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 all. That is until the urgency of fear on one hand and the promise of fulfillment on the other allow the determined to escape oppression and the resilient to open to trust and new beginnings. The intricacies of personality, politics, and personal choice, along with an attraction to fine jewelry and dance are absorbing—you won’t want to put this book down even after you’ve read the last word. And you’re sure to learn a great deal about the effects of political oppression along the way. Beware of what you hope for; it could come back as the end of freedom as you know it.

Memory plays a big part in this novel. In fact, you could say the plot revolves around memories secreted away. The Story Woman and all TellTale Souls understand the power of deeply seated memory. Have some fun with Russian Winter. For some of you, it may tempt the telling of tales you’d thought were secure!

The Buddha in the Attic

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.

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 show you the way.

Book also review on Amazon (click title) by Lynn Henriksen, The Story Woman, for TellTale Souls everywhere.

Whether 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 soul when I finished reading Zoe Carter’s Imperfect Endings. A true page turner, brought together through a dynamic flow of the highs of love and tenderness, and the lows of anger and sadness, revealing what it takes to be, at once, a mother and a daughter.

I could see both sides as the drama unfolded: the mother’s perspective, as she desired to make her exit —actually to direct it, while maintaining a modicum of dignity; and the three daughters’ reluctance to come to terms with their mother’s wishes and say goodbye to Momma. Throughout much of the memoir, a cloak of angry sadness hung from Zoe’s shoulders—she was deemed the caretaker, ever flying from coast to coast, always at her mother’s beck and call, while growing numb by degrees to her mother’s flirtatious and ever changing dates with death. Zoe was the “good” daughter—but also a woman conflicted by daughterly duties over shadowing those of being a wife to a man trying not to lose his patience, and mother to young daughters of her own, needing her attention.

Fluctuating between flashbacks of childhood memories and present day dilemmas, Zoe creates authentic scenes that strip away allusion to expose the raw reality of the family’s intimate workings. The three daughters’ angst for their parent’s past transgressions and weaknesses was palpable, and their reckoning of their mother’s pretenses and denial, although heartbreakingly understood, at least by two of the sisters, stayed unresolved.

But, in the final days, as their mother, Margaret, slipped away, the atmosphere rang clear with tenderness and acceptance as Zoe’s arms, gently enfolded a feather of a woman as the parade passed by, and songs from her lips sent Momma’s soul soaring.

THE STORY WOMAN REMINDS YOU TO WRITE A TRUE AND TELLING TALE ABOUT YOUR MOTHER.

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 16^th 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 turned page after page deep into the night. Each time I forced myself to put down this book, I could not wait to pick it up again. I was immediately captivated as Gortner described Catherine’s horrific ordeal as a young and tender orphaned child at the hands of the nuns at the Convent of Santa Lucia in Florence. Terrific pain and humiliation would surface again just three years later after she married Henri II of France, as her husband’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, personally orchestrated acts of conception between Henri and Catherine; acts that would bring forth heirs to the throne one way or another. Gortner made me feel her physical pain, as well as the psychological pain of her prophetic visions, but I also felt the sting of her devious edicts as she, in turn, orchestrated the deaths of a past lover and the many formidable foes who dared to cross the path she had charted for herself, her children, and for France. After all was said and done, I wondered if the glory she sought for France was ultimately for personal glorification given what she deemed the destiny de Medici.

_______

I couldn’t find a memoir written by Catherine de Medici, but her memoir would have been more than memorable had she written one.

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 enticed to read Too Much Happiness, although I don’t think you’ll find too much happiness overflowing the pages.

Love…if the great happiness—however temporary, however flimsy—of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another. This thought had me questioning happiness altogether.

 She was nearly crying with exhaustion and alarm and some familiar sort of seeping rage.  This is another line from another story where familiar paired with seeping rage caught hold of me, because of the sad fact that seeping rage would actually sound familiar and resonate globally.

