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Russian Winter: The Story Woman’s review

12/12/2011 By 2 Comments
Russian Winter

We’re deep into winter here in northern California, although not a Russian winter by any means. Winter evenings, when afternoon light fades earlier each day into cold, inky sky, I relish the extra time I guiltlessly take to read good books. Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay was one terrific novel I recently finished. It’s not a short read, but its complexity interwoven with love, loss, betrayal, dark secrets, intrigue, life-altering revelations, and redemption make for a true page turner.Daphne Kalotay crafts a magnificent novel rooted in well-researched historical facts with characters who compel attention. The personality of the ballet, life in Stalinist Russia and in Boston, and the exquisite depth of amber are superimposed on an interesting array of characters adroitly depicted by Kalotay in Russian Winter. Love affairs, lies, and political beliefs essentially trap humans in their tracks every bit as much as a spider finds herself forever suspended in time, emerging egg sack and

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THOUSAND FACES OF MEMOIR

11/29/2011 By 2 Comments
Buddha in the Attic

The Buddha in the Attic is a novel that reads like a memoir of a thousand voices. Julie Otsuka's writing is unique and lyrical, and the book is a treasure of souls. One that I couldn’t put down. When I came to the end of it, I wasn’t ready to let these Japanese mail-order brides and their families go. I realized there are Buddhas in many an attic waiting to be found. This is a hauntingly beautiful story made even more moving as the women appeared to be at once one and all. The universality and perseverance of women who are undervalued and the lessons on the female spirit are moving. The Story Woman highly recommends this book. It makes a beautiful gift.It may inspire you to become a TellTale Soul and write about a woman you know - as in the Mother Mother, where women are at once one and all.

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Build Your Platform with Writing Coach Teresa

09/19/2011 By Leave a Comment
Teresa - Build Your Platform REVIEW 9-19-11

Coach Teresa wrote the guest blog posted below this one. I've now completed working through her outstanding guide, Build Your Writer's Platform & Fanbase in 22 Days. Here are some thoughts on what I took away from it:Let this book spur you into action. Teresa LeYung Ryan opens the door and guides you directly into the world all writers and authors must negotiate if they want their work to be known. But she doesn’t stop there; rather than tell you what to do, she lets you do it for yourself. In a clear, affirming voice, LeYung Ryan takes you securely by the hand and shows you exactly how to Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase in 22 Days. The focused series of exercises that make up this workbook build on each other and really work. With her finger on the pulse of the community and media interaction, she’ll have you drilling down to the basics while reaching for the stars, the blogosphere, and beyond. You want success?  Coach Teresa’s got it all figured out, let her

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Imperfect Endings, Zoe F Carter’s Memoir

03/27/2011 By Leave a Comment
Zoe Carter

She Summoned DeathWhether or not one believes the choices this family made in Zoe Carter’s memoir, Imperfect Endings, are right or wrong, Carter is an undeniably powerful writer, who has an easy way with words on a complex, but timely issue. She has taken the difficult, to say the least, subject of life and death and crafted it into an unforgettable personal story laced with wit, wisdom, humor, compassion, insight, and abundant food for thought. To be honest, when I first picked it up I wondered if I wanted to “go there.” I’m glad I did—I found it incredibly moving.I know it took more than a little courage for Zoe Carter to write this provocative slice of life. Imperfect Endings meant paring familial façade to the bone and sucking out the marrow, which she did unabashedly.How does a daughter say, “Yes, Mom, I’ll watch you die slowly by your own hand.”  I’ll be a party to your staged sit-in with death.Hauntingly beautiful are the two words that washed over my

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Destiny de Medici

01/07/2011 By 2 Comments
CW Gornter Catherine de Medici 2011

Okay, so I received a few books for Christmas that I can't help but tell you about. Here's The Story Woman's review of another great read:Once again, C.W. Gortner doesn’t disappoint. The Confessions of Catherine de Medici bring a terrible, bloody time in European history to light through the thoughts and actions of “the Italian Jezebel,” the label her detractors gleefully hung on her. As this intriguing, ambitious, intelligent, often desperate and deceitful woman struggled to maintain Valois–Medici power in France during the 16th century’s religious wars between the Catholics and the Huguenots, I was torn between appreciating Catherine’s heroism and being wary of her insensitivity toward both her immediate family and the thousands of innocent people who perished due to her treacherous, although often ineffective, conniving.Gortner skillfully marries fact and myth, pairs the seers, Catherine and Nostradamus, and places the duty of royalty above all else, in such a way that I

