How I Spent My Summer Vacation, part III

Grenada Day 4

Like previous days, this day started out with rain, but this time it was a torrential downpour. Undaunted, we ate breakfast, packed a bag, and headed north with our map. The rain was crazy heavy and there were several moments where we thought about just turning around—the runoff on the road was substantial and every time we plowed through the standing water, it blinded us for a split second until the wipers cleared it. But then we lucked up by getting behind a large dump truck that was traveling very slowly. We stuck behind it through the worst of the storm. Cars behind us were clearly frustrated with our slow speed, but we were relieved to follow the tortoise instead of trying to keep pace with the hare. Past La Sagesse the weather finally let up to a light rain, so we spent the next hour and change just enjoying the drive.

photos from around Belmont Estate

Our destination for the day was Belmont Estate and we arrived there approximately two hours after leaving the villa. After getting out and stretching a bit, we made our way to the visitors’ center where we met Kelly, the young man giving tours that day (only EC $10 per person, plus tip). He was both energetic and well spoken and we enjoyed learning the history of the plantation and getting the full scoop on the way the cacao is harvested, fermented, dried and processed—all by hand! I was even invited to “walk to beans,” a task traditionally allocated to women, to get a feel for it. The tour concluded with our watching a short video of how the Grenada Chocolate Company then processes the chocolate nibs into their fine chocolate whilst Kelly prepared some cocoa tea and chocolate samples for us. Yum--I’d bought cocoa balls at the market during previous vacations, but making cocoa tea at home never tastes as good! For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a treat. Chocolate, ground cinnamon, and ground bay leaves are mixed to form balls, which are then boiled in water and then sweetened with a lot of sugar.

Some photos from around the estate

Belmont Estate used to supply Lindt and other European chocolatiers with their chocolate, but now it all stays on island, going to the Grenada Chocolate Factory, a solar-powered, all-organic locally owned chocolate company. Because of its small size, the factory doesn’t give tours any longer, but it was quite fascinating to see the process even on video.

more photos from around the estate

Belmont also has recently imported goats and is now the source of most of the goat cheese served in local restaurants on the island. They’re hoping to increase the production of the goat cheese in order to sell it to individuals and stores. We bid adieu to Kelly to walk around a bit on our own before lunch, so we wandered through the gardens, visited the land tortoises and parrots, and made snapshots for about a quarter of an hour.

Lunch was a combination of full service and buffet. Joan, our waitress, took our orders for drinks, appetizers (pumpkin soup for me, fish chowder for DH), and dessert (bergamot ice cream for DH, mango mousse for me) while our main course was a large buffet table filled with a variety of both local dishes and more standard American fare—green salad, potato & papaya salad, green bananas, rice & peas, pepper pot, fish, chicken, and breadfruit pie. It was my first time to try pepper pot, whose flavor I really liked. The food was all perfectly good but not particularly outstanding—hard to achieve ‘outstanding’ on a buffet, after all. But we enjoyed the experience immensely, not least because of Joan’s pleasant mien and the lovely breeze. Two prix-fixe meals, plus one bottled water, one coffee, and two fresh cane juices, came to around EC $120, including tax and additional service charge.

This cute little boy jumped into my photo!

After lingering there for a while, we continued our journey north to Sauteurs, our mouths rather continually agape from the stunning views of the lush mountains and gorges. We had intended to follow the signs all the way to Carib’s Leap but the road was blocked off with police signs in town. Changing gears, we followed the road out to Bathway Beach instead, which was a wild swathe of sand etched with breakers. Apparently along this windward coast the island loses up to 7 feet per year from erosion, at least according to the tourist literature left in our villa. We got out to make some photos and enjoy the salty tang of the air and the rare kiss of sunshine on our faces. Then back in the car following the road to River Antoine distillery (“get thee to a rummery,” my husband commanded as we drove by). By this time, school was getting out for the day, so driving again slowed down as we navigated through seas of small, uniformed children, each more adorable than the last.

Bathway Beach looking north/ Bathway Beach looking south

It was, we decided, a wonderful day, a perfect way to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. Wanting to continue the celebration with a nice meal, we chose the Beach House, remembering it as having a very nice ambience. Dinner was not quite as successful as we had hoped, however. Part of it was simply the wet weather and the resulting increase of bug activity. The restaurant has some attractive sconces, one on the wall above each table, and while in the past they’ve never attracted insects to the point of being bothersome, that night it was distracting and unpleasant.

