Edward Carey's Little, a witty, macabre epic about the woman who became Madame Tussaud

Carey presents an immensely creative epic that follows a poor orphan’s rise to become the famous Madame Tussaud.

Born in 1761, and nicknamed “Little” for her petite size, Anne Marie Grosholtz becomes the unpaid apprentice of her late mother’s odd, nervous employer, Dr. Curtius. After fleeing to Paris, they join forces with a redoubtable widow and her son. Their skills with wax attract attention, leading to their unusual museum and Marie’s invitation to tutor Princesse Elisabeth at Versailles.

At a time of rampant social disparities, the museum becomes a great equalizer: a place where royalty, poets, and notorious murderers—that is, their sculpted stand-ins—can be viewed up close, and ordinary people can participate in a lottery to be models themselves.

Mingling a sense of playfulness with macabre history, Carey depicts the excesses of wealth and violence during the French Revolution through the eyes of a talented woman who lived through it and survived. The oddball characters and gothic eccentricities evoke Tim Burton’s work, but without any fantastical elements; the reality is sufficiently strange on its own.

Carey shows how the seemingly absurd, like royal servants lodging in cupboards and artisans forced to re-create newly executed people’s heads in wax, becomes shockingly routine. The unique perspective, witty narrative voice, and clever illustrations make for an irresistible read.

I wrote this starred review for Booklist's September issue.  Little will be published later this month by Riverhead in the US. Aardvark Bureau published it in the UK this week.

The question of whether there are fantastical elements in the book (see the review at Kirkus) seems up for debate; it depends on whether you believe that some of the objects Marie encounters are actually sentient, or if her perceptions are due to her unique view of the world. I chose the latter, and appreciate how it was written to be read either way.

Also, having read and loved Michelle Moran's Madame Tussaud (see my earlier review), I wondered how similar a read Little would be.  My conclusion: other than being based on the same person and circumstances, they're very different in approach and tone.  It's worth reading both!

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore, a tense literary novel about revolution, liberty, and legacy

Historical atmosphere and characterization are top-notch in Dunmore’s (Exposure, 2016) newest work of literary historical fiction. Although there’s little action, considerable tension develops as Lizzie Fawkes awakens to the truth about the man she married and his first wife’s fate—details that readers know from the start.

The setting is 1790s Bristol, England. Revolution is erupting in Europe, and Lizzie’s mother, Julia Fawkes, a writer who “attacked the majesty of kings,” belongs to a group of radicals watching their beliefs take form in nearby France. Lizzie’s husband, building-developer Diner Tredevant, knows that war will crush his ambitions to build a terrace high above the Avon Gorge. Diner has always resented Lizzie’s family and their free-thinking ways, and as money grows tight, Diner’s controlling behavior and paranoia become evident.

The graveyard scene from the novel’s modern-day prelude isn’t picked up again but pays homage to the many women’s lives lost to history. Knowledge of Dunmore’s recent passing, added to her theme of the legacies people leave behind, lends a sad poignancy to the reading experience.

Birdcage Walk, Helen Dunmore's final novel, is published this month in the US by Atlantic Monthly (it's been out in the UK since March). Originally it was slated to be published in November, but the release date was moved forward after the author sadly passed away from cancer in June. This review was submitted for publication in Booklist's August issue, which is just out.  It's my first experience reading one of Dunmore's novels, and I'm glad it was assigned to me.  For those who've read her earlier work, I'd be interested to hear about your favorite(s).

To Capture What We Cannot Keep by Beatrice Colin, a literary love story set in Belle Époque Paris

They meet while aloft in a hot air balloon over Paris in 1887. Caitriona Wallace is an impoverished Glaswegian widow acting as chaperone to the wealthy Arrol siblings as they travel Europe on their Grand Tour. One of Gustave Eiffel’s engineers, Émile Nouguier needs to marry among his class to please his mother and bolster the family finances.

Although Alice Arrol is a naive teenager, she’s a potential match for Émile, but he finds himself more intrigued by Cait. However, in returning his affections, Cait would be choosing passion over honor.

Their beautifully restrained love story, told in a refreshingly unhurried manner and grounded in the era’s social constraints, gains complexity as Alice and her brother, Jamie, rebel against their expected roles. Nouguier is a historical figure, and readers get a close-up perspective on the Eiffel Tower’s step-by-step construction.

Drawn with care and suffused with stylish ambiance, Colin’s (The Glimmer Palace, 2008) Paris is a city of painters, eccentric aristocrats, desperate prostitutes, secret lovers, and the magnificent artistic vision taking shape high above them. Devotees of the Belle Époque should relish it.

To Capture What We Cannot Keep was published by Flatiron Books in late November (hardcover, 304pp, $25.99).  This review first appeared in Booklist's 10/1 issue.

There are two other things I should say explicitly about this book: it's a work of historical literary fiction, and although a love story forms an important part of the plot, it's not a romance by genre. Readers expecting more of a traditional romance will likely find the pacing too slow for their tastes. Also, as with other literary novels, the characterizations are complex, subtle, and multi-layered.  The cover is great and fitting, but the title doesn't really do it for me. It feels like it was chosen to appeal to the many fans of All the Light We Cannot See.

