Ann N. Kelsall

Confronting the Unimaginable

Revisado: 07-07-23

Long before American involvement in the war in Vietnam, a German friend of mine confided in an American neighbor, telling her that shorly before the war ended in Europe, she was raped by an American soldier. The listener insisted she must be wrong. "Our Boys Would Never Do a Thing Like That!

I wonder how much has changed. Will the the people who need this book actually read it?

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Unfiltered Truth

Revisado: 11-08-22

Reviews of Demon Copperhead invariably mention that the author is influenced by Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. I wish I hadn't known that. Occasionally I lost track of the brilliance of this novel in a pointless search for the likes of Uriah Heep. The novel stands on its own without reference to any other.

Barbara Kingsolver unfolds a story that can be hard to listen to. Sometimes too painful to bear. Demon and his compatriots experience life-shattering damage of the kind that modern American society often ignores. Domestic abuse, breakdown of families, a shamelessly exploitive foster care system, lack of access to health care, an ineffective educational system, and an overabundance of opiates.

The tale does not lack for good and influential people. With their prodding, Demon does eventually find a way to forgive himself for his own transgressions and recognize his own best self.

Is Demon Copperhead “The hero of his own life”? Probably not. But he does survive. By his own standards, that’s doing well.

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Wonderful critters-the people not s much

Revisado: 10-31-22

I must count myself among those who found Delia Owens' novel frustrating in general and most of its characters totally implausible.

Usually, I enjoy Cassandra Campbell's narration, but in this case, her rendering just doesn’t work for me. The main character never grows up. She peeps and whispers well after her voice should have shown SOME maturity. I hear very little variation in any of the local dialects. The white men all sound the same and the people of color are stereotypical black folk.

While descriptions of vegitation and wildlife are often lovely, references to geography are confusing. As others have pointed out, Ashville lies far to the west of the coastal region and is not a place one can pop off to for supplies.

The main character, Kiya, who is described as having been abandoned by EVERYBODY and living alone for a decade without schooling, learns to read scientific tomes after learning little more than the alphabet.. She teaches herself to paint scientifically accurate water colors of botanical specimens without any training and with limited supplies. She writes and publishes a series of academic volumes related to material about which she cannot have direct knowledge because they grow far beyond her particular swamp.

The most memorable character for me, is Sunday Justice, the cat. Him, I believe.

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Violence, Avarice, and Product Placement

Revisado: 07-23-22

Readers will not be surprised to learn that the iconic Gabriel Allon still punches above his weight, successfully dodges assassins, and hurls weighty objects with one hand disabled. One has to suspend one’s incredulity.

This convoluted tale of venality among the rich and vulgar threads its way through elegant hotels, restaurants, and palatial seaside villas in Europe and the United States, quite a bit of it in New York City and Long Island. The story is quirky enough and the characters vivid enough to kept me listening.

But I did NOT need to be told the brand of every handbag and suitcase or even the workout clothes of every woman who enters and departs the scene. Nor was I much concerned about what everybody had for lunch, what they drank, or the nature of their electronic gadgets.

I admit that some bits were wonderfully funny-- like the woman in the grotesquely complicated shower, frantically pushing buttons trying to control the water.

And Daniel Silva gets points from me for spending so much descriptive energy on the eastern end of Long Island and never once labeling it “The Hamptons.”

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StoriesThat Need Telling

Revisado: 07-06-22

In the Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd explores more than one kind of slavery in 19th century Charleston, South Carolina. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an enslaved black woman and her owner Sarah Grimke depend on one another for protection , support, and eventually, friendship. For more than three decades, both women defy the rules set out for them and in the painful process endure humiliation, loss, and eventual empowerment.

Sarah and her sister Angelina are historical figures who contributed much to the Abolitionist and Women’s Rights movements. Hetty is fictional, but the realities of her status within the “Peculiar Institution” of slavery is well documented.

The shameful role of slavery in the context of United States history is still dismissed by those who still argue that slavery “wasn't really so bad” and “slaves were well treated for the most part.” It is time to accept the realities of who we are and who made us.

Stories like The Invention of Wings should have as wide an audience as possible.

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Much Ado About Dumb Luck

Revisado: 06-28-22

Children are orphaned every day. They survive drought, pandemic and famine. They survive not as individuals, but as statistics.

But one who survives in a statistically remarkable way, the sole survivor of a major plane crash, for instance, will be seen as a miracle. The media will hyperventilate, the public will call him a hero and make demands upon him that no child should have to bear. Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano, posits an exquisitely complex theory about how one such an event might play out. It’s a good tale and I enjoyed listening to it. But I found all the intricate background details tedious at times.

Good, but not one of my all time favorites.

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A Fable of Love, Loss, and Redemption

Revisado: 06-25-22

Ove is a mythic figure. He is a man of many strengths but broken by great loss. He is camouflaged by a cloud of anger that nevertheless fails to conceal his goodness. With the help of a band of quirky and sometimes clueless neighbors, he discovers that he is loved. In spite of himself, he finds peace.

Narrator J.K. Simmons reads with the cadence of stories told around a campfire. He grabs hold of the laugh-out-loud funny bits, of which there are many.

I will be listening to this tale many times more than once.

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Guaranteed soporific.

Revisado: 06-22-22

The skill of narrator Saskia Maarleveld makes this bit of fluff worth folowing to its conclusion.

There must be hundreds of books written about London during the time of the Blitz. One has to search hard to find anything especially compelling in this nice little story about the heroine and her diligent rescue of a badly-run bookshop. The writing is mundane except for a few compelling accounts of the air raids themselves and the horror left behind.

The story is thin and leaves so many questions unexplored. Why, for instance, is Grace Bennett's aunt so determined to have her work in the dingy bookshop in the first place? The shop owner refers to her as that "meddlesome woman". Something has been going on there. I wonder what.

The Brits are tough, and unpleasant people are capable of change.
Books are salve for the soul.
But we already knew that.

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I loved every 32 hours of it!

Revisado: 05-09-22

As soon as I finished, I was tempted to start over again.

Of course,Trollope's naves and villians as well as his often hapless women are products of Victorian convention. But many of them would be comfortable in our contemporary world. I can see several of them at home in the United States Congress. Or on the Metro.

Some of them I would like to invite over for a beer and a barbeque.

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Huh? Really?

Revisado: 05-09-22

So much of this story just does not make sense to me. For instance, much is made of "child abuse". But one of the main characters is a young girl, first described as having a "club foot" and later as suffering from hip displasia, who never appears to receive any medical attention from her adoptive family. Her disability continues throughout her life. Really?

Then there is the charming German translator who appears out of nowhere to lend invaluable help to Kendra, the overnight literary sensation, simply because he became enchanted with her girlish first novel. One has to suspend disbelief.

The narrator, Mia Barron, is wasted on this material

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