36. Book Review: Lucky Us (2014)

Lucky Us: A Novel by Amy Bloom

Synopsis

“My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” 

 So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. 

 Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. 

 With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.

Review

If the book was anything like the synopsis this would have been a fabulous book.  The characters were hardly developed, the storyline was often too quick and random and the book left me wanting for more in many ways. This was our recent book club selection.  I chose it after hearing the author on NPR and having my interest piqued, but the book fell short in so many ways that I can't really give it a good review.  

Other books you may like…

Rules of Civility: A Novel

A Hundred Summers

28. Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See (2014)

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr

Synopsis

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. 

 In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Review

Wow! This book was a stunningly gorgeous read and an up-all-night-page-turner.  I highly highly recommend this book.  The characters and scenes are brilliantly rendered - I felt like the characters were old friends and the settings of the book were my childhood homes.  I could so vividly see each and every character and each and every scene.  This book was such a delight to read.  The short (often very very short) chapters made for an addicting read as I continually found myself saying "just one more chapter" and would end up reading another 100 pages.  This is one of those books that I waited all day to finally sit down and read and now that it's over I'm a little sad, but I will never forget it.  

While the book takes place during World War II I wouldn't categorize it as just another WWII book (while I do love reading that genre, if it even is a genre, it can get old after a while) in that the characters are so richly portrayed that the war takes a back seat to the story. Definitely read this book!

Other books you may like…

Suite Française

The Book Thief

17. Book Review: The Wives of Los Alamos (2014)

The Wives of Los Alamos: A Novel by Tarashea Nesbit

Synopsis 

They arrived in New Mexico ready for adventure, or at least resigned to it. But hope quickly turned to hardship as they were forced to adapt to a rugged military town where everything was a secret—including what their husbands were doing at the lab. 

Though they were strangers, they joined together—adapting to a landscape as fierce as it was absorbing, full of the banalities of everyday life and the drama of scientific discovery. While the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud or in letters, and by the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind. 

 The Wives of Los Alamos is a testament to a remarkable group of real-life women and an exploration of a crucial, largely unconsidered aspect of one of the most monumental research projects in modern history.

Review

I first heard about this book from the Books on the Nightstand podcast (have you ever listened? I'm a huge fan!) and I was excited to check it out, so when I randomly found it at the library recently I was thrilled.  The book is written in the first person plural (as in "we" or "us") and I was hoping that I would get used to it as I read it, but I just couldn't relate to it. The way it was written it seemed to tell all the story and none of the story at the first time.  And while I am sure that a lot of work went into this book, the tense of first person plural made it seem really shallow. HOWEVER (and this is a big however) the book was quite intriguing.  I think this is a book that will really stick with me as the imagery was fantastic and the history of the Manhattan Project and the women that picked up their lives to follow their husbands who were working on it is a riveting subject.  In addition this book was a super quick and easy read.  It would be a great palette cleanser after perhaps a tough or lengthy book.

Other books you may like…

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Land Girls