Little Syllables: The Blog
Review - The Cypress Maze by Fiona Valpy
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
The Cypress Maze is a wonderful book for fans of the genre. It is structured similarly to Valpy's other books with a modern POV and a historical POV. We begin with Tess, who is grieving her recently deceased husband and needs to get away from her everyday life. She heads to Italy to stay with her grandmother’s friend Beatrice. The two bond as Beatrice shares her story with Tess.
One thing I especially liked about this book is its different take on WWII fiction. The historical narrative follows Beatrice when she was a young woman who was stranded in Italy when war broke out. She was forced into hiding and protected by a sympathetic couple in a rural villa.
The politics and fighting of the war are not front-and-center here.
As Beatrice relates her story to Tess, we see the courage of good men and women during the worst times of their lives, we see the redeeming power of love, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The historical portion of the book was my favorite.
In the modern day, we follow Tess as she settled at the villa, helps Beatrice, and gets to know the villa’s new owner Marco. Although Tess is the protagonist of the story, I felt she was a rather passive character who spends much of her time observing others.
I appreciated the parallels between Beatrice's love story and Tess's--both of which ended in tragedy and loss. Having Tess hear Beatrice's history and the story of her love and grief helped Tess heal from her own grief. I love that Valpy highlighted this important component of grieving and healing.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I felt I couldn't give it five stars because I really didn't care for Marco and didn't feel his character was developed quite deeply enough to make his character arc feel substantial and sustainable.
The Cypress Maze is available now!
Review - Unnatural Ends by Christopher Huang
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Christopher Huang’s new historical mystery Unnatural Ends caught me by surprise and kept me guessing. Set in the early 1920’s, this novel centers around the mystery of Sir Lawrence Linwood’s death. His last request sets his three adult children on a quest to solve his murder, much to the chagrin of the local police.
The characters that Huang has created are intricate and interesting. The three adopted Linwood siblings—Alan, Roger, and Caroline—are very different from each other, though they all grew up under the thumb of Sir Lawrence. They each take a different path to attempt to solve the mystery, and they are each led into unexpected places. It doesn’t take long before their investigations lead further and further into the past as they realize that their own mysterious origins have some bearing on the current mystery. Lady Linwood is a mysterious character in her own right, and though she seems the most likely to have some of the answers, she also is the least likely to elucidate.
This story is written from multiple points of view. We get to see scenes from the eyes of most of the story’s characters—even more minor characters—and we see different time periods. This structure gets rather convoluted, and at times I felt a bit lost as to when and where I was as an observer. Even within the present timeline, each sibling is involved in their own investigations and the events we see from one person’s point of view are not necessarily happening at the same time as what we’ve just seen from someone else’s point of view.
The mystery at play in the novel is complex. As the story progresses, suspicion is cast far and wide, relationships grow more and more complicated, and even unseen characters become important. The culmination of this, and the solution to the mystery, was satisfying and surprising. That said, some of the characters’ schemes and machinations felt too elaborate and began to feel unbelievable.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and think it is a great addition to the genre of period murder mysteries. Unnatural Ends comes out on June 20, 2023.
Review - The Celebrants by Steven Rowley
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I loved Steven Rowley’s The Guncle so much that as soon as I saw an opportunity to get an advance copy of The Celebrants, I jumped on it! This book did not disappoint.
The Celebrants is a character-driven story of five friends and their lifelong quest to be there for each other. After the death of their friend Alec, just before graduating from Berkeley, the group makes a pact to give each member a “funeral” while they’re still living, so they will know how loved they are and nothing will be left unsaid.
The others in the group—Naomi, Marielle, Craig, Jordan, and Jordy—go their separate ways, but return to each other whenever one of them needs it. We see each friend as they face life’s challenges over the years, and we see what drives them to invoke the pact and reunite with their friends.
This book spans decades in the lives of these characters, but it focuses mainly on husbands Jordan and Jordy (known collectively as “the Jordans”).
This time, it’s Jordan who has invoked the pact, and the group gathers once again to celebrate one of their own, to confront their grief, and to support each other.
I loved this book for its intimate portrayal of the human experience. These five friends go through the same losses and grief that we all do. They fall in love. They fall out of love. They make mistakes and they suffer the consequences. They feel betrayal, anger, frustration, sadness, hopelessness, and hope. This book is about the type of family that a person can choose to create for themselves. And it shows us that there is no one right way to live.
Sensitive readers should know that this book contains adult language, references to drug and alcohol abuse, incarceration, suicide and death, and sexual content.
