book reviews

Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden. There was a lot to like about this complex tale of multiple generations of women across two continents ... a few of the characters were well-drawn, the bones of a couple of the plot arcs were interesting, the language was pretty but not overly tortured. But the book's structure was choppy, jumping around in time and perspective abruptly, which made it hard to keep up with what was going on. And it was impossible not to notice that a third of the book was simply Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. The author went so far as to draw notice to her plagiarism by having Burnett appear in the book as a character, a wink-wink nudge-nudge see-what-I-did-there attempt to pretend that Burnett gained her inspiration from this author's characters. Had the book's plot simply shared a few elements with Burnett's book, it might have been clever. But the point-by-point similarities were too much. Morton would have been better served by writing her own book, not simply rewriting someone else's.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, The St. Germain Chronicles. This set of short stories follows the more modern adventures of Yarbro's count. But they jump from era to era abruptly, and it's hard to follow where they lead. A couple of the stories seem to have no point, the interlaced letters seem only tangentially related to the stories, and overall the collection failed to make me want to read it again.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind. I wanted to like this book, I really did. Two people I respect recommended it to me, and I was hoping it would really wow me. And it was a fine book. Perfectly fine. However, the book's premise is that a young boy finds a book, also titled The Shadow of the Wind, and the book is so gripping and transformative that his whole life bends to grow around the story within the book and the history of its author. The problem there is that I wanted the real book in my hands to be as gripping and transformative as the fictional book in the book, and it simply wasn't quite there. Additionally, the author made part of the book an epistle written by one character to another, but he failed to change his voice or style to reflect that it was supposed to be a hand-written letter, and he also included in it scenes that the letter writer was not present for, which destroyed the illusion. Overall, a perfectly fine book ... but not what I had hoped it would be.

Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy. Marryat was a naval man who wrote naval books in the early 19th century. I suspect he is where Patrick O'Brian gained inspiration, because the books are similar in flavor. However, Marryat found a balance of tone and plot and detail that O'Brian's first book, at least, didn't achieve. Marryat's book was a very tongue-in-cheek, very Dickensian flavored send-up of the naval service, as seen by one rather lucky young seadog, an entertaining, amusing ride for both protagonist and reader.