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Editors' Choice Titles for February 2006:

[Complete Table of Contents] [EC Titles for Nov 2005]

THE TATTOO ARTIST
Jill Ciment, Pantheon, 2005, $23.00, hb, 207pp, 0375423257
Young Sara Ehrenreich is in love in New York City. She is Jewish and bohemian, artist and anarchist, and completely in thrall to her lover, Philip, a far less talented avant-garde artist turned art dealer who loses everything in the Depression. When Philip finds a sponsor for a trip to the South Seas to collect tribal masks to sell as primitive art, it looks like the answer to their financial problems and the adventure of a lifetime.
    The trip does not go exactly as planned. Cultural clashes and inopportune tragedy turn the Ta’un’uuans against Sara and Philip. The islanders decide that if these intruders want their art so much, they will give it to them: Sara and Philip are forcibly tattooed with the facial marks the islanders consider to be art form, mark of character and personal narrative. This is the first of many shocking developments, closely followed by the second: they are abandoned on their little island and must make a life for themselves in this foreign culture, surrounded by primitives who despise them.
    Sara’s need to create sustains her. She finds a niche in the tribe by taking up the bone needle and learning to tattoo, working on her own skin and on the tribe. She tells her story as an old woman, returned to New York after thirty years, explaining the marks on her body and the dramatic events that inspired them. As the Ta’un’uuans intended, Sara’s tattoos illustrate her character. From disfigurement to human tapestry, Sara undergoes a remarkable, harrowing evolution.
    It’s not very often that a novel literally takes your breath away. The Tattoo Artist leaves its own mark, creating a picture of invention and endurance.
--Colleen Quinn

THE CONJUROR’S BIRD
Martin Davies, Hodder & Stoughton, 2005, £12.99, hb, 309pp, 0340896167/ £10.99, pb, 0340896175

Pub. in the US as The Conjurer’s Bird, Shaye Areheart, 2006, $24.00, hb, 1400097339
Like A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession, Martin Davies’ The Conjuror’s Bird is a literary thriller. The book weaves together past and present in a spellbinding double narrative of contemporary conservationists and thwarted 18^th century lovers. Fitz, once on the verge of breakthrough in the scientific world, is summoned by his ex-wife to track down the long lost Bird of Ulieta, which was sighted on Cook’s 1774 expedition to the South Seas. A single specimen of the bird was brought back to England. Then both the bird species and the specimen vanished.
    Fitz immerses himself in the life of Sir Joseph Banks, famous 18^th century naturalist and one-time owner of the bird specimen. Soon Fitz finds himself enchanted by the figure of Banks’ elusive mistress, who disappeared out of history without so much as leaving her name behind. It becomes clear that this woman is the key to finding out what happened to the specimen. Meanwhile the stakes are raised when Fitz’s ex-wife reveals the true and murky purpose behind the search. Fitz encounters fierce competition and fights foul play. In the end, he must become a conjuror and trickster to ward off unscrupulous competitors hot on the trail of the bird.
     Davies’ writing is elegant and lyrical. He paints an arresting portrait of Banks’ shadowy mistress, a woman whose ambitions and yearnings place her centuries ahead of her time. A haunting story, highly recommended.
--Mary Sharratt

THE MADONNAS OF LENINGRAD
Debra Dean, Morrow, 2006, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 240pp, 0060825308
Pub. in the UK by Fourth Estate, 2006, £10.99, pb, 288pp, 0007215053
This superb first novel by author Debra Dean tells the story of Marina, a young tour guide at the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. After her fiancé, Dmitri, is drafted into the army, Marina moves with her aunt and uncle into a shelter in the basement of the museum. By day, she helps to pack up art treasures to send them out of the city for safekeeping, while at night she stands watch on the museum’s rooftop, on the lookout for German bombers. As the horrors of the siege grow worse and worse, she commits each painting to memory, creating a "memory palace" that helps her keep her sanity amid the deprivations of war.
    The story of Marina's experiences in the siege of Leningrad alternates with chapters telling of Marina as an old woman living in the Pacific Northwest and suffering from Alzheimer's. While her family prepares for her granddaughter's wedding, her mind rapidly deteriorates, and at times she cannot even remember her daughter's face, or the details of her children's lives.
    This is a beautifully written novel, a haunting tribute to the power of memory to help us survive in the worst of times. The story of the siege and the horrors that the people of Leningrad had to endure—with many starving to death, while the survivors waited in endless lines for bread—is especially powerful. And Dean’s descriptions of the paintings make you want to visit the Hermitage.
--Vicki Kondelik

