Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Eight: Orphan Train

So about a year ago, a coworker recommended Christina Baker Kline's Orphan Train to me, and for some reason the time just didn't feel right to read it, though it looked good.  Then my mother read the book and recommended it to me, so I decided I should finally check it out, and lo and behold, the recommenders were right: it was an enjoyable read!  The story is split between narrators (a teenage Penobscot Indian girl in foster care; a wealthy elderly widow) and settings (contemporary Maine; 1930s Minnesota), and while it's not super hard to figure out how the two stories are intertwined, each story is interesting enough in its own right to keep the momentum of the novel as a whole.  Also, the historical part of the story deals with so-called orphan trains (hence the title), which are a part of American history I knew nothing about, and now at least I know a little about the former practice of sending orphans from urban slums out to the Midwest in the hopes of adoption.  In addition to the interesting settings, Kline's characters are finely drawn, and the narrators in particular elicited my empathy and drew me into their stories.  For readers who enjoy historical and contemporary fiction as well as stories that foster an emotional connection to the characters, I'd definitely suggest reading Orphan Train.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Seven: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

This giant book by Emily Croy Barker caught my eye on the library's shelves partly because it's so huge (upward of 500 pages), and partly because of its long title, and partly because the dust jacket is so pretty.  Nora, a struggling grad student who's just been dumped by her longtime boyfriend, accidentally wanders into another, magical world--but this world turns out to be not quite the fantasy it at first seems and in fact is quite dangerous.  Unable to return home, Nora struggles to find her footing in this mysterious new world, and I at least was enthralled by her adventures here.  Full of great world-building, intricate plots and subplots, and plenty of emotional intrigue and complicated relationships, I could hardly put this story down!

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Six: Every Heart a Doorway

So I read this quick little book by Seanan McGuire on the recommendation of two of my coworkers at the library, and I'm so glad I decided to read it.  Ever wondered what life was like for Alice or the Pevensies or anyone else who gets through to a magical world and then has to return home?  Every Heart a Doorway explores what might happen to teens who've had adventures in other worlds and then end up back in the real world.  In this case, they end up at a boarding school run by a mysterious and sympathetic old lady who simultaneously tries to help them move on and find the doorways back to their other world.  When our heroine arrives at school, she's not sure what to expect, and when students at the school start being murdered, she's the number one suspect.  A strange mix of boarding school story, fantasy, and murder mystery, this interesting little book captured me from page with its excellent writing.  If you're willing to suspend your disbelief for a while, give Every Heart a Doorway a try.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Five: Lucky Us

So after a crazy spring, I'm finally coming into some free time again and will be updating my blog again, regularly, I hope!  First up: Lucky Us, by Amy Bloom.  This is one of many books my grandmother gave me that I'm finally getting around to reading, so it's not something I would have picked out on my own, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.  Lucky Us follows half sisters Iris and Eva and their haphazard family of misfits from Ohio to Hollywood to New York City in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. While Iris is the aspiring actress and Eva seems to be the sidekick wandering aimlessly through Iris's life, Eva is really the heart of this story, even as some chapters consist not of Eva's first person narration but of letters from Iris or other characters.  This story has a sort of emotionally detached feeling that doesn't usually appeal to me, but for some reason the dispassionate distance between me and the characters really worked with this story, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Four: Bellwether

So with Bellwether, I've concluded my unofficial Connie Willis month, although she's written many other delightful novels that I haven't read or reread in the past month.  Bellwether is the first book by Willis I'd ever read, and partly for that reason it holds a very fond place in my heart.  But I also love it because it's a little nugget of joy.  By far shorter than any of her time travel novels, Bellwether tells the tale of two corporate scientists who end up working together and discover a lot more than they'd bargained for.  Written after Doomsday Book but before the other time travel stories, many of the same themes run through this novel--especially regarding the effects of actions in chaotic systems--but Bellwether also has a healthy dose of gentle fun-poking at modern life as it urges thinking for oneself (a theme I can definitely get behind).  If you like happy, light-hearted, slightly snarky stories, I'd highly recommend Bellwether.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Three: Blackout and All Clear

As in past years, I'm discussing Connie Willis's monumental two-part story in one post because Blackout and All Clear really can't be read separately: it's one story that's been published in two (very long) parts.  This concludes her novel-length repertoire of time travel stories, and what a conclusion!  I first discovered these books in February of 2014, reread them last February, and now returned to them for the third time in as many years, and they're so wonderfully detailed and layered and complex that there's something new to notice with each rereading.  Without giving too much away, these books focus on three of Mr. Dunworthy's history students who are each studying a different aspect of England's involvement in WWII.  As one might expect from Connie Willis, their stories converge in interesting and unexpected ways, playing out over the course of years.  Reading these final time travel novels on the heels of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, one can see that certain themes and concerns travel through these works (and also through Willis's other works, most of which I'm not rereading at the moment), especially the effects of actions in complex or chaotic systems (a concern central to perhaps my favorite novel by Willis, Bellwether, which I'll be reading next).  With so much happening throughout the book's several stories, which are not always told in chronological order (always pay attention to the date given at the beginning of the chapter!), these works are not for the faint of heart, to be sure, totaling in at over a thousand pages, but if you like intricate, carefully crafted, well researched storytelling, it's hard to beat Blackout and All Clear.

Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Two: To Say Nothing of the Dog

So next in my Connie Willis series was To Say Nothing of the Dog, another time travel book, though only loosely related, so you could read this without having read Doomsday Book and be totally fine, though I think reading them consecutively really allows one to see the themes that connect both stories (and that also run through Blackout and All Clear, her subsequent time travel books, which I'm reading presently).
But to say nothing more of these extraneous details, I'll return to the book at hand, which is by far the most light-hearted of Willis's time travel books.  Set mainly in upper class Victorian England, this book is part comedy of manners, part romance, and a big part mystery.  I hadn't really thought of it as a mystery book until this time around, when it really hit me that the whole story is one big whodunnit: what happened to the Bishop's Bird Stump, and when, and how, and why? Our intrepid time travelers have been assigned to find out, and as they work frantically to track this hideous Victorian artifact through history, they also have some hilarious misadventures along the way involving cats and dogs, butlers and boats, and the side effects of too much time traveling (extreme sentimentality).
The title references Jerome K. Jerome's delightful Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and for those who have read that book, its influence is clear.  For those of you who haven't read it, I highly recommend it, as well as To Say Nothing of the Dog, which manages to be both funny and thought-provoking.