The fictional memoirs of George Sand: Elizabeth Berg's The Dream Lover

This work marks best-selling writer Berg’s first major venture into biographical historical fiction, a move that’s partly successful. Her subject is exciting and on-trend: George Sand, the nineteenth-century French writer whose insightful novels took readers by storm, and whose cross-dressing persona and many love affairs scandalized contemporary society.

Born Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin in 1804, she lived by her own rules, and her imagined voice—warm, sincere, and wise—is wonderfully disarming. As Sand examines her past, from her tense relationships with blood relations through her unhappy marriage and subsequent flight to independence in Paris, we’re introduced to this fascinating woman.

Berg’s descriptive skills are remarkable throughout, but Sand’s actions are too often reported from a distance rather than dramatized. This memoir-like style lets us learn about and admire Sand without placing us in the moment with her. There are exceptions, though, such as her scenes with actress Marie Dorval—her deepest, most passionate attachment—and her philosophical reflections on her continued search for love. It’s at these times that her story feels most immediate and alive.

The Dream Lover is published on April 14th by Random House (hardcover, $28, 368pp).  It appears on the LibraryReads list for April.  This review first appeared in Booklist's Feb 15th issue.

The novel is being heavily promoted, and the packaging is gorgeous. The flourishes on the image above are a little less prominent on the real thing, and her hair blends in more with the dark background.  From the moment I first saw it, I wondered if the image was a softened version of German artist Joseph Karl Stieler's portrait of Nanette Kaula, which appears in Ludwig I's Gallery of Beauties. The jacket doesn't say, but based on the listed source for the painting, it's possible.

Maureen Gibbon's Paris Red: a bold, observant novel of Manet's most famous model

Victorine Louise Meurent, the young woman who posed for Édouard Manet’s innovative, scandalous painting Olympia, among others, is placed at the center of Gibbon’s observant work.

In 1862, after an unnamed stranger enters the lives of Victorine and her close friend, Denise, and begins a teasing, charged relationship with them both, she takes a courageous step, leaving behind her impoverished existence as a silver burnisher to pursue him solo.

It becomes clear that she’s his match in sensuality—which surprises and pleases him—and her boldness serves them both well in her role as his model. Their affair is undeniably erotic, yet one of Paris Red ’s strengths lies in its unexpected status as a tale of artistic rather than sexual awakening.

Although only 17 to his thirtysomething, Victorine is no naive ingenue, and her involvement with Manet and his world serves as her entrée into a new way of envisioning and experiencing life. Full of animated scenes of working-class Paris in the 1860s, Gibbon’s color-rich prose moves with the deliberate urgency of brushstrokes on canvas.

Maureen Gibbon's Paris Red will be published on April 20th by W. W. Norton (hardcover, $24.95, 224pp).  This review first appeared in March 15th's Booklist.

Victorine Meurent (1844-1927) posed for numerous works by Manet, including the famous Le Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe (1863).  What isn't as well known is that she became a noted artist in her own right, exhibiting her work at Paris's Salon in 1876, although only one of her paintings has survived.  Read more about her in Kathryn Hughes' 2013 article for the Telegraph, "Manet's Forgotten Muse," and in the Guardian, V. R. Main's "The Naked Truth."

For more on Paris Red, Stephanie Renee dos Santos has a new review and interview with Maureen Gibbon at her blog, Love of Art in Historical Fiction.

Alexis Landau's The Empire of the Senses, an absorbing saga about a mixed-faith family in WWI and late '20s Berlin

A top-notch literary saga with a gripping plotline, Landau’s debut explores the complex questions of loyalty and ethnic identity in its depiction of a mixed-faith family living through social change during WWI and late 1920s Berlin.

Lev Pearlmutter and his gentile wife, Josephine, have a strained relationship even before he enlists. When he returns, having been emotionally transformed by his service in a close-knit Russian village, he has more reason to regret his marriage, but he loves his two children, Franz and Vicki.  Lev always considers himself more German than Jewish, and by 1927, they are a family of affluence that mixes well in society, or so it seems.

However, disconnection from their heritage affects each of the Pearlmutters differently. Even as anti-Semitic sentiment increases, ebullient Vicki is romantically drawn to a Jewish man. For Franz, a repressed gay man desperate for belonging, generational rebellion manifests itself in a particularly insidious way.

Each perfectly crafted individual is fully involved in the surrounding world. In Landau’s hands, even a simple trip to the barber, in which Lev muses on his own and the country’s problems, becomes meaningful and illustrative of the novel’s themes. The characters’ actions and thoughts are so three-dimensionally human that readers may forget they’re reading fiction and not experiencing their real lives alongside them.

The Empire of the Senses will be published on March 17th by Pantheon (hb, 496pp, $27.95).  This starred review first appeared in Booklist's January issue.  Back in December, I had listed it as one of a dozen favorite historical novels that I'd read in 2014; I wanted to hold off reposting the review until the publication date was closer. 

