Book Review: Dear Mr. Knightley

Dear Mr. Knightley. Katherine Reay. Thomas Nelson Publishers, November 5, 2013. Trade Paperback, Library Binding, and e-book, 336 pages.

Reviewed by Marie Becker.

The hipness of Austenmania remains indefatigable almost twenty years after Colin Firth redefined Mr. Darcy on the BBC. But perhaps nothing illustrates Austenmania so much as the growing number of texts that question whether there can be too much of a good thing.  Shannon Hale’s Austenland, the ITV mini-series Lost in Austen, and even Bridget Jones herself have been part of a dialogue about when Austenphilia becomes an obsession. Dear Mr. Knightley initially invokes the same question—at what point does taking refuge and solace in books inhibit us from venturing outside the comforts of the covers to take on real life?

However, despite the Austen-centric title and the plethora of quotes within, the real literary ancestor of this book is Jean Webster’s 1912 epistolary novel, Daddy-Long-Legs. It’s been a good twenty years since I last read the story of Judy Abbott, its main character, but the extent to which Dear Mr. Knightley maps onto it is evident from the first few pages. Updating a classic of literature can be tricky—mores and tropes, which are self-evident in one era, can feel forced, awkward, or outright inappropriate in another. 

Dear Mr. Knightley’s faithful adherence to Daddy-Long-Legs creates some dissonant moments, including the set-up itself in which a mysterious “foundation” gives the main character, Samantha, a grant earmarked for an elite graduate program she doesn’t particularly want to be in for which she must “pay” in personal letters to the donor under the pseudonym of one of Austen’s romantic leads. This set-up is potentially either bewildering or cringe-inducing to anyone who has slogged their way through grad school applications and student loans (or worked in HR). While Judy Abbott belongs squarely in the school of plucky and optimistic female orphans, Sam, a former foster child returning to the group home where she spent her adolescence, is far more psychologically fragile and much less resilient. Her character is often frustratingly opaque, less because of her constant citations than due to her fretfulness, naiveté, and harsh judgments of people based on little more than her literary stereotyping. I sympathize with Sam’s anxiety, but occasionally wonder what she makes of Austen’s delicately-wrought ironies. Austen is nothing if not funny. Interestingly, Reay notes that her upcoming work features a heroine with a sharper sense of humor.

On at least two occasions, Sam made literary allusions to ongoing scenes that baffled me—not because I didn’t recognize the scenes, but because I frankly couldn’t see the tenuous connections she was making between her life and the cited scene. Again, some of this is almost inherent in the literal-minded modernization the book is shaped around, but considering that Sam is surrounded by writers and professors, I longed for someone to challenge her to actually interpret the words she lives by and not just quote them willy-nilly.  Sam’s problem is not so much that she has tried to organize her worldview by books but that she has a flat, narrow thinking about what she has read. Even Sam’s growing religious feelings, an aspect which surely demands introspection, feels a bit second-hand, as if she parrots more than she feels without even realizing it herself.

The novel, consisting entirely of Sam’s one-sided correspondence with her mysterious benefactor until the conclusion, follows her through two years of graduate school in which she befriends a prickly adolescent in foster care, finds her voice in reporting on issues relating to child abuse and welfare, dates a shallow man, runs a marathon, and befriends the author of her favorite (non-Austen) novels. But there’s often something a little pat and flat about it; her struggles and epiphanies feel a little bit too easy and external. Her position in the book feels less grounded in hard-earned wisdom than plot contrivance, and in some key ways, I felt the conclusion undercut the sense of independent strength one expects in a coming-of-age novel. I found this particularly troubling in a book, which struggles to fit itself to certain plot exigencies that made sense in 1912 but significantly strip the heroine of agency in 2014. 

As someone who has read entirely too many books and thus addled her brain for real life, many of the concepts in this book had a strong appeal for me, but the execution left me a bit cold. The extent to which Dear Mr. Knightley works is heavily reliant on how appealing one finds Sam and how easily one can look past those contrivances. I struggled with both aspects at points in the novel, finding Sam too often to be self-pitying and passive and certain plot elements either implausible or uncomfortably retrograde.

Reay does have a distinct voice, and there are a handful of charming, vivid descriptions, especially among some of the supporting cast. And of course, her knowledge of and affection for books shines through; there are countless references and tidbits scattered like Easter eggs, which are undeniably fun to spot. Despite my qualms about this particular novel’s arc and heroine, I believe Reay demonstrates real potential in her deft prose that in a novel with fewer self-imposed restraints may sing.

Book Review: Commit to Get Fit

Commit to Get Fit. Laura Dion-Jones. Original Cosmo Girl Press, January 10, 2014, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 284 pages.

Reviewed by Sierra Kay.

