LAST NIGHT IN MONTREAL by Emily St. John Mandel

Seven year old Lilia had not seen her father in years; then one night, he comes to her Montreal home in the dead of night, takes her in his arms and disappears with her.  They become wanderers, never staying anywhere for long.   In hotel bedside bibles, Lilia writes "I am not missing. Stop searching for me. I wish to remain vanishing. I don't want to go home."
Christopher Graydon is the private detective hired by Lilia's mother to find her.  He becomes obsessed with the case to the point of ignoring his own daughter,  Michaela who is Lilia's age.  Eli lives in New York and is working on his graduate thesis; the topic is dying languages.  Lilia's latest stop was with Eli.  One day, Lilia goes out for the coffee and never returns.

Lilia ends up in Montreal and meets Michaela who then sends Eli a postcard to come and get her. But Michaela refuses to tell Eli exactly where Lilia is until he fills in the blanks about her own father and his relationship with Lilia.

I really enjoyed this book.  The narrative is told from a number of viewpoints - each adding yet another layer to a rich and complex story.  The characters felt real - each with their virtues and each with their flaws.  Discussion about Eli's graduate thesis - on dying languages was fascinating and made me want to research this topic further.  The author nailed the feeling of Montreal in the winter.  This is not a long book, but I suspect I will remember it for a long time.  I am eager to read other works by this author.

TULIPOMANIA - The story of the world's most coveted flower and the extraordinary passions it aroused

When economists need to summon an age of unchecked speculation and financial fecklessness, the Dutch tulip mania is at the top of the list. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s an early example of the vagaries of the stock market.  In the mid-1630s, the Dutch fell in love with tulips. The flower became a status symbol, and the Dutch were all but tripping over each other in a race to conspicuously consume. To satisfy burgeoning demand, speculators began to trade in what were essentially tulip futures; these grew outlandishly complicated and expensive, and on the third of February, 1637, the tulip market collapsed.

The book begins with a history of the origins and cultivation of the tulip in the Ottoman Empire and how it came to be introduced in the Netherlands by botanist Carolus Clusius, who established an extensive garden at the University of Leiden. 

The demand for tulips of a rare species increased so much in the year 1636, that regular markets for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Harlaem, Leyden, Alkmar, Hoorn, and other towns.   The tulip-jobbers speculated in the rise and fall of the tulip stocks.  People of all grades converted their property into cash, and invested it in flowers. Houses and lands were offered for sale at ruinously low prices, or assigned in payment of bargains made at the tulip-mart.

This book was an interesting story of botany and greed and what can happen when the latter triumphs.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME by Mary McGarry Morris

Songs In Ordinary Time was a tough read. Marie Fermoyle is a single mother of three raising her children in 1960's Atkinson, Vermont. Marie has so many strikes against her - she married 'above her station'; her ex is the town drunk and laughingstock; her daughter has an affair with a young priest; her house is rundown. Marie's pride completely prevents her from asking for help or accepting it when it is offered. Marie is overworked, struggling financially and lonely.

The stage is set for the arrival of Omar Duvall, a con man who insinuates himself into the lives of the residents of Atkinson and, in particular, the Fermoyle family. Duvall carries a dangerous secret and Marie's youngest knows all about it. Benji is so desperate to have his mother happy that he hides this knowledge from everyone.

The author does a wonderful job of developing the characters in this book - not just the Fermoyle family and Omar, but many of the residents of Atkinson as well. This book is not a 'page-turner' but it kept me interested until the end.

HALF-BLOOD BLUES by Esi Edugyan

The story of the Jews in the Holocaust is an all too familiar and terrible one.  In 'Half-Blood Blues', Esi Edugyan tells the story of a lesser known but equally persecuted people.  The Hot Time Swingers was a jazz band in Germany in the 1930's.  The members of the band - African Americans from Baltimore, Germans, Jews and a mixed race (mischling) German bond over their love of Jazz.  As this type of music becomes banned in Germany, it becomes dangerous for the musicians to remain there.  One by one, they are arrested or abandon the band for their own safety.  The two Americans and the young black German escape to Paris where they have the opportunity to meet and record music with the great Louis Armstrong.  He immediately recognizes the genius of Hiero, the 19 year old trumpet player.  When the invasion of Paris becomes imminent, the three must find a way to escape.