THE BAD BEHAVIOR OF BELLE CANTRELL
Loraine Despres, Morrow, 2005, $23.95/C$32.50, hb, 352pp, 0060515244
Tired of mourning her husband, Belle Cantrell does what any aspiring suffragette would do—she bobs her hair—and the town of Gentry, Louisiana, will never be the same. Before twenty-four hours have passed, her mother-in-law hires a handsome new overseer for their plantation, Rafe Berlin drives into town in his Stutz Bearcat, and drunken hooligans terrorize the preacher of the local Negro church.
    The rich symbolism of Belle emerging into full womanhood as she offers the barber her virgin tresses sets the tone for this sassy but poignant novel. On the surface, The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell is a light-hearted tale of the adventures of a widow struggling with the longings that have begun to "float around the backwaters of her mind." But at heart, this novel is a multi-layered commentary encompassing such issues as race relations, religious bigotry, women’s suffrage, and social mores. Although Belle’s insightful observations reveal the dark side of her neighbors, the villains are rounded characters ("Belle recognized in him a hungry child…beginning the next bite before swallowing the last, in case someone snatched the food off his dish"), and the heroes have their warts ("I never knew you Southerners cared so much for your darkies"). That no one in this novel is politically correct gives it greater authenticity and relevance.
    This is a book that will be enjoyed in college dorms for its amusing scenes of a woman breaking free from the restraints of the 1920s, and in reading groups for its brilliant symbolism and thought-provoking themes. Beautifully written in tight prose that never flounders, The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell is entertainment with a capital “E.” Outstanding!
--Nancy J. Attwell

KURAJ
Silvia di Natale (trans. Carol O’Sullivan and Martin Thom), Bloomsbury, 2005, £10.99, pb, 448pp, 0747565341
Pub. in the US by Bloomsbury USA, 2006, $15, pb, 448pp, 1582342202
The Tunshans give the name kuraj to the tumbleweed that the winds send rolling over the Asian steppe in springtime. The word also conjures up the idea of ‘a person without fixed home and without will of his own, who lets himself be dragged along by chance.’ This is how nine-year-old Naja sees herself. The daughter of a khan and a descendant of Genghis Khan himself, Naja is given to Gunther Berger by her father U’lan in recognition of a debt of honour. Gunther takes her home to post-war Cologne where she finds herself a stranger in a strange land. Desperate to fit in and clever beyond her years, Naja suppresses all memories of her former life, her culture and even her language. She grows up, marries, and moves overseas, but she cannot forget her past and knows that one day she must return to her birthplace to find the answers to the questions that dog her: ‘Who am I and where is my home?’
    Kuraj charts one woman’s search for identity and her coming to terms with herself and the life she has been forced to lead. It is an extraordinary story of adoption and isolation, conjuring up all the fear and confusion felt by a child who longs for acceptance, knowing all the while that she belongs somewhere else.
    The faded splendour of post-war Germany is beautifully captured, but this is essentially a novel that transcends time and place. It is rather a study of the universal human need to know oneself. In all, Kuraj is a grand achievement and an astounding first novel from Silvia di Natale.
--Sara Wilson

