"A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman and the Martin Wallace board game of the same name

Neil Gaiman's "A Story in Emerald" is a particularly well-conceived mashup of Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos, which was originally published in Shadows over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan. I first learned about it last April when Russell came across a Kickstarter campaign for a board game by Martin Wallace inspired by the story. We were sufficiently intrigued to back the campaign and I used Russell's June birthday as an excuse to buy a book in which the story appeared:  New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird.

Our copy of A Study in Emerald (the game) arrived at Chez Morsie sometime around Christmas, but we hadn't gotten around to playing it so when our friend Michael brought his copy to game night last week, I jumped at the chance to learn the game even though I hadn't read Gaiman's story yet. I read the story today.

The story is set in an alternate Victorian London that should seem pretty familiar to readers. The biggest difference between "A Study in Emerald"'s London and that of Doyle is that Victoria is one of the Great Old Ones, who have been ruling the planet for the past 700 years. Like Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet," "A Study in Emerald" introduces the consulting detective and his narrating companion. There is a murder with which Inspector Lestrade and his team need assistance. At the crime scene "RACHE" is spelled out in the victim's blood, though in this case the blood is green. While I am no expert on the Sherlock Holmes canon, it seemed to me that Gaiman admirably maintained the feel of Doyle's/Watson's writing (though this is helped along by the fact the story's introductory passages mirror that of "A Study in Scarlet"). I liked how Gaiman was able to introduce the backstory of the Great Old One's takeover without having it seem like a tangent. While I enjoyed "A Study in Emerald" as I was reading it, when I finished the story I was thrilled. I can't explain why without spoiling it (I even insisted that Russell must read it himself). There's more in "A Study in Emerald" for Sherlockians than there is for Lovecraft aficionados, but I'd recommend it to both (and especially to readers who appreciate both Doyle's and Lovecraft's worlds).

A Study in Emerald (the game) is built upon the political tensions described in Gaiman's story: the Great Old Ones rule the world, but there is a group of "restorationists" plotting to overthrow them. In the game, which plays 2-5, players are randomly and secretly assigned to either the Loyalist or Restorationist factions. Ours was a 4-player game and I was the token Restorationist; I did not win.

Interestingly enough, per Wallace's design notes, the inspiration for A Study in Emerald was not Gaiman's story but The World that Never Was by Alex Butterworth, a history of anarchism.

I felt that there was enough material her for a board game but was note sure about the reception it would receive. I had this feeling that some players might object to a game where your main occupation would be going around blowing up various world leaders. It just so happened that I had recently read "A Study in Emerald" which suggested a solution to my problem--turn the leaders into monsters, thus depriving them of any sympathy they may otherwise garner. (Design notes, A Study in Emerald rule book, 16)

Not to mention the added cache of both Gaiman and the Cthulhu mythos with gamers.  If nothing else, the "A Study in Emerald" overlay was marketing genius.  I don't tend to spend much time reading rule books (preferring to have games taught to me) and I would skip over design notes just as I usually skip over acknowledgments in the books that I read. I had Russell dig out our copy of the rule book when I started writing this post because I wanted to read Wallace's justification of his inclusion of zombies¹ (and vampires) in the game when they don't appear in the story,² and that's how I learned about the real inspiration for the game, which I found particularly interesting.

1. For what it's worth I was holding my own against in the Loyalist faction until the zombies card was in play. When Dan, who had the zombies card in his card, managed to get his hands on a card that allowed his deck to cycle more quickly, I (and the Restorationist cause) was doomed.
2. He justifies zombies because of a real life Dr. Frankenstein-type individual that appears in Butterworth. He has no good excuse for including vampires.

Alice Munro wins the Nobel Prize

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Alice Munro,

"master of the contemporary short story."

Here are link to the prize announcement (with video) and the very skimpy press release (PDF).

