Review Copy | Book Chatter

The Return
By Victoria Hislop
HarperCollins
October 2009
404pp

The blurb from the publisher:

Sonia knows nothing of Granada’s shocking past, but ordering a simple cup of coffee in a quiet café will lead her into the extraordinary tale of a family’s fight to survive the horror of the Spanish Civil War.

Seventy years earlier, in the Ramírez family’s café, Concha and Pablo’s children relish an atmosphere of hope. Antonio is a serious young teacher, Ignacio a flamboyant matador, and Emilio a skilled musician. Their sister, Mercedes, is a spirited girl whose sole passion is dancing, until she meets Javier and an obsessive love affair begins. But Spain is a country in turmoil. In the heat of civil war, everyone must take a side and choose whether to submit, to fight, or to attempt escape.

The Short of It:

Passionate, lyrical and teeming with life…The Return is a love story like no other.

The Rest of It:

I fell in love with this book! I picked it up and had absolutely no idea what to expect when I opened its cover. What I found inside was a beautiful story about love and a heated battle to protect one’s country. This is a story within a story and alternates between Sonia’s story, which takes place in 2001 and the story of the Ramirez family that takes place between 1931-1936 and includes the Spanish Civil War.

The story opens with Sonia and her close friend Maggie’s trip to Granada. There, they enjoy the local color and Sonia realizes that her love of dancing is really a thirst that cannot be quenched. Sonia also realizes that her marriage is falling apart yet she isn’t quite ready to admit it. She wanders into a café and meets Miguel, a kind waiter that begins to tell her about Granada and the history of the Ramirez family. Upon her return home, Sonia enrolls in a dance class. A dance class that her husband James sees as an intrusion upon their marriage. He lets his relationship with a bottle dictate what happens next and before you know it, Sonia is headed back to Grenada to visit her friend Maggie who has decided to live there permanently.

Upon her return to Spain, Sonia’s love of dance continues to grow. The fiery passion of flamenco pulls her in and she gives into the rhythmic stomping of feet and the clapping of hands. As the music falls upon her, and her feet take over, she finds her true self and begins to truly appreciate the culture around her. As she sorts through her thoughts, she goes back to the café to see Miguel and to learn more about the Ramirez family. Miguel is a natural storyteller, and regales Sonia with the story of Mercedes and her family. What she discovers changes her life forever.

I highly recommend this book! Victoria Hislop takes a period of history that I knew very little about and creates a sweeping tale that’s left quite an impression on me. So much so, that I have been reading up on the Spanish Civil War. It’s THAT kind of book! Once it ends, you want the adventure to continue. This would make a wonderful book club selection and actually with Christmas around the corner a copy of this book along with a flamenco CD would be a great gift idea.

If you’d like to read more about Victoria Hislop, click here for her website.

Check out Victoria’s other tour stops here.

A big ‘thank you’ to TLC Book Tours for asking me to be a part of this tour and HarperCollins for providing me with a review copy of the book.

Of Bees and Mist Cover

Of Bees and Mist
By Erick Setiawan
Simon & Schuster
August 2009
404pp

The blurb from the publisher:

Of Bees and Mist is the tale of Meridia — raised in a sepulchral house where ghosts dwell in mirrors, she spends her childhood feeling neglected and invisible. Every evening her father vanishes inside a blue mist without so much as an explanation, and her mother spends her days venomously beheading cauliflowers in the kitchen. At sixteen, desperate to escape, Meridia marries a tender-hearted young man and moves into his seemingly warm and charming family home. Little does she suspect that his parents are harboring secrets of their own.

There is a grave hidden in the garden. There are two sisters groomed from birth to despise each other. And there is Eva, the formidable matriarch whose grievances swarm the air like an army of bees. In this haunting story, Setiawan takes Meridia on a tumultuous ride of hope and heartbreak as she struggles to keep her young family together and discovers long-kept secrets about her own past as well as the shocking truths about her husband’s family.

The Short of It:

Of Bees and Mist is at once magical and adventurous in the telling. Sometimes enchanting, sometimes a bit spooky. An impressive debut for Erick Setiawan.

The Rest of It:

Of Bees and Mist falls into the ‘magic-realist’ fiction category and I have to say, that I don’t think that I have ever read a book quite like this one. Meridia falls in love with Daniel and moves into his family’s home. There she encounters Eva, the mother-in-law from hell. Eva is so wicked and vile that when she goes to work on you, bees fly out of her mouth to attack you. Needless to say, her words sting quite a bit. Elias, her husband is good at heart, but has a terrible time living with his wife and fights are a daily occurrence. At first, Meridia tries her best to get along with her mother-in-law, but all that ends when she has her own child and sees Eva for who she really is. This of course causes all sorts of problems between Meridia and her husband, Daniel.

Reading this book was like taking a trip to the circus. Not the circus you and I know today, but a circus from years past. The colorful tents, the jugglers, the musicians, the smell of circus food wafting in the air. This book had a FEELING to it. Every time I picked it up I felt as if I was taken back in time to this magical place. I really enjoyed it.

The only criticism I have is that the Meridia/Eva battle seemed to go on a tad too long and it sort of overshadowed the interactions between some of the other characters. Overall, I was charmed by this book and wonder what Erick Setiawan is working on next.

Source: Thanks to Kathleen Carter over at Goldberg McDuffie Communications for sending me this review copy.

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