Book Review: The House Girl by Tara Conklin

Title: The House Girl
Author: Tara Conklin
Publisher: William Morrow

About the Book: Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the “perfect plaintiff” to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her?

Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.

My Thoughts: Where to start. . .   I did enjoy this novel very much - especially the sections that pertained to Josephine.  I really liked her character and was moved by her story.  She was a slave, but had been chosen as a house girl for LuAnne Bell.  Her life was seemingly full of contradictions.  Even though she was a slave, she lived a different life as a house girl, even getting to paint and express herself.  Though the credit for her much of her work was given to LuAnne, I am not sure she was looking for credit for her work - she was looking for a new life.

Lina, on the other hand, seemed, if not content with her life, at least in a place that she wasn't ready to "stir the pot".  She still lived with her father, and yet was an associate in a big law firm.  Her mother had been killed when she was just a little girl, and I think this was part of the reason that she still lived with her father.  It was in that house that she could remember what little she did about her mother.  There was a mystery surrounding her death because her father never really wanted to talk about it with her - so being so young when she died - she didn't really know what happened.

As she starts to research Josephine's life and to see her struggles, a series of events in her own life seem to awaken her need for a change as well. I think it was learning about Josephine, and how she never gave up to be free makes her realize she has just been drifting along in her own life - waiting for something to happen rather than going out and finding it.  She starts to see the people in her father's (and mother's previous) life in a new light.  Questioning what she thought to be the truth, forces a confrontation with her father that was far too long in happening.  

Filled with interesting characters, to me, this book explores how relationships with family and others, have an influence on our lives and the choices that we make. Would Josephine have done the same things had she not been a house girl?  Would her life have been different is she would not have been close to Lu Anne Bell?  And Lina,  if her father would have shared things about her mother when she was younger, how would that have influenced Lina's choices in life, and would her father have been able to let things go earlier than he did?  I think this book would be a great choice for a book club read as there are so many things you could discuss and explore.  

~I received a complimentary ecopy of this book from William Morrow through Edelweiss in exchange for my unbiased review.~

The House Girl

Publisher/Publication Date: William Morrow, Feb 2013

ISBN: 978-0062207395

384 pages

The Memory Thief by Emily Colin (Book Review)

Title: The Memory Thief
Author: Emily Colin
Publisher: Random House

About the Book: Reminiscent of On Mystic Lake by Kristin Hannah, readers will adore Emily Colin’s unique and beautifully written debut novel, where one man’s promise to return drives an exquisitely passionate, unforgettable tale of love lost and found.

When Madeleine Kimble’s husband Aiden dies in a mountain climbing accident, Maddie can only think of his earnest promise to return to her and their young son. Aiden’s best friend J.C. feels great remorse over his inability to save him, but J.C.’s grief is also seasoned with the guilt of loving Maddie through the years. Meanwhile, across the country another young man wakes up in a hospital and finds that his memories have been wiped clean, and replaced with haunting dreams of a beautiful woman and a five year old boy whom he feels driven to find. What Nicholas Sullivan discovers upon his journey is utterly unexpected—and it will change all of their lives, especially Maddie’s.

My thoughts:  The Memory Thief is told from three different points of view - Maddie's, Nicholas' and Aiden's (AJ).  In the beginning I would get confused as to whether it was Nicholas or Aiden telling the story, but I quickly got into the flow of it.  

Maddie is dealing with the loss of her husband.  In her own way, she has been preparing for this day for years, as he was a mountain climber and they had lost friends in various accidents before.  Somewhere in the back of her mind I think she knew it was only a matter of time.  She had a bad feeling about the climb he was on and had begged him not to go.  

Aiden's love for Maddie was so strong, and his promise to return so true, that nothing could stop him from coming back.  He just has to keep his promise to her.  He is determined to find some way to get a message to her.  The problem is getting her to believe that it is truly him.

Nicholas can't stop obsessing over this woman and child he only sees in his dreams.  But he has no other memories after a motorcycle accident has wiped his slate clean.  He tries to adjust back to what his old life was, only to discover he has new habits that his friend's can't explain and his girlfriend even says he makes love differently.  He begins to learn more about this other woman and eventually learns her name, as well as the man he sometimes sees in his dreams - Maddie and Aiden. 

J.C. was Aiden's best friend, who also had the unfortunate reality of being in love with Maddie.  He had approached her years before and had made his feelings known - but then backed off and let Aiden and Maddie live their lives.  Maddie would have been lying if she said that she hadn't thought about what it would be like with J.C., but Aiden (and Gabe - their son) was her life.  J.C. had been with Aiden when he died, and he feels guilt over not being able to save him, and guilt for wanting to be with Maddie now that he is gone. 

Emily Colin is able to weave together all of these characters into a wonderful story of loss, love, grief, promises and discovering what it means to live a life of passion.  I loved this book and can't wait to see what else Emily Colin writes in the future. 

~I received a complimentary ecopy of this book from Random House/Edelweiss in exchange for my unbiased review.~

The Memory Thief

Publisher/Publication Date: Random House, Aug 21, 2012

ISBN: 978 - 0345530394

432 pages

Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce (Book Review)

Title: Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Author: Graham Joyce
Publisher: Doubleday

About the Book: It is Christmas afternoon and Peter Martin gets an unexpected phonecall from his parents, asking him to come round. It pulls him away from his wife and children and into a bewildering mystery.

He arrives at his parents house and discovers that they have a visitor. His sister Tara. Not so unusual you might think, this is Christmas after all, a time when families get together. But twenty years ago Tara took a walk into the woods and never came back and as the years have gone by with no word from her the family have, unspoken, assumed that she was dead. Now she's back, tired, dirty, dishevelled, but happy and full of stories about twenty years spent travelling the world, an epic odyssey taken on a whim.

But her stories don't quite hang together and once she has cleaned herself up and got some sleep it becomes apparent that the intervening years have been very kind to Tara. She really does look no different from the young woman who walked out the door twenty years ago. Peter's parents are just delighted to have their little girl back, but Peter and his best friend Richie, Tara's one time boyfriend, are not so sure. Tara seems happy enough but there is something about her. A haunted, otherworldly quality. Some would say it's as if she's off with the fairies. And as the months go by Peter begins to suspect that the woods around their homes are not finished with Tara and his family...

My thoughts:  I am not really a fan of fairy tales and this did not make me one.  It was just an okay read for me.  Where I found the prose to be enjoyable, I could not get completely invested in the storyline.  When Tara returns, she tries to spin some story about world travels, but it is not very believable -- especially since there has been no word from her at all in all that time.  (She thought she had only been gone for 6 months when she first returns, as time in the fairy world travels at a different speed).  Maybe it was because she was only 16, but she didn't seem invested in either world very much, she just kind of wandered through both (maybe that is what fairies do. . .)

Her family did try to run some different tests on her and had her visiting a psychiatrist to try to figure out what had happened to her, but nothing was very conclusive.  Her boyfriend and brother both tried to reconnect with her, but neither had much luck.  Maybe if I was a fairy tale fan this would have been a fantastic read, as I did like the author's style -- just couldn't relate to the story.

~I received a complimentary ecopy of this book from Edelweiss/Doubleday in exchange for my unbiased review.~

Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Publisher/Publication Date: Doubleday, June 2012
ISBN: 9780385535786
320 pages