I am a communications professional in the greater Philadelphia area and am always on the lookout for new freelance opportunities. I have an MA in Writing Studies from Saint Joseph's University. This site is just a sampling of some of some of my magazine and online writing. I'd love to hear from you, so please fill out the Contact the Author form at the bottom of the page or email me at [email protected]
Revolutionary Road
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
Two young people caught in a mundane existence are at the heart of Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. April and Frank Wheeler, formerly lively Greenwich Village singles, have become an ordinary suburban Connecticut married couple. The book is just as poignant now as it was when it was first published in 1961. Named one of Time’s top one hundred novels of the 20th century, it was re-released in time for the December 2008 movie version.
The story takes places in 1955. The Wheelers, just shy of their 30th birthdays, live with their two children in a subdivision called Revolutionary Hill Estates, one of the prototypical communities that sprung up across American after World War II. When we first meet them, April is performing in a rather poor community theater play. It’s the sparking point for the first fight between the two, as April accuses Frank of not praising her acting. The tension between the characters is palpable and Yates early on establishes his skill at peeling away their layers to reveal the rotten cores. Throughout the book, reading about Frank and April is like watching a car crash. You cringe but can’t look away from the destruction.
The novel succeeds as an indictment of American malaise. No more is this more evident than through Frank’s attitude towards his job at Knox Business Machines. It is never made clear to the reader exactly what he does. He prides himself on how little work he can do, remarking, “The great advantage of a place like Knox is that you can sort of turn your mind off every morning.” As Frank wastes away in his cubicle, it becomes a game to him, testing the limits. April, wanting to rescue herself from the life of a housewife, hatches a plan to move the family to France. She’ll work to support them while Frank figures out what he really wants to do with his life. Frank, looking for an escape from his doldrums, readily agrees.
The Wheelers are not the only couple in the novel. Shep and Milly Campbell are the subject of Frank and April’s distaste. They’re convinced that they are better than the Campbells, but the four have been dealt the same lot in life. The Campbell’s, though, cheerfully accept their jobs and organized days and white picket fence, exactly what the Wheelers are fleeing. Another, older couple, the Givings, first figure in when Helen sells the Wheeler their house. Unlike April, Milly works outside the home, creating a sense of purpose for herself instead of waiting for someone or something to fulfill her. But the Givings really make an impact through their son John, who is in a psychiatric hospital. He is allowed day trips and on several of his excursions, he and his parents have dinner at the Wheelers. John says aloud what readers had been thinking, that Frank and April are only playing house, not living a real life.
Reality interjects when Frank is ironically offered a better positon at work. The promotion comes at the right time as April is pregnant. Frank suggests they postpone Paris for a few years while April is convinced everything is ruined. The pregnancy leads to another of the Wheelers raw emotional smackdowns. April wants to induce a miscarriage, defying Frank, “Do you think you can stop me?” Frank talks her out of the idea, accepts his new job, and the two establish a truce. The peace is short-lived as April admits that she had fooled herself into wanting the husband and the house and the kids because it was expected of her. Her deluded desire to escape her situation leads to the novel’s sad but ultimately predictable ending.
Yates’ characters see themselves as “victims of the world’s indifference” but is it society or themselves that cause the most disappointment? Revolutionary Roadholds a mirror up to suburban clichés and then smashes the glass. Are we responsible for our happiness or is it determined by chance? The novel leaves the reader with the foreboding sense that their lives are no different than the Wheelers.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
The Owl Killers
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction
“You’ve got the spirit of a cunning woman in you. . . You mustn’t be afraid, you’ve got the strength of a woman. You. . remember that.”
Karen Maitland transports readers to a world of superstition in her medieval mystery The Owl Killers. In 1321, the village of Ulewic in England is ruled by the Owl Masters, pagan leaders who use violence and blackmail to keep the villagers under their control.
The village of Ulewic hangs in the balance between Christianity and paganism. The Owl Masters, masked men who are based on an actual cult, conduct rituals, including human sacrifice, to appease their gods.At the same time, the Church wields power over the village too. Father Ulewic has been transferred there from the city of Norwich as a punishment following his conviction for adultery. Ulewic resents the backwater assignment. Church authorities breath down his neck, eager to collect their share of the parishes tithes.
The poor villagers can barely afford the mandatory donations and are torn between that loyalty and the payments they must make to appease the Owl Masters.The already tense situation flares up as new players arrive on the scene. Women from Flanders arrive in Ulewic to start a beguinage. Beguinages were communities of women. Like nuns, they took vows of chastity. Unlike nuns, beguines did not take vows of poverty, and were encouraged to work and earn their own money. They could come and go as they pleased. The women devoted their free time to serving those in need. These communities served as a middle ground between marriage and convents for women seeking independence. In the novel, the beguines are viewed suspiciously. Besides nuns, the only other women who lived without men were prostitutes and witches.
When the cattle in the village come down with the murrain, a deadly virus, yet the animals in the beguinage are spared, rumors about black magic fly. A local villager contracts epilepsy and according to Church tradition, is banished. The beguines open their home to him and the people of Ulewic are stunned and frightened. Who are these women?