Commit to Get Fit by Laura Dion-Jones is an honest, frank and in-your-face assessment of her weight loss journey, providing a road map for the reader to follow. She begins with accounts of people’s perceptions of her—because of her weight—and how those perceptions influenced her decision to change.

The book details a thirty-five day health and wellness program designed to break old bad habits and replace them with personal responsibility. It emphasizes the individual’s role in taking control, and in building a lifestyle that focuses on a healthy diet and consistent exercise.

It was inspiring to read of Dion-Jones’s struggle with an injury that sidelined her, and how determined she was to find the right answers. She was not afraid to see a number of doctors until she had the necessary information. She exemplifies the energy and focus that we need to make a significant lifestyle change.

Commit to Get Fit mixes personal stories and anecdotes with useful, factual information to help guide decision making.  The openness and strength of the author’s voice makes this book easy to recommend, helping readers identify with the author and encouraging them to look at their own choices.  

If you’re looking to make a major life change, whether it’s weight loss or another area of your life, I suggest you pick up a copy of Commit to Get Fit.

Book Review: Painting with Fire

Painting with Fire. K.B. Jensen. Crimson Cloud Media LLC, 2013, Paperback and Kindle, 201 pages.

Reviewed by Mary-Megan Kalvig.

Painting with Fire is the debut novel of K.B. Jensen. Besides being an author, she is also a journalist, reporting mainly about crime in the Chicago suburbs, an experience that most likely helped Jensen write this novel about a woman seeking the truth about a crime.

The novel starts out with a murder and its grisly discovery. Claudia, the woman who discovered the body buried in the snow outside her apartment building, becomes obsessed with figuring out who did it after months of no news. Since she is currently unemployed, she has plenty of time to dwell on the murder and to start suspecting her neighbors, including her roommate Tom. It doesn’t help matters that Tom is a secretive man with a criminal record, but, with a friendship on the line, Claudia doesn’t know what to think of her roommate. Before long, the stories of her neighbors take shape, and the mysterious death of a stranger starts to get more complicated than Claudia could ever imagine.

Jensen does a good job of getting into the head of someone with too much time on her hands. While it initially seemed odd that Claudia didn’t get obsessed with the murder until months had passed, it added an element of authenticity that not all murders are solved in the first few days. That issue aside, Claudia has nothing better to do with her time, aside from applying for jobs, so she starts getting to know her neighbors. There’s a nice assortment of residents in her building, such as the couple that’s constantly arguing, the old lady shut-in, the lonely man whose wife left him, a religious do-gooder, and a single mother with a teenaged son. Almost all of them are quickly addressed and dismissed as suspects, which leaves the characters somewhat flat and unmemorable. Still, it felt like an accurate representation of how little we sometimes know or care about our neighbors.

This novel tries to mingle love and suspense, which is something I generally love and look forward to in mysteries, but, like the secondary characters, the romance falls a little flat. Maybe I’ve read too many romances, but I didn’t feel any spark between Claudia and Tom. At times it seemed a little bit like they were roommates of the opposite sex, each was attractive and supportive of the other, so why not take it to the next level? There wasn’t the build-up or chemistry that had me wondering when they would make the next leap in their relationship. Also, Tom has the habit of coming off as a moody artist – keeping his room locked and throwing a hissy fit if Claudia asks him about his past. While his support of Claudia is admirable, I wished he would tone it down a bit with his need to keep secrets. His behavior had the ability to make him unattractive and undesirable, at least for the reader, but it didn’t seem to bother Claudia. Plus it seemed like a forced way to make him appear suspicious for Claudia’s investigation.

As for the suspense and mystery, this novel wasn’t the roller coaster ride of ups and downs that I expected. The pace definitely picked up come the end, but the beginning was sluggish. Given the fact that this was an amateur sleuth and there was a lack of police development, the slow pace felt truthful to the painstaking procedures of a case growing cold after a number of months. A level of realism is always nice in a novel, but a little more excitement and pace is necessary to keep the reader engaged.

In the end, I’m left feeling “meh” about the book. By no means was this the worst book that I’ve read, but I’m not over the moon about it. For me, something was missing. Then again, all of the reviews I’ve seen online rave about this book. It just goes to show that every book has its ideal reader. Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t me.

Book Review: Apocalypticon

Apocalypticon. Clayton Smith. Dapper Press, January 19, 2014, Trade Paperback and Kindle e-book, 338 pages.

Reviewed by Stephanie Wilson Medlock.

Clayton Smith has written a wacky novel about the end of the world. Imagine Cormac McCarthy’s The Road mixed with the Three Stooges. In tone, the novel is a graphic novel without the graphics. People are killed on virtually every page, with exceedingly detailed splats and thumps, but we are not allowed to mourn for them, because in this fast-paced buddy epic, new threats, attacks, and even killer zombies are just around the corner.

