First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

For today's First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intro, I'm featuring an intro to a book by an author I want to read more of. Has anyone read this one?

 A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Flannery O'Connor 

(originally published in 1948)

(Intro from - A Good Man is Hard to Find)

 

" THE GRANDMOTHER didn't want to go to Florida.  She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.  Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy.  He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. 'Now look here, Bailey,' she said, 'see here, read this,' and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head.  'Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people.  Just you read it.  I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.  I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did.' "

 What do you think of the into?  Any Flannery O'Connor fans out there?

Mailbox Monday - November 12th

This month's Mailbox Monday is being hosted by Kathy-Bermudaonion

•  Nutcracker; Eta Hoffman - Maurice Sendak (thank you Crown)
• If You Spent a Day with Thoreau on Walden Pond; Robert Burleigh and Wendell Minor (sent by the illustrator)

• The Panther; Nelson DeMille audiobook (thank you Hachette)
• NYPD Red; James Patterson Audiobook (thank you Hachette)
• A Christmas Home; Greg Kincaid (thank you Crown)

The Cure for Grief; Nellie Hermann

 

Title:  The Cure for Grief

Author:  Nellie Hermann

Publication Year: 2008

Publisher: Scribner

Edition: hardcover

Setting: MA and ME

Source: personal collection

Date Completed: November/2012

Rating: 4/5 

Recommend: yes

I introduced this novel on my Tuesday "First Paragraph" segment a little over a week ago, and many of you thought by the intro something bad seemed likely to happen. Here it is again...

"Ruby Bronstein was nine years old the winter she found a gun.  It was a Tuesday in December; she and her family were on vacation in Maine.

That morning, after breakfast, Ruby stood by the window of the closed-in side porch, watching her brothers.  They were far out on the beach, moving across the expanse in front of the house and then stopping; a cluster of dark, stop-and-go bodies like raised, mobile moles on the pure flat of high tide."

What happens is not exactly what I suspected, but that paragraph certainly set the tone for the majority of what follows. 

Ruby is the youngest child of four, and the only girl.  She's smart, acts older than her years and adores her older brothers and wants to be a part of what they do, despite the teasing she often endures.  Her father is strict and quiet, and is a Holocaust survivor.  It isn't until Ruby is a young teen that she begins to understand what her father lived through as the family travels to Prague, and returns to the internment camp where the father was imprisoned.

Some families have more than their share of tragedy, and when one of Ruby's brother's is hospitalized and initially diagnosed with schizophrenia, the family's faith is tested. Ruby is taught early on to keep much of her home life private, but this incident with her brother will be the first of a series of tragedies that she must learn to cope with. Despite this she tries to act like a normal young teen, at least publicly -- she attends camp, experiences the first stirrings of love, but at times her anger at God comes out, when she thinks about just how much the family has been through.

So as I'm sure you've gathered, this is not an uplifting story, but it's well written, and as a reader, I found it engaging and it was easy to feel for Ruby and her family.  I was surprised to read that this was a debut novel and at least in part autobiographical.  The story is a real testament to the power to heal the heart, make peace with the past and go on with life. 

Saturday Snapshot - November 10th - Grandcats

Saturday Snapshot

is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.

Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.

My son and his wife adopted this (3) month old kitty last week. He is the new cat on the block joining, Psycho (below) one cute very senior cat (BELOW)

Psycho joined our family almost (20) years ago. He was only about 5 weeks old when he was found at near a dumpster. He has lived with my son for the last (16) years. Psycho's slowed down a bit, lost weight, and lost his hearing, but he still acts much younger than his age.  After a few days of hissing at the new addition, things are much better and the new (3) month old seems to be good company for the senior citizen while the humans are at work.

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph Tuesday Intros

For today's First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intro, I'm featuring an intro to a new book that gets released today in the US. Has anyone read it yet?

Flight Behavior; Barbara Kingsolver

Harper - Nov 6, 2012

"A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.  Or so it seemed for now, to a woman with flame-colored hair who marched uphill to meet her demise.  Innocence was no part of this.  She knew her own recklessness and marveled, really, at how one hard little flint of thrill could outweigh the pillowy, suffocating aftermath of a long disgrace.  The shame and loss would infect her children too, that was the worst of it, in a town where everyone knew them.. Even the teenage cashiers at the grocery would take an edge with her after this, clicking painted fingernails on the counter while she wrote her check, eyeing the oatmeal and frozen peas of an unhinged family and exchanging looks with the bag boy: She's that one.  How they admired their own steadfast lives.  Right up to the day when hope in all its versions went out of stock, including the crummy discount brands, and the heart had just one instruction left: run.  Like a hunted animal, or a racehorse, winning or losing felt exactly alike at this stage, with the same coursing of blood and shortness of breath.  She smoked too much, that was another mortification to throw in with the others.  But she had cast her lot.  Plenty of people took this way out, looking future damage in the eye and naming it something else.  Now it was her turn.  She could claim the tightness in her chest and call it bliss, rather than the same breathlessness she could be feeling at home right now while toting a heavy laundry basket, behaving like a sensible mother of two."