This book travels back and forth between 1930's Europe and present-day Baltimore, where Sid and Chip now reside.  Hiero's music exists only in a 3 1/2 minute recording.  It is so brilliant that he has a large group of followers.  A documentary is made and Sid and Chip travel back to Europe for the premiere.

The book is told through the eyes of Sid.  Sid is a talented musician - not an inspired one.  Against the backdrop of Europe in the '30's and early '40's he relates the story of the band, their struggles, envy, jealousy, fear and eventually, possibly, redemption.

Hot Blood Blues was shortlisted for nearly every major book award - eventually taking home the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize.  Well deserved!

WALKING THOUGH AND OTHER STORIES by Francine Fleming, Maria Jemmott, Shirley Merith, Manjit Singh and Paula Smellie

Walking Through and Other Stories is a compilation of five short stories by five different authors.  'Buckets of Wonderment' by Manjit Singh takes place in India.  Naina lives a life of struggle in service to a wealthy family.  She dreams of a future of romance and financial security only to find that perfect happiness was right beside her all along.  Shirley Merith writes of a chance encounter on an airplane in 'High Trade'.  Camille is a high powered advertising executive.  Although she welcomes romance, she is a woman who can achieve success and satisfaction through her own efforts.  'Walking Through' by Francine Fleming follows a wonderful narrative by a woman in a seniors' home.  Dahlia tells the story of her life over a series of visits that Megan makes to her father at the home.  Is Dahlia who she seems? Tricia gets a new lease on life when she visits her niece and nephew over the winter holidays in Maria Jemmott's 'A December to Remember'.  In 'Bone Keeper' by Paula Smellie, an elderly Inuit woman who has been raised by a French Canadian couple risks all to travel to northern Quebec to find the family she has never seen.

So, is this collection of stories great literature?  Probably not.  What these authors have done, however, is create characters who are relatable.  Each one had something that I could see in myself and, in the end, I cared about them.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger

I remember being so impressed with this book when I was seventeen years old.  I could identify with Holden - his sense of aimlessness, his sense of entitlement, his sense of alienation.

Fast forward 50 years.  Holden Caulfield is still aimless, entitled and alienated.  I can no longer identify.  (This is the book that inspired Mark David Chapman to shoot John Lennon?  How?)  I'm not sorry I read it again - but I can wait another 50 years to pick it up for the third time.

DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING by Madeleine Thien

The 2016 ScotiaBank Giller prizewinner is a gem of a book.  'Do Not Say We Have Nothing' takes the reader from modern day Vancouver, back to China of the 1960's through the Cultural Revolution and to the uprising at Tianamen Square.

This is not always an easy book to read.  Sometimes I found the timelines confusing and sometimes I had to struggle to work out who was who.  However, the writing is beautiful.  Every day when I picked the book up, I had to remind myself of where I was in the narrative, but whenever I put the book down my thought was, 'This is such a good book!'.  The section on the Tianamen Square uprising, in particular, was so vividly engrossing and I could imagine myself on the sidelines in the students' struggle.

I have put this book aside to read again - it just won't let me go.

ADULT ONSET by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Mary Rose (MR - called Mister by her friends) is a stay-at-home author, watching her two young children while her wife is away directing a play.  This novel (somewhat autobiographical) follows MR during the week that she is alone at home with her two children.  MR carries around a lot of baggage.  She has a complicated relationship with her mother - stemming from her mum's multiple pregnancy losses and the depression that followed.  MR herself suffers from chronic pain in her arm - again related to possible abuse she suffered as a child.  

I could not warm to this character - she lives in her head and is constantly second guessing every thought, every action.  Really, I found her to be about ten kinds of crazy and exhausting to be around.

Ann-Marie MacDonald is one of my favourite authors.  'Fall on Your Knees' was brilliant and the second novel, 'The Way the Crow Flies' was even better for me.  I love her writing style and her complex back stories.  'Adult Onset', however, is definitely my third favourite of her three books.