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Happiness is Reading Alice Munro

12/27/2010 By Leave a Comment
Munro Too Much Happiness

Alice Munro is one of the few authors I have read who so artfully relates the throes of the human condition through her characters’ active and reactive thoughts revolving around people with whom they are intimate and others whom they’ve simply met on their path through life. Having just devoured Too Much Happiness, Munro’s book of short stories, I am reeling from the power of her words. I have the habit, when reading brilliant authors’ works, of writing down certain passages that strike me with their eloquence or bite me with their awful truths. The following are several extracts, in italics, from the ten stories in Munro’s newest book (short thoughts from me tagged on without italics). While reading these clips, as they flow down the page and with the characters’ thoughts out of context, I’m hoping the effect will not be too strange. If you take your time with each, and I believe the protagonists’ inner thoughts will grab hold of you like they did me so you’ll be

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The Good Daughters: Perils of Husbandry

10/11/2010 By Leave a Comment
The Good Daughters-Maynard

The Good Daughters—Two sides of the same coin, or should I say strawberry plants? (Once you read the book, you’ll know what I mean.) Through Joyce Maynard’s insightful writing, I found the off-shoots, Dana and Ruth, to be not only good daughters, but also strong women, each with a powerful belief in herself that held true through times of duress as well as triumph. I would have welcomed both of them as my daughters and loved each girl expressly for the very uniqueness of her character and spirit. At times, I wanted to look directly into the faces of the girls’ mothers, Connie and Val, and ask, “What the heck are your problems? Can’t you like your daughters if they aren’t the spitting image of you?” From the beginning, however, I admired and genuinely liked Connie’s husband, Edwin Plank, the solid farmer, with his knack for plant propagation, for his seeming fair mindedness and acceptance that things were as they should be. But were they? Who was the elephant in the

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Narrative Voice in Writing Memoir

03/04/2010 By 2 Comments
Ann Seymour's I've Always Loved You

Ann Seymour’s I’ve Always Loved You is a book everyone interested in writing historical memoir should read. It is a remarkable example in emphasizing how to sustain a narrative voice when history is a big part of the memoir. Fascinating and heartbreaking are the first two words that come to mind after reading Ann Seymour’s beautiful tribute to her family, especially her father, as well as all those who served in WW2. Seymour writes achingly beautiful prose as she gives us a view of WW2 through the eyes of an enchanting, gregarious child, who doesn’t understand why Daddy has gone to war and will never return. But the well woven story goes beyond the eyes and ears of a loving daughter. I’ve Always Loved You moves between the diaries and journals her parents kept and the actual documented words of the power brokers of Imperial Japan in such a way as to give anyone a more fully rounded picture of WW2, which is an accomplishment worthy of applause. “Only an ephemeral

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Obsession, Passion, & Transformation Make for Accordion Dreams

09/26/2009 By Leave a Comment
Accordion Dreams

I was lured into Blair Kilpatrick’s memoir, Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music, the moment I saw the charming cover depicting a happy little girl holding her accordion, although I was surprisingly unprepared for the extent of the adventure she’d lead me on in this extraordinary musical memoir. Before I even opened the book, a small voice in the recesses of my mind encouraged me to find my BeauSoleil album, Bayou Cadillac, which I hadn’t listened to for ages. Find it I did, and as the first beats of Bon Temps Rouler resounded,  I settled back in a comfortable chair and darn near didn’t get up until I’d read this entire, enchanting book. To my delight, within the first dozen pages, Kilpatrick talked about how she had excitedly ripped the plastic from her newly purchased BeauSoleil cassette, which shows off the battered red Cadillac convertible, upended in a swamp. Now the hook in me worked itself deeper and deeper. Her compelling, obsessive journey

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Captivating Throne of Passion, Juana la Loca of Spain

09/18/2009 By 4 Comments
The Last Queen

I'm posting this book review on an historical novel by C.W. Gortner because I think The Last Queen is a great read and highlights the difficulties women have had throughout history attempting to be taken seriously whether they are royalty or not.  Gortner will be honored this October 15th at an event for National Reading Group Month by Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter. See links below for more information. Juana’s courage, strength, and passion amazed me as The Last Queen came of age so vividly under C.W. Gortner’s admirable pen. This historical novel is fraught with crushing battles of power and chilling intrigue throughout the courts of her parents, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, and of her husband, Philip of Flanders, as the Infanta of Spain attempts to take her rightful place on the thrown she inherited from her mother. My soul was struck as I witnessed, through Gortner’s well paced story, the agony Juana endured as her

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