The Theory Of Clouds
Stéphane Audeguy (trans. Timothy Bent), Harcourt, 2007, $24, hb, 272pp, 9780151014286
    “All children become sad in the late afternoon, for they begin to comprehend the passage of time. The light starts to change. Soon they will have to head home, and to behave, and to pretend.” Thus begins an inimitable piece of writing, the first novel of French historian Stéphane Audeguy, awarded the 2005 prize Maurice Genevoix of the French Academy.
    Akira Kumo, Japanese couturier, is an eccentric collector with an unclear past. He can’t remember the year he was born, although he thinks it was after World War II. He hates all things Japanese, and has an obsession for clouds. To catalogue his library, dedicated to cloud lore and the history of meteorology, he hires young Virginie Latour, and he tells her stories. There is the tale of the Quaker Luke Howard, a contemporary of Goethe, who named the clouds, and of Carmichael (based on John Constable), a painter who spent the summer of 1812 obsessively painting clouds. Kumo also explains how Napoleon’s disdain for the incipient science of meteorology led to the disaster at Waterloo. Soon, Virginie realizes that these stories are not entirely factual, but she is hooked. Then, just as Kumo begins to put the pieces together of his early years, he sends Virginie to England to purchase the mysterious Abercrombie Protocol, the seminal work of a 19^th-century photographer on the skies and weather of all latitudes, a work nobody has actually seen.
    Audeguy captivates with the effortless elegance of his style. The Theory of Clouds, however, is anything but simple. As the novel progresses, the distinctive theme reverberates in its spiraling downwards structure. The voice gets sadder. Clouds are quasi-religious. Clouds are beautiful. Clouds are dangerous and destructive. Audeguy’s intense lyricism, so very poignant under the surface, reminds you of Anaïs Nin and Proust. His prose is intimate, ironic, evocative, and powerfully erotic. It can also be coarse. The reader shudders, grimaces, and keeps on reading, mesmerized, expecting some hint, some mournful key to the human condition. Ultimately Audeguy delivers it. Don’t miss this one. Truly incomparable. -- Adelaida Lower

AWAY
Amy Bloom, Random House, 2007, $23.95, hb, 236pp, 9781400063567 / Granta, 2007, £10.99, pb, 240pp, 9781862079700
    In July of 1924, Lillian Leyb stands in line with hundreds of other women, waiting to interview for a job as a seamstress that has opened up at the Goldfadn Theater, located on New York City’s Lower East Side. A recent immigrant from Turov, Russia, Lillian speaks little English, but manages to impress the owner of the theater, Reuben Burstein. Subsequent developments lead to an improvement of her circumstances. Things are never what they seem, however. When startling news from home reaches her, there is nothing so important in her new life to keep her from embarking on a cross-country trek, her ultimate goal being to reach Siberia.
    This is a breathtaking jewel of a novel. The narrative draws the reader down to the gritty streets of New York City, its lights, sounds and smells, the multitudes constantly moving and striving for a higher rung on the ladder. Then you are off to Chicago and across the plains, where you land in the hardcore and corrupt world of Seattle’s Skid Row. Finally, there is Alaska, the vast, frozen wilderness, home to outcasts, the detached, and those whose dreams have somehow gone awry. Along the way, Lillian interacts with an array of memorable characters, from Yaakov Shimmelman to Gumdrop and Chinky Chang, each of whom adds his or her own form of wisdom and, sometimes, humor to the story.
    I highly recommend this novel. -- Alice Logsdon

    Author Amy Bloom’s father was a journalist. ‘There’s a story about a woman who… tried to walk to Siberia,’ he announced one evening. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ Like uncut gems, the words lay in front of his daughter. The result is Away.
   Following the murder of her family in Russia and the disappearance of her three-year-old daughter, Lillian Leyb flees to America with her cousin’s New York address pinned to her blouse. In the summer of 1924, the Lower East Side is heaving with 500,000 Jews. After a month in her cousin’s sweatshop, Lillian, her hands stained with blue dye, has perfected three answers to questions from prospective employers: ‘Very well, thank you’ if the question seems to be about her health; ‘I am a seamstress – my father was a tailor’ if the question contains the words ‘sew’, ‘costume’, or ‘work’; ‘I attend night classes’ said with a dazzling smile, in response to any question she doesn’t understand.
    Thus equipped, she is hired as a seamstress by impresario Reuben Burstein and his matinee-idol son Meyer, and later finds her way into their beds. However, when another cousin arrives in New York with news of Sophie, Lillian’s daughter, Lillian embarks on an odyssey epic in sweep yet intimate in detail: vignettes, cameo portraits of a gallery of characters who help or hinder Lillian: a black prostitute and her pimp, a constable, three motherless children, gold prospectors, oriental prisoners, drifters and immigrants with an eye to the main chance or just hoping for the best.
    Infused with insight and humanity, the writing is vivid, earthy, hilarious, yet poignant, tender, Lillian’s love for Sophie and the lengths to which she will go expressed in exquisite prose—leaving an ache of empathy and longing in this reader’s chest until after the last page was turned. -- Janet Hancock

INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES
Jennifer Lee Carrell, Dutton, 2007, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 416pp, 9780525949701
    Did Shakespeare really write what we think he did? Or did someone else? That long-fought argument is the basis for Interred with Their Bones. The book, set in modern times, opens with Kate Stanley, Shakespearean-expert-turned-theatre-director, standing on London’s Hampstead Heath holding a box gifted to her by her former mentor, Roz Howard. As she ponders its contents, she notices something on fire across the Thames. Looking closely, she realizes it’s the Globe Theatre where she’s currently directing a new production of Hamlet. Upon the discovery of Howard’s body in the charred remains of the theatre, Kate finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. She travels across America and England to try and solve the tantalizing mystery of the true authorship of Shakespeare’s writing while fighting to stay alive as those around her are murdered.
    If this book was only an average, typical mystery, it would be a good read. But mix in the contentious argument that Shakespeare didn’t write what we think he did, and this book becomes fantastic. As Kate struggles to solve the mystery, readers are privy to occasional chapters set in Shakespearean England that brilliantly dole out hints and clues to what has to be one of the most oft-argued debates in literature.
   Carrell’s skill at combining plot and character development has created a page-turner worthy of (though I am reluctant to actually say it for fear of turning some readers away…) The Da Vinci Code. It has the pace, plot and intrigue necessary to become a bestseller. For those who shy away from such novels, it also has intelligent research worthy of its own book. So, without being trite, Interred with Their Bones has something for everyone and comes very highly recommended. -- Dana Cohlmeyer

MOZART’S SISTER
Rita Charbonnier (trans. Ann Goldstein), Crown, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 336pp, 9780307346780
    Nannerl Mozart, a brilliant musician in her own right, has been close to her brother, Wolfgang, since his birth. Then her father announces that he and Wolfgang are to go to Italy, leaving Nannerl behind to support their ambitions by giving music lessons to the talentless young gentry of Salzburg. Bitter over her lot, Nannerl gives up her music and retreats into a shell until she meets Victoria, a gifted harpsichordist—and Victoria’s widowed father. The ensuing romance has far-reaching consequences for Nannerl’s fraught relationship with her brother and ultimately for Nannerl herself.
    Told through letters from Nannerl to her suitor and through a third-person narrator, Mozart’s Sister takes a bit of getting used to as the narrative flips back and forth in time and between narrative devices and points of view. The result, however, is well worth it. Charbonnier’s dialogue in this debut novel is lively, while her narrative voice is wonderfully droll at times, moving at others. Her characters, ranging from a baron who spouts bad poetry to the mercurial Mozart, are vivid. Nannerl herself is a beautifully realized heroine, who grows from a sullen, angry girlhood into a graceful yet formidable old age and who at last is able to embrace her brother’s musical legacy. Her journey is one that will entrance both lovers of music and lovers of historical fiction.
-- Susan Higginbotham

THE KEEPER OF SECRETS
Judith Cutler, Allison & Busby, 2007, £19.99, hb, 343pp, 0749080264
    This is certainly much more than a run-of-the-mill historical crime novel. A young and idealistic clergyman, the Reverend Tobias Campion, arrives in his new parish, a Warwickshire village. His first act is to save a servant girl from rape by a drunken aristocrat. But that is by no means the end of the affair. Murders follow, and the mystery deepens. It turns out that there is much more to this servant girl than appears on the surface. Both the period and characters are well realized, and there is an interesting and illuminating description of the treatment of mental illness at this time. The story takes unexpected twists and turns, and the ending took me completely by surprise.
    This is a standalone novel, rather than the first in a series. Yet by the end I found myself wanting to read more about this engaging young clergyman.
-- Neville Firman

FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT
Geoffrey S. Edwards, Touchstone, 2007, $15.00, pb, 464pp, 9781416564249
    New York Tribune reporter John Sharp arrives in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1850 to cover a trial that will prove pivotal in Southern history. Darcy Nance Calhoun is a white man accused of harboring an escaped slave. The die is seemingly cast, as everyone expects a guilty verdict followed by execution. To this simple plot, Geoffrey Edwards adds the complexity of controversial North-South attitudes, which might have swayed history a different way. Enter the plantation world, where one slave boy’s cruel, incomprehensible death becomes the reactive force forever known as the Habersham County Rebellion. Meet Tyler Breckinridge, who befriends Sharp, and introduces him to plantation life and owners whose opinions on slavery and secession run the gamut from fierce support to quiet opposition.
    But something is not quite right in this lazy but dynamic city. Fires are mysteriously breaking out daily, too many different militia troops appear to be training for something larger than a local hanging, and secret groups of South Carolina’s leading citizens are secretly meeting under the cover of darkness. Edwards presents related earlier events—the northern Astor Place riots, the Wilmot Proviso compromise, and the Denmark Vesey uprising—in a fresh, controlled, and pertinent manner. John Sharp has an unparalleled opportunity to interview and become friends with the accused criminal, Darcy, who is so much more than the simple-minded character he appears to be.
    Fire Bell in the Night is a fresh, unique presentation of pre-Civil war history that is riveting, adventurous, poignant, and one of the finest historical novels this reviewer has read in years! -- Viviane Crystal

THE MAPMAKER’S OPERA
Béa Gonzalez, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $24.95, hb, 288pp, 9780312364663 / HarperCollins, 2006, £6.99, pb, 320pp, 0007207794
    Praise for Béa Gonzalez’ The Mapmaker’s Opera abounds, with many critics and other reviewers comparing the author’s work to that of such notable writers as Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Marquez. This, I thought when I opened the book, had better be good. And it is excellent.
    Set in late 19^th-century Spain and early 20^th-century pre-revolutionary Mexico, Gonzalez’s rich, multi-layered story centers on bird lover Diego Clemente who, fascinated by the hand-colored birds he discovers in John James Audubon’s Birds of America, travels from Seville to the Yucatán to work alongside real-life American scientist Edward Nelson. In Mexico, young Diego, who is a gifted artist, not only experiences thwarted love, treachery and the stirrings of revolution, but also confronts his tortured past.
    An unusual story and unusually wonderful writing carry The Mapmaker’s Opera on wings above and beyond the norm. Presenting the narrative as a tale told by an old grandmother, Gonzalez seamlessly weaves the past and future while painting word-pictures of both the exotic and mundane, whether addressing the reader boldly from time to time to pull them into the story, deftly changing point of view, or making us laugh with her gentle sense of humor. Presented as an opera in three acts with a map as the score, the structure, too, is mightily impressive, as the author employs recurring images, particularly that of mapmaking—describing a beautifully drawn illustration, showing us a character scratch a design in the dirt with a stick—to propel her story forward.
    While I groaned at the novel’s ending—exactly, of course, as I was meant to do—I found the story engaging, compelling and above all, complete. Moreover, I’ll never look at a bird with the same indifference again. Highly recommended. -- Alana White

CAPTAIN WENTWORTH’S DIARY
Amanda Grange, Hale, 2007, £18.99, hb, 223pp, 9780709082811
    In 1806 the young Frederick Wentworth visits Somerset and meets the young Anne Elliot. It is a meeting of minds and hearts, but there is no happy ending for the lovers. Anne is persuaded by her godmother, Lady Russell, that marriage to a poor naval officer would be disastrous and they part on bad terms.
    Eight years later, his fortune made, Captain Wentworth returns to Somerset and finds Anne a spinster still, downtrodden and faded. Initially he looks elsewhere for a young, pretty bride, but soon realises that his feelings for Anne are as strong as ever. She in turn has lived to regret her repudiation of the man she still loves.
     In this retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Captain Wentworth’s thoughts take centre stage, and very revealing they are too. His love, rejection, bitterness and ultimate constancy are laid bare, but never in a way that compromises the original.
    Amanda Grange has taken on the challenge of reworking a much loved romance and succeeds brilliantly. -- Sara Wilson

UPRISING
Margaret Peterson Haddix, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $16.99/C$21.00, hb, 352pp, 9781416911715
    Set in New York City in 1910-1911, Uprising tells the story of three young women from different walks of life whose lives become connected through the shirtwaist workers’ strike. Yetta is a Russian immigrant who moved to America and works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in order to earn money to send back to her homeland. Bella is a recently arrived Italian immigrant who is overwhelmed in America and feels like a stranger. She is eager to learn and works at the factory as well. Jane is an unhappy rich society girl who longs for something different in her life but is uncertain about what she can do to break free from the cage in which she feels trapped.
    The hundreds of workers at the factory put up with low wages and unsafe working conditions until one day a strike is organized. Yetta feels passionate about their cause and quickly becomes one of the strike’s leaders, attending meetings and marching in the picket lines. Soon both Bella and Jane join her, and the girls quickly become friends. Haddix does a superb job of portraying the different aspects of the girls’ lives, from their involvement in the strike to the conditions of working in the factory and their daily survival.
    Chapters alternate between each of the girls, allowing readers to experience three different perspectives of the events that unfold. Not only is Uprising the story of the strike and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that changed American labor forever, it is also a story of friendship, family, choices, and the social classes and rules of society that existed in America in the early 1900s. This book is an excellent read that makes history come alive through all of the well-crafted characters. Ages 12 and up. -- Troy Reed

