The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

 First sentence:

"'In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of'"

Description:

"In 1936, the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet--but very 'American'--triumph. 'You are born her, they will not hurt you'--so the grave digger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true.

In The Gravedigger's Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys." - from the inside flap

My thoughts:

This is a book that will probably stay with me for a long time. I admired Rebecca and the way she found strength and purpose in her life. Despite, or maybe, because of her early years, she made sure she was always there for her son, and, most importantly, knew when to drop back as he found his own way in the world. 

Date read: 4/4/2025
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5*/5

ISBN-10: 0061236829
ISBN-13: 9780061236822
Imprint: Ecco
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2013
# of pages: 582
Binding: Hardcover
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Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

First sentence:

"Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm."

Description:

"We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition. . .

Cayce Pollard is a new kind of prophet--a world-renowned 'coolhunter' who predicts the hottest trends. While in London to evaluate the redesign of a famous corporate logo, she's offered a different assignment: find the creator of the obscure, enigmatic video clips being uploaded on the Internet--footage that is generating massive underground buzz worldwide.

Still haunted by the memory of her missing father--a Cold war security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001--Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokyo to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing--and compelling--as the twenty-first century promises to be. . ." -- inside the front cover

My thoughts:

This is an interesting book about finding meaning in the real and virtual worlds. Cayce Pollard navigates both worlds as she searches for the creator of a set of digital footage which may or may not be a finite piece of art. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Spook Country.

Date read: 3/19/2025
Series: Blue Ant, #1
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0425192938
ISBN-13: 978042519293
Imprint: Berkley Publishing Group
Publisher: Penguin Group
Year: 2004 (this edition)
# of pages: 356
Binding: Trade Paperback
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High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver

First sentence:

"A hermit crab lives in my house."

Description:

"Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven.

In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.

In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction."  -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir. Kingsolver gives the reader a glimpse into her life and the many aspects that inspire her writing. 

Date read: 2/17/2025
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5*/5

ISBN-10: 0060172916
ISBN-13: 9780060172916
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 1995
# of pages: 270
Binding: Hardcover
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Claimed by Shadow by Karen Chance

First sentence:

"Any day that starts off in a demon-filled bar in a casino designed to look like Hell isn't likely to turn out well."

Description:

A recent legacy made Cassandra Palmer heir to the title of Pythia, the world's chief clairvoyant. It's a position that usually comes with years of training, but Cassie's circumstances are a little. . .unusual. And now she's stuck with a whopping amount of power that every vamp, Fey, and mage in town wants to monopolize or eradicate--and that she herself doesn't dare use.

What's more, she's just discovered that a certain arrogant master vampire has put a geis on her--a magical claim that warns off any would-be suitors, and might also explain the rather. . .intense attraction between them. But Cassie's had it with being jerked around, and anyone who tries it from now on is going to find out that she makes a very bad enemy. . .." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this paranormal romantic thriller. Cassandra's journey into the world of the Fey both physically and mentally kept my attention throughout. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Embrace the Night.

Date read: 2/3/2025
Series: Cassandra Palmer, #2
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0451461525
ISBN-13: 9780451461520
Imprint: ROC
Publisher: New American Library
Year: 2007
# of pages: 374
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Postcards by E. Annie Proulx

First sentence:

"Even before he got up he knew he was on his way."

Description:

"Postcards is the story of Loyal Blood, a man who spends a lifetime on the run from a crime so terrible it renders him forever incapable of touching a woman. The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home -- not realising that in his absence disaster had befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

When I first read the description, I wasn't sure I would like this book. By the end, as I found myself wanting to know what happens next, I came to love it. Loyal Blood, and his family, don't have an easy life. While they often make both right and wrong decisions, they live their lives authentically. Proulx's descriptions brought me into the scenes, both beautiful and plain. It's a slow read, but well worth it.

Date read: 1/19/2025
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5*/5

ISBN-10: 0006546684
ISBN-13: 9780006546689
Imprint: Flamingo Books
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 1994
# of pages: 340
Binding: Trade Paperback
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Murder in the House by Margaret Truman

First sentence:

"'The chaplain will offer the prayer.'"

Description:

"He died beneath the Statue of Freedom, clutching a 9-mm pistol in his hand. But as dawn rose, the politician would die again--in a hail of rumor and character assassination.

Now one man suspects the shattering truth: that the congressman's suicide was a carefully planned murder. In the heart of the free world, a furious struggle begins: to reclaim a man's innocence, expose a woman's lie, and stop a chilling conspiracy of murder that reaches halfway around the world. . . ." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I liked this mystery set in Washington, DC and Moscow in the mid 1990s. There were lots of events, both criminal and personal as we learn what happened to Representative Paul Latham and why. One criticism was the late explanation of a character's actions and where they have been. I liked learning what happened to this character, but I wished the explanation happened sooner in the plot. 

Date read: 1/9/2025
Book #: 1
Series: Capital Crimes, #14
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0449001725
ISBN-13: 9780449001721
Imprint: Fawcett Crest
Publisher: Ballantine
Year: 1997
# of pages: 344
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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The Wild Wood by Charles de Lint

 First sentence:

"...like music entangled in a thorny embrace, leaf-sigh, branch-rustle."

Description:

"Back in print for the first time in ten years, this original novel stands among the finest of Charles de Lint's early works. Eithnie is a young painter who is acclaimed by the art world until the critics start noticing that her work has lost the animating passion that had set her apart from the crowd. She returns to her cabin in Canada's remote woods, hoping to find a place where she can seek solitude and focus on her art.

At first, Eithnie's muse remains elusive, but then beautiful and disturbing creatures start slipping into her sketches unbidden. The following days bring strange visitors bearing cryptic messages indicating that Eithnie may be bound by a promise made in a forgotten, magical childhood. The world of Faerie is clearly reaching out to her for help, and her ability to figure out what they need may mark the difference between their survival . . .and their doom." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this book about different world interacting - the "real" world and the "faerie". Eithnie, an artist, becomes entangled in both as she wrestles with finding her muse and trying to figure out whether the faces she sees in the woods are real or not. I liked de Lint's descriptions of the woods and the sounds Eithnie hears as she moves through them. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Something Rich and Strange by Patricia McKillip.

Date read: 12/31/2024
Series: Brian Froud's Faerielands, #1
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3*/5 = good

ISBN-10: 0765302586
ISBN-13: 9780765302588
Publisher: Orb Book, Tom Doherty Associates
Year: 1994
# of pages: 205
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