Vanishing Acts

Vanishing Acts, by Jodi Picoult
Wow--this is the 11th book I've read by Jodi Picoult. Some are definitely better than others. The only two I've given five stars to have been Keeping Faith and Sing You Home. This one I would put in the "average" category.

I like Picoult's books because she always poses ethical dilemmas and creates complex characters, many of whom have deep flaws but good intentions. They often have courtroom drama and surprising twists at the end.

The main character, Delia Hopkins, raised by her widowed father in New England, is now a mother and is engaged to her daughter's father, Andrew. Then she discovers that she was kidnapped by her own father when she was just four...and her mother is still alive. Andrew is an alcoholic and just happens to also be a lawyer, so she asks him to represent her father, even though he doesn't have much experience with trials...and is not licensed to practice in Arizona, where the case goes to court.

As usual, Picoult's books are highly readable and accessible...but this one will not stand out in my memory. The plot seemed to meander. The characters frustrated me at times. The "surprise" wasn't really much of a surprise. I found it hard to understand why Delia made the decisions she did, and I didn't like what happened to the most intriguing character in the book. The prison scenes were awful and implausible...her dad is supposed to be this great guy, yet he helps manufacture meth and shoots a staple into someone's eye??? And I know prison can be awful, but is it typically this brutal? And are alcoholics never allowed to have happy endings?

In summary, this book was okay...but Jodi Picoult has done so much better.

Loud in the House of Myself

Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl, by Stacy Pershall

I picked this one up at random at the library...I had never heard of Stacy Pershall...little did I know she was an Internet sensation (and not necessarily in a good way).

Pershall grew up in the small town of Prairie Grove, Arkansas, and she never really fit in there. Pershall's mom pours all of her attention on her brother. She refers to her father's anger, but we don't get much detail on that.

Fast forward to adolescence, when she develops anorexia and bulimia, followed by (or concurrent with) bipolar and borderline personality disorder. She becomes highly self-destructive and somehow, amazingly successful given the self-destructive behavior (she lands a job as adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts after earning her M.A., somehow!).

Each time she seemed to pull her life together, her mental illness struck again. (She even got married for awhile.) As one of the Internet's first "camgirls," Pershall broadcast one of the first online suicide attempts (and only one of many of hers) before shutting down her site. She found comfort by making tattoos of the things that scared or saddened her.

This book shed a lot of light for me on mental illness, particularly bipolar and borderline diseases. I would have liked to have learned more about her childhood and any thoughts she had about what led her to these illnesses. (Was it genetic? Environment?) She seems to have a tenuous relationship with her parents now, but what happened to her brother?

This was a raw, terribly honest memoir about all the mistakes Pershall has made in her life. I'd expect nothing less from someone who bared her soul (and clothing) for the Internet.

Most of the book is about her illness, and only an epilogue provides some closure. She seems to have it together now...but I felt that we were missing something in the journey to success. Maybe there's a Part 2 in progress?

View Stacy's book trailer to get a clearer picture of her.

          

The Invisible Bridge

The Invisible Bridge,
by Julie Orringer

The Invisible Bridge is the story of Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, who is studying in Paris in 1937 on the eve of World War II. He falls in love with a mysterious older woman, Klara, who brings her own set of complications. His older brother, Tibor, wants to study medicine in Italy, and his younger brother, Matyas, loves the stage.

Before long, Hungary is at war as part of the Axis powers. As Andras and his friends and family watch in horror, Hitler and the Nazis are overtaking Europe and spreading their horror throughout the continent.

The Invisible Bridge is 600 pages (hardback), crafted in the tradition of great, sprawling Russian novels. Following Andras, his friends, and family from Paris, to Budapest and the small towns of Hungary, to forced labor camps, The Invisible Bridge is about the great bonds of brotherhood and family, true friendship, love, and endurance. It's also about the healing power of art in the darkest times.

Author Julie Orringer got the idea for this book when she discovered that her grandfather had studied architecture in Paris as a young man. As a Hungarian Jew, he wasn't able to study in Hungary but was able to get admission to a French architectural school. After the war started, he lost his visa and had to return to Hungary, where he ended up being conscripted into forced labor.

“I knew he’d been in labor camps during the war, but I knew nothing about what had happened to him there or how he’d managed to survive. As I started to ask questions about that time, a series of amazing and devastating stories emerged, and a novel began to take shape in my mind—the story of a young Hungarian Jewish man who’d envisioned one kind of life but who was forced by the turnings of history to live quite another.”

Andras' story was inspired by her grandfather's experiences. I knew very little about the situation in Hungary during World War II, especially for the Jewish population, so I found this to be a fascinating read. Even now, Hungary has its share of right-wing fascists, just as it did during the war.

“In a sense, the fate of the Hungarian Jews is particularly painful because the deportations occurred long after the Nazis’ defeat was inevitable. For a long time, Hungarian Jews believed they would escape the fate of the Jews of other occupied nations—not only because the Hungarian government considered Jews necessary to the financial welfare of the country, nor only because so many Jews had served heroically in the First World War, nor even just because Hungarian Jews were particularly assimilated, but simply because the Nazis were bound to admit defeat before deportations could occur.”

This book was instructive and beautiful. I cried out loud in one of the final chapters. I loved reading about the friendship among the three brothers, in particular, and Orringer beautifully describes the way people survive terrible traumas and burdens.

The Book of Fires

 The Book of Fires, by Jane Borodale

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In 1752, 17-year-old Agnes Trussel, an English country girl, finds herself pregnant after she is raped by a boy in her village. Ashamed and horrified by her predicament, she finds herself in a position to steal some gold coins from a dead neighbor and flees to London to prevent any shame from falling on her poor family.

On the way to London she meets a pretty young prostitute, Lettice Talbot, who offers Agnes to get her life started in London. Naive and ignorant, Agnes agrees to meet Lettice later on at her boarding house (nee brothel). However, alone in confusing and very dirty London, she gets lost. As night nears, she finds herself wandering the streets, desperate, freezing, and hungry.

She sees a sign advertising help wanted at a house and knocks on the door. The house belongs to Mr. J. Blacklock, who makes fireworks and is mourning his dead wife. Blacklock soon takes Agnes under his wing as his apprentice.

Many other characters feature in the book--the other servants in Blacklock's house and Cornelius Soul, who provides the gunpowder for the fireworks. Agnes fixes on Mr. Soul is the solution to her problems, but he is not as she thought he would be.

At times this book was a bit slow going (especially with all the detail about the fireworks making), but I enjoyed it. At the time, fireworks were not yet made in color, and it is the quest of color that fascinates Blacklock and Agnes both, drawing them closer together.

Blacklock is an enigma, a dark and brooding character. Some of the characters were not drawn as fully as they could have been. But the amount of research Borodale must have had to do is astounding. The list of references is impressive. She effectively captures the cadence of dialogue, food, setting, and habits of the British in the 18th century. What a lack of options an unmarried pregnant woman had in those days...and telling anyone that she was raped would have only worsened her lot. A very satisfying read!