The End of Your Life Book Club Trailer

The End of Your Life Book Club is our October spotlight at work.  I definitely have to read it!

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

The Shoemaker's Wife
Author:  Adriana Trigiani
Publisher:  Harper Collins
Published: August 2012
Edition: Trade Paperback
Pages: 496

Source:  Many thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for providing a complimentary copy of The Shoemaker's Wife.  Receipt of this novel doesn't influence my opinion nor this review.  The opinion expressed here is my own.

The fateful first meeting of Enza and Ciro takes place amid the haunting majesty of the Italian Alps at the turn of the last century. Still teenagers, they are separated when Ciro is banished from his village and sent to hide in New York’s Little Italy, apprenticed to a shoemaker, leaving a bereft Enza behind. But when her own family faces disaster, she, too, is forced to emigrate to America. Though destiny will reunite the star-crossed lovers, it will, just as abruptly, separate them once again—sending Ciro off to serve in World War I, while Enza is drawn into the glamorous world of the opera . . . and into the life of the international singing sensation Enrico Caruso. Still, Enza and Ciro have been touched by fate—and, ultimately, the power of their love will change their lives forever.

A riveting historical epic of love and family, war and loss, risk and destiny, inspired by the author’s own family history, The Shoemaker’s Wife is the novel Adriana Trigiani was born to write.

My Review:

The Shoemaker's Wife is based upon the author's family and their story of immigration to the United States.  Adriana Trigiani's story begins in the mountains of Italy, a place of serene beauty and wonderful fragrances.  In a small village a young child is buried, Enza's sister, and a young boy employed to dig the grave, finds himself consoling Enza.  There is something between the two of them and their meeting ends in a kiss.

Years later, Enza remembers that kiss and though she and Ciro have met again, the timing is never right and she pines for her unrequited love.  Ciro, on the other hand, is blind to the effect he has on Enza and it is not until years later, when he returns from war, that he realizes Enza is the love of his life.  Call it good timing or coincidence, but he just happens upon the chapel immediately before Enza is about to wed another.  Dressed in his army uniform, dirty and underweight, he professes his love to Enza.  Finally!

"Enza knew that if she married Vito, she would lose her Italy forever. Even if she could have braved the ocean, Vito would hope to show her the island of Capri......not the mountains, lakes and rivers of the north.  She was from the land of the mandolin, the exquisite violins of La Scala were not hers to claim.

If Enza was going to create a new life, she had to build it with conviction, on her own truthful terms, with a man who could take her home again, even if it meant a new home of their own invention and not the mountain.  Ciro had her heart, he was her portion of the mountain.

....if she took Ciro on, she was in for a struggle compared to her life with Vito, but the love of all loves was worth it.  (page 314)

They marry shortly thereafter and make a life together in Minnesota where Ciro works as a shoemaker and Enza takes in sewing.  It is not the glamorous life Enza was becoming accustomed to in New York where she and her best friend Laura sewed costumes for the Metropolitan Opera.  It is not always easy but they have each other.  Love abides with them and the birth of their son Antonio is a great blessing.

As I was near the end, the tears running freely, I felt that yes, this is what a good writer does.  She/he draws out the intensity of emotions in the reader.  The characters are so well developed that it's as if you were there in person, witnessing their lives.

There is a lot of sorrow in The Shoemaker's Wife, a lifetime of separation from loved ones, but there is joy and though the ending of the book is not what the reader would expect, it still resonates with the heart.

Adriana Trigiani is an award-winning playwright, television writer, and documentary filmmaker. The author of the Big Stone Gap series; Very Valentine; Brava, Valentine; Lucia, Lucia; The Queen of the Big Time; and Rococo, she has also written the bestselling memoir Don’t Sing at the Table as well as the young adult novels Viola in Reel Life and Viola in the Spotlight. Her books have been published in thirty-six countries, and she has written and will direct the big-screen version of her first novel, Big Stone Gap. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Adriana's website: www.adrianatrigiani.com, like her on Facebook, follow her Twitter account.

You Can't Wait for Inspiration to Come!