THE ACB of HONORA LEE by Kate de Goldi

What a lovely book!  Perry is the only child of very, very busy parents.  When one of her scheduled after school programmes falls through they are left scrambling on how to fill Perry's Thursday afternoon.  Perry asks to be allowed to visit her grandmother who lives in an assisted care facility and suffers from dementia.  In order to connect with her Gran (who never remembers her - and thinks she is a boy) Perry decides to make an alphabet book to help her remember their visits.

This is a lovely, beautifully illustrated story about relationships and acceptance.

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN WOMAN by Vanora Bennet

When I read the book, the expression 'You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear' repeatedly came to my thoughts.  This book is basically a Harlequin romance set in the time of Sir Thomas More and Tudor England.  It is the story of Thomas More's ward, Meg Giggs - her education, her interest in medicine, her relationship with her husband (is he who he seems?).  The book is set during a time of religious and political upheaval.

Twice, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger stays in the More home and paints a portrait of the family.  The descriptions of the paintings and the clever descriptions of the hidden meanings in the paintings kept me interested and kept me reading.  I even looked up the two More family paintings on-line and referred to them as I read.

The rest of the book?  The boy meets girl, the unrequited love, the eventual marriage, the second love interest, the happy(ish) ending?  Maybe not so much.

LIBRARY OF SOULS by Ransom Riggs

In Library of Souls, the third and final book in the 'Peculiar Chlldren' series, Jacob has discovered his 'peculiar' power and learns to develop and use it.  The book picks up precisely where the previous one left off.  The children and the ymbrynes have been captured by the wights and Jacob, Emma and Addison (the talking dog) rush to escape the ice fortress and rescue their friends.

Once again, a series of loops allows the group to travel back and forth between modern times and the past - in this case Victorian England - where our heroes discover what really happens to peculiars whose souls have been captured by the villains (who happen to be Miss Peregrine's two brothers).  There is the introduction of an excellent new character - Sharon - a boatman who ferries the group across the river to Devil's Acre.  Sharon serves as navigator, guide, and protector for the group (think 'Charon' of Greek mythology who ferries passengers across the river Styx to Hades).  As Jacob becomes more adept at controlling his peculiar trait, he is able to call upon it throughout to control the group's enemies and, eventually reach a 'happy ending'.

As in the previous books, the narrative is accompanied by a series of vintage postcards from the author's collection.  Here's where this book became a 4 star rather than a 5 star read for me.  In the first two books, the stories seemed to flow hand-in-hand with the illustrations - one enhancing the other.  In this one, I got the feeling that the author had a drawer full of postcards and now needed to figure out how to make the story fit the pictures.  This led to the introduction of characters who contributed nothing to the story - except explain the use of one or another illustration.  I also found the ending to be a bit contrived to give the reader a happy ending.  Still, I don't mind a happy ending and contrived or not, it was still a good read.

A highlight?  The group finds themselves in a convention centre where a Comicon weekend is taking place.  Suddenly, they don't feel so very peculiar.

These are not stand-alone books - to really enjoy them they need to be read as a trilogy and I would very much recommend them.

GOOD KINGS BAD KINGS by Susan Nussbaum

Good Kings, Bad Kings is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction - and deservedly so.

This novel tells the stories, in a series of alternating voices, of the residents and staff of the Illinois Learning and Life Skills Centre - an institution for juveniles with disabilities in Chicago. They are stories of hopes and dreams, of desire for love, for independence, for respect; they are stories of friendship, love and caring despite the odds.
Whether the perspective was from a 'resident' or from a 'staffer' - those feelings are the same. It is also a story of life in a nursing home and the truly horrible conditions that people are forced to endure when desire for profit outweighs desire for caring.

The author uses the book as a platform to shed light onto the challenges faced daily by kids like these. She provides us with some hope in the form of caring staff members, but she does not sugar-coat the dim reality that is faced by disabled youth who have no one to care for them.

Susan Nussbaum succeeds in raising questions of institutionalization by giving a voice to those who are themselves institutionalized.

Since I put this book down I find myself thinking about it often. I would most certainly recommend it and would happily read more by this author.

THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt

The Secret History mimics a Greek tragedy.  Richard Papen, who is studying the Classics is an outsider at a prestigious American college.  He manages to become the sixth student in an Ancient Greek class, whose charismatic teacher normally allows only five students to enrol each year.  The other five students who have been studying together for some time come from a background of wealth and privilege - not at all like Richard's hard-scrabble upbringing. The murder of one of the members of the group is revealed on the first page.  The first half of the book deals with the events leading up to the murder and the murder itself.  In the second half, the remainder of the group must deal with the aftermath of the act.  Their tightly-knit group swiftly declines into fear, recrimination and remorse.

This book could best be described as a psychological thriller.  The unravelling of the group is suspenseful and Donna Tartt is such a good writer that I actually found myself caring about people who would normally cause me to raise my eyebrows at their arrogance and entitlement.  My only complaint?  I would have liked to find out more about their teacher.  There are plenty of hints about his control over his students but ultimately he manages to remain at arms-length and walk away from the situation.

This is a first novel for the author who goes on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.  I'm not surprised - she is brilliant!

THE WEIGHT OF WATER by Anita Shreve

I am generally ambivalent about Anita Shreve's books.  Usually, I really like parts of them but other parts - not so much.  The Weight of Water is the same for me.  Jean is a photojournalist on assignment to cover a 100 year old murder mystery that occurred on Smuttynose - an island off the coat of Maine.  (I looked it up - this murder really occurred)  Accompanying her are her husband, their small daughter, her brother-in-law and his girlfriend.  Five people, occupying space on a small boat for an extended period of time - it magnifies any marital strain, any jealousy, any petty remarks.  A storm is brewing.

The novel bounces back and forth between Jean and her life and the occupants of a very small home on the island of Smuttynose.  Maren and her husband are Norwegian immigrants who, 100 years ago, shared their home with his brother and sister-in-law, her sister and the occassional long-term boarder.  Five people, occupying space in a very small home for an extended period of time - it magnifies any marital strain, any jealousy, any petty remarks. A storm is brewing.  Because of the weather, the men who earn their living on the sea are unable to return home for the night.  Jean discovers a document written by Maren on her deathbed detailing the accounts of the night when an axe murderer entered the house and brutally killed Maren's sister and her sister-in-law while Maren hid in a cave outside the house.

The part of the book about the Norwegian settlers and the murders was extremely interesting.  There has been speculation for the last 100 years whether the convicted murderer was indeed guilty.  Shreve tells a compelling story in which she presents her version of the events leading up to the murders and what she feels happened.  She paints a grim picture of the isolation of these women and the hardships of their daily lives.  She also gives the women character and personality and I was interested in how they coped with their daily lives.

Unfortunately, I did not feel the same way about the modern group.  I did not find that any of these characters had been fleshed out to the point where I cared whether their lives were grim or glamorous.  The book is worth reading, however, for the 'historical' portion of it.

CLOSE YOUR EYES, HOLD HANDS by Chris Bohjalian

Chris Bohjalian has written a heartbreaking story in “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands”.  Emily Shepherd's world has collapsed after the nuclear power plant where both her parents work experiences a meltdown.  People die (including her parents), homes and families are torn apart and the finger pointing begins.  And who better to blame than people who are no longer around to defend themselves?  Emily runs away from the temporary evacuation site and finds herself living on the street.

As has been the case in a number of his other books (Midwives, for example), Bohjalian writes convincingly in the voice of a teenaged girl.  The book is written as if it is Emily's journal - the people who help her along the way and those whom she befriends and helps are well fleshed out;  she speaks of the perils of living on the street and the tricks used to enable a person to survive that experience.

I really liked this book (I am a fan of this author).  Bohjalian puts a sentence together beautifully.  He tells a believable story.  Emily Shepard is a character you can care about.

EARTH'S CHILDREN series by Jean M. Auel

The Earth's Children series are my guilty pleasure and I haul them out to read them every couple of years or so.

A young girl is found after an earthquake and rescued by a pre-historic tribe.  She is well-treated but considered an oddity because of her appearance.  She learns the ways of the medicine woman, she learns to hunt, she has a child.  Not everyone loves Ayla, however, and she is forced to leave the tribe and her child and make her own way.