Smith begins his novel in the smoking remains of Chicago, three years after “monkey bombs” have decimated 99 percent of the inhabitants of the United States. Ben and Patrick, two friends from St. Louis who have been holed up in a high-rise apartment on Lake Shore Drive since the end of life as they knew it, decide to take a last road trip, which they acknowledge is probably a suicide mission. Their destination: Disney World. The reason? Smith waits until the last page to reveal this information, although most readers will have figured it out at least a hundred pages earlier.

What Smith does extremely well is describe the physical realities of life after both bombs and poison gas have killed off nearly everyone and reduced society to small groupings of feudal gangs. The beautiful city of Chicago is largely rubble, and what infrastructure still stands is in constant danger of being blown up to allow one group or another to control sections of the city. Because the novel is set three years after the end of modern life, not one hundred years (as in the teen novel Divergent), the survivors still cling to the identities they had before all work became meaningless—securities traders still live together in the ruins of the Mercantile Exchange, worshiping money, when money has no value, and the man who runs Amtrak (without much real cargo and almost no passengers) is obsessed with maintaining the trains’ schedules.

Smith describes a world without government, without the Internet or even the telephone, without newspapers, without fresh food, without medical care, without any sort of grass roots organization attempting to pull people together and rebuild. In this dystopia, most people have lost any sense of humanity, and have either gone mad or decided to use the lack of any restraining law enforcement to amass what remains of the world’s desirable goods—in this case, booze and canned food.

Ben and Patrick use subterfuge and their cache of weapons to foil the attempts on their lives that occur without any clear motivation but with frightening regularity. Both are mauled and beaten, often by each other in their inept attempts to dispatch the bad guys and continue their journey. Their injuries are described in whimsical terms and each man pops up after nearly being killed with Batman-like aplomb.

What is lacking in this book, besides characters that are more than one-dimensional, is any sense of context: why, for example, did the attacks on the United States take place, and is this destruction worldwide? Smith starts off with apparent naturalism, but soon serves up roving religious groups who crucify any survivors unlucky enough to meet them, followed by bands of once humans who have morphed into iron-limbed zombies desperate to eat human flesh.

The irony is that Smith can definitely write. His dialogue is snappy, his powers of description are terrific, and he has plenty of imagination. But his attempts to make the end of the world funny or even ironic do not succeed. Reading the book is an exhausting experience that will please a limited number of young adult male readers.

Book Review: Annabelle and the Sandhog

Annabelle and the Sandhog. Ray Paul. Amazon Digital Services, December 7, 2013, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 196 pages.

Reviewed by Janet Cole.

Annabelle and the Sandhog by Ray Paul is a touching exploration of family relationships as seen through the eyes of three generations. The author approaches his subject matter and the well-described characters with great gentleness. Reading Annabelle and the Sandhog instilled in me the tranquil feeling that accompanies rafting down a placid river. My head is thrown back to enjoy the azure sky decorated with cotton puffs and the accompanying sounds of nature. And so, I floated through this tale.

Life in the early part of the 20^th century was not easy, especially for a young, unskilled lad fleeing from his home. Because the protagonist was strong, enthusiastic, amiable, honest, and hardworking, he landed on his feet. Those qualities served him well in the grueling and dangerous profession in which he became involved—that of being a sandhog.

Now, if your knowledge of this profession is as scant as was mine, you are probably thinking, “What the heck is a sandhog?” Contrary to the impression created by this nomenclature, a sandhog neither wallows, nor is greedy, nor is a member of the pig family. A sandhog is a laborer who works in the bowels of the earth, blasting and removing rock to make way for the construction of basement supports for buildings that will soon populate an area. It was not the most desirable of trades; it was dirty and it was dangerous. Because of his tenaciousness and integrity, our author’s character not only makes a go of it, but also excels at it. He creates warm and lasting friendships in the process, and he marries the love of his life, to boot!

The author weaves the main character’s son and grandson into the story. There are also references to a great grandson. The reader becomes familiar with their flaws through their interactions with grandpa or great grandpa as the case may be.

The character’s final years in a nursing home are made tolerable by the presence of a sweet and caring nurse’s aide. She has grown fond of this feisty old gent, helping him with his stroke-impaired speech, and encouraging him to get out of his wheelchair and move about. He has developed quite a fondness for her, and she for him.

The story is tender and well told. However, because the chapters jumped from character to character, I sometimes had difficulty remembering whom it was that I was reading about. I wished that I had an organization chart to refer to, and, then, I found the family tree in the foreword of the book. Perhaps if the chapter titles contained the identity as well as the name of the character, my perplexity and the need to reference the family tree would have been minimized. That being said, I found this to be a sweet and inspiring story.