A promising first novel

In 1920s New Orleans, Raziela Nolan is young, rich, beautiful, and vivacious, as well as independant, educated, and prone to slipping pamphlets on birth control in books at the public library. She is torn between accepting an engagement to her boyfriend Andrew or starting her education to become a doctor, until fate denies her a decision when she slips and hits her head at Andrew's pool and drowns. Thus starts her journey into the afterlife, making friends with others who are as yet unwilling or unable to pass into 'heaven,' in Ronlyn Domingue's The Mercy of Thin Air.

Eighty years later, Amy and Scott buy Andrew's old bookcase (which he had given to the son of Emmaline, his parents' former maid) at an estate sale. Razi's attachment to the bookcase causes her to follow the young married couple; she discovers that Amy is granddaughter to the recently deceased Sunny, who was the younger sister of Twolly, Razi's best friend in life. After her grandmother's death, Amy is distraught with her Grandpa Fin for destroying Sunny's photos and many sentimental belongings, and then who dies before she can forgive him. This act of destruction causes Amy to gather and compile to disc the family's remaining family photos, with the help of Great Aunt Twolly, now in her eighties, but at the expense of her relationship with Scott. As Razi continues to shadow Amy, while reminiscing about her own life, she observes parallels in Amy and Scott's lives to hers and Andrew's.

In some ways, The Mercy of Thin Air resembles Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Both are first person narratives of the deceased character, both young women denied a long life, both full of regret for what is lost. The book also serves as a lesson to live life to the fullest, as Nel, one of Razi's friends in the afterlife, states after 'teaching' himself the cello in his spirit form: "that's what I wanted... I did the wrong thing... what I thought I should do, not what I wanted. And I can't take it back," a statement which causes Razi to look back to her own decision regarding her life with Andrew. The two titles also touch on how the living mourn the dead differently, and how some people cope and some cannot. And on how love continues, despite the pain. As Emmaline sagely notes, "that's how you know you love someone with all your heart, when the world get (sic) so cold without them."

May we all learn these lessons ourselves.

Past lives makes great present entertainment

I love books about past lives. I love the fact that if I can't make my mind up if I want to read something contemporary or historic, I can have both in one cover! Whether it's a book on reincarnation, or a modern character researching past events, a good author will bring you into and hold your interest in both worlds, frustrating you when you leave one storyline, but immediately hooking you back into the other.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Possession by A.S. Byatt.
Two contemporary historic scholars join forces through their respective research of two Victorian poets, whose various writings reveal their torrid extramarital affair.

Marianna by Susanna Kearsley
When Julia Beckett first saw Greywethers as a child, it was a poignant moment which would one day lead her to purchase it. Once in residence, she finds herself daydreaming about Mariana, a woman who lived in the house four hundred years earlier, and Richard de Mornay, the man Mariana loves. When and how did their love end?

Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine
Matilda de Braose was put to death by King John in the 12th century. Centuries later, journalist Jo Clifford undergoes hypnosis while researching Matilda's story, becoming increasingly obsessed as she realises that Matilda is in fact Jo herself in a previous existence.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Recovering from a horrific car crash that left him burnt beyond recognition, the book's narrator meets manic artist Marian Engel, who tries to get him to remember their former life together in medieval Germany.

The Haunted Ground by Erin Hart
The discovery of a well-preserved woman's head in a peat bog brings together Irish archaeologist Cormac and American pathologist Nora to determine how long ago she died. Concurrently, local authorities investigate the recent disappearance of the wife and child of a local landowner.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Yes, fine, the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code, but it's a fun read about secret religious societies, ancient coverups and vengeance. When the Louvre's chief curator is murdered, his body is symbolically laid out before the Mona Lisa. When his granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, a police cryptologist, joins forces with Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, their investigation leads to the legendary Priory of Sion, a nearly 1,000-year-old secret society whose members have included Botticelli and Isaac Newton, and the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei.

The Sinner's Tale by Will Davenport
When a tawdry scandal threatens to destroy Beth Battock's political career, she is forced to return to the provincial hometown and the relatives she’s kept secret. There, she discovers the tale of Sir Guy de Bryan, whose sweeping epic of the havoc wrought by war serves as an example for the present day.

