The Night Portrait

The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli 496 pages

 

I saw this book listed on another book nerd page and knew I had to read it. It has dual-timelines, four main characters and a storyline that I loved.

 

At its core, this novel is about art: its creation and its importance to humankind and what will be done to save it.  This story centers on the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, The Lady with an Ermine. There is so much to write about how wonderful this story is that I could probably write a book about it. 

 

The two timelines are 1476-1499 and 1939-1946. The four main characters are Cecilia Gallerani (the painting’s subject), Leonardo Da Vinci (no introduction needed), Edith Becker (a German art conservator) and Dominic Bonnelli (American soldier, art lover and a member of the famed Monument Men unit). 

 

The Renaissance period, Cecilia and Leonardo, sections tell of how the painting came to be. The WWII sections described how the painting hung in a Nazi leader’s country home and how it almost became a war casualty.

 

The Night Portrait is a phenomenal read. I read it in three evenings and have the bags beneath my eyes to prove.  I cannot recommend this book enough to art, historical fiction, Renaissance and WWII lovers. It receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Audrey Hepburn Estate

The Audrey Hepburn Estate by Brenda Janowitz 368 pages

 

One of my favorite movies of all-time is from 1954. Sabrina, starring Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden. It is an important film, so much so that it “was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’”

Author Brenda Janowitz, in her eighth novel, has taken the essence of the movie and of Hepburn to craft a warm and surprisingly twisty work. The story is told with two narratives, “Now” and “Then.” 

“Now” is current time. Emma, Henry and Leo grew up on Henry’s grandparents’ Long Island estate, known as Rolling Hill.  The grand mansion has fallen into such disrepair that it is beyond saving. Or so says Leo, who has recently purchased the estate and plans to raze it. Emma has not seen Leo in almost seven years. It had been even longer since she had seen Henry. “Then” fills in the backstory, giving the reader insight into the characters as children and young adults.

Since Emma was eight years old, she knew that Henry was the one for her. They were childhood sweethearts. Janowitz reverses male roles. Think Henry in the Linus/Bogart role. Leo, the driver’s son, had been in love with Emma since they played together as children. Leo has the William Holden role. Since Leo first met Emma, he knew that she was the one for him. Who will Emma cling to in the turmoil that lies ahead.?

Emma returns to Rolling Hill for a trip down memory lane. What she didn’t know was that the house held more than one secret. She tried to get to Leo not to raze the house, but she was talking to deaf ears. She goes so far as to join the local historical society in the hopes of obtaining an injunction against Leo and his company.  Along the way, Janowitz throws in a few twists that turned the story in a different, yet same, direction.

Be sure to read the Appendix, “Finding Audrey Hepburn in ‘The Audrey Hepburn Estate.’”

The Audrey Hepburn Estate receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

 

 

 

The Booksellers' Secret

The Bookseller’s Secret by Michelle Gable 400 pages

Out in my garage, there are a number of plastic tubs (about 30) brimming with books that I want to read. One of them is Mary S. Lovell’s “The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family.”  So naturally, when one of my favorite authors, Michelle Gable* decided to write a novel with one of the sisters, Nancy, as the historical protagonist in a duel-narrative timeline, I had to read it!

If you’ve never heard for the Mitford Sisters, they hail from an aristocratic English family and became particularly infamous in the 1930s. An eccentric group of ladies if there ever was one. The last sister died in 2014. (It’s well-worth jumping down the rabbit hole with both feet to learn more about them.)

However this novel is set in the 1940s and in contemporary times.

 In contemporary times, novelist Katie Cabot has hit a slump. For the last three years she has been searching for a subject for her next novel. One of her writer friends, Jojo, invites Katie to visit her in London, believing that a change of scenery will spark her creativity. On Jojo’s advice, Katie visits the Heywood Hill Bookshop and the place where one of her idols, Nancy Mitford worked during World War II.

While visiting the bookshop (which still exists today), Katie meets several characters, all who are searching for a missing manuscript autobiographical novel that Nancy supposedly penned while working there. (Fact: Nancy was a very successful author in her time). While there seems to be a lot of subterfuge, nothing seems to be truly at stake.

The historical timeline takes up most of the book---and is the most interesting, as readers get to know Nancy and her sisters. After Nancy began working at the bookshop, she, unintentionally, turned it into a literary salon, where her wealthy and writerly friends gathered on Sunday afternoons.

