Now You See Us

Finished May 14

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal

This novel offered a glimpse into another place and life experience for me. It is set in Singapore, around three Filipino women of different ages who work as domestic workers. Corazon had worked in Singapore for years, and returned to the Philippines to raise her nephew Raymond. Now she is back in Singapore, and harboring a secret about what happened back home. We know that something happened to Raymond, but the whole story is only gradually revealed over the course of the novel. Her new employer is a widowed woman who has never had domestic help before. Her husband's death and other circumstances have led to her withdrawing from her friends and social experiences in general. One of her two daughters is getting married and she is being drawn into the planning of this, but she is dealing with loneliness that causes her to treat Corazon as a friend and that creates some issues for both of them. 

Donita is in her early twenties and this is her first job in Singapore. Her employer is a very demanding woman who tries to limit Dorita's freedom, and creates a difficult living situation for Dorita that gets worse over time. 

Angel is employed as a caregiver for an older man who has been debilitated by a stroke. She truly cares for his wellbeing and tries to help him recover physically as well as responding to his expressions in how much she asks him to do. On the personal side, she is also grieving the loss of a romantic relationship with another woman. When her employer's daughter hires a nurse to work with the older man, Angel worries about her job, but she also feels that her employer's son is trying to take adventage of her. 

Add to this mix a sensational murder, where a Filipino worker, Floradeliza, is accused of the crime. Donita knows the woman and is sure she is innocent, but doesn't understand the lack of power she and her fellow workers hold. 

This novel gave real insight into the logistics of working as a domestic worker, mostly in Singapore, but also in other places. There are lots of details about papers, medical requirements, and working conditions that really show how these people live under the threat of expulsion at the whim of their employers. 

The story is told in alternating points of view between the women, along with group chats online between them. There are also chats between the employers of such workers, and chats that other workers have during this time. 

The author made each of the main characters come to life for me, I could empathize with their situation and the circumstances they were trying to make the best of, while still trying to have some personal life for themselves. A real eye-opening read. 

The Ever Open Door

Finished November 29

The Ever Open Door by Julie Band

This debut novel was inspired by the author's own grandfather coming to Canada as a Barnado Homes orphan. Here the Barnado is a small but essential part of the plot. 

The main character here is Rachel Gilmore, oldest daughter of a shipowner in Liverpool in 1888. As the story begins, Rachel is at an event where her stepmother is being honoured. Because her stepmother is ill, Rachel is accepting the honour on her behalf and is escorted by her father. 

Rachel is a smart young woman and has been helping her stepmother with the household accounts as well as her father with his business accounts. 

Her stepmother is a trained midwife and has been working with the city's poor for years, and lately Rachel has been accompanying her on many of her visits. Now she has volunteered Rachel to help another agency with their books. Mrs Birt runs an agency that send orphaned children to Canada, and hopefully to a better future. 

Rachel's father's business is tight financially, and the investors and banks are applying pressure, and her father is considering all his options for the protection of the business, but when he is injured during the unloading of one of his ships, the family faces more immediate difficulties. 

Rachel is a girl who is smart and observant, and she notices the expressions and actions of the people around her. But she is also naive, despite her charitable activities and some of her choices get her into difficult situations. With her stepmother still not well, and her father's business tied up in legal situations, she tries to protect her younger sister Emily and herself. But sometimes she finds herself out of her depth and put into circumstances that place her and her reputation in danger.

I liked the spunk of the main character, and her resolve to do the right thing, even when it is a difficult one. She looks for opportunity and has ingenuity in her ideas. She is also a kind girl, raised to treat people of all classes with respect, and this serves her well. 

I also liked how the plot developed, slowly at first and then becoming a real page turner. I want to know more of Rachel's story to see where it leads. 

Fix Her Up

Finished July 5
Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey

This spicy romance novel is the small town of Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York. Travis Ford is a local boy who became a baseball superstar, playing in the majors. He also got a reputation as a ladies man, never staying with one woman for long enough to have a relationship. But after an injury, his skills weren't what they were, and he was traded around a bit before ending up without a contract. So now he's back home, and feeling sorry for himself. Enter Georgette (Georgie) Castle, the little sister of Travis' best friend Stephen.
Georgie has been in love with Travis for years, but never expressed her feelings. Her family knows, but no one has told Travis. Georgie has been working as a clown, making a living doing parties and other events. Now she's looking to step it up and hire some performers and become a larger entertainment company. Only problem is that no one seems to take her seriously, always treating her like a kid. And she's tired of that.
She's easygoing though, and has enough personality to take on Travis. She challenges his attitude, getting him out of his apartment and among the living again, and then she challenges him again, and just keeps on doing that.
And Travis finds himself seeing her in a different light, and feeling guilty for being so attracted to her. But also feeling like he's not felt about a woman before.
And so the story goes.
There is humour, graphic sex, and a decent plot. A fun, summer read.