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman
After the suspicious death of her oldest friend, stained glass restorer Juno Mackay delves into Christine's past and her obsession with Pre-Raphealite artist Arthur Penrose, his wife and sister-in-law, and the stained-glass portrait he commissioned a century ago.

She Walks These Hills by Sharon McCrumb
The ghost of 18 year old Katie Wyler, captured by the Shawnee in North Carolinain 1789, haunts the Appalachian wilderness. The story of her escape inspires ethno-historian Jeremy Cobb to retrace her return journey. Meanwhile, 63-year-old convicted murderer Hiram Sorley, who has no recent memory, escapes from a nearby prison.

The Mask of the Night by Mary Ryan
Okay, the beginning was a bit slow, and there were far too many exclamation marks, but once it got going, I zipped through it! A mysterious mask and signet ring, tied to an inquisitor from medieval Venice, and brought to early 20th century Ireland, curses the life of the recipient: Theo becomes 'possessed' by the original owner's spirit, and the desire to find his lady love, an independent woman accused of witchcraft. Theo believes he sees her in his wife's best friend, Jenny. Fifty years later, Dee finds these items in the ruins of Kilashane, Theo's now abandonned and decrepit manor house, and she becomes personally caught up in the intrigue of their past.

A new twist on an old history

In 1692, cunning woman Deliverance Dane was one of the victims of the Salem Witch Hunts, accused for the death of a young girl by her father. Years after Deliverance's death by hanging, her daughter Mercy attempts to clear Livvy's name, something which had been granted to the other condemned men and women. However, the presiding judge states that Deliverance was not and cannot be cleared as she actually was guilty of witchcraft.

Flash forward to 1991: Connie Goodwin is about to embark on the final stages of her graduate studies at Harvard. However, first she must deal with her deceased grandmother's old, decrepit house. Connie, for years submerged in academia, get distracted her discoveries in the house, including the mystery of an old key in a Bible, wrapped in a delicate paper with the name Deliverance Dane written on it. She uses her research skills to track down Dane's story, at the encouragement of her advisor, Manning Chilton, who may have alterior motives. During her investigation, Connie ends up not only learning about Deliverance's story, but her own.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is Katherine Howe's first fiction release, and mirrors aspects of the author's life: both have ancestors involved with the Salem Witch trials, both are dog lovers, both were/are graduate students at Harvard. But Howe's writing style is not bogged down in multisyllabic, academic, incomprehensible language. Rather, it is an intelligent but fluid text, its imagery often sublimely beautiful (Connie "was always puzzled that people say that darkness falls. To her it seemed instead to rise, massing under trees and shrubs, pouring out from under furniture, only reaching the sky when the spaces near the ground were full"). Howe successfully portrays Massachusetts in time periods separated by three centuries, with empathy, pathos, and humour (my favourite scenes being the comical portrayal of strict librarians, and of someone's shouting entering Connie's sleeping subconscious in Sans Serif script, not to mention Connie's new age mother). Without giving anything away, the unconventional ending may throw some readers off, but I found it to be a different, and who knows, perhaps plausible conclusion. And I look forward to more of Howe's work.

Fiction that goes beyond its target

As a teen, I devoured the classics, such as A Tale of Two Cities, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, Wuthering Heights, and practically all of Agatha Christie's mysteries. I wasn't into 'teen' fiction.

Looking back, I'm not sure if this was due to a lack of books that caught my interest, or a lack of Young Adult authors at the time. During university, I found myself turning to YA fiction as a break from academia, because of my notion that it was fluffy, therefore easier and lighter to read than 'adult' fiction; it wouldn't distract me from my studies through its plots or writing styles (no more "just one more chapter"!).

During this time, I came across multiple YA titles that challenged and changed my thinking, and rank them to be 'as good' as those classics I once voraciously read.

O.R. Melling's The Chronicles of Faerie
A series of four books taking place in Canada and Ireland, of crossings between the worlds of faerie and humans.

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle
During a summer spent with her maternal grandparents in Conneticut, Polly O'Keefe and her friend Zachary Grey become involved with ancient hieroglyphs which attract druids who lived some three thousand years ealier.

