Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick. I found Chadwick when I worked in a library my first job out of high school. Her books were an instant hit with me, and since I don't read them often, they are constant, reliable good reads that I always enjoy. From goodreads:
Matilda, daughter of
Henry I, knows that there are those who will not accept her as England's
queen when her father dies. But the men who support her rival Stephen
do not know the iron will that drives her.
Adeliza, Henry's
widowed queen and Matilda's stepmother, is now married to a warrior who
fights to keep Matilda off the throne. But Adeliza, born with a strength
that can sustain her through heartrending pain, knows that the crown
belongs to a woman this time.
This doesn't really do it justice, as its very...short, and Chadwick is known for her lengthy and detailed descriptions and most of her books span the lifetime of most of her characters. Matilda "officially" becomes queen based on English inheritance laws after her father King Henry dies in the 12th century. Although many are loyal to their first female leader, many are not, and Matilda spends her life trying to re-obtain her crown, first for herself, and then for her sons.
The Dinner by Herman Koch. From goodreads...
A summer's evening in
Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between
mouthfuls of food and over the delicate scraping of cutlery, the
conversation remains a gentle hum of politeness - the banality of work,
the triviality of holidays. But the empty words hide a terrible conflict
and, with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being
sharpened... Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. Together, the boys
have committed a horrifying act, caught on camera, and their grainy
images have been beamed into living rooms across the nation; despite a
police manhunt, the boys remain unidentified - by everyone except their
parents. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation
finally touches on their children and, as civility and friendship
disintegrate, each couple shows just how far they are prepared to go to
protect those they love.
This book was good, I think, although not because of a stellar plot line. The organization of the book, coinciding with the menu course they are concurrently eating, is fun and different, and it has an unreliable narrator, which isn't revealed until the end. I think the writing is a bit choppy, but that could be due to a poor translation, as I believe it was written originally in Dutch.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Description from goodreads...
First published in 1899,
this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it
was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening
has been hailed as an early vision of woman's emancipation. This
sensuous book tells of a woman's abandonment of her family, her
seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threaten to
consume her. Originally entitled A Solitary Soul, this portrait
of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American
fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and
Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman engaged in self-discovery turns away from
convention and society and toward the primal, from convention and
society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the
senses. The Awakening, Kate Chopin's last novel, has been
praised by Edmund Wilson as "beautifully written." And Willa Cather
described its style as "exquisite," "sensitive," and "iridescent."
I picked this off my classics list and enjoyed it, in parts. Kind of a parlor book; people of any age, in any time period, will fall out of love with their spouse and into love with someone new.
Girl on the train by Paula Hawkins
This might be my favorite of the 5...unreliable narrators, at least as a reader it seems its hard to know who to trust, multiple viewpoints, spotty memory recollections, and taking people watching a bit too far. It's set in England, and is well written, a fast read, and really interesting. From goodreads...
Rachel takes the same
commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track,
flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal
that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their
deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,”
she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the
life she recently lost.
And then she sees something shocking.
It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now
everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what
she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what
happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. Has she done
more harm than good?
A compulsively readable, emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller that draws comparisons to Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, or Before I Go to Sleep, this is an electrifying debut embraced by readers across markets and categories.
My sister nailed me her copy with a note to "read immediately."
At water's edge by Sarah Gruen.
I heard about this book from a book club I was supposed to attend but couldn't because of work. I read the book anyway and loved it. I was excited to read it for two reasons; Sarah Gruen also wrote Water for Elephants which I loved, & the locale in the book is Loch Ness, which I have a soft spot for. I thought Maddie was a bit of whiny brat at first, but comes into her own in a Scottish inn after she realizes her husband is a good-for-nothing cad. It's a less obvious and predictable, and more real journey of self-discovery. From goodreads...
In her stunning new novel, Gruen returns to the kind of storytelling she excelled at in Water for Elephants: a historical timeframe in an unusual setting with a moving love story. Think Scottish Downton Abbey.
After
embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society
Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut
off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already
embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being
colorblind. To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to
regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father
attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness
monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and
return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their
friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland
in the midst of war. Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster,
while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now
alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what
she wants. The novel tells of Maddie’s social awakening: to the harsh
realities of life, to the beauties of nature, to a connection with
forces larger than herself, to female friendship, and finally, to love.
