I judged a book by its cover.

"Waiting," by Emory professor Ha Jin won a National Book Award, won the Pen/Faulkner Award and was a Pulitzer finalist.

Pun intended, but I kept waiting for it to get better, to really pull me in...

OK, so maybe I'm just disgusted by the extremly passive and inadmirable male lead character, Lin Kong, who weds a country woman through an arranged marriage then leaves her at home with the family farm and their child while he travels a distance away to work in an army hospital. There he finds a girlfriend, Manna Wu, but their relationship remains chaste because of the rules of the day. So they carry on this platonic relationship for 18 years until Lin can legally divorce his faithful country wife. Lin and Manna finally marry, but married life is terrible for them: She bears him twin sons (a relative miracle in China) and then nearly dies, causing spineless Lin to consider returning to his first family. And that's all.

In the end, he describes himself as a superfluous man. Ineffective would be the better word, I think.

However, the story of the cultural revolution and its effect on Chinese society is this detailed novel's backstory. It is beautifully told by the native Chinese author in a spare manner.

For me, the story lacked the drama and poetry of Arthur Golden, Amy Tan or Lisa See.

"What occurs in the world of the faerie will become manifest in the world of men"

Reviewed: "Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story," by Carolyn Turgeon, Three Rivers Press, 2009, $13.95, 279 pp.

I’m a fan of novels that push envelope of the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" by mixing reality with fantasy. Carolyn Turgeon’s latest novel, her second, "Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story," does just that.

The enjoyable and quite readable fictitious tale follows Lil, an old woman who works her days away in a New York City bookshop while dreaming of returning to her youth as a fairy — yes, a fairy in the fashion of Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell, complete with wings and mystical powers. And Lil wasn’t just any fairy, she was the fairy chosen to be Cinderella’s fairy godmother.

But this is a Cinderella story that strays far from the innocuous, bubbly Disney version. At first glance at the book’s gorgeous cover, I thought maybe I could pass the book along to my 9-year-old niece, but as I read more changed my mind. I realized this is no light fairy tale, though it truly is the tale of a fairy. This fairy tale is more of the Grimm Brothers sort.

Lil is a tragic, heartbroken figure. She’s a person broken in spirit who hasn’t given up hope for redemption for past wrongs. She leads a double life: On one hand, she’s a knowledgeable bookshop assistant who ekes out a meager existence in a rent-controlled apartment; On the other, she’s a lonely, outcast creature who once did something so heinous as to lose the keys to the kingdom, so to speak.

Desperately, Lil wants to redeem herself — something she feels could possibly take her back to the fairy world, to the sister she lost at a young age and dearly misses.

The opportunity presents itself in the form of a good deed of sorts for Lil’s boss, a dashing Prince Charming of a bookshop owner who’s unlucky in love. Lil encounters and has an instant connection with Veronica, an artsy type who may the perfect young woman for him, at the shop and arranges for them to have a magical date to an actual society ball.

But the story is not as light and sweet as it may sound. There’s an underlying despair in Lil’s character, in her story. As much as we want her to be redeemed from her discgrace, we begin to doubt her credibility. But we are already, as they say, enchanted by this story.

Apparent are Turgeon’s sheer imagination, exquisite and colorful language and descriptions and ability to generate momentum within the story.

She reminds us that life, after all, is no fairy tale.
And though the world may be cruel, there is hope.

*Full disclosure: Carolyn Turgeon went to my high school (dear old State College Area Senior High School in State College, Pa.), graduating the year before I did. We were acquainted then, but didn’t stay in touch over the past two decades. I recently reconnected with Carolyn through a popular social networking site and was pleasantly surprised to learn she is a full-time author of marvelous and magical books (Her first novel, "Rain Village," went to print in 2006. Learn more at her website). Turgeon is quite the blogger as well: Check out The Astonishing Blog.

The Whole World Over: A Novel by Julia Glass

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This novel by the National Award Book winning author of The Three Junes, Julia Glass, tells the story, primarily, of pastry chef Greenie Duquette and her unlikable psychoanalyst husband, Alan. What I especially enjoyed was the story being told through the eyes of four different but connected characters: Greenie, Alan, Walter (Greenie’s gay restaurateur friend) and Saga (a woman trying to carve out a life for herself after a massive brain injury). The stories start in New York City but follow the unhappy couple to Santa Fe for a bit.

I enjoyed discovering and unraveling the mysteries of the interesting and diverse characters in The Whole World Over. However, (spoiler alert) I have to say I felt somewhat cheated and certainly manipulated when, after 500 pages (the book, by the way, has been described as "extravagantly long" at 562 pages) of painstaking character development on not only these four storylines but also those of corollary characters, the book suddenly turns into a story about/is interrupted by 9/11. And I do realize that 9/11 did just rip through the lives of New Yorkers (and everyone) in a split second, it’s just not what I expected of this novel's denouement. An example of the "manipulation" would be when poor, brain-injured Saga gets trapped in Manhattan with an inability to understand why the sky is raining papers and ash, why people are running through the streets and gaping up at where the Twin Towers once stood.

