The Dollhouse

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis   368 pages

In the last month or so, I was lucky enough to snag a copy of author Fiona Davis’s new book, “The Masterpiece,” and I just loved it. So of course, since that was only her third novel, I knew that I had to read her first two. This was Davis’ debut novel. It’s as equally mesmerizing.

Davis employed the dualing timelines as her structure. I’m wondering if this is going to be a continued pattern for her; I sure hope so, as I love it.

In 1952, Darby arrives from Ohio to attend the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. She plans to never marry and strives for financial and economic independence from her mother and step-father.  She moves into the Barbizon Hotel for Women. It wasn’t like a hotel that we think of today. She had to have three references in order to be even considered a place. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for her on the floor that houses other Gibbs’ girls. Instead, she is forced to live with aspiring models, who often distract her from her studies.

Darby becomes friends with the maid, Esme, who introduces her to the seedier side of New York. She also meets Sam, a cook in a jazz club who yearns to become a chef, using the spices he discovered in Southeast Asia.

Fast forward to 2016. The Barbizon Hotel for Women is now condos, except for the Fourth Floor. That’s where several of the now-elderly women from the Barbizon still reside. Rose and her divorced lover, Griff, have lived there for about a year. Thanks to Patrick the doorman, Rose learns about the women and the building’s history, especially the scandal that caused Esme to fall to her death from the rooftop terrace. Working for an internet news bureau called WordMerge, Rose wants to interview the women of the Fourth Floor.

She begins to knock on doors and finds some women wanting to talk with her; others who are not interested in bringing up the past. One of those women is Darby. Yup that Darby. As Rose is forced out of her apartment (Griff goes back to his wife, supposedly for a teenager’s sake), she becomes more and more obsessed with Darby and the rumors of her involvement with Esme’s death. It’s just happenstance that Darby winds up caring for Darby’s dog when the neighbor suddenly takes ill and is hospitalized.

I was enthralled with the story; I couldn’t put it down. Can’t wait to get my hands on Davis’s sophomore book, “The Address.”  “The Dollhouse” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Love and Ruin

Love and Ruin by Paula McLain   400 pages

Paula McLain burst onto the literary scene with “The Paris Wife,” and if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading that novel, grab a copy as soon as you can. In that novel, McLain wrote about famed author Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. 

After that book, she thought she was done with Hemingway. However, in a conversation at St. Louis County Library, she told the packed house that she had had a dream about him, after which she felt compelled to tackle the adventurous writer once again.

By this point in his life, Hemingway has had moderate success as a writer, but he had yet to write “A Farwell to Arms,” which catapulted him to superstardom.  It’s 1936. Tensions are starting to run high across Europe as Hitler comes to power. The world is afraid another war is imminent. The Spanish Civil War, however, is in its infant stages

Hemingway loved adventure, and so did Martha (Marty) Gelhorn. A St. Louis-girl, she bucked the conventions of her upper social status. A writer herself, Marty published her first book, “The Trouble I’ve Seen” to rave reviews.

As 1936 turns to 1937, Marty and her mother take a trip to Key West, where she meets Hemingway.  Although they were attracted to each other, Ernest was still married to his second wife, Pauline.

As the war in Spain heated up, Marty talked the editor of “Collier’s” to assign her to cover the conflict as a special correspondent.  She also runs into Hemingway again, and their passion ignites. McLain follows the couple around the world, through their ups and downs, through 1944.

Much like “The Paris Wife” and Melanie Benjamin’s story of the Charles and Anne Morrow  Lindbergh  in “The Aviator’s Wife., I felt like a fly on the wall as I watched two authors try to write under one roof, two people with an adventurous nature coursing through their and two  lovers love and fight.

The only downfall upon reaching the conclusion of “Love and Ruin,” is that readers have to wait for the next Paula McLain novel. Sure hope it’s soon.  “Love and Ruin” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Woman in Berlin

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary by Anonymous, translated by Philip Boehm, 261 pages

A revision of entries from a diary kept by an anonymous female journalist living in Berlin from April 20 to June 22, 1945,  A Woman in Berlin is a story of loss, horror, and survival in a situation unimaginable only a few years earlier, although the author is only too aware that Berlin is experiencing at the hands of the Russians what other cities experienced at the hands of the Germans.  In this personal account of the climax of the long nightmare that lasted from 1914 until 1989, there are many such instances of what the author calls "a logical reversal" - ill-fed German POWs laboring where starving Russian POWs had before, the loot of Germany carted off to Russia by the trainload, swastika flags cut up to make red flags to salute the conquerors.  As the diary begins, it is poignantly revealed how Berliners have regressed to prehistoric conditions - without electricity, telephones, or running water, huddled together in cavernous basements, scrounging for food and water, with only rumors for news, aware only of the immediately neighboring communities living similarly troglodytic existences.  The terrible chaos of the fall of the city follows, and it is as horrible as might be imagined - a time when the bodies of suicides were hurriedly buried in backyard gardens, injured horses were butchered by hungry mobs while still alive, and the number of times a woman had been raped became a subject of her small talk over ersatz coffee.  This is gradually replaced by a seeming return to normalcy, but the author's own personal life reflects the fact that some things are forever changed, which leads into the story of the effect of the war and its aftermath on the German psyche, a story at which this book only hints.

Although, as a result of its narrow timeframe, it only hints at the aftereffects of the war, the book is itself a notable part of that story.  It was first published in 1954 in an English translation in the US, and only after five years was a German-language edition produced by a Swiss publisher.  Not surprisingly, it was criticized by many who would have preferred to forget what they had done and endured, and a controversy ensued in the course of which the identity of the author was revealed against her wishes.  The author requested that the book not be reprinted until after her death, which occurred in 2001, leading to it becoming available again after decades as a rarity.

Where they Found Her

Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight
326 Pages

"At the end of a long winter in well-to-do Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of an infant is discovered in the woods near the town's prestigious university campus. No one knows who the baby is, or how her body ended up out there. But there is no shortage of opinions. When freelance journalist, and recent Ridgedale transplant, Molly Anderson is unexpectedly called upon to cover the story for the Ridgedale Reader, it's a risk, given the severe depression that followed the loss of her own baby. But the bigger threat comes when Molly unearths some of Ridgedale's darkest secrets, including a string of unreported sexual assaults going back twenty years. Meanwhile, Sandy, a high school dropout, searches for her volatile and now missing mother, and PTA president Barbara struggles to help her young son, who's suddenly having disturbing outbursts. Told from the perspectives of Molly, Barbara, and Sandy, Kimberly McCreight's taut and profoundly moving novel unwinds the tangled truth about the baby's death, revealing that these three women have far more in common than they realized. That the very worst crimes are committed against those we love. And that--sooner or later--the past catches up to all of us."

A pretty good story with some red herrings to keep you in suspense until the end.