The Reader / Bernhard Schlink / 218 p.

I didn't see the movie, but I guessed the "deep dark secret" that drives many of the otherwise mysterious actions of one of the major characters a few dozen pages into the book.  No, I won't share it here.  You will have to read the book or force yourself to stare at Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes for hours on screen...tough, I know...to find out.  Maybe author Bernhard Schlink intended the reader to guess long before the narrator does; in a way it is beside the point as he drags his narrator (the reader of the book's title) as well as the book's readers, into an emotional contemplation on relationships, individual choices, history and collective judgment and guilt.  Put that way, the book sounds terribly depressing, but believe me; it is not.  The beauty is in the details.  I read it in two sittings, and now I hope to find a copy in the original German.

Purge / Sofi Oksanen / 390 p.

I found out about this book from the Estonian guy in my book group.  Its author is a 33 year old Finnish-Estonian woman who first conceived of the story as a play.  The novel is the first to win both of Finland's top literary awards, the Finlandia and the Runeberg.

Looking at the cover, which features a thin young woman wearing an apron, working at a counter with a lump of dough and some apples and looking behind her, with a slight air of unexplained tension, an American reader might surmise that the title refers in some way to eating disorders.  It does not, at all.  Instead, it is a reference to the the Soviet persecution of large segments of the Estonian population after World War II.  One of the two main characters of the book was a young woman during that bleak period, and the other one, a younger woman, also has a personal relationship to that word. 

The action of the novel opens in 1992, when the two characters come together, but this action is interspersed with a written diary of another character from the past, and other written documents, and the narrative bounces between decades, between the 1930's and 40's and 1992.  Even translated into English, the language of the novel is obviously literary yet not pretentious.  Somehow, the reader does not shrink away, even when terrible events, and perhaps even more terrible non-events, play out. 

Before I read Purge, I asked my Estonian friend what rings true to him in terms of his own perceptions of rural Estonia, and he said, well, the flies...the constant swatting of flies.

Like the movie about rural Missouri, Winter's Bone, it has harsh and difficult parts, yet it left me more reflective than dismayed.

The Iron Thorn / Caitlin Kittredge / 512 p.

In the city of Lovecraft, the Proctors rule and a great Engine turns below the streets, grinding any resistance to their order to dust. The necrovirus is blamed for Lovecraft's epidemic of madness, for the strange and eldritch creatures that roam the streets after dark, and for everything that the city leaders deem Heretical—born of the belief in magic and witchcraft. And for Aoife Grayson, her time is growing shorter by the day. Aoife Grayson's family is unique, in the worst way—every one of them, including her mother and her elder brother Conrad, has gone mad on their 16th birthday. And now, a ward of the state, and one of the only female students at the School of Engines, she is trying to pretend that her fate can be different.

When we meet Aoife (pronounced Ee-fah, in case you were curious), she is an Uptown girl enrolled in the School of Machines (one of the FEW girls enrolled there) waiting to go mad.  However, notes from her estranged brother convince her to escape school and Uptown and head for her father's mansion in Arkham to find and help her brother. What she discovers there is crazy beyond her wildest dreams.

I loved the characters in this book. Aoife was a character that I really, truly enjoyed reading about.  She was..different.  She has this chip on her shoulder about the madness that is a part of her family and the looming eventuality that it will probably affect her as well. But...she's also got a bit of an attitude.  She's cautious but she's not afraid to pursue the things that are important to her.

The whole world that Kittredge has created is really spectacular.  There is a little bit of everything for everyone! Seriously! It took me a little bit to get into the language with all the crazy inventions and such (welcome to steampunk, I suppose, lol), but once the plot gets going you can't put the book down! Don't let its size/length stop you from picking this one up. It's a fabulous read.

Legacy / Cayla Kluver / 496 p.

This historical fantasy fiction filled with romance and political intrigue sounded like something that would be right up my alley.  My overall thoughts were that this was a worthwhile read but it definitely could use a little polishing. The Kingdom of Hytanica has been at peace for many years.  The King is preparing to step down--just as soon as his oldest daughter finds a suitable husband to take his place. This is proving a bit of a struggle for Alera, for her father has basically chosen the next King despite Alera's disappointment with the match.  Then Narian comes into the story--an intriguing captive from Hytanica's bitter enemy...who turns out to be so much more.