LEONARDO’S SWANS
Karen Essex, Doubleday, 2006, $21.95, hb, 352pp, 0385517068
To be pub. in the UK by Century in June 2006, £10.99, pb, 352pp, 1846050405
Leonardo da Vinci has become quite popular these days, as has the historical novel featuring an intrepid woman ahead of her time with an abiding interest in Art. Doubleday is clearly capitalizing on these facts in marketing Karen Essex’s latest novel. The strategy will undoubtedly sell books, but it does not begin to do justice to Essex’s haunting account of the sibling rivalry between two princesses of the Renaissance—Isabella d’Este, Duchess of Mantua, and her younger sister, Beatrice, wife of Il Moro, Duke of Milan.
     Told from the eyes of both sisters, the novel starts with deceptive superficiality, as the elegantly adept Isabella engages in a competitive battle for supremacy with the wilder and less intellectually accomplished Beatrice. Through a mere matter of poor timing, Beatrice has wed a more powerful and intellectually stimulating man—an event that perplexes Isabella, for how can the vagaries of fortune have allowed someone of Beatrice’s pedestrian aspirations to seize the prize that is Milan? Moreover, Milan commands the genius of Leonardo da Vinci, acclaimed court painter and engineer to Il Moro.
Determined to outshine her sister, Isabella sets herself to be immortalized by Leonardo’s brush, while Beatrice steers a resolute course to wealth and power. But larger political concerns soon overwhelm the oblivious self-aggrandizement and foibles of these Renaissance sisters. Both are tested to their limits and beyond, compelled to discover an inner strength that will ultimately exalt one and destroy the other.
    Threaded within their story is Leonardo’s relentless pursuit for knowledge and reverence for the fragility of life, which elevates him from the ambitions of those he must serve. Despite a sometimes distracting mix of past and present tense, this is a rare novel that captures an era of unparalleled personality, the like of which shall never be seen again.
--C.W. Gortner

ESCAPING INTO THE NIGHT
D. Dina Friedman, Simon & Schuster, 2006, $15.95, hb, 208pp, 1416902589
In her first book for a younger audience, Ms. Friedman does well. Escaping into the Night is a gripping telling of a little-known aspect of the Holocaust: the underground forest encampments that saved several thousand Jews from the Nazis. Halina Rudowski finds herself being spirited out of the Polish ghetto she and her mother are living in. She soon finds herself living a strange existence underground in the forest, struggling to cope with sudden changes in her life. This thirteen-year old girl, a talented singer, discovers her own resilience through the friends she chooses to embrace.
    This compelling book, intended for ages 10-14, is simply fantastic. It is impossible to not be drawn into the life Halina is forced to live and hold one’s breath as the choices she makes place her in harm’s way. Not only is her story fascinating, the exploration of the underground camps that allowed Jews to escape the Nazis is intriguing and one rarely—if ever—heard.
    Escaping into the Night is marvelous. One hopes that the author finds other equally compelling stories to tell for young people.
--Dana Cohlmeyer

THE ALCHEMIST’S DAUGHTER
Katharine McMahon, Crown, 2006, $23.95, hb, 352pp, 0307238512
Pub. in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, £9.99, pb, 320pp, 0297850857
In lyrical prose, this novel details the life of Emilie Selden, a female scientist in 18^th century England, squirreled away in her father’s laboratory on the ancient Selden estate. Despite her scientific knowledge, Emilie has never traveled beyond the village of Selden Wick, so her father is the only one surprised when she’s lured away from their scientific haven by her first brush with the outside world, personified by the dashing Mr. Aislabie. At first enthralled by London, Emilie soon discovers its darker side and longs for the peace of Selden Manor. She returns only to find that tragic events have laid bare secrets both long-hidden and devastating.
    McMahon has created a work that delves into the souls of its characters, not only Emilie, but also her controlling, contradictory father and the quietly tragic village rector. McMahon has given her characters exceptional depth, and she taps into their feelings so adroitly that the reader is able to effortlessly share their tension, longing, disgust, love, and pain. The novel is written in the first person, and events are viewed through Emilie’s eyes; this only adds to the novel’s tension, as the reader can clearly see the inherent dangers naïve Emilie fails to recognize. The author also probes the complex mind of Emilie’s father, a seemingly domineering and cold man, through his “Emilie notebooks” – the running diary he keeps of his daughter’s life. McMahon’s atmosphere is perfect, from the crumbling country estate of Selden Manor to the squalid misery of London’s back alleys to the peaceful quiet of the rector’s study. In addition, the author provides fascinating glimpses into the lost “science” of alchemy, in the process adding words such as “phlogiston” to the reader’s vocabulary. One of the more thoughtful novels of this season, The Alchemist’s Daughter is highly recommended.
--Bethany Skaggs

