About the Book:

The critically acclaimed author of The Madonnas of Leningrad (“Elegant and poetic, the rare kind of book that you want to keep but you have to share” –Isabel Allende), Debra Dean returns with The Mirrored World, a breathtaking novel of love and madness set in 18th century Russia. Transporting readers to St. Petersburg during the reign of Catherine the Great, Dean brilliantly reconstructs and reimagines the life of St. Xenia, one of Russia’s most revered and mysterious holy figures, in a richly told and thought-provoking work of historical fiction that recounts the unlikely transformation of a young girl, a child of privilege, into a saint beloved by the poor.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is a book that I received from the publisher as an advance copy read.  I think the original offer was initiated due to my love of the previous novel of Dean’s I had reviewed – The Madonnas of Leningrad.  Consequently, I was looking forward to this work to see where Dean goes from here.  Now, having read the book, I find myself with mixed responses — and for some of those responses I’m not even really sure why.  The story is a fascinating topic — set in Russia; a setting I always love to read about.  Dean’s love of the Russian people and place resonates in this book as much as it did in her previous work.  And there is certainly no doubt that Dean’s passion for the Russian world resonates strongly throughout the piece.

But from the beginning there is something disconnected about the entire story.  And I found this disconnected feeling quite frequently distracting.  What I can’t tell is if it is due to the approach in Dean’s writing — or the fact that the primary character of the book is an individual about which there appears to be very little known from the beginning.

The narrator is the first thing I struggled with.  The story is about St. Xenia, of Russia; but the whole thing is narrated in the voice of her cousin.  This is one reason that the book has a disconnected feeling.  Everything is told in the third person removed perspective — making it hard for the reader to connect with the primary character.  Adding to that is the fact that I found the narrator’s character and story more compelling than that of Xenia, herself.  I wanted to hear more about the narrator’s life, marriage, and the impossible world that Dean created around her. But since that wasn’t Dean’s primary focus, I found myself frustrated in that respect.  And yet — if these stories has been broken in two — and not told in tandem — they would have each made a fantastic story.  As it was I felt like they kept competing for dominance with each other.

Another thing that I struggled with was the light weight feel of the story over all.  I felt like this was more of a fairy tale — with little background detail, and almost no insight into the character’s inner thoughts and motivations.  It just never developed much beyond the very basic.  But I am not sure if this is Dean’s fault — so much as that there is very little known about Xenia from the start — as I stated earlier.  I was expecting a significant confrontation between the Tsar and Xenia herself, as a representation between the deep religious culture, and the political climate of the age in Russia.  But I felt like that was only alluded to, and never fully developed.  Once again leaving me frustrated.

Over all, this book provided a great summer read.  It moves quickly, and gives some of the feel of the Russian culture.  It can be read quickly — but it doesn’t demand a lot of effort on the part of the reader.

Tags: Clean Reads, Family, Government, Grief, Historical Fiction, Loss, Love, Russia, Russian History, St. Xenia, Suffering

Category: Clean Fiction, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Promo Book Reviews

About the Book:

In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write “something new–something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald’s finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author’s generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald’s–and his country’s–most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning–” Gatsby’s rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It’s also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby’s quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means–and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. “Her voice is full of money,” Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel’s more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy’s patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

Have you ever had the opportunity to go back and reread something from high school or college — something you had pretty good memories about?  But when you got into it you found yourself wondering what it was about the book that you particularly loved in the first place?  Such was my most recent experience reading this great “American Classic.”  Don’t get me wrong — Fitzgerald demonstrated a masterful ability to present the American society in the change of great transition, and he brought to the forefront the magnitude of what many of those changes meant to the American culture through his impassioned, and deliberately shallow characters.  But I have forgotten what a train wreck of a story this particular book really was.  I know when I originally read it I remember thinking what a great tragic romance — and I seemed to come away seeing Gatsby and Daisy on the same level as the original star crossed lovers — Romeo and Juliet.  Now, with a very different point of view, and a much older understanding I come away from this book shaking my head at some of the subtleties that Fitzgerald presents in this little book.

