the White House media and policy web and the knotted ropes of her possible career ladder.

"Maybe it was like going to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and seeing a rubber version of yourself blown up and 'walking' with the help of a dozen attendants, this version of you more than ten stories tall, knowing that your celebrity was just that, something outside you, something as big and as vulnerable as giant balloons"  (Page 87 of ARC)

The narrative of this memoir is smooth in its transitions between her intern days and her past in Troy, Michigan.  The struggles of family life and the dedication of her mother to help her out with schooling expenses and other costs clearly influenced Stacy's drive for financial independence, even if the job opportunities at the time were not the most fun.  Politics is at the forefront of her work in the White House, but it often takes a backseat to her internal struggle to become a strong, independent woman with a clear idea of where she wishes to be and what she wishes to achieve.

"Working, I wanted that feeling of rowing on the Potomac River, that feeling in the eight with all of us pulling our oars.  Sixteen arms and sixteen legs powering that slim boat forward, as we were lead by our coxswain, as our coach called out to us from his motorized boat nearby."  (Page 39 of ARC)

In many ways, what drives Stacy is the hole inside her -- an absence of fatherly love -- as she falls into transient relationships with co-workers, fellow students, and others.  While this desire to fill this emptiness does little to improve her romantic life, it does often push her to perfection in her work life.  In terms of memoir, readers will find Government Girl is deliberate, vivid, and eye-opening -- especially in terms of behind-the-scenes politics.  Readers will find Stacy's prose frank and honest, almost like a friend telling a portion of her life story to another friend.

Please stay tuned for a guest post from Stacy Parker Aab on Feb. 2, 2010.

Interested in winning 1 of 3 copies of her book (US/Canada only, sorry), please visit this giveaway link.

About the Author:  (Photo credit: David Wentworth)

Writer, blogger, and former political aide, Stacy Parker Aab served for five years in the Clinton White House, first as a long-time intern in George Stephanopoulos’s office, and later as an assistant to Paul Begala. She traveled as a presidential advance person, preparing and staffing trips abroad for the president and Mrs. Clinton. She also served as a special assistant for Gov. David Paterson in New York.  Please check out her Website.

Also check out this video where she talks about her memoir:

If you are interested in Government Girl, please check out the rest of the TLC Book Tour.

I'm also counting this as my 7th book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge.

FTC Disclosure:  I received a free copy of Government Girl from the publisher for a TLC Book Tour and review.  Clicking on title links or images will bring you to my Amazon Affiliate page; No purchase necessary. 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

First, I want to apologize to the author, TLC Book Tours, and the publisher for failing to meet my deadline for this review.  I think this is one of the only times I've missed a deadline, and in my defense, I erroneously wrote today as my tour date and not yesterday.  Clearly, my mind was not focused!  I apologize.  OK, on with my review.

Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a pot of water on the stove that takes a long time to boil.  Henry Lee is the main protagonist, but really his story happens nearly 45 years in the past, and those are the chapters that breathe and live.  Much of the present day (1986) life of Henry Lee is somber and lifeless.

"He'd meant to finish it when his son, Marty, went away to college, but Ethel's condition had worsened and what money they'd saved for a rainy day was spent in a downpour of medical bills, a torrent that lasted nearly a decade."  (Page 8)

The death of his wife, Ethel, from cancer six months before happens early on in the book.  Readers are left with a drifting character who really doesn't find his way into his own story for about 100 or more pages.  When we finally delve into his young love with Keiko, the story blossoms into an emotional torrent, especially when they are ripped apart from each other.

Discrimination is on every page given that in 1942 the United States was drawn into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  For Henry's father, the war began many years before when Japan invaded his homeland.  Henry and his father have a tenuous relationship -- a relationship that is mirrored in the present between Henry and his own son, Marty. 

"'He was vehemently against all things Japanese.  Even before Pearl Harbor, the war in China had been going on for almost ten years.  For his son to be frequenting that other part of town -- Japantown -- would have been bad form.  Shameful to him . . . '"  (Page 105)

Readers will appreciate the immersion into war-time America with its simmering angst against Asians -- not just the Japanese -- and the plight of those second generation Asians who try to maintain their livelihoods and tout their American loyalties in a nation that increasingly wanted to get rid of any reminder of war.  Overall, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a meandering novel about love, growing up, dealing with discrimination, and more, but in a way readers may find that the sequencing of events and alternating chapters between present day Henry and his younger persona could have been executed better.  In many cases the present day chapters take away from those during the war years, halting the narrative and adding little to the story's arc.

About the Author:

Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. Ford is an award-winning short-story writer, an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and a survivor of Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle’s Chinatown, he now lives in Montana with his wife and children.  Check out his Website or the BitterSweet Blog.

To Enter the Giveaway for 1 copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (Sorry, US/Canada only):

1.  Leave a comment on this post about one moment in your past you'd like to revisit or change.
2.  Blog, Tweet, Facebook, etc. the giveaway and leave a link in the comments.

Deadline is Feb. 5, 2010 at 11:59PM EST

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!!

FTC Disclosure:  I received a free copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet from the publisher for a TLC Book Tour and review.  Clicking on title links or images will bring you to my Amazon Affiliate page; No purchase necessary.

This is my 6th book for the 2010 New Authors Challenge.

If you are interested in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, please check out the rest of the TLC Book Tour.