There is something I think you ought to know, said a mother to her daughter after her father’s funeral. These may be among the most unpleasant words that person ever has to hear. There’s a pretty good chance that whatever you ought to know will be burdensome, and that there will be a suggestion that other people have had to bear the burden, while you have been let off lightly, all this while.

I began to understand that there were certain talkers—certain girls—whom people liked to listen to, not because of what they, the girls, had to say, but because of the delight they took in saying it. A delight in themselves, a shine on their faces, a conviction that whatever they were telling about was remarkable and that they themselves could not help but give pleasure.

The worst was that her fingers had pressed my back. Through my coat, through my other clothing, her fingers like so many cold snouts.

The yellow paint seemed to be the very color of insult, and the front door, being off center, added a touch of deformity. I playing with the color of verbs.

But only adults would be so stupid as to believe she had no power. A power, moreover, that was specifically directed at me. I was the one she had her eye on. Or so I believed. As if we had an understanding between us that could not be described and was not to be disposed of. Something that clings, in the way of love, though on my side it felt absolutely like hate.

When I first saw the look on Charlene’s face I thought that her money had been stolen. But then I thought that such a calamity would not have made her look so transformed, the shock on her face so joyful. When you read this story, you’ll be shocked that Charlene could be joyful doing what she did!

From what I had said, Charlene seemed to have got the idea that Verna had actively harassed me. And I believed that was true, except that the harassment had been more subtle, more secret, than I had been able to describe. Now I let Charlene think as she liked because it was more exciting that way.

Memories of childhood were much more distant and faded and unimportant than they seem today.

He knew how much she valued me and now at the end of her life she seemed very keen to see me. She had asked him to get hold of me. It may be that childhood memories mean the most, he said. Childhood affections. Strength like no other. Yes, and the strength of childhood bonds are the mortar of memoir.

He still tells her things—it’s a habit—but he is so used to her now not paying any real attention that he hardly notices whether there is an answer or not. This time she echoes what he himself has said, “Never mind. You’ve got enough to do anyway.” That’s what he would have expected, whether she was well or not. Missing the point. But isn’t that what wives do—and husbands probably the same—around fifty percent of the time?

I have never been so tempted to write romances, as when with Fat Maksim. And he takes up too much room, on the divan and in one’s mind. It is simply impossible for me, in his presence, to think of anything but him.

And at the end of his letter one terrible sentence—“If I loved you I would have written differently.”

Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind, and when a woman goes out she carries everything that happened in the room along with her. It will serve me well to remember this pearl of wisdom.

Which surely meant that he would consider she had some hold now, and would have felt it beneath his dignity to deceive her.

He had to be careful about saying what he really believed—that there must be something like intuition in the first-rate mathematician’s mind, some lightening flare to uncover what has been there all along. Rigorous, meticulous, one must be, but so must the great poet. I’ve been teaching for years that writing memoir is simply uncovering what’s already there mindfully.

She was learning, quite, late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood—that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements. It could be brimful of occupations which did not weary you to the bone.

­­­­______

Now go write a Mother Memoir, and if you think everything you write must be momentous, take to heart the last couple sentences above. And, while you’re at it, read as much of Munro as you can—if some of her brilliance seeps into your voice, so much the better.

The Good Daughters—

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 room that everyone stepped around for decades?

Maynard portrayed in Plank an honorable and understanding personality, but I began to see, as the story unfurled, that something was amiss. This man, this father, carefully placed selected strawberry shoots, spacing them evenly around the mother plant, like rays of the sun, letting them take root for the next season. (But was he as careful with the women in his life?) This act may be best for raising strawberries to be their finest, but I came away believing mothers and daughters of the human variety need to settle into their own nests—leaving Edwin’s husbandry for the cultivation of plants and livestock would have lessened the grief and confusion that dominated the lives of two families.

