Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

A quiet and poignant coming of age novel set in the 1950's.

This is the story of a young Irish girl and her journey to America (Brooklyn). She does not go by choice, but once there, finds herself with new choices and new experiences and after a heart breaking homesickness, enjoys her life and looks forward to the opportunities it presents.

An unfortunate experience calls her home and she then settles back into that life in Ireland, and she could easily stay back there again, except for a tie that has "wed" her to America. I won't give anything away but will say that I really loved this story and the writing.

The Servants' Quarters by Lynn Freed

Touching and delicate story....very different kind of story that has the Holocaust as a focus. That theme is there, but not front and center like so many other books dealing with the aftermath and after effects of the war. It's behind the scenes, under the surface, but very much there all the same.

The fact that the protagonist is Jewish is rarely mentioned and there is no religion being practiced in the house at all. Only once, in reference to her friend, Ruth, do holidays and traditions get mentioned at all.

But Cressida's nightmares and the scars on the face and body of Mr. Harding are the vestiges of the war and the death and destruction even if the war is not described at all. Even those who did not fight or experience the war are affected.

The story takes place in South Africa, but the setting plays little role in the story. Only the servant Phineas reminds the reader that the setting is in Africa.

I highly recommend this book. It is quite short, but the author packs a lot into those 220 pages.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This book was captivating! A bit long, in the end, I felt, but I read it really fast. It was a compelling and intriguing story with intelligence and real storytelling. There were lots of characters to keep track of, but the author provided diagrams to make it easy.

The characters were great, especially Lisbeth Salander. I wanted to get to know her better. Apparently, she was based on the story Pippi Longstocking, but she is quite modernized, as a punkster who is also an amazing hacker and investigator.

Unfortunately, the author died in 2004 right before delivering the manuscripts for his novels. So there will be no more after the next novel, that was just released.

A great summer read!

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

This Holocaust novel is quite different from others I have read. It is difficult because of its almost sympathetic view of an SS officer who saves a young woman and her daughter (born out of wedlock - and the father was Jewish). He is a brute - that is quite clear, but there are passages that paint a human picture of him and his fears, insecurities, and frailties. But at the heart of the novel are the two women, Anna, the mother, and her daughter Trudie, who live because the SS officer takes Anna as his mistress and rather than fight it, Anna accepts the situation to save her daughter. She also aids the Resistance, through her association with a baker woman, who supplies the Nazis with baked goods and bread, while gaining access to the camps in order to assist the prisoners. Both women, mother and daughter, are so damaged and the novel charts their journey from Weimer to Minneapolis and the course their lives take and their quest to make sense of it. Anna, tries to obliterate her past and shield her daughter from the trauma, while Trudie needs to understand what happened in order to make sense of who she is.

Trudie is a history professor and takes on a Rememberance Project, wherein she interviews Germans who lived during the war. she gives them the opportunity to talk about what happened and in a way, relieve themselves of the guilt associated with the Holocaust. Through these interviews she meets Ranier, a Jew, who tricks her in a way, by responding to her quest to find Germans willing to tell their stories, and then he tells his tragic and heart wrenching story. This devastates Trudie but she seeks his forgiveness and he and she get involved in a brief, but deep relationship.

The story wraps up in a neat way - almost too neat - but I enjoyed the ending and the ultimate "resolution" of the mother-daughter conflict.

Books Started and Put Down

I hate to do this but sometimes you just have to. I started two books - both good - but put them down before I finished and started something else. One of them was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murikami. I really really like it and I will finish it but it just was taking too long and I wasn't sure it was going anywhere.

The other is the Age of Shiva by Manil Suri and I like that. too, but wanted something different. So, I am now nearly done with Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum, an historical novel about the Holocaust and the German women who abetted the Nazis to save themselves and their families. It's a fast read and very gripping.

I am in California on vacation right now and reading a lot.