The character development in Legacy was the best part for me.  Alera really struggles with the decisions that she makes and she develops throughout the story from someone who blindly accepts her destiny to someone who questions authority and, in the end, makes difficult decisions. Narian was a very intriguing character and I thought that Cayla did a fabulous job slowing uncovering bits and pieces of him to the reader while still leaving you guessing about the "real" Narian.

The only complaint that I really had about this book was that the pacing was a tad slow for me.  I felt like occasionally the story got bogged down in excessive details regarding the setting of each scene and the sharing of background information that didn't seem to have a purpose in the story.  I felt that the story could have moved along a bit quicker without getting bogged down in such details as each thing that they ate and what they wore and the items in each room.

Overall, I did enjoy the story that Cayla Kluver has started here and I won't hesitate to pick up the second book when it comes out. I must commend her on writing such an imaginative story at such a young age (as this story was first penned when the author was, I believe, 14/15).  There is a lot of promise in the story and I can only hope that books two and three move along a bit more quickly than this one.

Evergreen - Belva Plain 593 p.

Evergreen is one of those novels that span several decades as seen through the eyes of generations of a family.  Such books always contain themes of continuity and change, personality and situation, and how every person's combination of inner self and social world sets her on a trajectory that overlaps and intersects with the trajectories of others, and produces a vast alone-ness in each individual life.

The other major theme in this book is: what is love, and what is its relationship to personality experience, to loss, to truth, to religion, to money and to family?   The central impact that causes the ripples forming that theme in Evergreen is the two very different loves of Anna, the main character.  Paul is the man with whom she feels an instant bond, and Joseph is the man who adores her.  Both men remain in different ways in her life, and so she is doomed never to be whole.  But in this early-to-mid-20th-century world of Jewish immigrants fighting to make their own place in New York, of wars and the Holocaust in Europe, turmoil and tragedy everywhere, is anyone really whole?  Anna's are not the only hard choices that must be made.

Though it was published in 1978, this novel did not feel the slightest bit dated to me, but warm-blooded and real.

The Sherwood Ring/ Elizabeth Marie Pope / 256 p.

                  Peggy Grahame is orphaned at seventeen, and heads with ambivalence and perhaps a little apprehension to the family New England mansion to live with her withdrawn Uncle Enos, who is obsessed with keeping Rest-and-be-thankful as close to its condition during the Revolutionary War as possible. But before she even arrives at the house, she gets lost in the woods and is given directions by a girl in a red cloak on horseback, who disappears before she can thank her. Peggy quickly discovers that the girl is the ghost of Barbara Grahame, the daughter of the house during the war. As Peggy becomes friends with Pat, a visiting scholar from England who is researching the history of guerrilla warfare in the area during the revolution, she is visited by more ghosts and begins to discover that their story holds the secret to the current mysteries of the house. And all the mysteries seem to center around the figure of Peaceable Drummond Sherwood, a mysterious and brilliant English officer who led a band of renegades on raids that plague the Continental army. 

                   This story is a humorous and touching love story, with just the right amount of star-crossed escapades and a dash of mystery. Peggy’s story takes a back seat to the story of the ghosts, as they take turns telling their story.  These ghosts are not grim at all, but as enjoyably kind, clever, and sardonic as the best character in a regency romance who ever quirked an eyebrow. The reader is carried away by the exasperation of Barbara’s brother Dick, as he tried to capture Peaceable, and deal with the troublesome Eleanor Shipley who has captured his heart but taunts him mercilessly, and Eleanor, who has been trying for years to get him to notice her.  But the story we care about most is the unfolding sparring and love between Barbara and Peaceable himself. . .

It’s a short, quick book (with illustrations!) that make it seem like an elementary-level title, but the story and age of the characters make it fit better in a young adult collection (though there is no mature content). I first read it in my mid-teens and adored it, and this re-reading was still very satisfying, as it has one of my favorite romantic scenes of all time. I wouldn’t call it a mystery, the way it is billed, but rather as a cozy romance with a little light adventure on the side.