I also had a misunderstanding with our waiter (or perhaps it was between our waiter and the kitchen), which resulted in a very odd first course, indeed. I originally ordered the summer salad, comprising mixed greens, fresh goat cheese candied pecans, apple slices, and a mango vinaigrette. Upon being told that the kitchen was out of mixed greens but that I could have a Caesar salad instead, I asked if I could have the romaine lettuce used in the Caesar salad, but prepared like the summer salad. “Of course,” was my response. Well, what I got was a Caesar salad, complete with anchovies(!) and parmesan cheese, but with the apples and candied pecans from the summer salad. It wasn’t exactly dreadful—it was more bizarre than anything else—but I couldn’t really bring myself to finish it.

The kitchen was out of the first two items DH tried to order so he ordered a simple steak, medium rare. It came back well done and so full of gristle that it was pretty tough to cut. The side dishes were the saving grace, including the seasonal vegetables, the baked mashed potatoes, and the sautéed mushrooms, all done to perfection. I had more luck with my second dish of beef skewers served with a peanut sauce called the Thai Teepee—they were absolutely succulent and tender. Our dessert, a cloud of meringue, filled with lime curd, a passionfruit reduction, and cream, was perfectly balanced and very light. Three cocktails, plus tax and tip, brought our bill to EC $301.

Were we overall disappointed? Perhaps a little. Our server could have saved us some disappointment up front by telling us what the kitchen had run out of, for example. And I am still shaking my head at that salad, but that was probably a miscommunication more than anything. There was no excuse for the awfulness of my husband’s steak, certainly, but we don’t really like to send things back, either, so we just sucked it up. We still had a pleasant evening because we thankfully still really enjoy each other’s company, but our good time was only intermittently connected to our food.

photos from the Beach House restaurant

Today I read a really good young adult novel called Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchette, enthusiastically recommended to me by friend and former co-worker, Rebecca Fabian.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, part II

View from our rooftop bar

Grenada Day 2

We awake to rain and a swarm of mosquitoes outside. Oh, dear! We spend the morning and early afternoon at the villa, swimming and reading. Breakfast is fresh fruit & toast, lunch is peanut butter & bacon sandwiches. There’s more rain than sun and in the afternoon we decide to drive out to explore the neighborhoods of L’Anse Aux Epines. Although it’s highly unlikely we would at this point stay anyplace besides one of the Antoines’ properties, it was fun to see in person the various villas from the Spice Isle Villas website.

a neighborhood villa

For dinner we chose Red Crab, for convenience as much as anything. Because it’s in our villa’s neighborhood, we always give it a try on each trip and each time we’ve come away with varying levels of disappointment. Not this time, though. At last it lives up to its reputation for us! I opted for the mahi mahi, prepared with a garlic sauce and served up with provision. DH chose two appetizers—the French onion soup and a dozen snails. All three were really quite good, along with the rum punches. Our meal came to EC $160, which included tax but not a service charge. (NB: Though the restaurants on Grenada might not compare to the ones on Anguilla, the prices don’t compare, either. If this had been Anguilla, the tab would have been at least US $160.)

Went “home” after dinner to see if we could go up to the rooftop deck and play some Bananagrams, but alas, with all the rain the mozzies were unbearable despite the combined efforts of breeze, ceiling fans, and our insect repellant. We retired indoors instead and read.

I woke up that morning with the preposterous fear that I would run out of books so I grabbed one from the villa to read that day instead. It was You Are Not the One by Vestal McIntyre, a collection of short stories. I’d never heard of him. It was readable enough but nothing to really blow my skirt up, as DH rather irreverently says.