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Yes, a romantic story with a happy ending, but a bit of a different path getting there. 'Old maid' Valancy Stirling is diagnosed with a heart defect, and decides that it's time to get out of her mother's house. She proposes to local bachelor Barney Snaith, saying she will die soon, and just wants to live out her remaining days in peace and quiet. But of course, something changes, because it wouldn't be a happy ending if we left it there, would it?

Laura Whitcomb's A Certain Slant of Light
Helen Lamb spends her days with Mr. Brown, an English teacher in a public high school, and her nights in his house, with him and Mrs. Brown. But they don't know it, as Helen has been dead and lost for 130 years. One day, she gets a jolt as she sees one of the students watching her. When he speaks to her, he explains that he, too, is one of 'the Light' inhabiting the body of a lost boy. After finding her own host body, Helen and James start a most unusual and intense love affair, as they adjust to their new lives without their hosts' memories.

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
In 1895, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely and guilt-ridden after her mother's suicide, Gemma is prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true. To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man sent to watch her and warn Gemma and her friends about using their powers to enter spiritual realms.

A modern Gothic delight

I love overly romanticised, dark, sinister stories. These include Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, "Dragonwyck by Anya Seton, Louise May Alcott's A Long and Fatal Love Chase, anything by Mary Stewart and Barbara Michaels, and my frequently re-read favourites, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I would now add a new title to the list: Sleep, Pale Sister.

Sleep, Pale Sister was originally published in 1993 by Joanne Harris, and reissued in 2004. One of its main characters is painter Henry Chester, whose works are influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and whose reputation is growing. His subjects are mainly young girls in scenes from Shakespeare or classic tragedies, and feature his favourite model, pale, unearthly Effie. When Effie turns seventeen, Henry, twenty years her senior, marries her. However, his vision of Effie as pure and untouched changes when she welcomes his sexual advances early in the marriage, and disgust and hate replace love and adoration. Henry vows to destroy Effie.

But Henry is not the only one plotting; Moses Harper is not only a rival to Henry in painting, but for Effie's attention. With information and help from Fanny, a brothel owner who has her own vendetta against Henry, Effie and Mose join together to ruin him.

This novel is full of what you would expect in Gothic fiction: a mad wife, a secretive husband, drugs and liquor galore, not to mention prostitutes, nightmares, large spooky houses, and the inevitable graveyard and ghost. Harris uses the device of a different character's point of view for each chapter, which adds to the book's almost frenetic pace and tumultuousness. It's a wild and bumpy ride, perfect reading for dark, chilly, windy nights.

He wrote, she wrote

Several years ago, I completely enjoyed reading Ami McKay's first novel, The Birth House. Set in early 20th century rural Nova Scotia, the book centres around the young Dora Rare, the only female descendant in the Rare family. Through her friendship with the elderly Marie Babineau, Dora learns the trade of midwifery, eventually turning her own home into a 'birth house.' McKay balances stories of tragedy, not unexpected given the time and place, discontent, including Dora's own unhappy marriage to a handsome but scheming con artist, and riotously funny scenes, such as those featuring Dora's Swedish massager.

Contrast this with Christopher Ransom's debut, The Birthing House. Conrad and Joanna Harrison move from California to Black Earth, Wisconsin, to a four bedroom Victorian mansion. Conrad purchases it on a whim, although it turns out that unseen forces may have 'encouraged' his decision. While Jo is away in Chicago for several weeks, Conrad is given an old scrapbook of the house's history by its previous owner, where he sees his own wife's face eerily staring back at him from a hundred year old photograph. If that's not enough to give Conrad the creeps, walking dolls, bloody floors, disembodied newborns' wails, and unusual shadows and reflections will do it. This is not a story of camaraderie and female support as in McKay's book. Here, the act of giving birth is one of supernatural power, one that gives life to the house itself. In its desire to feel the life force of new births, the house, or a presence therein, makes sure that the trend continues.


