The Little French Bistro (Nina George)

 

I wanted to like this book....but I really didn't. There were too many characters. Too many characters were cheating on their spouse. I wanted to find hope in the main character finding herself after a sad and meaningless marriage but mostly I found it depressing. The description of the places in France were compelling and almost seemed like a character itself. That was lovely. However, overall, it just wasn't for me. 

The writing was beautiful. Interspersed all through it were little phrases that did touch me...like p. 99 I have never even noticed that I am alive said by the main character as she works through finding herself after leaving a marriage where she was never really loved or treated well.

Goodreads says:

From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop, an extraordinary novel about self-discovery and new beginnings.

Marianne is stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. After forty-one years, she has reached her limit, and one evening in Paris she decides to take action. Following a dramatic moment on the banks of the Seine, Marianne leaves her life behind and sets out for the coast of Brittany, also known as the end of the world.

Here she meets a cast of colorful and unforgettable locals who surprise her with their warm welcome, and the natural ease they all seem to have, taking pleasure in life's small moments. And, as the parts of herself she had long forgotten return to her in this new world, Marianne learns it s never too late to begin the search for what life should have been all along.

With all the buoyant charm that made The Little Paris Bookshop a beloved bestseller, The Little French Bistro is a tale of second chances and a delightful embrace of the joys of life in France.

Painting Pepette (Linda Ravin Lodding)

 

Josette is a little girl with a pet rabbit. The story is set in France and she wants someone to paint her rabbit. Along the way she meets many famous artists who all have different styles and therefore paint the rabbit differently.

This story made me think of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. It would be great to read this when we read about Picasso in our imagination unit.

Goodreads says:

Join one little girl named Josette as she searches 1920s Paris to find the best artist to paint a portrait of her stuffed-animal rabbit, Pepette.

After seeing all the fine portraits of her family in her house in Paris, Josette decides that her stuffed-animal rabbit Pepette needs a portrait of her own. The two of them set off for Montmartre, the art center of 1920s Paris, to seek out an artist to paint Pepette’s portrait. They encounter Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall, and Henri Matisse, who all try their hand at capturing the rabbit.

Picasso gives Pepette two noses and three ears—which doesn’t sit well with Josette. Dalí gives Pepette very droopy eyes—so Josette says "no thank you" and moves on. Chagall paints Pepette flying through the clouds. Josette points out that Pepette doesn’t fly and is afraid of heights—so they decide to keep going through the square. When they meet Matisse, he paints Pepette pink, with lots of colorful dots and splashes covering the canvas. It’s a beautiful piece of art, but it’s not Pepette.

Giving up, Josette and Pepette make their way home. Josette is upset that no one was able to no one was able to capture the true essence of Pepette. Who could capture her soft gray ears, her heart-shaped nose, and all her wonderfulness? And then it comes to her—she, Josette, is the perfect person to do this.

Akin (Emma Donoghue)

 

I had a copy of Room, but I never did read it. This was my first experience with Emma Donoghue. 

One aspect I thought was interesting was family secrets. Noah knows negative things about Michael's father, but he keeps it to himself. I wondered if that was really fair to Michael. Is it better to be honest?  

(i.e. the maroon chip) p. 213: One the back, Ninety Days. but anyone could get hold of a plastic token: buy them by the dozen online, pick one up off the sidewalk. It proved nothing, except to a gullible child.....it could just possibly have been true: if ever his nephew had made a real effort to sober up, surely it would have been when he'd just sent the woman he loved to prison for five years, leaving his son motherless. An even bigger pity, if Victor had made it to the three-month mark before his final lapse.

The irony is that after those thoughts, Noah goes on to say that chemists have an unusually high death rate: a long tradition of blinding and scarring and poisoning ourselves. 

How is that any different than Michael's father, really?

Another interesting thing about this book was how every part of a family influences someone. Sometimes we think we're a black sleep or not like the rest of our family, but is that really the case. In the story, Michael is really not that different from Noah. Noah keeps hearing his wife's voice, as if a conversation is going on with her throughout the story. 

Another interesting connection to that is Noah's search for answers about his mother. Was she involved with all the missing children? Was she a helper or a snitcher? Also, the children represent connections to our past. 

p. 229 Imagine if you forgot your real name and date of birth, and when the war was over you couldn't remember who you really were, or find....any of your family who were left?"
"I'd remember." Michael's voice was stern.
"Well, some of them were just toddlers, So Abadi and Rosenstock, what they did was, they wrote down all the kids' true facts, made three identical cards for each, with photographs, fingerprints, addresses, relations, the whole works."
The paradox was that these cards had endangered the entire Marcel Network, hiders and hidden alike. But then, it wasn't fair to save a child's life at the cost of stripping him of who he was.