Conflict brews within the walls of the beguinage too. The beguines give shelter to some controversial women. Andrew is a holy woman who is starving herself as a sign of piety. As she is dying, she spits up the host. The women wonder if it is now a relic. If it is, they must turn it over to the Church. Debate heats up over what to do and when Father Ulewic hears of its existence, battle lines are drawn.
Agatha, daughter of Lord D’Acaster, is cast out of her noble home and seeks refuge. She begins to adopt some controversial religious beliefs, such as people can speak directly to God without a priest to intervene and that salvation comes through faith alone. Eventually these beliefs will cause her and the beguinage a world of trouble.
The strength of the novel is its narrative style. Maitland alternates points of view between various villagers and beguines, creating a complete picture of a time and place very different from our own. She gives special attention to the beguines. Several act as narrators, each with a unique take on the events unfolding around her.
The novel is very evocative of a certain era and an air of mystery surrounds the plot and characters. It is long, but Maitland’s vibrant writing makes it move along rather quickly. Each chapter is rather short, creating a punchy sense of action.
Whether you enjoy historical fiction or are looking for a story that empowers women, I highly recommend this novel.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
The Confessions of Edward Day
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
“What actors know about emotions is that they come in pairs, often in direct opposition to each other. That’s what it is to be conflicted. We want what we should not want and we know it. We desire that which is dangerous or forbidden and might cause us to suffer.”
With The Confessions of Edward Day, the Orange Prize award winning author Valerie Martin has created an engrossing fictional memoir. The title character guides the reader through his adventures as he strives for professional success on the stage in New York, while also fighting his personal demons.
Most the action takes place in the 1970. Edward and some friends, all fellow actors still waiting for their mythical “big break,” rent a summer home at the New Jersey shore. There, he falls for Madeline and the two spend the night together. One night, Edward swims out to far in dangerous surf and one of his housemates, Guy, rescues him. That neighborly action will have far-reaching consequences, as Edward and Guy develop a competitive relationship, each always trying to one up the other.
Much of their aggressiveness centers on work. The action quickly transitions back to Manhattan, as the characters audition for even the smallest Off-Broadway parts, hoping to move up to Equity theatres and their union wages. At first, Guy is more successful, causing Edward to resent the person who saved his life.
Martin’s skillful prose takes us into the heart and mind of Edward, showing what it means to be a “starving artist.” The German word schedunfrede loosely translates as “happiness at the misfortune of others.” When Guy makes his Broadway debut, Edward gleefully tells the readers, “The New York theatre critics were unanimous in their contempt.” Meanwhile, his own star starts to rise. Edwards joins a summer stock troupe in Connecticut and critics rave, “Newcomer Edward Day commands the stage.”
Acting is not the only power struggle between Guy and Edward; they also do battle for the affections of Madeline. After the time at the beach house, Edward is devastated to learn that Madeline is dating Guy. That’s not the end of their story, though, as Madeline and Edward have more secret meetings.
Madeline justifies sleeping with Edward by telling him Guy is impotent. When Guy dramatically catches the two, he tells Edward that Madeline was using him, that it’s a lie. We never know whether Guy is covering up his embarrassment or whether Madeline did make the whole thing up. Either way, the jockeying for supremacy in Madeline’s eyes informs many of the characters’ decisions.
Edwards’s professional and personal lives come together in a performance of Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya, where he is cast opposite Madeline, as clandestine lovers. The novel succeeds at bringing the reader into the secret world of acting-the rehearsals, the backstage squabbles, the physical and mental preparations, all of which are often more entertaining than the play itself. That certainly proves to be true in an encounter between Edward and Guy in Edward’s dressing room during one intermission, one that will change the lives of Edward, Guy, and Madeline.
The Confessions of Edward Day is a real page-turner. In Edward, Martin creates an honest, complex, true-to-life character whom the reader can’t help but root for, flaws and all.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
Looking After Pigeon
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
Looking After Pigeon transports the reader to the Jersey shore in the mid-seventies, with the precocious five-year old Pigeon as narrator and tour guide.
After their father walks out, their mother, Joan, moves Pigeon and her older siblings Robin and Dove to their uncle Edward’s house in an un-named New Jersey beach town.
“I have heard that in the sixties, they spoke of free love and equally free living. But little of it seemed to have rubbed off on our mother.” Order reigns supreme in the house. Their mother is a stickler for rules, and frequently preaches the evils of materialism. Joan gets a job at the local movie theater, determined to stay busy. Later, to the children’s surprise, she brings home a man named Cary who becomes a fixture in the house that summer.
Ten-year-old Robin becomes enchanted with a fortune-teller named Edith. He soon starts to believe that he has the gift, that he can predict the future and sets up shop alongside her, Edith marketing him as the boy wonder. Not everyone shares his enthusiasm, as other family members worry that the woman is only using Robin as a novelty to increase her profit. Robin doesn’t care and spends most days at Edith’s run-down shack.