The contrast between the two books is fascinating. Does it stem from gender issues? Childhood events? Being a parent? Or just simply different interests and imagination? How does the same premise, the story of a birth house, lay the foundations of two vastly different stories, one filled with both joy and not uncommon pain of having children, and one of complete horror and terror? The one similarity is the birth house itself, and the fact that both authors came to live in former birth houses.

Perhaps the answer lies in the spirit of the house itself! If so, don't accept any dinner invitations to the Ransom household.

Urban Fantasy at it's best

Every once and a while an authour manages to create a character that is so belivable I find myself wanting to know them personally. One of my very favorite characters was created by Patricia Briggs. She has a wonderful urban fantasy series set in the tri-cities area of Washington state. The first book in the series Moon Called introduces us to Mercedes Thompson. Mercy is a wonderful heroine who not only is a strong, smart woman who makes her living as a VW mechanic, but also is a skin walker (coyote shape shifter). Mercy's world is mostly like the world we know but with some fae, vampires, and good looking werewolves mixed in. Mercy has friends to help, mysteries to solve and a love life to sort out. So far there are four books in the series: Moon Called, Blood Bound, Iron Kissed and Bone Crossed. I warn you though, these books are dangerous. It is extremely hard to put down one once you have started.

Posted by Narelle

To re-read or not to re-read

Too many books, too little time. It's a motto that pretty much all voracious readers live by. Working in the library is a kind of beautiful agony; surrounded by so much magnificent reading, I am aware that I will never, ever be able to read all the glorious titles that I see. I almost sigh with relief when a new book order arrives, and nothing tickles my fancy; I will not be distracted from the books I already have at home by some new hard-covered interloper.

Therefore, with so much literary temptation, I pose the question: should a book one truly loved and enjoyed be reread? Why take up something with which you're familiar? Well, I think good reads are like good friends; you get to know them, grow with them, find new significance with them; you don't just hang out with them once, you go back to them again, and again, and again...

Here's a list of some of the good friends I've made over the years:

Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley - The story of King Arthur from his half-sister Morgan Le Fay's point of view. And no, she's not an evil, conniving, power hungry you-know-what.

Marianna; Named of the Dragon; The Shadowy Horses - Susanna Kearsley - Kearsley combines past and present, either through reincarnation or ghostly visitors, in these eerie, romantic titles.

ANYTHING by Barbara Erskine - Like Kearsley, Erskine using themes of past lives, either those of the main characters, or through spirits possessing them, but is much, much, much more frightening!

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - Two young girls are sold by their impoverished parents in 20th century Japan. Memoirs focuses on Sayuri, who becomes one of the most popular and sought after geishas of the time.

Morgan Llywelyn's Irish Century (1916, 1921, 1949, 1972, 1999) - The series follows the family and friends of Ned Halloran during Ireland's tumultuous struggle for political and religious freedom from Britain.

Last Chance Saloon by Marian Keyes - Three friends from Knockavoy, Ireland, lean on each other while trying to get through their (often hilarious) trials and tribulations.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - The enduring 'love' story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff which is so bizarre it carries on into their children's lives.

The Drowning Tree by Carol Goodman - Art, history, murder, suicide, mystery, love, suspense all rolled into 300+ pages! The kind of book that makes you (wish you could) take a sick day from work.

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier - A retelling of an ancient Celtic tale: in order to free her older brothers from a curse which has turned them into swans, Sorcha must face years of silence as she knits them shirts made of nettles.

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding - Get into the head and emotions of London's Bridget Jones as she looks for true love, and an outfit that fits just right.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult - What lengths would a mother go through to save one of her children from illness and death, and is it fair to expect others to go along with her?

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund - Una, wife of Moby Dick's Captain Ahab, tells her story of unconventional life on the New England coast.

Possession by A.S. Byatt - Two modern day academics' lives become intertwined as they research two Victorian day poets and the truth about their past before it is discovered by rival colleagues.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - A young girl inspires the Dutch painter Vermeer with one of his most famous works.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier - What happened to the first Mrs. DeWinter, the beautiful, vivacious Rebecca, and why does her memory continue to haunt her former friends and family, and particularly the new Mrs. DeWinter?

The Passion of Artemesia by Susan Vreeland - Based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the few female painters of the Italian Baroque period.