I haven't read Munro in ages, because I tend to gravitate toward novels over short stories.  I will have to address this lack of recent Munro-reading soon. For myself and others in the same position I've included a selected bibliography below. I'd appreciate any specific recommendations.

An incomplete Bibliography

• Dance of the Happy Shades and Other Stories (1968)
• Lives of Girls and Women (1971)
• Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You: Thirteen Stories (1974)
• The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose aka Who Do You Think You Are?: Stories (1979)
• The Moons of Jupiter: Stories (1982)
• The Progress of Love (1986)
• Friend of My Youth: Stories (1990)
• Open Secrets: Stories (1994)
• The Love of a Good Woman: Stories (1998)
• Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories (2001)
• Runaway: Stories (2004)
• The View from Castle Rock: Stories (2006)
• Away from Her (2007)
• Too Much Happiness: Stories (2009)
• Dear Life: Stories (2012)

Knitting Through It edited by Lela Nargi

Knitting Through It: Inspiring Stories for Times of Trouble
Lela Nargi, editor

A colleague brought in Knitting Through It for my knitting coworker and I to read.  I was eager to read it because the topic seemed like the perfect fit for a new year full of upheaval. Using knitting, the process of knitting, to "see us through adversity" (13) is something to which I can most definitely relate and I thought reading about others doing the same might be cathartic.  Unfortunately, Knitting Through It was a disappointment.

Knitting Through It is a short-story collection arranged topically--Knitting through... Charity, Illness, Smoke, Grief, Work, Unemployment, Politics, Prison, War, Poverty, Industrial Development, Families in Motion, Relationships.  Contemporary writing is supplemented by life stories collected in the 1930s and 1940s,¹ as well as patterns and photographs (mostly historical). While the structure should work in theory, in practice Knitting Through It reads more like the contents of someone's idea file than of a curated collection.  For example, "Knitting through Prison" (pages 101-113) consists of an excerpt from an interview that mentions a "profitable little trading business" that the interviewee's father had developed while in prison using handknits sent by his wife as initial stock, a story about a prison reform program crochet project, a photograph of an art installation featuring hats created during the course of the aforementioned program, a pattern for the simple crocheted hats the prisoners made, a photograph depicting Sing Sing prisoners knitting circa 1915, and a three-quarter page blurb about the "behind-bars craft tradition".

To be blunt, I feel like this collection needed editing.  The most interesting aspect of the book is the inclusion of tidbits from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers' Project records, but they don't always seem to fit well into the chapter themes.  And, even though their inclusion seems to have been a key part of the plan for the collection as a whole, the decision wasn't made to focus the collection on the American experience. I find this problematic only because the collection (especially with the inclusion of all the WPA-collected life stories) is so heavily American that the occasional international inclusion seems completely out of place.

1. From the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers' Project records, circa 1935-1942, housed at the Library of Congress.

Astray by Emma Donoghue

Astray by Emma Donoghue

[F]or the past decade and a hlaf, I've been writing stories about travels to, within, and occasionally from the United States and Canada. Most of these travelers are real people who left traces in the historical record; a few are characters I invented to put a face on real incidents of border crossing. Many of them stray in several sense, when in the course of their journeys across geographical and political boundaries they find themselves stepping over other ones: law, sex, or race. Emigrants, immigrants, adventurers, and runaways--they fascinate me because they loiter on the margins, stripped of the markers of family and nation; they're out of place, out of their depth. (Afterword, 263)

I loved everything about this book (including the cover art). As Donoghue explains so eloquently in her Afterword, Astray is a collection of short stories that together are a study on what it means to stray (in every sense of the word). The stories are thematically organized into three groups: departures, in transit, and arrivals and aftermaths. They are set at various points in time between 1639 and 1967 and focus on a diverse group of individuals.

