Now is Not the Time to Panic

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson 256 pages

 

It’s been a few weeks since I finished this novel, yet the story has stuck with him. It’s one of the books that I really wasn’t into, yet I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know how it ended.

 

The book opens in 2016. Frances Eleanor Budge---author, wife, mother, daughter---is contacted by a journalist named Mazzy. Mazzy knows that Frances is from Coalfield, Tennessee, and is doing a story on the 20^th anniversary of the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Does Frances, then known, as Frankie, recall the incident?

 

In the Summer of 1996, sixteen-year-old Frankie is dreading the long, sizzling summer in Coalfield. She is a loner, has no friends, there is nothing to do and is a budding writer. Plus her older, triplet brothers have their hearts set on irritating her.

 

Frankie bumps into Zeke, another sixteen-year-old, who is staying with his grandmother for the summer. He knows no one, and there is nothing to do. Zeke is an artist, but from the author’s descriptions, his art is rather Avant Garde. Together, they decided to create art. Zeke on image, Frankie on words. They like what they make.

 

In the garage at Frankie’s house there is an antique copier that, amazingly, still works. They print off several copies and hang them around town. As the townspeople begin to see them, popping up everywhere, they begin to wonder who is behind the poster since it is unsigned. Soon the town is obsessed with the poster. Especially since they keep popping up everywhere. Rumors circulate, people are killed, parents keep their kids indoors.

 

As the summer winds down, Frankie and Zeke go their separate ways, the furor over the poster subsides, but its impact on the town and beyond lingers on.

 

This was an okay story. It’s an interesting plot on the power of art. I wasn’t all that impressed with either Frankie or Zeke. For me it was a slow read, but I was interested to see how the author would plot the story and end it. Since Now is Not the Time to Panic was “okay,” it receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Astonishing Color Of After

The Astonishing Color Of After by Emily X. R. Pan, 472 pages

“Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.  Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life. Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a stunning and heartbreaking novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.” This book was pretty amazing.  I would give it to any teens that enjoy a good story.

The Masterpiece

 The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis   368 pages

I’m in love! I have added a new writer to my list of those whom I’ll read everything they write! I have wanted to read Fiona Davis’ first two books, “The Address” and “The Dollhouse,’ but somehow they never quite reached the top of my TBR list before there was a wait list at the library. It was this latest novel that made me determined to read it; something about the cover clicked in my heart, and I couldn’t let it go. Thanks to NetGallery and Penguin Random House I got my hands on a first edition, which I devoured in three evenings.

The story’s structure is one of my favorites, dualing timelines. The story vacillates between 1928/30 and 1974/6. I think I know why Davis chose the mid-1970s to place the second part of the story, but I won’t tell. No spoilers here!

In 1928, Clara Darden is an artist, an illustrator, working as a teacher at the Grand Central School of Art. She is also a freelance illustrator. Her students are dropping out at an alarming rate, and she fears not being asked back next semester. Part of the reason is that she is a woman, the only one among the remaining manly faculty. A number of the faculty becomes prominent artists, but not Clara, well not really

Fast forward to 1974. Virginia Clay is a newly divorced woman, still somewhat stuck in her 1950s role as housewife and mother. She is applying for a job, which takes her to the rundown facility that is an eyesore, Grand Central Station. It’s dirty, infested with drug addicts, and has almost been deserted. The terminal’s owners have their office under the buildings eaves. After blowing her interview, she asks for the restroom key and heads down the hallway. Instead of the facilities, she finds herself in the abandoned art school. Pictures still hang from the walls, and although the place is covered in dust, it looks as if the students had just been yesterday. As luck would have it, Virginia is offered a job in the Information Booth, with a cast of odd characters. This gives her a chance to further explore the old art school, but is stunned to discover that someone else is also haunting the area. Then, Virginia finds a painting that could set the art world on its ear. A painting that someone is willing to kill to own.

I loved the juxtaposition of the art/art school and the architecture of Grand Central as masterpieces. Both Clara and Virginia are well drawn (no pun intended) and fascinating women, both with a stubborn streak that just begins to make itself known. I can’t wait to meet Davis when she comes to St. Louis on her book tour.

 “The Masterpiece,” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Mapmaker's Children

 

The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy  336 pages

The Mapmaker’s Children spans two centuries with overlapping areas of commonality. But first, we must meet the two women who are the story’s main protagonists: Sarah Brown is an artist and the daughter of abolitionist John Brown. A century and half later, Eden Anderson is starting a new life in West Virginia with her husband Jack. Told in mostly alternating chapters, Sarah’s story occurs in the years between 1859 and 1889. Eden’s story is much more condensed and lot less well developed; it occurs 2010-2014. Sarah’s story could have stood on its own, but the addition of Eden’s and her discovery about the house she lives in succeeds in uniting the two women.

