Jane's Orange Marmalade

Welcome, Jane!

Orange Prize Winners I've Read:
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
Property by Valerie Martin
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Orange Short Listed I've Read:
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Paradise by Toni Morrison
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Orange Long Listed I've Read:
The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
Girl with a Pearl Earring byTracy Chevalier
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson
Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan
A mercy by Toni Morrison
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones

Oranges I Own TBR
On Beauty by Zadie Smith -- W
The History of Love by Nicole Kraus -- SL
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson -- LL
Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick -- SL

Glad to see you here, Jane! You've done pretty much the same Orange reading as I have except that The Tiger's Wife is up next for me and I just got a copy of White Teeth. However, I don't own/haven't read one of your TBR ones. Enjoy!

Hi Peggy -- thanks for the visit -- I loved The Tiger's Wife -- it was one of my favorite books last year, and I got to see Tea Obreht at a reading/discussion at Chautauqua this summer.

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

I thoroughly enjoyed this sojourn of a young Chinese woman who travels to London to learn English and while there, falls in love with an older man. Zhuang's story is related in a journal, organized less by dates, than by vocabulary words - words through which she learns not only English, but the strange ways of a different culture, philosophical differences, and the wayward meanderings of the heart.

And the cover is orange!

Oy, this one has been on my shelf forever! Great review!

Definitely one to pull off the shelf!

Since Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus is on this year's long list, here is my review:

This was a pure pleasure read. Part fairy-tale, part fin-de-siecle nostalgia, with a dollop of reflection on the nature and ramifications of illusion. The magic of circuses -- the skill of the performers, the closed society, the allure of thrilling danger -- has its own element of courtliness and Romance that Morgenstern exploits extremely well. And her language can be mesmerizing. The Night Circus is not the best novel about circuses I have read -- Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus carries more complexity -- but it's a dazzling debut. I look forward to her next book.

Secrets have power.... And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well yours. 4 stars.

Excellent review!!! Can't wait to read it!

Property by Valerie Martin
This is a brilliantly written book revealing the corrosive effects of human ownership of other humans -- in slavery, in marriage, in families. Much has been written about this Orange Prize winner, so I'm not going to rehash the plot. Martin's skill lies in creating a narrator whom the reader at once despises and feels sympathy for. I couldn't put it down until I had finished it.

Totally agree! Such a fantastic story with unforgettable characters!

I think I'll stick with books I own -- I'm going to try to read Dalia Sofer's The Septembers of Shiraz and Gail Jones's Dreams of Speaking in July -- now I just have to go and find them on my bookshelves.

The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer

While at times I found The Septembers of Shiraz a compelling read, ultimately I didn't find it very satisfying. Maybe I've read too many books about political oppression and torture all around the world in the last few years.

Sofer's story of the tribulations of Iranian-Jewish Amin family suffers, I think, from a third person omniscient viewpoint spread too thinly among the four members of Amin family: readers are not only privy to the thoughts and experiences of Isaac, a gem dealer arrested by the Revolutionary Guards, but also to his wife, Farnaz; his son Parviz, who has been sent to university in New York; and to his young daughter, Shirin. I generally appreciate multiple viewpoints in a novel, but here the shifting viewpoints seem to give the readers diluted characters and lessening tension.

I was thinking of reading The Septembers of Shiraz this month but a lot of people seem luke-warm about it.

Thanks for the very helpful review!

I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it -- it just didn't quite do it for me.

I totally understand how you feel about The Septembers of Shiraz Jane. It's not a bad book, but I PERSONALLY didn't care for it too much.

Add me to that luke-warm list. Rachel said it for me too.

Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones

This is the first novel I've read by Gail Jones, but it certainly won't be the last. She writes beautifully.

Briefly, Alice Black has just returned to her home in Australia after spending time on a grant in Paris where she was writing and researching a book on the poetics of modern technology. While on a train, she meets Mr. Sakamoto, a survivor of Nagasaki, who is writing a biography of Alexander Graham Bell. The novel is the story of their friendship, their shared interest in technology, and about Alice's inner explorations of her life and her family.