THE FALCONER’S KNOT
Mary Hoffman, Bloomsbury, 2007, £12.99, hb, 304pp, 9780747582755 / Bloomsbury USA, 2007, $16.95, hb, 297pp, 9781599900568
    Silvano’s dagger is found in the body of a man whose wife he had been serenading. He seeks sanctuary with the Franciscans in a friary near Assisi. In the adjacent convent of Poor Clares is Chiara, sent there by a brother who cannot afford a dowry. They both work making pigments for the artists then decorating the walls of St. Francis’s Church. More murders in the friary throw renewed suspicion on Silvano. He must find the real culprit before he can return home to Perugia.
    This is a closely plotted book with engaging characters, not just the two young people thrust into the monastic life against their will, but also the various nuns and friars, the merchants and nobility outside and the painters. There is a wealth of fascinating detail about the origins of the various pigments used for the frescoes and the stories they relate. Fourteenth-century Italy comes alive, and Mary Hoffman controls her populous cast with great skill. Painters as well as historians will enjoy this book. -- Marina Oliver

    Umbria, Italy, 1316. This is the age of Courtly Love, when young men sighed over unattainable ladies. Sixteen-year-old Silvano, handsome and rich, is in love with the wife of a rich sheep-farmer, Tommaso. Then comes news that Tommaso has been found murdered—with Silvano’s missing dagger. There is a warrant out for his arrest. He flees for sanctuary to a Franciscan friary.
    Here he learns from Anselmo, the Colour Master, how to grind the pigments to make paints to decorate the new basilica of St Francis in Assisi. He also meets 15-year-old Chiara, an unwilling novice in the Poor Clares, a sister nunnery of the same Franciscan friary. She, too, is learning to make paints.
     Both long to escape: Silvano to have the arrest warrant lifted and Chiara to live an ordinary life in the world outside. Then the friary is struck by a series of grisly murders and, once again, Silvano is under suspicion. So, too, is Anselmo, who has a painful secret in his past. Isabella, a rich merchant’s wife, also has a secret, and when her husband is murdered on a visit to the friary, events take a dangerous turn for Anselmo. Silvano and Chiara, whose own futures are at stake, desperately need to find the murderer before more people are killed.
    I enjoyed this book. The back cover says, ‘Think The Name of the Rose for teenagers’, and that about sums it up. It’s a real page turner, and I loved learning about the art and skill of fresco painting and how to grind the precious rocks to make the brilliant colours, as well as the glimpses into monastic life. The various story strands, including a romantic element, interweave beautifully, allowing a series of mini cliff-hangers.
    Recommended for 11 plus. Girls will probably enjoy it more than boys.
-- Elizabeth Hawksley

    This book is a murder mystery set in medieval Italy, and it is very good. I know who Mary Hoffman is from the Stravaganza series but this book is very different from them.
    It is very gripping, especially towards the end, and you always want to read on and find out more. The plot is narrated by different characters, jumping to a different one in each chapter. This mainly makes the plot more interesting, getting different insights into characters, but it can also be frustrating when it gets to a crucial point with one character and then it jumps to another character.
    The characters, like Isabella and Chiara, are convincing and you really get worried and hope things will be OK for them. The plot has big unexpected twists. It is a very good book, and I would recommend it for ages 10 to 13.
-- Ella McNulty, age 12

A MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN
L. M. Jackson, Heinemann, 2007, £14.99, hb, 376pp, 9780434015528
     London, 1852. Mrs Sarah Tanner, a woman with a dubious past, opens her Dining and Coffee Rooms in Leather Lane. On witnessing the brutal murder of an old friend by a policeman, she decides to find out why it happened and what she can do about it. On the way, she acquires two helpers: aged Ralph Grundy, and young Norah Smallwood, who meets the murderous copper and has to be rescued by Sarah. Between them, with Sarah very much the brains of the operation, they solve the mystery, but not before encountering London low life and much danger.
    Jackson has a meticulous knowledge of Victorian life, which pervades the story seamlessly. Slowly, details about Sarah’s previous life leak out, which all helps keep the reader intrigued. This is the first in the Victorian Lady Detective series, so doubtless more aspects of Sarah’s story will be revealed. The story has everything: a rich heiress, dastardly criminals, a mysterious lead character and deep, dark action. An absorbing read. -- S Garside-Neville