Casual Vacancy Takes Off in Edmonton!!!!

The big day has finally arrived!!!!

Today is the release for Casual Vacancy, the first adult novel by 

J K Rowling!!!  I can't begin to convey how much I have looked forward to reading it!  

Here's what you will likely see across the country(ies) in the bookstores!!!  These displays were front and centre this morning!

Now that I've obtained a copy, you'll understand 

if I excuse myself for a bit, right?

Chock Full of Chocolate (children's cookbook)

Chock Full of Chocolate

Author:  Elizabeth MacLeod

Publisher: Kids Can Press

Published:  2005

Pages: 40

Edition:  paperback

Part of the "Kids Can Do It" series

As part of a fundraiser our store is running to assist a local school with no library to obtain books for the over 200 students, the staff are baking our hearts out.  Today is the bake sale, one of two to be held over the next two weeks.  I came across Chock Full of Chocolate, a child friendly cookbook, and chose to make the Candy-Covered Pizza as one of my entries for the bake sale.  

All the recipes within Chock Full of Chocolate are easy to make and are recommended for children ages 8 and up with the assistance of a responsible adult.  This recipe turned out very well however where the recipe stated to work the dough into a circle with your hands, I found mine to be too runny to do so, so I spread it on the pizza pan using a spatula.  Other than that, it was an easy to use recipe.  Children would love decorating the pizza with a combination of candies of their choice.  I used Skittles and Smarties and another President's Choice candy (oblong shapes).  If I were to make this again, I definitely would add colour to the icing to make it look more like pizza sauce.  

Other recipes include:

triple chocolate cookies

shakes

s'more gorp

dirt dessert

If you're looking for a user friendly cookbook to enjoy with your child/ren, Chock Full of Chocolate is a good place to start.

Allow Me to Introduce You to Author John Worsley Smith

John Worsley Simpson is a Canadian crime fiction author of four novels, the latest Missing Rebecca is on tour right now with Partners in Crime Tours.  I recently had the opportunity to interview John which for me was fascinating because I once dreamt of being a journalist and author, both of which John has accomplished.  I love mysteries and a good crime novel so I am looking forward to reading Missing Rebecca in the very near future.  In the meantime, won't you join me for a visit with John?  PS  I am in italics, John's answers are in normal type.

• I read your favourite quote is, "If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"  ~ Albert Einstein.  Is your desk cluttered, empty, or an organized state of chaos that only you understand?  What does your answer say about you?

My desk is always cluttered, like my mind.  Both are the product of ADHD.

• Your first novel "Undercut" was a runner-up for best first novel by the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award.  To whom did the award go?  Undercut was published in 2007 but I understand you have two previously published books.  Are they both crime fiction?  (Here John corrected me with the publication date.  Mercury Press lists Undercut as as published in 2007 but that was perhaps the paperback edition, not hardcover).  Note:  Undercut received the Harlequin Prize.

Undercut was published in 1997 and the award for best first novel went to Kathy Reichs for Deja Dead.  Undercut was the first Harry Stark novel.  There have been three subsequent novels:  Counterpoint, Shadowmen and A Debt of Death.

• Do you consider yourself a series writer?  It seems Harry Stark "stars" in most if not all your novels.  Do you foresee Harry in future novels?

The Harry Stark series hit a small wall because my publisher, Mercury Press, in Toronto, went out of business.  I am, however, working on a fifth Stark novel, in which he has taken early retirement from the Toronto Police Service and is working as a private enquiry agent in Britain.

• How did you find your first publisher?  Did you approach an agent first?  Would you mind describing the process in short?  Do you believe your career in journalism gave you an advantage to being published?

I was fortunate in finding a publisher.  I tried to find an agent, with no luck, and one of the ones I approached suggested I try Mercury Press directly, and they liked my book and took it on board.  The "secret" to finding an agent or a publisher is simple:  either you have a track record (and it has to be an impressive one) or you write a terrific pitch.  Expecting a kid who just graduated from university with an English degree to be able to judge what is and what is not a well-written work is expecting far too much.  Their lights go on only when they see certain magic words that suggest the book being offered is almost the same as a previous best-seller.