Sounds like a great read, doesn’t it?  For me it was slow…very, very slow. Even though Nancy’s section didn’t have any tension until the last third, it was my favorite. Katie’s contemporary section read more like a romantic drama than a search for an eighty-plus year missing item. And I never felt that Katie’s section had a real resolution. I felt like I was left hanging. Therefore, “The Bookseller’s Secret” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

*If you haven’t read Gable, her two best novels, in my opinion, are “A Paris Apartment” and “The Summer I Met Jack.”

 

Before We Were Yours

Before We Were Yours  by Lisa Wingate 352 pages

Warning: Don’t start this novel unless you have plenty of time to read because you won’t be able to stop reading.

Wingate has taken a footnote from history and turned into a page-turner. The reality of the story is Georgia Tann and her Tennessee Children’s Home Society. On the outside, the home appears to be just like any of the other orphanages that are common in 1930s America. But Tann had a  dirty secret. She stole children from rural, poverty-stricken areas, then sold them to wealthy clients, charging absorbent fees and treating the children as if they were a piece of garbage.

Based on this solid fact and careful research, Wingate creates a Mississippi River family whose home is a shantyboat named the Arcadia in 1936. The Great Depression is raging across America, so life on the river isn’t so bad…at least they always have something to eat.

The five children and their parents, Briny and Queenie, lead a wanderer’s existence, traveling up and down the river. The kids get schooling here and there, but they seem to always be on the move to where the fishing is better and the weather is warmer. When Queenie goes into labor and a river midwife can’t help her deliver, Briny is forced to leave the boat and take his wife to a Memphis hospital. Twelve-year-old Rill is left to care for the boat and her four siblings.

The parents have been gone a couple of days when strangers passing as the law come to collect the children, telling them they only be staying at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society until their parents can come and collect them. The abuse they endure at the hands of Tann and her minions are criminal.

Then flash forward to contemporary time. Avery Stafford and her father, Senator Stafford, have returned to South Carolina for the Senator’s health issues.  Avery is being groomed to take his place in the Senate, following in her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. But it’s a chance meeting with an elderly woman during a nursing home photo opp, that changes her life forever.

The encounter compels Avery to dig through her family’s history to try to determine what the elderly woman and her dementia-addled grandmother have in common.

Waving between past and present, this is the story of how one family’s past has shaped its present. A highly compulsive read, the characters are complex and well-drawn. Before We Were Yours receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

June

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore    400 pages

Dual timelines and dual heroines make up Miranda Beverly-Whitemore’s fourth novel, June. At the heart of this suspenseful tale are movie stars, inheritances, and the fine line between truthfulnesses and falsehoods.

I loved that the title had played three roles, first as the book’s title; second, as the 1955 heroine’s name; and third, as the month both timelines occurred: June 1955 and June 2015.

The book opens in June 2015. Cassie Danvers has retreated back to her grandmother’s home, Two Oaks, in small town St. Jude, Ohio. She seems a tad delusional, or maybe, it’s just sensitivity to the spirits that still lurk in the crumbling mansion. Even her dreams are made of the houses’ long-gone inhabitants. She also seems to be suffering from clinical depression.

The mansion is almost beyond repair, yet all the twenty-five year-old wants to do is stay in bed. She barely eats, lets the mail pile up on the foyer floor, and refuses to answer the landline. Cassie is not only mourning her grandmother, but she is reeling from the breakup, which instigated (I think), with her beau, Jim, back in New York City.

Then the doorbell rings.

The story then switches to June 1955. Told from Lindie’s point of view, the whole town is anxiously awaiting the arrival of a film crew, in town to shoot the exteriors for Erie Canal. Starring in the movie are handsomer-than-handsome Jack Montgomery and more-beautiful-than- a-spring day Diane DeSoto.

June is expected to marry Artie Danvers in three days’ time, provided he returns to St. Jude.

June is a wonderful novel, full of interesting characters and plot twists. It took me a little while to get into the story. I had hoped to be pulled in quicker to the story. Cassie’s section was slower to develop than June’s. I think Lindie’s strong character had a lot to do with it. That’s the reason I give June 4 out of 5 stars.

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