The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

I just...no.  This entire book takes place within a 24 hour time span, in a house about to be "foreclosed" in 1912 England.  While the home, Sterne, is preparing for the birthday party of Emerald, a ragged bunch of strangers appears per the direct orders of the local railway station.   A train derailed nearby and there were no other places to put the non-critically injured passengers.  Um, what?  And since when does a railway company demand that homes accept survivors for an undisclosed amount of time??  Emerald, her vain and slightly narcissistic mother Charlotte, brother Clovis, who might be either bipolar or just a moody twenty-something, younger sister Smudge who suffers from borderline neglect, friends John, Patience, and her brother Ernst, all have a dinner planned when the strangers arrive at the doorstep. 
Eventually, another passenger arrives, Charlie, who coincidentally was once friends with Charlotte, and the housekeeper Florence.  The group puts the ill-fated railway passengers into the morning room, essentially locking them in with no food, water, toilets, and no one to check over their wounds.  Eventually, the group is fed, hours later, using most of the fancy dinner planned for Emerald's birthday, who eat the leftovers.  That must have been a very fancy dinner that food for 8-10 people can also serve 20+, then the original dinner party could still have some left to eat.  Anyway, after dinner, Charlie, proposes to play a game in which everyone goes around in a circle and says brutally honest things about one person.  First everyone picks on Patience, then Charlie goes after Charlotte.  He calls her a whore, telling her family that she was a prostitute before her respectable marriage.  Once the dust settles, Charlie corners Charlotte in her bedroom, and tells her her family will now abandon her.  He also implies he's supernatural and the railway party is no coincidence.  (what?).  He's dying and needed to see her one last time.  When she yells, her entire family comes to her rescue, against the prophecy of Charlie who then disappears. 

And that's the book.

Side stories:  Smudge sneaks her pet pony upstairs at one point to trace her shape onto her bedroom wall.  And of course can't get her back down the stairs because stairs + horse hooves = disaster. 

Charlotte's husband, Edward, away during all this to try to save the house, was mysteriously given a letter saying that a dead benefactor of Smudge's left her large amounts of money that will save Sterne. 

Okay then. 

I want the (few) hours of my life back that I spent reading this book.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Devil in the White City: Turns out in 1893, Chicago hosted a much celebrated and acclaimed World’s Fair. The book tells two parallel story lines; that of the construction, development, and execution of the World’s Fair, and the serial killer who preyed on the young women flocking to Chicago during the same time period. I’ve had a bit of a history with this actual book before I just read it. My friend Elizabeth lent me this book; she brought it to me on a girl date at a Mexican place. I didn’t finish my enchiladas, so I through her book into my to-go bag. We walked around shopping (and drinking) for awhile afterwards. By the time I got home and went to retrieve the book, my enchilada juice had leaked everywhere and the book was ruined. I bought a replacement book for E, and another copy for myself to keep, since I obviously can’t be trusted to borrow books. I put my copy on my shelf and never got around to reading it. Then Lovey’s roommate’s girlfriend brought it over to their place and RAVED about it. Remembering I owned it, I told her I’d read it and started it promptly once I got home.
Eh, not such a fan. The concept was awesome, but the mundane details about the background of the fair was tedious. Not being an architectural guru, I cared a lot less about building plans and construction than the author probably would have liked. I’m always up for a good serial killer novel, but this mystery contained very few details. There were a lot of cool points about the book: 1. Englewood at the time was a fancy, happening neighborhood. It is now a very rough, poverty stricken, gang and drug infested neighborhood. Anyone other than blacks need not enter. 2. The first Ferris wheel debuted at the fair. 3. Walt Disney’s father worked on construction at the fair, and people say the White City established at the fair inspired construction at DisneyLand, namely Cinderella’s castle. 4. One fair building still standing is now the Museum of Science & Industry, which is an awesome building. 5. The fair also inspired architectural geniuses Frank Lloyd Wright (who was fired by the Fair architect), and Mies van der Rohe. 6. Apparently the fair changed America’s viewpoints on electricity, transportation, and architecture. People began to realize Europe did not have to have a monopoly on architecture, and American cities could, and would, benefit from architectural advances. Some architects for the fair went on the design Central Park and the Flatiron building in New York, the Washington Monument and the Mall in DC.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See:

This book was really popular a few years ago, but the description on the back never seemed interesting to me so I never read it despite the hype.  A few weeks ago Lovey and I were perusing a used book store and I saw it.  Not only was it cheap, it was also 50% off.  I read this book in 24 hours; the old adage of not judging a book by its cover definitely stands true with this book.  Old world China is really interesting to me, despite the mess that modern China has become.  Not women friendly and life was brutal, but the Chinese culture was so unique.  I guess as the world's oldest continuous civilization, unique facets would emerge to keep it going. 
This book follows the story of Lily and Snow Flower; two young Chinese girls living in separate small villages.  They are linked by a matchmaker to become 'same olds,' which doesn't have a good translation, but its like life-long best friends that sign a contract as children.  Lily moves up in the world, financially, through the arrange, but Lily also has perfect feet for binding that made her very marriageable.  The book tracks the girls, who undergo the brutal feet-binding process, through girlhood, adolescence, and marriage in their small villages.  Along the way, they learn the womanly arts in the women's only chamber upstairs; knitting, embroidering, cooking, gardening, the women's secret language, as undergo the heartbreak of marrying someone they've never met, leaving their natal families, learning to cope being at the bottom of the social ladder in their new homes, with their mothers-in-law being in charge and their sole purpose to produce sons. 
As a reader, we learn about political instability, the consequences of opium addiction, cholera, feet-binding, family structure, expectations and roles of women, the importance of birth signs and Chinese festivals.  It's a really interesting read.  Lily is grounded, pragmatic, and naive;  Snow Flower is exotic, intelligent, and a dreamer.  They remain friends through all of it.  At the end the author has an afterward that explains the existence of a women's secret language (the language reserved for men is, I'm assuming, either Mandarin or Cantonese, but women wrote letters, poems, and stories in nu shu), that was discovered during the Cultural Revolution.  For thousands of years women utilized a language men couldn't read, although now its fallen by the wayside and is seldom used and rarely passed down to girls.  Fascinating home women find ways to survive in cultures that value them only for their uterus.