My favorite thing about Astray is that the stories are inspired by something that actually happened (or supposedly happened). Each story is followed by a note, usually a couple of paragraphs long, that explains its inspiration. What I like most is that the genesis of some of the stories is the smallest mention of something in a historical document. One of the joys of working as an archivist is coming across the types of tidbits that piqued Donoghue's interest. Our most visceral reaction to such a discovery is either a great desire to find out more information (research imperative) or a need to speculate about what really happened, using our imagination to fill in the gaps (daydreaming), or both. I suspect most of us don't often act on the former (because we have work to do), but instead keep mental lists (or photocopies) of the potential-laden morsels (I know I do). I love that Donoghue has followed these paths to their logical conclusion and given life to the historical snippets that haunted her.

I want a copy for my library. Astray is going on my wish list.

Sync this week: short stories

I'm not particularly excited about the Sync offerings this week, but I do want to get back into doing this these reminder posts.

Sync's offerings this week (Thursday, July 12 through Wednesday, July 18, 2012) are:

Guys Read: Funny Business, edited by Jon Scieszka

and
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Stories
by Mark Twain

Here it is! Volume 1 [of the Guys Read Library of Great Reading]. A lot of something funny for everyone. 10 original short stories by Mac Barnett, Eoin Colfer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Kate DiCamillo & Jon Scieszka, Paul Feig, Jack Gantos, Jeff Kinney, David Lubar, Adam Rex, and David Yoo.
You should be able to find something you like in here. This volume is guaranteed to contain an intro joke, a sneaky friend, a super-villian, an origin story, an idiot friend, a cranky author, a homicidal turkey, brother torture, a crazy grandpa, parents who give their kid's bedroom to a biker, self surgery using rusty pliers, and lots of laughs.

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a wild yarn involving a case of mistaken identity, a gambler who’d bet on anything, and a very unusual frog named Daniel Webster. First published in The Saturday Press in 1865, the tale was immensely popular, and in 1867 an expanded version was published with 26 additional short stories, told as only Mark Twain could tell them.

Note: these books don't expire like the e-audiobooks you get from the library. So, be sure to download the books even if you don't think you'll get around to listening to them right away.

More information about Sync is available in this post.

public service announcement:get a YA story from Jen Lancaster

Earlier today Jen Lancaster posted a request on her blog. She wants to test the commonly held belief that "social media mentions are tantamount to success" for authors. She's offering a free copy of her never-before-seen (young adult) short story, "The Girl Most Likely," to anyone who talks about her and her work on social media during the next week. And, you don't even need to say nice things. See this post on her blog for full details.

In any case, I like Jen Lancaster (she shares my affection for footnotes) so I have no problem going along with her experiment and I'm interested to hear the results (she's promised to report back). In any case, if you're interested in learning more about her work, I've posted abut Bitter is the New Black (see post) and Such a Pretty Fat (see post). Her blog is also good reading. If you're intrigued, you can post somewhere and earn a copy of "The Girl Most Likely." If not, it's no skin off anyone's back.

reading H.P. Lovecraft

Even though I'm not supposed to be buying books for myself, I did pick up one during this latest blog-neglecting period. When I was book shopping for my nieces and nephews (a post on that topic coming soon) I happened across this deeply discounted title: Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, introduced and selected by Joyce Carol Oates. Now that we (finally) have a copy of Arkham Horror, a board game built around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, I felt it was high time that both Russell and I read Lovecraft's work (and I love the cover art). I also figure that I might as well share my thoughts on the individual stories on the blog. So far I've read the first three.

The stories included in Tales of H.P. Lovecraft are supposedly his major works. I'm not sure if the stories are arranged chronologically or with any rhyme or reason and I don't remember reading anything about that the arrangement in the volume's introduction.

Joyce Carol Oates' Introduction (9.5 pages)
I appreciated getting a bit more biographical information about Lovecraft. What a horrible, horrible mother he had. JCO references many writers while placing Lovecraft in the context, explains the Cthulhu Mythos and its origins, identifies the overlap of Lovecraft's imaginary geography with areas in the Northeast United States, and outlines reader response. However some of the most interesting bits of the essay aren't specific to Lovecraft and his work.