Suddenly, all of the intertwined stories are just prologue to this horrible chapter in our nation’s history.

Still, it was a complex and compelling story. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of whatever talented chef Greenie was cooking: From apricot scones to lamb seared in ancho chili paste on polenta with two chutneys: pear & mint.

You can tell Glass is a foodie.

Also, you can tell I’m writing this before dinner.




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Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Anyone who has worked in a "cubicle city" will see the humor and genius in Joshua Ferris’ novel "Then We Came to the End."

In a phrase that mimics the cadence and portent of "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times," Ferris begins his tale with "We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of us liked everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything."

The story is told from the anonymous "we" point of view until, about half-way through the 385-page book, it turns into a first-person account of one of the characters, returning to the collective "we" to finish up.

The "we" speak, meant to imitate the way corporations view themselves in the first-person plural, is effective in communicating the way, in large companies, there is a collective mentality, and also that there are cliques. There are the cool kids and the geeks, those on their way up and those on their way down, the dedicated and the non-caring.

Everpresent to everyone is the constant threat of layoffs.

Not long ago, I worked for a large company where I had my own "cube" in the middle of a large room. In the corners of the room were the offices, complete with coveted windows and doors that could be shut, of the higher-ups. On the edges of the room were the slightly larger cubes of the soon-to-be higher ups. And in the middle, with the shortest and farthest away from the windows cubicles, were the peons like me. Personalities ran the gamut, and with such close quarters we were exposed to each other’s quirks. To my right was a colleague who constantly talked to his wife on the phone, using (quite audible to everyone in the vicinity) wince-causing babytalk and kissing noises. Across the aisle was a guy who spent most of his workday on Jdate. Like most workplaces, it was a group of people with whom you spent a great chunk of your day, but might never choose to associate with otherwise. It was a culture in and of itself.

Ferris had his own experience with corporate culture.

In the reader’s guide at the end of his book, Ferris explains: "I did yeoman’s work in advertising four about three years, and I was fascinated with the behemoth structure in place — the hierarchies, the coded messages, the power struggles. I thought such an awesome, malignant, necessary, pervasive, inscrutable place deserved a novel’s attention."

The "we" of the novel were a group of office buddies whose work had become rather unimportant or overimportant to the point of their inability to act. They are dissolved into the daily grind of coffee breaks, endless meetings, lunch trips, and gossip. And for them, for everyone in their company, layoffs loom large.

The possibility of a layoff is enough to make any worker freak out, as I found in my former cubicle city job. In Ferris’ book, some of the characters go to extremes. A man who feels he’s lost the loyalty of his friends and his grip on reality does something irrevocable. A woman who discovers she has a terminal illness chooses to ignore it and throws herself into her work.

As for the mid-way change in perspective to a first-person narrative, Ferris describes the “interlude” as “the book’s emotional heart. Without it “Then We Came to the End” would have been only an elaborate, if amusing game.” Although it was unexpected and somewhat jarring – all of a sudden you go from the anonymous “we” into someone’s private thoughts and fears - I believe this section was effective in bringing the humanity back to the individual worker. After a bit, the book takes us back to the group perspective, which before had become a bit tedious but now we can view in a new light. And there’s where it “comes to an end.”

Ferris’ book is entertaining, witty, enlightening, observant and true. Recommended for anyone stuck in that cube, with no door and no privacy, under the hum of the fluorescent lights and far from the windows, in the daily grind.






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(It's always fun to see what everyone else is reading.)

WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST-SELLERS

FICTION

1. "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

2. "Eclipse" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

3. "Devil Bones" by Kathy Reichs (Scribner)

4. "The Gypsy Morph" by Terry Brooks (Del Rey)

5. "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

6. "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)

7. "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

8. "New Moon" by Stephenie Meyer (Little Brown for Young Readers)

9. "Silks" by Dick Francis (Felix Francis Putnam)

10. "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski (Ecco)

11. "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" by Sean Williams (Del Rey)

12. "Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Sanction" by Eric VanLustbader (Grand Central Publishing)

13. "Smoke Screen" by Sandra Brown (Simon & Schuster)

14. "The Laughter of Dead Kings" by Elizabeth Peters (William Morrow)

15. "Moscow Rules" by Daniel Silva (Putnam)

NONFICTION

1. "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow (Hyperion)

2. "Stori Telling" by Tori Spelling (Simon Spotlight)

3. "StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup's Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Tom Rath (Gallup Press)

4. "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne (Atria Books/Beyond Words)

5. "The Obama Nation" by Jerome R. Corsi (Threshold Editions)

6. "Six Disciplines Execution Revolution" by Gary Harpst (Six Disciplines Publishing)