[I love the intro, how about you?] 

The Round House; Louise Erdrich

 

Title:  The Round House

Author:  Louise Erdrich

Publication Year: 2012

Publisher: Harper

Edition: eGalley

Setting: North Dakota

Source: Edelweiss

Date Completed: October/2012

Rating: 4.5/5 

Recommend: yes

Back on October 16th, I posted the opening paragraph of The Round House. Here it is again:

 
"Small trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.  They were just seedlings with one or two rigid, healthy leaves.  Nevertheless the stalky shoots had managed to squeeze through knife cracks in the decorative brown shingles covering the cement blocks.  They had grown into the unseen wall and it was difficult to pry them loose.  My father wiped his palm across his forehead and damned their toughness.  I was using a rusted old dandelion fork with a splintered handle; he wielded a long, slim iron fireplace poker that was probably doing more harm than good.  As my father prodded away blindly at the places where he sensed  roots might have penetrated, he was surely making convenient holes in the mortar for next year's seedlings."

 Several of you who commented thought the intro was symbolic of something to come -- and after finishing this terrific story, I can say many of you were correct. The intro was ominous indeed, and set the tone for much of the story that followed.

The Round House  takes the reader back to an Indian reservation in North Dakota in1988. Thirteen year-old Joe Coutts lives with his father, a tribal judge and his mother, a records clerk on the Ojibwe reservation, a job which required her to "know everyone's business".  One Sunday afternoon as Joe and his father were pulling weeds from the garden the mother mother, Geraldine heads out to her office to retrieve a high profile file.  When she doesn't return by the time dinner time approaches, father and son become concerned and prepare to go look for her.  They find her stunned, beaten and bleeding and smelling of gasoline, yet sitting in her car in the driveway of their home.

Who attacked her, and why isn't Geraldine willing to talk about her attack?  Why are things so secretive and why isn't Joe told something about the attack at least?  Of course bit by bit information about the attack, where it happened or who might be responsible is slowly shared behind the scenes, but from the perspective of Joe, the thirteen year old narrator, all he sees is his once happy and active mother holed up in her room, spiraling into a deep depression and afraid to even leave her room. "Her eyes were black pits...." Joe feels helpless and is not sure what he can to to make his mother feel safe again.  Joe has an idea and enlists the help of his buddies, Cappy, Zack and Angus in trying to find out who attacked his mother and plotting what they feel would be appropriate revenge.

Although the theme of this novel is a dark one and one might think it would make for a depressing read, that is not the case.  There is so much to hold the readers interest in this story. From the element of mystery with the attack, the adolescent antics of Joe and his friends as they try to find out about the attacker, and the Indian folklore of ghost and ancient myths shared by the elders made this a page turner. The pacing and the way the author took the edge off what could have been too much tension and a depressing story, ended up anything but, in my opinion.  Although I thought the ending was a bit abrupt, I was more than satisfied by this novel, and plan to continue reading more by this author.

Peaches for Father Francis; Joanne Harris

 

Title:  Peaches for Father Francis

Author:  Joanne Harris

Publication Year: 2012

Publisher: Viking

Edition: eGalley

Setting: France

Source: NetGalley

Date Completed: October/2012

Rating: 4/5 

Recommend: yes

Peaches for Father Francis reintroduces readers and movie goers to Vianne Roche the lovable, magical former candy shop owner who charmed so many in Chocolat over 10 years ago.

In this story Vianne is living with Roux and her daughters 15 year old, Anouk,  and Rosette, now 8 years old on a houseboat. She misses her candy shop and yearns for something more.  When a lost letter arrives from the grandson of her friend Armande who has since passed away asking for Vianne's help, she and her girls leave for Lansquenet.  Her former shop had been turned into a school by a group of newcomers to the hamlet who happen to be of Arab descent. These people are not welcomed and are viewed as outsiders. They are treated in much the same way that Vianne had been when she had arrived there years earlier.  When something happens to the school of the Muslim people, rumors have it that Vianne's arch enemy Father Francis may have been involved. Can Vianne help her former nemesis?

This was a story that was fun to read, even though the theme of "tolerance" is a serious subject.  The way the newcomers to this small community were treated seemed to accurately reflect the way many people, often perceived as different, are treated throughout the world. 

There were a lot of flashbacks to the earlier novel which were well written into this novel, as a result the story flowed very well.  I loved the author's depiction of life in a small insular community, and there was even another element of mystery involving Vianne's partner Roux.  Overall the quirky characters, tension among the residents, charm and magic made for and entertaining story.  Although this book was actually book #3 of the series, The Girl With No Shadow was book #2, I didn't feel like I missed anything by not having read that book.

Thanks to the folks at Penguin/Viking for allowing me to read/review this novel.