THE WITCH’S TRINITY
Erika Mailman, Crown, 2007, $23.95/C$29.95, hb, 288pp, 9780307351524 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £16.99, hb, 316pp, 9780340962190
    Mailman’s second historical novel, set in the small German town of Tierkinddorf between 1507 and 1510, explores the horror of superstition, the inexplicable fear of witchcraft, and the hysterical mentality of the mob.
    Tierkinddorf is plagued by a famine of monumental proportions. There is nothing to eat: the animals have all been consumed, the earth is unproductive and the mill is no longer operating. Why should a good Christian community be suffering such deprivation when communities in other parts of Germany are not? The only explanation is that the town has been cursed by witchcraft.
    Güde is an old woman who lives with her son, Jost, his wife, Irmeltrud, and their two young children. As deprivation increases, Irmeltrud makes clear that Güde has outlived her usefulness. Already struggling with memory lapses, Güde believes she has signed the devil’s book in the woods after Irmeltrud throws her out into the snow.
    After the town herbalist, Künne, Güde’s oldest and best friend, is accused of being a witch and burned at the stake, Irmeltrud accuses Güde of witchcraft. Events deteriorate and ultimately, no one is safe from accusation—not even Güde’s little granddaughter, Alke.
    Written in simple, sleek prose, Mailman captures the corruption of fear in a small town to a tee. With a Massachusetts “witch” for an ancestor, Mailman’s interest in the subject of witchcraft hysteria gives her bona fides on a topic to which she brings considerable skill in character development and plot design. The complex, unnerving portrait of Güde is masterful and leaves much to interpretation. The cold, snowy German winter, the pangs of starvation, the abuses of the Church and the resiliency of the people are all palpable images, beautifully executed to maximum impact. Though by no means a “fun read,” this concise novel is a recommended one.
-- Ilysa Magnus

THE LAST SUMMER OF THE WORLD
Emily Mitchell, Norton, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 390pp, 9780393064872
    Rarely does a book present the delicate balance of the relationship between a man and a woman as well as this one. Within its pages, the misplaced hopes, primal fears and unrealized dreams of both parties wreak havoc on love and commitment. When the burgeoning weight of the First World War is added to the mix, the results are a tragedy almost beyond the ability of either to understand, let alone control.
    This book is based on the young adult years in the life of Edward Steichen, the great and enigmatic pioneering photographer. It examines the pivotal years of his artistic life in France in the early 20th century, which coincided with his first marriage. Beginning with an alienation of affection lawsuit brought by his wife against her best friend, the artist Marion Beckett, the author weaves a tale of how it might have come about, and the forces which ultimately decide the outcome. It is told against the background of Steichen’s artistic life, which includes his mentor Auguste Rodin, as well as his romantic interludes with such notables as Isadora Duncan and the British sculptor Kathleen Bruce. The menace of World War I provides the ever-present historic structure.
    The result is an absorbing, highly readable story which satisfies on many levels. The author is a gifted writer who combines a well researched, highly detailed factual account with an artistic, almost poetic tale of great emotional complexity. She seems equally at home with the horrors of the trenches as she is in the mind of a young husband. Her tale is first experienced, and then contemplated long after reading.
    This remarkable book should not missed. -- Ken Kreckel

AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN
Jude Morgan, Headline, 2007, £19.99, hb, 407 pp, 9780755307685
    Jude Morgan follows up his tragic and haunting novel Symphony with this witty, Jane-Austen-inspired comedy of errors.
    Ten years ago Lydia Templeton spurned Lewis Durrant, the most eligible bachelor in Norfolk. Now thirty, the vastly accomplished Lydia is enjoying her spinsterhood and intellectual pursuits. Her idyll ends when a family friend strong-arms her into chaperoning the naïve orphan Phoebe Rae, heiress to £50,000. Lovely Miss Rae is torn between two suitors: the dignified Mr. Allardyce who has a promising career in diplomatic service and the overwrought Mr. Beck who pens tortured poetry concerning milkmaids and their ‘lacteous buckets.’ Seeking to counter Phoebe’s sensibility with her own good sense, Lydia accompanies her young charge to Bath. Also in Bath, Lydia’s old flame Lewis Durrant is determined to find a bride and produce an heir, which will allow him to disinherit his feckless, spendthrift dandy of a nephew. Lydia and Durrant strike a bet, wagering £50 to whomever will succeed first in their mission. Will Lydia see Phoebe happily betrothed to a worthy man who truly cherishes the young woman and not just her fortune? Will misanthropic, middle-aged Durrant find love at last? Is Lydia as impervious to romance as she claims?
     The plot bristles with reversals, hilarity and pathos, before wrapping up in a tender and satisfying finish. The characters, flawed yet endearing, are convincingly human. Light without being lightweight, this is a smart, stylish novel for discerning readers who wouldn’t normally read romance. An Accomplished Woman is what the Jane Austen Book Club will be reading next.
-- Mary Sharratt