The Celebrants by Steven Rowley comes out on May 30, 2023. I heartily recommend it!
Review - Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a new memoir by Rachel Louise Snyder, detailing her troubled childhood and how she eventually became an international journalist and advocate for victims of domestic violence.
The memoir begins with the untimely death of Rachel’s mother and the aftermath of that enormous loss. I loved how well she described what that loss was like from a child’s perspective, realizing now all that she didn’t understand then. Her father became entrenched in an evangelical church and remarried, blending families. These events began a tumultuous cycle of domestic violence within the family, which culminated when Rachel and her siblings were kicked out of their home as teenagers.
Rachel holds little back as she describes her own culpability in the events of her teenage years. She was a rebellious child who refused to be controlled. She fell into self-destructive patterns and was expelled from her high school.
Over the years that followed, Rachel eventually found her feet. She discovered her love of writing and her love of travel. As she learned more about the world and its people, she began to better understand herself and her own family.
This book is about strong women and the things that get in their way. It’s about disease and grief and death. It’s about faith and knowledge. It’s about messy family relationships and self-discovery.
If you liked Tara Westover’s Educated, you would probably like this book as well. Sensitive readers should know this book contains adult language, sexual content, child abuse, and drug use.
Women We Buried, Women We Burned releases today (May 11, 2023).
Review - In Herschel’s Wake by Michael Wohl
I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
In Herschel’s Wake tells the story of the life and death of the author’s father. Michael learns of his father’s death through unconventional means, but soon the reader learns that nothing about Herschel Wohl was conventional. His death sends Michael and his siblings (Anais and Toby) to a tiny island in the Caribbean to bury their father.
This is a family with complicated relationships, secrets, and trauma, and these three adult children come together for the first time in their lives to take care of someone who never took care of them.
More than anything, this book is about the author’s relationship with his father. He tells stories of Herschel’s break from societal norms in the ‘70s, his drug use, his ever-changing homes, and his quest to be a published author. Ultimately, Herschel is forced to flee the US and live a somewhat transient life in the Caribbean, moving whenever his past starts to catch up to him.
Now Michael, Anais, and Toby have come to Statia to sort out Herschel’s affairs, hold his funeral, and gain some sort of closure. Michael is left to sort through his father’s unsavory digital footprint and jump through hoops to bury the body. The limited services on the island mean that the most minor details are left to Michael and his siblings, from finding someone to build a casket to washing and dressing the body.
I found this book alternately interesting, disconcerting, and touching. The author works his way through his father’s life and their relationship as he works through his father’s death. Ultimately, I felt this book was about the love we have for some people even if we don’t really like them very much.
In Herschel’s Wake was published in September 2022 and is available now!
Review - Scatterlings by Rešoketšwe Manenzhe
I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Scatterlings was a slow, but interesting read for me. This book is historical fiction set in South Africa in 1927, when the Immorality Act was passed. The story revolves around Abram and Alisa and their daughters, Dido and Emilia. Abram is of Dutch descent and Alisa is Black, the daughter of former slaves in the Caribbean who was raised by a white couple in England.
Obviously, the Immorality Act complicates Abram and Alisa’s lives. As Abram considers leaving the country with his family, Alisa commits a terrible act, doing something that she thinks will be best for her children.
This story is built around several different points of view. A large portion of the book is excerpts of Alisa’s journal, and that is how the reader learns her backstory. We see her struggles with mental illness and with feelings of displacement. And we see how her actions affect the lives of her husband and daughters.
The characters in this story are complex and deeply wrought.
I appreciate how the author gives the reader intricate people to drive the story forward.
The setting is also very well done. This book provides a very detailed sense of place, and the reader falls in love with South Africa along with the characters.
Ultimately I felt this novel was about finding belonging and coming home. Each character in the book deals with displacement in their own ways, and I love how the author weaved different cultural beliefs together to show how these characters find their own homes (physical and metaphorical).
Scatterlings came out on December 13. Check it out and let me know what you think of it!
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Review - Landslide by Susan Conley
I received a free review copy from the publisher (Knopf). All opinions are my own.
Susan Conley’s Landslide is a story of a family and their struggles to weather the aftermath of trauma. The narrator is Jill, wife to Kit and mother to “the wolves”—teenagers Charlie and Sam. Kit is a fisherman in Maine who is seriously injured while away on a fishing trip. While he is hospitalized in Canada, Jill tries to navigate life with her boys.