I was very impressed with the presentation of the irresponsibility of a society that refused to take responsibility for their own actions.  Tom, the man that sets the entire tragedy of events in motion through his taking of a mistress is the great centerpiece of this book.  And while most people feel that the real tragedy is Jay Gatsby — by the end of this read through I wasn’t so sure.  Gatsby was certainly a victim.  However, Tom is the ultimate in all consuming ego.  His perception of there being nothing of value beyond his own world of money, and his concept that money can buy anything and everything that he could ever want or need is the base of this immoral character.  And it is through everyone of his immoral actions that the ultimate tragedy — the deaths of those that he was trying to hold on to that lead to the overwhelming conclusion of this horrifying tale.  And yet, it was the irony that of everyone he managed to destroy — Wilson, his mistress, Gatsby, and I think to a degree even Daisy’s love for him — the most unforeseen of events were the result of Daisy’s actions — and not those of Tom.  Tom could never destroy the man he wanted out of his wife’s life — only Daisy had the capacity to do that.  And it was through her lack of moral character that she managed to accomplish that feat in spades.

I was also really impressed with the presentation of the dramatic divisions that exist within the American society.  And while we like to claim that we are a society that grew without classes, this book is a strong testament to the falsity of that claim.  Money, race, moral character, geography, professions — all of these and more we have used to divide our unusual society into one of sharp division, and vast diversity.  We may like to claim that anyone can become a millionaire in this country — but that doesn’t exactly tear down the barriers that exist, and that will continue to keep us divided from those that don’t consider us worth of belonging to their perceived group of social elite.  Gatsby is probably one of the greatest examples of a “lame duck” character that I have ever seen.  Everything he does — everything he is — will never be good enough to buy him into the one home that he wants desperately to be invited into.  And yet — as Nick reminds him on more than one occasion — that one home may not be as great a place to be as Gatsby always seemed to believe.  Combine that with the overwhelming feeling of fatalistic foreboding that exists in this book, beginning to end, and I came away amazed that this is given to high school students to read — when they have not yet lived long enough to understand the subtleties that are going on in the back story.

Tags: America, Classic Literature, Classics, Family, Friendship, Historical Fiction, Loss, Love, Morality, Romance

Category: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Romance

About the Book:

“Paul Iverson’s life changes in an instant. He returns home one day to find that his wife, Lexy, has died under strange circumstances. The only witness was their dog, Lorelei, whose anguished barking brought help to the scene – but too late.” “In the days and weeks that follow, Paul begins to notice strange “clues” in their home: books rearranged on their shelves, a mysterious phone call, and other suggestions that nothing about Lexy’s last afternoon was quite what it seemed. Reeling from grief, Paul is determined to decipher this evidence and unlock the mystery of her death.” “But he can’t do it alone; he needs Lorelei’s help. A linguist by training, Paul embarks on an impossible endeavor: a series of experiments designed to teach Lorelei to communicate what she knows. Perhaps behind her wise and earnest eyes lies the key to what really happened to the woman he loved.” As Paul’s investigation leads him in unexpected and even perilous directions, he revisits the pivotal moments of his life with Lexy, the brilliant, enigmatic woman whose sparkling passion for life and dark, troubled past he embraced equally.

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is a book that I wouldn’t feel very comfortable giving a great recommendation for.  There is only one word that I could use to describe this book — OBSESSION!

The main character in this book — Paul Iverson — is the poster child for an obsessive disorder.  If this man were a real person, I would strongly be suggesting serious psychological help.  He is obsessed with his wife’s death, he is obsessed with teaching a dog to speak like a human, he is obsessed with what he could have done to change anything, and he is obsessed with finding answers to the unanswerable.  The man is simply obsessed.  Even for a character that is going through the grieving process — the proportions of his demonstration of obsession go way beyond anything normal, or healthy.

His obsession with his wife’s death is so sever that he manages to convince himself that it was a suicide — and that he is going to prove it no matter what.  (Hence the reason he decides to teach a dog, the only witness to the death, to talk.)  Excluding the fact that if one was going to choose suicide — falling out of an apple tree would not be choice one — since there is no guarantee that the fall would be fatal.  This obsession is a very descriptive demonstration of how unhealthy this state can be, and the ends that it can lead an individual to.

His obsession with teaching a dog to talk goes to extremes that are beyond even the realm of reason.  This man goes so far as to seeking a means to surgically alter a dog, so that it has the ability to speak like a human would!  I am not even going to try to figure out how the author expected a dog to have the ability to talk — when the character failed to teach the dog even the most basic of human sounds.

Overall I found the book to be very poorly thought out, and even worse in its presentation.  I was horrified at the descriptions of the surgical alteration of the dogs — and I even began to wonder how does someone even conceive of something like this! Basically, I just would not recommend this book.  The plot is weak at best, and for dog lovers this book could easily be considered a crime.

Tags: Family, Grief, Loss, Suffering

Category: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense/Thriller