Campbell's Kingdom

Finished September 3
Campbell's Kingdom by Hammond Innes

This is another novel I picked up used. It was written in 1952 and set roughly at the time.
Bruce Wetheral is working for an insurance company in England following WWII. He has just received some unsettling news about his health that has him questioning his future, when he gets a visit from his lawyer explaining that he is the heir to his grandfather, who passed away a few months earlier. Bruce only met his grandfather once, when he accompanied his mother as his grandfather was released from jail and took him to a ship bound for Canada. His childhood was one of deprivation, and when his mother passed away while he was still at school, he had no thought of other family.
Bruce doesn't have a lot of money or a lot of time, and he knows that his grandfather was written off as a dreamer when it came to discovering oil in the Rocky Mountains, but when he thinks on it, he decides he wants to see this land he now owns for himself, before he sells it to the eager buyer.
The easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to get where he wants to go is to emigrate to Canada, and so that is what Bruce does, committing himself fully to his new venture.
Once in Calgary, he again meets with a lawyer, but when aware of a ride towards his destination he snaps it up, and sets out. The logistics of getting to the small town of Come Lucky up in the Rockies is a complex one, and the locals aren't entirely friendly. They blame his grandfather's enthusiasm for oil for their own lost investments. Now, with a dam project offering jobs, they don't take kindly to his refusal to sell the land that will be flooded when the dam gets operating.
Bruce is determined to drill up there in his land, and when he finds questionable conduct among those set to thwart him, his determination grows.
Bruce is an interesting character, seemingly out of his element, but we are constantly reminded of his "war record". He is not the only one with war experience, but the personal experience of being found guilty of something draws him to his grandfather, and moves him to try to fulfill his grandfather's dream.
I enjoyed this book for the interesting plot, the suspense, and the character of Bruce.

The Flood Girls

Finished February 24
The Flood Girls by Richard Fifield

This novel is one that had me laughing and crying. The setting is Quinn, a small town in Montana, and we see things from the point of view of several characters. Rachel is a young woman who left town years before after a series of notorious behaviour climaxed with one causing her mother to throw her out. She's turned her life around, joined AA and is now in the process of making amends. Coming back to town is part of that transition for her. The recent death of her father Frank, has given her a place to live during this time. Jake is twelve and lives next door to Rachel with his mother and her boyfriend and their baby. Jake is a precocious child, with a passion for fashion, pulpy novels, rosaries, and Madonna. Frank was one of the people he related well to. Rachel's mom, Laverna, is a tough woman who owns one of the two bars in town. She also sponsors a women's baseball team, the notorious Flood Girls. Rachel is compelled to be on the team despite her lack of sports experience.
The book is rich with wonderful characters from Martha Man Hands to the two Mabels (Red and Black) to Buley, who owns the local thrift store.
Quinn is also a mining town, and a group of the regulars at Laverna's bar, the Dirty Shame, is a group of rough and rowdy lesbian miners. They are peripheral to the story, but offer an interesting background to the action.
This is a story of friendship and families, of acceptance and prejudice. A book that shows the wonder and tragedy of life.
I loved it.

Zama

Finished December 15
Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen

This novel was first published in Spanish in 1956. The author was Argentinian and worked as a journalist in Mendoza before venturing into fiction. He was imprisoned and tortured in 1976 by the military dictatorship and lived in Spain until 1984, when he returned to Argentina. He died in 1986. This novel is centered around the character Don Diego De Zama, an administrative worker for the Spanish crown posted to Asunción, in remote Paraguay, far from his home where his wife and children remained. While theoretically well-paid, his pay seldom arrives, and finances are one of Zama's big problems. He doesn't have money to send home to support his family, nor enough to live on. The novel is written in three sections, with the first taking place in 1790, the second in 1794, and the third in 1799.
Zama misses his wife Marta, and is consumed by worries about maintaining his image, even as he makes choices that aren't wise. He fights his lust for other women, not always successfully, and holds grudges against those he thinks judge him unfairly. He sometimes lives too much in his head, imagining things that aren't really happening. All of these concerns lead him to a series of bad choices, sinking him further and further in the esteem of those around him and making it less and less likely that he will achieve his dream of getting a posting closer to his family and with more prestige.
This is not a happy novel, but a novel portraying a man's downward trajectory.
The author did months of research before writing the novel, using historical documents to bring a sense of the time and place of his setting and the character of Zama.