Island of Exiles
I. J. Parker, Penguin, 2007, $14.00, pb, 398pp, 9780143112594
    In this latest entry to Parker’s mystery series set in 11^th century Japan, Sugawara Akitada, a middle-ranking government administrator, is forced to leave his wife and infant son when he’s ordered to investigate the murder of exiled Prince Okisada, who had been sent to Sado Island penal colony after trying to usurp the Japanese throne. Akitada goes undercover as an exiled prisoner to solve the crime and, in the process, almost loses his own life under horrifying circumstances.
    The reader is taken effortlessly into medieval Japan, into the lives of common criminals as well as those of Japanese nobility. The ease with which the author puts her 21^st century reader in that world is a tribute to her meticulous research and skillful writing. Akitada is a very sympathetic protagonist, a loving husband and father who grapples with daily domestic matters and a very inadequate income. His quest to find the prince’s murderer and still save his own life depends in the end on the arrival of his longtime friend and assistant, Tora.
    The book is filled with interesting details of the period and its beliefs, all woven expertly into the narrative. A mystery writer of exceptional skill, Parker keeps the action and the clues coming, throwing in ample red herrings into her riveting plot. This is an exciting, well-written read that rises above the crowded genre of historical mysteries. Parker’s series deserves a wide readership. -- Pamela F. Ortega

VIVALDI’S VIRGINS
Barbara Quick, HarperCollins, 2007, $24.95/C$31.00, hb, 284pp, 9780060890520
    Anna Maria dal Violin, abandoned as a baby, now lives as an orphan in the foundling home and cloisters of the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice. From an early age, she was taught to play the violin and became part of an elite orchestra of orphan girls. Antonio Vivaldi, the “Red Priest,” composed many of his pieces for them.
    Anna Maria longs to learn who her parents are. Sister Laura instructs Anna Maria to share her innermost thoughts and aspirations in letters to the mother she has never known. She soon rises to become Vivaldi's favorite pupil, and he composes challenging pieces for her to play. But Anna Maria longs to learn who she is and to see Venice. On more than one occasion, she manages to escape from the orphanage, but each time she is caught and punished. A small golden locket and chain are presented to her by a Jewish seamstress. Anna Maria knows it holds the secret of her parentage. Eventually, Anna Maria does learn the truth about herself and some of the other characters.
    Behind the masks of Carnevale and the musical scores of Vivaldi, 18^th-century Venice comes brilliantly to life in this passionate novel. The plot takes several twists and turns that will enthrall the reader. The details of history are well researched and the imagery sensational. The prose is lyrical and mesmerizing at times. Quick has included a glossary at the end to help the reader with Italian words and phrases. At the end, she describes what is historical fact and what she created from her imagination. This is a complex tale that will appeal to lovers of Italian history as well as to fans of Vivaldi and his music. Barbara Quick has written a truly enduring coming-of-age story.
-- Mirella Patzer