Jones manages to capture the immediacy of experience in telling specificity:

"Alice was flying to Europe, following darkness around the planet in her north-westerly projection. She would have a doubled night -- the nothing space of jet flight was freighted with black magic, so that passengers bore stoically their extended nocturne, relinquishing the ordinariness of time, relinquishing good meals and intelligent conversation, for this wearisome, dull, zombie imprisoning.... The lights switched off and passengers seemed instantly to sleep. They had become sluggish, bored. Now they met the extra night with eyes closed, their heads thrown back, their mouths slackly agape like codfish....It was as if the plane was governed by alien air or some creaturely intention. A posthumous blue washed over bodies, faces....She retreated quietly, wondering about the automation of planes, how they stayed up, anyway, what antigravitational devices kept them there, defying all instinct, hurtling like a thrown thing through distorted ever-darkness."

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Miller retells the tale of the Trojan War from the narrative view of Patroclus, Achilles' lover and boon companion. Patroclus, a prince in his own right, is exiled from his homeland because of an accidental death and sent to be fostered in the court of Peleus, the king of Phthia and the father of Achilles.

While I found this novel an intriguing read, it was also oddly unsatisfying in its lack of character development. We discover little about Patroclus's personality, beyond his kindness and lack of appetite for war, despite his role as narrator. Achilles is essentially the golden boy (both literally and figuratively), strongly tied to his mother, the goddess, Thetis, and finally fully aware of his fate.

Besides the fierce Thetis, the most interesting characters are those who appear in cameos: Odysseus, Agamemnon and Diomedes -- the leaders of the Greek forces against Troy. They embody the violence, the ambition and the hubris of the Mycenean-led forces who drag kings and warriors into battle and corrupt the heart.

Wondering what you are planning to read in Orange July? It's almost upon us.

Reading and thoroughly enjoying Wolf Hall.

So happy that you are enjoying it Jane. It's a good one.

I have to say that I think that Bring Up the Bodies is even better. There's just so much there! I read pretty superficially, but even I can see depths to explore.

Well, I haven't been here in a long time, and the Orange is now the Bailey's, and I've just read Burial Rites as my first book of 2015 -- thanks to a gift from my Virago Secret Santa.

Shortlisted for the 2014 Bailey's Prize (formerly the Orange Prize), Burial Rites is Hannah Kent's first novel. As a historical novel reimagining the murder of a landowner involving his female servant who is confiding her story to a sympathetic young man, it must bear some comparison to Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace to any reader familiar with Atwood's work.

However, Burial Rites stands on its own as an accomplished work of fiction with a well developed protagonist, a highly detailed picture of northern Iceland in the early 19th century, and thoroughly researched background material.

Agnes Magnusdottir was the last person to be executed in Iceland on January 12, 1830. She, along with Sigridur Gudmundsdottir and Fridik Sigurdsson, was convicted of murdering Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jonsson and burning down Natan's house to try to conceal the crime. The murder is well known to this day in Iceland, and Agnes is generally characterized in local legend as a scorned and vengeful lover who incited two young people to violence and murder.

Kent, who first heard the tale when she was an exchange student in Iceland, was fascinated by the character of Agnes and her isolated existence. An illegitimate child, abandoned by her mother at 6, Agnes was brought up in poverty and servitude. Nevertheless, like nearly all Icelanders in the 19th century, she was literate, and she had a roving intelligence that embraced the lore of the sagas and the starkness of the Icelandic landscape.

The novel spans the period of about six months before Agnes's execution when she is being held by a local official's family to await final authorization from the King in Denmark to proceed with the sentence. Within the family she labors as a servant, and Kent explores the evolving relationships within the family. Agnes is assigned a spiritual advisor, Thorvadur Jonsson, to whom she gradually tells her story.

So what was Agnes's role in the murder? This is the crux of the novel, and the reader's judgement depends of the interpretation of the reliability of the narrator.

All in all, a highly accomplished first novel -- and a good note to begin the year on.

I think several of us have chosen this as our first Orange/Baileys of 2015. I thought it a brilliant book.
Well reviewed Jane.

Jane -- on the wishlist with that one. Thanks for pointing it out to me.