The connection between generations was another theme. On p. 220 Noah is showing Michael photos from a book. He shows him the first faked photos, dated in 1840 as well as selfies where a guy posed himself as a drowned man and Michael quickly responds that he does that too and flips through his camera roll to show himself as a corpse on grass. Another examples was on p. 222 when Noah is trying to explain the law of closure in photography (the viewer fills in what they don't see, what's missing) and relates it to the FedEx logo. Michael replies, "The arrow. I never didn't see the arrow"....knowing right away what he is talking about. 

p. 237 Michael's tattoo: F.O.E. (Family Over Everything)

Then there's the irony of Noah saving Michael just as perhaps his mother saved Jewish children during the war? Or did she? 

Goodreads says:

In her first contemporary novel since Room, bestselling author Emma Donoghue returns with her next masterpiece, a brilliant tale of love, loss and family. A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets.

Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into taking him along to France.

This odd couple, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, argue about everything from steak haché to screen time, and the trip is looking like a disaster. But as Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family’s past, both of them come to grasp the risks that people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room a huge bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.

I'm really looking forward to our book club discussion on this one. I'm sure the ladies in our group will have many more insights.

The Gown (Jennifer Robson)

I'll be forever grateful to my friend, Karen Johnson, for introducing me to the author Jennifer Robson. Jennifer Robson is Karen's sister in law's sister and we got to speak with her for a book club meeting when we read one of her other books. It was so wonderful to hear her passion for history and all that went into creating the story. I also got to go listen to Jennifer Robson at Wordfest when she spoke about The Gown. (Here is an interview with her in Calgary). That was really a fun night! The person who interviews Jennifer Robson wore her wedding gown and many people in the audience were dressed in proper England tea-party type dresses. If only I thought of those kinds of things ahead of time! 

I can't remember the story exactly or if this is a real sample from the Queen's gown, but they passed this around at the event for everyone to see:

When she was doing her research, Jennifer Robson met a woman named Betty who really did work on the dress and was a big source of inspiration for the book. She talks about her at the back of the book as well.

Some of her other books that I've read are: Moonlight Over Paris, Somewhere in France, and After the War is Over. I also own Goodnight From London and I don't think I've read that one. Time to do that! Actually, reading The Gown has made me want to go back and re-read all of Robson's books.

This book is a special blend of family history research, historical fiction, mystery and romance. I was raised by a mom who sews, who was raised by a mom who sewed and so I have a bit of a passion for that as well. This book made me want to learn to do beadwork, for sure! As far as the royal family goes, I thought it was appropriate that Jennifer Robson should have a character who kind of looked at everyone's love for the princess with a bit of disdain at first. She does seem to come around though and mostly have good to say about princess Elizabeth. I woke up in the middle of the night to watch Diana and Charles' wedding and also loved the stories around Kate and William's wedding...and I love Harry and Meghan too despite all the bad press they get. All in all, I guess I'm a bit of a royal family fan. 

I thought this book was well written and came together nicely in the end.I love historical fiction and this book does not disappoint. We're going to discuss this book for my book club in June and I'm quite looking forward to it!

Goodreads says:

“Millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash of color on the long road we have to travel.”—Sir Winston Churchill on the news of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcoming wedding

London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?

With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love. 

All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr)

I had a lot of people recommend this book to me. It took me a LONG time to read it because I got busy with work projects and didn't have much time for reading. It was hard to follow since I had spread it over such a long period of time. Once I got back to it and got into it, I quite enjoyed it. The chapters are short and bounce between the character's stories. Once I got the rhythm of it, I quite enjoyed it.  I do love World War II stories. It is amazing the courage so many people showed during that time.

One story is about a boy in Nazi Germany who lives in a orphanage with his sister.  He is gifted at fixing radios and also has a keen interest in many other things. He listens to a nightly science program broadcast from France. Because he is so good at fixing radio and gifts in math and science, he wins a spot in a Hitler Youth Academy. He is happy to have something to do beyond working in the coal mines that killed his father, however, he has to start to not think about what goes on in the Hitler Youth Academy.

The other story is about a young blind girl named Marie-Laure who lives in Paris. She is cared for by her father who works at a museum. She became blind as a little girl. Her father builds a miniature model of their neighborhood, so she can memorize every street, building and corner. When the war comes to Paris, she and her father go to Saint-Malo to live with a great-uncle who lives in a tall, storied house next to a sea wall.

What does the title mean?
"The title is a reference first and foremost to all the light we literally cannot see: that is, the wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are beyond the ability of human eyes to detect (radio waves, of course, being the most relevant). It’s also a metaphorical suggestion that there are countless invisible stories still buried within World War II — that stories of ordinary children, for example, are a kind of light we do not typically see. Ultimately, the title is intended as a suggestion that we spend too much time focused on only a small slice of the spectrum of possibility." 
- Anthony Doerr

Goodreads says:
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.