HERE LIES ARTHUR
Philip Reeve, Scholastic, 2007, £12.99, hb, 289pp, 9780439955331
     South-west Britain, c. 500 AD. The Roman legions have left and Britain has splintered into warring factions. Saxons, arriving from the continent, are raiding ever further westward. The country needs a strong man to unite Britain against the invaders.
    Enter Myrddin, a skilled teller of tales and one who understands the political value of appearance. His aim is to turn Arthur into the country’s saviour. When Myrddin rescues ten-year-old Gwyna, fleeing from Arthur’s murderous war-band, he notes her ability to swim underwater. She is the tool he needs to strengthen Arthur’s position by some ‘supernatural’ endorsement: Gwyna’s first job is to play the part of the Lady of the Lake and give a credulous Arthur the sword Caliburn.
    She becomes ‘Gwyn’, Myrddin’s boy and, later, resumes her female identity as maid to Gwenhwyfar, Arthur’s neglected wife. Myrddin’s ‘spin’ may turn Arthur’s raids into the stuff of legend, but, for Gwyna, it cannot disguise the war-lord’s brutality, greed and betrayal of trust. How can an insignificant girl survive in such a dangerous and unpredictable world? And it becomes a whole lot more dangerous once she finds out Gwenhwyfar’s adulterous secret…
     I really enjoyed this book. It’s a modern and very believable take on the Arthurian legend. The first person narrative gives it immediacy and, having the low-born Gwyn/Gwyna as narrator, gives us a worm’s eye view of this blood-thirsty age and an understanding of how ordinary people of both sexes suffer in times of strife.
    But spin-doctoring is nothing new, and this is also a book about myth-making. As Gwyna says, ‘The real Arthur had been just a little tyrant in an age of tyrants. What mattered about him was the stories.’ Philip Reeve’s skill and way with words illuminates this dark corner of history brilliantly. For 13 plus.
-- Elizabeth Hawksley

     Reeves weaves an enchanting and convincing tale, woven much like one of his chief character’s stories. He takes you right back to late 5^th/early 6^th-century Britain, drawing you immediately into a whirlwind adventure where truth lies forgotten and nothing is quite as it seems.
    Philip Reeves has created a fun and action-packed book that provides an insight into the life of both boys and girls in Arthur’s time. Somehow he has managed to make the story both educational and, dare I say it, fun! The book is a refreshing break from the usual trash lined up for our age group, and I feel it would be best suited to the 12-14 age range, but it is not the best book for readers in search of a challenge. This said, Here Lies Arthur is one of those delightful books that you appear to just glide through and is thoroughly enjoyable. -- Rachel Chetwynd-Stapylton, age 14

RANDOM ACTS OF HEROIC LOVE
Danny Scheinmann, Doubleday, 2007, £12.99, pb, 388pp, 9780385612616
    In 1992, Leo Deakin awakens in a hospital in South America to the shocking news of the death of his girlfriend, Eleni. Although he doesn’t remember any details of the accident that killed Eleni, Leo is tortured with guilt. In 1917, Moritz Daniecki, captured on the Russian front and sent to a Siberian POW camp, escapes and begins the 500km trek home to find the woman whose memory has sustained him through the horror and deprivation of war. These two men draw their inner strength from their memories of love. This is ultimately their reason for hope and their salvation.
    Throughout the book the two stories are told in parallel, seemingly unconnected until the final chapters draw them together, and the links are finally revealed.
    In simple terms, this is a triumphant story concerning the power of love. It is by turns dramatic and powerful, romantic and tender. On the face of it, Daniecki’s story would seem to be the more powerful and compelling, but by the end, Leo’s search for understanding becomes equally dominant and moving.
    As the layers of the different stories unfold, the lives and hearts of the two men are laid bare, and by the end, the reader is likely to be emotionally wrung out. This makes a novel well worth the effort and one destined to stay in the mind for a long, long time after the final page is turned. -- Sara Wilson

A PIGEON AND A BOY
Meir Shalev (trans. Evan Fallenberg), Schocken, 2007, $25.00/C$32.00, hb, 320pp, 9780805242515
    It is always a pleasure to read a good translation of well-regarded book by one of another country’s premier writers. Meir Shalev has been translated into twenty languages, and has won numerous international awards; it’s frustrating not to be able to read him in English within months of a novel’s publication. Most recently, his 2006 Brenner Prize winning novel, an international bestseller, has been translated as A Pigeon and a Boy.
    The story sounds simple. A middle-aged man, Yair Mendelsohn, discovers the truth about his mother and the man she loved back in 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence. At another level, the novel is about loss and grieving: Yair’s mother has recently died. Yet again it is about truth, and finding one’s own truths. A satisfying read, this book is a multi-level, thoughtful examination of human relationships written in beautiful prose. Is it an amazing love story about Yair’s mother and the Boy? A Jacob and Esau story involving Yair and his brother Benjamin? As one reads the 1948 entries and then the modern entries, as one sees Yair grow as he discovers what truly happened, the novel also becomes a celebration of human determination in near-impossible circumstances.
    And if you knew nothing about homing pigeons before you read this book, you will finish it a great deal wiser, and full of wonder. This is a novel which book groups could enjoy, discussing it at length and at all levels. But regardless of your taste for book groups, this novel is a stunning read that should be at the top of your wish list. -- Patrika Salmon