When readers first encounter Sarah, she is very sick. The severe dysentery leaves her barren. Eden and Jack have been trying everything to conceive a child for the last seven years.

Barely well, Sarah rises from her sick bed upon hearing the voices of her father and two of his most trusted allies. She volunteers to paint landscapes that can be used as maps in their work with the Underground Railroad. She has learned the quilt codes and other means of communicating to the runaway slaves the path to freedom.

After her father’s hanging for his instigation of the raid on Harper’s Ferry, the Brown family stays in close contact with the Hill family of New Charlestown, West Virginia. She and one of the Hill sons, Freddy, develop deep feelings for each other. Those feelings grow, but Sarah refuses his proposal due to her infertility.

When Jack brings home a new puppy, Eden wants nothing to do with the golden furball. She is considering leaving Jack. Yet is the newly christened Cricket who finds the door to the root cellar. As it is opened for the first time in many years, Eden finds a porcelain doll’s head. As fascinated as she is by the discovery, it becomes a secondary plot in Eden’s sections of the book, yet it is important as it unites Sarah and Eden and the house they both share. The main plot in Eden’s chapters is watching her develop close ties with the neighbor girl, Cleo, whom Jack hires as Cricket’s caretaker.

Thankfully neither woman is subjected to a sappy the-doctor-was-wrong-now-and-I’m-pregnant ending. It’s much better.

I give The Mapmaker’s Children 4 out of 5 stars.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review. 

The Muralist

The Muralist by B. A. Shapiro  337 pages

The latest B. A. Shapiro novel, after The Art Forger, delves into the art world in two centuries and with two artists.

In 2015, Danielle Abrams (Dani) works as a cataloguer for Christies in New York. A lapsed artist, Dani receives several paintings that have been found in an attic. They could be some undiscovered works by Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, or Mark Rothko. However, Dani sees something different; the paintings remind her of her great-aunt Alizee Benoit’s work. In the world of abstract expressionism, there has always seemed to be a missing link. Dani has always thought that work could be Alizee’s.

In1939, Alizee Benoit is working for the WPA (Works Progress Adminstration under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal). Her best friends are Jackson Pollock, Leo Krasner, and Mark Rothko. They are painting murals for various buildings, but their true passion is abstract expressionism.

Alizee is a Jew from France and has left her entire family there. As Hitler’s rise to power escalates, letters from her family become more and more desperate, begging her to help them obtain visas to get out. When she’s working on her art, she wants her paintings to reflect the Jewish crisis. When she’s working for the WPA but she’s forced to paint idyllic country scenes. Alizee gets to meet Eleanor Roosevelt, who becomes a champion of her art. This seems a tad implausible, but Shapiro is so deft as a writer, that it’s interesting but not a read-breaker.

Alizee’s family (her brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins, one with a family) manage to get aboard the MS St. Louis. The plight of the 937 Jews trying to escape persecution was mentioned, but did not delve deep enough for me. That story is all but a footnote in history now, but readers who are curious can learn more about it in: Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust by Sarah A. Ogilvie and Scott Miller.

In the meantime, Dani discovers envelopes containing pieces of canvas behind the paintings that were recently discovered.  Dani is also trying to uncover what happened to Alizee. She checked into a sanatorium in 1940 and simply disappeared.

The narrative weaves back and forth between the past and present, bring the art world of the mid-20^th century to life. I had hoped to be swept away into this world while I read, but I was not. I was intrigued, but I didn’t find myself anxiously awaiting the time I could get back to the story.  Therefore, I give The Muralist 4 out of 5 stars.

I’ll Give You The Sun

I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson, 371 pages

This story is told alternately by twins Noah and Jude.  Noah’s story is told from their 13 year old perspective, giving the background for Jude’s current story at 16.  Although they were inseparable at one time now they barely speak.  Jude was accepted into an exclusive art school when she wasn’t sure she even wanted to go.  Noah, on the other hand, was desperate to be accepted there but wasn’t.  All of this is mixed in with their parent’s separation and their mother’s accidental death, along with Noah recognizing that he is gay, but immediately hiding it from nearly everyone.  By the end of the story, all of the reasons for the twins’ heartaches are revealed and while I thought some parts were obvious, I had a few surprises at the end.  I thought that it was a really good coming of age story that a lot of teens could relate to.