Sixteen-year old Dove waitresses at Joe Winter’s diner. Like the bird she is named after, Dove is beautiful and delicate. She shakes up the family dynamic when she announces she’s pregnant with her boyfriend Stan’s baby. The news throws the family into a tailspin, as everyone tells Dove how to handle the situation. Complicating matters is the unusually close, flirtatious relationship Dove and her boss have, a relationship that “might make people wonder who the father of her baby is.”
Although the story takes place only thirty-some years ago, these characters occupy a completely different world. Pigeon is frequently left alone when her family goes to work, something that’s unheard of these days. She has a well-cultivated sense of independence. Although she is the youngest, Pigeon acts as a confidante to her brother and sister, who tell her about the escapades with the fortune teller and the pregnancy before any one else. For her part, Pigeon keeps these secrets with a solemnity that belies her age.
Pigeon still has moments that show her true naiveté. Towards the end of the book, she accompanies her uncle Edward into New York for a business day trip. Pigeon sneaks off and tries to find her father, who had recently sent her a postcard from Manhattan. “I did not realize the impossibility of my task–to find an apartment in New York City with no address, to find among all of the people, only my father.”
Reading this novel feels as if you are looking in on a real family instead of a fictional one. Marson’s novel expertly captures the rhythms of everyday life. Her writing flows very easily making the story move along at an effortless clip.
Looking After Pigeon is a unique coming-of-age-story. Even though the reader sees everything filtered through Pigeon’s eyes, it is just as much about Dove’s and Robin’s summer of growing older and wiser. I felt a strong attachment to all the characters and flipped the pages eagerly wanting to discover their fates. This engrossing novel has much to recommend it.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
Undiscovered Gyrl
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
Why do people blog? In the raw novel Undiscovered Gyrl, Katie Kampenfelt, a seventeen year old starts a blog to chronicle her life in the year she takes off between high school and college. The book is formatted like blog entries, giving the reader a voyeuristic look into her escapades. Her real name isn’t Katie, she changes identifying details about herself, friends, and family so she can be completely honest, because “what’s the point of blogging if you’re not going to tell the truth?”
In Undiscovered Gyrl, Allison Burnett pulls of an amazing feat. He creates an unlikable narrator and manages to make readers keep turning the pages to discover what happens to her. Reading Kate’s blog is like the gaper delay after a car crash on the highway, you feel bad for looking but can’t stop the impulse.
At the start of the story, Katie is dating Rory but frequently gets high and fools around with Dan, a college professor. When she’s not with either of them, she and her best friend Jade use their fake IDs to get drunk. Her cycle of sex, beer, pot, and blogging gets another element-work-when her mom demands Katie get a job. Through a lucky series of events, she lands one as a nanny to the Spooner family.
To Katie, the Spooners are an idealized version of family. She blogs glowingly about Paul, and Margaret, and baby Cole, in contrast to the disdain she feels for her own mother and her boyfriend Mark, and her own father, and his girlfriend Affie. Her relationship with Paul turns from employer-employee to something much more.
If anything, Katie is unafraid to be herself. She writes about everything, regardless of how bad it makes her look. Cracks in her bravado reveal moments of her innocence, like when she admits she didn’t know she had to register before voting, reminding the reader that she is still a teenager, despite the very adult situations she places herself in and the resulting consequences. Katie realizes she’s in control of her destiny, writing, “All I have to do is make smarter choices,” but she can’t reconcile that ideal with her reality.
This is a modern novel, from its format to its content. Political and pop culture references, from the Eliot Spitzer scandal, to Heath Ledger’s death, to the primary fight between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, and Katie’s sometimes hilarious commentary on them, pepper her blogs, setting the story in a very specific era. At the same time, Katie is an everywoman narrator. No clue about location is ever given, meaning Undiscovered Gyrl could be set in any town.
The story is a provocative commentary on our technological age. As Katie the blogger gains more and more fans, Katie the person grows lonelier and lonelier. Technology connects us to more people around the globe, but in Katie’s case, at the expense of real life relationships.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
Greetings from Somewhere Else
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
If you’re looking for a breezy, late-summer addition to your library, pick up a copy of Monica McInerney’s novel, Greetings from Somewhere Else. A combination of an easy to follow main storyline combined with compelling subplots and a likable main character make it a quintessential beach book.
Lainey Byrne runs an event management company in Australia and juggles her relationships with her chef boyfriend Adam and her parents and three brothers. The family receives word that great-aunt May has passed away in Ireland. Her nieces and nephews were her only family and she left them her bed and breakfast, but there’s a catch. One member of the Byrnes must live in and run the inn for a year before they can inherit it. Lainey’s father suffers from an accident he had at a construction site and the family needs money for his care. If they follow the plan, they can later sell the bed and breakfast. Lainey is nominated as the representative.
She takes a leave of absence from her job, breaks up with Adam, and heads to County Meath. When she arrives at the inn, Lainey is in for a shock. The run-down old house has clearly seen better days, the inside is dusty, smelly, and old-fashioned. May’s lawyer tells her that there have been hardly any guests. Around town, Lainey’s aunt had a reputation for being an obnoxious, stubborn old lady, and her bed and breakfast had developed a stay-away status.