• How many re-writes do you do on average before your manuscript enters the publication stage?

Novel writing IS rewriting and rewriting.  I couldn't count the number of "rewrites" that go into a novel, because it's a constant process of rewriting: a sentence is reworked several times, words are changed, characters are given new roles and so on.

• I understand you are an editor for Bloomberg News in Toronto.  Over which section are you the editor?

I am one of the night editors for Europe for Bloomberg News.  I'm based in Toronto.

• With whom was your first job as a journalist and what kind of assignments did you receive?  Did you have a favourite "beat"?

My first job as a journalist was with a weekly newspaper, the Perth Courier, in Perth, Ontario.  My favourite beat was court.

• Do you see yourself varying from crime fiction?  If you were to write in another genre, I'm talking novels here, what would it be and why?

I would write children's poetry--examples of which you can find on my website http://www.johnworsleysimpson.ca.  I would also write black humour and young adult/children's literature.

• What is your favourite genre to read?

My favourite genre varies the way all things vary to people with ADHD:  one day I read Madame Bovary in French; the next day, I read Elmore Leonard; the next day, I read about political non-fiction; the next day I read history.

• If you were to compare your writing style to another, whose would it be like?

I would compare myself to Colin Dexter.

• If you could meet one author, alive or deceased, who would it be and why?

I would like to meet Graham Greene and John Mortimer.

• Describe a typical writing day in the life of John Worsley Simpson.

I don't have a typical writing day.  I write in snatches when I find the time.  Actually, I make the time, but it varies.  My latest gig is to write in Starbucks on my one-hour lunch breaks from Bloomberg.

• Have you always had a passion for crime writing?  Please elaborate.  What is your inspiration for crime writing?

I love crime writing because I love stories.  Crime writing is all about telling stories.  I don't have much use for non-linear modern "literature."  When I read literature, with a few exceptions, it's all stuff written before the twentieth century -- Dickens, Flaubert, Thackery, Thomas Hardy:  all story tellers, not self-indulgent, self-important 30-something trendies who haven't lived long enough or hard enough to have anything to say worth reading.

• What is your greatest passion?

My greatest passions are music and golf.  I cook, but it's not a passion.

• What is your favourite movie and/or television series?  I'm curious to know if you watch programs like Criminal Minds, Bones or Law and Order or if you prefer comedies or something "light" to remove yourself from the "crime scene"?

My favourite movie is Chinatown.  I don't watch any commercial television.  I do watch HBO series:  Treme, Boardwalk Empire, the Sopranos, Wire.  I watch PBS (U.K. series): the likes of Frost, Morse, Lewis.  I loved to a fault Rumpole of the Bailey.

• I truly appreciate this opportunity to better know a successful Canadian author.  Is this your first experience with a virtual tour?  What is your feedback on the process so far?

Yes, this is my first experience with a virtual tour.  I'm quite impressed with it.

Thanks again and I do hope my copy of Missing Rebecca shows up so I might have the opportunity to read it as well.  (I moved recently and wonder if it got mixed up in the mail with the move).  John kindly offered to send me another.

Missing Rebecca by John Worsley Simpson

I haven't received a copy of Missing Rebecca as of yet and I am scheduled to review this novel on the 22nd of this month.  Add to this, we just moved, so who knows where it ended up?  At any rate, I don't want to let anyone down, so I am doing a spotlight on this novel.  I very much wanted to read Missing Rebecca as I do love a good mystery/crime fiction novel and am quite disappointed to not have the opportunity before now.  However, there may be an author interview in the works, fingers crossed.  In the meantime, let me introduce you to Missing Rebecca.

Missing Rebecca
Author:  John Worsley Simpson
Published: May 2012
Publisher: Kindle, Create Space
Pages: 217
Genre:  Crime Fiction
Purchase Links:  Amazon B&N

Synopsis: 

John's latest book, his fifth novel, Missing Rebecca, is a story of death and deception. After a whirlwind romance, Liam and Rebecca marry, knowing almost nothing of each other's backgrounds. Only months later, on an afternoon shopping trip to a mall in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Cheektowaga, Rebecca vanishes, seemingly abducted. Or did she make herself disappear? Was the marriage a sham? Was Liam a dupe? This is a novel of high crimes and dark shadows, involving the immensely profitable drug industry in which exclusive access to the market for a medication can mean billions of dollars, and holding on to that exclusivity might lead to lies, deceit, corruption, payoffs, and even murder.

