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The Mortifications

Book Review of The Mortifications, by Derek Palacio

I received a copy of The Mortifications, by Derek Palacio from Blogging for Books.

Description from Goodreads:
In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal Encarnación—father, husband, political insurgent—refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with fellow Cuban immigrants in Miami’s familiar heat, Soledad pushes further north into the stark, wintry landscape of Hartford, Connecticut. There, in the long shadow of their estranged patriarch, now just a distant memory, the exiled mother and her children begin a process of growth and transformation.

Each struggles and flourishes in their own way: Isabel, spiritually hungry and desperate for higher purpose, finds herself tethered to death and the dying in uncanny ways. Ulises is bookish and awkwardly tall, like his father, whose memory haunts and shapes the boy’s thoughts and desires. Presiding over them both is Soledad. Once consumed by her love for her husband, she begins a tempestuous new relationship with a Dutch tobacco farmer. But just as the Encarnacións begin to cultivate their strange new way of life, Cuba calls them back. Uxbal is alive, and waiting.

Review:
This is what I would classify in my own taxonomy as a Book Club Book. It’s one of those books that takes itself very seriously, is beautifully written and every single person in it is miserable from start to finish. The specifics of their misery might change in the course of the book, counting as growth for a character, but everyone’s still miserable. That is The Mortifications  for you.

Despite how it might sound, I did like the book. More so now that I’ve finished than as I crawled through it. (It’s quite slow, inhabiting the characters mental space more than anything else.) But I can’t say reading it was as enjoyable for me as having digested the story as something to contemplate. I liked Ulises and Williams and I liked their relationship to the women in the novel. But the women are the objects of the book, while Ulises and, to a lesser extent Williams and Uxbal, are the subjects, in my opinion. And I could never quite wrap my head around the decisions and personalities of Soledad and Isabel.

The writing is beautiful, though entirely told, rather than shown—to such an extent that there are no quotation marks in the book. Nothing is said directly, the reader is just told that someone said something. It took a little while to get used to the style. But I did eventually and it was very cleverly done.

If you have a book club or happen to like book club books, this is worth picking up.

Book Review of Ready Set Rogue (A Studies in Scandal #1), by Manda Collins

I won an ARC of Ready Set Rogue, by Manda Collins, through Goodreads:

Description:
When scholarly Miss Ivy Wareham receives word that she’s one of four young ladies who have inherited Lady Celeste Beauchamp’s estate with a magnificent private library, she packs her trunks straightaway. Unfortunately, Lady Celeste’s nephew, the rakish Quill Beauchamp, Marquess of Kerr, is determined to interrupt her studies one way or another…

Bequeathing Beauchamp House to four bluestockings—no matter how lovely they are to look at—is a travesty, and Quill simply won’t have it. But Lady Celeste’s death is not quite as straightforward as it first seemed…and if Quill hopes to solve the mystery behind her demise, he’ll need Ivy’s help. Along the way, he is surprised to learn that bookish Ivy stirs a passion and longing that he has never known. This rogue believes he’s finally met his match—but can Quill convince clever, skeptical Ivy that his love is no fiction?

Review:
I’d give this a 2.5-3 stars if I was using stars, here on the blog. I very much appreciated that Ivy was self sufficient and frequently acted with a lot of agency. I liked that there was a character likely meant to be on the autism spectrum, a severe introvert and a single mother who had overcome her own past trauma.

However, I felt the plot was a weak one. It’s basically insta-lust that bloomed into love out of nowhere and the mystery was just an excuse to throw the characters together. This impression solidified when the villain announced themself before the characters identified them and told their whole plan, start to finish, with no prompting. Such that the characters didn’t really have to solve the mystery in the end. I also felt cheated that after all the build up, we never saw the end result of the romance. That was all off page.

My main complaint however was that Quill, the hero, notably WAS NOT A ROGUE. If I pick up a book called Ready Set Rogue, I expect a rogue. Quill is a single man in a historical romance novel, and I suppose the term rogue is morphing to mean just that, but I still consider a rogue a ‘dishonest or unprincipled man,’ a ‘knavish person’ a ‘scoundrel.’ Quill is polite, principled, loyal and not even a player. He’s a gentleman in every way—politically, socially and behaviorally—NOT A ROGUE. This annoyed me to no end.

I was reading an ARC and there were some pretty significant discrepancies in the time line and contradictions in event, but I have every faith that these will be cleaned up before the book’s final print run. That the repetitive phrasing, over-use of ‘bluestocking,’ and anachronistic language will be isn’t as guaranteed, but it was readable even as an ARC.

As an aside, I don’t think the cover fits the tone of the book or the description of Ivy (who was curvy with glasses), but that’s just my opinion. I’m not a huge lover of historical romances, so there’s a chance someone who is will overlook those things that so annoyed me. All in all, I found it to be an OK read, not bad but not very good either.


What I’m drinking: organic Irish Breakfast tea form the Traveling Tea Shop.

open season

Book Review of Open Season (Joe Pickett #1), by C. J. Box

Open SeasonI won a copy of Open Season, by C. J. Box through Goodreads. You guys, I’ve been so lucky in the winning department lately!

Description:
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden–especially one like Joe who won’t take bribes or look the other way–is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. There had to be a reason that the outfitter, with whom he’s had run-ins before, chose his backyard, his woodpile to die in. Even after the “outfitter murders,” as they have been dubbed by the local press after the discovery of the two more bodies, are solved, Joe continues to investigate, uneasy with the easy explanation offered by the local police.As Joe digs deeper into the murders, he soon discovers that the outfitter brought more than death to his backdoor: he brought Joe an endangered species, thought to be extinct, which is now living in his woodpile. But if word of the existence of this endangered species gets out, it will destroy any chance of InterWest, a multi-national natural gas company, building an oil pipeline that would bring the company billions of dollars across Wyoming, through the mountains and forests of Twelve Sleep. The closer Joe comes to the truth behind the outfitter murders, the endangered species and InterWest, the closer he comes to losing everything he holds dear.

Review:
This is by no means a perfect book. There are a few helpful coincidences and I thought Box’s use of male philandering and suggestions of sexual predation to emphasize who is good and who is bad was clumsy to say the least. It wouldn’t pass the bechdel test unless you count the children, and the seven-year-old is maybe just a little too smart to be realistic. But I simply enjoyed Joe Pickett and his family.

This is not a new book, first published in 2001. And maybe 15 years ago the alpha male trope wasn’t as popular as it is now, but it’s so refreshing to encounter a male main character, who has a fairly über manly job but isn’t an alpha jerk. Joe considers his family his anchor. He adores his wife and kids. He cooks pancakes in his bathrobe and isn’t bothered that his quite, considered manner makes him come across as slow at times. He’s the guy that always does the right thing, even when it’s hard and everyone around him is telling him not to bother. I just really liked him.

I also thought, with #NoDAPL (the protests against the building of an oil pipeline under the Missouri River) in the media, the plot here was quite timely. The writing was lovely and I think it prompted some interesting discussion on The Endangered Species Act.

For those who pick up this new edition, read the introduction after the book. Box discusses how he chose certain aspects of the plot and it provides enough clues that it kind of gave away some things for me. If in no other way, by telling me what was important enough to pay attention to, instead of it coming to light in the course of the narrative.

All in all, however, a win for me.


What I’m drinking: Decaf coffee with a shot of whiskey in it. What? It was nine at night, I can’t be drinking caffeine that late anymore. It didn’t used to keep me up, but it sure does not. And the whiskey? It was not long after the presidential elections. I needed that shot!