Lainey uses money May had left her to redecorate the inn with the help of her friend Eva from Dublin. She throws herself into the project to distract herself from thinking about Adam. Another distraction soon comes along, Lainey’s childhood friend, Ronan, now a handsome documentary filmmaker in the country on assignment. Her flirtation with Ronan forms one of the undercurrents of the story.
Coming up with clever new ways to market and fill Tara Hill, her new name for the bed and breakfast, keeps her busy. Her brother Hugh keeps in touch by sending videos of the family. Lainey sees Adam’s influence in some of the videos and wonders if it had been a mistake to end things with him.
Greetings from Somewhere Else also has another ingredient that makes for a good story — a main character who changes for the better. The more Lainey learns about her aunt, the more she sees herself in May’s bossy, single-minded, isolating behavior. “She had to learn to take a step back, let things unfold, let people live their own lives. . .Not be the one in charge of the world. . .It was going to be very, very hard.”
Lainey’s year in Dublin is the catalyst for positive changes in her personality and her relationships, and it mellows her view of the world.
McInerney’s writing is clear and compelling and the pages move quickly. A plot point involving a series of letters May wrote and Lainey inherited could have been fleshed out more; yet, for the most part, the story is well-developed and a good choice for some light entertainment.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
Follow Me
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction
“Does it ring true to you if I say that your mother seemed to experience life with more intensity than most (314)."
Joanna Scott’s lyrical novel, Follow Me, traces the story of three generations of women and their family secrets. Sally Werner tells her life story to her granddaughter and namesake, who in turn serves as the frame narrator for the story.
The elder Sally’s saga begins in the 1940’s when her cousin rapes her. That act is the catalyst for her long and wandering story as she struggles to find her identity.
Scott guides the reader through Sally’s physical and emotional journeys. She is pregnant and unwilling to marry her cousin. She leaves her newborn boy in her house and runs. Sally runs until she comes to a town where no one knows her. Assuming a new identity, she works as a housekeeper for an elderly man, Mason. She settles into her new role, but the unexplained, undeniable urge to see if there is something better out there, leads her to flee again. “She had to make a plan and start living a life that would run like [a] river towards happiness.”
At Sally’s next stop, she found that happiness, but only fleetingly. For the first time in her young life, she falls in love. A tragic accident causes her to run away, again expecting a baby. She boards a bus and heads to a new city. In Rondo, Sally gets a job as a salesgirl, an apartment, and gives birth to a daughter.
Sally’s past catches up to her in shocking ways. As her daughter, Penelope grows up, she wonders what happened to the son she left. Over the years, Sally wrote letters and sent money home, none of which were answered. What she learns about how his fate has unexpectedly intertwined with hers and her daughter’s and granddaughter’s will leave the reader saddened and amazed, and more importantly, eager to turn the pages.
I do have a couple nitpicks about the book. Sally lives a happy, judgment free existence as a single-mother in a small-town in upstate New York in the early 1950’s. I find it a bit unrealistic that there was no scorn, or even gossip about her. Also, the novel frequently switches voice. At times, the reader is inside Sally’s head, at times observing her objectively, and at other times, the narrators are Sally’s daughter and granddaughter. These changes sometimes make it hard to focus on the story.
Scott’s writing more than compensates for those small discrepancies. There is a lyrical quality to her prose. She is especially skilled at evoking a sense of place, like when she writes“There were passing fields lusher than the others, carpeted in velvet green. . .” Scott also creates a protagonist readers sympathize with, and roots for, one of the hallmarks of a gripping novel. Readers will continue to turn the pages to find out her fate, and the fates of her daughter and granddaughter.
Follow Me is a rich, layered book from a skilled writer and I recommend it highly.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
The Rain Before it Falls
This review originally appeared inMostly Fiction
“Beatrix could be a selfish person, at times, there was no doubt about that. . .But at the same time, she was quite capable of love (50)."
The Rain Before it Falls is an elegant, multi-generational saga that draws the reader in with a unique narrative format. Before she died, Rosamund left behind a series of cassettes for her niece, Gil, who must pass them onto someone named Imogen. As Gil listens to the tapes, she and the reader learn of the complicated web that draws together her aunt and the mysterious Imogen.
Rosamund’s talk is inspired by pictures. She chose twenty photos that best captured her life story and describes each one–the subjects, the locale, but more than that, the history behind them. Her story begins at the start of World War Two, when she is six. Like many English children, Rosamund was sent away from the dangers of London to live in the country with her aunt Ivy, uncle Owen, and cousins, including Beatrix, three years older. The bond between Beatrix and Rosamundbecomes a monumental force in their lives. Beatrix, desperate for the affection she didn’t get from her mother Ivy, latches onto her cousin as a kindred spirit, someone similarly lost and lonely. Rosamund describes Beatrix’s relationship with her mother as harsh. “Beatrix’s duty was to remain invisible” and any demand for love was met with indifference.
