SoapZone Community Message Board

Nightwoods by Charles Frazier - If the author's name sounds familiar, it's because it's the same guy who wrote the hugely popular Cold Mountain that so many folks read maybe a decade ago. Frankly, I hated Cold Mountain...I got about 70 pages in and quit because I just didn't like CF's writing style. He would go on for two pages about the lush green meadow and the poplar trees and the cerulean sky, blah blah blah...and then say "the ground was brown as <poop>" and not advance the story one bit. I got Nightwoods at a book sale, where I stuffed a bag with roughly 30 books and paid $5...I liked it a bit better than Cold Mountain (at least enough to finish it), but I didn't love it. And the author's style is still too stilted for me and short on actual story. In Nightwoods, which is set in the Appalachians in the 1960s, a loner living in an abandoned hotel where she once worked finds herself the caretaker of her murdered sister's near feral twins (I believe they're supposed to be maybe 7 or 8?). To say much more would be unfair, since there's so little story. Goodread's readers were divided on the book...those who loved Cold Mountain said this one was not quite as good and those who, like me, hated Cold Mountain thought it was an improvement. An improvement for me, yes, but still I'd give it a B-. If you LOVE florid prose and scene-setting, try Nightwoods but if you prefer a plot, then pass.

Art of the Carousel by Charlotte Dinger - I have long been fascinated by carousels (I think they appeal to the horse-loving child in me). Even as an adult who sought out the more thrilling coaster rides, I always took a turn on the merry-go-round whenever we went to Geauga Lake or Cedar Point (at CP, I rode both the traditional carousel and Cedar Downs racing derby), and once, after visiting Cedar Point with SZ's Valerie (posted under D2Leaper because she loved both Duran Duran and Quantum Leap), I went to the Merry Go Round museum in Sandusky where I saw older carousel horses and seats and got to ride on their carousel . I was hoping this book would mention the museum but it didn't. It was written in the 1980s and while it gives a pretty extensive history of the carousel and some of the folks who gained minor fame by being master horse and seat carvers, it was a bit too slanted towards collectors of antique carousel memorabilia and how to restore the older carved pieces. Still, the pictures were pretty and I learned the difference between a stander (the horses on the outer edge that don't go up and down and have 3 or 4 legs on the ground), a prancer (one of the inner horses that has the back legs on the platform and the front legs in the air and goes up and down) and a jumper (all four legs in the air, goes up and down). A-.

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French - In a small town in England, housewife and doting mother Charlotte Salter goes missing on the night of her husband's 50th birthday party. A day later, the husband of family friends is found dead...was it an accident, suicide or murder? Over 30 years later, the two sons of the dead man start a podcast to talk about the crime that shook their small town to the core and in the process, they hope to figure out just what happened to Charlotte. A decent thriller that's more about Charlotte's kids than the podcasters; there were plenty of plot twists but I found the ending to be slightly unsatisfactory mainly because I thought the motive was a tad weak and contained info that was a little out of the blue. Still I read this one in only a couple days...I'll give it a B+

Beautyland by Marie-Helena Bertino - My favorite read this month. It begins with an odd premise: back in 1977, on the very day Voyager 1 was launched, a single woman gives birth to her premature daughter. Except the girl isn't really hers...she's an alien, sent to Earth to report on humans and to determine if the planet would be suitable for her race and "activated" as a mere toddler. Don't let the sci-fi premise prevent you from trying this one; in her short observations, our heroine Adina provides a fascinating glimpse into what it's like to be human but also what it's like to be "other". Solid A, maybe even an A+...I highly recommend Beautyland.