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BLIND DATE
Frances Fyfield
Penguin Books
An ex-policewoman in London disfigured by acid
living in a bell tower, a sister's violent murder witnessed by her
son, and two mother's who have no idea how poorly they have influenced
their children. All of this centered around a London dating service
that may be the key to everything. In BLIND DATE, Frances Fyfield
has created some fabulous characters who keep you flipping pages to
find out what's next.
The story centers around the life of Elizabeth Kennedy.
When we meet her she is recovering from an acid attack at her mother's
B&B on the English coast. Also present is her dead sister's young
son who witnessed his mother's murder. Elizabeth is determined to
catch her sisters killer, not only because of family vengeance, but
because while a policewoman, she may have driven the wrong suspect
to take his own life. She is driven to know the truth as much as she
is driven to carry out justice. There are family tensions and hidden
family jewels to deal with by the seaside, so she flees back to London
and her home atop a bell tower. Enter Joe, a mysterious handyman hired
in her absence. He has an agenda, but what is it? Is he the killer?
A journalist? A pervert? Elizabeth trusts him, but she's not sure
why, and the reader just wants these two to get together and solve
the crime.
Amid all this, Joe and Elizabeth's friends are visiting
a dating service that may hold all the answers. The dancing around
the fire by all the characters makes for interesting reading. And
while Fyfield has that annoying English writer habit of making you
guess which characters are talking in the beginning of the novel,
and overall the killer's motivation is a stretch, I really enjoyed
reading this mystery on the basis of the strong character portrayals.
The bell tower thing kept me going to. I would love to see Joe and
Elizabeth team up for a sequel.
Jane Hinde
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THE CAMPFIRE COLLECTION
Spine Tingling Tales to Tell in the Dark
Eric B. Martin, Editor
Chronicle Books
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ÊÊÊ
While the title seems to suggest a collection
of urban legends, these stories are not the tales of escaped lunatics
with hooks for hands. They are tales of the human heart gone bad,
or the beast who is true to his heart's desire.
Broken into four sections, each delving into everything
that can go wrong in the woods, The Elements, Beasts, The Unknown
and Ourselves, the editor, Eric B. Martin has culled stories from
fiction writers and diaries of the doomed. In The Elements there is
"The Snow-Shoers" excerpted from George R. Stewart's 1936 ORDEAL BY
HUNGER and the failed attempt to reach the North Pole by Captain Robert
Scott as well as fiction by Edgar Allen Poe and Jack London. The next
section has a marvelous, Aesop style story by Paul Bowles entitled,
"The Hyena." The Unknown collection of stories is by far the creepiest
with "They Bite" by Anthony Boucher being my favorite. "Hunters in
the Snow", in the Ourselves section is also a pretty creepy telling
of male bonding gone bad during a hunting trip into the woods.
The book is sized and bound for backpack carrying
and the stories are just right in length to read before bedtime. Good
old fashioned fun.
Carlye Archibeque
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THE HOUSE OF MEMORY
Stories by Jewish Women
Writers of Latin America
Marjorie Agosin, editor
The Feminist Press
This is a collection of short
stories written by Jewish Latin American women writers, a marginal
group at best. Marjorie Agosin, the editor of the collection and an
amazing writer in her own right, does not stand by the idea of marginalization
though. Her belief is that there is a universality to the joy and
suffering of people that goes beyond race, gender and nationality.
Reading this collection, it is easy to side with her views. In each
of the stories told here it seems only the ceremonial specifics of
the relationships and the exact nature of the suffering has anything
to do with race, gender or nationality, the basics are all about being
human.
The book is divided into three sections. The first
section "Ancestors and Traditions" is full of stories told by the
children of immigrants. The first story, "The Family Tree" is a funny
tale of a Grandmother and her daughters whom her granddaughter refers
to as "the beasts" throughout the story. In the second section, "Immigrants
and Strangers", one of the stories, "May You Make a Good Bride", is
told in the voice of a second grade Jewish girl attending a Catholic
school. She longs to be a good Catholic, but it seems more for the
childhood reasons of acceptance by your peers rather than any religious
motivation. When she is transferred to a Jewish school for third grade,
she is amazed at how normal the other Jewish people seem. And the
last, "Forging Identities", is full of stories of acceptance, of oneself,
of ones origins, and of the "other."
This is a monumental book in literature. No collection
like it exists and some of the writers have never been translated
into English before. The amazing thing is that there is a universality
to the stories even though they take place in a strange land and are
live by people far removed from the reader (in most cases) by religion
and gender. It makes perfect sense that a lot of these tales are told
by children. Children are na•ve, but they also learn to accept change
more readily than adults do, and they have a way of observing dichotomies
as a natural way of life. Agosin has chosen stories that encourage
us to see differences from a child's point of view and then leads
us to more adult stories about acceptance. In this way the collection
is beautiful on an organizational level as well as an artistic level.
Of note also is the introduction by Agosin. She does a fabulous job
of putting the importance of the telling of any groups stories into
perspective while explaining the reason for this particular grouping.
This book is a testament to the power of literature to educate without
alienating.
Carlye Archibeque
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