Asking For It

Finished May 9
Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

This teen novel is set in the Irish town of Ballinatoom, where Emma O'Donovan is a young woman who uses her beauty and popularity to get what she wants, or at least what she thinks she wants. She is the dominant one in a group of 4 girls, with the others being Jamie, Maggie, and Ali. She values her reputation, but still is willing to use her body to get the boy that she wants. She doesn't want to be seen as afraid of trying things, even though she really is. She counsels her friends to deal with bad things that happen to them quietly, and not make a fuss. So when she goes out to a party when her parents are away overnight, and they find her on the doorstep the next day in very bad shape, she works to protect her reputation. She doesn't remember exactly what happened anyway, and despite knowing inwardly some of what she happened is not what she would choose, she tries to move forward as if nothing had happened, but when it turns out that pictures were taken and circulated, she doesn't know what to do, or how to react.
This is a story of peer pressure, of a culture of risky behaviour, and of bad choices. This is not the book I expected as I began it, and yet it is a book that speaks to the realities of some young women.

A Bride for the Season

Finished March 30
A Bride for the Season by Jennifer Delamere

This romance novel is set in the 1850s in London. The story follows two characters. Lucinda Cardington is 25 and has given up the idea of a husband. She plans to use the inheritance she comes into the following year to set up her own home so she is freer to do what she wishes. She already spends one day a week at a shelter for women. There she helps to educate former prostitutes so they can find legitimate word and have a better life. But her parents still force her to attend social events that she has no interest in and her younger sister Emily is too much the flirt. Lucinda worries about Emily, and so one night when she sees Emily sneaking out of the house, she takes her maid and goes after her.
James Simpson has been playing the field for a few years, flirting with the young women, but never going further than that. He takes his pleasures elsewhere. However one night, after a ball, he takes himself to his usual haunts and finds himself accosted by none other than an upper class young lady. It looks like his two world have finally come together and he will be forced to marry the young lady, Emily, in order to save her reputation.
He finds that her father's terms are more complex than that though. Emily's dowry is dependent on James also finding a husband for Lucinda. As James takes the time to get to know Lucinda better, in order to find a good match for her, he finds himself more and more drawn to the elder sister, but how to manage things then is the difficult part.
An interesting romance that shows the reality of life during this period as well as giving a nice love story. Lucinda has many interests, and James is a man who actually cares about women and looks at them as having something to contribute.

That Night

Finished October 28
That Night by Chevy Stevens

I've enjoyed Chevy's other books, which were loosely related to each other. This one is a departure, still set on Vancouver Island, this time mostly in Campbell River.
The story moves between time from early 2012 when Toni Murphy is getting out of jail on parole, 1996 when she is in her last year in high school and struggling with bullying at school and a combative relationship with her mother, and 1998 when she goes to jail after her murder conviction. We learn early that Toni and her boyfriend Ryan were convicted of murdering Toni's younger sister Nicole, but that they didn't do it.
Toni doesn't know what happened that night, but she does know that the girls who bullied her in school lied about that night and about her on the witness stand.
We see Toni adjust gradually to her life in jail and finally learn a way to go forward with her life. We see her struggles in life during that last year in high school and the events that led up to her sister's death. We see her difficult relationship with her parents, particularly with her mother. And we see how she finds that her past won't let her go until she finds a way to find the truth about what really happened that night.
The struggles that Toni has as she first encounters bullying at school are difficult to read, especially when people believe her tormentors rather than her. And her relationship with her mother starts as a typical teenage rebellion with a mother who worries about her and wants to guide her, but deteriorates as the chasm between them grows along with a lack of trust. It is Toni's relationship with her boyfriend that provides her with stability in life, and yet seems to be a focus for both her mother and the bullies.
A great story of how things can get out of control, how relationships can change, how one's reputation can make a difference, and how difficult it can be growing up.

Give Me Everything You Have

Finished February 21
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun, read by Robin Sachs

James Lasdun gives an insightful and open account of his stalking by a former student. Starting as a straightforward exchange when she was working on a novel, chapters of which he had read and encouraged her in when she was his student, this relationship gradually devolves into something else entirely. The student approached him a couple of years after the met when she was in his creative writing class, and as he really thought her writing good, he encouraged her and even introduced her to people he thought would be helpful to her writing career.
But the email interactions first became overly friendly, and then hateful and aggressive. She eventually moved into posting comments online, making public accusations of plagiarism and sexually inappropriate behaviour, and impersonating others when making such statements. She progressed into attacks on others he had professional and personal relationships with and sent emails to current and potential employers.
Despite these things, Lasdun found he had little recourse in any legal sense, an interesting development of the Internet Age, showing that some aspects haven't entirely caught up to the realities yet.
He touches on mental illness, reputation, racism, and social norms and looks into his own reactions and how he learns to control what he can and learns to deal with what he can't control.
A window on a very difficult and increasingly present phenomenon.