THE JOURNAL OF DORA DAMAGE
Belinda Starling, Bloomsbury, 2007, $24.95, hb, 464pp, 9781596913363 / Bloomsbury, 2007, £12.99, hb, 464pp, 9780747585220.
    Dora Damage has a name straight from Dickens, and in fact her tale would not be out of place in that author’s works, although perhaps written on the distaff side. Dora is the wife of Peter Damage, a bookbinder, and theirs is not a love match. Their daughter Lucinda was conceived on one of the rare times they were intimate (Damage having made Dora scrub herself with bleach before he touched her), and she was born with epilepsy. Damage himself suffers from crippling rheumatoid arthritis that is interfering with his livelihood. Dora cannily plays to his ego while surreptitiously taking over the business herself.
    In 1860, a woman bookbinder is unheard of, so Dora must pretend to the outside world that her husband is running the business while she tries to drum up additional work. When one of her clients sees through her ruse, the price he extracts is that she bind pornography for a group of dilettantes. Starling walks a fine line between displaying Dora’s repulsion and her reluctant fascination by a world that is denied her by her husband. The poverty in which her family lives and even the smell of the bookbinding materials are so tangible as to be worthy of Dickens.
    Starling has written an engrossing and unsettling book, which serves to remind the reader how few rights women had in Victorian London. Dora achieves her modest rebellions, but always with the sense of looking over her shoulder; the effort it took to keep her family safe, clothed, and fed made me ache for her.
-- Ellen Keith

THE SHADOW CATCHER
Marianne Wiggins, Simon & Schuster, 2007, $25.00/C$29.99, hb, 323pp, 0743265203
    The story opens in present-day Los Angeles. The fictional writer of a novel about Edward Curtis is meeting with Hollywood executives who are interested in buying rights to produce a movie based on the book. Because Curtis is famous as a photographer of Native Americans, they want to give the film a decidedly upbeat Western spin and present Curtis as a selfless folk hero. The novel then begins to oscillate between two distinct yet parallel narratives: one focused on the present, and one focused on Curtis during his own time (1868-1952).
    In the present-day narrative, Marianne Wiggins (the fictional author has the same name as the actual author) goes on a search for her presumed long-dead father after receiving a phone call from a Las Vegas hospital saying that he was dying there and she was listed as next of kin. In the Curtis narrative, Wiggins (the actual author) creates a detailed portrait of his erratic and often contradictory life. Apparently both Curtis and the fictional Wiggins’s father suffered from the compelling need to unexpectedly wander from their families for long periods of time.
    Wiggins (the real author) fashions the two narratives into a coherent story of families lost and then found again. Through a series of discoveries uncovered by tenacious research, Wiggins (the character) manages to bring the past history of her father to bear on the present in a way that is illuminating and satisfying. Wiggins (the real author) amplifies her story by incorporating selective images in the manner of W. G. Sebald, and fashions a fictional study of Curtis that reveals a complex, creative, charismatic yet contradictory individual. This is an extraordinary novel that exemplifies the best of historical fiction. -- Gerald T. Burke

CRUSADE
Robyn Young, Dutton, 2007, $25.95/C$32.50, hb, 493pp, 9780525950165 / Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £12.99, hb, 544pp, 9780340839720
    Crusade is an epic tale of war, political intrigue, religious fervor, greed, and passion set in Acre of 1274. It captures the color and bustle of that vigorous trading port where Venetians, Genoese, Arabs, Jews, Franks, and English live and work in their respective sectors but where trade and matters of governance and defense force them into tenuous and shifting alliances.
    Not everyone in Acre is happy with the truce between Mamelukes and Christians. Peacetime is bad for certain businesses. A cabal of merchants collaborates with the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, who uses them in turn to further his own agenda. Together they concoct a scheme that would set the Near East ablaze in unstoppable jihad. Templar knight Will Campbell is ordered to execute his Grand Master’s plan—but he is also pledged to the Brethren, a clandestine group within the Temple whose mission is to maintain peace in the Holy Land. The web tangles hopelessly as his efforts at peacekeeping are betrayed—as is his love of Elwen, illicit though it was for the should-be celibate Templar.
    I will not spoil the story by telling whether Will was successful in foiling the scheme, but will finish by saying that the story ends with the battle for Acre in 1291. It’s impossible to put the book down at this point. I was impressed that the author included details like the Frankish horseman getting tangled in the guy ropes of Arab tents and a knight being thrown from his horse into a latrine. Both events are recorded in Gabrieli’s Arab Historians of the Crusades.
    Crusade sweeps you from the ramparts and markets of Acre to Cairo’s palace and walled harem, to the hills of Syria, the holy mosques of Mecca, and a hundred points in between. The story is outstanding—a winner from start to finish. -- Lucille Cormier

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