Grenada Day 3

Socked in. By storms, that is. All. Day. Long. It rained so hard all day that we couldn’t even read outside because the wind was driving the rain all over, even in the middle of the rooftop pavilion—our pages just kept getting too wet. And our internet access wasn’t working, either. We ate brunch in the villa and then got a little stir crazy, so we hopped into the car for a drive. We drove all over LAE and then got a hankering to see the SGU campus, so we drove over to True Blue to explore there, too. Then we stopped at the Spiceland Mall to see if we could purchase a couple of umbrellas, but as it was Sunday, everything was closed. Undaunted, we kept driving and thought we’d see if the vendors market was open on Grand Anse. Two stalls were open, so we chatted with the proprietress while we poked around, eventually settling on a sarong, some hot sauce, and some vanilla to take back home with us.

a cow on True Blue peninsula

Back to the villa again where DH wanted to get back to his book, but I was still feeling restless and decided to go for a walk instead. Man, there are some KILLER hills in LAE! I got soaked through, of course, but there was something fun about seeing the neighborhood on foot and making friends with the dogs along the way. They all seem to come on strong with full bravado but then melt into full-body wiggles with their tails going ninety-to-nothing the moment you stop and greet them cheerfully.

a pothound playing in the water

For dinner we called in a take-out order at La Boulangerie for one pizza and one order of Boscaiola pasta, similar to a Bolognese but with mushrooms added. Our least expensive meal yet at EC $50, or around US $20. Between the rain and bugs, we ate indoors and turned the TV on for the first time, vegging out on the daybed and enjoying the good food.

This is only our second vacation where rain has had a tremendous impact on us, so we’re pretty lucky. But it was our first time on Grenada with so much rain and it became clear that Turtleback Villa, while wonderful in so many ways, is not particularly well-suited for long periods indoors—there’s no table inside for eating meals or setting up a board/card game. And because there are no screens on the French doors, we couldn’t throw them wide open because of the awful mosquitos, so whenever we stayed indoors, we inevitably had to run the a/c. We tried playing Bananagrams on the bed, but every time our weight shifted, so did our playing tiles, so we gave up on that, too. (There is a low coffee table by the daybed, but my husband is of an age where he simply cannot lean over that far in comfort for any length of time, so that table wouldn’t work for us, but it might for other folks.)

our spiral stairway leading to the rooftop bar

Today I read the first book in a wonderful new(ish) mystery series – The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall.

What I Read on Summer Vacation, Part I

THE FALSE FRIEND by Myla Goldberg. When as an adult Celia recovers a memory of a childhood tragedy that contradicts what she told the police so many years ago, she returns to her hometown to confess the truth. But in this book, Goldberg explores just how elusive and malleable memory and truth can be in the face of time, demonstrating the lengths people will go to hide from unpleasantness, both the world’s and their own.

While this book may be less enchanting than Goldberg's debut novel, Bee Season, it is infinitely more haunting and plausible. This title will be available in September from Doubleday Books. (NB: My sales rep, Ann Kingman, told me that Doubleday is interested in using my shelf talker for some of their online publicity, which pleases me to no end!)

THE WIDOWER’S TALE by Julia Glass. Julia Glass follows classic tradition, proving once again that family is the original source of comedy, tragedy, and frustration. Her newest novel is a meditation on love, both filial and romantic, and how hopelessly ridiculous we are destined to become if we don’t make the efforts to temper our passions with reason or our actions with accountability.

Glass is one of the best writers out there for exploring the nuances and quirks of interpersonal relationships and this book fits into her pantheon neatly. This book will be available in September from Pantheon Books. Interestingly, I chose "pantheon" in the above sentence before looking up the publisher for this one and decided to leave it since it was such a nifty coincidence.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation, part I

June 2010 Grenada & Anguilla

Travel Day 1:

Travel on American nonstop Hartford to San Juan—totally full flight, unfortunately with a high proportion of screaming and otherwise badly behaved children (at what point did it become acceptable to watch portable DVD players with no headphones?). With the ridiculous layover that comes with the Grenada transfers, for the last few trips we’ve opted to leave the airport for a leisurely lunch at Pamela’s Restaurant, part of Numero Uno Guesthouse. This year we opted to save a bit on taxi fare by staying a little closer to the airport and chose to give our custom to the Ocean Bar & Grill at the Ritz Carlton instead. I had called ahead a few days before our departure to see if it was possible as a non-guest to spend a few hours there enjoying a long luncheon and I was assured that we would be very welcomed, indeed. In fact, we were. Now, resorts are not our first choice for accommodations, and even if they were, the Ritz would in all likelihood be beyond our means for a two-week-long vacation (not to mention that it’s all a little too, well, corporate for our tastes). But if the San Juan location is representative of the chain, after our afternoon there, I can totally see why people are devoted to the brand. No staff member, from the concierge to the hostess to the busboys, could do enough for us. To a person, they were pleasant, congenial, and professional. Before being seated, we mentioned that we would be hanging out for about 3 hours and that we would be happy, therefore, not to take the first row of tables closest to the sand and the view. Nonsense, they said! We were the first to arrive for lunch and therefore must have our pick of tables. So we settled in with our books and backpacks to enjoy the view and the ambience.