Charlie is the responsible and mature one, often acting like a parent to Sam, who is only a year younger, but seems much younger. Sam is the troubled one, still reeling from a tragedy years earlier that left him unmoored and unstable.
This is a story of trauma and recovery, of strength and vulnerability, and of a family working to navigate these things under difficult circumstances. And this is a story about mental health and how past traumas have a way of resurfacing throughout our lives.
I enjoyed this book’s complex relationships. It feels real—raw and frustrating as Jill deals with Sam’s moods, Kit’s absence, and Charlie’s growing independence.
Jill struggles to know where she’s needed, and if she’s needed.
The setting is a big part of the story; the rough seas, the dreary rain, and the cramped houses all reflecting the turmoil of the family.
Though these struggles and turmoil are not all resolved by the end of the book, it ends on a hopeful note. We can see glimpses of a better future for this family, and those glimpses are what make this book great. Just like life, this story is not tied up into a neat little package. We don’t know if Jill and her family will live happily ever after, but we can see it’s possible.
Landslide was originally published in 2021, and the paperback was released in September 2022. It’s available now!
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Review - The Six-Minute Memoir by Mary Helen Stefaniak
I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
The Six-Minute Memoir: Fifty-Five Short Essays on Life was a fun read. It’s a series of short memoirs that can be read in 6 minutes or less. This is a great book to read when you’re on the go because it’s readable in little snippets.
I’m very interested in memoir as a genre, and I think Stefaniak’s concept of the six-minute memoir could be a great way to start writing my own. She even provides prompts at the end of the book to help writers get started! Even if you’re not looking to publish memoirs, a six-minute memoir is a reasonable goal for a person who wants to write their personal history and doesn’t know where to start.
I enjoyed reading Stefaniak’s observations on the people and situations around her, as well as her descriptions of place. She does a great job with setting in each of these memoirs. She also makes great connections between seemingly disparate ideas. She is alternately funny and heartfelt, and always interesting.
The Six-Minute Memoir is new this week!
I heartily recommend it for fans of the genre and for others looking for inspiration on writing about their own lives.
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Review - Bernice Runs Away by Talya Tate Boerner
I received a free advanced copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I found myself in the mood for a quick, light read, and the cover of Bernice Runs Away made me think it would fit the bill. I was in for a surprise!
I was drawn to this book because I have often threatened to run away to Bermuda, mostly because I tend to get painfully bored when I don’t feel like I have productive things to do. Also because I have four children, and sometimes that is a lot.
Bernice Runs Away really took me by surprise. Bernice is 81 years old, a widow, the mother of one living child, and the grandmother of one adult granddaughter. She lives alone. She’s starting to forget things.
Her daughter wants her to move to Atlanta to live in her new carriage house, but Bernice has other ideas. Thanks to a gifted copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, Bernice starts to realize that she needs to do what sparks joy in her life. So, she resolves to run away.
Ultimately, she returns to a favorite vacation spot from her youth, where she first fell in love, where she has many happy memories with her parents and her husband and kids. She trusts only one close friend with her plan, and she goes.
The book details her escape from the humdrum of her life and how it changes her and her family. Ultimately, Bernice finds herself at Lake Norfolk.
I ended up loving this book! It wasn’t as light and quick as I expected going in, but it was heartfelt and real. It was honest and redemptive.
Bernice Runs Away comes out tomorrow (October 1, 2022)!
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Review - Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer
I received a free advanced copy through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Less Is Lost is the sequel to Greer’s book Less, which came out in 2017. I read Less last year and enjoyed it enough that when I saw a follow-up, I snatched it up!
Our protagonist, Arthur Less, is awkward, quirky, and unsure of himself. He is a moderately successful writer who is regularly mistaken for another author with the same name. In the first book, Arthur is facing both his 50th birthday and the marriage of his ex-partner Freddy, so he decides to fill his calendar with all the invitations he would have otherwise rejected. He leaves on a whirlwind trip around the world—all to avoid facing his problems.
The second book presents Arthur with different, but familiar, problems and he finds himself on a road trip across the US in an old conversion van. Arthur travels to try to raise money to save the home he shares with his partner, and along the way, he faces heartbreak and grief as well as hilarious misunderstandings, ridiculous situations, and his own demons.
I liked Less is Lost even more than the first book! I felt a kinship with Arthur as he sets out to find himself and figure out what he wants in his life, all while dealing with a variety of troubles. This book is about identity, resilience, and choosing to love.
I rated this book at 4 stars!
Less Is Lost is set for release on September 20, 2022.