It is no surprise then that Beatrix marries at age eighteen in what used to be termed a shotgun wedding. Beatrix sees the marriage and her pregnancy as a way to escape her mother. Even at age fifteen, Rosamund senses something is wrong. “It is very apparent. . .that Beatrix and Roger have no future.” She felt sad for her cousin for choosing this disappointing life and frustrated for not knowing how to help her. Beatrix doesn’t want help as she takes matters into her own hands, leaves her husband, and runs away with an Irish gypsy, baby daughter Thea in tow.
As they grow older, Rosamund and Beatrix’s lives remained tangled together. During university, Rosamund falls in love with Rebecca. The two share an apartment under the guise of roommates, trying to avoid gossip. Three years after they flee to Ireland, Beatrix and Thea reappear. Beatrix fell in love with another man and must go to Canada to follow him. Thea needs a place to live. Over Rebecca’s protestations, Rosamund agrees she could live with them. The three women form a little family, shown in the photo Rosamund dubs her favorite, evoking her most cherished memories. Two years later, Beatrix returns with her new husband to reclaim her daughter. Little Thea had become the glue that held the family together. Without her, the women become strangers in the same space. Rebecca writes a note. “I don’t want to be in this place without her any longer,” and the door closed on that chapter of Rosamund’s life.
The story skips ahead as the photographs become more current. Rosamund visits Beatrix and her family. She witnesses a horrible fight between mother and daughter, eerily reminiscent of the hatred Beatrix and Ivy had for each other. After the argument, Rosamund comforts Thea and falls asleep in her room. The next day, Beatrix falsely accuses her of something abhorrent and Rosamund leaves. It is the last time the cousins see each other, their once unshakeable bond ripped apart by Beatrix’s insecurity and selfishness.
Thea loses touch with her aunt as she grows up and eventually has her own daughter, Imogen, whom she gives up for adoption. Rosamund thinks, “I still believed reconciliation was possible. . .I could be the one to bring it about.” Her recordings are her attempt to bridge the past and the present, to connect Imogen to the mother and grandmother she never knew.
Author Jonathan Coe’s technique is the most compelling part of the novel. Anyone who has ever looked at old family photos knows the weight they carry. Stringing together a story based on pictures is clever. Coe’s excellent descriptive skills are evident. It’s almost as if the reader has a copy of these images. They are painstakingly detailed but never overdone. Effortless is the best way to describe Coe’s writing. It is easy to get drawn into the novel and not realize how much time has passed.
All of the characters are complex, especially Beatrix. While she does some dishonorable things, it is hard to dislike her. Coe creates four sympathetic female characters, where other writers struggle to create one. Any woman will find parts of her relationship with her own female relatives in this saga, which is what makes it compelling. The Rain Before it Falls has much to recommend it. This slim volume packs a deep emotional punch.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
Isabella Moon
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction.
Isabella Moon by Laura Benedict is an attention-grabbing mystery novel that transports the reader to the sleepy Southern town of Carrystown, Kentucky. In the beginning of the novel, we learn that a young woman named Isabella Moon disappeared two years earlier. All efforts to find her have failed. That is, until a newcomer to Carrystown, Kate Russell, claims to have seen Isabella’s ghost and knows what happened to her. As the story unfolds, a series of mysterious deaths shake the small town.
First, a healthy high school basketball player collapses and dies during a game. When talking to his family, Sheriff Bill Delaney uncovers boxes and boxes of cold medicine in the boy’s room. The discovery sets in motion a subplot about an underground meth lab operation. Even more gruesome is the murder of Lillian, the mother of Francie, Kate’s best friend. Lillian is bludgeoned to death. Lillian sees Isabella Moon before she dies. Oddly enough, these events coincide with Kate’s admission she knows what happened to the girl. The sheriff then starts to think of Kate as someone to keep an eye on.
Mixed in with the main mysteries are chapters about a woman named Mary-Katie who meets, falls for, and marries Miles. In the Mary-Katie chapters, we learn that Miles “insisted on ordering for her at lunch. . .suggested what dress would be best or told her how to hold her tennis racket.” This controlling behavior dominates their relationship. He freezes Mary-Katie’s credit cards and asks her to sleep with a potential business partner to seal a deal. The ultimate betrayal comes when Miles hires a thug to beat a pregnant Mary-Katie, causing her to miscarry the baby he does not want. Outraged, Mary-Katie shoots him and flees, setting up a new life under a new name.
It’s no surprise that Mary-Katie and Kate Russell are the same woman. The big surprise comes later in the novel when we learn what really happened to Isabella Moon.
All the characters in Isabella Moon are knitted together in complicated and sometimes shocking ways. The story is told through the perspectives of more than seven characters, some taking their turn for only a chapter; others, like Kate, Francie, and Bill Delaney, being the narrator for large portions. While having multiple perspectives can help readers understand a story with so many puzzle pieces, at times it is overwhelming. Sometimes it seems the author bit off more than she can chew. A few storylines, such as who murdered Lillian, become casualties of having too much going on and aren’t fleshed out as well as they could be. At times, the novel teeters on the edge of melodrama. Miles is almost cartoonish in his villainy. It’s hard to believe someone could be so heinous when compared to the more down-to-earth portrayals of the other characters.
