The Grass Might not be Greener

So, if you had to lose your only child, would it be better if "lose" was a euphemism, or if you actually lost your child?  That question is central to The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice.  In The Lemon Orchard, Julia moves to Malibu to house sit for her aunt and uncle who own a lemon orchard.  Julia's life has been in turmoil since her daughter and husband died in a car crash 5 years earlier, and she is ready for a change.  In the orchard, Julia meets Roberto, who was separated from his daughter in the desert when he was trying to illegally cross into the US from Mexico.

Although Julia has to live every day knowing that her daughter has died, she doesn't envy Roberto's uncertainty.  Anything could have happened to his daughter, Rosa.  She could have been abducted by a sex trafficker, she could have been eaten by coyotes, or she could have made it safely to the US, but not known how to find Roberto.  Julia is very sympathetic to the plight of illegal immigrants, and wants to help Roberto find out what happened.

The Lemon Orchard was a page turner, and a great summer book.  I hadn't read anything about Mexican immigrants before, and I enjoyed this introduction.  I would think that anyone who liked Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah would like this book as well. 

I read The Lemon Orchard at the request of Lindsay Prevette of Viking/Penguin books.  No promises were made, no payments were received.  One odd coincidence was that there was a character in this book named "Lion", and a character with the same name in the last book that I reviewed on request, My Education by Susan Choi.  According to the Social Security Baby Name Index, Lion has not made their list of the top 1000 baby names any time in the last 100 years, so it's sort of strange that I've read two books with characters by that name in the last two months.  I'm not sure what book I will read as my "industry requested review" in September, but if there is another Lion, I'll take that as a sign.  Of what, I have no idea.

Next Up:  At Last by Edward St. Aubyn

Still Listening to:  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schein.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this one - hopefully it will improve quickly!

The War Part One

The five main families in Fall of Giants by Ken Follett all approach the World War I from different perspectives.  The Williams family from Wales is forced to confront the reality of war when the son, Billy, is drafted.  Billy's sister, Ethel, finds the war to be an unexpected opportunity to fight for voting rights for women.  The Fitzherberts are a wealthy English family, except that the patriarch is married to a Russian princess.  Earl Fitzherbert is immediately named an officer in the British army, not because of his military expertise, but because of his social rank.  His sister, Maud, also works for the rights of women, and obviously befriends Ethel.  The VonUlrichs are a German family of diplomats, who spend a great deal of time in England prior to the war, but fight for Germany when the war is inevitable.  The Peshkovs are Russian brothers who raised each other after their parents were killed by the Czar's regime, and ultimately find themselves on opposite sides.  Finally, the Dewars are a wealthy American family, with a son working for President Wilson.  In Follett's style, the five families are intertwined in some predictable and in some surprising ways. 

World War I is the backdrop for this story.  As told by these characters, the war was completely avoidable, and seemed to have more to do with rulers being bored and greedy than with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.  The war ultimately showed flaws in the reasoning and strategies of each of the countries involved. 

By the end of the Great War, it is clear that another war is destined to be, due to the sanctions imposed on the losers.  The sanctions, coupled with general civil unrest in Germany and Russia, created a toxic atmosphere, which we all know eventually exploded into World War II.

By the end of the book, it is equally clear that a sequel is destined.  The Williams, Fitzherbert, VonUlrichs, and Peshkovs all have children, who will be just about the right age to fight in World War II.  The Dewar son is a newlywed, and children are surely not far away for that family either.  Although I'm not ready to start it yet, I will add Winter of the World, the second book in the trilogy, to my TBR list.

My favorite characters in Fall of Giants were the Williams family.  I started off really liking the Fitzherberts too, but there were plenty of reasons to like them less by the end of the story.  In some of Follett's earlier books, there have been characters who were just pure evil.  In this one, there is a police officer who is a clearly a bad guy, but he didn't quite rise to the level of evil in World Without End or Pillars of the Earth.  I'm sort of thinking that they may get worse with age, and that by Winter of the World they will really be people to avoid.

I listened to Fall of Giants for the first 2/3 of the book, and then listened and read the last 1/3.  I found that I could read an hours worth of story in about 40 minutes.  John Lee was the audiobook reader, and he did a great job.  He had a distinct voice for each character, with a believable accent, which must have been difficult given all of the nationalities involved.  The book was 985 pages, and the audiobook was 24 hours, so this was clearly a BFB.  I will have more to say about this one when The Typical Book Group gets together to discuss it. 

Next up:  The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice

Next up on CD:  The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine

Patrick in his 40s

In Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn, we rejoin Patrick Melrose several years after the party in Some Hope.  Patrick is now married, and has two children.  The story starts as his older son, Robert, narrates the birth of Patrick's younger son, Thomas.  Patrick and his wife, Mary, want to be sure that their children don't have the same damaged childhood that they had.  Mary's dedication to Thomas in particular drives an enormous wedge between her and Patrick, leaving Patrick feeling like a twice deserted child.

I had expected Mother's Milk to be the story of Patrick's reunion with his mother, Eleanor, and in a way, it was.  When we meet up with Eleanor, she is so feeble that even Patrick can't bring himself to unleash his anger at her.  Eleanor has dedicated her intervening years to philanthropy, which in her case meant allowing a charlatan to take her money and her house in the south of France for a questionable foundation.  Once again, she has left Patrick behind, even as she finds herself depending on him.

Patrick's children are incredibly precocious, and I wouldn't even believe that children like he describes could exist if I didn't know one myself.  My niece, Jane, who is about to turn five would fit right in with the Melrose children.  Toward the end of the book, Thomas, who is three at the time, says "Unfortunately . . .Beatrix Potter died a long time ago."  This is exactly the type of thing that my niece knew and would inform adults of when she was three.  He then goes on to tell a story that includes the sentence "And the ground opened up and California fell into the sea, which was not very convenient, as you can imagine."  I can just see Jane telling that story!  Thankfully she is being raised by more balanced parents than Patrick and Mary.

Mother's Milk is the fourth in St. Aubyn's Patrick Melrose series, and it completes the collection, The Patrick Melrose Novels.   I have spent my summer reading the earlier novels, Never Mind, Bad News and Some Hope, in between my book group assignments and industry requested reviews.   While I was reading them, I came across this great review by Rachel Cooke. It talks a lot about St. Aubyn, and his relation to the Patrick Melrose character.  One thing that I missed about the earlier novels while reading Mother's Milk was that few of the old characters were revisited.  Patrick's close friend, Johnny is back, but hardly anyone else reappears.  Julia is said to be one of Patrick's former girlfriends, but I don't remember reading about her in the earlier stories, and can't search for her name since I'm reading on paper.

The critics seem to have liked Mother's Milk much more than St. Aubyn's earlier novels.  It was short listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2006, and was a NYT Notable book for 2005.  The collection, The Patrick Melrose Novels is a Big Fat Book, with 680 pages, and is also the last book that I needed to complete The Off the Shelf Challenge.  I think that I under promised for that challenge by a little too much, seeing as it is only August.  I will up my goal to 20 books this year, and hope that I will still be able to over deliver.

Next up:  Next I'm going to read Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  I have been listening to it on CD for about three weeks now, and will get through it faster if I can also read a few pages at night.