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The Whipping Club

Book Review of The Whipping Club, by Deborah Henry

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The whipping clubI won a copy of The Whipping Boy, by Deborah Henry.

Description from Goodreads:
The Whipping Club explores the sacrificial secrets we keep to protect our loved ones and the impact that uncovered secrets have on marriage, family and society. Both a wrenching family drama and a harrowing suspense story, it chronicles an interfaith couple’s attempt in 1960’s Ireland to save their son from corrupt institutions.

Review:
I won a copy of this book a long time ago, but put off reading it because it looked like it was going to be so heavy. It turned out not to be what I thought, but I’m not sure it was better. This is a hard on to review objectively because I just so strongly disliked it. Everything in this book is grim, even the theoretically happy(ish) ending. It’s all people feeling miserable and being miserable to each-other, especially those in position of authority, and all of that misery is offloaded onto the shoulders of a blameless 11-year-old boy. Even the kind characters are often complacent in horrendous abuses. I felt bad when I finished this book and I do not enjoy that experience.

I can say that I had trouble with the points of view. It stared centered solely on Marian and remained so long enough that I settled into the single POV, but then another one popped up and then another and another until we had an omniscient narrator. But it felt willy-nilly. I also sometimes had trouble telling what was meant to be current and what was memory or flashback.

And honestly, I just didn’t particularly like any of the characters. I appreciated that Marian was educated and taught by her father to think for herself and be proud of her differences, something you don’t see in a lot of mid-60s female characters, but I didn’t relate to her. The only ones I came close to caring about were Adrian and Peter and they were brutalized. Peter especially, I felt he was little more than Henry’s whipping boy, like she wanted this horrible thing to happen but didn’t want to irrevocably contaminate her sympathetic character.

Then, it finished with this rousing declaration to protect the innocent and fight the good fight with a strength of will I didn’t sense in any of the characters up that point. In the end, those who actually enjoy depressing book club books this may enjoy this. But it wasn’t a winner for me.

The Golden City

Book Review of The Golden City, by J. Kathleen Cheney

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A note before I get to this review: Most summers my in-laws come for an extended visit to play with the kiddos. That includes this year. I currently have house guests. They will be here for six weeks. As you can imagine, trips to the zoo, dinners, socializing and basically having a grand old time is cutting into my reading time. So, for the next month and a half you can expect reviews to appear less frequently and probably in spurts. It will pick up again, I promise.

The Golden CityI won a paperback copy of The Golden City, by J. Kathleen Cheney from a Goodreads giveaway.

Description from Goodreads:
For two years, Oriana Paredes has been a spy among the social elite of the Golden City, reporting back to her people, the sereia, sea folk banned from the city’s shores….

When her employer and only confidante decides to elope, Oriana agrees to accompany her to Paris. But before they can depart, the two women are abducted and left to drown. Trapped beneath the waves, Oriana survives because of her heritage, but she is forced to watch her only friend die.

Vowing vengeance, Oriana crosses paths with Duilio Ferreira—a police consultant who has been investigating the disappearance of a string of servants from the city’s wealthiest homes. Duilio also has a secret: He is a seer and his gifts have led him to Oriana.

Bound by their secrets, not trusting each other completely yet having no choice but to work together, Oriana and Duilio must expose a twisted plot of magic so dark that it could cause the very fabric of history to come undone….

Review:
I’m pretty ‘meh’ about The Golden City. I liked the writing. The editing was fine. Finding it set in Portugal was a change from the regular US/UK based fiction one normally finds (though I’ve seen others comment it wasn’t accurate, I don’t know one way or another) and Selkie, Otterfolk and Seria were outside the norm magical creatures.

I even liked Oriana and Duilio. But I found them dull. Really, they seemed to exist in parallel plots that they then occasionally talked about. And they were so bound by social convention that there seemed to be no passion in them at all. And Oriana has to be the worst spy in history.

The mystery seemed shaky. Almost 50 people disappear and no one notices? I mean sure, employers might be oblivious, but did none of these people have families or friends that might report them missing? The great magic that was supposed to happen seemed questionable at best, though even the book admits that. And it all seemed to fall apart for no real reason at all. Oriana was still walking around as if no one was after her, and it didn’t seem anyone was despite claims to the contrary. Sure, Duilio dodged assassination attempts, but it’s Oriana that’s supposedto be in danger, but I never once felt that.

And I was distinctly dissatisfied with the ending. It’s not a solid HEA, which I don’t always have to have, but it felt like something had been left incomplete. In fact, what it felt very much like was an obvious tie-in for a sequel, which irks me.

All in all, I would call this OK, not great but not wholly bad either. I’d read a sequel if I came across it for free or could borrow it. But I doubt I’d spend money on it.

The Prince’s Boy

Book Review of The Prince’s Boy, by Paul Bailey

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The Prince's BoyI won an ARC of Paul Bailey‘s novel, The Prince’s Boy from Goodreads.

Description:
In May 1927, nineteen-year-old Dinu Grigorescu, a skinny boy with literary ambitions, is newly arrived in Paris. He has been sent from Bucharest, the city of his childhood, by his wealthy father to embark upon a bohemian adventure and relish the unique pleasures of Parisian life. 

An innocent in a new city, still grieving the sudden loss of his beloved mother Elena seven years earlier, Dinu is encouraged to enjoy la vie de Bohème by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d’Alsace, a notorious establishment rumoured to offer the men of Paris, married or otherwise, who enjoy something different, everything they crave. It is here that he meets Razvan, a fellow Romanian, the adopted child of a man of refinement – a prince’s boy – whose stories of Proust and other artists entrance Dinu, and who will become the young man’s teacher in the ways of the world. 

At a distance of forty years, and written in London, his refuge from the horrors of Europe’s early twentieth-century history, Dinu’s memoir of his brief spell in Paris is one of exploration and rediscovery. The love that blossomed that sunlit day in such inauspicious and unromantic surroundings would transcend lust, separation, despair and even death to endure a lifetime.

Review:
In some ways this was a wonderful book, in others it was pompous—trying far too hard to be what it is. In the wonderful column are a host of colourful characters, a strong, abiding love and some great writing.

However, I struggled to really get into the narrative. I found the dialogue almost unbearably stiff. It was purposefully so, for sure, since the characters are mostly of the upper-crust and thus constrained by the dictates and decorum of polite society. But I still found it unnatural to read.

The whole thing felt very much like a poorly done costume drama, set in the mid twenties. It tries so hard to be Paris in the 20s that it just comes off as an archetype of that time and place, rather than a believable story set there. Everyone is fashionably morose, maudlin and mawkish, voguishly liberated, libatious, and lascivious (or not), etc. Alternatively, perhaps it was striving to mimic the gravitas of the literary greats Dinu is so found of reading. But, again, it just felt forced.

I did appreciate that, while there are small joys here, this is an incredibly sad story and Bailey has allowed his characters the freedom to wallow in it. He never gives in to the popular pressure to provide everyone a sacrosanct happy ending. I also found something immensely gratifying in considering how The Prince’s gift to his boy was also so very cruel, though Razvan could never regret receiving it. It’s a testament to the duplicity of human nature, for sure.

I think that there is a lot to recommend this book to the right reader. I just don’t know if I was that reader.