The publisher's blurb states:  "Unlike most historical novels of this kind, The Empire of the Senses is not about the Holocaust but rather about the brew that led to it, and about why it was unimaginable to ordinary people like Lev and his wife."  An accurate assessment, imho.

Book review: The Fortune Hunter, by Daisy Goodwin

Goodwin’s second novel is a luxurious indulgence for romantically inclined readers. In 1875, Charlotte Baird, an intellectually minded heiress, becomes an unexpected third wheel when the man she hopes to marry, Captain Bay Middleton, is pressed into service for Empress Elizabeth of Austria’s visit to England.

A reputed ladies’ man, Bay genuinely likes Charlotte for herself and encourages her unfashionable interest in photography. However, as Bay guides the willful, lonely, and deeply private empress on her fox-hunting pursuits on the grounds of vast country estates, they bond over their talent and passion for horsemanship and develop an intense mutual attraction.

Mingling historical fact with imaginative fiction, Goodwin writes with effortless grace, and her dialogue’s subtle wit is delightful. Each of her three protagonists commands attention and sympathy, which heightens the story’s poignancy. Charlotte’s levelheaded personality remains unaffected by her wealth or her relatives’ dependence on it, and Bay is movingly torn between duty and his sense of self-worth. Finally, despite her outlandish regimen for maintaining her complexion and ankle-length chestnut tresses, Elizabeth is never less than beguiling.

The Fortune Hunter was published yesterday in hardcover by St. Martin's Press ($26.99, 480pp).  For more information, see the author's website or follow her on Facebook and Twitter.  This review first appeared in Booklist's May 15th issue. 

Some additional thoughts and comments:

- Readers may notice that some name spellings have been anglicized, such as that of Empress Elisabeth (with an "s"), popularly known as "Sisi," and her son, Rudolf.
- The author's note at the end indicates many of the instances where the story deviates from history; the timeline has been condensed, for instance, to maximize its dramatic potential.
- Bay Middleton is, yes, a distant relation of the Duchess of Cambridge.

Book review: Evergreen, by Rebecca Rasmussen

Rasmussen has been steadily crafting a unique brand of midwestern literature that combines offbeat characters and timeless rhythms reminiscent of folk tales with touching story lines about the pain and hard-won joys of real life. As with her debut, The Bird Sisters (2011), in her new book, she shows her strong affection for the picturesque rural settings of yesteryear.

In 1938, Eveline Sturm joins her German-born husband, Emil, in the northern Minnesota backwoods. Their isolated cabin is beyond rustic, and her only reading material is Emil’s taxidermy manuals, yet she decides to remain alone with their baby son, Hux, when Emil returns to Germany to care for his father. Years later, Eveline’s daughter, Naamah, the product of a traumatic rape, grows up amid cruelty in a Catholic orphanage.

After reuniting with his half sister as an adult, Hux tries to help the beautiful, damaged Naamah recapture her lost childhood. In this character-driven saga of friendship and the thorny bonds of family, Rasmussen writes with wisdom and compassion about the people and places that shape us, for better and worse.

Evergreen was published on July 15th by Knopf in hardcover ($25.95, 352pp).  This review first appeared in Booklist's May 1st issue. If you haven't already read The Bird Sisters, I recommend it as well; both it and Evergreen are great choices for book clubs.

Two reviews online, finally

It's only been six weeks since they were published... Amazon must have hiccupped somewhere.

From Booklist: my reviews of Jonis Agee's The River Wife (one of my favorite reads so far this year) and Laura Dietz's In the Tenth House. The latter credits "Roberta Johnson" rather than me, but the print magazine has it right. Susan, Sally, Sadie, Sandra, Sondra, I've gotten, often (sigh), but Roberta is a new one.

Added later - to see what else we've been doing this holiday weekend, see Randomography (including a picture of me holding a garden cat that demanded attention) and Greasy Spoons.

Four reviews in four days, and other news

The results of my four-day reading/reviewing marathon in early January are finally online:

• Sheila Kohler, Bluebird, or the Invention of Happiness
• Donald McCaig, Canaan
• Mark Slouka, The Visible World (do not read the Publishers Weekly review first; horrible spoiler)
• Michael Wallner, April in Paris

Unfortunately I can't read this quickly all the time, but then I was still on holiday break over New Year's. Other news bits:

Read more about Prince Michael of Greece's new historical novel Le Rajah de Bourbon (yes, it's in French), which "traces the swashbuckling story of [Balthazar Napolean de] Bourbon's first royal ancestor in India." Bourbon, an Indian lawyer/part-time farmer, is supposedly a long-lost descendant of the Bourbon kings. Time to brush up on my French.

The Boston Globe reviews Alison Weir's Innocent Traitor, but not without bringing to the table some prejudices on historical fiction. "Bodice-ripper argot"?

Israeli novelist Eva Etzioni-Halevy, author of The Garden of Ruth, speaks about researching and writing biblical fiction.

What was so great about Catherine? An older piece (complete with, um, tacky photo) from Salon.com about Virginia Rounding's Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power, which also discusses other "princess books" found on the display tables of your local bookstore.