Sonny was our server and she was delightful, checking in with us just often enough that we could add another beverage to our tab, but not so often that it felt pushy or that she was rushing us. Really, she had an uncanny sense of timing. We ordered an appetizer of chips & salsa to share, the kosher foot long hot dog (DH), the Puerto Rican Cobb salad (me), an ice cream, one iced tea, one Medalla (the local light beer), one Diet Coke, and two lattes. With the exception of the Medalla, which was a whopping $6 (really? for a local beer?!), everything else was priced slightly less than I would have expected for such an upmarket location. Our total before tip came to $72. (For comparison purposes, our meal at Pamela’s the year before for a comparable number of drinks and amount of food, came to $91. It just so happened that the mini notepad I was using for this trip had last year’s trip tallies still in it.)

Help me--I'm sideways!

We took a taxi back to the airport a little after 3:00 (fare is $10 each way, plus $1 per suitcase) and hunkered down in the terminal to bide our time for another few hours. Between reading and people-watching, the time actually went pretty quickly. We boarded the American Eagle flight (all but two seats were filled) around 6:00 for an on-time departure with our noses still buried in our books, so even the two hour flight went by quickly. DH was absorbed in the new behemoth Vietnam novel called Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes while I was involved with Julia Glass’s forthcoming novel called The Widower’s Tale. I had started Paul Harding’s Tinkers that morning, and while the beauty of the language really struck me, the story itself did not, so I put it down until I could devote more attention to it.

Once we landed, it took very little time to make it through immigration, grab our checked luggage, and then maneuver through customs. Outside Jude, a friend of our hosts, was waiting to drive us to our villa, the charming and ever-so-reasonably-priced Turtleback Pavilion. Low season rates here are always a good value, but because of the economy, the owners were offering 30% off the rack rates this summer. Spice Isle Villas or Reef View Grenada to see the websites. Our fourth visit to Grenada and our third stay at that villa (on one of our trips we traveled with friends and stayed at the larger, sister villa of Tradewinds, found at the same websites above), so clearly we’re devoted fans. Almost 16 hours exactly from the time we left for the airport that morning we tumbled into bed, filled with that odd combination of exhaustion and exhilaration that so often accompanies travel days.

Grenada Day 1

It might be a gigantic pain in the ass to have such a long travel day, and I ain’t sayin’ that I wouldn’t rather get to Grenada in a more timely manner, but boy howdy—there is a real and certain reward for landing on the island well past sunset, and that is waking up to its sunlit splendor first thing in the morning.

Our hosts, Anthon and Sharon Antoine, had done some light provisioning for us ahead of our arrival, so after the usual exclamations over the beauty of our surroundings and our great good fortune to be there, we immediately set about making coffee before heading out to the pool. One of the best things about Turtleback is the number of nooks tucked around the villa for reading & relaxing, so there’s always an option to be social or solitary, in the sun or in the shade. Between the main level and the rooftop lounge there are two pairs of padded Adirondack chairs, two padded sets of chaises longues, three sets of tables & chairs for dining, two rocking chairs, and a set of the most amazing padded swings whose backs can adjust up or down like a chaise longue. It’s truly a limer’s paradise!

A bit more about the villa: it’s an open plan studio with a king-size bed, a compact but complete kitchen, and a full-size day bed all sharing the living space with a compact bathroom off to the side. French doors on three sides can be thrown wide open, but the best part of the villa is the outdoor living space. There’s a swimming pool big enough to actually swim in, surrounded by mature foliage, plus the rooftop deck with wet bar, which has lovely views over the bay and out to the Atlantic. For a couple traveling without friends or children, I don’t believe there’s any better value for that level of comfort and style on the entire island.

