Meet Me in Monaco

Meet Me in Monaco by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb   384 pages

Get ready to be swept away!

It’s May 1955. International beauty and movie star Grace Kelly is attending the 8^th Annual Cannes Film Festival.  The paparazzi are out in full force, trying to snap “the” picture.  Grace is stalked by a London photographer, James Henderson, who must get that picture, whatever it is, in order to keep his job.

To avoid Henderson, Grace ducks into a small boutique, Duvall’s perfumes. The owner, Sophie, recognizes the darling of the silver screen, and hides her in her office. But sparks ignite when Sophie and James meet. Although Sophie is already in a relationship, she is drawn to James.

With the perfurmery in financial difficulties, Sophie is facing some tough decisions. Should she close the boutique in Cannes and return to her labatory? Can she continue to make perfumes with the natural fragrances of the flowers that grow on the land that surrounds the lab?

James is single, but the love of his life, his small daughter, lives in London. He hates to be away from her, but he must make a living. He leaves the perfumery with one of Sophie’s sweet-smelling business cards.

James is selected to photograph Grace Kelly’s first meeting with Prince Rainier of Monaco. James accidentally gets to meet Grace, who catches a whiff Sophie’s business card that James has in his pocket. Could this chance be the catalyst that changes their lives?

The story is told in three alternating voices: Sophie’s, James’s  and news articles writte by Angeline West, a fashion editor. Readers get to intimately know Sophie and James, learning what makes them tick and watching them grow as individuals. Grace is always in the story, but is more of a secondary character to Sophie and James.

Authors Gaynor and Webb do an excellent job in re-creating the beauty of Cannes, Monacco and the French Riveria.  I felt as if I had been there.  I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and had difficutly in putting it down. Therefore, “Meet Me in Monaco” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Max the Brave

Max the Brave by Ed Vere   32 pages

A cute book for Preschoolers through Grade 2.

Max is very brave, very black kitten who chases mice. Problem is, Max doesn’t know what a mouse looks like. So off he goes in search mouse. Since this is such a short book, I don’t want to be a spoiler. You’ll just have to read it to find out what obstacles get in Max’s way.

I give Max the Brave 5 out of 5 stars.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue

 

The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin    368 pages

I read Melanie Benjamin’s prior novel, The Aviator’s Wife, and just LOVED it. I felt like I was on the wall of the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh home. I admit that I haven’t yet picked up her two previous novels, but they are on my TBR list. I was excited that Benjamin was finally coming out with a new novel.

This time she turns her pen on “New York’s ‘Swans’ of the 1950s—and the scandalous, headline-making, and enthralling friendship between literary legend Truman Capote and peerless socialite Babe Paley.” The ‘Swans’ are Babe’s friends: Slim Keith, C Z Guest, Gloria Guiness, and Pamela Churchill (yes a relation to Winston).

These women are five of New York’s most beautiful and wealthiest women. They have it all: high profile husbands, money, clothes, beauty, glamor, influential friends, jewels, and gorgeous homes. Babe’s drop-dead gorgeous face often appeared on cover of style magazines, mainly Vogue. But inside was a desperately lonely woman who only wanted to be loved.

Enter Truman Capote. He explodes onto the New York scene and is quickly taken under Babe’s wing. They form a tight, chaste relationship, in which each one depends on the other for emotional support.

When I first picked up Swans, I had to read to page 159 and gave up. There was, I thought, no real plot. Nothing happened and the same conversations happened over and over. I was bitterly disappointed.  I thought about my disillusionment often; then it hit me. That’s basically what these people were about---nothing. The only one who seemed to contribute to society was Capote.

So I picked Swans up again, started on page 150, and was soon immersed in their world. It was sad to watch Capote binge on drugs and booze and Babe succumb to cancer, but death was really the only way out of the lives they had created.

I give The Swans of Fifth Avenue 5 out of 5 stars.

A Drifting Life - Yoshihiro Tatsumi

A Drifting Life - Yoshihiro Tatshumi - 834 Pages

Yoshihiro Tatsumi (calling himself Hiroshi in this autobiographical memoir) is the man behind the alternative style of manga gekiga. Gekiga refers to manga that transcended flights of fancy, action, and humor. Gekiga is about drama, and change, and real life! He wanted the world to experience manga the way he did: as an emotional experience and not just pure entertainment. Gekiga has depth. This manga paralleled those themes perfectly.

A Drifting Life follows Hiroshi from is early days of creating manga to becoming a manga editor and professional mangaka*. The more he read, the more he wanted to create. And the more he created, the more he wanted the medium to evolve. Hiroshi started submitting his work to local manga publishers, which led him to meet his hero Osamu Tezuka. From then he realized that manga was his passion. He drew inspiration, not just from other manga, but from films, from prose novels, and even from the people around him.

I loved this book, but I will say, it's a LONG one. It's so detailed! My favorite kind of manga and anime is 60s, so this was right up my alley. Tatsumi also does a great illustrative job showing Hiroshi's age progression throughout the manga.

A Drifting Life inspired me to create more. Hiroshi would spend so many nights awake, and take on so many projects, and deal with so many toxic people in his life, and yet his love for manga still remained. It may have waned and grew as life took hold of him, but it always remained.  Another great part of A Drifting Life was that Tatsumi included current events mixed in with the story. This helped me understand what Japan was going through at the time and how it may have inspired or deterred him from writing.

Which brings me to why I felt sad for him as well. He spent so much time trying to get people into the idea of gekiga all the while trying to make ends meet, that he ended up not writing as many long form stories in that style. He never felt like he did gekiga justice. He felt as if he kept coming back to those ideals, but real life kept getting in the way. Even if he didn't feel that way, he certainly made a lasting impression on readers.

I would definitely recommend this book if you're interested in the history of manga. It's a very specific sect of manga, but if you want to follow the story of a man hoping to stay inspired and hoping to inspire others, definitely read this!

RIP Yoshihiro Tatsumi (1935-2015)

*Mangaka: is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese.
Other Gekiga Mangaka:
Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion)
Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha)
Tetsuo Hara (Fists of the North Star)
Kazuo Koike (Lone Wolf and Cub)