JCO on the difference between genre and literary fiction:

Readers of genre-fiction, unlike readers of what we presume to call "literary fiction," assume a tacit contract between themselves and the writer: they understand that they will be manipulated, but the question is how? and when? and with what skill? and to what purpose? However plot-ridden, fantastical or absurd, populated by whatever pseudo-characters, genre-fiction is always resolved, while literary fiction makes no such promises; there is no contract between reader and write for, in theory at least, each work of literary fiction is original, and, in essence, "about" its language; anything can happen, or, upon occasion, nothing. Genre fiction is addictive, literary fiction, unfortunately is not. (xiii)

Nostalgia: "To love the past, to extol the past, to year in some way to inhabit the past is surely to misread the past, purposefully or otherwise; above all, it's to select from the past only those aspects that accommodate a self-protective and self-nourishing fantasy" (xi).

"The Outsider" (5+ pages)
Even though I'm pretty sure that I had not previously read any Lovecraft, I was struck with profound sense of déjà vu when reading "The Outsider." A disappointing start to the collection, short with its surprise ending so obviously that even twist seems inappropriate.

"The Music of Erich Zann" (7 pages)
A bit creepier, but the framed narrative gives the reader a bit too much distance.

"The Rats in the Walls" (16 pages)
Finally a really good ending. "The Rats in the Walls" gave me hope for both Lovecraft and this volume.

Steampunk! out this week

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant

I posted about Steampunk! back in June, but the anthology is out this week so it seems like the perfect time for another post.

There's a great review written by Steampunk Scholar up on one of the Tor.com blogs.

My favorite stories in the book were "Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow, "Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black, "Finishing School" (comic) by Kathleen Jennings, "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" by Libba Bray, "The Oracle Engine" by M. T. Anderson, "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks, and "The Summer People" by Kelly Link.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is a strangely compelling little book. Contained within it are thirty-nine short short stories (one is only three sentences long) and a longer fortieth story, grudgingly appended by the author.¹

Usually with short story collections I want to read the stories one at a time, to savor them. I couldn't do that with Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day though. Loory's stories--the publisher calls them contemporary fables and I think that's apt--are compulsively readable. They are poignant and unsettling, simple and profound. And I wanted to eat them all up!

My favorites stories² follow a tea-drinking, spoon-collecting octopus and an unappreciated, intellectual television. Others feature a duck who falls in love with a rock, companionable cadavers, and a menacing hat. It's a strange hodgepodge that's at once a unified whole.

In his acknowledgments, Loory mentions that the stories in Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day were inspired by a horror writing class. There is some horror here, but it's subtle. Subtle and thought-provoking. Overall I think the collection leans more toward humor--wry humor--and hopefulness.

I want to reread Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, to really let myself reflect on each of the stories in turn. Loory has a lot to tell us and he's only just started.

Get a taste -
One of the collections' stories, "The Girl in the Storm," posted in its entirety on the author's website.

1. Note introducing the appendix: "The following is a longer story not part of the same project included here at the publisher's request" (193).
2. "The Octopus" (28-36) and "The TV and Winston Churchill" (59-63).

disclosure: I received a review copy of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day from Penguin via NetGalley.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

ETA: Happy International Steampunk Day!¹

This particular title isn't due out until October, but I wanted to get something out while I still had my copy as reference (my Adobe Digital Editions tells me that my copy is due to expire in less than 24 hours). I'll likely post about Steampunk! again closer to its actual release date, but here's something to whet your appetite.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant

Firmly rooted in Victorian London, steampunk has often been a bit too Anglo- and Eurocentric². One of the things that's so refreshing about Steampunk! is that its diversity of setting, story, character, format. Something that was achieved by asking the anthology's contributors, whose ranks include both big names and virtual unknowns, for "stories that explored and expanded their own ideas of what steampunk could be" (8).