A young man is journeying with his brother.  They encounter several tribes along the way, settling down with them and learning skills from them until leaving to resume their journey.  The brother dies along the way from a cave lion attack that leaves Jondolar severely injured.  He is rescued and nursed back to health by Ayla, who has settled down in a nearby cave with only the animals she has managed to domesticate for company.

At this point, the series becomes a little like a Harlequin Romance against a pre-historic backdrop.  Boy and girl meet and fall in love.  Neither is able to articulate their feeling for eachother, leading to a series of misunderstandings.  However, they are able to work together and between them manage to invent most of the significant developments of the Stone Age.  Eventually, they realize that their feelings for eachother are mutual.

Ayla and Jondolar continue their journey together.  They meet many other people along the way.  There continue to be misunderstandings, breakups and reconciliations.  The most interesting thing about these books are the descriptions of the lives and customs, the ceremonies and festivals of these stone age people.

I really like the whole series and will probably continue to re-read them every few years or so.

THE CROOKED MAID by Dan Vyleta

This story takes place in Vienna in 1948.  The backdrop is the deNazification of Austria and the turmoil experienced by people trying to find a place for themselves after the war.

Robert is a young man searching for the answer to his father's suspicious fall from a top-floor window.  Anna has come to Vienna to search for her husband - a man with secrets of his own - who has disappeared,  They meet on the train to Vienna.

Although their paths rarely cross in the city, they are connected by the people that they encounter along the way - a war-widowed American journalist, a hunchbacked young servant girl, a former POW whose primary purpose is to survive by any means, a detective who yearns for human connection (love?) but accepts that it will never happen.  On the simple face of it, this is a missing persons story;  a murder mystery.  But really, there is no simple face.  These characters are neither good nor evil.  There are no absolutes.  They present themselves as one way to one, another way to others - all are true but none are completely so.  It is an absolute pleasure to read this book and see how the author strips away layer after layer leaving us finally (perhaps) with a semblance of truth.

This novel was short listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2013.  It lost to Lynn Coady's short story collection 'Hell Going' (another excellent book).  I probably would have voted for 'The Crooked Maid'.

THE BOOK OF RUTH by Jane Hamilton

Ruth is a small-town young woman with not too much going for her.  She works at the local dry cleaner;  she and her husband live with her mother;  she goes bowling on a Saturday night.  Ruth's Aunt Sid has made a life for herself as a musician and teacher and their written correspondence gives Ruth a glimpse into life outside her small town.

The author has a beautiful writing style.  She paints a picture of a complicated mother-daughter relationship and a troubled marriage as seen through Ruth's eyes.  She has created a character who put me in mind of Rohinton Mistry's two beggars in 'A Fine Balance' - no matter how life kicks you in the teeth, you accept and carry on because, well, what else is there to do?

Toward the end of the book, a family tragedy changes Ruth's life - perhaps for the better.  But I never really got the feeling that she felt she needed to be saved.

I liked this book rather a lot.  It's pretty slow moving, but every page can be savoured.

THE PAINTED GIRLS: A NOVEL by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Painted Girls is a good book, with interesting characters.  It is a novel about the three Van Goetham sisters in Paris of the 1880's.  They are exceedingly poor and struggle daily for the most basic subsistence.

The oldest, Antoinette, used to be one of the petit rats, one of the little girls hired by the ballet. Now she does walk-on roles in the Opera, trying to help her mother, an absinthe-addicted laundress, support her younger sisters. She's also in love with a young man who she believes loves her truly, but her sister believes is dangerous. Her younger sister Marie is just starting at the ballet as a petit rat.  She is talented and, while not beautiful, is chosen by the artist Edgar Degas as model and muse. The youngest sister, Charlotte is an excellent dancer, and follows her sisters into the Opera.

The book goes back and forth between chapters narrated by Antoinette and Marie.  We follow their efforts to survive, to keep going, to have enough to eat - no matter what it takes.

It wasn't until I read the author's notes that I realized that the Van Goethem sisters actually existed - that Marie was, in fact, the model for Degas' sculpture 'Little Dancer, aged fourteen';  that Charlotte had a successful ballet career that lasted until 1954;  that Antoinette's lover (although they never met in real life) was the defendant in a sensational murder trial.