Shawn, from Y&R car rentals, showed up shortly after 9:00 to drop off our two-door Toyota with four-wheel drive and get our paperwork taken care of. Since we were just sitting down for breakfast when he arrived, we invited him to join us. After the rental was squared away, we decided to put off our grocery shopping for a couple of hours and just relax around the villa instead. If we had known that our first day would be our only day of sunshine on Grenada, no doubt we would have enjoyed it even more.

At noon we cleaned ourselves up and headed to our favorite decadent place for lunch on Grenada—Spice Island Beach Resort. If we were resort people, this is exactly the kind of place we would be drawn to—gracious, open-aired, and unmistakably islandy. As always, the service was charming and the food was excellent, but this year we noticed two differences: the dearth of guests and the slightly increased menu prices. One local salad, one lamb roti appetizer, one smoked salmon sandwich, one order of ice cream, two Tings and one frozen fruit punch took our total to EC $166, including tax and service charge. Now I understand that that translates to less money than we’d spent on lunch at the Ritz the previous day, but it still felt higher than usual, particularly for the small portions served.

After lingering for a while over our books, we left Spice Island to head over for some grocery shopping at the IGA in Spiceland Mall. It’s a tad more expensive than the Food Fair closer to St. George’s, but we have always found the selection to be greater here. A brief pause to buy some mangos from a guy under a tree in the parking lot and then we headed back “home,” where we spent the day in a circuit of swimming, sunning, and relaxing on those marvelous swings.

Dinner found us at Charcoal’s, a new BBQ restaurant in Lanse Aux Epines, just down the road from our villa. It’s clean and casual and fun, not to mention reasonably priced. DH selected the grilled lambi platter while I opted for the babyback rib platter, each accompanied by our choice of 2 sides. One beer, one rum punch, and one order of ice cream brought our total to EC $101, or about $38 in US. They also offer take out, which seemed to be a popular choice the night we were there.

Charcoals in LAE

Another early night back to the villa for more reading and then bedtime—I finished Myla Goldberg’s forthcoming book, The False Friend.

Stay tuned for Part II

Some lighter options for summer reading

It's no secret that I tend to be drawn to darker, literary tomes that carry some weight, both literally and figuratively, but what's less known is what a colleague of mine (not from my store, will remain nameless) refers to as my "book slumming." (She's hardcore when it comes to her reading. If there's even a hint of commercialism, she's not likely to pick it up.) I don't see it as slumming, actually. When there are so few people out there who make reading a priority in our lives, why on earth would we want want to denigrate readers who read books written by authors who will never, ever win a literary prize?

Which leads me to my post today. Books for entertainment. Books for fun. Books that might even be, dare I say it, funny. Perfect for those days when you don't really want to be burdened with more depressing insights into the human condition. These are not books where you will be blown away by the beautiful prose stylings of the artiste.

Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin, published by Vintage in paperback. A woman recovering from a divorce reluctantly gets involved in helping a friend search the Yucatan peninsula for nine plants with a mythical collective power. Along the way she encounters an ethereal orchid grower, a mystical marijuana cultivator, and a man who will stop at nothing to get the nine plants first. In this delightfully distracting read, the author takes us for a romp that is equal parts romance, adventure, magical realism, and self-discovery. It’s a colorful, frothy, well-paced novel perfect for summer escapist reading. Think any of the Indiana Jones movies or Romancing the Stone and you'll have a pretty good idea where this book is coming from.

The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian, published in paperback by Harper. Ella and John, a couple in their 80s, want to experience one last hurrah. Despite their children's horror and their doctors' warnings (she has late-stage cancer and he has Alzheimer's), they head west in their RV on Route 66 in search of lost time. Full of laughter and poignant moments, this book is a reminder that a life well-lived to the very end is a rare, sweet thing, indeed.


Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith and Jane Austen, published in paperback by Quirk Books. If you thought Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was just a tantalizing in media res novel, this is the book for you. You'll discover Br. Bennet's dark past, uncover the secret of the unholy plague, and swoon with Elizabeth Bennet's debut is interrupted by a legion of the undead! Good fun all around.

You've got to pick a memoir or two...