I read Steampunk! over the course of a month or six weeks. While I know that anthologies aren't meant to serve as a unified whole, I usually prefer not to read them straight through. I do almost always read the stories in the order they are presented, but I like to be able to sit on one before I start the next. I quite enjoyed being able to read Steampunk! leisurely.

I would like to say that each of the works collected in Steampunk! was absolutely wonderful, but I can't. Elizabeth Knox's "Gethsemane" caused me vexation; I didn't "get it" at all. I think I was too tired when I tried to read it and it's one of the longest stories in the anthology so I decided to skip it, fully intending to revisit it at some point before posting my review (that is until I realized that my e-galley was about to expire). Other than that (and please do note that the fault might very well be my own), the anthology was full of win.³

At the moment my favorite story of the bunch is Dylan Horrocks' "Steam Girl." I didn't expect to prefer this one because it is (at least in my opinion) one of the least steampunk contributions to Steampunk!³ (the titular character's alter ego exists in a imaginary? steampunk world, but she and the story's protagonist are firmly planted in the realistic here-and-now). "Steam Girl" is, however, perfectly crafted.

I should also note that Steampunk! is geared toward the young adult market unlike the steampunk anthologies of which I am familiar.

Steampunk!'s table of contents, with links to extracts when available (my favorites are starred):

• "Some Fortunate Future Day" by Cassandra Clare
• "The Last Ride of the Glory Girls" by Libba Bray*
• "Clockwork Fagin" by Cory Doctorow*
• "Seven Days Beset by Demons" (comic) by Shawn Cheng
• "Hand in Glove" by Ysabeau S. Wilce
• "The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor" by Delia Sherman
• "Gethsemane" by Elizabeth Knox
• "The Summer People" by Kelly Link*
• "Peace in Our Time" by Garth Nix
• "Nowhere Fast" by Christopher Rowe
• "Finishing School" (comic) by Kathleen Jennings*
• "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks*
• "Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black*
• "The Oracle Engine" by M. T. Anderson*

If you've clicked on nearly any of the table-of-contents links, you'll have realized that the book has a great website. If you haven't, visit StrangeAndFascinating.com to learn more about the book.

Steampunk! is going on my Amazon wishlist. I'd love a copy, but I'm ornery and I won't buy it on principle. If I'd gotten a paper rather than digital advanced reader copy, I would have been able to keep it as long as I wanted. I'm really not supposed to be buying books and I'm not about to break my rules for a book I would otherwise have gotten for free.

1. Apparently June 14, H.G. Wells' birthday (except it's not actually his birthday), has been dubbed Int'l Steampunk Day. A bit more info here and here.
2. See Multiculturalism for Steampunk, especially the 1 April 2011 post
3. I can't bring myself to edit out this colloquialism (internetism?) even though it's not something I'd use in my everyday speech.

disclosure: I received a review copy of Steampunk! from Candlewick Press via NetGalley. See e-galley snark above. Like I said, ornery.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

I had a really difficult time of it with Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (see post) so I wasn't sure how I'd like The Ladies of Grace Adieu. But, since it's short stories and I liked the cover art, The Ladies of Grace Adieu went on my to-be-read list.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu is not a quick read. One needs to spend time with these stories, to give them one's undivided attention. Philip Womack of the Spectator writes, "these tales read as if Jane Austen had rewritten the Brothers Grimm," which I think it a pretty good summation.

Dark Roots

I believe this is the first time I've used a short story collection as the book of the month...

Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy

Dark Roots is a short story collection by critically-acclaimed Australian author, Cate Kennedy.

In the volume's title story a 39-year-old woman begins dating a 26-year-old man. At first the love affair makes her feel invigorated, sexy and powerful, but slowly insecurities begin to take over to the point where she begins to unconsciously sabotage the relationship.

The seventeen stories included in Dark Roots are full of individuals like this, true-to-life characters confused and unsure about their futures. Their actions, though, range from eerily familiar (things you can imagine yourself doing if you were in that situation) and completely inexplicable (things that leave you wondering just how desperate you'd have to be to take such risks).