Now you see why I was so excited to read Missing Rebecca!  It smells of secrecy and mystery and is written by a master crime fiction writer.  All essential ingredients for a page turner of a time, if you ask me.  Have you had the opportunity?  If so, how did you enjoy Missing Rebecca?  Please stay tuned for more. 

Psstt.... it's confirmed!!! Exclusive author interview coming September 22!!!

Meet the author:

JOHN WORSLEY SIMPSON is a crime-fiction writer. John was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, emigrated to Canada at the age of four and grew up in Toronto, He has been a reporter and editor in major newspapers and news services in North America, England and Ireland. He is married and lives in Newmarket, Ontario.

Connect with John Worsley Simpson at his website, Facebook and Twitter.





Missing Rebecca is on a virtual book tour with Partners in Crime.  See the full schedule here:  http://www.partnersincrimetours.net/2012/06/missing-rebecca-by-john-worsley-simpson.html

The Potential of The Unfinished Garden

The Unfinished Garden
Author:  Barbara Claypole White
Published: August 2012
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Edition:  Trade Paperback ARC
Pages: 384

Source:  Many thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for providing a complimentary copy of The Unfinished Garden.  Receipt of this novel doesn't influence my opinion nor this review.  The opinion expressed here is my own.

The Unfinished Garden is a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt, set in the forests of North Carolina and the woodland gardens of Southern England.

James Nealy is haunted by irrational fears, inescapable compulsions. A successful software developer, he’s thrown himself into a new goal—to finally conquer the noise in his mind. And he has a plan. He’ll confront his darkest fears and build something beautiful: a garden. When he meets Tilly Silverberg, he knows she holds the key…even if she doesn’t think so.

After her husband’s death, gardening became Tilly’s livelihood and her salvation. Her thriving North Carolina business and her young son, Isaac, are the excuses she needs to hide from the world. So when oddly attractive, incredibly tenacious James speeds into her life, demanding she take him on as a client, her answer is a flat no.

When a family emergency lures Tilly back to England, she’s secretly glad. With Isaac in tow, she retreats to her childhood village, which has always stayed obligingly the same. Until now. Her best friend is keeping secrets; her mother is plotting; her first love is unexpectedly, temptingly available. And then James appears on her doorstep.

Away from home, James and Tilly forge an unlikely bond, tenuous at first but taking root with every day. And as they work to build a garden together, something begins to blossom between them—despite all the reasons against it.

My Review:

Write what you know, they say, and that is what Barbara Claypole White did when she created An Unfinished Garden.  The author put a lot of herself, her loves (gardening), her trials (raising a son with OCD), grief and more into this novel and doing so makes this story feel genuine.  Her obvious months of research are evident in the detail with which she explains OCD, health issues and gardening.  

Starting with the cover:  it attracted my attention with its bright and colourful cover art, with the title in a turquoise flourish of a font. Inside, before the novel begins, one finds two quotes representative of the nature of the novel:

"Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there." ~ Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

"Worry gives a small thing a big shadow." ~ Swedish Proverb

We meet Tilly who owns and operates a wholesale greenhouse in North Carolina, is raising a young son and is a widow trying to live with the guilt she feels over the death of her husband.  One day, while at home with her son, Tilly receives an unexpected visitor, James, who battles many demons of his own and has determined that Tilly, through her gardening expertise, is the one person who can help him to calm the turmoil of his mind.  She must design a garden for him.  But Tilly declines.  No one ever turns him down!