I found this book to be well researched, the characters are beautifully drawn.  Nothing is sugar coated - it was a tough and often unfair life.  There are no 'AHA' redemptive moments, where someone realizes the error of her ways.  There is no knight in shining armour to offer true love and a way out.   There is, however, the thread of loyalty, devotion and sisterly love throughout.

JULIET by Anne Fortier

When Julie Jacobs' aunt died, she received a letter that reveals her name is actually Giulietta Tolomei, a descendant of the real-life families that inspired Romeo and Juliet.  Julie's twin sister inherits everything; Julie is told to go to Italy to find a safety deposit box.  Julie has always had a great love for the work of Shakespeare and for the play 'Romeo and Juliet' in particular.  While in Italy, Julie discovers her family history and finds love.

This book was very confusing to me.  It is as if three different authors collaborated on it - and not particularly well.  The story of the modern day Julie, her sister Janice, and the modern day love interest 'Romeo' felt way too contrived to me.  The author used modern day slang that felt very forced.  I simply did not buy into the love at first sight angle at all and the characters were very two-dimensional.  The 'historical' component of the book was, in contrast, beautifully written and very interesting and far more believable than Shakespeare's play (I must disclose here that 'Romeo and Juliet' has never been a favourite of mine.)  Then, suddenly, the book turned into a suspense thriller - where did that come from?

Overall, this book is probably fine as a quick read without much substance - but it won't stay on my bookshelf.

ROAD TO VALOUR by Aili and Andres McConnon

I am a big fan of The Tour de France .  Gino Bartali, the Italian cycling legend (and subject of this biography) holds the distinction of winning the Tour twice and the record of the longest time span (10 years) between wins.

The authors, Aili and Andres McConnon chronicle Bartali's life - from an impoverished childhood in rural Tuscany to his first triumph in the 1938 Tour de France.  As World War II ravaged Europe, Bartali undertook dangerous missions to help those being targeted in Italy, including sheltering a family of Jews and smuggling counterfeit identity documents in the frame of his bicycle.  When the Tour resumed after the War, Bartoli came back to win the 1948 Tour de France - this time as the underdog - in an exhilarating performance that helped to heal and inspire his country in the aftermath of the war.

THE PERFUME COLLECTOR by Kathleen Tessaro

Grace Munroe lives the life of a socialite in the 1950's - parties, shopping, charity events - all on the arm of a husband who expects the perfect wife to advance his career and their social standing.  Eva D'Orsey is a young orphan in the 1920's - a poor chambermaid with a head for numbers at a hotel that caters discretely to the whims and wishes of the rich and famous.
Not long after Grace learns of her husband's infidelity, she receives a letter from a solicitor in Paris informing her that she is the sole heir to the fortune of Eva D'Orsey - a woman who is a complete stranger to her.  Grace travels to Paris to find out about the woman who has changed her life.

Kathleen Tessaro takes us through the lives of these two women and eventually discloses the connection.  (Non-spoiler - although the author does not disclose the connection until late in the book, it is pretty easy to figure out early on).  Through the contacts made in the hotel, Eva eventually becomes the muse for one of the great perfumers in the world.  Easily the best thing about this book for me were the descriptions of the creation of perfumes.  In this day and age when every pop star, reality star and people famous for doing nothing are flooding the market with their 'signature scents', it is extremely interesting to read what a serious, creative process creating a memorable scent really is.  The book is worth reading for this alone.

Tessaro has written a very readable and enjoyable book.  It has been labelled as historical fiction, but I would have to put it in the 'chick-lit' category.  It's a good vacation read, but I'd pack it in my carry-on bag to read on the plane.

STRONG MEDICINE  by Arthur Hailey

I picked this book up in a thrift shop because I remembered reading and enjoying it years ago.  I thought it would be like reading an episode of 'Mad Men' - all retro and the like.

It wasn't actually anything like that.  I didn't get that 'retro' feel because it wasn't.  There were no pretty lights and shadows to cover up the fact that this book was misogynistic, homophobic and racist and that, in 1984 that was okay.  I suppose the storytelling was interesting enough - it follows the story of Celia Jordan - a woman who, against all odds, rises to the top of her profession in the pharmaceutical industry.  We follow the development of new drugs - the testing, the approval, the success and occasionally the spectacular failure.  I'm thinking that a modern retelling of a story on this topic could very well be worth reading - this version is no longer the correct vehicle for this story.