THE UNCONVENTIONAL MISS WALTERS
Fenella-Jane Miller, Hale, 2005, £18.99, hb, 224pp, 0709079559
Nineteen-year-old Eleanor Walters is obliged by the terms of her guardian’s will to marry an older man, her cousin Lord Leo Upminster, whose uncontrolled temper and rapid changes of mood she finds both bewildering and frightening. However, his dark, handsome looks are undeniably attractive. Ellie is certain that Leo has married purely out of a sense of duty and therefore she insists on a marriage of convenience, denying any intimacy to her husband. Frustration and a series of misunderstandings cause mounting tension, despite Eleanor’s growing affection for Leo. However, she is forced to run away from him after becoming the unwitting victim of malicious gossip. Eleanor decides to take refuge on a lonely country estate with near disastrous results following the outbreak of riots in the area. 
    Miller’s detailed picture of the social unrest that followed the Napoleonic wars, and the appalling hardship in the country caused by lack of employment, absentee landlords and unscrupulous agents, provides a realistic background to the story. Eleanor’s dilemma, her growing maturity, and social consciousness are sensitively portrayed; moreover, the limitations imposed on her actions, including her plans to renovate the dilapidated housing on the estate, reflect the social realities of the period. The author clearly has a detailed knowledge of fashion history, fabrics, interior furnishings, and other items of everyday use, and I was particularly fascinated by these minor details that add special colour and interest. Miller’s characterisation is wholly convincing, making the novel a particularly engaging and entertaining read that I thoroughly recommend.
--Lucinda Byatt

NO REST FOR THE WICKED
Wendy Robertson, Headline, 2005, £18.99, hb, 342 pp, 0755309448
This is a delightful and unusual story. The three principal characters are unlikely heroines, but beautifully drawn and immediately pique our interest. Pippa is a young French girl rescued from a sweatshop to act as assistant to the wardrobe mistress of a troupe of travelling players in the 1920s. Worldly-wise Miss Abigail, the wardrobe mistress, was once a dancer until she broke both her ankles: she is Pippa’s mentor and stands between her and the harshness of the world. The third heroine is Tesserina, an Italian vagabond rescued by Pippa from a hostile crowd and who turns out to be a magical dancer in the style of Loie Fuller. She too shelters under Miss Abigail’s wing.
    The interactions, secrets and ambitions of the three women are skilfully shown against the backdrop of the variety troupe, full of lively individuals. The northern English towns are shown through Pippa’s eyes as grey and chilly compared with the sunny south of France where she was born. Secrets are slowly revealed, each solution leading to another mystery. More than one tragedy occurs before all the ends are neatly tied up. An absorbing and enjoyable read.
--Pamela Cleaver

A ROSE FOR THE CROWN
Anne Easter Smith, Touchstone, 2006, $16.95, pb, 672pp, 0743276876
Kate Haute is a young woman from a lowly background, taken into her uncle’s household and given the great privilege of becoming educated and trained in the ways of upper-class society. She is married to an older, kindly and well-heeled merchant who soon dies, leaving her a wealthy widow. Then she marries for love, she thinks, but her husband has taken her for the proverbial ride: it is her money he wants, not her company or to share her bed.
   By sheer inadvertence, Kate meets the young Richard of Gloucester, and so marks the beginning of their lifelong, passionate relationship, the birth of their three beloved illegitimate children, and their struggle to remain loyal to one another during periods of war, personal tragedy and political highs and lows—not the least of which is Richard’s marriage to his queen, Anne. Although Kate has recognized all along that Richard can never marry her, the depth of her despair when he does marry is palpable.
   Anne Easter Smith has done a remarkable job of weaving contemporary sources and scholarly evidence into the romantic, touching story of Kate and Richard’s abiding connection to one another. The love Kate and Richard share is almost painful in its intensity. Kate is an appealing, fully drawn character who grows and ripens as the story progresses. Smith’s Richard is certainly not the vilified hunchback king who killed his nephews in the Tower, but the fiercely loyal younger brother of Edward IV and later, husband of Anne. The Author’s Note, extensive and wonderful, supports the existence of Kate or a Kate prototype.
   This is a marvelous book, long and complex, deeply satisfying and a great read. Highly recommended.
--Ilysa Magnus