7. "Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea" by Chelsea Handler (Simon Spotlight Entertainment)

8. "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" by David Sedaris (Little, Brown)

9. "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" by David Freddoso (Regnery)

10. "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Other's Don't" by Jim Collins (Collins)

11. "Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life" by Spencer Johnson (Putnam)

12. "Fleeced" by Dick Morris & Eileen McGann (Harper)

13. "You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty" by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz (Free Press)

14. "The One Hundred" by Nina Garcia (Collins Living)

15. "Four Hour Work Week" by Timothy Ferriss (Crown)

The Wall Street Journal's list reflects nationwide sales of hardcover books during the week ended last Saturday at more than 2,500 Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Bookland, Books-a-Million, Books & Co., Bookstar, Bookstop, Borders, Brentano's, Coles, Coopersmith, Doubleday, Scribners and Waldenbooks stores, as well as sales from online retailers Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

The River King by Alice Hoffman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I've been a fan of Alice Hoffman's mysterious, magical fiction since high school when I read Turtle Moon - borrowed from my sister's library.

The River King didn't disappoint. Hoffman's lyrical prose drew me in to a story about an enchanted Massachusetts boarding school and the suspicious death of an outcast student in the nearby river.

The appearance of watery ghosts, charmed fish and vengeful black cats were not surprising, given Hoffman's penchant for bringing the otherworldly into the everyday.

But also this is a love story, and not just of one couple. An engaged teacher and a lonely cop get together and sparks fly. A beguiling swimmer and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Passion triumphs over reason.

A good read. I plowed through the last half of the book in one night. This book missed a fifth star because I was disappointed with how tidily and hastily the book ended. I would've liked to learn more about the lovers, the townsfolk, the dead boy's final resting place.


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The Great Man: A Novel by Kate Christensen

My review

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel is not about a great man at all, but the strong, unique and falliable women who surrounded a celebrated but morally weak artist in his life.



After the artist's death, his sister, his wife, his mistress, his grown daughters and his mistress's best friend are reminded of their time with him through the eyes of two biographers writing about him.



Sometimes comical, often biting, The Great Man gives us female protagonists who are grandmothers, or old enough to be grandmothers. And their voices are anything but tedious.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is good beach-reading material for those who like a darker, CSI meets pre-WWII Russia suspense-filled tale. The cold, spare, fast-moving story is a departure from my usual girly wrought-with-feelings-and-emotions lit picks.

The story follows war-hero Leo, a government true-believer under Stalin's regime, through his fall from grace and subsequent scramble to stay alive while trying to crack the case of Russia's first serial killer.

A quick read, but it didn't capture or captivate me.

Written by Tom Rob Smith, whom I want to make fun of for having two monosyllabic first names, it's a first novel and unbelievably detailed as such. Well, he did go to Cambridge after all.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields, Penguin Books, 1993, 361 pp.

Rating: 4 of 5 stars
I think Carol Shields is genius for the way she wove together this tale of a family with roots in rural 19th century Ottawa.

A bit of a slow starter, this one. I tried reading it years ago, got through about 50 pages then put it down. But the "Winner of a Pulitzer Prize" (1995) sticker on the front got me to give it another go.

Sleepy in spots, rich in detail and complex. Told from several multi-generational viewpoints. Sad and ironic.

In the end, you want to defend Daisy Flett, through whose eyes we view the final chapters (illness and death). You want her to find love again. No such luck.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Though it was well-written with Kidd's Southern charm shining through, this novel lacked the magicality that "The Secret Life of Bees" held for me. Not un-worthwhile. A good beach read, I'd imagine. I still find it hard to believe that a woman would leave her seemingly wonderful husband to go roll around in the mud with a hot monk (and that a hot monk was just, you know, willing and available).


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Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

My review

Because there's more to life than business books, and because I read more fiction than books of the business variety, today I'm trying something new and posting a review of my latest read fiction, a book of stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008 by Knopf Canada, 224 pages).

Also, I'll plug my online book club here, which contains my reviews of both regular old books and business books. It's a great way to find new books to read.
Check out my reading list on Goodreads - where you can see what your friends are reading:
http://www.goodreads.com/friend/i?i=LTM2MDcwNTQzNDA6MjU3%0A

Like Lahiri's first collection of stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, each intricately-woven tale is like a gorgeous jewel that you feel you're the first to discover. The theme of "unaccustomed earth" - of families displaced and children who grow up torn between two cultures - pervades each of the stories, none of them very short. I liked that the last three stories are linked and are told from the viewpoint of a girl and boy who meet in childhood then later as adults. It's comforting, compelling to travel with them through the sometimes painful parts of their lives, to meet up with them again, years older, in the next tale. Even if, and especially if, there is no happy ending.

Lahiri's writing is unexpected, rich and stunning. I can't wait 'til her next book.


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