WORLD'S FAIR by E.L.Doctorow

I am always delighted to pick up and re-read a book by E.L.Doctorow - easily one of my favourite authors.  Once again, this book did not disappoint.  Doctorow is a literary time traveller who takes us with him - in this case to New York in the 1930's.  World's Fair feels like a thinly disguised autobiography.  The author was able to tell a coming-of-age story through the eyes of Edgar, the youngest child of the family.  Occasionally, he includes chapters narrated by other adult family members to help underscore how the impressions of a boy are not always what he thinks they are.

Edgar's dad was a charming dreamer, losing money hand over fist and firmly attached by the apron strings to his own family.   His mum was too harried and too overworked to wring much enjoyment from life.  Still, Edgar is reassured that they loved him and that he loved them right back. It’s probably that way with most families. When all the grudges and grievances wear down, what remains is the love.

Towards the end of World’s Fair, Edgar enters an essay-writing competition on the theme of the typical American boy. “The Typical American Boy is not fearful of Dangers,” he writes. “If he is Jewish he should say so.  If he is anything he should say what it is when challenged.” In a more sappy coming-of-age story this effort would win first prize and its author be hailed as a literary star in the making. In the real world, though, magic takes softer, more subtle forms.  So no, Edgar’s earnest, heartfelt essay can’t mend his parents’ failing marriage or save his dad’s floundering music shop.  But it does earn honourable mention in the local paper and affords the family the opportunity to attend the World's Fair in its waning days.

For me, this is a quiet little perfect book.

THE MYSTERIES by Robert McGill

A young woman disappears from a small town in northern Ontario.  The author teases at the knot that holds the mystery together until it is loosened and each strand adds a detail or two.

Robert is a young traveller who finds himself in the small Ontario town of Sunshine, in the middle of a party at the town's wildlife park.  A stranger has given him a yellow notebook and told him to deliver it to an Alice Pedersen. But Alice Pedersen disappeared two years ago.

Six months before Robert's arrival, human remains have been recovered from the local shoreline.  Stoddard Fremlin, the hockey coach, has been arrested on suspicion of murder.  Daniel Barrie, who was having an affair with Alice and who left for England immediately after her disappearance, has suddenly returned.  Rocket de Witt, a rising hockey star with deep secrets of his own and one of the last people to see Alice alive, has left town. Amid all this, there is a tiger on the loose.

Throw in the wildlife park owner who may have built his animal sanctuary on sacred native burial grounds, an eccentric hoarder and an insurance investigator who may be getting a little too personal with this case and you have an absorbing read that kept me engaged to the very end. Told from the perspective of several of the townsfolk, the mystery of Alice's disappearance slowly unravels, at the same time revealing the dark and carefully kept secrets of the inhabitants of Sunshine.

UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

On July 24, 1984, Dan and Ron Lafferty murdered their sister-in-law and her baby girl.  Why?  Because god told them to do so.

Jon Krakauer provides a fascinating look at the religious environment that created the brothers.  The author begins with a history lesson.  Her follows the creation of the Mormon Church by Joseph Smith two centuries ago and traces how the religion has become what we know today.  The family were members of a fundamental branch of the LDS Church - a branch that broke away from the mainstream church and was horrified at the direction the church was taking - away from the comfort of patriarchal monotheism, away from the subjugation of women, away from the tenets of polygamy.  The brothers blamed Brenda Lafferty for speaking up for herself and other women.   The book is a terrifically interesting blend of history and true crime.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" isn't so much an indictment of Mormonism (mainstream OR fundamentalist) as it is an illustration of how excessive faith, or extremism in ANY religion can lead to corruption, immorality, and unreason.  Towards the end of the book, the author provides a quote from a former member of a fundamentalist branch of the LDS, "If you want to know the truth, I think people within the religion are probably happier, on the whole, than people on the outside  But some things in life are more important than being happy, like being free to think for yourself".