Dark Roots explores what it means to be human. In these stories there is comedy and there is tragedy and in many cases it is Kennedy's subtlety that is her greatest strength.

In the story I mentioned above, the protagonist is reading the list of side-effects of her new birth control pills, among them is a "tendency to hirsuteness". I didn't recognize the word and was intrigued when, in the following sentence, the character resolves to avoid alcohol except in moderation, something that didn't seem to relate to any of the other side-effects. So, I looked it up and it seems that alcohol doesn't relate to hirsuteness either, as hirsute means "hairy" or "covered with hair".

book clubbing in Feburary

Margaret Atwood is going to be speaking on campus on March 3rd, so we decided that we should read one of her books for February. Our selection was Moral Disorder, her most recent collection of short stories (2006).

Moral Disorder and other stories by Margaret Atwood

Moral Disorder is for the most part a series of interconnected stories featuring the same set of characters, but there are some notable exceptions.

The group had mixed feeling (tending toward ambivalence and annoyance) about Moral Disorder. The biggest complaint was the fact that Atwood didn't fully commit. Moral Disorder is neither a traditional collection of short stories nor a novel masquerading as a set of short stories. The fact that only a small portion of the prose was not interconnected made Atwood's choices all the more perplexing.

While I am a fan of Atwood, I had a hard time with Moral Disorder. I do think, however, the most of my difficulties came from the fact that I was listening to an audio version. Now, I love audio books, but the way this one was presented made it a real challenge to read. Many of the stories in Moral Disorder don't really come to an obvious conclusion (we assume this is because the overarching story is going to continue) and the reader of the audio version did nothing to signal to the listener that story A was done. The title of story B would be said in the same exact tone as the rest of the narration so unless the listener was paying close attention, the stories just merged into one. In other collections this would be less of a problem, but in Moral Disorder with the majority of the characters appearing in multiple stories, it was horribly confusing. The only time I was really able to appreciate Moral Disorder properly was when I set aside a huge chunk of time and devoted myself to it completely, allowing no other distractions.

The Secrets of a Fire King

The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards

I've had The Secrets of a Fire King on my wishlist pretty much ever since I read The Memory Keeper's Daughter (read my post). Now that I've read it, I'm wondering why I didn't try to get my hands on a copy sooner. I loved the varied settings of the stories, Edwards' vivid descriptions, and her sympathetic characters. In this collection, Edwards is subtle and strong. Her words are mesmerizing. And, while there were some stories that I cared less for than others, there were none that I wanted to write off (which is rare in a collection, I think).

I think my favorite stories were "Thirst" (about a mermaid who gave up the sea for love), "A Gleaming in the Darkness" (the story of Marie Curie's cleaning woman), and "Aristotle's Lantern" (how to describe that one?). I loved the irony of "The Invitation" and optimism evidenced in "The Great Chain of Being" and "The Story of My Life" (and how those two stories frame the collection).

While The Secrets of a Fire King has a number of recurring themes, I was particularly struck by Edwards' meditation on Marie Curie and her legacy. When radium appeared unexpectedly in a second story, I felt a surge of joy (and a greater anticipation about where that story would lead).

St. Lucy's Home...

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

Reading this book is like dreaming. The stories are unsettling, at once completely realistic and not quite right.

Child protagonists grapple with growing up in a world where sisters disappear into the ocean after tobogganing in gigantic crab shells and grown-ups go to ice discos to grope each other in the anonymity of a blizzard.

In the title story, daughters of werewolves are sent to a finishing school to prepare them for human society. It was my favorite, I think, and I'm almost glad that it was saved for last. My second favorite might be "Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration," in which a child, whose father is a minotaur, recounts her family's trek westward in a covered wagon.

While Russell has a tendency to use SAT-words, this debut is unique and very readable.

