Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus More


Oct 10

14

Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on October 14, 2010
Posted in Books Read in 2010  | 18 Comments

After Noah’s father, Olaf phones him with a plea to come help him, Noah tells his wife Natalie that he has to go. Since Noah hasn’t seen Olaf since his wedding, many years ago and is estranged from his father, Natalie isn’t supportive at first. After all, she is just about to ovulate and the wind for trying to become pregnant is narrowing.

Noah and Natalie live in Boston but Noah does make the trip to his father’s home at Misquah, Minnesota, on Lake Superior. As soon as he arrives and sees his father, he knows he did the right thing. Noah want to take Olaf to the hospital to see a doctor but Olaf refuses. It doesn’t take a doctor to see that something is wrong with Olaf.
Since Olaf doesn’t have a phone, Noah drives into town to phone his sister , Solveig. She said that she would make it there as soon as she can. He also phones Natalie. Just as she was about to hang up, she told Noah that she is coming out to his father’s.
Mean while, back at Olaf’s house, Noah gets reacquainted with his father. They talk about his mother and why Olaf didn’t rush back from a shipping job to see her before she died. Noah was just a child at the time and always resented Olaf for that. Then Olaf confided in Noah as to what really happened back in 1967, on the Ragnarøk. The ship that Olaf worked on. Olaf was one of the three men who survived the sinking.
“the crew of the ill-fated superior steel ship ss Ragnarøk, march 1967.”
Olaf still carried guilt all these years later for surviving. It’s the reason he drank all those years ago, though he did quit drinking a few years ago.
Noah and Olaf tried to make up for lost time with the short time they have together.
Safe From the Sea grabbed me from the start and will stick with me. It is a finely crafted character driven saga. Sure there have been stories done about father and son relationships before, but not like this. Peter Geye captures the relationship as well as the beautiful Lake Superior landscape with pitch perfect ease. In my opinion, it is a must read!
5/5
Thanks to Net Galley and Unbridled Books for this eBook. It is also available in print.
I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota and have invited Peter Geye to So Many Precious Books for a guest post, to tell us more about Minnesota and the Great Lakes. Please join us on October 15th.
If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link in the comments.
Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Oct 10

12

Ape House by Sara Gruen

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on October 12, 2010
Posted in 23rd Writers Festival • Animals • Books Read in 2010  | 6 Comments

Back in 2008 I wrote a five star review for Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I could hardly wait until she wrote her next novel. The wait is now over, Ape House was released in September. 

Sara Gruen will be appearing as a special event of the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, at 7:30 PM on November 4th.  Look for my post, covering the event, in November.

Ape House is really has three main intersecting story lines:
Isabel Duncan is a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab. Her “family” are the bonobos that she works with. She also has some major boyfriend trouble. There’s the story of John Thigpen, a married reporter who interviews Isabel and the apes. His career is threatened and his marriage is in jeopardy. Then of course, there are the bonobos themselves, Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Malkena. They are the center of the story and communicate with Isabel with American Sign Language.
An explosion happens at the lab and the bonobous escape, while Isabel is wounded and rushed to the hospital. All of a sudden a reality television show comes on the air featuring the bonobous. Isabel is determined to recover from her injuries and be united with her “family”.
I found Ape House to be a fun and engaging read. It seems a bit more like “main stream” fiction than Water for Elephants but still has literary merit. I usually like quirky characters however, Nathan and Cecelia were a bit over the top for me and I really wanted interested in John’s marital issues and Isabel’s boyfriend issues.
The best part of the book was about the bonobous themselves. Gruen’s research seems to be bang on and she captured my heart for the wonderful creatures that have so much in common with us, humans. I think the story would have been better if Guren would have focused more on the bonobous and less on the John and Isabel’s personal issues.
3.5
Thanks so much to Julie Forrest of Random House Canada for this book.
Also reviewed by:
If you also reviewed this book, please leave a link in the comments.
To find out about real life bonobous visit the Bonobo Conservation Initiative.
Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.

Sep 10

22

Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass

Posted by Teddyrose@1 on September 22, 2010
Posted in Books Read in 2010 • Music • Nashville  | 9 Comments

After Rick Bass spoke with Maxine Brown of the chart topping Browns of the 50’s and early 60’s, he decided to write a novel about the Browns.

The novel centers on Maxine, the oldest sister of the Browns but also includes her sister Bonnie and Brother, Jim Ed. The Browns grew up in the swamps of Arkansas during the Great Depression. Their father had a saw mill that they helped with when there was enough money to keep it going and when their father was sober enough.
The secret to his lumber’s quality lay in his children’s ability to discern pitch. At the end of almost every lunch break, the Brown children would be summoned to the saw-sharpening table, where the newly honed blade would be placed on an axle with a motor and then spun rapidly, as if being made ready for a cut. The sound they listened for – the perfect blade – held an eerie resonance, the faint sirenlike echo of a high harmonic that was little different from the tempered harmony the Browns were already learning to achieve with their voices.
Maxine sneaks a recording of Jim Ed singing to a radio station, where it aired and the rest was history. Not a real glamorous history mind you. After one of their shows, Fabor Robinson presents them with a contract to make the famous. He did that to a point, but kept almost all of the money they generated. There was nothing they could do about it.
Eventually they got out of the shady contract and teamed up with Chet Atkins, who became their producer and they became quite famous. Their entire family was friends with Elvis Presley and Bonnie and Elvis dated for a time.
If my review sounds a little flat, that is because I found the book to me flat. It had a repetitive edge to it that is hard to explain. It read more like a biography then a novel as there was no dialogue to speak of. With only 250 pages, there were times I felt like giving up on the book completely.  This could have been a real true tribute to the Browns.
I have heard so many good things about Rick Bass and there were some pearls in his writing, just not enough to hold this reader’s interest.
2.5/5
Thanks to Lissa Renner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this book.
Have you reviewed this book? Please leave a link to your review in the comments.

Copyright 2007-2010: All the posts within this blog were originally posted by Teddy Rose and should not be reproduced without express written permission.

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