Single Schmingle

How to be Single
Liz Tuccillo
Washington Square Press

So the best thing that I can say about this book is that the cover art let me use purple font as part of this post. Um, yeah. It was that bad.

How to be Single is about a late thirty-something New Yorker, Julie, who decides she's tired of being asked why she is single. She's sexy, and pretty, and has a big-brain and a great job, and the people in her life (excluding her other single girlfriends) can't understand why she can't find a man. Frustrated, Julie buys an around the world ticket and sets off on a trans-global adventure to find out how women in other cultures can be single, happy, and fulfilled.

Julie first goes to France where she learns that a woman must have, above all else, pride. She then goes to Italy. I'm not really clear what she learned there, but she spent a lot of time being wooed by a Frenchman who had followed her from Paris. In Australia she learns that she must love herself. In Bali, she learns to fall in love (with the married Frenchman whose apparently not-so-proud wife hauls her pregant self around the world to bring him back.) In China, Julie learns that the grass is always greener on the other side; Asian men want Western women and Asian girls want Western guys. She also goes to Brazil, to Iceland and then home to America. You get the idea. Once back in the land of the brave, home of the free, Julie decides that relationships just happen and maybe, just maybe, there's a miracle out there for her. Oh barf. One Jimmy Choo out of five.

It is the nature of truth to struggle to the light

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins
Penguin Canada

It took me almost four weeks to make it through this novel. Not because it was too long or too boring -- but because it was too good. When I first started the book, I decided to play along to see if I could figure out the "whodunit." Maybe I'm not too smart, or maybe Collins' is just a fantastic writer because this story kept me guessing until the very end.

Considered by some to be the first example of detective fiction in the English language, The Moonstone is a story about a famous yellow diamond that is said to carry a terrible Indian curse. Collins uses multiple narrators (all of whom are wholly unreliable) to spin the tale and he introduces his readers to the various types that are now standard in early mystery novels -- the bungling local policeman, the savvy gentleman amateur investigator, the mythic professional from Scotland Yard, the manor house as scene-of-the-crime, a plethora of suspects and the infamous red herring.

From a social perspective, the novel also had a lot to offer. Collins was quite liberal for his day and he had very forward-thinking views on class, race, and religion. His characterization of Miss Clack (a poor relation to one of the main characters and a tract-distributing zealot) had me in stitches. The novel was choc-a-bloc full of humour and pathos and probably should have been included on my Victorian lit syllabus when I was studying at university. Oh -- so many books, so little time. Three and one half candles in the drawing room with Professor Plum.

Incredible Hulks

Rapscallion
James McGee
Harper Collins

One of the last "conventional" books that I bought for my dad before he passed away was McGee's Rapscallion. For those of you who have been with me for awhile, you will recognize the author from an earlier post when I reviewed The Resurrectionist. I'll be honest ... the writing hasn't really improved and the characters are no further developed. That's the bad news. The good news is that Rapscallion had both an interesting plot and enough of an historical bent to keep me engaged. I daresay I actually learned something.

Did you know, for example, that during the Napoleonic wars, Britain used hulks (ships that are afloat, but incapable of going to sea) moored on the Thames as prisons? It's true! The living conditions on these ships were abominable and it was not uncommon for the mortality rate aboard the vessels to hover around 30%. It is said that on a warm day, the smell coming off of these ships was enough to pollute the air from bank to bank. Gross.

Unfortunately, while mildly entertaining and somewhat educational, Rapscallion was unable to distract me from missing my dad. In fact, I think it made me miss him more. In the last couple of weeks before he died, we had started to read this one together. It had been a long time since I had read aloud to anyone and we had only gotten a few chapters in before it became too much of an effort for him. Sigh. This one gets one sad and lonely star out of five.

Ooooh ... Candy!

The Sugar Queen
Sarah Addison Allen
Bantam

When I saw this book at the grocery store (yes, the grocery store!) I knew that I had to have it. I was getting ready to go up to my girlfriend's cottage for the weekend and I usually take at least a couple of books as, uh, well, cover. (It is so much easier being a little bit anti-social when you have a book to help you hide.) Anyway, as soon as I read the blurb on the back, I absolutely knew it was going to end up in my cart. Magic realism and a candy addicted, winter-loving heroine?! Whoa! How could I resist?

Josey is southern belle trapped in a bad situation. Her father, an incorrigible philanderer, passed away when she was nine and left her with a mother who didn't really love her. Bound by duty, Josey sticks it out at home yearning for an acceptance that she'll never receive. Her one joy (aside from the daily sightings of the gorgeously delicious mailman) is the secret stash of candy and travel magazines that she has hidden in her closet. One day, she's opens the door to access her cache and finds herself face-to-face with Della Lee -- a skankily beautiful, down-on-her-luck kind of girl who is a sometimes waitress, sometimes prostitute in the little town in which they both live. Della blackmails Josey into letting her stay and the story that develops out of this relationship becomes the basis for the entire novel.

Love, relationships, self-confidence, facing your fears, -- there isn't much that The Sugar Queen doesn't tackle and it is all handled with a dash of southern grace and charm. This novel is definitely a bildungsroman with a peppermint twist and I would encourage any fan of the "chick lit" genre to give it a whirl. Three tasty lemon drops out of five.

On the Road Again

The Shell Seekers
Rosamunde Pilcher
St. Martin's Press

Last Wednesday marked the first day of my "official" summer vacation. It was a bit of a rocky start -- my flight to Calgary got turned back over the Ontario/Manitoba border and the delay cost me my connection to Whitehorse. Six hours after my originally scheduled flight, I was put on a plane to Vancouver and eventually rolled into the Yukon a mere seven or so hours late. The downside to the ordeal was that I think I will soon be enrolling in some anger management classes. The upside was that it gave me the opportunity to read a couple of books.

The Shell Seekers is a lovely story set in the early to mid-eighties about a Englishwoman, Penelope Keeling, and her three grown children, Nancy, Olivia and Noel. The novel opens with Penelope returning to her home after a brief stint in the hospital following a heart attack. As most people do after a traumatic event, she takes stock of her life and reminisces over things past.

What I enjoyed most about this novel was how Pilcher uses beautiful language to paint vivid portraits of the main characters. Penelope and her children weren't always likeable, but they were so real that they could have stepped off the pages and sat down at my kitchen table for a cup of tea. Like most family chronologies, (think The Thornbirds) there was a lot of melodrama within the pages. There was also, however, enough of a story to keep me hooked and awake on a trans-Canada flight. Two point five stars out of five.