California Golden

California Golden by Melanie Benjamin 352pages

 

I’m not much of an outdoorsy person. In fact, I rather loathe it.  Bu that doesn’t stop me from reading about the great outdoors.  I would like to hang ten and try surfing, but like I just said…and without my glasses/contacts I couldn’t even see the darn wave.

 

Most of the time, when I hear “great outdoors,” I think woods and insects. The critters I can handle, but not those pesky insects. However, in Melanie Benjamin’s newest novel, the great outdoors refers to the surfs and sand of California and Hawaii. Benjamin’s description of the waves, the sun, and the freedom one feels in the water is unparalleled. I felt as if I was there.

 

Carol Donnelly is one of the first female competitive surfers in the sport. She is a marvel to behold on board. But Carol is trapped in 1950s- ‘60s societal expectations of marriage and motherhood, and she resents her children for it.  Her daughters, Mindy and Ginger drop out of school to partake in the surf culture and, sadly, to gain their mother’s attention.

 

Carol teaches her daughters to surf. Mindy is a natural while Ginger can barely hang onto the board. When Mindy wins a competition in California, Carol seethes with resentment. And to top it off, Minday gets work as an extra in the surfing movies that were so back then. Mindy first gains notoriety as the Girl with the Curl. The 1960s come alive when Mindy goes to Whiskey A-Go-Go and is seen at all the LA hotspots.

 

She finds love with a Hawaiian surfer. But with Vietnam escalating, the pair breaks it off. It is only when Mindy is on a USO tour in ‘Nam, does love return in a rather unexpected way.

 

Meanwhile, Ginger falls in love with an abusive surf bum. Author Benjamin creates the life of authentic beach bums, unlike the glamorous life portrayed in the movies. Unwashed and malnourished and high isn’t the life Ginger had dreamed of as a little girl, but she loves Tom with every fiber of her body and mind.

 

Readers don’t know much about Carol after she loses the competition. She had an accident which forced her retirement from surfing and eventually was the root cause of her Parkinson’s Disease (I’m not sure how a head injury could cause Parkinson’s, but what do I know.).

 

Reader’s journey through the two very different lifestyles of each sister. However, an unexpected pregnancy causes major strife and happiness with the family.

 

California Golden is different than most of Benajmin’s wonderful books. While most of her novels are character driven, this didn’t have a strong plot. California Golden receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Book Haters' Book Club

The Book Haters’ Book Club by Gretchen Anthony 352 pages

Love the title of this book! I had to read it just to find out who would attend a book haters’ book club if the person hates books. That had to be an interesting group of people. Perplexing at the least.

Elliott, co-owner of Minneapolis’ Over the Rainbow Bridge, has recently passed away, leaving the other co-owner, Irma, in a pickle. Business is not good, and bills are piling up. Irma is also grieving the death of her longtime boyfriend, Nestor, from cancer.

Irma calls a meeting with her two daughters, Bree and Laney, and Elliott’s life partner, Thom, at the lawyer’s office. She has decided to sell to a developer who plans to raze it and replace it with high-rise condominiums.

As shocking as this decision is to the three, Bree has the most to lose. She works in the store and has assumed that she would take it over when Irma retired. Laney just wants to get back to her home in Oakland, California, and running a tire-repair shop with her husband. Thom is angry at Irma, but no one seems to know why, including Irma. The most infuriating part is that Irma won’t say why she so desperately wants to sell. This part of the plot dominates the first book’s first half.

The second half is about Irma coming clean with her secrets and what the three can do to save their relationships…and the bookstore.

The book’s title comes not from a fictional book club, but that is the name of the newsletter that Elliott sent out with reading recommendation to his customers. That title comes from Elliott’s belief that “all it takes is the right book to turn a book hater into a book lover.” He wasn’t actively trying to turn non-readers into readers, and, truthfully, I don’t get it. Readers are treated to a few of the newsletters. Cute and interesting, but they do not push the plot forward. And neither does periodic visits from Elliott in the form of the Forward, Commercial Breaks, Intermission, Curtain Call and One Last Thing…They’re creepy.

“The Book Haters’ Book Club” receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Master of Hestviken

The Master of Hestviken by Sigrid Undset, 994 pages

By right, Olav Audunson inherits the estate of Hestviken when he is still a boy, although he is an orphan living far from the home of his ancestors.  By the time he is able to take possession of it, decades have passed and he has already experienced love, hatred, loss, exile, betrayal, and mortal sin.  His struggle with this last defines his life, a grim life full of tragedy illuminated only by intermittent flashes of grace.

The Master of Hestviken is a series made up of four novels, The Axe, The Snake Pit, In the Wilderness, and The Son Avenger, set in 13th century Norway.  Although there is a bit of action and bloodshed, and quite a bit of romance, it is fundamentally a social, familial, psychological, and theological drama.  It is slow-moving and complex, but also compelling, heartbreaking, and surprising.  

We are the Brennans

 

We are the Brennans by Tracey Lange 288 pages

Tracey Lange’s debut novel centers on an Irish Catholic family in New York with lots of secrets to hide, and that makes for a perfect afternoon of reading!

Sunday Brennan, the only girl in a family of sons, left home five years ago for Los Angeles on the pretext of a job offer to write web content. Leaving involved more than her family. It meant that she walked away without a word to her fiancé. In reality, she was hiding from her deepest secret and trying to overcome it.

Life hasn’t quite worked out for her. She’s basically estranged from her family and drinks too much. After a serious car accident that left her with a broken bone and bumps and really awful bruising, her older brother, Denny, talks her into coming back home to heal. Sunday feels she has no choice and flies back to New York with Denny.

Denny has his own set of problems. He and his best friend, Kale (who is also Sunday’s ex-fiancé) own a pub. They are trying to expand, but things at the new location are not going smoothly. Denny has taken out a mortgage on his family home, unbeknownst to his father, and borrowed money from a very shady character from their past. Denny’s separated from his wife and child, while Kale is also facing difficulties at home.

Navigating the past, each other and the present are at the heart of this family drama, along with the secrets they share.

Told in multiple points of view (there are at least six) I felt this gave the story a completeness that could not have come from a single narrator---readers get multiple sides of the story. Author Lange does a wonderful job in keeping the voices varied and it’s easy to know who is narrating each section.

“We are the Brennans,” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.