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen by Jennifer Steil, published by Broadway Books. What starts as a 3-week course teaching journalism to a group of greenhorn reporters in Yemen quickly evolves into a year-long stint as editor-in-chief of the English language newspaper, The Yemen Observer. Bewildered and smitten in equal measure with her new surroundings, Steil faces obstacles as varied as stampedes, kidnapings, and suicide bombings. But what intrigues this intrepid journalist the most is her status as "third gender" -- as a Westerner, she is free to mingle with either men or women in a country where the sexes are still strictly segregated (even at wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom are not permitted to be with each other). This memoir is both instructive and engaging, teaching this reader, at least, much about Yemeni food, culture, customs and government as Steil encounters them for the first time. A fascinating read.

The Spice Necklace: My Adventures in Caribbean Cooking, Eating, and Island Life by Ann Vanderhoof, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Everybody who knows me knows that reading, travel, and eating are my three greatest passions, and I can’t recall the last time reading a book made me as happy as this one did, as it fed all three. Unlike many travel & food writers who never stray beyond the glossy tourist areas, Vanderhoof is the real deal, seeking out and sharing the best, most authentic, down-home island recipes and experiences—whether it’s scampering after thyme-grazing goats on a Dominican mountainside, or pounding out conch with Grenadian fishermen, or learning how to “whine & shuffle” her way through a Trinidadian Carnival covered in mud, paint and sweat (and possibly other bodily fluids). I swear, you’ll scent the nutmeg wafting on the breeze as you read this book, the next best thing to sailing the West Indies yourself!

Packing for summer vacation

Packing for summer vacation is no easy feat for me. Oh, the clothes aren't really an issue. We go to the Caribbean, so two pairs of capris, four bathing suits and some sarongs or coverups, snorkel gear, some tops to mix & match, and a couple of pairs of sandals are all I need. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll toss in a sundress, too. Before the days of the shoe bomber, we even got away with doing carry-on only, even for a two week vacation, but these days we generally check an additional bag with our various liquids and unguents, namely sunscreen.


No, the hard part of packing for me is paring down the list of books that I take with me. Last year I set a personal best of reading 19 books over 15 days. I don't think I'll necessarily match that this year, but I intend to pack at least 16 books for the same amount of time. And since I like having these things planned well in advance, today is the day I've dedicated to reading the first few pages or first chapter of a couple dozen books to determine which ones make the cut. The only thing worse than running out of books on summer vacation is being stuck with duds.

I try to bring at least one non-fiction title, but then my fiction really runs the gamut. I'll take short stories and novels, big thick tomes and slender volumes, typical beach reads and books so dark that the only place to read them in comfort is in the dazzling tropical sunlight. It's also a time for me to both catch up on backlist (previously published) reading and read ahead, courtesy of advance reader's copies, for the books that are coming out in the fall. This is also the first year that I'm lucky enough to have a Sony e-Reader. I don't know how easy it will be to read its non-backlit screen in the bright sunlight, especially whilst wearing my polarized shades, but we'll give it the ol' college try.

On my list of definites (at least so far):

The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
Great House by Nicole Krauss
The Tower, the Zoo & the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
Tinkers by Paul Harding
The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass
Jellicoe Road by Marlina Marchetta (for young adults)
Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
The Woman with the Bouquet by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Help Me, Jacques Cousteau by Gil Adamson
Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer


I still need a nonfiction book to take with me. Any recommendations?

Some debut novels I recently read & enjoyed

A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei. Lin Yulan, a revolutionary leader of the Chinese feminist movement, reluctantly returns to her homeland after years of self-imposed exile for a guided tour of "the new China" with her two daughters and three granddaughters in an effort for the nearly estranged women to reconnect. Each woman arrives in China with her own agenda, and each discovers that some shameful secrets are simply too heavy to bear alone. This powerful, intricately woven first novel is a meditation on grief & recovery, strength & vulnerability, and the urgency to leave one's mark on the world. A very promising debut.

The author graduated from Amherst College, just down the road from our bookstore, and she very graciously stopped by our store one day to sign stock while she was visiting her alma mater. The sales rep had emailed her the above blurb that I wrote for their publicity department and she was very appreciative--there are so many first time writers whose works get overlooked that she seemd grateful for our store's efforts to promote her book. I really look forward to her future work. Penguin published this book new in hardcover in the spring and I hope by the time it's released in paper that it will find the audience it deserves! It would be a very good book group selection.

Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaze Mengiste is a debut novel set in the writer's homeland of Ethiopia during the 1974 military overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. As famine, chaos, and suspicion sweep the nation, one family becomes wrapped up in chaos of its own. When the matriarch dies, father becomes pitted against sons, brother against brother, and husband against wife, each deciding where his or her loyalties lie, both within the family and in the context of the political turmoil exploding around them. This moving book takes the intimate story of one family's struggle to survive a new regime and places it against the backdrop of important world events.

This book puts me very much in mind of my favorite novel of the last several years--Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. And not just because it's the story of one man's personal loss echoed in the devastations of his country--there are some absolutely beautiful phrases and startling insights about this famine-stricken nation, "a desolate valley, the sun too bright for shadows of death." Published by Norton in January 2010.

May is National Short Story Month!

It's been a bit too long since my last blogpost--but I couldn't let National Short Story Month pass us by without telling you about two of my favorite short story collections!


I don't read very much short fiction, as I prefer to really sink my teeth into a book and get absorbed by its world. However, if all short stories were as good as Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's collection called The Most Beautiful Book in the World, I would have to change my reading habits. These stories are exquisite, elegant, and enchanting--perfect little gems of literature that explore the nature of happiness across age, gender, and class boundaries. Each story left me with a sigh of satisfaction and contentment.


When I was on the WAMC Rountable for book discussion, I jokingly referred to Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders as "the best book you probably haven't heard of" from 2009. Not only has it been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Commonwealth Award, and been named winner for the 2009 Story Prize Award, it has appeared on the Top 10 list of publications as varied as The Economist, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Time. Yet when I handsell it to customers, they inevitably say, "Who?" This brilliant debut is a collection of interrelated stories set mostly in around the town of Lahore, Pakistan. The book takes an unflinching look at the class system, but there is also a real delicacy of detail and a rich sense of place. We get stories about servants and the wealthy, the virtuous and the wicked, young lovers and bickering siblings--and all in a direct language that speaks to both the heart and the mind.

Love in the time of Victoria...Queen Victoria, that is.

I have been meaning to post about this book for the last few months, as it was a book I mentioned on the radio for the Round Table book discussion on WAMC back in January, but I'm afraid real life derailed the blog for a while. But noticing the display of Lewis Carroll books at the Odyssey today prompted me to dig this up to post.

ALICE I HAVE BEEN by Melanie Benjamin is a new(ish) hardcover novel that is the ingenious imagining of the inner life of Alice Liddell, the real life little girl who was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Now I have to confess that I’m a huge fan of the Alice classics--I read the books so often in my childhood that I took to reading them backwards AND upside-down just to keep things interesting. The poem "Jabberwocky" was the first poem I ever memorized (quite possibly the only poem I ever memorized) and I can recite it to this day, but this novel is so vividly imagined and compellingly told that you wouldn’t have to be obsessed with Lewis Carroll to reap lots of enjoyment from the novel. It opens in 1932 when Alice is an old woman, reflecting on her life and how the public identification as Alice in Wonderland has affected her. The author deftly interweaves known facts into the fantasy of her conjectured story, and my curiosity was roused to the point that I actually did a few Google searches to sift through the narrative for fact vs. fancy (Alice did meet Queen Victoria's youngest son whilst he was attending Oxford, but there's no evidence that he courted her, for one example).

I found Alice Liddell’s childhood the most compelling section, where we see her interactions with Charles Dodgson, the Oxford mathematician who would go on to write the Alice books under the psyeudonym of Lewis Carroll. The author does an amazing job of maintaining a very delicate balance between a sweet, avuncular relationship and a predatory relationship between the two, and it’s clear that however ambiguous their friendship is to the outside world, the two of them find mutual comfort and understanding with each other.

It’s the section where Alice is a young woman that is so heartbreaking to me, which picks up several years after the rift between Dodgson and the Liddell family. Tired of overanalyzing the relationship that shocked the entire Oxford community, Alice retreats into the comfort of hazy memories and finding order in the strict ideas of Victorian fashion and decorum, preferring not to dwell on that universal great mystery of just how narrow the chasm is that separates childhood from adulthood. Ultimately this spellbinding novel is a meditation on the sorrows and losses on both sides of that chasm, which makes it such a satisfying read.