THE TURK AND MY MOTHER
Mary Helen Stefaniak, Norton, 2005, $14.95/C$21.00, pb, 316pp, 0393326993
This is the story of several generations of a Croatian family, both in their native country and in the United States. The mother of the title is Agnes, and it is her husband Josef who first emigrates to the U.S., just before World War I. Other key characters include Josef’s mother, known as Staramajka (the Croatian word for grandmother); Josef’s brother, Marko, a soldier who is missing in action; Agnes’s daughter Madeline; and George, Agnes’s son and the narrator of this story. Josef is unable to bring his family to Milwaukee until after the war, and that provides the opportunity for Agnes to the meet the Turk in her native village.
    This dry recounting of the bare bones of the book gives, however, no sense of the incredible richness and mesmerizing nature of the storytelling. The different stories weave in and out, and we learn more details about people and events as we read further. Staramajka is a wonderful character, full of life and impishness and hidden secrets, so it comes as a shock when one of the younger generation remarks that she appears to others as a frightening old woman. We have seen her humanity and her incredible sense of compassion. There are echoes of events from generation to generation, and a number of surprises along the way.
   In an extensive interview with the author at the end of the book, she mentions that her greatest challenge was to make sure the reader could identify where and when the action on any given page was taking place. This can shift from sentence to sentence, and even within a sentence, but she has succeeded admirably, and I never felt confused. The author also mentions that her secret wish was that she “write a book whose ending would make the reader feel compelled to go back and reread the book.” Her wish will shortly be fulfilled by this reader, who longs to enter this enchanting tale once again.
--Trudi E. Jacobson

WOLF GIRL
Theresa Tomlinson, Corgi, 2006, £5.99, pb, 372pp, 0552552712
This story is set in Whitby Abbey in the year before the Synod of Whitby. Cwen, the weaver, is accused of stealing a valuable necklace. If a royal necklace stealing it would be treason and the punishment would be slow death. But Cwen’s daughter Wulfrun is determined to prove her mother innocent. She finds some surprising allies in the Princess Elfled, the novice monk Adfrith and the cowherd/poet Cadmon. Their quest takes them to a small fishing village and then to a hermit in a forest. But there are those who do not want the truth uncovered and Wulfrun and her friends eventually find themselves on a wild desperate flight to Bamburgh.
    Whitby Abbey and its community are brought vividly to life both by the author’s descriptions and also by the useful little plan at the beginning of the book. Right away this makes it quite clear that this is a Celtic Abbey and not one of the better known medieval Roman ones. For a start Hild’s community contained both monks and nuns. The everyday work of the little community can be easily imagined by the reader. There is Adfrith in the scriptorium, Fridgyth with her herb garden, Cadmon with his calves – and we share his pain when the blood month arrives and they are killed.
    The book just abounds with strong, independent female characters. To name but a few: there is the Princess Elfled, wilful and imperious but also courageous and determined, Wulfrun, resourceful  and responsible beyond her fourteen years, and the abbess Hild herself who rules her little community wisely and who wields power among the greatest kings and princes in the land.
    The pace is just perfect. Fast enough to keep the reader’s interest but without making the common mistake of sacrificing background and character development. And the twists and turns of the plot never become confusing. Thoroughly researched, it comes with notes on the history and the sources.
    Theresa Tomlinson says she wanted to find a way of writing about the Anglo-Saxon history of Whitby which would make it interesting to young adults. In Wolf Girl she has done just that. In fact she has done more.
    Wolf Girl should be fascinating for young people and adults alike. 12+
Mary S. Moffat