As Tilly and Isaac return to her home town in England to assist her mother through an injury, Tilly discovers her ex-boyfriend from high school has relocated there as well and is newly separated, with two children.  Perhaps their on-again, off-again relationship has a second chance....no make that a fourth chance?  Then James arrives, throwing an enormous curve ball into the mix.  He is determined and relentless in seeking Tilly's assistance in designing a garden for him.  But those aren't his only motives and everyone is blind to that, except, perhaps, the reader.

It's easy to feel involved in their lives as the reader gets to know Tilly and James very well.  I wanted to knock sense into both of them at times, to yell "wake up, don't you see what's going on?" Sebastian, the ex-boyfriend, just didn't do much for me at all. Sure he's handsome, wealthy, a great father and available and they have a history but I kept thinking if it didn't work before, what makes them think it'll work this time?  A relationship built on lust and "safety" can't have much of a future, can it?

Honestly, I ached for James.  I felt his pain and cringed at the thought of someone having to work their way through thought processes like his all the time.  I wanted to take the burden from him.  Obviously, I was rooting for him all along.  Who wouldn't? There's something incredibly sweet and vulnerable about him and yet he is strong and wise and very supportive of Tilly.  

As Tilly succumbs and the two work together in the garden, she teaching James the basics of pruning, weeding and finally planting, more than herbs and flowers grow in the garden.  Tilly and James learn from each other, they find balance (literal and figurative) and support from and for each other.  And I cheered! 

Too soon!  Of course, there's still Sebastian, insecurities, guilt and grief amongst the trials and perhaps it's not so easy as saying, "get over it."  OCD isn't something you just get over, nor is grief and there are other obstacles that are a hindrance, much like the poisonous adder or the nettles.  Still, I had hope.

"An unexpected thrill pounced, a longing for the surprises of spring when tender plants poked through the soil in defiance of hardiness ratings, self-seeded annuals popped up in unexpected niches and perennials died without explanation, leaving gaps for new plants.  Her garden was a place of death, of rebirth, and change, and like her life, would continue to evolve whether James loved her or not." (page 359-360)

The garden is the perfect metaphor for the change, growth, potential and obstacles the characters within An Unfinished Garden encounter.  Ever changing with the seasons, growing, blooming, resting.  All transferable to our lives.

"The English author H.E. Bates said that a finished garden is a dead garden. ...  It'll take a lifetime.  A garden's a work in progress without end." (page 363)  

But then again, so are life and love works in progress.  And as satisfying a thought that is, so is An Unfinished Garden.

Barbara Claypole White grew up in the English village of Turvey with big dreams of becoming a novelist. After a detour through women’s and medieval history at York University, she landed a job promoting London fashion. She was part of the first British Designer Show, measured celebrities in their underwear, and worked for the queen of the international rag trade, Dame Vivienne Westwood.

One day her boss sent her to New York, and she fell in love with an American professor who followed her around JFK Airport. Eighteen months later she was a faculty spouse, freelance writer, and marketing director in Champaign, Illinois, a small Midwest college town. She also started writing her first novel—a love story set against the world of eighties fashion and AIDS.

Five years passed; then Barbara learned she was pregnant, and her husband was offered a distinguished professorship at UNC Chapel Hill. The family moved to the North Carolina forest, and Barbara became a stay-at-home mom and a woodland gardener—factors that would shape her writing voice. She returned to her manuscript, took evening classes in writing at the local arts center, and slammed into another detour: her young son developed obsessive-compulsive disorder.

From that moment, fascination with mental illness framed her life. She ditched her first novel and began writing Dogwood Days, which turned into The Unfinished Garden. She also joined a nonfiction project for parents of children with invisible disabilities and blogs through the highs and lows of OCD at www.easytolovebut.com. (Her son is now an award-winning teen poet.)

Barbara is consistently drawn to the theme that people who need each other find each other, and is hard at work on her next novel…when she’s not gardening.

Connect with Barbara at her website.

Happy Birthday Agatha Christie!

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. 

Agatha Christie

The author of And Then There Were None was born on this day in 1890.

Coming Soon but Secretive.....

I am so excited to read news of another new novel by legal thriller writer John Grisham!!!!  The above image was found on GoodReads and John Grisham's site.  Talk about vague hints!

Cover Image of The Racketeer