I think of you

I think of you by Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif's first fiction offering since The Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Man Booker Prize, is actually a repackaging of nine stories originally published between 1983 and 1996.

Set primarily in Egypt and the United Kingdom, each of the stories features a female character. Throughout the collection Soueif focuses on the interior life of her protagonists and the ordering of the stories lends some sense of a progressively maturing voice. The collection, however, does seem a bit uneven. With the first five stories developing two specific characters, the protagonists of final stories seem comparatively inchoate.

The first three stories--"Knowing," "1964," and "Returning"--show three different epochs in the life of Aisha, an Egyptian woman who immigrated to the United Kingdom in her teens. "Mandy" and "Satan" feature Asya, a woman separated from her husband who dealing in different ways with the repercussions of their broken marriage and his philandering.

In the title story, which is arguably the collection's strongest, the unnamed first-person narrator has been hospitalized due to a high-risk pregnancy. With her husband in London unable to get a visa and her family in Cairo, she is alone, the only patient not observing purdah. She survives her hospitalization by invoking an elderly friend, confidante, and role model who died of cancer.

If the stories have a unifying theme it is that of estrangement; estrangement (both emotional and physical) from husbands, as well as from the homeland and the culture of one's childhood. While I think of you lacks the refinement of Soueif's later work it is nevertheless worth reading. Her stories are touching, nostalgic, but never overly so. Soueif's prose is lyrical and this collection is buoyed by her ability to give her readers an extraordinary sense of place.

Read the full review at Armchair Interviews...

other recent reading

All American Girl by Meg Cabot
Written for the teen/tween set, the book is light-hearted and will appeal to anyone in the mood for a sweet book with a happy ending. Protagonist Sam is a sympathetic character, a spunky social outsider with a good sense of humor and a crush on a guy who she can never hope to get. The story, outside of the romantic bumbling, does have a message. The only thing that I didn't particularly like were the lists, but they are Cabot's MO in this novel and serve both as summaries and as a way to add Sam's voice to the narrative.

Drowned Wednesday & Sir Thursday by Garth Nix The third and four books in Nix's wonderful Keys of the Kingdom series.

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
I've been listening to this book in the car for quite some time and I finally finished it yesterday. While I appreciated how moody and episodic it was, I did get irritated with it occasionally.
I also found it quite uneven. For a book that was supposed to be jumping between two different time periods, it seemed like 3/4 (or more) of the book took place in the 18th C and I was amazed (especially since 'Hawksmoor' is the title of the book) that Hawksmoor isn't even mentioned until practically its midpoint.
That being said, Ackroyd does bring 18th Century London alive and protagonist Dyer's belief system is fascinating (especially in as much as it clashes with the Enlightenment thinking all around him).

Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
A collection of seven stories set in Thailand from a young (my age) American author.
I really felt that the first five stories in the book were too similar - it was almost as if the stories were all about the same person. "Don't let me die in this place" was the first deviation from the young Thai boy protagonist and I thought it was a wonderful change of pace. The other story that I really liked was "Cockfighter," again because it was so different from the other stories in the book (not that the other stories were bad, but just that they became - for me at least - a bit homogeneous).

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
I thought it was a good read, long but thoroughly engrossing. Though the ending is a bit unrealistic; everything is tied up too well. I think it is probably more of a historical romance than a work of realistic fiction.
That being said, Donnelly's descriptions of 19th Century London (and to a lesser extent, New York) seem fairly realistic. The author's take on Jack the Ripper is also interesting (and more plausible than some of the other things in the book). Additionally Fiona is a very sympathetic character as well as being a viable heroine (despite her modern sensibilities).

Whiskey Sour by J.A. Konrath
J.A. Konrath's debut novel and the first in a promising series (the Jack Daniels mysteries).
This book is full of gruesome murders, which in all honesty really aren't my thing (I'm one of those people who watch horror movies through the cracks between their fingers). Of course, that's not going to stop me from reading the next book in the series especially since it is already on Mt. TBR (to be read).