Isabella Moon, though, has much to recommend it. The author succeeds in getting readers to root for Kate/Mary-Katie. There are elements of the supernatural in the plot, but it manages to feel as if each could really happen and it never ventures into the macabre. Some interesting themes running throughout are identity and perception. Can we change ourselves? Can we change what people think of us? A subplot involving the inter-racial relationship between Francie and her boyfriend, who come from different economic backgrounds, addresses identity and perception as it relates to race and class. The story lets readers pause and say hmmm about these big issues without being hit over the head.
While not perfect, Benedict has put together what should be a welcome addition to a mystery fan’s bookshelf.
©Danielle Bullen 2009
The Meaning of Night
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction
“After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.” With an opening line like that, it’s easy to see why I picked up a copy of The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox. The novel rests on an interesting premise. A fictional manuscript dating from Victorian England has been discovered and it is the confession of Edwards Glyver. What Glyver confesses to is at the heart of this darkly compelling story.
It quickly becomes clear that the red-haired man is collateral damage. Glyver kills him as practice for killing his adversary, Phoebus Daunt. Their hatred dates back to their days at Eton when Daunt frames Glyver by planting a stolen rare book in his room. Caught red-handed, Glyver is forced to leave the school in shame. “Revenge has a long memory,” he tells his foe, and that become the main theme of the novel. Frustratingly, is never explained why Daunt commits this crime. That is one of several loose ends that readers of The Meaning of Night must face. While I questioned whether the events at Eton are enough to justify Glyver’s hunt of Daunt, it is a greater injustice that is the backbone of his dark quest.
Through a series of intricately plotted discoveries, Glyver learns that the woman he believed to be his mother was not. Instead, his birth mother, Lady Laura Duport, plotted to give up her baby to her friend, his adoptive mother. The Duports are heirs to the Tansor lordship, and one of the wealthiest families in England. Glyver is in line to inherit their fortune. Proving his lineage becomes one of the cornerstones of the story. Lord Duport, seemingly without a biological heir, decides to adopt one, and chooses none other than Phoebus Daunt. Daunt’s death, then, is the only way Glyver can claim his inheritance.
Assuming a false identity, Glyver finds work for Mr. Tredgold, the Duport’s attorney, work that brings him in frequent contact with the family. A series of characters flit in and out. Some, like Bella, his favorite courtesan, serve merely ornamental purposes. Others, like Emily, the woman Glyver loves, are catalysts for even deeper plot twists. All the characters, though, take a backseat to Glyver, one of the most calculating narrators I have come across recently.
There are several peaks and valleys in The Meaning of Night. What begins as a noir crime novel, peppered with phrases like, “We proceeded westward through the raw October cold and the thickening misty,” soon turns into a psychological portrait. Large chunks are devoted to the main characters’—Glyver and Daunt’s—back stories. The story is mostly told in flashback. The narrator only circles back to the killing of the red-haired man within the last 50 or so pages, which are, in my opinion, the best in the book. At times, the jumping through time (entire years go by within paragraphs), is very confusing, as is the extensive list of characters. The novel could have benefited from a dramatis personae, a list of characters a bewildered reader like me could refer back to.
While some of the characters’ motives are suspect, it is best to suspend disbelief and engross yourself in Cox’s skillful prose. The settings of Victorian England, from lush opium dens to mannered country estates, are precisely drawn. If anything, this is a richly atmospheric novel. Although the plot has its holes and asks a lot of the reader in terms of leaps of faith, it is Glyver who keeps it chugging along. Whether you root for his drive to lay claim to the fortune or whether his amoral hijinks leave you cold, Glyver’s journey will make you turn the pages until the shocking end.
©Danielle Bullen 2008
Change of Heart
This review originally appeared in Mostly Fiction
Claire, Maggie, Michael, and Shay are just some of the characters in Change of Heart who are brought together by religion. Shay Bourne, a handyman, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of a man he worked for, Kurt Nealon and his daughter. Eleven years later, as Shay waits on death row, the water in the pipes of the prison turns into wine. That sets off a firestorm with Shay at the center.
As unexplainable occurrences happen in the cellblock--a dead bird is brought back to life, a fellow inmate is cured of AIDS--the attention surrounding Shay intensifies. Rumors start, the media nicknames him the “Death Row Messiah,” and people from far and wide gather outside the prison, hoping to catch a glimpse of Shay.
Shay wants only one thing--to donate his heart to Claire, a young girl with a fatal heart birth defect. Claire Nealon is Kurt Nealon’s daughter. Claire's mother wants a heart but does not want the heart from the man who killed her husband and the sister that Claire never had a chance to meet.
Michael, a priest who already has a life-changing connection to Shay, visits him and becomes his spiritual advisor. Witnessing the miracles, he begins to question all he knows about the Catholic Church. Maggie is an attorney for the ACLU who learns about Shay’s wish to donate his heart and becomes his lawyer. Shay believes he can only be saved if he gives his heart to Claire. The chemicals used in lethal injections would make his heart unusable. Maggie goes to court to sue for execution by hanging instead, therefore keeping the heart viable.