Maynard does know how to tell a story depicting the human condition as few others. She makes you squirm a little, and think a lot, and, even though you may think you know exactly what’s going on, you won’t until she thinks it is time to let you know. This engaging tale will stay with you long after you have read the last sentence of The Good Daughters.

Now be a Good Daughter or Son and write your Mother Memoir to become a TellTale Soul.

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 wall separates the past from the present,” was observed by Seymour’s father when on the battlefield he awoke from a dream of being with his wife to the utter amazement that she wasn’t by his side – he was alone.

Pick up this book, read it, and better understand WW2 through a remarkable mix of memoir and facts.

I also published this review on Amazon where you can purchase Ann Seymour’s I’ve Always Loved You, if you’re not near an Indy book store like Book Passage.

Gentle Reminder: Do something great today. Pick up a pencil or belly-up to the keyboard and write your Mother Memoir like all TellTale Souls. Doing so may be the beginning of your book length project on family history.

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 into Cajun-Creole music progressed with her quest to learn to play the accordion, and pay it well, after she fell in love with all things relating to Louisiana’s famous folksingers and musicians, whose French lyrics tell stories through song and melodies merge souls through accordion, fiddle, guitar, and triangle.

In, what I consider a love story, Kilpatrick shares the secrets she learned from the fathers of this genre from learning to play “by ear” to knowing you must practice a tune 100,000 times, if you want to succeed.  From her illuminating prose, I now understood more of the nuances of this music I love. I learned to hear the fiddles talk in their call-and-response style and to feel the easy contracting and expanding bellows of the accordions, as those who played their pearly keys lead the tunes.  Moreover, the commanding personalities of the giants of Cajun-Creole music came to life as Kilpatrick peeled back the layers of developing friendships with her friendly, though passionate, conversational style of writing.

Kilpatrick had me “vibrating in some kind of universal rhythm lock” by the end of the book; and by then, too, I wanted to play in her band, Sauce Piquante, even though I know how to play not a one of those beckoning instruments.  She has a way of expressing in writing exactly what I think I’d feel if I had been so fortunate as to have taken this journey into the heart of Cajun-Creole music.

She even includes a ‘mother memoir’ within her Accordion Dreams memoir, when in chapter fifteen she gives us a look at the women in her Eastern European family, as her “mother laughed and cried as the memories came back.” For me, that’s the beauty of writing ‘mother memoir’ because you can’t help but be taken back to your beginnings, just as Kilpatrick couldn’t help but be taken back to the roots of Cajun music. “And you find yourself back at the beginning, at the place where you began.”

I fell in love completely with the “laughter and tears, love and loss.  Holding on and letting go. The mysterious dance of memory linking past and present – and carrying us forward, into the days ahead.”  The resonance of Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole Music will stay with me for a lifetime.

Link to Blair Kilpatrick

The Story Woman asks men and women to write  bio-vigettes capturing the character and spirit of their mothers to join the ranks of TellTale Souls.

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 faithless husband raped her night after night, as she was forced to leave her first born behind in Flanders and another child taken from her breast by her father to raise as his own, and as she ultimately succumbed to the captivity that often befell women of royalty in those times. Had she been driven mad by her treacherous husband and her scheming, duplicitous father as they vied for her position or had Juana la Loca, as she came to be known, been wrongly labeled and shut away by the two men she learned to loathe?

That question is one for which we don’t have an answer, but I felt compelled to honor her sanity and believe she would overcome the perils in her path to rule over the people of her beloved Spain.  Her fate was sealed in loneliness and sorrow with no escape. I felt her loss as well as my own.

Women’s National Book Association, San Francisco October 15th event. Our partner, Whole Foods Mill Valley, is graciously supplying specialty foods to promote “Shared Reading.”

C. W. Gornter

Two other fabulous authors will also be reading for this event: Tanya Egan Gibson, How to Buy a Love of Reading, and Kathi Kamen Goldmark, And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You.

The Story Woman asks men and women to write a bio-vignette about a loved one to become a TellTale Soul.