The chapters of Change of Heart alternate between narrators. Various sides of the story are told from inside and outside the New Hampshire state prison. Interestingly, Shay never narrates. It is very much his story, but we only see him as the other characters do. Faith and its flipside, doubt, lay at the center of the novel. Shay says, “Everyone’s got a little God in them . . .and a little murder in them too. It’s how your life turns out that makes you lean to one side or another.”
Picoult writes about religion without crossing the line into preachiness. The novel is fast-paced and the characters, especially Maggie and Michael, are well crafted and elicit empathy from the readers. Although it deals with controversial issues -- the death penalty, religion, bioethics to name a few -- Change of Heart is an entertaining yet thought-provoking novel that will stay with the reader after the last page.
©Danielle Bullen 2008
The Post-War Dream
This review originally appeared in Philly Burbs
The Post-War Dream, Mitch Cullin’s haunting novel, centers on Hollis Adams, a seemingly ordinary man who has retired to a life of golfing and leisure in Arizona. The novel jump starts with a simple request. “Tell me about us,” asks his wife, Debra. But before Hollis can reminisce about their courtship, he must delve further into his past. Against the backdrop of a freak Southwest snowstorm, the novel flips between their relationship and Hollis’ time in Korea some fifty years earlier.
Cullin skillfully blends several genres. At times, this is a war novel. What is striking about the portions dedicated to Korea is how Cullen crafts the banality of routine and focuses on the camaraderie between the soldiers versus the epic battle scenes that characterize other selections from this genre. War throws people who otherwise would never have met into extremely close proximity, and so taciturn Hollis encounters arrogant, fast-talking private Bill McCreedy. At first, Hollis is simply amused by this loquacious foil, but the relationship between the two grows increasingly strained. Eventually Hollis breaks the ultimate soldier code and thinks, “You’re not worth fighting for.” An encounter in the jungle between Hollis, McCreedy and a North Korean soldier changes Hollis forever. Although he earns a purple heart, the guilt of Hollis’ inaction during this crucial moment haunts him for the rest of his life.
The novel also functions as a coming-of-age tale, an intense meditation on how war affects the young men who fight in it. When he returns to his native small town of Critchfield, Minnesota in his early twenties, Hollis is paraded around town like a hero—a role he feels he doesn’t deserve, but takes full advantage of. Well intentioned bartenders happily pour him free drinks, fueling a downward spiral into a series of drunken rages. Hallucinations brought on by memories of that night in the jungle with McCreedy drive him to rethink his anger. When a surprise letter from McCreedy’s family arrives, Hollis takes it as sign. Leaving his mother and stepfather and their contentious relationship, he heads to Texas to meet the family of his fellow soldier. The trip acts as a personal turning point where Hollis attempts to atone for his past.
Cullin is at his best when writing domestic scenes, capturing Hollis and Debra’s comfortable rapport. Toward the beginning of the novel, Debra is diagnosed with cancer, prompting her request for their love story. Debra’s epic battle with the disease is more frightening than the battles Hollis fights in the war. The proud man is helpless against this enemy. Debra’s struggle causes both Hollis and the reader to focus on their own mortality, on the choices they have made, on the lives they have intentionally or unintentionally shaped. Debra teaches her husband what true courage is. “We’re the cure for cancer. People are,” Debra says. She vows to live with the disease, and not let it take over her spirit as well as her body.
The three sides of the story fuse into one slightly surprising revelation about Debra’s past and the bittersweet conclusion leaves doubts about the main characters’ fates. Despite this obscurity, The Post-War Dream remains a moving novel that successfully portrays one man’s journey to self-forgiveness.
©Danielle Bullen 2008
A Second Helping of Murder:More Diabolically Delicious Recipes from Contemporary Mystery Writers
This review originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Haverford magazine
The perfect treat for any mystery fan, Robert Weibezahl has co-edited A Second Helping of Murder:More Diabolically Delicious Recipes from Contemporary Mystery Writers, “a cookbook featuring recipes from both today’s mystery writers and the classics of crime.” This innovative creation, a sequel to the successful A Taste of Murder, features over 100 recipes, each contributed by notable mystery writers such as Elizabeth Peters, Don Bruns, Susan Kelly, and Candace Rob. Recipes for appetizers, drinks, soup, bread, breakfast dishes, pasta, seafood, poultry, steak, side dishes, and deserts are cleverly divided into sections with titles such as “The Set-Up,” “A Shot in the Dark,” “A Bunch of Crooks,” “The Quick and the Dead,” “Murder Most Fowl,” “Accomplices,” and “The Proof is in the Pudding.” The collection even includes a centuries-old eggnog recipe from Edgar Allan Poe. Each entry has a message from its creator on the origins of his or her recipe, the recipe itself, and biographical information on the author.
As you may have already surmised, this is not your average cookbook. The editors spiced things up by interspersing excerpts from mystery stories with the recipes. Besides providing the opportunity to try some new dishes, A Second Helping of Murder gives its readers the chance to help others eat well, too. A portion of the book’s royalties will be donated to From the Wholesaler to the Hungry, a Los Angeles-based organization that directs unsold produce from distributors to food banks so that low-income families can have healthy diets. For its clever premise, mouth-watering recipes, and philanthropic angle, this cookbook is ideal for culinary crime-solvers.
©Danielle Bullen 2008
Helping Your Child Overcome an Eating Disorder
This review originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Haverford magazine
Marlene Schwartz and her colleagues present a structured, meaningful guide for families coping with a child who has an eating disorder. Schwartz is a psychologist and the co-director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, which researches the roles family and society play in preventing and treating eating disorders. Eating disorders are not only about food, nor are they merely cries for attention or purely mental problems. This book teaches its audience, “People of all shapes and sizes can develop eating disorders.” Common causes of these disorders are the social environment surrounding a patient, traumatic life events, negative influences from family and friends, unhealthy eating habits, self-deprecating thoughts, and a person’s individual biology and personality.
However, the book is more than a laundry list of facts and figures; it is an indispensable guide for people struggling with these issues. It turns scientific research on anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating into comprehensible chapters with topics such as understanding eating disorders, finding help, and what you can do as a family. These and other sections of the book include frequently asked questions to help debunk myths about eating disorders, case studies of eating disorder survivors (which give the book a personal edge), and activities for the family geared toward recovery. One of the main messages of Helping Your Child Overcome an Eating Disorder is the importance of parental involvement in treatment and recovery. Although the authors rightfully acknowledge, “Eating disorders have very real psychological and physical consequences,” they also emphasize, “recovery and health are possible
©Danielle Bullen 2008
Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public LIfe in America
This review originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Haverford magazine
“How can America, the world’s oldest continuous democracy, reconcile desire for unity with vast diversity?” ask anthropologists Melissa Checker and Maggie Fishman in their “groundbreaking” new book, Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power and Public Life in America. Checker, a professor at the University of Memphis, and Fishman, a doctoral candidate at New York University, collected a series of case studies examining grass roots cultural activism into an engaging volume. According to the authors, cultural activism is “public efforts to reconfigure aspects of society people perceive as oppressive.” This style of activism is uniquely American. Among the 10 chapters in Local Actions are portraits of a Georgia community saving its neighborhood from toxic contamination; Native-Americans using their casinos to change popular perception about their culture; and New York artists using their work to improve the city’s education system.
This book is written using the technique of ethnography. In ethnographic studies, researchers live and work alongside their subjects, watch their projects unfold, and become personally involved in the various causes. Checker, Fishman, and the other contributors examine issues such as how activists make connections, and how they form agendas. The authors expertly detail the positive effect activism has not only on individual communities, but also on the entire nation. They conclude that Americans form collectives not to isolate themselves, but to be better heard within the context of mainstream society. By reading these studies, audiences will gain a better understanding of how social changes are made.
©Danielle Bullen 2004
The Seuss, the Whle Seuss, and Nothing but the Seuss: A Visual Biograpy of Theodore Seuss Geisel
This review originally appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Haverford magazine
As Charles D. Cohen skillfully demonstrates in this unique book, “a good cartoon will leave an indelible memory upon a reader far more effectively than many pages of text.” Through vignettes and a multitude of illustrations, Cohen traces the career of Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) from his childhood in Springfield, Mass., to his work in advertising, to his prolific output of children’s literature. This book’s visual biography style is ideal for portraying the life and work of its subject. Cohen weaves accounts of Ted Geisel’s life in with pictorial creations of his famous alter ego, creating a comprehensive study.
Even in Geisel’s early work for his high school newspaper and the Dartmouth College literary magazine, his zany style and sense of humor were evident. From the beginning, according to Cohen, his creations embodied a “youth’s enjoyment of poking fun, a fondness for sophomoric word play and. . .images of the animal that would later become inextricably linked to his... alter ego: the cat.” Yet his early cartoons were not designed solely for a children’s audience. Geisel was a skilled satirist, lampooning Prohibition during his college years, and later American isolationism and Nazi Germany.
Dr. Seuss, named after Geisel’s mother’s maiden name, grew to popularity when he used the pseudonym in his advertising work. For years, he created print ads and direct mail campaigns, most famously for Flit bug spray. His catchphrase, “Quick, Henry, The Flit,” along with the imaginary creatures he designed for the ads, made his work recognizable to thousands of Americans. His diverse career also included military service during World War II producing training and propaganda films, creating early television commercials for Ford, and working on the musical The 500 Fingers of Dr. T, a movie based on one of his books.
Yet to generations of children, Geisel is best known for his imaginative picture books. The first, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, was published in 1937. It was in the 1950’s, however, that Dr. Seuss’s reputation as a children’s author was solidified. He was a “pioneer in the fight for equality,” says Cohen, teaching children “a person’s a person no matter how small,” in 1954’s Horton Hears a Who! Arguably his two most famous characters, the Cat in the Hat and the Grinch, both debuted in 1957. His most successful book, Green Eggs and Ham, has sold over eight million copies. Geisel continued writing until 1990, when he published his final book, Oh the Places You’ll Go.
According to Cohen, “Ted’s books succeed because he believed children's abilities and their imaginations exceed adult's expectations."
©Danielle Bullen 2004